The Shepherd's Hut

But I spose the women and the children was the closest. There’s something about the men just stops them being able.

past is still in them. The force of events long gone, it lingers. These heavenly bodies and earthly forms, what are they but expressions of matters unfinished? Perhaps it’s not childish nonsense to see stones as men walking, to behold the moon and feel a tinge of dread. A stone is a fact, a consequence. And the moon, it marks a man’s days, does it not? Another month gone, a reminder every cycle that your moment is waning. No wonder it catches in a little fella’s chest when he sees it. Mebbe lunatics are men who’ve remembered they’re just men, not angels.

There’s a sad feeling in a place people have just walked out of and left behind.

Anything with blood in it can probably go bad. Like meat. And it’s the blood that makes me worry. It carries things you don’t even know you got.

And I wish I could say I stayed up late thinking about him but the truth is I was only awake a little while. I was so tired the swag felt like a sponge that soaked me up. I went to sleep like someone disappearing from the earth, like rain sopped into dust.

For the first time in my life I know what I want and I have what it takes to get me there. If you never experienced that I feel sorry for you. But it wasn’t always like this. I have been through fire to get here. I seen things and done things and had shit done to me you couldn’t barely credit. So be happy for me. And for fucksake don’t get in my way.

It’s a dangerous feeling getting noticed, being wanted. Getting seen deep and proper, it’s shit hot but terrible too. It’s like being took over. And your whole skin hurts like you suddenly grew two sizes in a minute.

To live you gotta be hard, I know that. But nobody wants to be a deadset cunt. That’s just not fucking decent.

Don’t you see it Jaxie Clackton, you are an instrument of God.’ ‘Oh, I said, you mad fucker. You been out under the moon too long.

Where was I? Who was I? What was I? … And for a long time Fintan took it just like that. Giving them nothing. And it was horrible and incredible and it all piled up on me, squashing me in, forcing me down, until something cracked and all in one moment it was like everything landed. All the birds landed. The sunlight landed. The song landed. All the decent things in him landed. On me. On my head. And I knew where I was, and who I was, and what I was. Yes, what I am. And it was just like he said. What I laughed at him for. It was like the sun and moon going through me. I was charged …

Please God, whatever I was I am no longer….All is forgotten, if not forgiven—it could have come to that. But I don’t trust the thought. I don’t know if it’s because it would be too easy or too terrible to imagine no one cares anymore.

But I’m not such a good judge of monsters; I don’t know if the idea of a good death repels me now because it’s in itself repellent, or because I no longer have the courage to seek such a thing.

out there houses are rare as rocking horse turds.

Shanksing across that country you stick out like a rat on a birthday cake.

Oh, lad, I know they’re only stones. And the moon is only the moon. But they’re not empty things, you know. The past is still in them. The force of events long gone, it lingers. These heavenly bodies and earthly forms, what are they but expressions of matters unfinished? Perhaps it’s not childish nonsense to see stones as men walking, to behold the moon and feel a tinge of dread. A stone is a fact, a consequence. And the moon, it marks a man’s days, does it not? Another month gone, a reminder every cycle that your moment is waning. No wonder it catches in a little fella’s chest when he sees it. Mebbe lunatics are men who’ve remembered they’re just men, not angels. Jesus, I said. That’s what you come out to see the moon for, to remember you’re gunna die? No, he said. To remember I am a creature, not a ghost. I am, for all my sins, the thing itself, not just the idea. Ah, look at that moon. Still rising, rising. Like the wafer. Forever out of reach. When I close my eyes it burns in my head. And Jaxie, how I wish that afterglow would light my way. To sleep. To peace.

I got up and pulled on me boots and futzed about finding me treehole in the dark and then I dug the phone out of it and got back in me swag and switched it on. Just to look at old stuff from before Christmas, texts and posts and shit. Just to see Lee’s face, look into her uneven eyes. And you wouldn’t believe it but for a moment the bloody thing lit up, said no service, emergency calls only, and it was like a miracle. But before I could even thumb up a pic the fucker died on me. All I had was that pale blue light burnt into the back of me eyes and it stayed in me like moonlight glowing on inside me head. Then I knew I didn’t even need a lame-arse phone. I had the light of her in me. Had her face right there in front of me. So I stared hard into her eyes, the green one first and then the grey, knowing she’d feel me there in her room, in the dark, up at Magnet. She always got me, Lee, and now I knew she’d get me tonight, laying there in her bed, feel me like a sheet on her so she could pull me up to her chin and be safe. Lee. Lee. Jesus, Lee. I was aching like a hungry animal, glowing like a fucking bushfire and I knew she felt me. There was no bloody way she couldn’t. I was a storm on the way. The smell of food, the sound of clean water. There isn’t one thing in the world hot and hard as knowing there’s someone waiting, coming, pressing, wanting you. Even a priest understands it, I get that now.

Liam Rector’s “Song Years”: “Change is hard and hope is violent”.

I suspect that God is what you do, not what or who you believe in. But people do shit things all the time, I said. There’s something wrong with us. Perhaps. And maybe not. But when you do right, Jaxie, when you make good — well, then you are an instrument of God. Then you are joined to the divine, to the life-force, to life itself. That’s what I believe. That’s what I hope for. And it’s what I have missed. That’s all jumblyfuck to me, I said as decent as I could. Well, think of it this way, he said, pushing his specs back up his nose. When somebody does me a kindness, it enlarges me, adds to my life, you see? And not only mine — it adds to all life. Which is why I wanted to thank you. For coming here. Me? Fintan gave a sad little laugh. And I caught him looking at me goony as an emu. What? I said. Don’t you understand me, boy? Can’t you see it? Jaxie Clackton, you are an instrument of God.

In the end he wore me down. Always asking. And the answer I give him is still the only one I have. What do I want? Peace. And it actually shut him up. He didn’t niggle me about it. It was like he got it straight off. I don’t just want quiet, neither. I want peace.

sort of worked, our arrangement. Before I couldna seen the sense in it. But two of us getting meat and wood, two of us keeping a look out, it was more efficient that one bloke faffing about on his own. And it wasn’t we had anything in common exactly but we was another human to talk to.

The spent shell come out the .243 shining like a bright idea.

Whatever it was went through me like a rifle rag. Come dawn, me date was so hot you could have lit a sparkplug off of it.

We was just kids, we did kid stuff. And we didn’t have things to do like people in the city. We couldn’t catch the bus to the beach or the movies or hang out in big shopping malls. We had to ride everywhere or shanks it. Go for a milkshake at the roadhouse, check out the tip. Because there was no KFC or Subway. We’d walk along the highway looking for eagle feathers.

Drug dealing worse than kiddy fiddling, is it? Stop that, now! There’s no need and you’ve no right. You think the Catholics care how they make their money? They bloody love gangsters, it’s their bread and butter. Good God, child, you wouldn’t know the half of it. You wouldn’t have the faintest notion.

Jesus, I told meself, harden the fuck up. She heard me say that once, Mum. To me little cousin out by the laundry where he was bawling, his knee bleeding a tiny bit. She had that disgusted look on her face. What? I said. I didn’t do nothin. You’re no better than your father, she said. Listen to you, Jaxie, you sound just like him. I didn’t talk to her for three days.

So we had some blues, me and Fintan. He said we were merely conducting civilised conversation. But sometimes it was like he didn’t know how close he was to getting his head stove in. Or maybe he didn’t care. Even so, everything was peaceful more or less. Until the wind came round from the north.

Say I hit your number, called you up, you’d wonder what the fuck, every one of youse, and your mouth’d go dry. Maybe you’re just some stranger I pocket-dialled. Or one of them shitheads from school I could look for. Any of youse heard my voice now you’d think it was weather. Or a bird screaming. You’d be sweating sand. Like I’m the end of the world.

elbows-out walk like a scorpion all burred up for a fight

I spose it’s wrong to pray that someone dies… But I’ve thought about all the prayers. If that’s what I was doing them years…Asking something, someone, anything, for a big black anvil to fall from the sky like in the cartoons. Kerang! On Wankbag’s head. Because nothing else was gunna save [me]…