Notes from a Coma (5 page)

People will tell you that JJ was a lucky lad, a lucky child having the life he had compared to what it might have been; that’s one of those careless things people say without thinking. But he wasn’t and he isn’t. JJ’s never had a day’s luck in his life. Anything that was given to him with one hand was taken away with the other. You’ve only to look back at all the time that lad spent in hospital when he was a child or to that day in the church to see that he would never have a day’s luck in his life …

There were only a few of us in the church that day. It was the middle of a Sunday afternoon and JJ and Owen were
making their debuts as altar boys. It was a bit of an occasion, as you can imagine, otherwise I wouldn’t have been there. Nor would Anthony either who was beside me in the seat. It was afternoon benediction and the idea was that the two boys would have their first try-out in front of a small audience; if anything went wrong there wouldn’t be too many people to see it and not much embarrassment for the lads. All I remember hoping was that it would be over quickly and that we’d get away to watch the second half of the match—Mayo were playing Sligo that day in the Connaught final.

A few minutes before three JJ walked out of the sacristy carrying this long taper to light the candles on the altar. There was these two candelabra things at either end of the altar, ten candles on each of them reaching up to the centre in a kind of arch effect. JJ lit the right-hand one first, standing and leaning on his tiptoes to reach the last two or three. Then he went over to the one on the left. He lit the first five or six and was stretching up to the top ones when it happened. The cuff of his surplice must have caught on one of the lower candles. As quick as lightning this orange flame shot up his sleeve towards his shoulder. JJ jumped down from the altar shaking his arm, trying to put out the flame.
Of course this only made things worse, fanning and spreading the flames to the rest of his body. I was out of the seat in a shot, racing up the aisle, pulling off my jacket. JJ was now dancing around in front of the altar, waving his arms and screeching, almost covered in flames—you’d think to look at him he’d just grown these big orange wings. I threw the jacket over him and wrestled him to the ground. It seemed like all this went on about half an hour but from the moment he walked out with the taper in his hand to the moment I put the jacket over him I’d say less than a minute and a half had passed. When I turned him over on his back he was all black and smoking. His surplice had been burned away entirely but as far as I could see there didn’t seem to be too much wrong with him. He just lay there black and charred with smoke rising off him. Anthony pushed me aside and Father Scallen came charging out of the sacristy. Anthony had JJ sitting up with his arms around him.

“JJ!” he shouted. “JJ!” He put his hand under his chin and turned his face up. “JJ …!”

JJ just sat there wreathed in smoke and I saw that the hair on the side of his head and across his scalp had been badly singed.

“Stand back, let him have some air.”

Maureen pushed into the crowd, shoving us aside. “Get him something to drink. Owen, get him a glass of water.”

JJ was sitting there with no sound out of him. There were these long weals along the backs of his hands but they didn’t seem to be giving him any pain. Maureen took his hands, turned them over and lifted his face so that she could see the marks on the side of his head.

“This child needs the hospital,” she said. “These hands are going to blister. Get this black thing off him.”

Anthony sat in the back of the car with JJ on his knees wrapped in a coat. Maureen sat in beside me and I put the boot down. We were lucky it was a Sunday afternoon—there wasn’t any traffic on the road and we pulled into casualty about thirty minutes later. The nurses whisked JJ away with them and Maureen strode off behind them telling them she was his aunt.
^†
I was alone in the corridor then with nothing to do except get a cup of tea and try to read the Sunday papers. There were only a few people in the coffee shop—a
few patients going around in dressing gowns and a few gasúrs running about the floor with bags of crisps and ice lollies. Maureen and Anthony came back after about two hours. They looked a bit happier in themselves.

“He’s settled now,” Maureen said. “He’ll sleep for the rest of the day.”

“What did they say?”

“They said he was a lucky lad. Just his hands and his hair. They think he might have some scorching on his lungs but they’ll do tests on that tomorrow.”

“Did he say anything himself, did he talk?”

“He said a few words. Just that his hands were sore and that he had a hot feeling in his chest. But it doesn’t seem to be troubling him too much. I think they are more worried about the shock than anything. They bandaged his hands and put something on his head. He’s sleeping now.”

Anthony pulled in beside me. “I’ll come over in the
morning to check on him. I suppose there’s nothing else we can do for him this evening. The nurse said he would sleep till morning.”

“There is nothing we can do,” Maureen repeated. “I’ll come over with you in the morning if you like.”

I could tell Anthony was glad she’d said that. He drew his hands across his face and clasped them on the table in front of him. Then he spread them wide and looked at both of us. “Of all the things. And in a church too, of all the friggin’ places.”

I had no answer to that nor did anyone else either I’d imagine. I gathered up the paper and made to go. “It’s just one of those things, Anthony. Nothing you or I or anyone else could have done.”

Maureen and Anthony walked ahead of me to the car. A red-faced man with a little girl in a red dress was coming the opposite way. She was struggling under the weight of a big bunch of flowers. I asked the man how the game went. He threw his eyes up to heaven.

“A draw,” he said. “They threw it away.”

The altar boy from hell?—yes, I remember that. Don’t ask me who put it on him but from what I remember it was on him the first day he came to this school. The funny thing about it is that he never really was an altar boy. That day he went on fire and was nearly destroyed—that was his last day ever in a church as far as I know. But that’s how it is in a small town like this, an incident like that can mark you in more ways than one.

I’d say in thirty years of teaching JJ O’Malley was the brightest young fella I’ve ever come across; the brightest by some distance. This school’s never had a student with his abilities across the whole curriculum—our very own genius. Of course we’d seen those exam results of his and marvelled at them but it was one thing seeing them and another thing entirely coming face to face with the lad himself. There was nothing he wasn’t good at, no subject he wasn’t better at than any of his peers. Maths, physics, geography, literature, you name it, there was nothing he couldn’t turn his mind to. He flew through any exam he ever sat without breaking sweat: brains to burn as they say.

But of course not everything interested him. The science subjects, maths, physics, chemistry—he had little enough interest in anything built on formulas or that argued towards
definite conclusions. It was the discursive ones that drew him out and got him excited. English, history, religious instruction, civics—anything that led to argument and debate and multiple interpretation—that’s where he was in his element. And of course he was the bookish sort too who liked flourishing big jawbreakers of words. Ontological for instance—you won’t hear too many fifteen-year-olds coming out with that one. No, nor secondary school civics teachers either. I remember going to the dictionary for that one and I remember as well being none the wiser after I found it.

“There is an ontological and ethical priority established in the first paragraph,” JJ repeated nervously.

“I’ll take your word for it, JJ. But could you render that into plain English for the rest of us?”

He leaned forward on his elbows then, his hands clasped on the desk. This was a bad sign; JJ was about to get up on one of his hobby horses. If past form was anything to go by the class would pass in a blizzard of words and ideas and most of it would be lost on everyone around him. Still though, it was always worth seeing JJ vexed with the world and in full flow.

“The problem is that the constitution contradicts itself in the preamble, the opening paragraph. It recognises not itself but God as the Supreme Authority, the source of all laws including itself. The phrase …”

“I don’t see the problem, JJ. The constitution is the bedrock of civil law in this country, just as it is in liberal democracies the world over.”

“No, it is not and that is exactly the point. God is the foundation of civil law in this country.”

He was clasping his hands under the table now to stop himself trembling. You could see he loved these discussions but you could see also that he was almost afraid of himself. He told me once he suffered from a kind of mind-racing—what he called his mindrot meditations. Sometimes ideas would come to him in the middle of the night and keep him awake till all hours, chasing after them to wherever they led him—up blind alleys and down dead ends as he put it himself. This sounded like one of them.

“Granted so that is the case, JJ. Go on. You’re coming to the crux of your argument.”

“Supposing someone was to stand up here in this classroom or somewhere else and claim that he was God and that he had evidence to prove that this was indeed the case. Then there would be a problem.”

“Only if he disagreed with some article of the constitution.”

“Exactly, suppose he did disagree. Suppose he woke up one morning vexed for some reason or hung-over from a feed of drink and he said give me another look at that constitution. So he reads through the whole thing and somewhere along the way, it doesn’t matter where, he says stall the digger this has to be changed, I can’t stand over this. So he takes out a pen and strikes through an article and rewrites it. Now in that case there wouldn’t be a thing anyone could do about it, it’s his constitution as it says itself. It wouldn’t even have to go to the people.”
^*

“JJ, if God were to appear here in the half-parish of Kilgeever He would have more things on his mind than amending the constitution. And as for sinking pints up in Thornton’s …”

The class collapsed in guffaws.