Mick by Chris Lynch Read Free Book Online Page B

though, didn’t they?” Marian said to me. I thought to answer, couldn’t, shrugged instead. “Ah but you understand that, I know, after all what you said the other night.”
    “What did I say ?” I begged, taking her hand in mine.
    “Oh you’re a divil, just like my Marion. And you know what else, you’re a throwback. I ain’t heard words like you used in decades. Nobody says jungle bunny no more. Nobody says jigga-boo or chinky —”
    “I fuckin ’ did not say—” I snapped.
    “Y’know, boy,” she prattled on, “it was just the way we talked in them days, so everyone knew who everyone was. Now, with them all breathin’ right over our shoulders instead of stayin’ where they belong, we can’t say the words we want. But you—”
    “Me, nothin’, all right. That wasn’t me. You know, you drink a little too much, and your memory’s a little screwed.”
    This made Marian chuckle. She pulled her hand out of mine and threw me a wink. “Don’t you worry, now,” she said. “We know how to take care of our own.”
    Marian’s words shoved me further into sickness, the vile taste coming back up out of my belly again. Did I need taking care of now? I was not one of their own, goddamn it.
    And there was no way, even drunk, even in that atmosphere, that I could have said those things.
    I was pretty sure.
    “Go have a drink, Marian,” I spat, wanting her and her words out of my space.
    She took my words as encouragement, and went off to find that drink.
    A cheer rose up as the local entry in the upcoming mayor’s race bought a round for everybody in the place. Not one of the once-a-year bums, this man was in the Bloody four or five nights a week. The difference was that he was buying, this one time. He knew how many miles he could get for his beer buck, guaranteeing the votes of the sloppy, soggy clientele for a one dollar draft on the one day it would work. The man stood across the room and raised his glass slyly to Terry, not risking the political jeopardy of sitting with him.
    Another priest—where do they all come from, and why do they all want to sing?—stood on the stage. Slyly, again slyly, always slyly, he nodded and winked at Terry before revving up a ferocious, dissonant “Wild Colonial Boy.” Augie ran up to Terry and they exchanged warm, excited head butts. Terry drank my drinks, Augie’s drink, everybody’s drink, held both fists high in the air, and roared. He was king, and he knew it.
    “Where are the Cormacs?” Terry asked.
    “Workin’. Holidays they gotta go in second shift, so they took off already to pick up their truck.” The Cormacs work for the phone company. “Said they’d be back in a while.”
    The chunky Maguffin sisters mounted the stage, blocking out the musicians behind them. Singing to their combined families of thirteen kids, they squawked a “McNamara’s Band” so aggressive the people up close—people who can stand quite a lot of abuse or they wouldn’t be sitting there—scootched their chairs backward, and Brendan yelled “You suck, get off the stage!” Their children, all of them blond as new baseballs, laughed their little devil laughs, munched onion rings and buffalo wings in their too-small, mismatched polyester sweat suits. The sisters didn’t hear, sang blithely on with the same conviction and confidence as everybody else.
    “Where’s Baba?” Terry asked.
    “Cormacs carried him home,” Angie said, “dropped him on his porch.”
    The two laughed and butted each other again, as hard as they could. Blood rolled down from the middle of Terry’s forehead, between his eyes, over the crooked nose, turned, ran out along the deep crease beside his lip and chin, lined them like the mouth of a ventriloquist’s dummy. He never noticed.
    I couldn’t look at him. I couldn’t look at anybody else in the place either. I turned my face once more to the mirror behind the bar. To myself. I couldn’t look at him either. I took the latest of the beers