Call Me the Breeze (12 page)

One day a bona fide traveller shouted at him across the exercise yard: ‘G’wan, Stokes! Lettin’ on to be wan o’ the buffers and you wan of ourselves the whole time! You have no house of your own! That house belongs to Mannie Maughan!’

Before the screws could do anything he had charged across the yard and had your man up against the wall battering the living shit out of him. ‘Say I’m not a traveller!’ he bawled. ‘I have my own house! Say that!’

All you could hear before they managed to pull him off was: ‘You have your own house!’

‘And it’s not Mannie Maughan’s!’

‘And it’s not Mannie Maughan’s!’

He dusted himself down as the screws pushed him past me. ‘I’m sorry about that, Joesup,’ he turned and said to me, ‘but I like people with manners. Us Stokeses was always brought up to have manners. Not like those ill-bred fuckers, effing gangsters and robbers!’

I don’t know how long I’d been in there before my speech began to come back. Where it had gone to I hadn’t a clue — I guess I must have been in a state of shock. Which is not surprising considering the balls I’d made of the whole fucking thing. And all the shit the papers had written about it. The yellow press had completely gone to town. ‘
One-Man Army Runs Amok
’ was one of the headlines from the
Irish Press
. The worst of all was the
Sunday World
. They had a photo of Robert De Niro — the famous one with him blasting away as he’s coming up the stairs — and there right above it in bold black type:
MANIAC
!

In retrospect, it is a very debatable point as to whether the return of my speech was a good development or not, for once he realized what had happened Bonehead wouldn’t leave me alone, making up for all those days and nights I sat staring back dumbly at him. He had gotten it into his head that every word the papers had written was true and started setting me up as some kind of hero. Shouting at the screws and everybody going past: ‘Youse think youse are smart but youse are fucking well not! Joesup is the man — the man with the eyepatch will sort youse out! Look at him! Haw! He’s like Moshe Dayan so he is! He’s the boy all right! Took them on all on his own! Good man, Joesup! You showed them coppers! It was just like a film so it was — I seen it all on the telly!’

I used to go into a depression when he’d start all that even though I knew he didn’t mean any harm.

One night I lost it and tore a newspaper into shreds. The article kept comparing me to Donald Neilson, the Black Panther who had kidnapped the heiress Lesley Whittle and kept her in a mineshaft, where she died. I just sat there on the edge of the bed, shuddering with grief as I thought of a motherfucker like that doing such a thing to a helpless young girl, and how they could compare me to him. For weeks I was so numb thinking about things like that that I thought the best thing to do would be to get a hacksaw, which I did. Using a trick I’d seen in the movies where you put one blade down your sock and slide another one up your sleeve. So that when they intercept the first one they’re so delighted at having nailed you they don’t bother their arses looking for the second.

I went to work on my wrists but didn’t manage to execute that either. Getting nothing out of it except a couple of hours of blissful oblivion before waking in sick bay with Bonehead staring down at me. I think because we’d become such pals they’d started to think of us in there as queers, but we weren’t — there was nothing more to it other than Bonehead getting it into his head that I was ‘full of brains’ and sort of like ‘quality’ or something, I guess you could say.

‘Not like them fucking travellers!’ he said to me one day. ‘Hitler had the right idea, Joesup. People like that just have to be gassed-ed!’

Another time in the workshop he announced that people like me sort of had to be looked after. ‘I read about youse boys, you know, in a book!’ he said. ‘Fellows like James Joyce and all! They’re special kinds of bucks, aren’t they, Joey? Brains and everything! I read books too, Joesup! Oh yes! My father was a great big book man! Tommy Stokes — could have gone to college if he’d wanted! What odds if he was an alcomaholic! But the drink did get him bad. He didn’t mind himself, you see. And that’s what you’ll have to start doing. You can’t just be carrying on like this. Look at the mess you’ve made of your arms! You can’t be going on like that! You hear me, Joesup? You’ll have to promise me now!’

After that fortnight in sick bay, we became pretty much inseparable. His actual name was Pat Joe Stokes, but they just stuck the two of them together so ‘Pajo Stokes’ he became. Except not even that so very much either, mostly Bonehead. The more I got to know him, the more I really started to think you could trust him, and, for me, the way I was feeling in those days, that was a really big development.

And, after all these years, it’s great to be able to say that I was right. I don’t know how many cups of tea he made me or how many cigarettes he rolled for me in those days when we’d tramp the exercise yard or lay about in that TV room, dreaming. Trying to forget. All I know is it made a hell of a lot of difference.

‘We’ve all made mistakes, Joesup,’ he’d say to me. ‘And after I get out I’m finished with thieving. People only get the wrong idea about you. They think you’re one of the Wards — or the Nevins. Or the “bad” Stokeses. And don’t get me wrong, Joesup — there’s plenty o’ them! Do you know what I mean? They think you’re lower class. So it’s no more lifting lead for me. I’m thinking of going into cigarettes and whiskey.’

I told him all about Mangan, my tinker neighbour.

‘Hitler,’ he said as he flipped his rollie, ‘Hitler had the right idea about what to do with them boys. Oh aye, don’t talk to me about the Mangans.’

The mouse came out then and he fed him some more bread. Eddie Gallagher he called him, after the maverick Provo kidnapper. Some of the papers had said that was where I got the idea. ‘Ah, good man, Eddie,’ Bonehead would say, as the mouse tore into the bread. ‘So what do you think of him, Joesup? Is Eddie looking good today?’

Then he’d look at him and say: ‘You’re a good one, Eddie Gallagher, but you’re not as good as our Joesup. Joesup’s the best kibbernapper of the lot!’

I used to hate him using that word but there was no point in me saying anything about it. Sometimes I’d just fall into a deep sleep and hope I’d never wake up. But even then you wouldn’t be safe, for there’d be pictures in there that seemed to come drifting out of a fog. Almost as soon as your eyes began to close you’d feel them slowly gathering and there’d be a depth of unhappiness inside that dream that you almost could not describe. Which is hardly surprising when you consider some of the things you were remembering.

They dug Tuite up out of the animal pit near the tannery a week or so after the night at the bungalow, and it wasn’t too long after that the rumours started. I think it was Austie got the one going about the detective’s head having been practically hacked from his body. But whether it was Austie for definite or not didn’t make an awful lot of difference, for pretty soon nearly everybody had patented their own private version, gravely setting down their drinks as they looked you right in the eye before declaring: ‘It was the Red Hand Commandoes did this one.’

That was a made-up name employed by Protestant paramilitaries whenever they were involved in any casual killings. When settling old scores and things like that. Boyle and Sandy knew it would cover their asses no problem, people being only too ready to believe it.

‘They branded him, you know. They burnt UVF into his back at least thirteen times.’

It was Austie who told me that the detective’s penis had been severed
and stuffed into his mouth. ‘That’s the type of cunt you’re dealing with when it comes to these Protestant bastards!’ he said. ‘It’s not like the Provos, who’ll hit a legitimate target, go in for the quick, clean kill. With the UVF, no job is done till the flesh is cut to ribbons. That keeps them happy.’

Everyone thought Fr Connolly was going to have a heart attack. ‘Is this what we’ve sunk to?’ he said. ‘And our Rally of Peace and Reconciliation only weeks away? Do you hear me, people? An animal pit! An animal pit, I ask you!’

After Sunday Mass all anyone could think of was poor old Tuite lying there amongst the stinking, infested pelts. It was no wonder now that feelings were running high, especially with regard to the Peace Rally. ‘You see?’ snapped Oweny Casey, one of Austie’s regulars in the bar later on: ‘You see now the type of peace you can expect from the likes of those fucking animals?’

He slammed his pint down and spat the word ‘peace’ out of the side of his mouth. ‘They’d know a lot about peace,’ he sneered, and I was afraid the glass was going to shatter in his hand. This from a man who normally took no interest in politics.

‘This time it’s a fight to the death,’ he said then. After that, someone happened to mention Campbell Morris and another argument flared. ‘It’s time we set aside our differences!’ someone else pleaded. ‘People can’t be dying like this. He was an innocent man!’

‘There’s no such thing as innocent!’ came the terse response. ‘How do
we
know he was innocent?’

You could see there was going to be another bitter row, so Austie put everyone out. That night two public monuments were broken in the town and a barn set on fire out on the road. It might have been an accident. The trouble was nobody could say for sure and that had the effect of kind of making it worse. As well as that, of course, on account of Tuite being one of their own, the cops had gone crazy and given Hoss’s younger brother a savage beating. Austie said if it kept on like this he’d shut the bar up altogether. He nearly had to do that when a couple of nights later they set upon this woman and started arguing with her about the peace rally. Even though she was trembling they didn’t let up — it was like they didn’t even notice. She was the secretary of the Peace Committee, whose job more or less was to oversee the entire rally. I froze when I saw Sandy McGloin going over to comfort her. He handed her a handkerchief and offered her a lift home.
‘People’s tempers are frayed,’ he said. ‘It’s a hard time for the community, ma’am.’

Austie himself got drunk — a very rare occurrence — and kept falling about the place, asking would there ever be peace in the country.

I was handing Boyle Henry his whiskey — I know it seems strange and that people are bound to think:
But why didn’t Joey Tallon inform the authorities? Why didn’t he go straight down to the police station and say what he’d seen that night inside the bungalow
?

That it was my … duty! My
responsibility
!

But it’s easy to say that. It’s easy to look back now and say something like that. I knew Boyle Henry would have covered his tracks. That it would end up being my word against his. And who was going to believe me? Especially after my having been in trouble with the law, disturbing the peace that time with The Seeker.

But it wasn’t just that. There was something awful about Boyle Henry. You could feel it. All you had to do was look in his eyes as he sat there at the bar. Remorseless is the word, I think. No it isn’t.

There is no word.

‘Thanks, Joey,’ he said a week or so after the funeral, shifting on the barstool and wiping his mouth with a hankie. He folded it neatly and shoved it in his pocket. Then rubbed his thighs. ‘Bad times,’ he said.

‘Yes, Boyle,’ I said, my heart beating far faster than usual in case he’d fix me with those eyes and ask: ‘Have a good time that night in Oldcastle, did you?’

As if he knew I knew something. Even though he couldn’t have. How could he possibly have? There was no way. ‘You were gone when I came back to the car, Joey,’ he said then. ‘I was worried about you.’

He smiled and raised his glass. Then he winked and took a sip before leaving it back down on the counter again. He reached in his top pocket and pulled out a Hamlet. I was working out what my response was going to be if he said anything more about it. But when I looked again he had turned his back and was staring at the boys playing snooker. At the other end of the bar someone was glowering into another man’s face, the sinews in his forehead showing as he seethed under his breath: ‘Tuite was no friend of mine either! But this is a bridge too far! Do you hear me? Those UVF fuckers have overdone it this time!’

I heard glass smashing outside in the street. Then I thought: A
glass of sweat, please
. I didn’t want to think it but I did. I didn’t want to think
Pie
either. I had to go down the back and rinse my face. When I came back Boyle Henry had set up a drink for me.

‘I couldn’t believe it when I came back to the car. There you were —
gone
!’

I didn’t know what to say. He burst out laughing. I went for the drink and slugged some of it down. All I could hear was him laughing as he rocked back and forth on the barstool.

In the cool of evening, it was like the town was boiling.

I prayed that night and read some Hesse. I sat by the window and thought to myself that the last thing I wanted Jacy to feel was that I had anything against Boyle Henry. Any grudge or …

She might turn her thoughts towards jealousy then. And start thinking that I did it to …

That I wanted her all for myself. I
did
! But not like …

Not like that. And that was what she would think if I reported him to the police. No. No matter what he’d done, I couldn’t allow that to happen. The truth about him would be revealed to her soon, but it would be nothing to do with anyone else. Just her and me. The Only Ones.

I carried
Steppenwolf
everywhere with me now and tried to memorize the Hesse passage I’d been studying. But I couldn’t so I read it to myself while I was waiting across the road from her flat. It reads: ‘
He is resolved to forget that the desperate clinging to the self and the desperate clinging to life are the surest way to eternal death, while the power to die, to strip one’s self naked, and the eternal surrender of the self bring immortality with them
.’

I had never thought of it like that — the eternal surrender of the self. I had always felt the opposite. That you never surrendered to anything and that, if you did, you were weak.