Dead I Well May Be (22 page)

We sit there and just think for a while. Ma should be calling us in to bed but Ma’s next door smoking and chatting with Mrs. Parkinson.

You know the way I asked Nan for the cardboard Death Star? PJ says after a time.

Aye.

I don’t think I want it now. I think I’m sick of all that
Star Wars
shite.

Really?

Yeah.

And your Action Men, too?

Aye, sick of all that. You can have them back.

I can?

Aye.

What’s got into you?

I don’t know.

Later, under the cool sheets of the upper bunk, I ponder this and other things, but eventually they all vape and there’s only one topic on my mind. Someday I would rescue her. In just a few years. When I was older. I would go in and punch him out and take her and we’d disappear across the water to England or America or somewhere where the sun shone and the sky was blue and we were far from soldiers and paramilitaries and bombs and violence. But, of course…

And yes, that was the night.

Later that evening Da came in singing and blitzed to high heaven. There were voices. Things flew. Things crashed.

Ma said, Over my dead body you will.

And he said, You’ll fucking do as you’re told. This is man’s business, and you’ll keep your fucking neb out of it.

And Ma’s one to overegg the custard when she gets the chance and said that if it was man’s business what was it to do with him.

He said that she was to shut the fuck up if she knew what was good for her.

And she said something that I’m sure was sarcastic and funny and he couldn’t think of a reply, and there was an almighty smash of something and she screamed that that was a wedding gift. A slap. A sob.

I knew that PJ would have the pillow over his ears, but I could hear.

I could hear.

It was 1982 and the year after the hunger strikes, and tension was as high as I ever remembered it. In Belfast, riots were as general as Joyce’s snow. Every night, petrol bombs and blast bombs, the peelers keeping apart Protestant and Catholic and sometimes nobody would get killed. Here in the northern suburbs, though, it was less of a problem; things were calmer, but it was like your pan of milk on the cusp, a slight notch up on the heat … Anything or anyone could make it overboil and scald.

And Mr. Miller believed that he was the boy who could make the magic. Really, he wasn’t much of a player, big to us, but small time in the larger scheme of things. But still. He was the boy. And later, when it went to shit, I couldn’t help but feel that I was partly responsible. You do that as a wean, you think the world revolves around you. Sometimes
I used to think that when I left a room all the people in it froze like with the pause button on a video and only started up when I came back in again.

Epiphany came thirteen days early for PJ and me and Ma and Da. Oh aye.

Seething with fury and looking for trouble, Mr. Miller went down to the Rangers Club. Mr. Miller talked a great game and said that they were all yellow bastards down there, and if they really meant what they said about helping the police and the forces of law and order, they’d do something about it. He persuaded about half a dozen eejits that the best way of assuring the future of Northern Ireland as a political entity was to do a firebomb attack on a Catholic housing estate. In the brilliance of their plan they were all to go home and make Molotovs, and he and Arthur Durant would drive them over in Arthur’s van. Mr. Miller made especially sure that our da came along. Oh yes, that was how he’d get me. Maybe he would have had Dad fire the first Molotov or maybe he’d have got Dad’s prints on a bottle. In any case, he was arranging it so that ever after he would have something over him. The best laid plans …

They never got anywhere near the estate.

They were stopped by the army for driving too fast, the Molotovs were discovered in half a minute, and everyone was arrested. Marty Bains turned rat, and Da and Mr. Miller and all the rest got five years for conspiracy to cause explosions.

There followed an inevitable, clichéd, and speedy progression: Ma divorced Da, turned to drink, started smoking again, turfed out Granpa, starting going with Mrs. Miller to the Central Bar, took up with Mr. Henry, who owned the butcher’s, and since Mr. Henry and us didn’t get along, sent us to live with Nan in East Belfast.

Mrs. Miller stayed with her husband and somehow conceived a bairn, who is, I’m sure, a credit to his people.

Like his grandfather and great-grandfather before him, PJ went to sea, leaving at the age of fifteen, and is now … where?

Me? I lived with Nan, and God bless her, she’s a wonderful woman, but no disciplinarian, and things fell such that I went to the world of violence: the rackets and the army and America. From there to here.

And that was then and this is now.

Events, trapped by them, by history.

Trapped, and in this cell forever? I don’t think so. For like I say, Another Christmas coming. Another Christmas Eve …

N

All the agonies of memory and the present. Pain and guilt and recrimination.

Of course, I can never tell the boys what I suspect, that they’re here because of me. And that makes me think about her. Hair, eyes, but distant, fading, and I try for them, all the long day.

The same old view. Fergal, Scotchy, flies. Change position, lean back, look up.

The story, the movie, food. Exercise and slop on the third day. A scramble for dry straw. Lockdown. Water and then a squat above the bucket as only liquid comes out. Dry yourself with straw and try not to rub too hard. Last thing you need is a bleeding arse.

Sometimes Fergal mutters a Hail Mary. It irritates Scotchy, but he doesn’t say anything.

Watch Fergal at his pick. Watch Scotchy scratch himself.

Stare at the ceiling when light comes in.

My story continues.

Above me the big war has begun and it progresses in a terrible, infantile bloodbath. The door continent has committed half its resources on a broad attack on many fronts. But its initial success has led to a crisis of supply and logistics, and both armies are bogged down into a static line of trenches. Wave upon wave beating against one another. It’s Shiloh or Ypres or, again, the Somme. A slaughter of innocents.
With the resources of continents this could go on for decades. The press is becoming discontented and the governments introduce censorship at source; victories are proclaimed. It’s always victories.

More night. More days.

We take out our wet straw and replace it with dry stuff. Our hair is long and our beards are shaggy. We stand out even more from the Indian prisoners, who somehow manage to groom themselves. Occasionally, we hear a truck in the yard and prisoners are moved in and out. There are some new inmates, you can tell by their clothes rather than faces. For everyone else, this might be a transit prison, but I know that we’re here for the long haul. Maybe the longest haul.

At night and sometimes in late afternoon, now on a regular basis, giant rumbling thunderstorms shake the prison. The rains drip down on us from the ceiling and the floor floods. We move our bodies pathetically onto little hills of unevenness on the concrete and thus on any convex mound we try and sleep.

The floors dry but never for very long. It’s a little cooler, but we’re heading into what must be the wet season. I try to remember from my geography whether we’re in the tropics and I believe we are.

Thunderstorms, dry patches. More night. More days…

And then, wonderfully, amazingly, incredibly, finally, something fucking different:

A hand on my shoulder.

Fergal wakes me before daybreak, holding something in his hand. I look up. It’s an object, I can’t make it out. Everything is a bit out of focus still. It’s curved and round. I stare at it for a while and then sit.

What is it?

Fergal cannot fully contain his excitement. He punches me on the shoulder.

It’s my fucking leg iron, you stupid wanker, he says.

I sit bolt upright.

Jesus, your fucking pick worked?

’Course it worked.

Does it just work on yours? I ask anxiously.

No, man, it’ll work on them all; all the locks are interchangeable. They just put ’em in a bag, you know. They’re old, twenty years old, I’d
say. They test them for brittleness, but that’s all. Old, easy. Tell ya, it was piss easy.

It took you four fucking weeks, Fergal, I say.

Yeah, but with the tools I had, he says.

I’m grinning at him, and he’s practically laughing.

Do mine, Fergal, do mine, I say, excitedly.

Ok.

He sits down in front of me and grabs the lock attaching my ankle chain to the ring bolt. He works on it for about ten minutes and incredibly the lock clicks. He lifts it up in slo-mo and dangles it in front of my face.

You’re a fucking genius. All this time, you’ve been a fucking genius, I say, biting back something like a breakdown.

I am, too.

We gotta wake Scotchy.

We walk over to Scotchy. We fucking walk over. Delight in it, and stand behind him, something we haven’t been able to do since we’ve been locked in.

Scotchy, I whisper, and he wakes instantly and turns to us, gobsmacked.

How in the name of fuck, he says, far too loud.

That wee shite did it, I say, gleefully.

Fergal is beaming. Scotchy thumps him in the leg.

You bastard, you tricky wee sleekit wee bastard. Wee fucking sneaky wee fucking shite, Scotchy says.

Fergal bends down and undoes Scotchy’s lock. This time it takes him only about five minutes.

Every time it’s easier, he says.

Scotchy is momentarily thunderstruck and silent.

What now? I say, excitedly.

Can you do the door at all? Scotchy asks.

Fergal shakes his head.

You need a big key. We don’t have the metal, and even if we did, it would be a tough job. Loud, too.

Scotchy’s spirits are up, though, and I’m thinking even if we can’t get out, at least we’ve got one over on the bastards.

Scotchy tenses and turns on us.

Hands, he says.

Our wrists are manacled together by a foot and a half of chain: one end of the chain is welded to the left manacle, the other attached to the right by a lock. These locks are never undone, and I think that they might be rusted or harder, but Fergal says that they’re all standard issue. He goes at mine for a few minutes and that lock clicks too. Scotchy insists he’s next, and Fergal does himself last. We have complete freedom of movement for the first time in weeks. I do jumping jacks and touch my toes, and the two boys stretch and laugh at me.

Scotchy huddles us close.

Ok, boys, got to get our shit together. All right, let me think, ok, something I’ve wanted to do since I got in here. See what’s out that fucking window. Bruce, you get Fergal on your shoulders there, hoist him up.

I nod. I’m still the strongest; Fergal is the lightest. It makes sense. We go over to the barred window. I cup my hand and he stands on it. I lift him up, and he clambers onto my shoulders.

What do you see? Scotchy asks almost frantically.

Ok, there’s the towers at the corners and guys on them, two, I think. There’s a fence beyond our cell wall here. It’s, um, I suppose twenty feet high and there’s razor wire in two loops at the top of it.

How far between the wall and the fence? Scotchy asks.

I don’t know. Thirty yards, twenty, I can’t really judge.

And what’s beyond it?

Beyond the fence?

Of course, beyond the fence, Scotchy snaps.

About another thirty or forty yards of grass and then there’s trees.

All right, get down. You’re fucking killing me, I groan.

Scotchy is pumped, and I am too. But Fergal still on my shoulders is all business:

Even if we get through the door and into the courtyard and up over the cell-block wall and we do get out, there’s still the fence. I mean, it’s a big fence, and they probably have guard dogs all along it at night, Fergal says.

Would you just get down, ya eejit, I say.

No, wait, tell us everything again, height of the fence, how far, how far to the trees. Are there spotlights on the towers? Scotchy demands.

Scotchy, we can look again later, I say, and Fergal climbs down my back just as I’m about to collapse on the floor.

Scotchy comes over to Fergal and sits down beside him. He looks serious.

Fergal, tell me again, slowly, why you can’t pick the lock on the cell door, he says. He doesn’t want his hope to vanish so quickly after it just appeared. None of us does.

Fergal shakes his head.

The locks I just opened are easy, standard, from years ago. Once I had his belt buckle filed, it was pretty straightforward. The lock on the door is different: it’s big and needs a big key and there’s no way I could pick it with this, it’s impossible. I’d need the key itself, or a big wad of metal to mold, and even then it would take me months, maybe years, to file it into the right shape.

Fergal has said all this with great patience. Scotchy is quietly appalled. There really isn’t a way out, even with our leg irons off. We could never tunnel through the wall. They’d notice that, and the floor’s solid concrete. It has to be the door or nothing.

So what’s the fucking point then? What difference does it make if we’re fucking free in here if we can’t get out of the fucking cell? Scotchy says, antagonistically.

I didn’t say it makes any fucking difference, Scotchy, so why come on with the attitude to me? Fergal says.

I’ll come on with the attitude with whoever I fucking well like, Fergal, Scotchy says.

Aye, well, save it for the tough guys of Crossmaglen, Scotchy. You’re not impressing anyone here, Fergal says.

Aye, well, when you did ever impress anyone, ever?

I got us out of the fucking lock.

Aye, and what good is it?