Read Online Everything in This Country Must by Colum McCann - Free Book Online Page B

he swayed to the radio, it rises up from the bottom of the sea and begins to breathe around us.

    *   *   *
    TWISTING IN HIS SLEEP , he turned his face to the wall in shame when she brought her sleeping bag over to his bed and nudged in beside him, saying she had heard him thrashing. She smelled of the bar—cigarette smoke in her hair and her voice hoarse from singing—and the boy wondered if she had enjoyed herself, and he hoped not, he couldn’t bear the thought of her laughing.
    He could feel the blood racing through the veins in his arm and furtively he loosened the tight strip of black cloth. She zipped herself into her own bag and touched his hair and she said: Everything will be all right.
    The boy pushed himself in against the wall and bit his tongue.
    It’s a nice little pub, she said. Lots of tourists. They put a tip jar out for me and I made a few bob. It was one of those old jars like what you used to get bonbons in. I put a pound in the bottom first to make sure everyone put in paper money and nearly everyone did. Isn’t that funny? We’re going to like it here eventually, wait’ll you see.
    Did you hear anything more?
    I caught the phone ringing earlier by the pier and it was your grandma calling us.
    When are we going to get a real phone?
    Oh, one of these days.
    What did she say?
    She said she loves you.
    That’s what she always says.
    She said she wants for you to be strong.
    Strong, he said, his voice breaking high and then deep, and he wondered to himself if he was two different people within just one word, both a boy and a man.
    If you’re on hunger strike, he asked, does your blood pressure go up or down?
    You ask the strangest questions.
    Well, he said. Up or down?
    I’ve no idea, replied his mother. I imagine both the numbers fluctuate. Why d’you ask?
    Ach, no reason really.
    You’re a mystery.
    A good mystery?
    Yes, a good mystery, she laughed.
    I don’t want to be a mystery.
    Well then you’re not.
    Ach, Mammy, he said, and he turned himself to the wall.
    He heard her body swish and move within the sleeping bag, trying to get comfortable. He was surprised when he found himself awake in the morning, alarmed that he had managed to fall asleep, his mother beside him, gently wheezing.
    *   *   *
    ON THE BEACH there stood a pole. A red-and-white life preserver ring hung from it. He went there late in the evening while his mother was gone, singing in the pub.
    The beach was deserted. Windblown litter moved along the sand. A bright light burned in the house of the old kayaking couple, and the boy imagined that it was the safe house. He waved to his comrades and took to firing stones at the beach pole. At first he missed with most of his shots, but more and more the stones began to make small dents in the wood. He developed rhythms of firing and the pole became a soldier in riot gear. The life-preserver ring was his shield. The soldier had a baby face and spoke with a London accent. The boy stood back and threw a rock, which hit the eyes of the pole, and the soldier squealed. Some blood came from the eyebrow and the boy danced and spun in the sand and executed a perfect kung-fu kick in the air. He fired another stone, aiming this time at the neck. The boy had heard once that this is where military gear was most exposed.
    In the house back north he had never been allowed out at night, but now he began his own riot on the sand.
    Fuck you, he shouted.
    The soldier crouched down at the knee but still the rock caught him and sent him reeling backward as sirens wailed and Molotov cocktails were carried in from the sea. The boy tore off his T-shirt and wrapped it around his face to act as a sort of balaclava. He ran forward and spat at the pole, and when he turned the soldier tried to hit him from behind, but the boy ducked with perfect timing. He swung around and kicked the soldier in the face and blood erupted from his nose.
    You’d try it, would you? Come on. Get up. Come on.
    In the