Solar Bones. Mike McCormack
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older sister who looked on his antics with a mixture of admiration and jealousy, Mairead, the doting mother who saw something to be proud of in the blithe way he had set aside his studies to take to the road and myself, the father whose patience was sorely tested and who found himself in a constant state of grating irritation with him – a topic of conversation enlivening and productive of so many different themes and moods that to be reminded
later, as we drove home, by Mairead of how completely overthrown I had been earlier in the evening reduced me instantly to a shamed helplessness which she probed in that way of hers, warning me there may have been every chance I had reacted more aggressively than I thought so that it was now advisable that I should bethink myself and come to a clearer assessment of what had happened because
you were frightened
how do mean
you were, I was worried you might lash out at someone
when have I ever lashed out at anyone
I know, that’s what worried me
Mairead said, with the darkness passing in a wet glare on the windscreen as we made our way along the narrow secondary roads connecting the sleepy villages of our homeward journey, me in the passenger seat, unused to someone else behind the wheel of my own car, so finding it doubly hard to cope with Mairead’s questions but eventually admitting
yes I was
hoping that the subject would be buried quickly once and for all
I was frightened, both for me and for her, are you saying I overreacted
no, but I was surprised you reacted as you did – what was it exactly that got you so upset
there was blood
yes, it’s different to oils, a big swerve away from her previous work, but I still find it odd that you could be so shocked by it
I would have thought it would be shocking not to be shocked by it – when did we become so blasé about such things – and she was so poorly as a child
she wasn’t poorly, she was a bit anemic, low in iron so she had to take a supplement which stained her teeth – did you notice how she had them polished tonight, it gave her that shine –
I wasn’t looking at her teeth – all that blood – I had an image of her sitting on the side of a bed with a syringe in her arm, that’s the picture that came to me
for god’s sake Marcus, you’ve no worries about her
I’m her father, it’s my job to worry, do you know how she harvested it
harvested it – you’d swear we were talking about one of her organs
you have a better word
no, but if she said she was careful then I believe her – look, you need have no worries about a woman who wears a coat like that, they are not likely to put themselves in harm’s way
that’s nonsense
no it’s not, so now
I worried that some new sensitivity to shock and fear had opened up in me, some defect or weakness that might expose me to some unanticipated shame with which I would have no ability to cope, something that would have to be met with definite refutation if the grinding anguish which now churned inside me were to be prevented from growing into something more corrosive and
not to worry, Mairead continued, it was only blood, it could have been a lot worse
how could it have been worse
you could have walked into the gallery and found her standing naked
why would she be naked
oh you know, some of these performance artists are pretty out there, she could have been cuddling a pig
a pig
yes, or naked and peeing into a
ok Mairead, I get the picture
I groaned as she
drove on through the wet night, passing through those small towns and villages which slept with their empty streets under a sodium shroud, moving on into the narrow bog roads that were unlit but that had a precarious sense of being raised over the sea of heather and scutch grass stretching out on both sides, driving on through the ragged moonlight in which we seemed to be the only car on the road, Mairead taking it easy because
I’ve never driven these roads at night
she said, her gaze focused as she kept a steady speed into the bends and sudden turns which
you never realise how narrow they are till you have to drive them at night, so narrow and twisty
there’s no rush, just take your time
I thought you engineers would have straightened all these roads during the boom years
we were told we had better things for doing with our money – most of the boom money went into bypassing or linking major urban centres – there wasn’t a whole lot spent on bog roads, certainly not a few miles of blue road like this
blue road
yes
what does blue road mean
blue road means that it is not green road
blue road and green road
yes
let me guess, blue and green politics
that’s it
and this road got ignored
it did
because green was in power
yes
because, let me guess again – the ballot boxes in this townland keep coughing up blue votes
that’s right
and as long as they do these roads will stay narrow and windy and the pot-holes will deepen
certainly not much will be spent on straightening them out – slow down here, this is a temporary surface stretch, these chippings could slide out from under you on a bend like this and
she drove on, keeping a steady speed in the middle of the road, through more bogland stretching away into the darkness, the lights of scattered homesteads winking in the level distance like ships out to sea, miles of bog before stone walls and sod fences began to rise on both sides of the road to close in around the car and
that’s odd, she said
what’s odd
we just passed a single street light in the corner of that field, one street light all on its own in the middle of nowhere and
I know, did you see what was under the streetlight in the corner of that field
a few cows
there was a half ring feeder
so
so why would you need a street-light over a half ring feeder
how would I know
think about it
it’s the light
yes, shining on
feeding cattle
exactly
so someone got a streetlight put in the corner of his field so he can see his way at night to feed them, is that right
yes, that light has been there for years, one engineer tried to get rid of it but word came down from on high that the light was to stay where it was
so now we’re stuck with it
we are
that’s ridiculous
it’s not as ridiculous as trying to remove it now, when our engineer tried to do that he was told fairly sharpish