Dead Dogs (17 page)

Little Judas is going,
Seán’s a fucking looper. Leave him ta fuck here and get your arse back home. Davey won’t be happy if
anything
goes wrong. Davey’s fucking dangerous. You’re afraid of Davey, aren’t you? Seán can look after himself
.

I am the worst friend ever.

Along with Judas this is the first time I’m realising that I have no real friends, that I have no life outside of Seán and what we do together. Football is well and good but Rory’s really the only one I get on with and I’m not sure if I want to get on with him
anymore
. I’m realising this and I nearly drop the package.

Without really knowing what I’m doing I go to take another half-step backward.

Davey looks at me and then he looks at the package in my hands. And then, smiling, he looks over his shoulder into the back of the car. Seán is frowning at me but not in an angry way.
There are tears in eyes. Actual honest-to-God tears. He doesn’t understand why I’m leaving him.

Davey, still smiling, turns back to me. And then in the car both Davey and Rory start to laugh and Davey’s going, ‘You’re some boy, aren’t you? You cowardly little rat.’

This is the plain truth of things. Truth is not glazed
earthenware
. Truth is not silk-smooth sandalwood. Truth is a heavy thing of rust and ragged edges.

In my head Judas is screaming with laughter like the sound of scrap being compressed.

I look at Davey and the violence in him is a thing of little snagging hooks. I look at Davey and then I look at Seán’s soft face and then, trying not to think too hard about it, I get back into the car.

In the back beside Seán, Rory’s face looks like it’s had all the bones removed. Seán is smiling like a baby with wind. His face is all contorted and his lips are wriggling wide with happiness. I am disgusted with myself.

I toss the package behind the driver’s seat. I am on automatic. The whole ugly little incident reminds me of what’s been under the surface with Davey. It reminds me of how fucked up the guy is. It reminds me that I’m scared of him.

And then, off-hand like he’s talking about football results, Davey’s going, ‘That’ll teach the little bastards to fuck with
someone
’s car.’

I’m wanting to tell him that they didn’t do anything. I’m
wanting
to tell him they were only kids. I’m wanting to tell him to let
me out of the car. I’m wanting to get out of the car and leave all this behind me. All this. Everything. Right now, Seán is a yoke about my neck and the guilt that I’m feeling hurts my stomach.

But I don’t do anything. Instead I sit there in silence as Davey eases the Peugeot out into traffic.

Dorset Street and the Drumcondra Road are pretty okay
traffic
-wise. It’s hard to believe but it’s still only mid-afternoon. The car is silent. The tension is palpable. It seems to fill all the
available
space. When you inhale it leaves a copper tang at the back of the throat. I’m trying not to remember the child’s cracked face but I can’t help it.

Seán is still moaning softly to himself like the sound of distant sirens.

We’re stopped at the traffic lights beside Fagan’s and Davey finally says, ‘Alright. Maybe I shouldn’t have hit him.’

Rory goes, ‘Yeah.’

And just like that I’m thinking, well at least he knows he was wrong. And just like that we’re all papering over the cracks again.

After this, Judas start to talk to me a lot. But after this, as well, I know that I’ll never cut and run on Seán again, no matter what Judas says. And here I am trying to get Seán to stop his
medication
because I haven’t the balls to do anything on my own.

The yellow in me is enough to paint the world.

Derek Meyler, our next-door
neighbour, smokes about sixty Sweet Afton a day. Because of this he has this wheeze that you can hear a mile off. This is why I don’t jump when he leans over the concrete wall between our back yards and goes, ‘How’s it goin’, chap?’

I’m in our back yard hanging out the washing on the length of twine that passes for our washing line. I’m taking my time about it though because the atmosphere in the house is crawling. When I sit down it’s like there’s things with little scuttling legs moving all over me. So I’m out here in the yard now for maybe half an hour.

It’s pretty depressing to think that Da hasn’t even noticed. It’s even more depressing to think that he has but he doesn’t like the atmosphere any more than I do.

I’m attaching my Liverpool jersey to the line with a plastic peg and I’m saying, ‘Not too bad. How’s it going with you, Derek?’

Our yard is a little concrete-floored oblong, walled-in by a four-foot-high perimeter of grey unpainted blocks. The concrete floor is breaking up and weeds are unfurling through it in
brilliant
green.

Derek coughs into one yellow hand and in that cough you can hear the wet slapping of his decaying lungs.

He goes to say something, coughs again and hawks up a wad of phlegm that he spits into a tissue.

I go, ‘Are you alright, Derek?’

He nods and goes, ‘I’m fine. It’s quare hard to kill a bad thing.’

I laugh and go to hang up one of Da’s T-shirts when Derek stops me in my tracks.

Just like that he goes, ‘You’d want to watch that Guard Devlin.’

I’m blinking at him now and I don’t know what to say.

Derek laughs and the laugh turns into a spluttering rasp and he wheezes, ‘Sorry. Sorry. I was talking to your Da and he said you’d gotten into a bit of trouble. He mentioned that guard.’

I’m nodding silently still holding the sopping T-shirt and Derek is going, ‘Well, I’d be quare careful of him. He’s not exactly a straight arrow.’

I’m frowning now and I’m going, ‘How do you mean?’

Derek looks around him like he’s in a fucking pantomime and he whispers with the rasp of each of his sixty Sweet Afton a day fraying his voice. He leans over the wall and he goes, ‘Remember the brothel that they shut down a few months ago? The one in that house up by Cluain Árd?’ 

I’m stepping closer to him now and my mind is full of
curiosity
. Full of the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew.

I’m now part of Derek’s little cloak and dagger show and I say, ‘Go on.’

Derek goes, ‘Well, they say that Devlin was mixed up in it somehow and that it was all swept under the carpet.’

Still frowning, I’m going, ‘Who says, Derek?’

And like he’s a fucking a pirate or something, Derek says, ‘
Iiiii
says.’

He says, ‘A few months ago I was caught short coming home from Mackey’s and I went for a piss down by the gasworks beside the Slaney. The squad car rolled up with Devlin and this other young fella in it.’

He shakes his head and goes, ‘It’s quare bad when you can’t even go for a piss without the guards sticking their snouts in.’

I don’t say anything to this.

Derek is still talking. He’s saying, ‘Devlin and the young guard got out of the car and Devlin said to me, “For fuck’s sake. You’re worse than a dog.”

‘Of course, I’m fluthered out of me skull and like an eejit I threw the brothel thing back into his big fat fucking face.’

Then Derek laughs again and in it you can hear the clattering of coffin lids. He goes, ‘He has some size fuckin head doesn’t he? Big fuckin farmer’s son I bet.’

In my mind, I can see Guard Devlin’s muscled ham of a head. Like a Great White’s. I can see the teeth in his smile. His
barbed-wire
grin. 

Derek goes, ‘The big bollix nearly took my fuckin head off with a box. And do you know what he said to me when I’m lying on the ground? Do you what he said? Cos I can remember every single fuckin word.’

I’m shaking my head and Derek is saying, ‘He leaned down over me and he spat, he fuckin
spat
, right in my face and he said to me, “There’s a lot of deep holes in this river. They’ll only look for you where I tell them to look for you.”’

Now Derek spits himself and goes, ‘Cunt.’

I’m swallowing something that feels like chalk dust in my throat and I go, ‘What happened then?’

Derek snorts and says, ‘The two of them put the boot in a few times and then fucked off. The next day, I went up to the barracks to complain but they laughed me out of the fuckin place.’

Derek eyes me with shrewd little button eyes and he goes, ‘I’d watch myself with that one. Don’t cross him. He’s bad news.’

I’m standing there as Derek is saying this and I’m hoping that it’s the dripping T-shirt that’s making my pants wet.

It takes about a week for Seán to decide to stop his meds.

He has long chats with Mr Cowper and he’s in the Guidance Office more than he’s in class. On the corridors people still woof and bark and pretend to scratch behind their ears. I’m getting this every bit as much as Seán and I’m trying to cope with it but it isn’t easy. Every time my phone goes off my stomach knots because it might be one of the lads texting me a picture of a dead dog. I
haven’t gone on Facebook in ages because it’s just one solid mess of abuse and insults.

Most of the lads think they’re only slagging but day after day of this is starting to wear me down.

Seán doesn’t tell anyone that he’s stopped taking the tablets but it’s pretty obvious. His face isn’t as sad anymore and there’s colour back in his voice. He doesn’t sound like a robot anymore. He actually seems happier but every now and then when the lads
woof
at us I can see something crawl beneath his skin. Seán doesn’t want to do bad things but I don’t think he can help
himself
. Every day he’s fighting a battle that he can’t win because what he’s fighting is himself.

Just like before I don’t know what it’s costing Seán to keep himself under control but the pressure will tell in the end. He’ll snap just like he did with the dead dogs.

We only have the time between now and then to do
something
about Dr Thorpe. Then Seán can go back to his meds. He can go back to wherever it is they send him, a world wrapped in wet wool.

I feel like I’m using him. I feel like he’s my crutch in all this.

The thing is, I have no idea what to do.

My Da is happy enough now that he thinks Seán is drugged to the eyeballs and he’s encouraging me to spend more time with him. He says this is because the summer holidays are coming up and Seán needs help with his English but I know it’s really because something has changed between us. A glass wall has
come down and me and my Da aren’t the way we used to be. I haven’t seen him laugh in weeks.

Me and Seán are sitting in his bedroom in his house out by the Still. His bedroom is pretty big, like my one used to be when I lived out here with Mam and Da. He has a single bed against one wall and his laptop sits on a desk in the corner. Normally when you visit your mates their rooms are covered in posters. Premiership teams and action shots of Suarez or Giggs or Lampard. Posters of musicians and singers and glossy shots of Cheryl Cole with just the right amount of cleavage showing. People pretend that their parents don’t really notice this but we all know that they do, they just don’t mention it.

Not Seán’s room, though.

Seán’s room is like a cell. There aren’t any posters on the walls and there aren’t any pictures of family or friends. Each wall is a blank arctic yawn of white paint. Here and there you can see dim smudges of ancient Bl-Tack where something used to hang. They are like the marks left on people’s forehead after mass on Ash Wednesday. What happened is a few years ago Seán’s Da got a bit freaked out by the fact that Seán spent so much of his time in a featureless box. Seán’s Da thought his son needed more
stimulation
than to just be walled in by white. When Seán was out, his Da went and stuck maybe half a dozen posters to the walls. When Seán came back he started to moan until his Da took them all back down again.

Seán tells me after this that he can’t sleep with posters on his walls. He thinks the people in them are looking at him and that
they move around when he closes his eyes. When he tells me this I tell him not to be so fucking stupid but when I’m going to sleep that night I keep thinking about the eyes of all the two-
dimensional
footballers staring at me.

We’re sitting in Seán’s room and there’s no posters, no books, no magazines. Nothing except me and Seán and the little tub of tablets that he’s shaking in his fist.

He’s going, ‘I feel okay. I don’t feel like I’m going to do
anything
bad.’

I’m nodding at him and I’m saying, ‘Good. So what are we going to do about Dr Thorpe?’

Seán shrugs and he goes, ‘I don’t want to get into any more trouble.’

I can see the set to his shoulders, the stubborness underneath. This has been missing for the past while. Any sense of vitality was leached out of him. Seán might be an oddball but at least he’s alive again.

I’m looking at him and I’m going, ‘We won’t get in trouble. We just need to find some way to prove we saw Dr Thorpe …’

And now I’m stopping. I can’t bring myself to actually say the words and Seán is looking at me all confused and so I just say, ‘… doing what he did.’

I look at the floor between my runners and when I look up again Seán is not looking at me. He’s looking off over my left shoulder and his eyes have this thousand-yard stare to them. It’s like he’s seeing something that nobody else can. His face has an expression that falls somewhere between confusion and surprise.

There’s this theory about the universal nature of the spirit. I saw it somewhere on the Discovery Channel or something. You take four ordinary people from four different cultures. An American, an Englishman, an Indian and a Japanese person. Now to these four people you give an identical drug. Ethics are circumvented here by the fact that they’re all volunteers. The fact that the drug induces vomiting, diarrhoea, fever and
hallucinations
is, however, impossible to get around. Poor bastards. But this is all in the cause of scientific enquiry so that’s okay too.

In fact it’s the vomiting, diarrhoea, fever and hallucinations that makes it all worthwhile. It’s the point.

The drug comes from some root or plant or sap or something only found in the Amazon. In fact it’s only found in a particular part of the Amazon. You know all those eco-warriors bleating on about how hectares of potential cancer cures are being torched or turned into sawdust every day? Well hectares of interesting shit like this are going up in smoke too. In fact, since I don’t have cancer, interesting shit holds a lot more relevance for me.

This shit is interesting due to the effect it has on the four volunteers. The schmucks.

You see the vomiting, diarrhoea, fever and hallucinations have the strange quality of being the exact same for them all. Especially the hallucinations.

The drug from the root or plant or sap has been taken
forever
by the traditional, indigenous shamans of a tribe who still retain an almost placental connection with the earth which … whatever. Basically the local priests take this stuff to get
themselves high. They vomit, they shit, they shake and finally they see things. What they see is this. First they’re in a field of maize. Maize so high it’s like a solid wall of green and gold. Then a jaguar, yeah a jaguar, comes and takes their hands in its mouth and leads them off. Anthropologists and sociologists explain this by saying that jaguars and maize are part of the culture and aren’t just brought about by the drug’s effects. They see maize and jaguars because that’s what they expect to see.

This is where the experiment comes in.

If you give this drug to four people from four other places, other social spheres, other worlds, and don’t tell them what to expect except shits and spits and shakes and some pretty colours, will they see jaguars too? Place your bets ladies and gentlemen, the ball is rolling.

And guess what? They all saw a field of maize and they all saw the jaguar.

This can be explained by either some wacky property of the drug which short-circuits the connection between our
hindbrain
and consciousness and shoves an image of some primordial big cat into our thoughts. Or else some wacky property of the drug kicks open the Doors and leads us to a place where jaguars act as guides. They’re both pretty fucked up in my opinion.

The professor whose job it was to rationalise this madness to the viewing public started to laugh halfway through. I remember this. I remember his olive cardigan and his reasonable, oh-
so-serious
face. I remember the twitch at the corner of his mouth just before he started to laugh. I remember how he tried to hide
the mania in that laugh. It was like he’d had a hole punched in his world and couldn’t help but look into it.

This is how Seán looks now.

It’s like he’s looking into a different world.

And then he’s going, ‘We could spy on him.’

I’m blinking at him because he hasn’t said anything
constructive
in so long. He definitely wouldn’t be saying this stuff if he was still on his meds.

He’s saying, ‘He must have put the body somewhere. It wasn’t there when we went in. I didn’t like his house. It smells weird. I don’t like Dr Thorpe anymore.’

I’m smiling at Seán and now I’m really happy he’s off his meds. In spite of everything, I’m smiling.

I’m going, ‘I don’t like him either.’

Seán is nodding and smiling back at me and he goes, ‘He plays golf. I seen him loads of times. He always has his clubs in his car. He has lots of golf stuff in his house.’

And suddenly I’m thinking about the plaque on his desk.
Strawberry Fair Golf Classic Winner 2009 2010 2011
.