John the Revelator (18 page)

Slowly I shook my head.

‘I don't know. I can't remember any of it. Only what they showed me on the tape.'

Jamey nodded and moved his lower jaw around, as if making sure it was still attached to the rest of his head.

‘Well,' he said, ‘something happened. You were raving like a loon, man. I thought you'd wake the whole village.'

‘Why didn't you stop me?'

‘I was kind of in shock. Besides.' He grinned. ‘I was getting some good stuff. You threw the chalice at the cross and started going apeshit, knocking over statues and upending the pews and all kinds of stuff. Holy Communion everywhere. Then your face went white. Actually, it was more a kind of green. You spewed all over the altar.'

‘They said it was...'

‘I know. It wasn't. After you puked your guts up, you ran off. I followed you, but I forgot the camcorder. And the tape.'

‘I'm sorry.'

Jamey looked me in the eye again.

‘It's done.'

Ash fell from the tip of his cigarette. You could feel the whole summer's heat trapped in the ground.

He blew smoke into the air and chuckled.

‘Balinbagin was like a holiday home, man. All I did was write. You were the one doing the time. I heard you were miserable. I was kind of touched.'

He flicked his cigarette away.

‘Y'know, I was waiting for this all summer. Dreading it. Now it's done.'

‘How did you know what was going to happen?' I said.

He bent over the pile of piss-sodden clothes and took money and keys from his jeans.

‘Because it happened before,' he said. ‘Gunter told me.'

He reached inside his jacket and removed a folded sheaf of papers from his jacket.

‘Here,' he said, and thrust them at me. ‘Read this when you get home.'

The papers were damp in parts, but still legible. I stuffed them into my back pocket.

Jamey stuck his hand out. I shook it without quite knowing why.

‘Look after yourself,' he said and began to move stiffly across the yard.

‘Where you going?' I said.

‘Away. Don't tell Dee anything. Just play dumb, no matter how freaked out she gets. I'll call her as soon as I can.'

He walked slowly across the cattle grid. Before he disappeared into the evening light, he called out: ‘I'll send a postcard.'

Then he disappeared, and all I had left of him were stories.

 

 

 

 

The old crow knows the story. He sees it all unfold like a sequence of silent irised images. Figures move in herky-jerky movements, but no matter what happens he does not intervene, for in his starved bird mind all mortal events are merely dreams of what happens. Even a crow knows that in dreams you cannot change a thing but merely watch with a detachment that is at once benign and malign, like a bored god, or a bored god's messenger.

My mother was in bed by the time I got home. I was so tired and sore I couldn't make it up the stairs so I collapsed into her armchair and took Jamey's papers from my back pocket. They smelled and I had to carefully peel the sheets apart to read them. And maybe it was shock, but as I read his words I didn't know whether I should laugh or cry or both.

 

Balinbagin Boys' Home
7 Priory Road
Balinbagin

 

John,

I wasn't going to write (it's hard to be bothered when the correspondence is all one way) but the weirdest thing happened. Your mother came to see me this morning. She asked me not to let on, but you know me, can't keep my trap shut. I thought maybe she'd be fishing for information about a certain person's involvement in you-know-what, but the subject never came up. She just asked if they were feeding me and if I was keeping out of trouble. She stayed about half an hour and listened to me yammering on and then she left. I still don't know what to make of it.

Anyway, seeing as I'm writing, I might as well send you my latest story. The stuff's pouring out of me these days—must be the artist-friendly environment. I hope you're keeping them in a safe place, they might be worth money someday.

Talk soon.

JC

 

The Cuckold
by Jamey Corboy

 

Gunter Prunty was a big man, and not easily intimidated. As a schoolboy, he was able to whale the crap out of boys three or four years older and not think twice about it. Even the teachers were a little scared of him. But one thing Gunter dreaded more than anything was being asked to stand up in English class to read aloud. It reduced him, a giant of a lad, to a stuttering red-faced mess.

Gunter was not what you'd call a man of letters. He'd never read a book in his life. And yet, at the grand old age of twenty-seven, poorly schooled, having failed to complete his Leaving Cert, he became fixated on a word he'd heard somewhere. Not your everyday word either. It stuck in his brain like a fishhook.

Cuckold.

Maybe he'd heard it on the telly or in a film. He wasn't a hundred per cent on the meaning, but he definitely had a hunch it pertained to what had been going on with him and Maggie, so one night in Donahue's he asked the Corboy lad, who fancied himself a bit of a scholar. When Corboy told him, Gunter figured they might as well have printed his mug shot where the word appeared in the dictionary.

Cuckold.

He could almost taste it. He tongued it like a bad tooth. Pronounced it different ways. Played charades with it.
Cuckold.

Sounds like: Cock-holed. Butt-plugged by another man in a three-way pile-up. A fuck sandwich, with Maggie as the filling. That girl had his heart scalded, no two ways about it.

Cuckolded.

Now it sounded kind of chickeny.

Buk-awk-buk-buk.

The weird thing was, deep down, in some secret, dirty place he could barely bring himself to acknowledge, Gunter was
excited
by her carry on, because anything was better than being bored, and most of the time, he and Maggie bored each other stupid. Yes, jealousy festered inside him like an ulcer, inflamed him with rage. But at the same time, the thought of her with another man sent an illicit shiver through his mind. Sometimes he lay in bed pulling the guts out of himself, imagining her face contorted with pleasure as she writhed under some gurning punter. But always afterwards, his ejaculate hardening to a crust, he felt pathetic and ashamed.

The very first night they met, she was fresh off the boat from England, with no plans to go back. ‘I've had enough of bastards,' she told him when the drink had loosened her tongue. ‘Handsome bastards. Ugly bastards. Hard bastards. Soft bastards. My whole life, bastards. I must give off some smell that attracts them.'

Gunter too could be a bastard if it suited, but when it came to Maggie he was a soft touch, even when she threw things at him, or pummelled him with her fists and he had to thrust his hands in his pockets to keep from hitting back. Even when she started coming home late smelling of Donahue's.

One such night when she crawled into bed, instead of letting him mount her, she put her hand on his head and gently but firmly pushed him down between her thighs. Gunter was a little shocked and unsure about how to proceed, but he gave it a shot, burrowing into her coarse hair, her woman-smell. At first she squirmed and groaned and made whimpering noises, and he took this as encouragement. He stayed down there for ages, tongue sore and strained, her moistness tingling his cheeks. But when at last he lifted his head, she'd fallen asleep.

Try as he might, Gunter couldn't quite pinpoint when he first suspected something dodgy going on. It was just an instinct, a hunch. Sometimes when he kissed her on the mouth, he found himself wondering what she'd had in there lately.

But even when the late nights became more frequent, and his suspicion turned to certainty, he was reluctant to confront her. He was kind of curious as to how the thing would play out. He waited up late in the kitchen, lights out, downing shots of whiskey, trying to quench that giddy sick feeling in his stomach. He grew addicted to that feeling, addicted to quenching it. He drank and smoked and drank and smoked and relieved himself against the backyard wall and asked the rain what's the fucking point, but the rain didn't know a thing, just hissed and plonked.

He lay awake in bed at night listening for the sound of her stealing in like a stray. He pretended to be asleep when she crept into the bedroom, and just when she thought she'd gotten away with it, he'd speak, his loud voice in the darkness, making her start. He'd ask where she'd been, not because he wanted to know the truth, but because he wanted to hear her recite the lies she'd prepared.

Then he took to going through her coat and bag on the sly. He scrolled through her text messages when she was asleep or in the bath. He snooped around the bedroom. And when he found proof, it was in a place so obvious he had to wonder if she wanted to be caught. A Durex box stashed at the bottom of the drawer where she kept her underwear. Gunter never used rubbers. Like eating through a muzzle, he always said.

He shook the johnnies onto the bedspread, hands trembling, a sour metallic taste in his mouth. Out of a box of twelve, eight left. He paced the flat, sickened and exhilarated. He poured himself a generous measure of whiskey and sat trying to remember, working out the times, the dates, trying to figure out what he'd been doing while she was out fucking this mystery man. At work maybe. Or cleaning the flat when she was too tired or browned off to do it herself. Bleaching the bath, scrubbing the toilet, wearing those Marigold gloves. Eating takeaways in front of the television because she'd stopped cooking, trying to bury that awful gut feeling under comfort food. Steak and kidney pie. Batterburgers and chips. Chicken dippers.

Buk-awk-buk-buk.

He was pouring his third whiskey when he heard the key in the door. His stomach flip-flopped. Maggie came into the kitchen, did a double take when she saw the bottle.

‘Bit early for that, isn't it?'

He pushed the bottle away.

‘Tell me his name.'

She plugged in the kettle.

‘Whose name?'

‘His name, Maggie. I found the rubbers.'

She folded her arms.

‘Gunter, are you off your trolley?'

‘The rubbers. In your fuckin'
dresser.
'

She tried to change the subject, demanding to know what he was doing going through her things. She tried to make out the rubbers were her friend June's, but he cut her off, roaring, ‘
Don't try to make me into a bigger gom than I already am!
' and she burst into tears, but the waterworks only made him madder. He looked at his hands. They were trembling like the morning-after shakes. He tried to get himself under control, tried to swallow his anger, felt it burn all the way down to his stomach. He looked at Maggie, her face crumpled, her bottom lip curling like a child's. He made himself go to her and put his arm around her and be a man.

‘Tell me his name,' he said softly.

She shook her head.

‘I can't, Gunter. Please stop it.'

‘You're only making things worse.'

‘Stop.'

But he wouldn't quit. He kept at it until he wore her down.

‘If I tell you,' she said, wiping her face with her sleeve, ‘do you promise not to do anything?'

Gunter put his big hands on her shoulders.

‘I promise.'

‘Please, Gunter. I'd be mortified.'

‘I swear. Now tell me.'

She swallowed. Looked at the floor.

‘Jude.'

‘Jude what?'

‘Udechukwu.'

He was flabbergasted.

‘What in the hell kind of name is that?'