The Dead Republic (8 page)

I knew he’d stopped because the music became music again. Dust settled; so did the noise. I could see Ford, over the heads and hats of the men who’d gone in front of me.

I stopped, and I was angry. But I watched. The resolve, whatever it was I’d pulled together, had blown away. Ford had me where he wanted me, in the middle of red nowhere. I didn’t even have an accordion to squeeze and hide behind.

The music stopped.

He didn’t shout, but I heard him.

—Here.

Another voice took the word.

—Here!

Ford turned, a half-circle. He pointed.

—And here.

—Here! Let’s go!

Ford marched off the chosen hill. This time I waited. I didn’t want to move.

—I think Pappy would like a word with you.

Meta Sterne was beside me.

—Are you quite alright? she asked.

She took off her big-brimmed hat, so she could look up at all of me.

—I’ll be grand, I told her.

—The heat?

—Yeah.

Ford stopped at the bottom of the hill. The cactus guy unfolded two canvas chairs and put them side by side, backs to the hill. I saw Ford speak to Danny Borzage, and Danny turned and walked towards me. I saw his fingers, and heard that poxy bit of a song,
The Bold Henry Smart
.

And now I moved. I met him halfway, keeping an eye on the ground I’d have to cover. I went straight for him, through him; I made him and his squeezebox get out of my way.

Ford didn’t turn. But I saw his fury in the stiffness of his shoulders and neck. As I came up behind him I could see his white handkerchief. He was chewing it, sucking it up like a piece of very white spaghetti. I sat beside him. Most of the hankie was in his mouth. A corner of it, a fat rat’s tail, sat on his chin.

Meta Sterne was beside him now and, for a while - a few long seconds - I wasn’t there. It was her and him. Her wide hat brim made shade for both of them as she stood beside him, and slowly pulled the handkerchief from his mouth. It began to dry in the heat; I could see the steam lift from it. She picked up her blanket, flicked it open, and was sitting on it before it had properly settled, just beside Ford’s feet.

—Ready, Meta? he said.

—All set, she answered.

Her hat darkened the paper on her lap. It was like she was putting her hand into a cave to write.

—Lil, I said.

—What?

The name had just dropped in front of me.

—I had a sister called Lil.

I wasn’t really talking to them. I just needed to hear it.

—She in the story? said Ford.

—She was my sister.

I searched for the pebbled notebook. Trousers, jacket - I had more pockets than I’d ever owned. I found it, inside my jacket. The words were there, the names. They were all there. I looked at the last one I’d written. GRACIE. I waited till my hand, my arm, stopped shaking. Then I wrote the new name. LIL.

I tried to see her. I tried to see all of them. But I couldn’t. I could feel them and - I thought I did - I heard them. Their cries and whines. But no more names dropped for me. GRACIE. LIL. Just the two. There’d been others - lots of them. I could make up a number - ten, eleven, seventeen. Any big number would have been right, and useless. I was the only one who’d lived.

I didn’t know that. It only hit me then. Lil and all the crawling brothers and sisters - they’d died because I’d stopped looking at them. I’d taken Victor from the last damp cellar. He’d followed me, less than a year old; he’d pulled at my trousers, all the way. It was just me and Victor then. We’d go back sometimes, and they’d be there, and new ones, on top of my mother, crawling over her, as their weight pushed her slowly into the ooze. I went back one day, and they were gone. They were dead - my mother too. Because I didn’t see them.

I was forty-seven. Lil and Gracie, they were younger; they’d be women in their forties. (But Gracie
had
died; memory kept telling me that.) They might have been in Dublin, Liverpool or New York, any of the places I’d lived in. In among the Paddies or out on their own. They might have been married, mothers, grandmothers. The boys too; they’d been there as well. I didn’t even know their names. Just the surname, Smart, and nothing else.

Lil and Gracie. Two names; solid, remembered. Two shapes, two wails.

 

 

 

I waited until dark. Then I found a rock, a slab of a thing that looked like it had been put there by the film people. It was still warm from the day that was now dead. I sat back on it; I lay right down. I could feel the cold air sit hard on my chest. I let myself get used to the cold. I shivered my way into it.

I looked up at the stars. There were so many of them - all that death and none of it hidden. Every dead infant and toddler; they were all up there - the starving, milkless, tortured. There were millions of them, more than millions. They looked down at me and waited.

—I’m sorry.

I tried to see them, the brothers and sisters who were waiting for me. But all I could see was stars.

It was still dark when I gave up. But I was stuck to the slab - I couldn’t move. I couldn’t feel my hands. I couldn’t move my head, or shut my eyes. I had to keep looking. I couldn’t budge. I had no choice.

There was one star. It seemed to grow; it got brighter, yellow - then white. And I knew who it was.

Henry.

The other Henry. The first and the real. He glowed proud and angry. He stared at me. He’d pinned me to the slab. He could have killed me - he was going to. A sudden shaft would slice and burn me up to nothing. I’d be a shadow left on the rock. I tried to stare, tried to match him. But it was hopeless.

He came no nearer. He got no brighter. He waited too. Until I understood: they were behind him. The other stars, our brothers and sisters. They were tucked in there, behind the other Henry. He was hiding them from me, behind the white glare, and he was hiding me from them.

The stars faded. I saw them drowned by dawn light that slowly bleached the sky. The shadow of one of the massive buttes cut its way over me. It grabbed my legs and pulled me to its freezing hold. And, as it took my face and eyes, the dawn glare was gone and I saw the other Henry, still up there, still guarding what was his.

—Gracie!

I could yell again. I could move.

—I only want to see her! Lil!

The shadow raced over me, like a gravel current.

—Gracie!

The stars were gone. The sun was already eating at the long shadows.

He was still up there.

 

 

 

It was night when I woke. He was sitting beside me. He’d brought a canvas chair.

—Susie, I said.

—Susie O’Shea?

—No, I said.—I told you about that. I didn’t know her fuckin’ name.

—Who’s Susie?

—My sister, I told him—One of my sisters.

The name was breaking up, becoming another. But I got it down - there was enough light - below the others. GRACIE,

LIL, SUSIE.

—It’s all coming back, he said.

There was no sneer in the words.

—Tell me about the wedding, he said.

I kept looking at the names on the page. But the light was climbing out the hole at the top of the tepee. I’d woken up with other names around me, but I’d only managed to grab the one. I could feel the others; they were still in the air, breaking.

His foot tapped my knee.

—The wedding, he said.

They’d gone. But I’d caught one of them. A real name, not a hidden star.

—We did that, I said.

—What about the dowry?

—What dowry?

—You should have read the fucking story, said Ford.—There’s always a dowry.

—What’s a dowry?

He leaned out of the chair, and then pulled himself back in. He’d taken a piece of paper from a back pocket. He brought the page right up to his face; he lifted his specs. There was less than an inch between his eyes and the paper.

—Can’t make out Meta’s scrawl here.

He coughed. He read.

—Dowry. Noun. An amount of property or money brought by a bride to her husband on their marriage. Origin. Middle English.

He stopped reading.

—That clear? he said.

—Yeah.

—Great, he said.—Middle English, my ass. It’s an Irish tradition. So, what did she bring?

—Nothing.

—Nothing?

—Just herself.

I could see her now. I could feel her - no, I couldn’t - but I could remember her skin, and her heat and breath. I could put her together. I had my words and pictures. I was there - in the tepee, not in Dublin or Roscommon. And I wanted to stay there, in the fuckin’ tepee. I wanted to put my life together, to tell my story. But I didn’t want to crawl back into it, or even think that I could do that. I wanted to live properly. I wanted to keep going.

He was waiting, looking at me.

—
Macushla
, I said.

—The tune? John McCormack?

—She liked that one.

—Great, he said.

He hummed it a bit, and stopped.

—It’ll fit, he said.—It’s a song about fucking a corpse, but we can use it.

—Good.

—No dowry?

—No.

—See, we need that tension. The brother won’t hand over the dowry. So she won’t let the guy fuck her until she gets the dowry. The legs stayed crossed, and these are
legs
. So he fights the brother. Fights the fucker right across the country. Bam, bam. For twenty minutes. Gets the dowry and throws it in the fire.

He sat up.

—She needs the dowry, he said.—We have to see that fight. We have to see her angry, you know, red-haired and fucking furious.

—She was in the I.R.A., for fuck sake. How much more anger do you want?

—Mary Kate, he said.

—Who?

—I told you. This woman has to have a name.

I looked at him. He looked at me.

—Okay, I said.

—Okay?

I nodded, once. I could give the man the name. That way, the story would stay mine.

—Great, he said.

He was happy. He loved the name; I could see that. He was rolling it around.

—Yeah, he said.—Mary Kate. Two names. Enough for two fine women. That’s what we call them in Ireland, right? Fine women.

I said nothing.

—We’ll still go with the Miss O’Shea thing, he said.—But then he finds out her name is Mary Kate. Right after she becomes Mary Kate Smart and her brother won’t hand over the dowry.

—She didn’t have a brother, I said.

—What did she have? Her dad’s dead - has to be. Who gives her away - at the wedding?

—Her cousin.

—He can be her brother.

—No.

—The man of the house. A big guy. Colludes with the British. Makes sense. We can shoot
him
in the head.

—Hang on a minute, I said, and I took out the notebook.

I wrote the name. IVAN REYNOLDS. Her cousin. I went back some pages. I found it. MISS O’SHEA. I wrote below it. NOT

MARY KATE.

He nodded at the notebook.

—You’re writing stuff down there.

—Yeah.

—Remember what I said? We got to get it all into two hours, less. We got to take shortcuts.

He held his hand out. He wanted the notebook.

—Go on, he said.—I already ate. I just want to see it.

I let him take it from my hand. He opened it and brought it to his face. He lifted his glasses.

—This is great, he said.

He mumbled. I saw him turning pages.

—Names, he said.—Names. Tell me about Victor.

—My brother.

—Yeah.

—He died.

—He dies, you take up arms. It’s good.

—There were dogs, I told him.

—Christ. They ate him?

—No, I said.—No.

I was remembering; I was going further. I could hear the rats, I could feel them slide under my fingers. I made sure I was still in the tepee. Then I told him about the fighting dogs, and the rats myself and Victor had caught to drive the dogs mad before they were set at each other. I told him how we’d boil the babies, how we’d rub the soup onto our hands and arms, to drive their mothers wild and careless, so we could more easily catch them. I told him how we’d bring the rats to the secret places on the edge of the city, where men would bet on the dogs, and how I’d lower my hand deep into the sack and keep it there longer than I needed to as Victor went among the men with a hat held out for their guilt money, and how I’d pull out a frantic rat and hold it over my head, the claws scratching the air just over my scalp, and I’d drop the rat into the pit for the dogs, and I’d make sure that Victor’s hands and arms were washed clean of the rats before we’d lie down and sleep, in whatever corner we found and made our own each night.

I finished. The story had its dogs.

He said nothing. He sat still, looking at me. And I knew: Victor wasn’t going to make it. Mary Kate would have a brother but Henry Smart wouldn’t. Henry had to be a loner. I was a writer then, and I’d killed my second brother. I’d blame Ford later but I knew exactly what was happening.

He stood up.

—This was good, he said.

His hand was on my shoulder.

—You need to get out more, he said.—A wigwam’s no place for a rebel. We have to get at this. Because this is going to be my next picture.

He stooped to avoid the deerskin wall. And he was gone. I stayed there. I made sure I did. I wasn’t in Dublin, running with Victor, or holding Victor as his last cough faded to nothing - I’d killed him.

That was stupid, sentimental shite - I knew it and I pushed it away.

I got back to work.

I wasn’t running from the cattle drovers, or lying on top of Piano Annie—