The Guards (5 page)

“The girl was a shirker.”

“A what?”

“Work shy. We had to let her go.”

“That’s it?”

“Indeed. She was, alas, what we call a reject. No future whatsoever.”

I stood up, said,

“You’re right about that. She certainly has no future.”

…so smug believed—that desolation
had the limits full explored.

Sutton was staying in the Skeff. Like every place else in Galway,
it had recently been renovated. Any space is immediately seized for “luxury apartments”.

I found Sutton at the bar, nursing a pint of Guinness. Inspired, I said,

“Hey.”

He didn’t answer, took in my vaguely healing injuries, nodded. I took a stool beside him, signalled to the barman for two pints, said,

“Remember Cora?”

Head shake and

“I’m not from here, remember.”

The pints came and I reached to pay, but Sutton said,

“Put it on the slate.”

“You’ve a slate?”

“Comes with being an artist … a burnt-out artist in fact.” I thought it was best to take it head-on, said, “My hiding, your blaze, I didn’t believe they were connected. Or connected to anything else.”

“And now?”

“I think it’s all deliberate. I’m … sorry …”

“Me too.”

Silence then till he said,

“Run it all by me.”

I did.

Took longer than I thought, and the slate grew. When I’d finished, he said,

“Bastards.”

“Worse then that.”

“Can you prove anything?”

“Nothing.”

I told him about Green Guard, the security firm, said,

“They employ the guards.”

“They do. And you’re thinking … what?”

“See if my assailants are there.”

“Then?”

“Payback.”

“I like that. Include me in.”

“I’d like to meet Mr Planter too. He or Ford killed that girl. I want to know how and why.”

“Planter’s a rich fuck.”

“Oh yeah.”

“Probably got notions.”

“Sure to.”

He took a large swig. It left a white foam moustache. He asked,

“Think he likes paintings?”

“Oh yeah.”

“Lemme work on that.”

“Great.”

“Want to grab some grub or just get wrecked?”

“Wrecked sounds better.”

“Barman!”

… fears daily revealing…
Real
The lines on hour
Scarred.

Next day, I was dying. Not your run-of-the-mill hangover but the
big enchilada. The one that roars—
SHOOT ME!

I surfaced near noon. Events up till four the previous afternoon were retrieveable. Napalm after that. I do know Sutton and I ended up in O’Neachtain’s.

Glimpses peeked through:

Line dancing with Norwegians.

Arm wrestling the bouncer.

Double Jack Daniels.

My clothes were crumpled near the window. The remains of late night takeaway peering from under a chair. Trod on chips and what appeared to be an off-green wing of chicken.

Christ!

Did some serious throwing up. Morning prayer. Old establishment ritual, on my knees before the toilet bowl.

Twyfords!

They built bowls to endure.

Finally, purged, my system settled into a rhythm of spasmodic retching. The kind that tries to vacuum your guts up through the thorax. Thorax. Good word that. Gives a feeling of medical detachment.

I wanted the hair of the dog. Jeez, I wanted the whole dog. But it would lead to more lost days. I had vengeance to wreak, villains to catch. With trembling hands I tried to roll a joint. Sutton had given me some “waccy-baccy", said,

“From the Blue Atlas Mountains, this is serious shit. Treat with respect.”

Couldn’t roll the spiff. Went to the cupboard, found a stale cherry muffin. Scraped the guts out. Heated the hash in tinfoil then poured liberally into the cake. Popped the mess in the micro-wave and blitzkreiged.

Boy, it looked a sorry sight. After it cooled, I tried a bite. Hey, not bad. Between tentative sips of water, I got it down.

Then sat back, see where it went.

Orbit.

Hash cookies are renowned for space travel. I can confirm it.

A deep mellowness enfolded me. My mind was tiptoeing through tulips. I said aloud … or did I? … “I love my life.”

That’s the best indicator of my condition. Time later, I got the munchies and began to eye the green chicken. Luckily, a frozen pizza had somehow survived my recent campaigns, and I got stuck into that. Halfway through, I fell asleep. Out for six hours. If I dreamt, it was of “Hotel California”.

When I came to, my hangover had abated. Not gone but definitely not howling. After a shower and oh so careful shave,
I headed for my video shelf. It’s sparse but has my very essentials:

Paris, Texas
Once Upon a Time in the West
Sunset Boulevard
Double Indemnity
Cutter’s Way
Dog Soldiers

In 1976, Newton Thornberg wrote
Cutter and Bone.
Three ruined survivors of the sixties share a house. Cutter, a crazed crippled Vietnam vet. Bone, a draft dodging dropout. Mo, a mother and agoraphobic alcoholic. They investigate the murder of a young prostitute. They piss off the wrong people, and Mo and her baby are killed.

Cutter and Bone track a capitalist they hold responsible. Cutter, according to Bone,

has a savagery of despair. It precluded his responding to any idea or situation with anything except laughter. His mind was a house of mirrors, distortion reflecting distortion.

Cutter operates on two things:

Despair

Cynicism

Robert Stone wrote
Dog Soldiers
in 1973. Karl Reisz adapted it for the screen in 1978.

Again, it’s three fucked people.

Marge, hooked on pharmaceuticals. Her husband, John Converse, a war correspondent, and Hicks, who brings drugs into the States. John Converse sells out his friend to the DA
and realises fear was extremely important to him. Morally speaking, it was the basis of his life. I am afraid, therefore I am.

Hicks, pursued by villains and agents, dies in an old hippie cave. Written on the wall is

I watched these movies back to back and felt, as I had felt all my life … fuckit.

“One door I passed revealed a man
fully dressed in an antique zoot suit
and a white ten gallon hat.
As I passed by we regarded each other
as two wary lizards might stare as
they slithered across some barren stone.”

Walter Mosley,
White Butterfly

Eleven in the morning, I’m sitting on a bench at Eyre Square.
The debris of Sunday night is mildly stirring. Four o’clock, in the hours before dawn, that’s when it’s the war zone. The clubs and fast food joints disgorge the hordes.

The fights and yahoo-ism begin.

Top of the square is a statue of Pádraig Ó Conaire. They beheaded him. Christmas two years ago, a yob torched the crib.

Down near the public toilet, a young lad was murdered.

A city on the predatory move.

Progress my arse!

I’d a battered copy of Richard Farina’s
Been Down So Long It Seems Like Up To Me
in my jacket. It’s the green faded one. Pockets to burn, like Robert Ginty in
The Exterminator.
Richard Farina was Joan Baez’s brother-in-law. Would probably
have written fine books but the dope took him out. I’m running a list in my head:

Jarrell

Pavaese

Plath

Jarrell, from a Caribbean cruiser threw himself

and

Gustav Flaubert (1849)

As my body continues on its
journey
my thoughts keep turning back
and bury themselves in days past.

Out loud, I mutter, in Irish,
“Och, ochon.”

A new age traveller approaches, sits on the end of my bench. I’m drinking a cappuccino from a styrofoam.

No chocolate sprinkle. I hate that shit.

The traveller is mid-twenties, bangled in every conceivable area. She says,

“Caffeine will kill you, man.”

I don’t figure this requires a reply. She says,

“Did you hear me, man?”

“Yeah, so what?”

She scoots a little closer, asks,

“What’s with the negative waves?”

A cloud of patchouli envelopes me. I decide to cut through the hippy pose, say,

“Fuck off.”

“Oh man, you’re transmitting some serious hostility.”

My coffee’s gone cold and I put it down. She asks,

“Did you have red carpets in your home as a child?”

“What?”

“Feng Shui says it makes a child aggressive.”

“We had lino. Brown, puke-tinged shade. It came with the house.”

“Oh.”

I stand up and she cries,

“Where were you when John died?”

“In bed.”

“The Walrus will never die.”

“Perish the thought.”

And I’m outa there. I look back and she’s got the cappuccino on her head, sucking it down.

I’m bursting for a pee and risk the public convenience. A minor drinking school has temporary possession. The place is infamous since a paedophile ring preyed there. The lead wino shouts,

“Want a drink?”

Do I ever, but answer,

“No, but thanks a lot.”

My interview with Green Guard is at 12.30 so I still have some time to kill. Catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror, my hair is wild. As I exit, I say,

“Take care.”

The school chorus,

“God bless yah, sur.”

Off Quay Street, I notice one of the old barber shops. Check my watch, reckon … go for it.

There’s no customers. A man in his late twenties puts
The Sun
aside, says,

“How you doing?”

“Pretty good, thanks.”

I clocked the English accent straight off, asked,

“Didn’t this used to be Healy’s?”

“You wot?”

He didn’t call me “guv” but it hung there, available at a comb’s notice. I said,

“I forget the numbers, but I think I want a No. 3.”

“You sure?”

“Well, Beckham was a No. 1, so I definitely want up from that.”

He motioned to the chair and I sat down. Avoided, to the best of my ability, my own reflection. I asked,

“London?”

“Highbury.”

I longed to say, “Highbury and shite talk“, opted for

“Grand bit of weather.”

The music was loud and the guy said,

“Joy Division … 1979’s ‘Unknown Pleasures’.”

I kind of liked it. The twisted mix of grace and savagery spoke to my withered sensibility. I said,

“All right.”

“Oh yeah, mate, they’re the biz. You know, it’s twenty years since Ian Curtis drank a bottle of Scotch, watched a Werner Herzog film on TV, turned on a Stooges’ album …”

He stopped. The punchline was coming and it wasn’t going to be good. I could do my role, asked,

“What happened then?”

“He went into the kitchen and hung himself from the clothes rack.”

“Christ.”

The guy stopped cutting my hair, hung his head. A moment of silence. I asked,

“Why?”

“Dunno. He was caught between a failing marriage and his lover. His health was fucked, and he couldn’t get a grip on the band’s huge success … gel?”

“What do you think?”

“I was you, I’d go for it.”

“Bring it on.”

He did.

When I was leaving, I gave him a decent tip. He said,

“Hey, thanks a lot.”

“No, thank you.”

I had phoned the security firm early in the morning. Using a false
name, I said I wanted a job. Was asked,

“Any experience?”

“I was in the services.”

“Great.”

I wanted to see if any of their staff recognised me. From there, I was going to have to make it up as I went along. Worst scenario, I might even get a job.

En route, I went into Zhivago Records. The manager, Declan, was one of a rare to rarer species, a Galwegian. He said,

“How’s it going?”

“Okay.”

“Jeez, what happened to your hair.”

“It’s a No. 3.”

“It’s a bloody disgrace. What’s stuck in it?”

“That’s gel.”

“Saw you coming more like.”

“I want to buy a record, so could we cut the chit-chat?”

“Testy! What were you looking for?”

“Joy Division.”

He laughed out loud.

“You … ?”

“Christ, do you want to sell me a record or not?”

“The compilation album … that’s the one.”

“OK.”

He knocked a few quid off, so I figured he’d earned the cracks. Outside, I took a deep breath, said,

“Showtime.”

“Linda put her hand on his arm. ‘You know,
you don’t have to do this.’
He turned to her, a little surprised. We want
to find out what happens next, don’t we?’
‘I forgot/ Linda said, ‘you’re using me. I’m
an idea for a movie.’
Chili said, ‘We’re using each other.’”

Elmore Leonard,
Be Cool

The security office was on Lower Abbeygate Street. I went in and
a receptionist asked me to wait, saying,

“Mr Reynolds will see you in a moment.”

I’d barely sat when she called me. The minute I walked in, the man behind the desk did a double take. I glanced at his hands. The knuckles were bruised and cut. We stood staring at each other. I said,

“Surprise!”

He stood up, a big man, all of it muscle, said,

“We don’t have any vacancies.”

“Too bad. I think I could do ‘rent-a-thug’.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

I held up my bandaged fingers, said,

“Like your work.”

He made to move from the desk, and I said,

“I’ll see myself out.”

The receptionist gave me a shy smile, said,

“Get the job?”

“Got the job done all right.”