I rose one morning and ran, across the world. When I first felt Ireland beneath my feet I was relieved, and tired, and cold. I tasted salt in the wind. The man I work for came to the reception centre in a white van. He sat in it with the engine running and looked towards the main entrance. As people walked from the doors he said English? You speak English? And some of those who did agreed to go with him in the van each night to clean offices and factories. He said, slowly: You’ll never be asked, but if you are, say you’re an EU citizen. Act offended. If you’re asked for proof, say: Do you carry proof of your citizenship? That’ll fuckin bamboozle them! Then say fuck-all else, only that you’re self-employed. All right? Contractors, that’s what you all are.
One summer evening he brought me to a house on a narrow street at the end of which there was a small stone church and a graveyard. What do you think of this, Grace? We were at the door of the house. Leave your bucket of tricks there, Grace, you need do no cleaning here tonight. I only want to show you it. Show me what? The house, of course, he said, and laughed, and looked at me. His eyes reminded me of the dogs in the township as they waited for my mother’s cousin’s body to cool. Would you like to live in this house some day? He gestured about him with his hand, an arcing flourish. He drew out his vowels, like a man whose brain was damaged. He was trying to make me believe him foolish, harmless. There was a garden at the rear of the house, connected to the front by a narrow walkway lined with flowers. The sun pooled on the grass; small white flowers danced in it. Dark evergreens guarded the back wall. I imagined myself for foolish seconds sitting there, unseen, at peace. He gestured again, his hand sweeping out from his chest, like a circus ringmaster. He watched me closely. I thought of Satan, drawing Christ’s eyes to the glistening world beneath them, promising, offering to contract. I would live there, and he would have a key. There’d be no peace.
My employer’s wife died yesterday. I see him now, standing near the supermarket counter. He has a box of bottles in the crook of his arm. I buy fruit and bread here, humming as I move slowly along the aisles. He is smiling at a well-dressed lady who holds his outstretched hand in both of hers. God rest her, God rest her, the lady is saying. If there’s anything we can do for you, anything at all.
She was ill for a long time. He often stood and spoke of her, watching while I worked my way around the empty offices. He’d have a new mop-head to deliver to me, or a bottle of some spray or bleach, as a pretence. It’s terrible hard, so it is. Terrible hard to see her that way. Oh, Lord God. My heart is weary, Grace. Go easy, Grace, take your break. Come sit in the van a while. And he’d sit and talk again about the little house and tell me it was mine for only a tiny rent, we could work something out, as soon as I was regularized. Won’t it be lovely, Grace?
And he believes in his soul, I think, that it would be lovely. That he would visit at his will and I would smile at him and surrender to him. Just as those boys on the bus this morning thought that I would surrender to their dirty shoes kicking against the back of my seat and their hissed words of spite, their phones descending from above me, flashing and clicking as they stole images of me, to their thin guffaws. I stand still, hidden from his view. He’s smiling at the lady; he leaves his hand in hers. His eyes have a light in them, a glint, not of tears but of triumph. This is his victory, he thinks, his time to reap. He’s not thinking of the rain.
Retirement Do
I BOUGHT TWENTY Benson from a woman with a shaking hand. She hardly looked at me. Her shop was small and musty, cornered by an empty square. Not long left in either of them, I’d say. I could have done it there, I suppose, but a voice inside said Wait, stick to the plan. I can still see her open shop door from where I’m standing now, spilling darkness onto the bright footpath. There’s a stone man above me, someone once heroic or great whose plinth I rest against, and a weeping willow across from me, its branches draped out over a low wall. Caressing the ground, mourning noiseless in the breeze. Lazy, those people, that they wouldn’t cut it back. Waiting for the council maybe. There’s no cloud at all. Only a fingernail of morning moon interrupts the blue, ragged, like it was bitten off and spat there.
Four cars turned off the main street and parked in the square in the last few minutes. Faces of misery on the people in them. Maybe they’ve all a funeral to go to. They were all dickied up to the nines, but no colour nor smiles. There’s a church there below the road behind the hill I’m nearly sure. There’s one somewhere nearby, anyway. I see no spire, but my aspect is low. A woman across the aisle from me on the early bus had a missal and a rosary beads and she tramped off with purpose that way once we got off. This town has a smell about it, like stale milk. A warm breeze sweeps it into my nose. The one smell I hate, I don’t know why. I might gag if I had any bit in my stomach. It was the Bensons or something to eat. No contest. Fags take the edge off of hunger anyway.
THERE’S ONLY THE one shade in this town it looks like. Saw him earlier, scratching on the station steps. Fine sugary chops on him. No full-time squad car even, I’d say. Cutbacks. I’d bet he’s not the fastest runner, either. He finishes up at five in the evening according to a notice posted on the station door. After that it’s your own lookout. You have to tell your troubles into an intercom and a peeler miles distant will sympathize.
I lifted these boots lovely yesterday evening from a gearbag flung down at the edge of a hurling pitch. The lowering sun’s dying glare covered me. Old lads training. Junior A or B, jogging red-faced around, short pucks, laughing at each other. I remembered that craic from years ago. Funny how the senior players when too senior get called junior again. It must rankle. Signs on they paste one another vicious. Wallop younger lads for having the cheek to exist. I have the nearly new desert boots of one of them anyway. I was away up the road miles before he panted back to his bag. I left him my old tackies as consolation.
I’m baking now all the same. I might cool myself among that willow’s strands. I’m prone to sunburn. My whole head swelled one time so burnt it got, filled with fluid. A tasty little she-doctor lanced it for me free. They have to, you know, if you turn up empty-pocketed. First, do no harm. Harm it would have been to run me unseen to. Foul pus from my roasted crown oozed onto her floor. Not to worry, she said, and smiled, swooping deftly to wipe up. Lord, she was a dinger. Then she read me kindly: melanoma, lotion, stay out of it altogether, cap, and I nodded dumbly, eyes down her front, like a plastic dog on a dingbat’s dashboard, placating her.