Songdogs by Colum McCann

Author:Colum McCann
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Picador

SATURDAY

a burst of blue herons

Went to town – smell of sea salt still in my hair – and bought my train ticket to Dublin, got him some haemorrhoid cream in the chemist. He was embarrassed by it when I gave it to him, retreated his way up the stairs, humming a bit of a tune.

‘You have to sing every now and then,’ he said to me from the top of the stairs, ‘it’s the only way of pissing on doom.’

He waved the little tube of cream in the air.

I laughed and went out to the barn, started nailing down a few of the stray aluminium sheets that have popped through the rivets over the years. The barn’s in terrible shape, looks a bit like my cabin. Won’t last another winter. Used the ladder to climb up on the roof. I was there an hour or so, switching a couple of the metal sheets, turning down the jagged ends, putting in new rivets. Some of the beams were a little soft and woodwormed, the nails sank right into them. The sky was the colour of old jeans and I sat back to watch a ziggurat of geese make their way through it. They flew over the house and my eyes followed them. Leaning against the ladder, I caught sight of the postman’s van driving along the lane, Jimmy Kiernan from school at the wheel. He parked his van, rang on the doorbell. Trash metal blasted from a ghetto-blaster on the passenger seat. I could have called out to him, over the music, but Kiernan was one of the last people I’d have wanted to speak to, and I just let him ring away.

Kiernan had a bit of a paunch and his silver lightning-rod earring caught the light, his pasty-white skin like the flabby underbelly of a herring. He banged on the front door.

The curtains at the old man’s window were open and I saw him walk across in his vest and open the window latch, lean his head out.

‘Package,’ said Kiernan.

‘What’s that bloody racket down there?’ the old man shouted down.

‘Package!’

‘That’s grand, leave it there.’

‘Ya have to sign for it.’

‘Sign it yourself.’

‘Jaysus!’ said Kiernan, leaving the small brown parcel on the doorstep. He wheeled around and I’m sure he must have seen me, but I leaned further into the ladder and looked riverwise, laughing to myself at the old man’s stubbornness. Kiernan stood for a moment, clicking his fingers, climbed into his green van, and left with his arm propped up on the open window, the music fading off.

My father came out, still in his string vest, carrying a wooden tray. The cat came up and rubbed against his calves, but he leaned down and pushed her away gently. He sat on the doorstep, put the box on his lap, opened the package. There were a few small things inside, plastic packages that looked like dimebags, others like matchboxes. He took them out deliberately and placed them in the wooden tray,

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