Some Great Thing (2 page)

“Thank you very much. Thank you. I like this couch.”

“Fortune.”

“Yeah?”

“Flippin right. I remember.”

“I’ll bet. How are you today, anyways, Mrs. Herlihy?”

“I want you to leave, Robert.”

“Sure. I’ll just knock that back.”

J
UST KNOCK IT BACK
goodbye son. Off then, ya freakin sponge? I’ll just slip over here and ring the Bell’s and call ya back for more. No? Tomorrow then. Come on back tomorrow.

“G
OODBYE
.”

G
OOD MORNING AND GOODBYE
to you Robert, ugly face, freakin mole, strawberry pus on chin.

Smell of old teeth. So old in my mouth, and look at yourself. Look at above the couch, dirty freakin mirror, lookin at yourself. Get yourself up for another, and for anyone else? Blinds down behind the eyes. Older than you look. Nothing like you look. Get yourself another. Goddamn couch cost a fortune, might as well enjoy life.

Feet!

Get a man to lay a carpet just as soon as I finish this here, this drink here cost a fortune. Three fingers at noon, get me through the lunchtime quiet. Half a glass, fat fingers today thank God. There’s a toast to all my friends, I wanna thank you all for comin. Get a man to lay me down, three fingers behind the truck.

Feet! God damn the knees. Cover your knees ya freakin hag and lie down there on the couch. There ya go. There ya go. Peace and freakin quiet. I’ll just have a quick cigarette, if that’s all right with you, Robert.

Robert?

“I
T
’
S HERLIHY.
”

“Hello, Mrs. Herlihy. What can we do for you?”

“Don’t put me on hold.”

“No need, ma’am.”

“No need?”

“No, ma’am.”

“I didn’t … I need my cigarettes. Robert didn’t deliver my goddamn cigarettes.”

Jerry

W
HAT I SHOULD SAY
is my name is Jerry and I built this house. Four-square, plaster walls, buttressed from toe to tip with an iron goddamn will, my friend, standing proud proud proud. I hammered it into the ground and I pushed it up to the sky, and with the grace of God and the sweat of men I will build a thousand more.

All these houses you see around you I built, and neither you nor the grown-up child of your grandchild’s grandchild is going to see them crumble.

I build, my friend, and up yours if you think me common. I challenge you to build something, and I defy the fist of time to touch what I have done. I challenge you to build a matchstick outhouse in the time it takes me to tell an endless tale. See if you have the will; then wipe that smirk off your flabby pink chops and listen.

It is endless. And I am worn.

My name is Jerry and my son’s name is Jerry, and that’s because my imagination was always saved for my work. And Jerry, my son my son, is the life hope love and death of me.

Please tell me if you see him.

A plague of years ago I put a cigar between my teeth and reckoned myself the greatest man on earth. For there in her hands, careful of the ashes Jer, was the pinkest thing I ever made. Flesh and wrinkles and a boneless chicken in the palm of my hand, screaming
in a purple dribbling rage, my boy. My chest, my boy, as swollen as the proud blue sea.

But where do I begin?

He had a grip as sharp as needle-nosed pliers. And he grew up smart.

Simon

S
O I SAID TO
her, I said, listen, I said, Kwyet, I said, Kwyet, I said (the eager chasseur), I want, I said, to run. My little humming Quiet, my little thread of Kwyet, a birdbreeze lower than a breath said Come, she said, or so I had imagined, Come she said, Here I am.

She said nothing, but I took her to mean much, as she ran more than walked, cowered more than curved up the stairs through the door by the window.

I want to run, I said, but None, I said, of this Come here. My goose was bumped all over from the breeze of disquieting breath; to run was my need, not my wish. I was prepared to get song-of-songsy, all hinds and harts and panting, to sing with her as we ran. But when I was
there
, when I was right there with her, there was nothing but quiet: an open window and an invitation. Come, she says, here I am.

What a long way to the ground.

H
E IS A FASCINATING
man, awful, handsome, disgraceful, a subject of great interest for many and the subtlest beast of The Glebe. You have to search to find him but we know exactly where he is: Number Fifteen, Cowslip Crescent, Not Far From Here At All If You Know The Roads.

Twenty years ago he had twenty years stretched out before him, as they say, although he constantly searched for them and has found them only now that he looks back.

His name is Simon.

K
WYET HAD A BOTTOM
like a pillow, where I rested my head to consider what I looked like from above. I sent my soul up there to have a look. Kwyet on the bottom, me on hers, my graceful raffish soul tilting his head in Botticellian pose above my grateful rakish body (recently sated on Kwyet’s adaptable bottom). I smiled and my soul winked back at me. I looked good, I should say.

Jerry

H
E SHOWED AN INTEREST
in building, my Jerry. He had strength and the right touch. You know, nimble. I am talking about Lego and Meccano, mostly, in the early days. Toys of course. I wasn’t fooled. Don’t think for one dirty minute that I was a fool. I know the difference between toys and real life. But there was potential there, in those little forearms of my little Jer. He could put up a Lego wall as fast as any Italian brickie.

Then when he was eight, I remember the day clearly, he built an impossible house. It was plaster. It had three walls and no drafts. I showed it to Edgar Davies, who showed little interest; but it was clear to me that I was raising a genius, my friend, a boy, my friend, with the promise of a prince.

Simon

L
ET ME BEGIN WHERE
she began, at the ends of her almond-sweet toes. There began daily his lingual epigraphy, from toes to ankles and upward: a world of liquid phrases sketched with the tip of his tongue. Kwyet was every morning a dream of an unfound America.

Toes, ankles, inward; my salt trail of reverence (delicious!) formed a changing map.

When Kwyet ran, the elastic world yearned after her and he could not resist the pull.

Jerry

I
WAS THINKING NOTHING
when the doorbell rang because I am and was a busy man. Paperboy? is maybe all I thought.

But when I opened the door.

This was, I don’t know, maybe several years ago now.

When I opened the door there was Jer.

“Jer!” I said.

Or maybe “Jer?” because I will tell you now there was no way I could have recognized him if I hadn’t been his father.

“Jer?!” I said.

And he said, with my voice but smaller, “Hi, Dad,” he said, and came in.

Now there are two things I should tell you. The first is that he had stubble on his face, hair on his hands, and his mother’s you’ll-never-touch-me eyes. And the second I cannot tell you because you do not know Jerry or me or what it would be like to want to hug him.

“Hi, Dad,” he said, and I knew it was my job to be cool.

“How are ya, Jer,” I said, cool.

And he said, “How are ya.”

And I said, “Beer?”

And he said, “Yeah.”

And I went to the fridge and came back with a couple.

He was still standing there in front of the door, and we clinked them together, me and Jer, and no two beers in the history of man were sucked back faster, I tell you with no shame. We finished at
the same time, and when I look back now I realize that’s because he was my son.

“Another?” I said.

And he said, “Yeah.” So I came back with two more.

“Come in. Sit down. Come in.”

He had a knapsack on his shoulder full of his father’s hope. I couldn’t ask if he was going to stay.

He sat down over there, across from me, and I kind of wished I was his beer and don’t call me a faggot.

“How are ya, Jer?” I said.

“OK,” sip of beer, “OK … You?”

“OK,” I said, and was going to say “You?” again. “Beer?” I said, and he said, “Yeah,” and I got another case from the basement and put it in the fridge.

“So, you’ve been OK, eh, Jer?”

“Yeah. OK enough.”

“You look thin.”

“Yeah.”

“Healthy?”

“Yeah.”

“You hungry?” Too early, too early.

“No”

“Me neither.”

“
You
look thin,” he said, after a while.

“I’ve been on a diet,” I said, because I’d been on a diet.

“Yeah?”

“Yep. Twenty pounds.”

“Yeah?”

“Yep.”

And it just came out again—“You hungry?”—and I watched him grow his thorns.

We sat there silent for a long loud time, I tell you with no pleasure.

But when the room warmed up and the floor came back, I looked at my son full in the face and I said this: “I know the guy who makes this beer.”

And he said, “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” I said, and I told him a story you can borrow if you want to send your kids to sleep. I’ll tell you how it goes once I’ve finished this. There I was talking about yeast, a grandmother’s recipe, a guy named Buck who made one or two himself, and there was Jer, a familiar stranger, older, smaller, a growing man, and as he politely nodded himself to sleep I might have walked over and put my hand on his head.

Simon

S
HE NEVER HAD A
lover as curious and adept, I told her to tell me. We were sitting on my windowsill (naked: downstairs), and we were both immensely pleased with me. She was at a loss for words.

The Story of Jerry McGuinty

T
HIRTEEN NEIGHBORHOODS, FIVE THOUSAND
roofs, thirty thousand outside walls, and a rock-hard pair of hands. That is what I have built. I have laid iron, I have laid iron mesh, I have breathed more iron filings than the men who built the railroads. And I have plastered.

My father was a plasterer. His father was a plasterer. His father’s father was a plasterer (and plastering was the death of his father). I, my friend, am a plasterer. Lean forward here and I will show you my card. I am a member of the Plasterers’ and Cement Masons’ International Association of the United States & Canada, local one-one-five. There are fifty thousand members, and I am the best. My father was the best. His father was the best. His father’s father was the best. And this is all due to two things: will, and a secret. Only Portland cement goes into my mix, and when it comes to mortar I use barely a pinch of lime. That is my secret.

Will. Until you know what it is like to join ten million bricks, don’t say a word about will.

I have covered five thousand acres with my own creations. That’s right. I have choked, raped, and tortured the earth, my friend, and in the end it is mightier than it was. Teach me about nature and I will show you a pair of hands.

We’re in Ottawa, the capital of Canada, no less. Now look here at this map. The Oaks: mine. The Hunt: mine. Pine Grove: mine. Much Of It: mine. I will show you more later. I will drive you around them. Edgar Davies helped with one or two of them.

I have no sensation in my left little finger. I have missed more nails than you have opportunities, and I haven’t missed a nail in thirty-one years. Frostbite has whitened both of my earlobes and sunburn has turned my forearms to suede. Before steel soles I stepped on five nails and after hard hats I missed death twice.

I have loved a woman.

I own my own company.

I have heard and told ten thousand filthy jokes.

My first day on a site without my father was the day my life began. A January day as cold as a nail. My apprenticeship was over and I was given a job with people who hated me because that’s what builders do when they meet new people.

“McGuinty! Ya thick-headed cunt plaster shit on the cock-ass floor-cunt!”

I remember the foreman.

“McGuinty!”

He ate a cat once.

“McGuinty, ya lick-whore cunt drip wall fuck level or I’ll eat your ass!”

I couldn’t move my fingers and the plaster was slower than time. At lunch I sat with a man, Johnny Cooper, who had just finished five years for GBH. I didn’t know that, and he looked lonely.

“You sit any closer and I’ll punch your gut through your ass,” he said.

I plastered half a wall and I helped one of the brickies, a guy named Mario.

“Jerry,” I said.

“Mario,” he said.

“What should I do?” I said.

“Eat my cunt,” he said.

The foreman took me aside at the end of the day and stood me next to the half wall I’d plastered (still wet), and he pushed me slowly
into it face-first without saying a word. I stepped back and saw an impression of a scared white Jerry McGuinty.

I
LEARNED HOW TO
talk.

“I can’t cunt find fuckin nails ass, shit, you seen them, hoor?”

“What?”

W
E BUILT EVERYTHING IN
those days. We built hangars for the military and houses for their people. The houses were made of paper, nothing but chipboard and plasterboard, staples and glue.

Let me tell you what it’s like building with plasterboard.

I’ll tell you later.

It was the time to be in the construction business, I tell you for your interest, and a lot of guys I knew worked hard enough to start their own company later. We built the hangars and houses, convenience stores, gas stations, model homes that lasted for a month. Everyone had a finger in everything, and everyone’s finger was gold.

But that first January. Girders stuck to my flesh like frying pans and my toolbox looked at me like a threat. Every hammer, wrench, and trowel I owned found different ways to hurt me. One day I wouldn’t feel my fingers, the next they’d be there like a scream. Put your hands in a freezer for a day, if you have the time, and then thread a screw through a nut. Don’t tell me how it feels.

“Ouch!”