Heartland, p.22
Heartland, page 22
Red closed one eye and brandished a fantail.
–I’m so fucking scared, he said in a low voice. I’m terrified.
–Ah stop it now, fellers, will you, pleaded Hughie.
–He’s dead, the fuck, and it’s been a long time coming.
–Please, said Hughie.
–Look, Patches – this is the situation. No matter what you think, I know my boy wrote that piece of paper. And, unless I happen to have had my brains taken out in the night, which I don’t think I have, I know that no child could ever come up with something like that on his own. So I’m sorry to have to disappoint all of you if that’s the way that you’ve been thinking. But no young feller, at least that ever I met, just comes in from school one day and sits down at the kitchen table like he’s in some kind of trance or something and invents a poem the like of that.
–Shut up, will youse! the Runt screeched hysterically. I don’t want any of youse talking like this. Because youse don’t know what is about to happen – he’s out there, waiting!
–Shorty, for Christ’s sake, pleaded Wee Hughie, at his wit’s end, for the love of Christ will you do what I’m asking!
But Shorty was at a loss.
With Sonny Hackett continuing, oblivious.
–Of course, as you can imagine, that was what gave my wife her excuse. Because after that she kept on saying that what was happening to poor Cosmo was that he had inherited that weakness of mind. With which the Hacketts, down the years, had been afflicted. Or so she said. It’s your crowd, she kept on saying, it’s your bad blood that’s made him this way.
Sonny explained that the words were getting all clogged up, somehow, in his throat, but Big Barney Grue leaned across and touched his arm – giving it a gentle but firm and reassuring squeeze.
–It’s gonna be OK, Sonny, he assured him, it’s gonna be alright, compadre. You’s gonna be fine -don’t you worry, just take your time.
Sonny’s face was pale grey now but, somehow, he eventually rallied.
–Then she said it, Sonny Hackett continued, looked me right in the eye and told me how the Indian had said to her – warned her, in fact – that if she didn’t make an effort to get away from me once and for all, that something terrible was going to happen. Something awful, he said. That was what the Indian said – something awful. Can you believe it?
For a moment, his eyes were fierce.
But then he laughed uncertainly.
–It’s inevitable, she said. She said it was inevitable. That’s what she said. Inevitable.
He slammed his hands flat down on the table. With his voice so high it was only just audible.
–Yes. That’s what he told her about my own little Cosmo. That if we didn’t do something he was probably going to end up being possessed. It’s punishment. Punishment, I’m telling you …
Wee Hughie turned white.
–Ah what the hell do Indians know, he spat acidly, fucking tom toms!
Red Campbell nodded, with a vehemence clearly intended as conciliatory.
–Steady on here now, Sonny. Let’s do our best to get to grip with things, if you get my meaning. I mean, didn’t you tell me yourself that his sister was studying poems at school? So couldn’t that be where he got it from? What do you think Hughie?
–I’d say that that’s a very likely explanation. As likely an explanation as any, I would say, Red.
–There, you see? beamed Red Campbell, nodding away.
As Sonny swung around and struck the wall an unmerciful blow.
–IT’S PUNISHMENT, he cried, PUNISHMENT I’M TELLING YOU!
Then he let out an odd, irrational chuckle.
–We can avoid the subject all we like. But in the end, let’s face it – murdering people, it’s kind of a bad thing to do, ain’t it? he said. It’s just a pity that it had to be poor old Wilson. Ah, well …
Red Campbell lifted a heavy ashtray and wielded it.
–That kind of talk ain’t getting us nowhere, he warned.
Throughout it all, Mervyn Walker had chosen to pass no comment of any kind, seeming content to amuse himself by whistling a familiar little tune – one which, once upon a time, a long time ago, had been associated with his lifetime friend, the respectable Protestant farmer Wilson Gillis.
–Let me rest on peaceful mountain, the barman murmured softly, and you could almost hear the low drone of a harmonium and see Wilson, as always, erect and stately in the front pew, opening his Good Book at Galatians 6:7.
Praising his God in a quiet country church.
With Mervyn Walker becoming so absorbed in his thoughts that he almost forgot completely about his inconspicuously wrapped cargo located beneath the counter.
As he remained there, drumming his fingers in deep contemplation, magisterially reflecting on all of those evenings that he and Wilson had spent walking by the river and, on Saturday mornings, spincasting their lines as the mist began to clear over the still silver surface of their beloved Lake Wynter.
I have to stop here for a little bit because sometimes it’s hard for me to remember everything properly.
Not to recall particular details, you understand – more dealing with them.
Because that emotional knot you might remember me speaking about earlier, it can just, out of nowhere, swell up in you.
Sometimes they say that I have a tendency to dwell too much on the past, or at least certain aspects of it – and that, with my unfortunate history of alcohol abuse, may well have become prone to a degree of self-delusion.
And, to some extent, I acknowledge, in some fashion, that may well be true.
Because my breakdown definitely did leave a mark. One which, unless you’ve been through it yourself, is very difficult to explain.
As well as that, it’s tedious also. I can’t tell you how often I’ve been tempted just to get up and walk out of the AA meetings. With more interminable accounts of nightmares, agitation, pressure and autonomic hyperactivity – fast heart rate and high blood pressure, in other words – doing the rounds.
All of which are the standard symptoms of delirium tremens, and to which I won’t pretend to be any stranger, particularly to the sensation of impending catastrophe and that awful feeling of something crawling underneath your skin.
–You know I sometimes think you imagine things, Ray, Fr Conway has once or twice remarked to me, or at the very least, exaggerate them – maybe you listen to too much music. All them wonderful tales and melodramatic stories …
And the priest may be right.
Except that, unfortunately for me, everything I’ve written – about me and Jody, at any rate – all of it is one hundred per cent verifiable. Just read the letters.
They’ll help.
For, what with the valley of Glasson County always having been such a unique and special place, complete with its own insurgent vision and unique, perhaps eccentric, code of manners – it was always going to be difficult to understand this story, certainly for someone who comes from outside.
So, all I can say is that everything I’ve set down here in these few humble pages is as close to the truth as I can possibly get. And I remain pretty much convinced that, in general, I have managed to get it right.
I guess, just by being born in Glasson County – having grown up in the heartland, I mean – there are just some things you instinctively know.
You’ve got to believe me.
Chapter 29
Five Little Fingers
I clamped my hand hard, almost brutally, against my mouth – convinced for sure that, this time, I was definitely going to do it. Sneeze, I mean.
The air in the room below me was, bad as ever, still infected with apprehension – although Barney Grue was smirking impishly, rocking back and forth in his armchair.
Probably bringing back a fond memory of some Saturday night, when he’d been standing on the balcony sipping a cola. Thinking about who he might ask to dance, and what was she likely to offer by way of response.
Before deciding, abruptly, to pay a visit to the lavatory – only, in his enthusiasm, coming to the realisation that his three hundred pound bulk had suddenly gone drunkenly crashing to the floor and, in the process, delivered him a considerably painful bump on his forehead.
But, fortunately, Wee Hughie was on hand, assisting him with some difficulty back onto his ‘throne’, which was how the small man good-humouredly described it.
As Big Barney snorted defiantly and swung his enormous arm in a wide, extravagant arc, bawling out the single word:
–Fingers!
For Red Campbell’s part, all that was going through his mind was:
The door!
At which he kept staring with blazing, bloodshot eyes.
More than anything he wanted for that door to open, and once and for all, put an end to this waiting.
Barney Grue snorted and laughed to himself a little as he saw himself standing in front of the stage in Heartland, the showband going through the motions of twanging out their hit, the one entitled ‘Five Little Fingers’. With the lead singer in his natty black velvet tuxedo-style suit now, in Barney’s memory, sinking to one knee in order to perform what they called the ‘talky bit’ to all the girls who were reaching up trying their best to grab him.
Once or twice, the singer had even pretended to sob as he spoke the words – every one of which Big Barney remembered, something which made him want to laugh out loud, when you considered the amount of pain that they brought him each and every time he remembered them.
–Yes, lamented the lead vocalist, I knew only too well that night just what it was my own little baby was trying to say to me, in its own quiet and little special way. That she was trying to love me – that’s what my baby was trying to say. And it only took five little seconds for those five little fingers to reach out and tell me all that I needed to know – I love you, Daddy.
Barney well knew that if any of his colleagues somehow got to know what it was he was thinking about just now, whether it be showbands or babies or fingers or anything else, they would probably have fallen off their chairs in hysterics.
Being well aware that Barney Grue, principally on account of his built-for-diesel girth, had very little experience to speak of in the world of romance.
Except that that was where they were wrong, you see.
Because there was one particular person about whom they knew nothing.
And while he mightn’t be Elvis Presley or anything, this person herself had privately confided her affections to Mr Grue.
For it was her – yes, none other than the radiantly beautiful Mercedes Starrs – who had insisted that what was most important was what you found inside a person. And whether or not you could depend on them to be there.
Whether or not, when it came to it, they would let you down.
And whenever he heard those words from Mercedes Starrs, Big Barney Grue shifted just a little on his throne and murmured:
–That very first night when I laid eyes on Mercedes Starrs, what I can only describe as a light that was almost unearthly shone upon me. One that glowed like no other before or since. And underneath which stood a creature pure and sweet as the clearest of spring water, and in whose blue eyes the virtues of selflessness and charity shone out clear as the glassiest ocean. And provoked in me, yes in big old bumpy-head fat Barney Grue, a sensation which no man in this world has got no right to expect. To even entertain the notion for one second that the Queen of Appomattox, the brightest jewel in old Virginny, she might ever consider even passing him the time of day, much less accompany him onto the ballroom floor.
Where he would lead her – how vivid it seemed! – in a quadrille as the Palm Court orchestra struck up the piece she had come to know and love, ‘The Green Fields of Ireland’, her long black eyelashes keeping time with the swayingly elegant sweep of the violin.
As her lips murmured: love – for that was, he knew, the emotion she was experiencing.
Finding himself quite overcome, his extremities started visibly trembling as he suddenly shot forward and loudly vacated his seat, robustly announcing that he felt a pressing need to visit the bathroom.
As, arising and trailing his way across the floor – and crashing headlong into three chairs on the way – he found himself calling her name out loud, and just as the door of the lavatory swung open before him, briefly caught a glimpse of her standing there, large as life, reflected in the ochre-stained porcelain surround.
–Mercedes, he choked, through the lattice of his fingers, my one and only Mercedes Starrs – that I among men should be so chosen. To be so privileged as to carry a flaming brand for your special beauty. And why it must be, in humility, one last time I utter your name, unique among women: Mercedes, gentle woman, as pure and chaste as sparkling water, as cold as gleaming ice, and to whom alone, from this night out, I pledge my heart and life to the protection of our love.
He was never to know just what it was that happened, and neither did any of the others. Because the door had already closed when they overheard the unmerciful cry and ran inside to discover Barney out cold on the tiles, but with a deep cut three or four inches wide on his forehead, bleeding profusely.
–He must have lost his balance again and slipped, Wee Hughie suggested, and with Red Campbell’s assistance heaved him back inside the bar.
–Here. Let me, said Sonny, dabbing the livid gash with a towel.
As Mervyn arrived over with a rudimentary bandage – a scarf, basically.
Which they knotted around his head.
–I’m sorry I don’t have a first aid kit, said Mervyn, I do apologise.
–That’s all right, said Sonny, as he dabbed some more water on the big man’s protuberant lips.
As Barney Grue awoke once more, howling with the pain, which he said was unbearable.
–What happened? he repeated. Please does anyone know what happened? Where’s Mercedes?
Looking all around him but, hardly surprisingly, finding his surroundings nothing more than a blur.
With no sign of her anywhere – Mercedes.
But then, of course, as they all knew well, there never had been anybody by that name.
All it had been was a vision in an airport – one which now came blindingly back to him again, in an eruption of prismatic colour.
–Give you the shivers, sometimes, these airports. I was just standing there looking out the glass of the observation bay across the tarmac. When, all of a sudden, it seemed to go cold. And all I kept thinking was that maybe the plane she was on had crashed. Mercedes, I remember crying, my Mercedes. You’re here.
Then he looked up and realised what he’d said, looking ashamed.
–Oh Jesus, he moaned, oh Jesus Hughie, can you help me? Can any of you do that – pull me out of this trough?
With the actual truth being that, in recent times, Big Barney had been experiencing violent, periodic blackouts.
About which, however, he had never breathed a word – and as a result, he had started to become seriously concerned that he might, in fact, be in danger of losing his mind.
And had already resolved – long before the accident in the bathroom had occurred – that, definitely, just as soon as all this was over, that, once and for all, he would foreswear alcohol.
Then, quite out of nowhere, and entirely in spite of himself, yet another striking memory returned.
And he found himself thinking about a great big rooster, or chicken.
Foghorn Leghorn was the big fellow’s name.
What am I going around thinking about him for? Barney Grue wondered.
Then he remembered – but of course he did.
That, on the day when he’d paid a visit to a certain labour ward in Midford Hospital, the rooster in question had been playing on the television. Yes, going through his antics:
–Ah say. Ah say, that boy!
Yes, that was what he kept on saying, in that distinctive Southern drawl, as he stomped around with those great red rooster feet.
–If ah happens to discovah just who has been pokin’ around mah hutch, then believe you me there gonna be a raisin’.
Now, as they looked at him, everyone in the bar was astonished to hear Big Barney bawling:
–I bloody hate that Foghorn Leghorn – I fuckingwell hate him. Hughie, do you hear me?
As that great big wounded bear of a man then lifted up his head, looking out with blazing eyes through a great big forest of whiskers into the long grey face of Sonny Hackett, now entirely distorted.
–Are you there, Big Barney? he heard Sonny Hackett repeat, tapping him solidly on the head.
Barney Grue, then, was swallowed by an entirely unnamable dread.
Because, just the very second that Sonny Hackett had spoken, he could have sworn that he’d heard the sound of a baby.
And then, after that, the squawking of a big giant chicken.
–You got no friends, you great big built-for-diesel tubba grease, it was saying as it stomped around, and that’s the way it’s a-gonna stay.
After which the rooster gave a callous impatient cackle and tossed back its flapping comb before glaring at him, ferociously.
–Yes, ah would say that that boy Barney – why that he ain’t got hisself no friends at all! he screeched.
And that was the reason why the sobbing had begun again, even if no one could properly hear him.
Because Big Barney was, however reluctantly, beginning to accept the strident assertions the chicken, or the rooster, or whatever the fuck he was.
And which made him feel just a tiny bit better – confirming as it did, that for probably everyone alive, when you got down to it, there wasn’t really any such thing as what we call a ‘friend’.
There’s only you and the person you love.
That’s if you’re lucky enough to have someone.
Someone called Mercedes, maybe, in a long dress of calico, wielding a fan. Over which she might look at you, fluttering her upturned lashes.
A woman you could call your own precious lovely sweetheart.
No wonder he used to love going to the Heartland ballroom every weekend to spend his wages from the factory, to drink and look at women.
