A sample of one of three novels I started and failed to complete in the past five years or so. This one was the most recent, and I do think about returning to it, editing and completing it. A lot of the story is lost to me now and also I think differently about characters, their situations and their voices.
I slam the flat sole of my boot
against the door, crunching it open, and as soon as I’m in the man leaps on me
and I grunt and we fall instantly to the floor but I catch him good with my
elbow sending his bottom two teeth out and he loosens
his grip and I’m up and I use the my boot again against his head this time.
Then the other man bounds over and catches me in the chest but not low enough
to do much but rattle and ache so I bung out one with my right and then a low
one with my left and then the boot again.
I’m wearing
all the clothes I own; one pair of underwear, one pair of socks (one sock
missing heel,) one pair of long underwear, one grey t-shirt, one navy blue
sweatshirt, one workcoat, a pair of jeans and
the boots. Winter is eating in, but right now I am sweating, lumbering around
the room as men leap out of nowhere, catching me good, but never good enough for them.
“Joseph!”
The only person ever to call me Joseph. “You fucking nut you was supposed to be quiet!” He rants as we clear the room
looking. We are looking for signs that these men had something to do with a
crime. The kidnapping of my sister. I lean into the bathroom. The
ceramic of the bath has been completely shattered, while the sink hangs off of
the wall, linked by gurgling copper pipes, and scraps of dusty plaster. The
ceramic lid to the toilet cistern is missing. There is piss in the toilet, and
underneath that, rust or limescale that has eaten into or attached itself to the
rotten ceramic, apart from a clear, undamaged shape, like a bird spreading its
wings. Davy pushes past me and starts pissing with me in the room.
“Fucks
sake.” Could barely hear him over the urine hitting water. The bath is filled with some
sort of chemical, surrounded by glass piping and beakers like in school. Davy reckons it’s to make some drug
or other. The motel’s been abandoned for a long time; cats roam around, relaxed
and happy, unafraid, collarless, ceaselessly breeding and defecating. Through the doorway in this lighting the world looks grey, and cold.
My sister
found employment in the honourable, dreamlike way. She was the eldest of us;
me, my second eldest sister Lou, and my eldest sister, Wend. While I was
rumbling through the bush and Lou was gathering clay, Wend was always on the
field, darting over other players, striking the ugly puff of a ball in between
the goalposts time after time and time; it was not a surprise when she was
seriously noticed, and less of a surprise when she moved out into the town,
still young, to train all day, to hone the blade that is this talent she owns.
Davy says this is why she has been kidnapped; she represents a lot of money, a
lot of skill.
My father
didn’t follow football, but respected sport. Every Tuesday and Thursday, after he
got back from work, after all the niggles had been fixed around the house,
after all the gardening had been done, after all the mouths had been fed, he’d
disappear to the boxing gym. Occasionally, he’d have a match on Saturday.
Usually he’d win, but occasionally he’d lose, and be unseen, holed up in his
room from shame and unable to move without pain. Then he’d emerge again, making
jokes about him and Wendy swapping sports; she could only kick her boxing
opponents and he only punch the ball and the referee. Davy would laugh.
Davy would
sit at the table in his vest, the tattoo of our home district’s coat of arms on
his shoulder, and grumble about my father’s boxing. “With them gloves on, might
as well be fighting with numb stumps on the end of your arm. There’s no wrist
in it, it’s just shoulder and bicep.” Here he’d flex his own hands, his
knuckles worn and scarred. “Can’t kill a man with your bare fists. Hurts too
much. You’re taking a share of the hit.” Every Friday, Saturday and Sunday
night uncle Davy would be at the Red Lion, a damp and flat-roofed pub in town.
He wouldn’t drink much, but at the sign of a few knowing glances, would descend
into the basement, to face a challenger in a bareknuckle fight. Once he took me
with him, when I was about sixteen. If both contenders were still conscious at
the end of the fight, they embraced, they smiled, bloody, teeth missing,
gristle and bone crunched and misaligned. My mother threw a bowl at Davy’s head
when he brought me back. Strangely, that bowl gave him the only scar on his
face, just above his left eyebrow.
I would
never watch my father fight. Watching Davy fight was flesh on flesh, bone on
bone. To me, my father’s strength was used to heave buildings into sway in the
villages of the county, to tear the Earth in the garden to feed us, to hold my
mother tightly with great bursts of emotion, to lift the children up, to shake
hands and pat backs. I didn’t like to think of those dexterous and calloused
hands swathed in padded leather, pounding a man’s face, surrounded by nameless
spectators, a crowd stitched out of many tuxedoes .
Yet it was
the reverse pounding which took effect. In one particular month, my father took
shelter in his room for a fortnight altogether, a week each after two separate
fights. After he felt rid of shame and pain after the second bout of loss, he
returned to work, unbruised, unscarred; healed. He picked up a load of bricks,
and headed up the scaffolding, in his usual careful way. He carefully stepped
off the ladder, carefully hollered that the ‘Bricks’re up boys,’ then carefully
set them down, then carefully stood up. Upon standing, after a series of
hurling many punches, and receiving much more, finally something, some nerve or
blood vessel, failed in a more basic task. Anywhere else and we’d have been
laughing, consoling, smiling. But at the top of the scaffolding, my Father lost
consciousness, and tottered over, diving into the brick heap, his solidity, his
strength, crumpled against the misshapen piling of stone.
A year
later, we’re all working; Wend is rising in the world of football, working part
time; Lou is working part time, studying part time, and I am working full time,
for the same group my father worked with. Perhaps as a sympathetic gesture, or
more likely the assumption that skill could be hereditary. Sons often follow
their fathers. We all work on the garden, we all bring the earth to fruit.
Davy came
to dinner and visited often anyway, but now he’s here at least every other day.
He takes Lou to school and Wend to football practise, he helps out in the
garden and around the house. He fixed up the old truck; our Dad walked
everywhere anyway, and so when the truck broke down it never crossed his mind
to get it fixed. Mam worked part-time in a school in a town in the next county.
I’d still find her sat on the bed, looking out the window at the garden, or the
fields, frozen in some movement; folding clothes, getting dressed. I knew who
was in her thoughts; he’ll live forever in her.