John the Revelator (6 page)

Miss Ross finished the poem with a flourish, placed her stick of chalk on the ledge and turned to face the class. The disappearance of her bottom was somewhat compensated for by her blouse being undone to the third.

‘Now, boys,' she said, clapping chalkdust from her palms, ‘I want you to take that down in your copies and learn the first two stanzas for Monday.'

Gabby Mahon emitted another pained sound. Miss Ross consulted the roll, still too new to have gotten the hang of our names.

‘Gabriel Mahon,' she said, ‘would you stand up and read the first eight lines aloud please?'

Gabby stood, in a hoop with the blueballs, squinted at the blackboard and tried to speak. His face went pale and his eyes rolled up until you could see only whites and he took faint and had to be helped out into the bright sunlight of the yard.

And we all envied him something rotten.

 

The Junior Cert should have kept Jamey out of action for at least a couple of weeks, but he was one of those people who get away without doing a thing, who just cram at the last minute and sail through the papers with an ease that makes the rest of us spit nails.

A couple of days after the exams had started I was passing the café with the sign on the door advertising cut-rate long-distance calls. I saw him sitting at a table by the window. He was hunched over a Moleskine notebook, the
Ballo Valley Sentinel
and a mug of coffee set to one side, schoolbag at his feet. His granny glasses were perched on the end of his beaky nose and he was writing furiously, filling the page with reams of tiny spidery writing. Plus, he was wearing—get this—a suit. No secondhand double-breasted job with shabby cuffs and flared trousers either, but a proper three-piece, tailored to fit. He looked good. Jamey had a relationship with clothes I could never hope to emulate, seemed to apply the same set of aesthetics to them as he did to books or music. Me, I just wore whatever my mother picked up in the sales.

He spotted me watching and beckoned me inside. The coffee machine behind the counter hissed.

‘How's the worm-boy,' he said, almost shouting over the din.

To be honest, the worm-boy stuff was getting a bit old. He must've sensed my irritation because that was the last time I heard it.

‘You want something to drink?'

I shook my head and took a seat. He spread the
Sentinel
on the table, tapped the bottom of the front page.

‘Have a look at this,' he said as he rose from his chair.

I read the article while he ordered a refill.

 

Local Asylum Seeker Disappears
After Attack
by Jason Davin, Staff Reporter

 

Concerns were expressed at the sudden disappearance last week of Jude Udechukwu, a 20-year-old non-national whose last known address was at 14 Rafferty Street. Mr Udechukwu,
The Sentinel
understands, was retained in an ‘off the books' capacity at a local garage. It is believed that the night before his disappearance, he was involved in an altercation with a number of locals and failed to report for work the next morning. The following day, a work colleague contacted Mr Udechukwu's landlord, Mr Thos Rackard. On gaining entry to his flat, they found that many of his personal effects were missing. ‘It was odd,' Mr Rackard told
The Sentinel.
‘If he was planning on doing a runner, you'd think he would've wanted his deposit back. It's not like I was planning to keep it.'

At the time of going to press, local Gardai said they were awaiting further developments before considering mounting a search for the missing man.

‘Funny how they call 'em non-nationals,' Jamey said, placing the fresh cup beside the old one. ‘Like they were all born out of thin air. You ask me, he probably got fed up and buggered off back to Africa.'

Seconds later he said, ‘Have you seen the new shop beside Fernie's?'

I hadn't.

‘Aw, man. You should check it out. It's full of mad African stuff. Weird food and ornaments.'

He looked out the window of the café and said, almost to himself: ‘This is one weirdo little village. I tell you, when I get out of this place, I'm gonna write a book about it that'll turn your hair white.'

‘
I am only escaped to tell thee,
' I said.

Jamey's eyebrows arched.

‘What's that?'

It was something my mother was in the habit of saying, in the important tone of voice she reserved for quotations. I repeated it and Jamey nodded.

‘Why did you move up here anyway?' I said.

‘Ollie. The special school is much better than the one in Ballo. Smaller classes.'

‘Why is he in a special school? He seems fine to me.'

‘I know. The kid's sharper than I am. It's one of Dee's ... things. She seems to think he needs special attention. Whatever. I didn't mind moving. Ballo was boring, man. Nothing but housing estates.'

He caught sight of something over my shoulder. His face froze and he spoke in a low voice, barely moving his lips.

‘Don't look, John, but some old bird is staring holes in you through the window.'

Slowly I eased around in my seat. There was a woman there, sure enough. A tall woman in a wool-knit cap. Mrs Nagle. She averted her eyes and moved off, pushing one of those shopping bags on wheels. Jamey watched her go.

‘Who was that nosebag?'

‘Oh, just the old woman who lived in the woods,' I said. ‘A weela weela waile.'

Jamey gathered his papers and put them into his schoolbag. As he got up, he slid a large manila envelope across the table. I picked it up and peered inside.

‘What's this?'

‘One of my stories. Don't read it now. Wait till I'm out the door.'

He shouldered his bag and left, sharp as a blade in his three-piece suit.

The envelope contained a number of A4 sheets, handwritten and photocopied. I counted out my change and ordered a cup of tea and read through the story.

 

The Grace of God
by Jamey Corboy

 

The two o'clock extraction cancelled, so Maurice went back to his book about the Ali-Foreman fight in Zaire. When was that? 1972? ‘74? He could remember watching it through fuzzy reception on the black-and-white television set in the kitchen of their old bungalow. It was a tradition, staying up with his dad until the early hours to watch the big fights, the Rumble in the Jungle, the Thriller in Manilla, the Olympics, the sad travesty of Ali versus Spinks.

Maurice lived for boxing. He was barely out of short trousers when he joined the local club, St Anthony's. They said he was a natural. The old man was proud of him. Not only could he take punishment as well as dish it out, but he loved to train too, the roadwork, the thud of the bag, the smack of the pads, the
slappeta-dappeta
of the overhead ball, the smell of sweat and leather gloves.

But what he saw one afternoon in Ballo changed everything, left him so shook he never climbed inside a boxing ring again. When his father quizzed him about it, he just clammed up. Said he was done fighting and no more about it.

His mother made no secret of her relief. She'd been a bag of nerves ever since a local boy collapsed and died after a bout in Balinbagin. Fifteen years old. What was the chap's name? He couldn't remember. The post-mortem revealed some sort of blood clot on the brain that probably would've done him in sooner or later, but you couldn't tell that to all the concerned parents and protestors who wrote to the papers and lobbied the council about it. As a result, all the amateur clubs in the county came under pressure to make protective gear compulsory.

Like most of the boys, Maurice hated those big bulky headguards. He'd worn them during sparring matches and it felt like trying to fight while wearing a crash helmet. The club's mentors could only shrug and say they didn't like it either, but what could they do? The tourney that day in Ballo was one of the last where the boys were allowed to go bare-headed.

The venue was a draughty old school hall. By the time the St Anthony's contingent arrived Maurice still wasn't assured of a match, so he tried to relax and watch the junior bouts, red-faced little urchins with snotty noses throwing wild barnyard swings. As the afternoon wore on the boxers got bigger and the quality of the fights improved. Maurice was about to start packing up his gear when Andy, one of the club's trainers, brought word.

‘We've found a lad for you,' he said. ‘You'd better get togged off.'

The dressing room was cluttered with stacking chairs and kitbags and towels. The air was thick with the smell of sweat and Deep Heat. Maurice got out of his tracksuit and into his singlet and shorts. He could feel his stomach tighten, a tingling around the back of his neck. He thought of Our Lord in the garden of Gethsemane, sweating blood, and then of the old saying about how you should never bet money on a boxer who crosses himself before a fight, because any fighter relying on the grace of god is a dead duck.

‘Let's get you bandaged up,' said Andy, a spry man in his thirties, wiry and small as a jockey, a handy bantamweight in his time. He took two new rolls of bandages from his tracksuit bottoms, tore a hole in the end of one of the rolls, slipped it over Maurice's thumb and began wrapping the knuckles with practised expertise, swaddling between the fingers, encircling the wrist, tying off the ends.

‘Make a fist.'

Maurice flexed.

‘Too tight?'

‘Nope.'

Andy started on the other hand, talking as he worked.

‘This chap's name is Timmy Breen,' he said. ‘He has a few inches on you, so you'll need to be nifty. Don't go toe to toe. Jab and move. If you land, don't stand there like a daw admiring your handiwork. Jab, jab, jab, then a right hook to the ribs. Boom-boom!'

He bounced back on his heels and mimed a flurry of lethal-looking punches.

‘Where's your gumshield?'

Maurice took it out of his kit bag and gave it to Andy, who slipped it into his shirt pocket.

‘Get warmed up there. Do your shadowboxing. I'll go see what the story is.'

Maurice danced around the room throwing phantom combinations, monitoring his stance, body angled, guard tight, elbows protecting the ribs, chin tucked in, knuckles touching cheekbones.

Andy stuck his head in the door.

‘You're on.'

Maurice followed him out into the hall and stood by the ringside, limbering up. The crowd consisted of other boxers and their families and friends, children running around, old lads wrapped up in overcoats, the back-row experts. Andy held the gloves open, big red and white 14oz pillows. Once he was laced up, Maurice clambered onto the platform and slipped between the ropes. The canvas felt hard and unyielding through the thin soles of his boxing boots. The other boy, Breen, was already in the opposite corner, dancing on the spot. He had broad shoulders and thick legs and a ruddy farmer's face.

Andy rinsed the gumshield in the water bucket and popped it into Maurice's mouth. The feel of it against his palate always made him want to gag.

In through the nose, out through the mouth.

‘Keep that chin tucked in,' Andy was saying. ‘He's got reach, so try and get under his left and work inside.'

Maurice nodded, slapping his gloves together, bouncing on the balls of his feet. The ref climbed into the ring, a bald man in a white shirt. He called both boys together, barked out the rules and sent them back to their corners.

‘Bring the fight to him,' Andy said, his voice charged with urgency. ‘Good lad.'

The bell clanged. Maurice quickly crossed himself and moved to the centre of the canvas. The ref's hand was out in a suspended karate chop.

‘Box!' he barked.

The two boys tapped gloves and began to circle each other. Maurice looked for an opening in the other boy's guard. He feinted a couple of left jabs, gauging Breen's reflexes, but something distracted him from getting stuck in.

Out the corner of his eye, he glimpsed a boy about his own age, standing slumped and slack-jawed in the neutral corner, gloved hands dangling limply round his knees, gumshield jutting out from his mouth like one of those Amazonian tribal faceplates. Drool ran down his chin.

A succession of hard jabs snapped Maurice's head back and then Breen was all over him. It felt like a wall falling in. A right hook to the gut left him winded and gasping for breath. His ears sang, shrill alarm bells jarred by the impact, his brain in scramble mode shrieking
fight-fight-fight
but all the connections were down, he couldn't get his guard up. He was dimly aware of Andy bellowing from the corner, instructing him to tighten up his guard.

A blow to the jaw sent Maurice's gumshield flying and his nose began to spout blood, blood running down the back of his neck like snot, spread all over his face and staining his singlet. The ref stopped the fight to retrieve the gumshield and handed it to Andy to rinse. Breen stood in the neutral corner. The apparition had vanished. The ref grabbed a towel and wiped blood from Maurice's face and instructed both boys to box on.