The air rushed in. He breathed it hard as the towel was torn off, sucking it in, pure elixir of ambrosia, cold and life-sustaining, his lungs inflating greedily.
“Did I not tell you, boys, did I not? A strong fellow, sure, so he is. Almost a minute in the universe of the drowning and not a word for it.”
“And no shit at all,” said Jimmy. “His buttocks got a cork a’tween ’em.”
“He is tough,” said Ginger. “Give the poor beggar that. Impressive start. A right bucko, as you said, Anto. Maybe ’twill be a long night’s work.”
“On the other hand,” said Jimmy, “maybe that was it for the fella. Now he’s spent. He gave it a good go, but he isn’t holding it today, not now that he knows what it’s like and how far beyond deciding it is.”
Anto took the opportunity to continue the lecture.
“Finally,” he said, “there’s my kind of torturer. I am what is called the duty torturer. I ask no understanding, and if caught out by the Clara Bartons of the news, then I go to me fate with dignity, sure in the conviction that what I done was in the right, no matter how them lady-fellows spun it round and made it seem evil. Because of Anto Grogan and his three leprechauns, there’s a hundred-odd British squaddies back in Blighty, drinking Mr. Guinness’s black velvet and enjoying their fine plowman’s lunch. We won’t comment on the fact that the fookin’ Brits always make their pet Irish their torturers, because they know we have the strength, which they themselves do not, and at the same time will take our ultimate fate, our dismissal and disgrace, with dignity befitting our proud race. So when the four of us are found out and called beasts and driven from the service we have given our lives to, then that’s fine by us, it is. We seen the duty, we done the duty. We take the crap that comes afterwards, the shit the Clara Bartons bring to us. You may ask the boys, perhaps they differ, but because of what we done in the night in the cellar of the jail with the buckets and buckets of lovely snotgreen water-because of that we knew in the day where the camel jiggers would be, and we put them down. Lord God, Sniper Swagger, you alone of men would know how godly that was, how Christian civilization was what we defended with our manly trigger fingers. Remember that wolfish Yank in the movie and his speech about standing on the wall? That was us, boyo, on the wall, doing the duty that had to be done. Or do you read Orwell? You’ve heard the one I loves so, about the comfort and warmth of many fine people in England, which I extend to Christian civilization, because rough men do dark deeds by night. We here in this room, all of us, are mates, having done the dark deeds, having been the rough men. Sniper, are you ready for more?”
Who could outspeak a poet? Not Swagger.
“Fuck you, Mr. Potatohead.”
Anto sighed, as if disappointed in the lame zinger that Swagger had improvised, and more disappointed that his hero was no Oscar Wilde, answering in honed epigrams.
“A comment bespeaking futility. No better than the sod carrier’s curse. Are yis not finished yet?” he wondered and stared into Swagger’s twisted, drenched face, and answered his own question. “You are not. Still, I think you’ll be before I have my breakfast eaten. Second bucket, buckos.”
“You talk too much.”
“I do, I do. The Irishman’s curse.”
The second bucket was a creature. It hunted him through the towel and he squirmed and struggled, trying to fight for a last wisp of oxygen trapped in the fibers of the towel, but then it had him. He thought of some kind of wet squid, something monstrous from the dark, dark well of human fear, some glistening, tentacled, boneless crusher from the deep that wrapped its wet strong arms about him and buried his face in the nexus where all those legs formed some kind of hideous, pink, cold, horror-movie sucking mask. Wet and cold and slimy, oceanic and ancient, it fought to snatch his soul from him, and he felt his body bucking against its grip, his bound knees trying to rip free, his hands trying to claw away from their plastic wires, and he had an image of ripping the thing off his face and throwing it to the floor and stomping it, smashing it with his boots, feeling it squirm in endless pain as it died spewing green greasy guts across the floor and then it all went black-
“You said he’d be a fighter, and a fighter he is,” Ginger said, as Bob came back to consciousness through a sense of dislocation. Air, there was air.
“Almost nobody lasts long enough to actually pass out,” said Jimmy, with just a hint of awe showing in his voice. “I don’t recall any man ever passing out. They panic and beg for release, but no one can consciously hold their breath long enough to simply make themselves faint like that.”
“Agh,” said Anto, “he does have the fight in him, for such a string bean of a fellow. You’d have thought a bruiser might have a bigger lung capacity and do well under the towel, but this fella’s nothing but skin and bones, yet he’s got a lot of battle in them scrawny pants of his. And again, Ginger, not a shitter, is he? I should have bet you, Ginger, on that. Give it to me. I knew he wasn’t a shitter.”
Anto leaned into Bob’s face, peering intently, seeking answers.
“Sniper, you’re a lot of trouble.”
“Begging your pardon, Anto,” said a new voice-it had to be the one called Raymond, who hardly ever spoke-“but maybe it’s best if yis don’t be calling him ‘Sniper.’ It reminds him of who he is, and in that perhaps he’s finding his bloody strength.”
“Hmm,” said Anto, “good point, Raymond. Should I try the reverse then?”
“I should,” said Raymond. “Don’t build him up, tear the fellow down. Make him see how little he is, how he cannot win, how we hold all the cards, we are the power. This man here is a man being tortured in a cellar, the lowest form of life there is, at the whim and mercy of them that has him.”
“Did you hear that, you bloody bastard?” Anto asked Bob. “Raymond thinks I’m all wrong, I’m building you up when it’s tearing you down that should be my pathway. All right then, I’ll try it. Nobody can say I don’t listen to suggestions. Hero! What tripe! What rotten spew! What yellow runny shit! You’d be nothing. Do you hear? You’re a man who’s killed boys and women in your time, as have we all. You ain’t no hero, you’re a bloody killer, with your fancy rifle, lyin’ up in the grass, waiting for the poor sods to come out and then taking all from them with but the three ounces you put into the trigger, and it’s nothing to you, but somewhere there’s a widow cryin’, a baby or two starvin’, a mate grievin’, a father disconsolate, a mother ruined. But that’s nothing to the bastard in them bushes calmly and without a scratch on him looking for his next voyager and hoping to get back while the scoff’s still hot. Aye, looking at him makes me sick, boys. Douse him again. Get this bastard done so I don’t have to truck with the gobshite.”