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Authors: Patrick McCabe

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BOOK: Call Me the Breeze
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My heart was beating fast all evening in the bar just waiting for Jacy but in the end she never showed and later on that night I heard them saying she’d gone to Dublin. I know I shouldn’t have dropped the acid tab but I was so disappointed that I -

But then the electric tingles started at the tips of my toes and before I knew it I was as happy as Larry.

Barbarella’s

The pub was going great guns now, after the disco and the building and all was finished. The best of it all was the big paved enclosure in between the old bar and the new, the bit they called The Courtyard. They were going to have all sorts of functions in it, they said. The disco was stuffed nearly every weekend. I often went in for a few jars after work, admiring the decor and whatnot — neon strip lighting, a flashing multicoloured glass floor. About as up-to-the-minute as you could get. It sort of provided comfortable surroundings for the way you’d be thinking. About how you were going to break it to Mona, etc. The words you would use, what exactly it was you were going to say. It was like Austie’s place and the way it had gone — an old-fashioned bar outliving its time and inevitably giving way to the new. ‘Like I mean, Mona,’ I said to myself, ‘who would have ever believed there’d be a place like Barbarella’s in Scotsfield? Things change. It’s the way it is.’ ‘We can still be friends,’ you could hear her saying, nervously adding: ‘Can’t we?’

‘Of course we can,’ I’d reply. ‘That was never going to be an issue. It was never on the cards, baby. You know?’

It would be good saying that and I felt so good about having worked it out that I dropped another trip. And sitting there in my old caravan it was like looking out on a mystical country. ‘It’s just like Charlie’s garden, Mona,’ I’d say. ‘A garden that could have been.’

Then I’d burst out laughing when I’d realize what I was actually looking at!

The Tinker Camp

For the so-called ‘garden’ was nothing more than a couple of old tents with the canvas rotted away and any amount of other old rubbish, including bicycle frames and bedsteads, a broken pram, a burst mattress and a dying-looking piebald pony standing tied to a tree. Not to mention God knows how many car wrecks. With anything that might have been of value on them long since stripped and sold. Travelling tinkers came and went but the only one there on a permanent basis was Mangan. In the nights when they came, you’d hear them all arguing, playing Johnny Cash and Elvis, getting violent then, and drunker, as the half-starved mongrels howled along with the galloping music. Sometimes you’d get edgy and you’d find yourself shouting: ‘Can’t you play something else for a change? Can’t you play some other fucking song?’ and standing there twitching, not realizing how edgy —

It was the acid, of course, mostly. Looking back that’s plain to see, but in those days you mightn’t attribute it to that. You’d think it was to do with Jacy and what kind of day you’d had in the pub. You’d be nearly in tears with frustration, trembling on the bed and repeating: ‘
Why won’t they listen? Why
?’

As the dogs howled and the shrill, off-key rockabilly guitar scraped on through the night …

(You can tell by the shaky writing just how edgy those days could be.)

12 July 1976, 4.15 a.m.

The dogs the dogs the dogs! They never let them off the leash you see and that’s why they howl like fucking dingoes. It really gets on my nerves. Why can’t they let them off the chain for a while? Why don’t
they play something else? Why do they never play some other record for a change? I’m going to go out and tell them. Fuck them! Fuck them and their dogs! I don’t have to put up with this! I don’t! Oh, Jesus, I feel so cold
.

Nervy

You could be particularly nervy, I remember, if a certain number of things were to happen. If Mona didn’t come home, say …

That was what I was like the night they started up with this accordion, the dogs joining in, some fucker then screeching on a fiddle …

All you could think of was that, when she did come home, you’d say: ‘I’ll never say those things about Jacy again. Ever.’

‘You’ll never love anyone else,’ she’d say. ‘You hear me? You won’t! I won’t allow it, Joseph!’ as she stroked your hair, and if you sobbed it would only be because she spoke the truth.

But then in the morning it would all be quiet again with the tinkers having departed and not a sound to be heard, from the woods, across the fields and right into the town. No Johnny Cash, no accordion, no dogs. Peace and silence would reign once more. And you’d take the record by Spontaneous Apple Conclusion out of the drawer and, without even thinking, you’d lift it to your lips. And kiss it. Kiss it as you spoke the single word: ‘
Iowa
.’

Ten Men Dead

I remember exactly when the argument started. We were all just sitting there, and the next thing you know they were at each other’s throats. When he heard about it, Austie went fucking mad. ‘Why didn’t you throw them out?’ he bawled at me. ‘They have no business arguing about things like that in here! We have enough trouble with the cops as it is!’

It was to do with the Kingsmills massacre and the ten Protestant labourers who’d been assassinated on their way home from work.

‘That’s what we’ve descended to! A fucking sectarian murder gang! Well, if that’s what it is, it’s not my war and I want no fucking part of it!’

Carson was a well-known Provo. But not any more, by the sound of it.

‘We need you so bad,’ sneered Hoss, ‘for all the good you’ve ever been.’

‘Ten men dead in the snow, slaughtered for sweet fuck all!’ he snarled, finishing up his drink.

‘If you’re not in it then stay well out of it!’ snapped Hoss as Carson the former Provo banged the door behind him.

Big Sur

I wondered what The Jace — I felt I knew her so well now it was OK to call her that — made of all that stuff, the killing and bombing, I mean. It was a long way from California, that was for sure. I had a fair idea she didn’t give a fuck. ‘If that’s how they want to live their lives, well, that’s fine. All I can say is, include me out.’ The unblemished sands of Big Sur stretching out for miles behind her and the Pacific surf crashing. I couldn’t stop thinking about things turning out differently for Charlie if he’d gone down the road of Carlos Castaneda and stuff and not got stuck with violent revolution and shit — just how great it all could have been. I’d been reading in the Ed Sanders book about how they used to live in the desert and drive around in these dune buggies, and I’d see myself then just sitting on a rock, sharing a toke with Charlie. And him nodding as he said: ‘You know what? You’re right. You’re right about love, you and Jacy.’

‘Me and The Jace,’ I’d say, ‘I think we got it right. Two flowers in a beautiful garden.’

As, behind a monster spliff, Charlie ‘The Gardener’ twinkled!

Cops

Hoss got his name from one of the Cartwright brothers in the TV Western series
Bonanza
and was built like a brick shithouse. One man you didn’t argue with was Hoss Watson for he’d take you apart without even blinking. Ever since the salesman’s death the cops had been shadowing him because they were pretty sure he’d been in on it. And now that the British Ambassador had died they had got it into their heads he’d been involved in that operation too, because of a comment he’d made to the sergeant one night. ‘Good enough for him,’ he’d quipped, or
something like that. But they had nothing on him they could make stick.

You couldn’t move now without the cops watching you. One night I got talking to one at the corner, the radio on his hip spitting static. ‘What do you think of this town?’ I said, not really caring what he said, just to make conversation more than anything. He was a young fellow not much older than myself, looking at me with his face so pale. ‘What do I think of this town?’ he said. ‘I think it’s hell.’

I felt sorry for him that he had to think that. Thinking that about anywhere, in fact. Especially when things were going so well for me. Not knowing what to do when only minutes later I’d seen her and her pal coming out of the office where she worked. I ducked down into the entry and watched the two of them going up the street. The other chick I didn’t know but she was completely different to Jacy. Definitely no Charlie Manson joints there, or trips in dune buggies, I kept thinking. She was just an ordinary country girl who, I figured, worked in the bank or some place, with this little skirt and jumper on her. But any friend of Jacy’s was a friend of mine, I reckoned, and all I could think was that it was real good to see them together that way, just rapping away there the way chicks do.

In the nights now I couldn’t sleep at all — just thinking of the flowers on her collar and the way she slung the bag across her shoulder. I wondered what was in it. A diary, some books, perhaps some dope. I wondered what she read. I had found myself being amazed by some of the writings Charlie’d been influenced by — it gave you a list at the back of Ed’s book and I couldn’t wait to get my hands on some of those. They sounded like fantastic reading material. Even better than the stuff The Seeker had given me. Lyric poetry. Philosophy. ‘
The printed word is the key to the truth. Knowledge is power
,’ he used to say to The Family. There were quotes in there from
The I-Ching
. Robert Heinlein. Hermann Hesse’s
Steppenwolf
.

I didn’t know that one.

Library

Una Halpin the librarian got it for me. ‘I didn’t know you read so much,’ she said. No, I said, I didn’t — only lately. ‘It’s a fabulous read,’ she told me then. ‘I read it all the time.’

I couldn’t believe my ears.
What next
? I thought.
Una Halpin starts the revolution with Charlie and Family? In that little crocheted dress she’d be a very likely candidate all right
.

But I thanked her anyway and went off to read my book. It was all about this guy, deep and complicated with so many layers to his personality that you got dizzy even reading about them. I’d sit up all night just reading it and smoking roll-ups, every so often lifting my head and turning to her to say: ‘
Your face in the light when it shines
…’ and then smoothing back her hair, long and blonde and fine and just streaming out there to touch them stars.

I leaned forward to kiss her ear. And it was then I sang it softly: ‘
Oh but California/California I’m coming home
’ — the Joni Mitchell song, of course. I could see her eyes shining and it did my heart good.

‘Big Sur,’ I murmured to myself as I closed old Hermann and fell on the bed. ‘Big Sur, you’re looking good.’

One night I heard her say: ‘Let’s just go, let’s just take off and —’

‘Where we gonna go?’ I asked her and lit another smoke.

‘Joey,’ she said. ‘Don’t even ask such questions.’

We were rolling across the Midwest when I heard myself speaking the words.

‘I feel I can tell you anything,’ I said.

To which she replied: ‘You can.’

‘When we get there, what will it be like?’ I asked her.

‘It’s like heaven, Iowa,’ she said. ‘I spent all my childhood summers there. And that’s how I’ve always thought of it. With the golden corn swaying and the big blue sky seeming to stretch for ever — it’s the way a child might imagine it to be. Paradise, you know?’

I could sense my eyes glittering. Glittering like that stretch of water I saw whenever I melted into Mona. Except that this was even more beautiful.

‘How a child might imagine it,’ I heard her saying again, as she slipped a cassette tape into the dash and the fluid country shuffle of J. J. Cale went sweeping out into the weighted air as we cruised on down the interstate.

‘You like that one?’ she asked me.

‘“Call Me the Breeze”,’ I said, drumming my fingers in time on the hood.

‘OK, I will, then! I’ll call you that!’ she replied, as J. J. Cale sang out and on we sped towards the heart of the sun.

Dublin Community Radio

Things were going from strength to strength for The Mohawks — the name they eventually settled on after hours of arguing. I had to work so I couldn’t go to the studio but when I switched on the radio in Austie’s there’s Boo Boo going full throttle. ‘Records?’ he said. ‘We don’t make records, Dave. Psycho fucktunes is what we make. We piss on vinyl.’

‘OK,’ said Dave G., ‘so what do you do apart from urinating on plastic? The music you make, could you describe it for us?’

‘Sure I’ll describe it for you suckers!’ said Boo. ‘The Mohawks from Scotsfield — you wanna know what music they make, what kinda sounds those mothers lay down? Well, I’ll tell you what we are and what kinda sounds! We’re the screaming psychobilly cowboys, a garage band with music to melt your brain!’

‘And what might punters expect to hear if they go along to see you guys?’

‘Expect the terror of low-flying Stukas! Hank Williams on amyl nitrate!’

‘So there they are, folks! The Mohawks — a loud, dirty combo with lots of sheer, aggressive bad-ass attitude! And they definitely are not punk!’

‘Punk’s for queens!’ sniffed Boo Boo as, with scabrous, paint-stripping guitars, the band launched into a driving, raw version of ‘76’, one they’d written in the van in ten minutes flat.

Thirty and thirty and ten and six
How many’s that? It’s seventy-six!
Seventy-six! Seventy-six!

The British Ambassador’s in the grave
The British Ambassador’s in the grave
Number plate 6, 6 M-I-K!
On this beautiful summer’s day!

Seventy-six! Seventy-six!
What the fuck do you make of this?

The minute the show was over, the switchboard was jammed with calls of complaint, mostly from in or around the Scotsfield area. One woman said: ‘Those foul-mouthed hooligans don’t represent us!’

Dumb motherfuckers
, I thought, as I lit up a spliff and had me a laugh. Then I opened up
The Family
.

And the more I read it, all I kept thinking of was that old good Charlie — the Charlie before things had to go and get themselves fucked up — hooking his thumbs into his belt and grinning: ‘You’re looking good, man!’ not realizing for a minute or so just who it was he was talking to — me and ‘My Lady’. Jacy strumming her guitar as she sat in the sun and Charlie slapping me on the back as he said: ‘She’s one good chick, man! One hell of a chick, believe me!’ The two of us sitting there as he opened his tobacco pouch and thought for a long time before asking: ‘You ever been to India?’ I shook my head. ‘I’m gonna go there one day,’ he said. ‘When the revolution’s done. I’m gonna go up to the mountains and seek out the prophets.’

BOOK: Call Me the Breeze
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