The Dead Republic (6 page)

I grabbed it and threw it away. I heard it smack against the wall.

I opened the notebook. DAVID CLIMANIS. MARIA CLIMANIS. They were the names I’d written after I’d dropped the ashes into the alley. There was solid memory, the evidence of my eyes.

But what was the thing lying on the floor against the wall?

I could burn it again. But it would never end. I’d have to do it every day.

I hadn’t burnt it, or it was a different copy of the same
Saturday Evening Post.

I picked it up. It was the same magazine, the exact same weight. I’d held it before; I’d held it the day before. I put it back down on the floor.

It hadn’t happened.

I’d wanted it to happen. I’d wanted to burn it. But I hadn’t. I breathed deep. I took it in. I accepted it.

I sat on the bed. It was quiet around me. The hoor above wasn’t snoring or working. The oul’ lad in the next room wasn’t dying.

I took off the leg. I lay back.

I saw it.

Right beside me, on the pillow.

Red.

I didn’t move, I didn’t breathe. I didn’t want to blow it away. The coastguard’s red scarf, the little bit of paper that I’d caught as it rose in the heat - the day before. It was on the pillow, three inches from my nose.

—The cunt.

 

 

 

He wasn’t in any of the beds. There was a woman fast asleep in one of them, in the room I’d guessed would be his. Mary, the wife. She was alone, and lying straight down the middle. She hadn’t had company in years.

I was in Ford’s house, 6860 Odin Street. It was three in the morning.

He had two kids, he’d told me, but they were grown up and gone. I didn’t think there were servants. But it was a strange house. It wasn’t huge, but it had been added to; it went off in three different directions.

It was years since I’d been in a house at night. But it was coming back. I’d remembered the address. I’d found a handy window. I’d climbed up to the ledge and got in without grunting. The wife would wake up in the morning and walk across the space where I was standing, and she’d never know that I’d been watching her. I was older and slower, with a leg that announced itself when the wood hit wood. But I still knew what I was doing.

I went back downstairs. I found the room I’d been in before, where Meta Sterne had surprised me. It was hidden away, a den, behind a bigger room. I stayed away from the windows and got to the door of the hidden room. I held the handle tight, like I was going to kill it. The door made no sound as I slowly turned the handle and pushed.

Thousands of books, the desk, old smoke. No bed, and no Ford.

I closed the door.

I went into the other downstairs room. A long table at the centre; I didn’t count the chairs. The curtains were open. There was a steep hill rising, right behind the house. I got under the table and sat there.

I looked along the walls.

I hadn’t seen him in weeks but I knew he wasn’t off making one of the films. I didn’t know why I knew but I trusted the knowledge. The smoke in the air was old but it wasn’t ancient. He was near me.

There was one hidden room in the house. So there’d be more - there might be. But I could hear nothing new; nothing slid in beside the usual hum. I looked along the wall, where it met the floor. And I saw it. A thin line that might have been nothing. My arse - I’d found the fucker.

I crawled - I didn’t grunt - along the length of the table, to the wall. I was sweating. I stood up. I needed the table now, to help me.

I was right in front of where I’d seen the line, in front of a wood-panelled wall. The only wall in the house not covered in pictures from the films. I pushed; it was solid. I shifted quietly, one step nearer the window. I pushed the wood. It gave, very slightly. There was something behind it. I pushed again and sent my hands towards the window, an inch - another. The panel went with them; I was opening a sliding door. I stepped away from the doorway and the block of light that fell into the room.

I could hear him. Asleep and fighting.

The booze came with the light, and the smell of piss and vomit, and his cigar.

I went in.

He was sunk back in an armchair. His eyes were shut. His neck looked broken and useless. His cap had come off; it was stuck between his head and the back of the chair. His bottom half, to his gut, was inside some kind of sleeping bag. One hand held a bottle of bourbon - the label was turned in towards him. There were empties on the floor, on the table beside him.

I took the
Saturday Evening Post
from my pocket. I unfolded it and put it down his sleeping bag.

They found me. I recognised Bill, Ford’s driver - he was the shadow across my legs - and then I knew.

—How long this time?

—Don’t know, Mister Smart.

—How come? I asked.

—Don’t know how long you was gone before Mister Ford told me to come get you.

I was sitting on a bench.

It wasn’t a bench. It was a low cement wall, at the edge of a dry dirt park.

It was hot.

—How long have you been looking?

—Six days, he said.—Maybe seven.

—That must be a record.

—I don’t think this one counts, Mister Smart, he said.

—Why not?

—Well, he said.—Here’s what I think. This time you weren’t hiding. This time you were lost.

—You might be right, I said.

But he wasn’t. Granted, I didn’t know where I was or the last time I’d known the day and the date. I felt my chin. There was a beard there; I couldn’t get through to the skin. I’d been gone but I hadn’t been lost. I’d been on the step, beside my mother. I’d been looking up at the stars, at my dead brother and the other ones. I’d been running barefoot through the streets of Dublin. I’d been running away from Granny Nash.

I opened my shirt. It was filthy, and I stank. I looked down at my chest. I looked through the grey hair for the bruise Granny Nash’s finger must have left when she’d poked at me. I couldn’t see it. But I could still feel her stab.

I felt Bill’s hand under my arm, and I stood up for him.

—Come on, Mister Smart.—Time to go.

—Where?

—Back to your roots.

—Ah, fuckin’ hell, I said.—Dublin?

—No, sir. Monument Valley.

I knew where that was. It was where I’d been found the first time, in the dirt, by Henry Fonda.

—I want a wash, I said.—I want a shave.

—Sure.

I’d been running through Dublin. I’d been under the ground, in the rivers and sewers, with my father, and alone. I looked down at the leg and the shoe. They were both dirty but undamaged. There were no water-stains in the leather or on the wood. But my ears were still full of the words trapped under the city.

I pulled my hand over my scalp and across the back of my neck. The skin was rough and baked; I felt it come away on my fingers.

I looked around but there was no sign of my fedora.

—Do I still have the room? I asked.

—I guess so, said Bill.

—The rent?

—Taken care of.

I’d been home. While my beard grew and my head crusted, I’d gone back to Dublin. I’d sat with my mother on the step, and all the steps. I’d crawled all over her; I’d tried to find my place on her lap, in among my brothers and sisters.

I stopped.

Bill waited for me; he didn’t pull at my sleeve.

I tried to remember the names of the brothers and sisters. And the dead ones too, the ones who’d gone up to join the first real Henry in the sky. There were girls and boys, one a year, for years - but I couldn’t see any. I could only remember one name.

—Victor, I said.

—Mister Smart?

—Victor, I said.—Remember that for me.

—Sure, said Bill.—Just Victor?

—That’s it, I said.—If I ask you again, will you tell me?

—Sure.

—Grand.

He drove me back to the dive. He parked right outside.

—I’ll wait here, he said.

I wasn’t his prisoner.

—What room am I in?

—Thirty-seven.

—Give me half an hour.

—Sure, he said.—Take your time.

The pebbled notebook was still on the table, with the pencil. My hat was on the bed, but there was no
Saturday Evening Post
. I picked up the notebook. I read the names. VICTOR. It was there already.

 

 

 

Gracie.

 

 

 

—I had a sister called Grace, I told Bill.

I was sitting beside him as he took us through the desert, into more serious desert.

—That right? he said.

—Yeah.

—Back home in Ireland.

—Yeah.

—What was she like?

—I don’t know, I said.

I’d a feeling Gracie had died before I was born. I seemed to know that - I wasn’t sure. But I knew the name, and I’d always known it.

We’d been driving a long time, in and out of darkness and into settled daytime. We’d gone past towns and the signs for towns before I remembered that I’d wanted to know their names. Barstow, Ludlow, and Bagdad. We crossed the Colorado River at Bullhead City. I’d been in that water before. I’d washed myself at the bend I looked down at as Bill drove us past. But I didn’t recognise the name, Bullhead.

—New city, said Bill.—Built to support the Davis Dam construction. Got a new name too.

—What was the old one? I asked.

—When I came out this way with Mister Ford before the war, I seem to recall it being called Hardyville.

That name meant nothing either. But I’d been there.

I took the notebook from my jacket pocket. I opened the page I wanted.

—And Victor? said Bill.

—My brother.

—Remember him?

—Yeah, I said.—I do.

I looked at the burnt rubber lines, left where the cars had gone off the road. We kept rolling over them. There were hundreds of the lines, but none of the cars.

—And yourself? I said.

—Brothers and sisters?

—Yeah.

—I don’t know, he said.

His eyes were on the road. He was bringing us north now and the colour of the land ahead was changing, becoming red.

—I grew up in an orphanage, he said.

—How was that?

—I knew nothing else.

I printed the name. GRACIE. I closed the notebook.

—What date is it, Bill? I asked.

—December 16th.

—Still 1948?

—Yes.

We kept going; he didn’t stop. I could see the red towers from twenty miles away, the buttes and mesas of the valley. The buttes got higher. They must have been a thousand feet, but they got no nearer. It was like I was watching a raw, new place pushing up through old ground. There was still no valley, just the towers. Then the engine’s hum changed and we were going down, into Monument Valley, back to where I’d died.

 

 

 

—What’s this one called? I asked.

—
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon
, said Ford.

—Any good?

—It’s a Western, he said.—They’re what I do. It’ll be a master-piece.

He was looking a lot better than the last time I’d seen him, soaked inside his sleeping bag. He sat with his back to the set, staring out at the strange red land and the red sky that joined it, far away.

There was a canvas chair beside him. I sat down.

He pointed.

—Over there, remember?

—Is that where you found me?

—Yep.

I looked at the huge land in front of us; I moved my eyes slowly, from left to right.

—How can you tell it’s the place? I asked.—It’s all the fuckin’ same.

—I guess you didn’t read that story before you left it back at my house.

—No, I didn’t.

—Okay.

—Where’s the town? I said.

—What town?

—There was a town here when you found me, I said.—Where’s it gone?

—That was Tombstone, he said.—It got taken down after we were finished with it. My friends, the Navajo here, they used it during the winter months. Kept them warm, I hope. The real Tombstone is south of here, at the other end of the state of Arizona. Matter of fact—

He looked at me.

—The real Tombstone doesn’t exist, he said.

—What has
The Kerry Dances
got to do with Miss O’Shea? I said.

—What?

—That stuff you said - I don’t remember - about the song letting people think they know her.

—That’s right, he said.

—What?

—They see her the first time and they hear it, like it’s going around her head, like a breeze. It seems to be her tune. And it is her tune, her theme. She goes off the screen. Walks out of the frame. Five minutes, and they see her again. And this time they expect it. Her tune. And they get it. So they know her. It’s all in the notes, her whole life. It’s one of the tricks. There’s something you’ve got to understand.

He waited, made sure I was with him.

—I’ve got this whole valley here—

It was vast, all in front of us. The whole world was this red valley.

—But I end up using the same spot, he said.—I guess four or five times now.

I heard him chew his cigar, shift it from one side of his mouth to the other.

—I come out here to get far away from the goddamn producers, he said.—I love it.

He put his hand on my arm.

—But my point is—

There was no show or big drama; we were alone.

—I want to tell your story, he said.—But I’ll have two hours, if I’m lucky. So, I have to condense your story. You’re what? Forty-seven?

—I think so.