Young Skins (10 page)

Arm clambered back up towards the road, stepping on stones where he could, smooshing the impressions his feet had left in the softer ground on the way down, leaving Fannigan’s bootprints intact. He squeezed his runners back on and inched his nose out over the wall’s lip; no traffic or souls about. He slipped over. His iPod was still going in his jacket. There were thorn ends and snarls of sap-coated twigs stuck to his clothes. He batted down the shoulders and sleeves of his jacket.

Arm plugged in the buds, slipped his hood up, and resumed walking right out of town. His trousers, wringing, dried as he went. Eventually he found himself following the familiar wrought-iron railings that looked out over the strand. The railings were eaten through, thinned to crusted spindles of rust at their most exposed points. Beyond them lay the rush-topped hillocks and sandbars, the sand milk-blue in the moonlight. Arm scanned the boiling surf for a long time, watched the way each wave rose, evolved like a fortification, and then collapsed.

It was nearing four in the morning as Arm headed back into town. A couple of teenage lads were coming the opposite way, on the other side of the road. Arm took out his earphones and listened as one vociferated to the other about almost bating the head off a third lad back in the pub or club or wherever they’d been, the boaster milling his fists around, clumsily shadow-boxing the air and his cohort cackling along. They were oblivious to Arm. He was on the riverside of the road, and could hear the Mule, and couldn’t help but listen out for a voice or scream or roar, because even though Arm knew the man was almost certainly already dead he was still susceptible to the dreamlike dread that Fannigan had somehow eluded the laws of the perishable world and staged a resurrection.

But
Ssshhhhhhhhhhh
went the water.

And
Haaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh
went the wind.

And from off in the nearing distance of the town centre came the calm hum of the taxis as they made their appointed circuits through what was left of the night.

Arm’s folks had him late, and only him. A single-child family was a rarity around here, where households teemed with ever-expanding factions of brothers and sisters. Arm’s mother was a schoolteacher, forty-two at the time of his birth. His da was already fifty. The da ran a delivery truck out of the local bun factory along the western seaboard for thirty-two years straight and when he walked through the door in the evenings he trailed in his wake a fragrance of cinnamon and currants. His parents’ hair was grey by the time Arm started primary school, and though they raised him right and raised him well, Arm sometimes wondered if he wasn’t just a late concession to the perennial babymaking thriving away about them. Good old Maye and Trevor Armstrong. Arm and they had always got on and maybe too much. Too much civility, too much mellowness; though it was clear to them that there was an aspect to the run of his life Arm kept from them, they refrained from prying. They doted on Jack, and doted on the idea of Ursula; they chided Arm for not sticking with a girl that lovely.

They saw Arm with Dympna and said nothing at all.

It was their only real fault, this enduring inability to ever think the worst of their son.

When Arm came to the next morning he could hear them downstairs in the kitchen, making breakfast. The noise of their domestic routine got Arm to dwelling on Fannigan’s mother, old and frail and alone in this world for good now, though she did not yet know it. He pulled a naggin of Jameson’s from the foot of his bed and took a few scouring hits, looking to snap himself out of such useless, malign sentiments.

Arm showered, put on a white vest, his good denim shirt, and made his way down to the Dorys. The low sky was slabbed with rifts of cloud the colour and texture of raw animal fat. Ursula’s mother was out front, unloading groceries from the backseat of the family Vauxhall.

‘Can I help?’ Arm asked, hovering at the foot of the driveway with his hands in his pockets. He had the stone flecked with Fannigan’s blood with him. He had not yet decided where or how best to dispose of it, and figured in the interim he should keep it close.

Margaret Dory regarded Arm. She had a narrow, taut face and pale blue eyes that made no bones about boring right through him.

‘Douglas. Urs and Jack aren’t here. No, I’m fine,’ she said.

‘Where they gone?’

‘Over to the town farm.’

‘Guess I’ll drop down so. You think that’d be alright?’

Margaret considered Arm’s question. He could see she was thrown by his requesting permission.

‘Well, Douglas, well I’m sure it’d be okay.’

Arm pulled his hand from the weighted pocket and offered a brisk polite wave. Margaret Dory looked at Arm like he wasn’t there.

The cottage was abandoned. The noise of the radio drifted from inside, and the browned flower-husks on the sill shivered dryly in the breeze. Fresh deposits of shit stubbled the trampled track to the main field. Ursula and Jack were by the gate, their backs to Arm. Jack was in his Spider-Man jacket, standing on the bottom rung of the three-beam fence and baying elatedly as the horse and rider completed a stately lap of the field. Arm came up quietly behind him and grabbed at his shoulders, but Jack didn’t so much as flinch. It was as if he was expecting Arm’s touch at exactly that moment, and perhaps he was. The kid was a mystery from every angle of approach.

Arm chucked him on the cheek, very lightly, attempted the same on Ursula. She slapped at his hand and scowled.

‘No offense meant,’ he said.

‘What are you doing here?’ she said.

‘Your mam told me where you were.’

The rider and her horse were coming over. The rider stepped down from the saddle and approached the fence.

‘Hiiiiii Jack,’ she said, and turned to Arm, ‘the boxer.’

‘How do.’

‘Hi,’ she said to Ursula. ‘You’re Jack’s mom?’

‘Yes,’ Ursula said.

‘Rebecca. I’m the horse lady.’

‘And you’ve met Douglas here?’

‘Douglas? Yeah, he’s been here before. He’s been around.’

Ursula looked at Arm.

‘I’m taking an interest,’ he said.

Jack was reaching towards the horse, outstretched fingers writhing in acquisitive agony, as if the animal was a toy he could pick up. The horse turned to the open field. It twitched an ear and considered the middle distance; clouds in boil about the peak of Nephin. The uncles’ farm was situated in a cloistered ruck of lowland not far from the foot of the mountain, and when he squinched his eyes Arm was convinced he could make out the buildings from here.

‘You want a go, Douglas?’ Rebecca asked.

‘Ah, I’m alright.’

‘Go on,’ Ursula said.

Arm looked from woman to woman, their faces identically resolute, deadpan. Just like that, they had allied against him.

‘Looks like my mind is made up for me,’ he muttered and got up over the gate.

Rebecca laughed and tugged the rein, bringing the horse around.

‘Okay, now, get on up on the side here . . . One foot in then throw yourself over. Don’t be afraid to take hold of the mane.’

‘She won’t mind?’ Arm asked.

‘You can tug the shit out of it, it’s fine,’ Rebecca said. She had a calming hand on the horse’s long jaw as Arm futzed to get on.

He toed his left foot into the stirrup on his side and stepped down until the strap went taut. He clutched a hank of horse hair and drew himself up towards the saddle, paddling air with his right leg until he’d groped it down the far side of the horse’s flank. Then Arm was solidly astraddle, and gripping the pommel he pushed himself upright in the hard leather of the seat. In the transition from ground to back the horse seemed to have grown to twice its original size.

‘Alright. I’m going to take you round, at walking pace first,’ Rebecca said. ‘I’ll guide her with the reins, you just hold steady and relax. And don’t fall off.’

‘Look, look at your daft daddy,’ Arm heard Ursula say.

Jack had his teeth sunk in the wooden fence. His eyes flicked dispassionately across the half-horse-half-daddy creature steadying itself in front of him.

Rebecca led Arm and the horse into the patchy turf of the open field. Arm was sent rocking, side to side, on the barrel of knit muscle beneath him. Then the horse began to move faster.

‘Okay we’re speeding up a bit now!’ Rebecca shouted.

Arm watched her bouncing head of curls, saw the crooked white line bisecting her crown where the part in her hair naturally opened. Then the rein was not in her hand anymore. The horse’s shoulder shot passed her. Its stride opened out. Arm bounced and bounced, skewing from side to side in the saddle. He tried to get his head up. Rebecca was gone, somewhere behind him. The reins were a loop of flimsy leather flickering along the side of the horse’s straining head. Nephin Mountain hiccupped violently up and down in the air in front of him.

Arm pressed his face into the long swinging neck. He could smell the velvet mustiness of the creature’s hide, the sweetness of the pulverised grass and black earth as it cut up under the thrumming hooves. ‘Stop,’ Arm was moaning, ‘stop, stop, stop.’

He thought of Fannigan, pale as any apparition, a body riding the current to sea.

They were heading towards the fence on the far side, and it was only at the last moment that the horse banked and swung around in an arc, shooting back the way it had come. Rebecca was standing in the middle of the field, arms up and out, furiously flagging them down. The horse beelined for her and decelerated to a choppy trot.

Rebecca snatched the dangling reins and pulled the horse’s head down. This had an effect as instantaneous as putting a car into neutral. Now the animal ambled at a desultory clip, and after the burst of speed it felt to Arm as if he were floating. He was loose-boned, adrenalised and softly tittering at a high, wretched pitch that sounded like it was coming from somewhere else. The bolt into the wind had driven tears from his eyes.

‘What was that move? You shot off there like the Lone Ranger!’ Ursula exclaimed, her hand on the back of Jack’s neck. He still had his jaws locked into the fence.

‘Fuck, sorry man,’ Rebecca said. ‘She just spooked.’

‘I didn’t do anything,’ Arm exclaimed, to both women.

‘You didn’t mean to,’ Rebecca corrected him, ‘I shouldn’t have had you up there. Normally it’s only me or the kids on her. You smell and weigh like a different species. Sorry, Douglas. Get on down.’

‘It’s alright,’ Arm said, ‘I’m fine.’

And dignified as he could, he poured the shook jelly of himself off the beast.

‘You could’ve broken your neck,’ Ursula mused brightly.

Arm winced at her, then rested his elbows on the fence and tipped his forehead onto his crossed wrists. In the little hollow comprised of his arms and head and chest he listened for his racing heart to come back down to an even keel. Arm knew if he raised either hand out flat in the air it would be shaking. A tear loosed itself from a lash and hit his cheek, running down his skin in a hot stripe.

Rebecca was somewhere behind him, near. Arm could feel her looking at him.

‘You ever get knocked out in the ring?’ she said, as if she was following exactly his thoughts and wanted to change tack.

Arm shook his head where it lay.

‘I didn’t think so,’ she said.

‘Lots of hits,’ Arm said, swabbing his eyes. ‘But I was never truly put out.’

‘I’ll get him home, if you want,’ Arm said to Ursula. ‘I’ll take him up to Supermacs for a Coke and burger first.’

‘Shouldn’t be encouraging him to eat that shite,’ Ursula said.

‘Well. He’s a little boy. They like rubbish.’

Rebecca was patting the horse’s grey face. ‘I got to get this brat fed and watered,’ she announced. ‘We have a convoy coming in from the retirement home just after lunch.’

‘Good luck with that,’ Arm said. ‘Hope that fecker doesn’t throw you.’

‘She won’t,’ Rebecca said, ‘I’ll see you next week, Jack.’

Jack pulled his mouth away from the fence. There was a blotch of saliva, a bracelet of bite marks worried into the wood.

Arm shepherded Jack up the main street. Jack knew where they were going and was getting excited, yipping and wanting to scramble ahead. Arm kept a finger snagged in the collar of his jacket.

‘Walk,’ he urged, ‘Walk.’

Dympna rang.

‘How’s the head, soldier?’

‘Not bad,’ Arm said. ‘Just out with the boyeen.’

‘I’ve a soft skin on me today, myself. Jesus Christ, we were milling through that whiskey like it was water,’ Dympna chuckled. He sounded supine and pleasantly shattered. Dympna enjoyed stewing in his hangovers, and often passed entire afternoons in a recuperative fog on the living-room sofa, duvet crimped around his neck like a barber’s bib, downing two-litre bottles of Fanta and watching box set after box set of DVDs.

‘Out with Jackie boy, is it?’

‘Correct,’ Arm said.

‘When’s that done up?’

‘Shortly.’

‘Cool, cool, sure I can drop down and grab you.’

‘It’s okay.’

‘I know its okay, it’s no bother,’ he said. ‘We’d best get out there, get things squared up.’

When Arm did not respond Dympna said, ‘Sorry, fuck. Look. Take your time with Jackie.’

‘I didn’t say anything,’ Arm said.

‘You have grades of brooding silence, Arm,’ Dympna said, ‘I can tell I pissed you off, or else you already were. Either way I’m not adding to it. We both have enough shite on our plates.’

‘And sometimes you have to eat it up,’ Arm said.

‘Exactly,’ Dympna said. ‘And speaking of which. Fannigan. Don’t sweat on that.’

‘I wasn’t,’ Arm said.

‘The uncles we can bring round. We can get them to see what’s best in the long run.’

‘You didn’t think so last night.’

‘Ah, I was drunk. Letting fretfulness get the better of me,’ Dympna said, like it was all nothing. ‘So. Will swing down your way for four, will we say? Give you plenty a time with the lad.’

‘Okay.’

‘I know,’ Dympna sighed, ‘it just goes on and on, doesn’t it?’

‘It does.’

Arm still had his finger hooked in Jack’s coat collar. They were at the zebra crossing. A modest stream of traffic was emptying down the main street. Cloudbanks blotted the sun above the post office and the air was laced with a salt foretaste of rain.