Unquiet Dreams Read online

  And they stared.

  So far, so good; the Man knew what he was doing. The two old reprobates leaned in, drawn by its mesmerizing self-sufficiency, and the boy felt proud, like he had something to do with it—other than finding it in the Mother's arms.

  Lefty cocked one eye up at the Man. There was doubt in his words but wonderment in his face. It was funny, the boy thought, how a face that old and begrimed, a face that had sunk a thousand rafts of garbage, could still look little more than a child's when confronted with a miracle like this. "Whatchoo do there, Roy? Where th'hell you get sumpthin' like that?"

  The Man shrugged like it was nothing at all. "Boy found it."

  "It's a brain," Jimbo cut in urgently. "Cow brain maybe. Maybe pig."

  "Ain't no brain," Lefty countered with scorn. "Brains're grey, not white."

  "Even when washed by the bayou?" Jimbo said, but you could tell he had lost enthusiasm for his theory. "Damn strange, anyway." They all shook their heads in accord. The boy grinned to himself, proud of the Mother, and her child. Jimbo reached out, like to poke the thing, but the Man growled a warning—don't touch the merchandise. Yet it was hard to resist. The bunched white lobes of it seemed so portentous; slick, swollen, it floated with a regal air, smug and complacent, the boy thought, as if it was just humoring them all for now, but soon it would have more important things to do. The thought made him shiver again. Mother had secrets, secrets this treasure shared.

  Jimbo dinged the side of the pot and the low echo of its resounding tone swooshed the water ever so slightly, so that the pale shape turned lazily circling deosil now, against the sun as if turning the other side to the warming rays—rays that could not reach here under the overpass. The old men muttered and stroked their rat-haired beards, cogitating one and all. The boy had an idea growing in his belly. He could not yet articulate it in simple words, but it had a lightness, a brightness that lifted his spirits yet again.

  The clang of the lid woke them all from their stupor. The Man had put the plan in action. No more freebies. Jimbo and Lefty took his measure, but found him fixed. They went quietly, though, to the boy's surprise. The Man glowered, like he had already given them too much—and regretted it. But as they shuffled off exchanging low words, the shifty grin peeled across his grimy countenance, a look of triumph and smug self-satisfaction. The fortune was already made, the boy could see. They would be rich.

  It took no time at all. That night men started to come, to gaze into the pot and marvel at the shape of the thing as it floated in the black waters. They paid. Some a little. Some a little more. Within days, those who had little could no longer pay enough to see it. Stories flew up and down the bayou, but the boy knew why they could never agree, why they always came back. It wasn't what it was, but what it could be. The mystery of the thing drew them—that small piece of the Mother—like flies to a dogs' carcass; hopeful, hovering, they gathered at night and offered their thoughts, their opinions. No answers, no sureness. They all sighed—even the Savers—and came back, again, and poked at it with their words and with their thoughts. Never with their hands; the Man kept them all from touching it, naturally. He had to protect his investment.

  "It's a dog's stomach…"

  "Nah, it's a brain, I tole you—"

  "Cow brain, yeah, I think that's—"

  "Hell, no! Ain't nuthin' but some little hunk of papier maché."

  "Oh, right, Mac. That's why you been back here every night this week, uh huh."

  "Shut up! You ignorant. It's a man's liver, bleached in the sun."

  "Oh man, you such a liar. Ain't never no liver. No matter how long in the sun. Look at it!" And look they did, puzzling, tapping the sides of the pot, watching it circle lazily in its bath. Violence always threatened. These men were accustomed to settling their arguments with quick jabs and low kicks. Fear kept them in line, though, here under the hum of the overpass. Old Snowy had drawn blood one night, arguing with some young one-armed guy over just what the treasure was. Opinions were the only capital one held in this world. The veracity of opinions could rank one highly, while the dubious sort left you at the back of the line, last one to get the drift, last to check out the trash barrels. Old Snowy was used to respect, used to his place in the wrangling chaos. But he drew blood, endangered the uneasy truce. The Man didn't let him come back yet. No one else would risk banishment from the single wonder of their world, so the peace wore on, threatened at times, but holding, like a dam not quite ready to burst.

  The boy got ambition. He had a name for the feeling that was rising in his chest: freedom. When he got his split of the money, he could…go…somewhere. He didn't exactly know, but some place else. He could leave, leave the Man, go out in the wide world. He could follow the Mother to her big broad belly, the gulf, her true home. It was out there, the Man said so. The boy remembered. He could recall the first time he heard the word. It was just an offhand remark for the Man, just a spit between his teeth. Where things washed away, why, all the way to the gulf, he had said. The boy had been little then, hanging on the Man's words as a mystery that might be solved, rather than one that must be endured, as he knew well now. But the word had filled him with a swell of excitement: all that water! All the floods that ever happened, going to this place, the gulf—how immense it must be. Water that big, he finally realized, water that big would provide a life for him. The small existence they poked out of the edges of the bayou would be nothing to the bounty of Mother's great belly where the many waters gathered. He could live in great ease, scrounging in the morning, then taking it comfortable, watching the flow of the water with a peaceful satisfaction. That was ambition, surely.

  The Man paid him back for it. His impatience was to blame. If only he had waited, the Man might have swelled with enough magnanimity to toss him some coins, and he could have stolen away in the night, unnoticed, unmourned. But he asked for his money when the dreams grew too loud in his sleep, and the Man slapped him down with a harsh cuff and a guffaw. The few others there, gathered early for the nightly ritual, joined in the laughter and goaded the Man on. "Money?" he snapped as the boy cowered, holding his ear, waiting for the pain and ringing to subside. "This my money, boy. My rules, my world. You forget that, boy?"

  "I found it," he grumbled proudly, if unwisely.

  The Man laughed and the others with him. "Finders keepers, eh? Losers weepers!" They all laughed at this witticism. "Guess you the loser, boy." Even as their coughing hilarity buoyed him up and out of the circle, their eyes returned to the treasure, hungry, famished, for its sight.

  He stumbled away from their laughter into the first graying shades of twilight. It had been dark all day, overcast and fishy. Night would be just a deepening hue. He went to Mother and plunged his hands in her cold waters to calm their shaking and his angry heart. This is what it came to, all of it. He had her soothing waters and he had the Man's rough regency. If it came down to that, he chose her. Better her mystery, her harsh floods and draughts than the brutal way of the Man. Her ways were uncompromising, but they were better than the capricious rule of the Man, who would always be stronger, smarter and more powerful, who would always tell him what to do and when, who changed his mind capriciously. Mother would not lead him, she would not offer easy answers; he'd have to think for himself and live within her harmonies. If you followed her flow, all was right—it was swimming upstream that brought trouble, and a failure to follow her signs. He made his choice then, he chose her, and not the joyless way of the Man.

  He did not expect epiphanies, he knew he was not saved, but she sent him a gift anyway, just to show him the choice was right. He leaned closer to the waters and heard the story they sang to him. He lifted his head and looked west. Dark clouds had hung there all day, drifting slowly north. He puzzled at the sign. He had seen the clouds, knew they meant rain, knew too that they were passing far to the north. But the waters sang the tune of coming. He shook his head as if to clear his still-ringing ears. What was she telling him? Was he just too
stupid to heed? He trailed his hand in the now-black waters, feeling for the truth, waiting for the secret to be revealed, hoping some trash-bloated carp wouldn't come along and bite his fingers for bait. His head inclined toward the Mother's song, eyes closed, heart almost still as he listened with his body and soul to her message.

  He had almost drifted into a melancholic slumber when the revelation hit him, nearly knocking him over. When? Soon. How much? A lot! He should go, now. He didn't even realize he was smiling as he half-walked, half-climbed up the slope to the road. He looked back down at the Mother he loved so much. The bench on her banks where lovers sat on cool days, the trees still bent low, always listening to her speech, her songs, her warnings. He wondered if he should go higher, but he knew he had to stay, to see, to bear witness, to know that freedom would truly be his.

  It was a short time later—less time than a walk to the seven pillars, but more than a slow steady piss in the morning—he first heard it. He could see from the overpass where he dangled his long legs, that the Man and his cronies were as attentive as ever to her little secret, her small mystery, and he smiled this time and knew it. It was her gift, after all. He just didn't know how, he tried to make it so simple. But she knew. She always knew.

  At the first roar his head jerked up. Somehow he had been nodding. How long had he been awake? Or was it the unaccustomed weight of freedom, a burden he would move from shoulder to shoulder until he found the right position to bear it away. He would become used to it, quickly. Again, louder now, as it rushed along the many twists of her snaking body, trying arrogantly to carve new ways. Chin resting on the guardrail he looked down at the Man, candle lights sparkling in his puny world, reflecting his small understanding, and he waited. It was not long. The roaring, the confusion, the shouts, and finally only the green-brown waters so high, so sudden, he finally had to lift his feet or risk losing his two different shoes. There was no sign of the Man or the mystery. Maybe tomorrow; he would be walking south, perhaps he would see the Man, washed ashore, white and bloated as everything else swept up by her waters. And maybe not. He didn't much care. The gulf would really be filled this time. He hummed to himself as he crossed the empty street, swung over the rail, and stepped down to trace the lapping edge of his Mother.

  Mandrake and Magpies

  for Mr. B with regards

  Mandrake anthrax: a whispered phrase, one the kids tossed around while they waited for buses, for dates, for the long lines outside the Karma club, twitching to the beat. The girls wore dresses so short you could glimpse their knickers or at least it seemed worth trying your luck. The boys had hair that defied gravity. Riley suspected they spent more time on their locks than the girls did.

  But none of it mattered. He cared nothing for fashion, just sniffed around their ranks for a word on that elusive stuff—better than crack or smack, rocket fuel—or so rumour had it. Riley drifted past knots of strung out kids in Eyre Square, hoping for a lead and bought a cuppa in Mocha Beans, an ear cocked to the convos around him.

  No one was holding, that was clear, but here and there he'd hear the phrase as he shambled about town, check himself and turn. Then he'd find they were speaking in French or Romanian, laughing as if they'd just switched tongues on his account. Riley had a moment's regret for not paying more attention in French class back at St Cedd's, but he knew sooner or later he'd discover the source.

  Or else he'd go to Una.

  The thought made him shiver. Dark spots in his brain still echoed and he didn't want to add to their number. Three days passed before the need got so bad that his unwilling steps turned toward that shabby industrial park. He wasn't a junkie, it wasn't that. Riley liked to think of himself as an explorer, one bound for the unknown inner realms. He had sampled just about everything then gone back to the tried and true, yet he bided his time for a hint of something new, beyond what had gone before. Transcendence, that's what he was after, a spiritual high. Most nights he had to settle for the more mundane type. But he had a weather eye cocked for the bigger score.

  Riley paused on the roundabout past the Tesco, waiting for the traffic to clear. A murder of crows chattered on the island, their raucous tones taunting him—or was it a kind of warning? He shouldn't go to Una. He knew better. He would curse her name before they were through. Nevertheless, Riley knew that she would be the one, that hers would be the place where rumour became fact and he could get his hands on some of that mandrake anthrax.

  The rain began: that horizontal rain that filled all your pockets and wormed its way down your neck. Riley argued that it wasn't a sign either. It wasn't Galway unless the rain was whipping down—even when the sun came out. As he crossed over the little rivulet that passed under the road, a single magpie laughed at him from its perch on a reed and he remembered it was one for sorrow, two for joy, and looked in vain for a second. "Shoo," he muttered, waving an ineffectual hand. The pie flicked its tail feathers, hopped to the other bank and continued to make remarks about the weather—or his fate. Riley checked the shiver that shook his shoulders. It was just a bird after all.

  Headford Road teamed with afternoon traffic. Delivery vans jostled with suburban families heading for the cinema or the shopping centres in their SUVs. Riley cut through the car park at Debenham's then behind the hotel to come out by the used car dealer that never seemed to have any cars. It was that part of town.

  The tourists never saw this part of the city. Riley remembered when he first arrived here, queueing at immigration, wishing his grandmother had been Irish after all, the old liar. He passed the line of hopefuls now, still hanging about the unmarked office in the gloomy industrial park—it was useless though, as the numbers were long gone by this time of day and the Gardai would never see them.

  He slipped past the book bindery and there it was: Allied African Imports. Didn't half sound like a phony name. Irony: Una made a good clip from the trade, well beyond the smuggling. The little head shop in the centre and that newagey clinic both took a steady stream of merch off her. Riley used to deliver boxes of drums and fertility statues that they marked up and sold on to the kids at the uni every new term. Of course that was before.

  "Well, look what the cat dragged in." Hackett glanced up from his station at the counter, an incomprehensible pile of mechanical works in front of him, a screwdriver in one hand.

  Riley grunted. "It's said the Hacketts have been celebrated through the ages for their wit and charm. What a pity to bring such an illustrious tradition to an end."

  "You're a feckin' mess, Riley. Sleeping in the rough now, ya drunk?"

  "Where's Una?"

  Hackett stared a moment, tapping the screwdriver on the counter. Finally he called back over his shoulder, "Una! You want to see what the cat dragged in?"

  "Thanks. You're a prince, Hackett."

  "Fuck you, Riley." Hackett went back to work on the gadget, studiously ignoring him. There had been no malice in his hatred. Nothing more than habit, really. It was just the way the dividing lines had been drawn and now Riley was on the other side.

  Una stepped out from the backroom and Riley felt as if a light had been switched on in the grim interior of what passed for a shop. Not that she was sweetness and light: if anything, Una Flanagan offered nothing but dark from her raven tresses to her ten eye Doc Martens. Her pale face and piercing blue eyes produced only harsh lights that probed him with the unflattering glare of a well-placed searchlight.

  "Is there something you're wanting, Riley?" Her smooth contralto with just a hint of coffee and cigarettes purred almost gently, the tiger teeth hidden behind its velvety folds. The curves of her form provoked more intoxication than any other substance he had ever ingested but that elixir had been denied him for some time now.

  "Can we speak private like?" Riley finally managed once he broke his mesmerized gaze from the jut of her jaw.

  "Have we anything to discuss?" Her tone suggested there was not.

  Riley tried to compose himself a little, straightening his spine an
d throwing his shoulders back. "Can we have a word about…mandrake anthrax?"

  Her eyes narrowed. "Where'd you hear about that?"

  Riley felt a charge of hope surge through his chest. "Around."

  Una smiled. The expression didn't suggest friendliness and it made her look even more feline. If she had a tail, it would have been lashing back and forth. "Come through." She turned and disappeared. Riley trotted over quickly, ignoring the snicker from Hackett.

  "I'm glad you weren't too high handed to see me, Una, because—" The smack of her palm jarred him but he was too relaxed to let it do more than swing his head around and back like child's toy on a spring. "Fair enough, I grant you, Una. You might give a lad some warning all the same."

  "I hate feckin' junkies." She uttered the words without rancour and sat behind the beautiful teak desk he remembered so well. Of course the last time he'd seen it Riley had had Una bent over the side of it with his trousers around his ankles as he slammed into her, a speedball coursing through his veins.

  Good times.

  "I'm not a junkie."

  "Yeah, pull the other one. It's got brass bells hanging from it." Una picked up a crumpled pack of Gauloises and lit one, inhaling deeply before she spoke again. "How did you hear about mandrake anthrax?"

  Riley shrugged and slipped into the chair opposite. "Word gets around."

  "Around where?"

  "Just around." Her questions were suspicious. Riley's mouth watered. This shit must be amazing. "You know, just whispers anyway. No one who's actually tasted it."

  "And even though you're no junkie, you want some, is that it?" Her cool gaze fixed him to the chair like an insect on a pin. Curlicues of smoke rose from her nostrils. The early afternoon light caught the fumes as they dissipated. The haze spread toward the ceiling. He found it hypnotic.