Page 60 - 2017 WTP Special Edition

Drive-By (continued from preceding page)
crowned The Queen of the Harp, and was sitting on a bale of hay on a flat-bed trailer, getting towed up main street, Granard, by a Massey Ferguson 165, drove by Moxy O’Rourke. Moxy was ebul- lient. Rita was nineteen. I was nursing a pint in the doorway of the Greville Arms. And it was shaping to drizzle.
spoon, glance for direction at Rita, who pokes this look, go on, engage. I twist a face like I’m honestly trying to un-puzzle his conundrum. But I’m dis- tracted, and worrying with my spoon, a hunk of potato through gravy.
And another memory that often follows that one, is later, when Anika was born, telling Rita that thankfully the child was blessed with her moth- er’s looks. And Rita taking Anika back from me and saying: do you know what, Jim, those looks will just be another thing she’s expected to look after.
And this here, I find, is precisely the quandary with Thomas, do you tell him to cop the hell on, quit filling his head with this shite, or do you hu- mour him, pay no heed, under the hope that one day, better sense might prevail?
—Sweetheart, says Rita now — it will all be ok, just go and get your dinner from the oven.
—You couldn’t, Thomas says —that’s the thing, it would’ve been impossible.
—I’m sorry, I say —I am.
—Well, they tell us the inferno obliterated all trace of the fuselage, he says —all that metal, ti- tanium even, and yet, they also tell us the victims were positively identified through their DNA and dental records.
I fill the kettle and stand watching it boil. Behind me, Thomas slows in the pace of the clacking on his laptop. There comes gravel and angles in the silence between us. I chance a look at Thomas. Both earphones are out. The kettle clicks off. Gradually, his clacking recoups its velocity.
Who’s They, I want to ask. I hear a lot of people whispering conspiracies about They?
I don’t need to ask what Thomas is doing on his laptop. I know he’s not looking for work. Short odds are, Thomas is befuddling his mind with the latest conspiracy-theory bullshite. He’s been through them all: The Freemasons, and the New World Order; 9/11 and why the Jews never showed up to work; and why, why-oh-why, were there no scorch marks on the front lawn of the Pentagon?
And Thomas keeps looking at me, nodding, smil- ing. Then, seemingly satisfied that whatever
his point is, it’s proven, he’s pushing back in
the chair. He’s shaping like a doctor who’s just granted me the all-clear. You can leave now sir. All blasé, the cut of him. And I find all this especially galling because, that evening, of all evenings, I’m famished, and worn-out. That whole long day I worked for the Department of Parks and Wildlife. Twenty-whatever degrees of white Australian heat, with a brush cutter, maintaining fire breaks in the John Forrest National Park. All day, coping with the rip of a of a two-stroke petrol engine, togged like a bomb disposal technician in regula- tion PPE, and sweltering, getting ball rash. And then these are the questions I’m expected to front in the evenings?
Get this, a few evenings ago, Thomas, oddly chatty, says:
—Dad, if you incinerated a plane to the point where there was no trace left of the fuselage, how would you identify the 184 people on board?
I look up from my bowl of watery stew, and see through the rising steam that the lad is deadly earnest. The hoodie is down, so it’s a big occasion, and he’s pitched all eager in the seat. I drop the
—It’s an unreasonable suspension in basic logic, says Thomas.
51
I drop the spoon, glance at Rita, who’s giving me
—Go on son, I say, finally —enlighten me.
—Impossible?