The Truth Commissioner (24 page)

Lester, who is probably the weakest player of them all, gives the team talk, calling them to huddle round. No one jokes any
more or fidgets and they link arms and lean into the circle's centre, listening to the words that are delivered in the sombre
tone of a homily.

‘Mark your man close, stay with him – if he goes off court for a piss stay with him. Let the son of a bitch feel your hot
breath on the back of his neck. Be in his face all the time. But, Raul, no fouls, no free throws. Keep it cool, man! And watch
out for Eamon O'Sullivan – the bastard's all elbows and wind. Keep it cool, play our game and we can't lose. Danny, let the
ball do the work,' he says as both his hands imitate a rapid flow of passes but for a second look like a car's windscreen
wipers. ‘And keep giving the ball to Edward – ain't that right, son?' Edward nods his head and half smiles. ‘In the basket,
Edward, every time. In the damn bread bin.'

When they go on court the waste technicians are already there doing a little passing drill. There's a sprinkling of spectators
– a few loner students seeking a cool place to sit unobserved and a couple of the college basketball team who train on court
next. He always hates to see them there, in his imagination can already hear their laughter and the barely suppressed guffaws
at their fumbling mistakes, their ironic cheers when someone scores. And then his eye catches Ramona sitting near the halfway
line, her lunch bag on her lap. He goes over to her right away and she tells him she cannot stay the whole game.

‘Just long enough to see me make a fool of myself,' he says. She doesn't answer but looks over his shoulder. He wants to please
her. ‘I'm going to speak to Father Mulryne Saturday morning. I said I'd give him an hour of help with the kids' soccer practice.
After it I'll speak to him.'

‘Good luck,' she answers and he doesn't know if she's referring to the game or his proposed talk with the priest.

The game plays out to its own soundtrack. There is an underscore of grunts and broken breathing, of names called in sharp-edged insistent voices, and over this is scored the constant stammering bounce of the ball and the heavy slap and sudden high-pitched squeak of shoes. Only occasionally is there the soft trill of the ball cleanly kissing the net. As expected there is, too, the laughter of the waiting college players and their ragged bursts of exaggerated applause at moments of accidental skill. Only Edward is immune to their scorn, as he moves about the court, a thin, languid ghost of a player, evading the clattering bodies of the opposition as if he's spectral, formed only by particles of reflex and instinctive skill.

Conscious of the presence of Ramona, he tries at first to raise his own game, adding a flourish, a decorative elegance, to his movements, but he knows he can't sustain it and so reverts to what he's been told to do and gives the ball as early and as often as possible to Edward. There is a beauty in his play – it's clear that he could have been a college player and in this game he gradually drifts into his own element, moving to his own music, forgetting for a while that he's slumming it and allowing himself to free-flow, giving himself to the memory of other games in other places. The technicians have no answer but after the first time-out, their play hardens and when Edward receives the ball in a corner he's banged so hard in the hack by O'Sullivan that he almost hits the first row of seats. O'Sullivan holds up his hands in a simulation of an apology belied by the grin on his face. The college players hoot their decision and he gives them the finger.

‘He fell over!' he shouts to no one in particular. ‘You only have to look at him and he falls over.'

‘Take it easy, man!' shout voices from about the court. Others help Edward to his feet. When open play resumes he calls for the ball, takes it deliberately close to O'Sullavan, dips a shoulder, feints and then darts past him in a seamless flow of spped. O'Sullivan stumbles wrong-footed in his slipstream and reddens before kneeling down as if to tie his lace.

Now the game cuts up rough, rougher than he's ever seen it and with an edge that's new and ugly. Tempers and elbows are raised, every ball is grappled and bumped for and the game collapes into a staccto stopping and starting, a cacophony of disputed calls and fouls. When Edward stretches to receive a short pass in centre court, O'Sullivan clatters him to the floor, then stands over him shouting at him to get up. At first he lies there, not moving or responding, before jumping up and pushing the ball hard into O'Sullivan's stomach, causing him to jack-knife in a winded gasp, and then there's shoving and pushing with players running in from all sides and no one sure if the insurgents are coming to pacify or participate. As O'Sullivan struggles for breath he tries to force his way through to Edward but Danny manages to push himself between the two men.

‘For God's sake, Eamon, it's only a game! Let the kid be.'

‘Out of the way, Danny, before you get hurt.'

‘No one's getting hurt. Cool it for God's sake!'

‘He's a showboating son of a bitch! Let's see just how much of a man he is!' he shouts and he tries to push him aside to reach
his quarry. Without thinking Danny slaps O'Sulli­van hard on the cheek and, in the seconds it slows him down, restraining
arms from his own team mates are pulling him away and the referee's whistle is a continuous shrill blast abandoning the game.
Suddenly he remembers Ramona and as he looks desperately to the seats he sees her leaving. He calls to her but either she
doesn't hear or has chosen to ignore him, hurrying towards the exit without looking back. Now it's O'Sullivan's voice again.

‘Never side against your own. You remember that.'

‘What the hell you talking about, Eamon? Edward is my own – in case you hadn't noticed we play on the same team. Have you
been watching
Gangs of New York
or friggin' something? Get real.' His anger wants to say more but he's thinking of Ramona and so he hurries off to the changing
room, with every step remembering her words about a man who never raised his hand, who knew how to treat her properly, and
he smarts at the memory of what he's done. Should he go to her now to try to explain? But gradually the thought of trying
to talk in the restrictive confines of the library, of trying to say important things in whispers, makes him hesitate before
telling himself that it would best be postponed until the evening.

In the changing room the team are claiming a victory, talking it up, making it sound like a battle that's been won, reprising
key moments through the distorting lens of their fired-up imaginations. They greet him like a hero, milling round, arms flapping
and then hands building a pyramid of high-fives to the fanfare of their hollers. He looks past them to where Edward is changing
quickly and slipping into the showers before anyone else. Afterwards he comes across him in the corridor where he is getting
a Coke from the machine. As he searches his own pockets for money, Edward drinks slowly from the bottle then uses it to point
at him.

‘I don't need anyone to fight my battles for me,' he says softly. ‘I do it for myself.'

Before he can think of a reply Edwrard has slung his bag over his shoulder and walked off. When he puts his coins in the machine
it swallows them but gives nothing in return and in his frustration he thumps the side with his fist.

‘You still fighting, Danny Boy?' Cedric asks as he joins him in the corridor.

‘It took my money and gave me nothing back.'

‘Must be a woman,' Cedric says before he retrieves the coins by pressing a button. ‘Let me try.' There is the soft
thunk
of the bottle dropping and Cedric smiles as he hands it to him, then pats him on the back.

But it is a cigarette he wants. A cigarette more than anything. If he's to have one now, however, it will break his designated
schedule so he slugs the Coke instead and tries to tell himself that it's enough.

The afternoon drags out in a sequence of tedious jobs which leaves him frustrated and impatient to see Ramona. He tries to
practise and perfect what he wants to say but the words jumble in his head and he decides that it might be best to read the
situation before he fixes on an approach. He works with Raul and Edward but there's no reference to what was said in the corridor
and he's too preoccupied with his own concerns to build bridges and in truth a little angry that the guy is so contemptuous
of his efforts to help, an intervention that has brought him only grief. The heat is high now and everything is framed by
a light that seems to pulse against his temples.

When he gets home the temperature has dropped a little and Ramona is already sitting on the stoop with her shoes kicked off
and sipping a cup of iced tea. As he walks towards her, her face is shaded, her expression unclear and he feels as if he's
stumbling blindly into the force field of her uncertain mood.

‘Hi,' she says neutrally as he reaches the bottom of the steps.

‘Hi,' he replies as he stares at her face for an answer and then into the awkward stretch of silence, even before he has time
to compose them, the words blurt out, Tm sorry, Ramona, really sorry. It just got a bit heated.'

‘I saw that," she says, running her hand through the black sweep of her hair.

‘It was just boys' stuff. Heat of the moment.' He stumbles into silence and stands watching her sip her tea.

‘Boys' stuff? It looked to me like you slapped him pretty hard.'

He stands at the bottom of the steps like a little boy and doesn't knowr what to say.

‘Get your shower,' she tells him, ‘the food's almost ready.'

In the shower he pushes his palms against the tiles and leans his body forward so the water cascades down his back. The frustration
inside him makes him push hard against the wall as if he's trying to throw it over. He thinks of the lake, of what it would
be like to swim in it. The water is always cold, Arnie says, even on the hottest day. Maybe some day he will take up his offer
to go fishing. Suddenly he likes the idea of being far out in the early morning when the mists cocoon you from the harsh realities
of the day to come and the only sound is the press of the swell against the wooden prow of the boat. He puts his head under
the water, lets it play against his scalp. But as the water washes away the sweat of the day he feels, too, the erosion of
the securities with which it had started. Now everything seems fragile, built on shifting sand, and it frightens him how quickly
his secure vision of a future has slipped away. He thinks of foundations, on what he has tried to construct a life, and as
always when he thinks like this there is a new surge of unease. The water begins to run cooler but he stays where he is and
feels again that he's being followed, that at every moment malevolent and unseen eyes fix their gaze upon him. The thought
is shot through with a fierce burn of fear and, as he turns off the water, the droplets on his body drip with ever greater
self-torture.

How could he have been so foolish as to raise his hand in front of her? The gnawing memory eats through every other thought
and he presses the towel tightly to his eyes as if that might block it out. He thinks of the nights he has heard her whimper
in her sleep, remembers the first time he understood what she had never talked about when he stretched out his hand to remove
some tiny piece of thread from her hair and saw her flinch and squirm away. In that one moment he understood it all and afterwards
when she had cried he had coaxed her to tell him, but even then she revealed only enough, as if recalling it was to feel once
again all the pain and the shame. Three years she spent with her former partner and now he's angry again, telling himself
that if only he loves her well enough he can make her forget in time, that their future will wipe away the memories that make
her whimper in her sleep. And he is angry that he can do something so stupid that makes her remember once more.

They say little to each other over the meal but in the little everything is said. He hesitates to talk of Father Mulryne again
because the gambit is too obvious, transparent in its desire to make amends, and so when he speaks, he speaks of nothing except
the trivia of the day. Later she tells him she's tired and wants to have an early night but she gives no invitation to follow
her and so he sits out on the stoop with a beer and thinks back over the day trying to step back into it in different footprints
to rediscover the perfect place he wants to be. But the journey takes him further than he wants to go and so he finds himself
wandering once again in a mesh of narrow streets, in windblown housing estates that blister the side of the mountain and squat
like gulags above the edges of the city below. He tries to shrug it all away with a deep slug of beer but it tastes bitter
on his tongue and he tells himself that he will go to bed now, snuggle into Ramona's heat, slip his hand round the swelling
globe of her belly and hope she will not push his hand away, let him embrace a new and better land.

On Saturday morning, as promised, he helps Father Mulryne with the kids' soccer school on the college grounds. As always it
strikes him as odd to see the priest out of his normal black and in a blue tracksuit, his unruly swathe of grey hair falling
forward when his large body lumbers into a run that with increasing speed always looks as if at any moment he might topple
forward like some giant tree felled in the forest. Mulryne compensates for his lack of knowledge about the game by the enthusiasm
he generates as he waves his arms in exhortation and salutation of the smallest achievement and the potential scribbling chaos
of the session is ordered and punctuated by the authoritative blasts of his whistle. The kids – boys and girls – respond with
serious concentration and effort. He likes Mulryne, thinks that he's always been kind to him over the years, taken an interest
in him but never asked too many questions, reading accurately his reluctance to talk about his family or the past.