‘Sure, a puff now and then does nobody any harm.’
I waited until he had finished, in case he fell asleep and brought the house down with him, another fire, another echo. He pushed himself back against the bed and I heard him letting go again, but I pretended nothing had happened.
‘I’ll get Doctor Moloney out tomorrow morning,’ I said.
‘You will not.’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s Sunday tomorrow and, besides, I won’t have anyone shoving anything up me rectum.’
I laughed.
‘What’s so funny?’ he asked.
‘Oh, nothing really.’
‘I heard they do that in San Francisco these days,’ he said.
I was a little startled and thought for a moment of Cici in her whitewhite city. ‘Do what?’ I said.
‘Shove strange things up beyond.’
‘What d’ya mean?’
‘Gerbils and the like.’
He chugged on the cigarette. ‘They said it on the TV. I was up at all hours one night, watching.’
‘You watch TV these days?’
He took a moment to reply, held his hand to his temple, scratched the bald spot. ‘Times have changed.’
‘You used to hate it.’
‘Every now and then in the winter.’ He scrunched up his eyebrows.
‘How about a glass of hot whiskey to make you sleep?’
‘Nah,’ he said, ‘I’m content with this,’ dropping the ash into the cup of his hand, then letting it fall out on the floor.
I stubbed the butt end out for him and, just before he lay over to sleep, he sat up and leaned his head against my shoulder. I moved in closer to him, put my hand at the back of his head. When he pulled back from my shoulder there was a little bit of phlegm on my t-shirt. I didn’t want to move, but he saw it and, using the handkerchief, he started to wipe if off.
‘Jesus Christ,’ he said, ‘ah, Jesus.’
He rolled over to the far side of the bed, pretending he was sleeping. I picked up the wooden tray with all the flies in it, worked away at one of my own for an hour or so, trying to wind some thread on the shank, but couldn’t find the knack, kept dropping the damn thing. It seemed impossible, so finely tuned and delicate. I looked at the flies he had made during the day. They lay there in waiting, ready to burst into flight, and I took two small chatterer wings and flipped them together between my fingers as he dozed off.
SUNDAY, lord, i remember
He woke early this morning, rummaging around before the sun rose. Heard him as he opened up his window, spat down into the grass, went to the bathroom and pissed in the sink. I went downstairs after him and he gave me a nod.
‘How ya feeling?’
‘Like a million dollars,’ he said. ‘Look.’
He had the tray out open on the kitchen table and he was admiring one of the flies in particular. ‘Isn’t that a beauty?’
Jazz bucked from the radio and he moved over to fiddle with the dial, fine-tuning it. He pecked rhythmically at the air with his head. Hair stuck out where he had been sleeping on it. He ate a little cereal, some toast with jam, said he felt great for fishing today. Reached for the fly once more, held it up. ‘You and me both,’ he said. I thought he was asking me if I wanted to go fishing with him, but then I realised he wasn’t talking to me at all, that he wanted to be on his own, him and his fly, so I let him be.
He wore a baggy green crew-neck jumper and a fat red tie knotted up to his neck, mashing up over the top of the sweater. His head looked skeletal above it.
‘All dressed up?’
‘Yeah,’ he said.
He gave me a shrug.
Before he left for the river I asked him — for a bit of a joke really — if he was going to go to mass, that Mrs McCarthy might be expecting him, down there in her rosary beads and headscarf. But he shook his head sharply and all he said was: ‘The Lord’s my shepherd, I shall not want him.’
We stood at the door and I told him that I’ve never been much of a man for mass, either. A bit too much like a spiritual suppository. He cocked his head sideways in agreement, opened the door handle, turned around to face me, looked at the rods, switched them back and forth, touched the inside lining of his jacket where he had placed one or two of the new flies. He reached out to shake my hand, then drew it away quietly before I had a chance to shake. I was going to ask him why he wanted to do that, but he just turned away. He picked up the rods and left, shuffling slowly through the yard.
It was strange the way he walked, stopping every few yards to catch his breath, hitching the back of his grey trousers, shuffling along, contemplating the sky as if he might try to reach up and shake its hand, too. I just went outside and sat on Mam’s wall and celebrated the lack of rain — it was a beautiful bright morning.
* * *
Lord, I remember. Mornings back then, in the mid-seventies, before it all tumbled down around them.
Mam was building the low stone wall along the lane. She wore a yellow rain jacket, her silver hair woven back into a braid that touched the small of her back. She would kneel down at the half-built wall as if in prayer, sometimes singing a bit of a Mexican song. The wall wasn’t very well built, but it broke the land in a splendid way. Holes in it like rheumy eyes staring out at the fields. It threatened with topple — because she was always failing in one way or another, making it too high in places, too low in others, a little lopsided, a touch drunk. But she loved the building of it. She would start work when breakfast was finished, shortly after the morning swim. She stood and watched as my father and I fought the current, but even then you could tell she was itching to get started. Long thin fingers cracked against one another. As soon as we emerged from the water, she’d put her hand on my lower back and hustle me up to the kitchen, jogging alongside me, leaving the old man there. As I ate she pulled on her blue garden gloves and, just before my father breezed his way into the kitchen with his head wrapped in a towel, she’d lean to me and whisper: ‘Now, m’ijo, I will begin.’
The wall ran two hundred yards from the house to the main road. It was anywhere from two to four feet high, serpentine, almost coiling by the time it reached the road, as if she wanted to extend it further and further, but could only make it loop into itself. It looked like an ancient set of grey teeth. Birds sometimes nestled in the gaps between the stones. Mam was forever dismantling sections, putting it back together again, replacing larger stones with smaller ones, juggling, shuffling. Men rode past on bicycles and hailed her with a giant ‘Senorita,’ and she quickly corrected them. ‘Señora!’ she’d shout. They’d wink: ‘Whatever you say, Missus Lyons.’ She’d bend down to the wall again, cramming in a flat rock, or chiselling the side of a sharp stone. She covered her eyes with a brown arm so sparks didn’t jump up at her when she worked. At lunchtime the men would stop again, and instruct her on the building of the wall. She’d make them cups of tea in large white mugs, listen closely, nod her head, braids swinging, then wave them off and continue as before, stubbornly, steadfastly. It was her wall. It belonged solely to her. She made it the way she saw fit.