CHAPTER 11
I WAKE UP IN MY HOTEL ROOM TO A TWEET FROM SIMON.
If you aren’t sure how to interpret my words of wisdom. Please ask. The last thing I need is patients doing stuff in my name.
I think Simon is granting himself absolution from whatever his flock of patients might get up to.
Messiah complex anyone? Paging Dr. Jesus.
That phrase is a little redundant. I mean, who believes in Jesus anymore? And if you want to see teenagers crap themselves laughing, try explaining what a pager used to be. You tell ’em about cassette tapes and they think you’re one lying, old Depends-wearing motherfucker.
The following is a transcript of a conversation I had with Jason’s nephew:
Me: The songs were pressed onto a long tape. Six songs per side, then you turned it over.
Nephew: Turned what over?
Me: The tape in the machine, but you had to be careful or the machine would eat the tape and you’d have to straighten it out with a pencil.
Nephew: Fuck off, Gandalf. You’re making this shit up.
Five minutes later I get another message, this time from Mike.
Get over to the club now, laddie. We need to wrap this up. Be here by noon, or else?
Balls.
I was hoping Mike might be traumatized by last night. Also there was no need for a question mark at the end of Mike’s text. It’s not as if we don’t know what happens if I don’t do as I’m told.
I’m gonna have to whip out Tommy’s video. How much of it he watches is up to Mike.
So I’m on my merry way to get shot in the head. If I had to compile a list of possible traumatic moments in the life of an Irish male, the classic head shot would be right up there with driving test and turning Pops on his side so the puke doesn’t choke him, especially when the temptation is there to let the vomit do its work. It’s nature, right? Who’s gonna blame a ten-year-old kid?
Maybe I told you before that I’m not big on the whole flashback thing? I probably told you right before launching into a flashback thing.
But I don’t have flashbacks per sé, what I do have is a good memory for the bad times. I think of my mom and I see her weeping in a corner, dishcloth clutched to her breast masking the ripped blouse. I think on little Patrick and I see his moon face and those wonky teeth that would surely have needed braces, inkblot bruises covering his cheek, and him thinking he’s a bad kid, that everything’s his fault.
I got a head-shot memory too. From guess where? The Lebanon, big surprise, right.
Zeb says to me: What’s all this THE Lebanon shit? It’s Lebanon, okay? You don’t say THE Ireland or THE Israel.
So I come back with: You say THE United States.
It went on like that for a coupla hours until Zeb got one of his periodic boners and had to excuse himself for twenty minutes. That guy is like Old Faithful, when is he gonna slacken off? He’s in his forties now for feck sake.
Anyway, my head-shot memory. The UN trucked us over to Damour to throw stern looks at the locals, who were hell-bent on revenge on PFLP and DFLP militiamen who had just defiled a cemetery, dragging coffins out of their neat rows, executed a stack of Christians and painted a mural of Fatah guerrillas holding AK-47 rifles on the church wall.
A quick aside: revolutionary groups all got their go-to mural guys. A good inspiring mural can swing 10 percent of the don’t-knows, not to mention make the revolutionaries feel validated. These guys are not just slopping paint onto walls, it’s at least as legitimate an art form as graffiti. Banksy was never darkly satirical with automatic fire knocking chunks out of his canvas. It’s the worst-kept secret in Irish republican circles that the artist who did a lot of the good stuff on the Falls Road was actually an Ulster Unionist who strapped on his orange sash on march day. I guess you get a pass if you provide a valuable service.
Anyway, back to the Lebanon. There we were, in the rear of a truck driving straight into the aftermath of a massacre. I know for a fact, because we took a poll in the truck, that twelve point five men out of sixteen had no clue what PFLP or DFLP stood for, never mind the difference between the groups. I don’t know how we arrived at point five of a guy in those calculations.
In the course of our sweep we happened on a Phalangist militiaman inside the gutted church with half a dozen Japanese Red Army terrorists trussed up in the aisle. There had been talk of Red Army guys helping out with the Popular Front but I always thought that was barracks’ bullshit. But here these guys were, Japanese no doubt about it, down on their knees being all stoic for the most part, about to pay the ultimate price for their roles in the recent massacre. I don’t know how a lone Phalangist managed the logistics of wrapping six enemy soldiers in restraints but it was pretty clear that he to take advantage of their immobility to speed the Red Army boyos directly to whichever pearly gates they believed in, fervently hoping there would be a distinct absence of virgin hosts there to greet them.
We just kinda looked on for a second, a little perplexed to be honest. Intrigued too, like we were watching the whole show on TV. Peacekeepers aren’t on anyone’s side as such, so plugging this super-soldier would lead to one clusterball of a debriefing. Tommy Fletcher let his trademarked cow-scaring roar at the guy, followed by:
“Hey, gobshite. Step away from the prisoners.”
The Phalangist responded by shrieking in shock, then shooting the first Red Army guy in the head. The guy looked minorly disappointed for a second, like his car wouldn’t start, then keeled over.
“Balls!” exclaimed Tommy and rushed the gunman. We all followed suit and there ensued a macabre version of Duck Duck Goose with us jabbering while the Phalangist dodged between the Red Army lads plugging as many as he could before we subdued him.
By the time we piled on, the guy had a score of five and he would have completed the set had his frankly ancient Luger not blown up in his hand and shredded his fingers.
Is that a funny story in retrospect? Is there a touch of humor to be gleaned from a domino line of Japanese terrorists?
Not for me.
I think on it too long and the strength of the images really drags me under. The guy with the gun staring in shock at his own mangled hand. The last Japanese soldier singing a simple melody high and clear. I’ve been trying to find that song ever since. Don’t know why. It sounded like he was repeating the phrase abandon we but that can’t have been it. Wrong language. The air in the church was baked orange and heavy with moisture, a miasma that clung to our uniforms. And Tommy squatting on the Phalangist, who was maybe eighteen, taking a poll as to whether we should report all of this or just go on our merry way and pretend nothing had ever happened.
So we took the path of no resistance. We cut the surviving prisoner loose, used the bonds to tie up the Phalangist, which must have earned us a grudging nod from the gods of irony and got ourselves the hell away from that bloodbath, because there is no way to come out of a three-way balls up like that smelling of anything but fear and death.
By the way, we worked out what fear smells like one night in the barracks and I still stick by the formula: 50 percent stale sweat, 30 percent gas and 20 percent stink of your own private hellhole. Wherever what bad thing happened to you happened.
When fear creeps up on me, my first sensory clue is the stink of that church with trussed corpses clogging up the aisle trumping the ghosts of brides being escorted by their proud fathers.
I voted the same as everybody else. Get the hell out.
Abandon we.
I know. Sounds a lot like a flashback, but I don’t get flashbacks.