Ambulance (Part Two)

With you gone the ground felt more solid and the walking more painful.  My legs were shot and I had a limp which I could not recall having before.  My body, absent father to numerous pains, was now discovering, and taking responsibility for, the life it had dodged for so long.  I was glad it was too early to be acknowledged by the wider public. But of course things tend to happen in the first light to faze and nuisance you.  As I drooped along the footpath, I saw coming towards me two young men and even though I was not stark naked I felt that way.  The lads had relatively new shirts on, sweaty and half-buttoned from a night on the lash, I assumed.  They were loud.  Their voices.  Nothing out of the ordinary there.  Even from a distance I could see one of them had a face like the devil – the eyes small, brows thick.   Nothing out of the ordinary there either.  There is an intense physiognomy of evil in this country.  And so this advancing evil unsettled me.  I was sure I was done for.  Something was different, my knack was knocked.  I would normally fear no-one.  Not at any hour.  Yet I was overcome in the moment with a sense of dread.  My stomach became heavy and turned slowly.  It was not the anticipation of a hiding which concerned me.  It was the facing someone.  That instant when the aggressors got eyeball to eyeball, grinning to themselves, enjoying the terror they were inducing.  I was sure this was connected to the bullies of my youth, though I would require a closer analysis of my life by an outside observer to confirm it.  The lads were still some yards away when I ducked into the nearest back lane, rose above my limp, and ran and ran as though my life depended on it.  As I fled, I could hear them laughing fiendishly in the background.  I didn’t turn to look but I knew they had stopped at the lane’s entrance to point and ha-ha at my spineless gallop. 

The lads didn’t follow after, thank God, but the fear stayed with me.  Soon I was forced to stop running as a dead-end approached.  The lane was more than just a lane, it was in fact more complex than I had thought.   I turned left and was taken deeper into the back streets where a larger nexus of alleyway was revealed.  All the detritus of modern life was on the ground there.  Faeces, cans, soiled garments, spent needles.  There were kinks and bends as I wandered along, but none showed the way to an exit.  Bends led to more bends, which led to more kinks, then to unwanted dead-ends.  On the other side it was hotels, tattoo parlours, fast food restaurants, various central agencies; on this side it was long brick walls, some of which were deftly graffitied, many of which were not.  As I turned corners to nowhere, stopped, wound back, and tried a different corner, stopped, wound back, and tried another, I got to know intimately a multitude of surfaces.  On one pathway the floor was set with smooth tarmac and the walking was fine.  But the next thing there’d be cobblestone and effort.  A great deal more of it consisted of broken old stone and glass.   

It was apparent quickly that I had gone astray.  The fear brought on by the lads, irrational as it was, expanded to something more sinister.  I had known there to be hundreds of back streets in the city but I had no real understanding of their cavernous dimensions. I stopped, unnerved, still no end in sight.  Looking behind me, I realised I’d gone so far in and taken so many turns that I was no longer sure which direction I had come from.  Breadcrumbs wouldn’t have made a blind bit of difference.   The labyrinth seemed to have broadened and convolved before my eyes, making escape less realisable.  Then glory.  I saw what appeared to be a green Ford Transit parked up ahead.  There must have been an exit close by, or else how could that van have gotten there?  Also, if I could not find the way out, I could always wait for the driver to come back and follow them.   I made my way towards the vehicle, along the cracked asphalt and moss and foil and bloody tissues, but I was slow, being tired after the run, and still with the limp.  I thought perhaps the tiredness was affecting my eyes too for the colour green, which I had marked out in my eyesight as the van, appeared to be fading and by the time I got to its location it was gone.  Was the Ford Transit a mirage?  Fata Morgana?  I had known the back streets to be wild, unmanaged places that could send one assuredly mad and were presently to be avoided at all costs, but I hadn’t imagined it had gotten this bad. 

I found a grassy patch by a wall and plopped myself down.  It was damp.  This was a prime pissing spot, no doubt.  As good a place as any.  I would have pissed there myself if I’d had the urge.  But wait.  Perhaps I had.  Indeed I stood right up again and did just that.  Might as well.  Nice.  After pissing I sat down again and my thoughts went back to you and your withdrawal.  In my longing for you to return, I thought I heard your voice.  It’s your nastiness got you here, you said.  You can’t handle me at all, you said.  You can’t handle your drink, you said.  Get over yourself, you said.  It was not your voice.  But you were right.  Regarding my own affairs with great sorrow, I wondered if The Faber Book of Ballads would have me.  If they were planning to publish a new edition.  They could shove me in there between Dunlavin Green and The Croppy Boy. 

Damper beneath me.  Considerably so.  Had I sat down in my own piss? Refreshing, all the same.  The sun was up somewhere.  Its light began to fill the murky space and make known to me previously unseen paraphernalia, additional evidence of self-abuse, as well as, surprisingly, a newspaper with a half-finished crossword.  Someone had done a fair job with it but there were empties.  My eyes fell on 9 Across.  A 6-letter word for Yellow beginning with G.  It had to be either Golden or Gilded but I couldn’t be certain until I answered 4 Down.  This was not to occur as I recalled I had failed to retrieve a pen from my forsaken belongings back at the Hegarty house.  So the newspaper instead became a mat for me to sit on. 

In the fast-coming light, my waking delirium reached its peak and with all the narcotic debris around me I imagined I was in a hospital dumping ground.  A rather bad hospital if they were discarding their waste in this manner.  And maybe that’s where I was.  Behind some black market off-the-grid emergency room, the kind offering low-cost surgeries and irregular or illegal treatments.  Inside, our favourite citizen was getting pumped full of laughing gas.  Doctor constantly looking around, not concentrating, poor work with the scalpel.  Blood everywhere.  People laughing.  Jesus, imagine the wait, imagine the magazines.  That’s what you get when you gut your services.  Guts on the waiting room floor.  Guts in the lanes.  And everywhere besides.  

Vomit came.  To my surprise.  You were the one who used to throw up all the time.  Not me.  There was nobody around, as far as I could tell, yet I was given to embarrassment anyhow.  I’d been able to get by without throwing up for what seemed like ages, but had witnessed many times your casual regurgitations.  Strange you not being there for my comeback.  We were meant to share these moments.  If you had seen it you would have been proud.  What came out of me was meagre, but impressive.  Like in that Chinese film where the monk bleeds gold, I spewed the gilded stuff.  A rather enlightened discharge.  Bright yellow (with a hint of green).  When did you ever see that?  Only with curry.  I’d had no curry. 

Although the vomit was novel, I was well-used to the shaking frenzies, and one overwhelmed me now, heart pounding like temple bells and a chill going through me as if my bones were becoming ice.  It was that state of being which I hoped could be seen by those I had wronged over time, so they could send some sympathy my way, forgive me for whatever it was I had done.  Nothing worse than that feeling of being cast out for an unremembered event, not remembering who it was cast you out, or how you were cast out, or why, and feeling that you had likely done the casting out yourself amid rashness and lunacy, making loved ones cower, afraid of what you may do next.  Your outbursts.  Your bedlam.  If those you had burdened could sense the burden in you, maybe, just maybe you could retire from their bad books for good.  Override a lifetime of bad dreams.  Ah, stop it, will you, with this wallowing, nobody was killed.  Not that you hadn’t contemplated it.  That barman, remember.  True you were not a customer in his establishment.  You only wanted to use the toilet but he came chasing after you, nothing better to be doing with himself, just to make you leave.  He had every right to, perhaps.  But it was the way he did it, you know.  No manners, him saying to you, condescendingly.   An ignorant bastard, yes.  And you had thoughts about going back and whacking him, didn’t you?  With a hammer.  But you didn’t, so give it a rest.  Sometimes you narcissists need to take a good hard look in the mirror.  You have legs, so walk.  An arse, so get off it. 

And then the first sign of life I’d seen since running from the lads and getting lost in this backhouse helix.  A pigeon.  Of course.  Pecking at the junkie ends.  I offered my concern, saying, There’s not much there for you, bud, and you’re liable to catch something, realising only after it was probably already perishing with every disease under the morning sun.  It was trembling too, like myself, looking poorly and wan and typically dim-witted.  Why was it these birds, known for their skills in homing and carrying, always looked so straightforwardly dumb?

I could hear cars passing, the early morning buses, and suddenly, loudest of all: an ambulance.  Nee-naw.  Nee-naw.  That old woman was having a laugh again from her brown cloud.  After the first ambulance went by, there was another.  Nee-naw.  Nee-naw.  By God, I could do with one myself if there was one going extra.  Town wasn’t short of emergencies this morning.  The old woman was at the switchboard.  Looking after our favourite citizens, even our least favourite ones.  I imagined she’d do a fine job if she could control that snippy side of her.   

I got to my feet.   Still shivering.  With increasing light of day there came a clearer head. 

Things happen. 

I found myself walking again, slight-bodied but perseverant.  Tarmac please.  I could hear my bones move, which was both reassuring and unnerving, but I decided to side with reassuring, for the sun gave a blast of exuberance.  It occurred to me in my growing pep that no way out would show itself if I didn’t go looking for one.  So tarmac would you please.  And quick.  Some buoyancy.  Get away from all the nee-naw.  And be more foresighted when lost in the future, hey. Yes.  You’ve no home to go to.  In your head.   So make more maps as you go.  In your head.  Be more unintoxicated and brisk.  And most of all glad when your bones work.