Dead Dogs (20 page)

Behind us the lead singer of the band goes, ‘Lads, we’re trying to play a gig here. Would ye stop the messing.’

Seán turns around to face him and there must be something desperate in the way he looks right now because the man shuts up and he and his mates back away from us and keep right on backing away.

Out in front, Dr Thorpe takes another hesistant step toward the stage and before I know what I’m doing I’m lifting my arms up and I’m shouting out over the crowd, ‘Everyone! You have to listen to me!’

There’s a bleating note to my words and people are pointing fingers and laughing and through the crowd there’s a few guards starting to push their way to us. People aren’t paying any
attention
to what I’m trying to say and I’m starting to get frantic. There must be a few lads from school in the crowd as well because slowly at first but gathering tempo and volume a chant is building.

Woof. Woof. Woof. Woof
.

Out of the big field of faces in front of me the chant gets louder.

Woof. Woof. Woof. Woof
.

Dr Thorpe takes another step. And another. And another.

Then there’s the squeal of feedback and I’m swinging the abandoned microphone in front of my face. All of a sudden I can hear my own breathing coming from the monitors at the front of the stage. It sounds like a sea in storm.

Because I’m an idiot I go, ‘Um …’

And out over the crowd my idiocy carries, amplified and distorted and humming with static.

Ummmmmm
………..

I can’t hear the chant now. All I can hear is my own breathing and the rush of my own pulse in my ears.

Through the mic and out over the crowd I go, ‘Everyone! You have to listen!’

I’m standing too close to the mic and the feedback makes everyone wince but I keep going. I’m saying, ‘You have to listen to me.’

Below me Dr Thorpe has almost reached the metal fencing in front of the bandstand. I’m pointing at him and I’m going, ‘That man is a murderer!’

As these words come out of my mouth, Dr Thorpe stops and his eyes lift to meet mine and his face is crawling with fury. I’m standing like a preacher on a mount with my outstretched left hand pointing at him and it’s like I’ve transfixed him where he stands.

The whole crowd goes quiet. In the wake of the fading feedback comes an electric hush. Even the
woofs
have all died away. Not a word is spoken and everyone is looking at Dr Thorpe and frowns are starting to crease people’s faces. Out in the mass of people the guards stop too and in the silence I can hear the crackle of one of their radios.

Dr Thorpe stares up at me and all of a sudden I’m reminded of Seán. There’s broken glass in that look. There are blades in it.

All the while Seán is moaning to himself. Under his breath
but loud in the silence I can hear Seán going, ‘We’re in so much trouble. We’re in so much trouble.’

The crowd is starting to bubble again now and there’s an edge to people’s voices. This time it’s not derision. This time there are no mocking chants. Just a saw blade of anger blended with a lot of confusion. The crowd is on the verge of becoming a mob.

And all the while, Seán’s going, ‘We’re in so much trouble. We’re in so much trouble.’

Seán is looking at me now and across his face all the muscles are squirming like there’s something vile under his skin. His eyes are looking at me and in them I can see all the hurt he’s ever felt. Every jeer and every sneer stares back out at me and now Seán’s going, ‘I don’t want to be a freak anymore.’

‘I don’t want to be a freak anymore.’

Over and over he says this and every time he says it his voice gets just a little louder. Without his meds Seán’s pretty fucked up. And now I’m starting to worry about him. About us.

Looking at Dr Thorpe with his talk-show host’s hair and his middle starting to slacken you wouldn’t think he’d have it in him. You wouldn’t think he’d be able to clear the metal fence and vault so easily up onto the bandstand. You wouldn’t think it. But he does.

Dr Thorpe is standing on the bandstand beside me and Seán and he starts moving towards us. He walks like the Terminator out of
Terminator 2
. Not the Arnie one but the other one. The one made out of liquid metal. He moves like he’s fluid but cutting all at once. His features are smouldering.

I’m leaning into the mic and the static is whip-cracking again and over Seán’s mounting volume I’m practically yelling stuff. Down in the crowd people’s faces are starting to crumple at the noise and everyone looks like they’ve swallowed something really sour.

I’m pointing and going, ‘That man, there. Dr Thorpe. You have to do something. I saw him. I really saw him.’

Dr Thorpe’s face is all twisted and anxious and there’s terror as well as anger crawling in him. Dr Thorpe is looking at me and Seán and it’s like he suddenly realises where he is. He swallows hard and you can here the little glug of his bobbing Adam’s Apple. He looks at us and in this weird plaintive voice he goes, ‘What were you doing at my house? What have I ever done to you?’

And then Seán is beside me and his big hands are bunching around the base of the mic. This close to my eyes I can see the wrinkles of his thick fingers all corrugated and silted with grime. His nails are all broken from where he picks at them. I know this. He doesn’t bite them. He curls one hand into the other and he picks at them. Around his nails the skin is all callused and cracked.

These fingers, my best friend’s thick, ragged fingers, they curl around the base of the mic and then they unplug the jack.

Just like that.

When the jack comes out of the plug there’s a thump of noise like a detonation and when the speakers blow you can actually feel the concussion. You know in that movie
Das Boot
? It’s like that. A depth-charge.

Then there’s a silence. A world-filling silence. And into this silence, Seán, with his big hands still holding the mic and still holding the flaccid jack, goes, ‘I don’t want to be a freak anymore.’

When I look into his big face I see the same expression that people use to look at him. There’s this sort of pity in his eyes and this sort of disgust and this sort of disbelief. And right now I know that Seán doesn’t want to do this anymore. All the others with their
woofs
and their insults, all the others with their
cruelty
and disdain. All these people have beaten him. Anymore, he doesn’t want to be different.

And up on this bandstand with people staring at us and Dr Thorpe’s face a hanging mask of empty sacking I know that Seán has chosen them over me. Over us.

And just like that I can see in his face the questions that he’s never ever asked before. Behind his cobbles for eyes for the first time ever he doubts me. I know that in his head his own version of Judas is bawling,
You never saw anything
. He’s saying,
Dr Thorpe wouldn’t do something like that
. He’s saying,
Nobody can believe the Lord’s prayer out of you
. Seán doesn’t trust me.

And Judas laughs and laughs and laughs.

And my anger rises measure for measure.

There’s a display table on the bandstand stacked high with local produce for all to see. Juices, jams, chutneys. The works. My swinging fist connects with the side of Seán’s face and he flounders into it. Seán doesn’t deserve this. I know straightaway that he
doesn
’t but his nose and lips pretty much disintegrate into a cloud of red. It reminds me of the dead girl’s hair. Frothy and ephemeral.

His fall smashes half the display stuff to atoms.

His fall breaks something inside of me.

In the middle of a morass of chutney and glass Seán is on his back and he lies there blinking up at me and Dr Thorpe.

And just like that I’m left on my own and in my ears the sound of my fist connecting with Seán Galvin’s flesh is horrible and familiar. The dead meat smack of it.

The red stuff that Seán’s lying in definitely isn’t blood. It’s too red red. It’s not warm enough and it’s not dark enough and it’s not like the stuff coming from his nose.

For Seán, the world must rock to the concussion of being blind-sided.

This is the day I lose the best part of my life. Today I’ve lost the best part of my life.

This is the day, with the sun rabies-hot in the sky and every face in the Market Square hanging open. Every mouth is a shocked black hole and I don’t know what I’m screaming but I’m screaming something.

Jam. Seán is lying in strawberry jam.

I’m looking at him and hate myself for what I just did. My hand is aching already from where it connected with Seán’s face. I’m pretty sure that I’m going to have flecks of Seán’s skin smeared across my knuckles.

Down below, the crowd is evaporating except for a load of guards who are trying to fight through the streams of people to reach the stage. Even over the screams you can hear the robot voices coming from their radios. These bodiless voices sound
panicked. It’s like the guy up in the barracks operating the dispatch is having a fit. I can imagine him yammering into his headset as every light on his control board comes on all at once and starts winking at him.

Down in the Square, I can see Guard Devlin. He’s just
standing
there but I can remember the way he looked at me in Dr Thorpe’s house. The way he grinned like a Great White with his big, fat, wide head, all muscle and snaggle-teeth. I remember it like it’s happening again in front of me. Guard Devlin stands there and ignores everything. He ignores the scattering crowd. He ignores the other guards moving confused and tense amongst the upended lawn furniture. He ignores Dr Thorpe standing baffled and frantic beside Seán. Seán is moaning again. He ignores all this and he just stares at me for a minute with my breath coming in gasps between my screams and my eyes wide and my hands clenching and unclenching.

And now I can hear what I’m screaming. I’m screaming, ‘You have to believe us. We’re not freaks. We’re really not freaks!’

Beside me Seán is moaning and from his nose and lips the blood just spreads and spreads and spreads.

I get this leaflet to
explain why I’m here. This is what the
opening
paragraph says:
If you are suffering from a mental disorder, you may go into a psychiatric hospital or unit voluntarily, or you may be committed as an involuntary patient. The vast majority of admissions are voluntary – this means that you freely agree to go for treatment. Voluntary psychiatric patients are not completely free to leave psychiatric care and may be detained for a period and may then be involuntarily detained. There are detailed rules about the detention of patients involuntarily
.

They won’t even talk about letting me out of here yet so I presume I’m not one of
the vast majority
.

Nobody believes me and nobody listens to me. I keep trying to tell people that I’m grand. That I’m not fucked up. People smile and nod and take notes on clipboards and then leave again.

Seán visits sometimes. He is back on his meds now and he seems to be doing well. He says Mr Cowper was asking for me.

The irony of all this is lost on him.

Joe Murphy
was born in 1979 in Enniscorthy, County Wexford where he lived for nineteen years before dying. Then he got better.

He was educated in Enniscorthy VEC, from where he went on to study English in University College Dublin. After undertaking a Masters in Early Modern Drama, he went on to qualify as a secondary school teacher. He has had poetry published in an anthology of Enniscorthy
writers
, and his first novel,
1798: Tomorrow The Barrow We’ll Cross
, was published in 2011 by Liberties Press. His job is teaching.

You wouldn’t believe the stories.