CC 96: Ruff

The defective fist didn’t even brush one of Geary’s lacy whiskers, gliding past his face gracelessly like a frightened plane dodging the mountains in a movie.  Contact or no, he fell back in an awful mess anyway, in his valiant measure to avoid the blow.  I was about to join the fallen, being too unsteady myself, but before I could do so, Francie had me pinned  against the wall.

‘What are you doing , Pascal?  You can’t be doing that shite in my house.’

‘Tell him, he fuckin’ started it,’ I yelled at Francie, struggling against the hold he had on me like Jesus screaming from the cross.

‘You’re the one acting up, mate.  You can’t go throwing digs around the place.  This is a small room.  And you can’t even stand up straight.  Throwing your fists around like that, you might wind up knocking someone else out instead.  Or worse – spill the drinks.’

‘Let me go.’

‘I’ll let you go when you calm down, you’re causing mayhem right now.’

‘Who do you think you are – Jesus on the cross?’ screeched Serena.  Now the Serena I knew from the past had come back.  ‘Geary’s right.  You’re making a big fuss about nothing.  You’re not the victim, Pascal.  You’re the one throwing punches.’

‘I didn’t hit him.  He just fell.’

‘But you tried to hit me, you gobshite,’ said Geary, as he got to his feet and plonked himself down on the couch. ‘If I didn’t have good reflexes, you could have broken my jaw.’

‘Reflexes?’ said Jane.  ‘Ya fell on your hole.’

‘I don’t think he’s strong enough to break anyone’s jaw now,’ said Paidi. 

I saw that Emer had come out of her trance a little, but only to be met with the shock of all this unfolding foolishness.  I wished for her to stand up and shout No and jump in to defend me against these bastards who were out to crush poor old me; that did not happen as we were in the season of delusion, and I was the blind king with an army of none behind me.  Fuck it though.  I had a right to my own rights and wrongs.  I projected sadness into Emer’s eyes when it might well have been embarrassment only that resided in there.  That piece of crap?  Your husband?  Ex-husband?   He’s making a show of himself, and yourself, you should bloody well know that.  Pascal’s at it again, flying off the handle.  That’s what she was thinking they were thinking, I was near sure of it.  The only thing I couldn’t be deluded about was the condemnation in her eyes.  I’d seen it before, but was deluded before.  

‘I’ll go, let me go,’ I said.

‘Are you calm?’

‘I am.’ 

Francie looked disappointed as he loosened his grip.  I liked him a lot, so his disappointment brought me more gloom.

‘Pascal, you were out of order.  I think it is best if you just leave.  You’re a good man, you know, but fucksake, I can’t be having this sort of thing here.  I worship at the hooves of harmony.  This is a shrine, this house.  There are rules for co-existing, you know.’

‘I’m sorry, man.  I’ll be out of all your ways directly.’ 

I took off my glasses, breathed on the lenses, and gave them a rub.  See if I could modify the optical magnification.  I had a wee look around the room to see if there was anything I needed to take with me.  But no.  I still had my jacket on, so apart from that and my glasses, there was nothing else in the room belonging to me.  Not a thing.

‘Folks,’ I began.  ‘I’m really sorry.  Geary.  Sorry, man.  I’m fucked up.  I’ll leave yous in peace.’

And I left.  Jane said goodbye.  Francie said goodbye too.  But the others, nothing.     

On the way out of Francie’s house, I bumped into a small table in the hallway, and knocked some books off it.  ‘Sorry, just spilled some books,’ I shouted back into the sitting room.  Didn’t want them to think I was wrecking the place on the way out in some further display of childishness.  Nobody answered, so I just picked the books up, and put them back on the table.  Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky.  It struck me then that I never did find out which philosopher Francie was.  Maybe Kierkegaard.  Or maybe that was too Christian for his sensibilities.  Ah, it didn’t matter. 

I fell out the door and into the ethereal night with its silence and its mystery and its microscopic bugs whipping at the face.  For a moment, I questioned the reality of the night and its mysteries and its bugs and my face and the silence, as though I was still lost in some version of here or was it there, and had not slotted into the correct here or there yet.  But as I breathed in the cold air, I acknowledged taking the breaths, and the thought that I was thinking about breathing made me feel less miserable.  I could see the night, sense my face, feel the bugs, hear the silence, and almost smell the mysteries as I thought my thoughts.  I am here, I thought.  But then afterwards realised I was not in point of fact here but sloppily there, falling as I did, in that moment, face down in the garden, and my face splashed right into the damp muck and grass.  It was wet there.  Better stand up, stop thinking, just walk. 

I stood floundering on the road outside the Pollard home for a few minutes expecting a taxi or something to come along.  But no chance.  Mount Avenue was a lonely country road most hours, so you wouldn’t expect it to be anything other at three or four in the morning or whatever the fuck time it was.  The fog from before had lifted, but even though the road stayed lit up, it was hard to see anything with the shroud of night weighing in to harass my late-stricken vision.  I looked to my left, then to my right: nothing.  I started walking back the way we’d come in, past Maeve House in the field across the way, and toward Cuchullain’s Castle at the top of the hill.  It was easier to see Maeve House now with the fog gone, and it looked to have had a slow Halloween, unstirred by the usual unearthly forces; maybe all the action was at the Pollard’s tonight.  Haunted houses had fallen on hard times.  As I dithered along, trying as best as I could to keep my balance, I suddenly heard, coming from behind, the muscular ruffs of a formidable brute, the canine custodian of roads in the night.  I turned and saw the dog’s silhouette perched a few yards away looking for all the world like the land’s perpetual terror.  That pup from the next house Francie was talking about.  Why didn’t they keep this beast locked indoors?  Silly people, letting their mongrel run about like that getting up to no good.  Oh shit, it was moving forward.  Stupid dog.  It wouldn’t get me.  Even so, I walked a little faster, but the ruffs kept coming, and they got louder, and came closer, ruff-ruff-ruff, and I started to shit myself, and when I looked back, I saw it was quickly approaching, running, and ruffing, at me, and I tried to run myself, but couldn’t, and I tried to ruff back at it, but it just ruffed louder in response, and harder, with more authenticity, as the wind laughed in my face, and the ruffs filled my ears, and my soul filled with fear, and eventually, ruff-ruff-ruff, I fell, again, I think.