Dead dogs, p.3
Dead Dogs, page 3
I’m raising my hand up to block some of the floodlight’s glare and I can’t believe he’s fucking said that. I’m looking from him to the boys and back again and I know how I must look, spot-lit like a fucking urchin in a play of Oliver Twist. I’m looking from him to the boys and I’m going, ‘That’s not what I said.’
Now all the other lads have stopped and they’re standing in a line looking at me and Paul. Their breaths are coming hard and hissing through the sieves of their teeth and their heads and shoulders are wreathed in opaque, misty ribbons. I’m thinking, Paul Cullen’s a bit of a bastard.
And then I’m thinking, where the fuck has Rory disappeared to?
I’m facing Paul and the rest of the lads and I can feel every single gaze fastening onto me. The lads are all gasping and blowing and under their jerseys their chests are heaving. I’m standing there, watching them watching me and I’m suddenly aware that I’m not out of breath.
I’m suddenly aware of this and then I’m going, ‘Ah, for fuck’s sake.’
Paul’s looking at me and out of the black nothing of his face he says, ‘If you don’t want to train like the rest of us, you can train on your own.’ Then he says, ‘Ten laps and then go home. I’ll talk to you on Thursday.’
Just like that he turns around to the other lads and just like that I know I’m dropped for the game on Saturday.
The way the ground is now, it’s hard to run. The rain over the past few days has saturated it and here and there water lies in the pitch’s gouges and troughs. In the floodlights the water looks like dribbled mercury. I’m turning away from Paul and the other boys and now I’m splashing through the metallic spills. I can feel my boots sink into the slick mud, I can feel it shifting beneath me as I start to jog. With each step there’s a retching slurp and my studs carry away a cloying splat of the pitch’s surface. With each step the mud mounts my boots and with each step I’m carrying a little more weight. I know that by the end of the tenth lap if I’m able to haul my feet out of the gloop at all, I’ll be lucky.
On the way past Rory, he gives me this apologetic look and shrugs at me.
I’m thinking, thanks a fucking bunch you dick. I’m thinking, if you’re that fucking sorry you should be doing these laps with me.
The ghost light of the floodlights runs in a salt-white band most of the way up one side of the pitch. This means that as I jog, I’ll be able to see where I’m going for only about half the way round. The other side of the pitch has a black curtain drawn across it. Now, though, the floodlights are drenching me down one side and alongside me, instead of Rory, my shadow keeps pace with me. It is elongated and made spidery by the angle of the lights and it is as black as I feel. It is rank and frustrated. It is a spillage of anger.
I’m jogging up the sideline, away from Paul Cullen, away from Rory, away from the other lads and their curses and panting, away from their clutching stares. I’m jogging up the sideline and my breathing is a sea in storm and every slap and suck of my boots pulls a little more out of the muscles in my legs.
Halfway round the first lap, I look up and across the pitch at everyone else in a welter of movement under the eyes of the lights. Everyone is running and swerving and everyone is hard-edged and stark. From over here in the dark it all looks so alien. It is all dance and ritual. Primitive.
I’m on my third pass through the black when I look down to see where I’m putting my feet.
I’m on my third pass through the black when Seán grabs me by the throat.
He’s looking at me and even in what little light there is I can see an awful glee in his face.
I don’t know how long Seán’s been waiting in the black dark beside the pitch. I don’t know how long he’s sat with the water dripping off the briars onto his head and neck. I don’t know how long he’s been watching me slop and strain in the mud with that disgusting look on his face. I don’t know how long it took for his hands to get this cold and hard, how long it took for his blonde hair to get this plastered to his head, how long it took his olive green jacket to get this soaked. I don’t know how long it took before the fire in his eyes exploded into life like this.
But it has and now Seán has me by the throat and before I can even yell out, he’s bringing his wide, wriggling mouth close to my ear. His clammy cheek is pressed against mine and he whispers two words.
He whispers, ‘Help me.’
I’m blinking in the darkness and Seán is so close to me that the smell of him fills my senses. Shampoo, Lynx deoderant and something else. Something pervasive and unpleasant. Something coming from his hands. I can feel the soft dampness of his cheek against mine. I can feel the hot surge of his breath against my ear and I can feel the way he’s shaking where he stands.
I push him away from me and now I’m staring at him in the dim light from the far side of the pitch. His huge shoulders are slumped forward like his chest is caved in and his whole body is shivering in horrible little ripples. He looks shattered. In the cold wash of light from the training area he looks beaten.
He looks like this until you see his face.
His stooped shoulders have brought his head down and forwards like he’s wearing an invisible yoke. He’s looking at me from under his blonde eybrows and the will-o’-the-wisps that live in his eyes are frantic and bright. From between the tight curves of his lips his teeth show white and slippery. From behind this horrible smile his voice comes soft and pleading like from a different person, ‘Help me.’
I’m looking at him and it’s like watching someone wearing a mask.
I’m looking at him and I’m thinking, Seán’s fucked. He’s done something really, really bad.
I’m thinking this but what I’m saying is, ‘It’ll be fine. Don’t be worrying. You’ll be alright.’
And now Seán’s expression is starting to fold into that of a sobbing child. I’m watching his smile slacken and wilt into a sagging line and I know that whatever effort he was putting into stopping himself doing bad things was way too much for him in the end. Dr Thorpe’s little lipstick-red tablets didn’t work and now looking at Seán I know that whatever it cost him has cost him everyting.
Standing there in the dark I’m thinking, Seán’s beyond fixing.
Without really knowing what I’m doing, I put my arm around Seán’s shoulders and now I’m guiding him around the black edge of the pitch. I don’t how I know it but I know that I can’t let any of the lads see Seán like this.
The dressing rooms are twin cubes of gulag grey. They were supposed to be hooked up to the ESB last year but that didn’t happen. Now they’re dark cavities of cold concrete. Useless light-bulbs dangle from the ceilings, like dead planets hanging in the void. Away from the lights, away from the slap and suck of the training, the dressing rooms are empty apart from me and Seán. Around us the coiled piles of the lads’ kit-bags and clothes are little heaps of matt black in the sort of grainy charcoal that passes for light in here.
In this no-colour light I’m watching Seán as he slumps onto one of the benches lining the walls and sobs slither out of his mouth. His face is buried in his hands and now my eyes have adjusted to the gloom enough to see a hanging festoon of snot and spit arcing down from his big fingers. Under the cold wet of my jersey I can feel the cold wet of my skin, and under my skin I can feel the hot gush of my heart’s every pulse.
‘What happened, Seán?’ I ask.
I don’t like the detachment that’s entered my voice. I sound like I’m trying to talk someone down from a ledge.
In the damp-concrete night of the dressing room my breath floats out from my face and away in a cloud of condensation. Seán’s head is bandaged round in the moist coils of his own despair. His breath billows through the cage of his fingers like he’s a trapped animal.
Now I’m moving toward him, my studs chattering on the hard cement of the floor. They sound like tapshoes, brittle and clattering and for some reason they always, always, remind me of that sound your tooth makes just as the dentist finds it with his pliers. Like something splintering.
Above the splintering of my footsteps just as I get near him, Seán goes, ‘You can’t tell anyone.’
His face is still in his hands so to the crown of his head I say, ‘That depends, Seán. I can’t promise you anything until you tell me what’s wrong.’
Fighting his sobs, he lifts his head and his eyes are the first things I see. They swallow the world. It’s like all the heartache, all the self-disgust that lives within Seán is now puddled in the holes of his eyes. They are bottomless shafts filled with an endless, aching dark. Looking into them it’s like I’m looking into Seán and all that I see in him is a hungry universe of nothingness.
But from these blank, black sinkholes a whole world of tears is sluicing down his face. His lank hair is plastered across his forehead and his mouth is whorled about with deep lines of grief. His lips are working now but nothing’s coming out except for drool and this weird gurgling sound he’s making. Words want to get out of his throat but Seán’s too shattered to let them.
I kneel down in front of him and I can feel the mud caking to my legs crack and chasm and tug at the hairs on my calves and thighs. I can feel the damp grit of the floor beneath my kness. The studs of my boots scrape the concrete and score lines across it.
I’m looking into the swallowing dark of Seán’s eyes and I go, ‘It’s me, Seán. You can tell me. We always help each other. You’re my best friend.’
Seán snorts a clotted ball of phlegm back up into his sinuses and he reaches his big paw out to catch the front of my jersey.
His slack mouth works without any words for a second and then he says, ‘I can’t tell you. You don’t want me for a friend. Nobody wants me for anything. I’m a fucking freak.
And then he untangles his fist from my jersey and he hits himself in the forehead so hard I’m surprised I don’t see blood.
I’m reaching for his arm and I catch it on the second attempt but at the same time I’m turning my head to look out through the gap in the metal shuttering that covers the windows. Through the slot in the sheet steel I can see the caustic light of the training area and in my head I can see the lads coming back and finding us like this. Me and Seán, me covered in mud and sweat, Seán covered in tears and snot. They’d ask a lot of questions that Seán is in no state to answer. Me neither come to think of it.
I’m thinking, if the lads come back, Seán’s going to look like a weirdo. I’m thinking this and a little Judas voice in the back of my head goes and you’ll look like a fucking weirdo too with your fancy fucking words and your too-good-for-us fucking attitude. You with your psycho fucking friend. That voice is starting to get a lot more frequent lately. That Judas screech. It terrifies me. Never before, never, have I been ashamed of Seán. I’ve never cared what people thought about him. He’s my best friend and that means something.
Thinking this, trying to strangle the Judas screech, hanging on to Seán’s hawser of an arm, I’m going, ‘For fuck’s sake, Seán, don’t be such a handicap. Tell me what the fuck is wrong before the lads get back and kick the shit out of both of us.’
Seán stills then. He goes quiet. Not limp but motionless.
‘I can’t tell you,’ he says. ‘It’s too bad.’
And then his face collapses and his whole body loosens like a landslide and his eyes start spilling tears again. And through lips that are in spasm, his voice comes clabbered and soured with self-disgust.
‘I can’t tell you,’ he says again. ‘But I can show you.’
Seán’s not stupid and he’s not some kind of monster. Let me get that straight. Me and him have known each other for so long now that all our memories are shared. I used to be friends with him because I didn’t know how different he was. Then I was friends with him because once you’re friends with someone you can’t just not be friends with them. Especially when they’ve done nothing bad on you. Especially when they need you because they’ve nobody else. No Mam. A Da sliding away like grease in a fire.
There’s this girl in school. Jennifer O’Riordan. Jenny. She is far and away the best-looking girl in school. I think so anyway. A lot of the lads think so too and they know I’m head-over-heels about her. For months I get slagged at training and once someone stuck a drawing of two stick figures having anatomically incorrect sex into my kit bag. One was labelled Jenny with a big clumsy arrow scrawled in the direction of the stick figure with the giant boobs and the other one was obviously supposed to be me. I know it was Brendan Currane who masterminded this because he always does his Js the wrong way round. The retard.
This is last year when we were doing our Junior Cert and I’m finding myself staring at Jenny O’Riordan during class. A lot of teachers make us sit in alphabetical order and because my second name begins with a D I’m usually stuck up in the top half of the class while she’s usually behind me somewhere. Seán sits on his own because he doesn’t really like anyone except me sitting beside him.
The school furniture consists of brown desks clad in a sort of slippery, fake wood veneer and brown plastic chairs that totter on the flexing tubular steel of their legs. You have to lie the chairs on their sides and straighten the legs before every class, the tubular steel is so kinked at the bends. The sixth years are too heavy for them and, if they’ve been in class before you, when you swivel in your seat you can feel the cheap steel start to give.
Last year I find myself doing stupid things in class so that I can catch even a glimpse of Jenny O’Riordan. I turn around in my seat for no reason. I borrow pens from people behind me even though my pencil case has a blue pen, a red pen, a HB pencil and a full mathematical set in it. It’s gotten so bad at one stage that Mrs Prendergast keeps me back to talk to me about my attention span. I have never been kept back before and all the lads ooooooohhhh at this. My neck and face are radiating heat and for the rest of the day I can feel a red stain swimming under my skin.
Now and then Jenny will catch my eye as I’m contorting like a fucking circus act in my chair and she will smile at me. She will smile at me and there’s an expression on her face when she does this that I can’t quite fathom. It’s like someone looking at a baby or something. But as far as I’m concerned a smile is a smile and on each occasion I’m gurning back at her like a simpleton.
This all comes to a head one day in Maths.
I’m shit at sums and I start thinking about how Jenny looks with her head bent over her copy, the blonde curtain of her hair tucked behind her ear and the white nubs of her teeth nipping at the end of her pencil. Mr Fogarty isn’t paying much attention to the class. He’s doing something with the roll, his face wrinkled beneath his dome of slick, hairless, pale skin. It’s like his entire head is a ball of scar tissue. His control over his classes is absolute. His discipline is a beartrap thing of sudden cruelty. The only noises in his room are the scratching of pencils and the chitinous clicking of calculators.
Like something out of a pantomime, I’m flicking little stilletto glances around me under my brows before I elbow my red pen off the desk with all the finesse of a fat man falling off a high stool. Mr Fogarty looks up at me. Only his eyes move. His head stays bowed but his eyes move and his gaze travels from me to the fallen red pen and back to me again. His upper lip wrinkles in silent contempt and he goes back to his work.
Smiling inanely I lean out of my chair and smiling inanely I turn my head to catch Jenny’s eye.
She lifts her face and for a long moment we are locked together, she staring at me, me suspended awkwardly over the edge of the chair, my body torqued out into space.
The chair creaks once before the legs give way and the class explodes into laughter. One creak. Like it was jeering me.
At big break Seán says, ‘You have to say something to her.’
We’re in the gym and the place is an echoing church of laughter and conversation. I’m looking at him over the rumpled, golden hump of a chicken goujon roll. Around a mouthful of dough, ketchup and reconstituted chicken gloop, I go, ‘What are you talking about?’
I’m still embarrassed about what happened in Maths this morning and the last thing I want to do is go anywhere near Jenny O’Riordan for the rest of the day. I can picture her hand coming up to hide the laughter that sings in her eyes and shakes her shoulders. I can picture the hilarity on her face as Mr Fogarty hauls me off the floor by the collar.
I lost my fucking pen as well.
Seán looks at me with his big, blank eyes and he says slowly, like he’s thinking hard about every syllable, ‘You have to say something to her. Everyone saw that you were staring at her when you fell. Everyone sees you every day staring at her. I can hear everyone saying that you’re dying about her.’
I’m swallowing my mouthful of carbohydrates and pretend chicken and I’m going, ‘Ah, for fuck’s sake. Is everyone talking about us?’
Seán looks at me and his lips squirm in a weird smile and he says, ‘Why do you say “us”?’
He says, ‘They are talking about you. Not Jenny. You don’t have an “us”.’
I look at him for a moment that stretches into a long expanse of silence. Everyone else is having their lunch too and the silence between us is filled with other people’s laughter and monkey-house chatter. He’s right of course. There is no ‘us’ when it comes to me and Jenny. The admission of this is hooked into my bowels.
I’m shaking my head because I’m an idiot. I’m shaking my head and then I’m saying, ‘Yeah.’
And then I go, ‘Just don’t you start taking the piss as well.’
Seán looks at me then with his great heavy face and he says, ‘I won’t take the piss. I don’t ever take the piss. Even when all the others were laughing at you, I wasn’t.’
I look back at him and I’m thinking all the others? but what I’m saying is, ‘Thanks, man.’
Seán beams like I’ve just given him the greatest compliment he’s ever gotten.
We spot Jenny sitting with two friends on one of the low windowsills lining the corridor that links the old and new parts of the school. She is wrapped all about by the fall of sun through the glass and her hair has ignited into gold filigree. Herself and her friends don’t even look up as we stop in front of them. They are looking at Jenny’s iPhone and the scratchy, parched audio from the video they’re watching skitters all along the corridor.
