Here Are the Young Men Page 22

  The junkie dropped the pretence of interest and was about to step between us and stagger on down the street, but Kearney held him back with his hand again and said, ‘Hold on, there’s no rush now, bud.’ His voice had lost the false, schmaltzy compassion; it was cold and serious. ‘I can’t give ye money, but I have something else for ye.’

  The junkie waited suspiciously, and I looked on as Kearney pulled down the zip on his leather jacket and reached into the inside pocket. He looked up and down the street before taking his hand out, then spoke in a low, urgent voice: ‘Look. I found this in me brother’s room. I don’t want him messin with this stuff. I don’t mind what other people do with their lives, but he’s only a kid, basically, and he’s too young to be foolin with this crap. I was goin to throw it in the bin, but I feel bad that I can’t give ye any money, and I reckon ye like this stuff. Do ye? Or am I totally wrong? I don’t mean to be makin assumptions, like, ye just looked like the kind of man who likes this stuff.’

  The junkie’s face was lit up with reverence. He seemed to have stopped breathing, entranced by what was in Kearney’s hand. It was a small plastic bag with about two grammes of light-brown powder in it. I had never seen heroin before and wouldn’t have been sure if it really was that. But the junkie’s expression confirmed it.

  His hand darted out for the package, but Kearney withdrew it easily in time.

  ‘Hold yer horses, boss,’ he said. ‘Are ye sure ye want this? Don’t ye know that it’s fuckin yer life up?’

  The junkie whined and moaned, reduced to a pathetic state, like a child crying for sweets.

  ‘Do ye hear me? I asked ye are ye sure you want it. This shite will fuckin kill ye.’

  Realizing an answer was necessary to get to the smack, the junkie mustered his attention enough to look into Kearney’s eyes and whine: ‘Ah man, don’t worry about it, bud, give me that gear and that’ll be the last of the stuff I’ll ever touch. I just want to have a little bit, man, ye know what I mean. It’s been a shite day … me bird … normally I wouldn’t take it off ye but me bird, I was robbed … ah man just give us the gear will ye.’

  ‘I’ll give it to ye if you want it. Are ye sure, then?’

  ‘Yeah bud.’

  ‘Fair enough. There ye go.’ Kearney handed the incredulous junkie the bag. I watched it change hands.

  ‘Off ye go and enjoy it, now!’ he called as the junkie hurried away in the opposite direction, hand clamped around the package, newly energized.

  Kearney started to cackle, watching the scampering addict turn off the quiet street.

  ‘What the fuck was that?’ I said. It was like I’d broken out of a trance.

  ‘Relax, man.’

  ‘What was in the bag?’

  ‘What do ye think was in it? Gear. Smack. Think I’m a liar?’

  ‘Where did you get heroin from?’

  He shrugged, turning to give me his attention for the first time. ‘I got it. Doesn’t matter where. Ask me no secrets and I’ll tell ye no lies.’

  ‘Is it poisonous? Is he goin to die?’

  He giggled. ‘Affirmative. Yes. That’s correct, Matthew.’

  ‘Jesus!’ I put my hands to my head, started pacing up and down.

  ‘Ah, give it a rest, would ye. Give over the bleedin melodrama. Ye knew what we were goin to do.’

  ‘What you were goin to do. But no, I didn’t know ye were goin to give him poisoned fuckin heroin.’

  He was serious now, his voice hardened: ‘No Matthew, not just me – we. You knew what we were doin. You said you were up for it. Are ye denyin it now?’

  ‘No. Yeah. I am denyin it. I thought ye were havin a laugh. I didn’t believe ye.’

  ‘Well ye can believe me now. But think, what are ye goin to do about it? Cos ye know, I’ve got ye recorded at home, saying ye were up for killin a junkie with me. So yer fucked.’

  I looked at him, standing there, not smiling, watching me. I started to panic.

  ‘Oh Jesus, Kearney, what the fuck? Give it a rest, stop yer messin. I didn’t say that, I didn’t mean it. Leave it out, will ye?’

  ‘It’s not too late to help him, ye know. If you want to, ye can run after him and try and find him and tell him –’

  I didn’t hear the rest of the sentence: I had already started running, fast as I could, through the alleys past Talbot Street, looking for a solitary junkie among the afternoon crowds in the city centre.

  Two hours later I sat on the bus home, on my own.

  Rain pelted down on the city. I looked out the window; the faces I saw were sinister; the laughter all sounded wrong, full of menace and mockery. It all sounded like Kearney’s laughter.

  I hadn’t found the junkie. I had looked and looked but he was gone, vanished.

  I couldn’t eat my dinner that evening. I heard my ma whisper something to my da in the sitting room behind me. He lowered his Evening Herald to watch me through the door, while I sat in silence at the kitchen table.

  He came in and shut the door behind him. Then he sat down, folded his arms on the table and said, ‘Tell me straight, Matthew. Have you been takin drugs?’

  42 | Kearney

  The buzz was extreme, even better the second time. All that night he couldn’t sleep, his mind fizzing with ideas and visions. The next morning, frazzled and jerky but still ecstatic, he decided to go back in for another shot. He sensed that his discipline was slipping and he had to rein it in or he’d be undone. But then he thought, Fuck it. He bounded down into the basement to reef up another helping of rat poison, and took the bus into town.

  It was a grey morning. Deciding he should probably chop and change the locations to avoid any kind of pattern forming, Kearney let his legs take him through the dull weekday murmur of the city centre, along Harcourt Street, all the way to the canal. There, he stepped down to the quiet, grassy bank and walked alongside the water. And, soon enough, he came upon what he was after: another wizened, babbling old drunk, slouched on a bench by the archway of a bridge. Kearney gulped on the Red Bull he’d bought to keep himself perky, and approached. This would be easy as fuck, just like the first time. And this time he was going to take a souvenier.

  ‘Shift on up a bit there, boss,’ he said when he reached the bench. ‘Here, I’ve a few cans with me, perhaps you’d like to share them.’

  He was a pro by now. He sat with the scruffy tramp and plied him with booze. Feeding him the second can Kearney said, ‘Listen now, Padre Pio. There’s only one thing I ask of ye on this fine mornin. Ye can have all the drink ye like from me, but I hope ye won’t mind if I make a little film of ye. Just for, like … the Church. To show them the good work or whatever. Alright?’

  The tramp was indifferent. Kearney took out his mobile and started filming. This smelly fuckhead wasn’t as manic or embittered as the first one. He didn’t say much at all, just supped on the can with quiet gratitude. Kearney giggled freely, not bothering to mask his derision. The alco had an innocent-looking face, which made it all the more hilarious. Kearney poked his cheek with his finger, pushing in the skin and making noises like you’d do for a baby, gurgling at him. The alco didn’t give a fuck.

  When the tramp had finished his third can of Devil’s Bit, it was time to cut the banter. Time for a little vino.

  Kearney gave him the bottle and made him wave for the camera. He laughed and slapped him in the head, eliciting a low, tremulous whine. Then he went for a walk.

  The lack of sleep was starting to catch up on him. He stopped off at Insomnia for two double espressos – a tip Dwayne had given him in Boston, useful for getting to work when there was no speed or coke around. Wired anew, he marched back into the centre, crossed O’Connell Bridge and stopped in at Dr Quirkey’s arcade. He played House of the Dead for a spell, exhilarated by the exploding faces of zombies and chainsaw-motherfuckers as he shot them repeatedly at close range. The crossfire thrills – caffeine, guns, blood and noise – coupled with the awareness of what was waiting for him back on the canal bank, f
used into an intense and indiscriminate eroticism. As Kearney unloaded again and again into the screen, his cock pulsed in his jeans, his jaw fell open and his eyelids fluttered. During a pause in the game action, he scanned the teeming din of the arcade: everywhere, eager little sluts, moaning to be defiled, pouting for the rape.

  He couldn’t take it any longer. Killed by a chainsaw stuck into his face, he jammed the blue plastic gun back in the metal holster and paced into the toilets. Barely had he slammed the cubicle door behind him than he’d pulled his cock out and was pumping frantically. Images hurtled through his mind, relentless filth. Everything was porno, everyone a victim. Within seconds, groaning at high volume and biting his lip till a hot trickle of blood ran through his saliva, Kearney jizzed all over the place. It pumped out of him in violent spasms, splattering his chin, his hands, his chest, the door and the partition. The spasms didn’t abate for many seconds, the spunk gushing out of him like he’d struck milky oil. Kearney continued to moan, overpowered by bliss, not in control of himself. His legs gave way and he crashed backwards on to the toilet seat, falling off and sliding down the partition wall. As the waves of rapture slowly subsided, Kearney started to giggle, then laugh uproariously at the state of himself. He’d never seen anything like it.

  He may have passed out for a moment. He blinked awake. His mind was blank. Then he remembered: it was time to go back to the drunken cunt. He gave himself a hasty clean-up and hurried back out of the arcade. He half-ran down O’Connell Street, over the bridge, up Grafton Street, through the Green and down along Leeson Street till he was back at the quiet, sheltered bank of the canal. The water calmly gurgled through the black crescent of the archway, beside which Kearney had left the alco perched on his bench.

  And there he was, still in exactly the same place. Kearney glanced behind him to make sure no one was around. All clear. He took out his phone and started filming as he approached the tramp, then stood at the bench beside him. The tramp still reeked of piss and fuck knew what else; he still had dribble or pus or something leaking from the cracked corners of his mouth; he was still a laughable human wreck. Only this time, he wasn’t breathing.

  You pathetic old fuck, Kearney thought, standing over him and looking down. You pitiful old man, you fucking wretched, disgusting old bastard. Sickened by the sight of the alco even in death, Kearney stepped forward and delivered a forceful kick to the corpse’s ribs. The body jolted on impact. Then it lurched to the side, teetered for a moment and fell over, rolling down the bank to fall with a plop into the canal’s flow, as Kearney’s camera phone drank it all in.

  You pitiful fucking wreck. You dirty stinking cunt.

  43 | Rez

  He didn’t go out much. His parents felt that he probably should, but at the same time they were reluctant to let him out of their sight, in case he ‘tried it again’, as they always referred to the possibility of another suicide attempt.

  A little over a week into his convalescence, Rez’s ma deemed it time for him to start seeing his friends. For a few days no one came. Then, as Rez was watching a mid-afternoon omnibus of US talk shows, the doorbell rang. The doorbell in the Tooley household was one of those old-fashioned ones that actually went ding-dong. Rez heard his ma going to get it.

  It was Matthew.

  Matthew stayed for less than twenty minutes, during which time he clutched a teacup and looked at the floor or into the telly, swaying faintly in his chair. It seemed to Rez that Matthew’s sentences were slurred.

  They talked for a while: awkward, stilted questions, and barefaced platitudes in response. As they sipped their tea and stared at an ad for Power City on the telly Matthew said, ‘So you’re watchin a lot of telly?’

  ‘That’s right, I am yeah,’ replied Rez.

  ‘That’s good, telly’s good,’ said Matthew, nodding slowly, staring into the screen. ‘It’s good for ye to watch a bit of telly.’

  ‘Yeah,’ mumbled Rez. ‘I think it is. It’s good to watch a bit of telly.’

  They watched telly for a bit.

  Somewhat later, Rez said, ‘How’s Cocker? Alright?’

  ‘He’s not bad, not bad,’ came Matthew’s response, followed by another sip of tea.

  Cruising on Xanaxed autopilot, beginning vaguely to enjoy this series of exchanges, Rez asked, ‘And how’s Kearney?’

  On being asked this simple question, Matthew became weirdly nervous. He stuttered and fidgeted, looking away from Rez, first at the wall, then at the floor. He gave no intelligible reply.

  Why was he being like this, Rez wondered. But the effort of thinking about it was too great. He had just turned away to face the telly again, when Matthew, in a strange, desperate voice, blurted out: ‘Rez, Kearney is gettin all messed up.’

  Rez turned back to stare at him.

  Matthew said nothing else.

  ‘Matt, you’re sayin that like it’s a surprise,’ said Rez.

  Now Matthew looked straight at him: his eyes were pink; he seemed almost frantic. ‘No Rez, I mean he’s gettin really messed up. He’s doin weird things, he’s …’

  He trailed off. They looked at each other, the mid-volume chatter of the TV filling the silence between them. Rez waited. Then he said, ‘What do ye mean? What’s he doin?’

  Matthew didn’t answer. He appeared to sink into himself. Eventually he muttered, ‘Nothing, never mind. He’s just mad, ye know yerself. He just keeps goin on about his games all the time. It’s wreckin me head. There’s nothing goin on.’

  Rez turned away and stared at the telly. There was a rocket launch being broadcast live on the news. Distractedly, Rez noted the eager tone of the reporter’s voice as the rocket took off: you could tell she was hoping it would malfunction, combust in mid-air like the Colombia a few months ago. After the countdown, as the shiny spacecraft corkscrewed moonward and all seemed to be going well, the disappointment in the reporter’s voice was blatant. Why else would they bother showing a rocket launch in this day and age, if not for the possibility that it would blow up live on air?

  Sluggish with drugs, Rez’s thoughts were entangled in the weird insinuations of the televized launch. Matthew’s puzzling behaviour receded from consciousness.

  And then Matthew was standing up, saying he had better get going, telling Rez to take care. Rez nodded like a businessman, forgetting briefly the exact nature and purpose of Matthew’s visit.

  Then Matthew left and Rez turned again to gaze into the lively colour-dance of telly.

  Telly, he noted, is really great.

  44 | Kearney

  He kept a close check: there was still nothing in the papers about a dead junkie or dead winos. Or next to nothing: there were two short reports of a ‘bad batch’ of heroin that was going around, one in the Herald and one in the Independent, but neither of them mentioned any slaughtered humans.

  You needed to see it happen, thought Kearney. You needed to be there at the precise instant when the body passed from life to death – like in Stu’s video. He felt like telling Dwayne what he had done, but it was too risky. Instead, he emailed him about the video: ‘i jus keep thinkin of it over and over i never seen anyting like it hehe fuckin MENTAL. moddern art!! but hush hush cos we be fucked if anyone ever fund out we seen sumting like dat.’

  The next day, Dwayne replied: ‘wot de fuck u talkin about joe?? u mean dat porno with yer fiwho looked like cristina agillerra? r de video wit all de yungfellas tormentin de homeless lad? dat shit is wide spred over here nigga. y wud we b in trubble for watchin dat? wot de fuck u on about joe???’

  Kearney was puzzled and unnerved by this response. What the fuck did it mean? Thinking it over, he found he was starting to get a headache. Better, then, not to think of it at all. He smoked a big fuck-off cone and that helped. Dwayne was a dickhead. All Kearney wanted now was to go back into town and fucking decimate another random cunt. But he knew it was best to cool off for a while. The buzz he was on reminded Kearney of what Dwayne had said once about tattoos: as soon as you get one, all yo
u can think about is the next. You want one that’s bigger, brasher, bloodier, and there’s no end to it till your body is a mass of pouting sluts, flaming swastikas and blackened landscapes. With effort, Kearney suppressed the impulse to find some other wheezing alco, maybe gouge out his eye or break all his fingers, or pull his tongue out with a pliers. He had to be clever, treat it like a game and not lose control. Otherwise he’d be fucked, end up in Mountjoy.

  He holed up in his room for a few days, getting stoned and investigating the online world of hentai, a new Japanese fascination of his. When he ran out of hash on Friday morning, he decided to pay a visit to Mick, a dealer he knew through Dwayne. There was a drought on, but Mick always had his sources. Kearney had enough money for a quarter that would last him a few days, a period in which he intended to stay home, till he felt confident about taking the next step.

  He got on a bus and headed into town. It was another grey and sullen morning. No one was around; it was as if the city had been evacuated. Mick’s flat was on Parnell Street, down where town starts feeling dodgy and faintly lawless. Kearney rang the bell, waited to be buzzed through, then ascended the stairs. He sat quietly while Mick took his time rolling a spliff and telling supposedly funny anecdotes to three older lads, who laughed obsequiously. Slow, spacey reggae played on massive, bass-heavy speakers stacked on a chest of drawers. ‘Dub’, Mick called it. Kearney pretended to like it, impatient to get the dope and leave.

  After twenty minutes of dub and forced laughter, Kearney left with the hash. Instead of going straight home, he walked to the Garden of Remembrance to roll a spliff. He wanted to be nice and stoned on the bus journey home, before spending the rest of the day in his attic, getting blitzed out of it. He sat down on a bench, noticing that the place was nearly empty, and took out his book, Naked Lunch. He had never read it, and never intended to. Reading, clearly, was for faggots. The book had belonged to Rez until Kearney borrowed it one day – not to read, but to roll joints on in public places. It worked brilliantly. Rez was never getting his book back.