Hello and Goodbye by Patrick McCabe

Author:Patrick McCabe [McCabe, Patrick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Quercus
Published: 2013-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

—You’ve thrown your lot in with the ultimate traitor, Gabriel. However, there may still be time to exonerate yourself, he had added.

Whatever the fuck that was supposed to mean.

*

We’d dream about America as we lay there, tapping out messages – sending our hopes and deepest yearnings in Morse code along the pipes.

—One thing you never try is to put one over on the Iron Valley Boys! you’d hear Donal Givney bawling. And then he’d start into it, narrating this crazy fantastic movie that he’d dreamed – in which the three of us ‘motherfuckers’ were set to return to our home place as heroes. There was no one to touch him when it came to making up that movie bullshit. And it kept us going – no, it really did. As he described every scene of Return to The Meadowlands – along with every single shrub that grew on the slopes of Big Iron Mountain, and along the shore of the lake where we’d spent our childhood.

—Fifteen years and we’re out of here – we’re gone! you’d hear Gavigan roaring, thumping the wall.

Finally, in the end we had forged a pact – that as soon as we got out we’d buy a heap and travel to America.

—Make it a Trans Am, Givney shouted, scorch the asphalt right across country!

—Coast to coast, all the fucking way!

—Burn rubber, yuh sumbitches! Here we come! The Valley Boys – they are on the road!

And it was in honour of that pledge I eventually made the trip – with Beni Banikin, all the way across America. Just as far as we could go.

The Farmer was always getting things wrong. Singing ‘Judas King’ to the lyrics of a Thin Lizzy song – instead of ‘Eunice King’ – which was, of course, the actual name. I had always been on the verge of pointing that out to him, but never had the heart when I’d see him in full flight – complete, as always, with invisible guitar.

Not that the infelicity appeared to bother our commanding officer a great deal, however. Utilising the malapropism to significant effect, as he saw it – resourceful fellow that he was.

—So, then – how is Judas today? was what he said – and I really do feel, at this point, that I have to acknowledge that in those latter days in the prison my resentment towards Dog White had deepened to such an extent that it was difficult to restrain myself from actually striking him.

—Not many of us lucky enough to have a song composed about us – are we, Gabriel?

I decided it was prudent and wise to attempt to make no response of any kind. As he emitted what I can only describe as a lungless laugh – and again was gone.

Not that he was finished with me or anything, as I was to discover later on that evening, when yet another note was pushed underneath my cell door. A cold dew formed on my forehead as I read it.

—Goodbye, Mr Rat. Ultinam viscos tuos canes inferni fucking edeant.

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