In the Forest

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  For

  Imelda Riney,

  Liam Riney,

  Father Joe Walshe

  IN MEMORIAM

  Turn back, turn back, thou Bonnie Bride,

  Nor in this house of death abide.

  —FOLK SONG

  Cloosh Wood

  WOODLAND STRADDLING two counties and several townlands, a drowsy corpus of green, broken only where the odd pine has struck up on its own, spindly, freakish, the stray twigs on either side branched, cruciform-wise. In the interior the trapped wind gives off the rustle of a distant sea and the tall slender trunks of the spruces are so close together that the barks are a sable-brown, the light becoming darker and darker into the chamber of non-light. At the farthest entrance under the sweep of a brooding mountain there is a wooden hut choked with briars and brambles where a dead goat decomposed and stank during those frantic, suspended, and sorrowing days. It was then the wood lost its old name and its old innocence in the hearts of the people.

  * * *

  Ellen, the widow woman, did not join in the search when the men and women set out with their dogs and their sticks, clinging to the last vestiges of hope. Yet she dreams of it, dreams she is in Cloosh Wood, running back and forth, calling, calling to those search parties whom she cannot reach, the tall trees no longer static but moving like giants, giants on their grotesque and shaggy roots, their green needly paws reaching out to scratch her, engulf her, and she wakens in a sweat, unable to scream the scream that has been growing in her. Then she gets up and goes into her kitchen to boil milk. She looks at the sheen of dark beyond her picture window, the plants, geraniums and cacti, limp in their sleepiness, looks at her big new brass lock, bright as a casket, and then she comes fully awake, and as she tells it again and again, Eily, the dead woman with her long hair, walks towards her and says, “Why, why didn’t you help me?” “The Kinderschreck,” she answers back. “The Kinderschreck,” and with her raised arm tries to blot out the woman’s gaze, the light of the eyes a broken gold, like candles puttering out.

  Kinderschreck

  THE KINDERSCHRECK. That’s what the German man called him when he stole the gun. Before that he was Michen, after a saint, and then Mich, his mother’s pet, and then Boy, when he went to the place, and then Child, when Father Damien had him helping with the flowers and the cruets in the sacristy, and then K, short for O’Kane, when his hoodlum times began.

  He had been a child of ten and eleven and twelve years, and then he was not a child, because he had learnt the cruel things that they taught him in the places named after the saints.

  He was ten when he took the gun. He took it so as not to feel afraid. They put him away for it. It was his first feel of a gun, his first whiff of power. It felt heavy. When he stood it up, it was taller than himself. He did not know if he would have the guts to fire it. His hands shook when he loaded it, yet he loaded it out of a knowledge he did not know he had. Then he cuddled it to himself and gave it a name, he called it Rod. I didn’t mean to kill, only to frighten one man. He wanted to say that, but he was not able to say it, because they were beating him and shouting at him and dragging him off. There was the guard, the sergeant, his father, and Joe Mangan, the bad man that threw the shovel at him and blamed him for cycling over his wet concrete and destroying it. It was not him that cycled over it, it was Joe Mangan’s own son Paud, but they blamed him. No matter what was done wrong, they blamed him, and there was no one to stand up for him, because his mother was dead. They said she was dead, but she wasn’t; they buried her alive, suffocated her. They brought him up flights of stone stairs and into a cold room to show her lying on a slab with no colour in her cheeks and no breath. It was snowing outside. It was the snow that made her white and made the world white. She was not dead. They only told him that so as to trick him, because he was her pet. They were jealous, they were. They put her in a coffin and buried her. He stole out at night and went and talked to her, and she talked back. He crept out through the window and ran across the fields to the grave at the edge of the lake. He was a cross-country runner and had won a medal for it. He scraped the earth back and made a hole where he could talk down to his mother and where she could hear. She promised to come back and save him when she was less tired. His plan was that he would run away until then, live in the forest and eat nuts and berries, and in the winter go from house to house to beg for food. He would give himself a secret name, Caoilte, the name of the forest.

  The first time he spent nearly a night there he was dead scared and dead excited. There were spots before his eyes and shimmers, different colours. He got on his hands and knees and broke sticks, building a sentence around the totem words: “God hates me, Father hates me, I am hated.” In the wood that night he saw things no one else saw, not Joe Mangan’s sons, not anybody’s sons, only him. He climbed into a tree and hid. A fox, a she fox, let out a sound that scared him. It was like a woman having her throat slit, only worse. The vixen was calling for her mate, her husband. She was in a bad way and so were the pheasants that were letting out cluck-cluck sounds to warn each other of the danger. He heard a badger barking and he ducked well into the branches because he knew a man that a badger bit and the man said it was worse than any dog bite. He swore then to live in the wood, to make a log cabin up in the trees, with a floor and chairs and a rope ladder leading up to it. He and his mother would live there, away from his father and everyone else. While he was thinking it, a princess floated by, flying. She was wearing a long white coat and had very long hair down to her ankles. She was carrying slippers. His mother was still in the house, his father attacking her with a poker. She shouted at him to run out, to run off to the woods, and she stayed behind to take the blows. He’d got one blow. There was blood at the side of his mouth that had run down from his ear, and he put a fob of a pine branch on it to stop it. The thing was to keep awake, no matter what. There were noises and there was silence. The louder the silence, the scarier the noise to come. A cock pheasant was warning all other pheasants of an imminent attack. He was waiting for his mother to come, but he was afraid she might be dead.

  There was a full moon and it was walking across the sky, and in places the light spilt onto the ground, where there were no trees. That was called a glade. He knew that from school.

  When his mother came he was fast asleep. Mich Mich Mich. He wouldn’t let on he heard her and wouldn’t let on when he came awake. She lifted him down and tweaked his nose and said, “Sleepyhead, sleepyhead.” One of her front teeth was gone and she didn’t look nearly as nice. He put his finger into the hole and felt the damp of the blood and tasted it and it was warm. His mother and he were not two people, only one.

  “I saw a beautiful lady.”

  “Go on.”

  “She was on her way to her wedding.”

  “How do you know?”

  “She had silver slippers.”

  His mother carried him back to Glebe House through the scrub, and the moon was a lamp to show the way. She said he was a brave boy to stay all alone in the forest and not scream like that silly vixen. She said he was a true son of the forest. Next day he wrote that in the front of his copy book at school: I am a true son of the forest. They jeered at him, called him a liar, a bluffer, said that he’d run scared from his own shadow, he that had to have his mammy walking him to school and
waiting for him out in the cloakroom and sometimes having to sit in the back of the classroom because of him bawling. A mammy’s boy, a patsy, a pandy, a sissy, and a ninny.

  Soon after that, they had to leave Glebe House and went to live in a cottage far from the woods.

  * * *

  His father and the guard and the sergeant and his sister, Aileen, and Joe Mangan and Mrs. Joe Mangan are all in the court, and the judge is sitting at a big brown desk, higher up. The sergeant is telling the judge the terrible thing he’d done. The German man is on the other side, nodding about the terrible thing he’d done. His sister, Aileen, is beside him, holding his hand. His nose is streaming and his eyes, and he has no hanky. The sergeant is describing how he stole a bicycle from the doctor’s shed, then rode it over the wet cement that Joe Mangan had just put down, and did it on purpose, and then rode and got the groceries for his sister and left them on the windowsill and ran off in search of an empty house where he could find a gun. The sergeant got very wound up when he came to the bit about breaking into the German man’s house and finding the shotgun and the belt of cartridges and then painted the picture of him creeping back towards his own house, hiding in a ditch at the end of the garden and waiting for the opportunity to shoot. The sergeant told how he himself and the boy’s father were behind that very door that had been shot at and were lucky to be still alive. There was more and more about his aggressive behaviour from a very young age, from the innocence of stealing apples to the non-innocence, the evil, the knowing evil of stealing a gun. He was listening to it all, but he was not allowed to speak. He had not cycled over wet cement, another boy did that, Joe Mangan’s son Paud did that, but he got the blame and they called him dirty names at the time and told him what they would do to him. They would carry him off to the Shannon and drown him, and he’d never be found. He ran to his own house to tell his sister that, but she wouldn’t let him in because she had a friend of hers there and she was ashamed of him. When he asked for a glass of orange, she poured it and put it out on the windowsill and told him to drink it there. That was when he ran away, because no one wanted him and no one believed him and he had no friend.

  When the judge gave the sentence he didn’t understand it. A detention centre. What did that mean? The judge’s voice was very low, but his face was very red. The sergeant thanked the judge and they trooped out. His sister told him outside the court that he was going to be going away to St. Malachi’s and it was lucky that there was a vacancy as it was a very nice place. He cried and screamed and ran down the street, but they caught him in a car park and lugged him back.

  “If ever you try to escape, I’ll hunt you down like a dog until I find you,” Sergeant Wiley said to him, and there was hate in his eyes and in his spit.

  His sister said that it was only for a little while and that it was a nice place and had a swimming pool, just like a holiday camp. He would be let home at Christmas and he could write letters, so he mustn’t cry. “I didn’t mean to kill, only to frighten one man.” She told him to shush it or they’d murder him for thinking such a thing, and anyhow, they had to hurry home to start washing and ironing and packing his things. She borrowed a suitcase from Mrs. Joe Mangan.

  When they arrived there he wouldn’t get out of the motorcar but clung to his granny’s knee. She was the one nicest to him, along with his mother and his sister. The car drove past iron gates into a yard with big high walls. The sergeant sat in front and he in the back, refusing to get out, because the place was not a holiday camp but a big dark creepy castle. His granny kept telling him to be a good boy and do as the guard said and walk in there like a man. The sergeant lugged him out by the ear and led him past a whole lot of boys, boys his own age and boys younger and boys older, gawking and jeering. The sergeant passed him over to Brother Finbar, and Brother Finbar took him in and shut the door and bolted it. Brother Finbar had a long brown robe on him and a pair of rosary beads that swung in and out. They walked fast, with Brother Finbar telling him they would put manners into him. He was brought to a cloakroom to be fitted with clothes. He and Brother Fin-bar fought over his jumper, the one his mother had knit for him when she was sick in the hospital. It was purple and red, with navy cuffs and a multicoloured tassel at the end of a zip. It smelt of his mother, and when he wore it, he could feel her soft hands and her kiss. He would not part with it. He would not raise his arms to have it pulled off. Brother Finbar dragged and dragged, then found a loose thread in the waistband and started ripping it. He could see the colours breaking up, navy blue and purple and red; it was like his mother was being ripped up, and the threads were in wormy coils on the flagged floor. He was fitted with short pants, a jacket three times too big for him, and nailed boots. “You will wear our clothing whilst here,” Brother Finbar kept shouting. Whilst here. Whilst here. Whilst here.

  * * *

  Out in the yard, boys cuffing and roughing each other. He stood apart with a group of boys studying him, making a ring around him. Where’s he from? Ask him. Ask ’im. Down the country. Where’s that? Where’s down the country? Ha. Ha. Ha. A bogger. Has he got a cigarette? Hey, Rambo, got a fag? He doesn’t smoke. Eejit. Bogger. Give him a hook. Test his mettle. Show your mettle, Bogger. Clinging to his mammy’s knee. By the time the bell went, they had him down on the ground, kicking him, until a boy called Bertie pulled them off. The tea was in mugs and the thick slices of bread were streaked with lard. Brother Finbar stood at the head of the table as if he was an iron figure with iron rosary beads and an iron beard.

  “Eat your tea, boy.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “The boot is on the other foot now … there’s no guns here to scare people.”

  “I want to go home …”

  “You’ll go home when the boldness is gone out of you, however long that takes.”

  * * *

  For two weeks he was assessed so as to be sent off to the other place. The Castle it was called, and it was run by the same order of Brothers and was miles from anywhere. The woman that assessed him sat him at a table and asked him questions, asked him if he had three wishes what they would be. He said he wanted to go home. Other boys told him he’d better get rid of the notion of going home. They said that once a person went to the Castle over yonder, they never got home. No use hoping. No use.

  The Castle had the same big gates and the same rules and the same cabbagy smell. The boys were older, rougher. On the first evening he was late being brought over in the van and he had his tea alone with a young Brother. He couldn’t swallow.

  “I have stomach cramps,” he told the young Brother.

  “Drink a drop of hot tea, ’twill help you,” the Brother said. He was a nice Brother and one side of his face was a raw red and he said that was called a strawberry face. He took different pieces of cutlery to draw a map of the country, and then he put the sugar bowl down to show where he came from, a scenic place with mountains and a famous lake. He missed it. He said he was very young when he joined the order, but they were a family of fourteen and with his face and everything there were no other chances for him.

  “How long will I be here?”

  “Years.”

  Brother Anthony ran off then, saying he had something for him. He thought it was a slice of cake, but it wasn’t. It was a prayer that Brother Anthony had copied and that he read out to him: “Jesus said to them, When you make the two one and when you make the inner as the outer and the outer as the inner, you shall enter the Kingdom.”

  “A child and his mother are one.”

  “Ah, yes … but that’s secular and I am talking of being with God.”

  “Will I not be going home for Christmas?”

  “It’s not for me to say. Who’s at home?”

  “My sister and my pet fox … I didn’t get to say goodbye to it.”

  “No use crying over these things … these losses.”

  The rain was sliding down the window and plopping onto the flat roof.

  * * *

 
He tried. He tried to keep awake so as not to wet the bed, but he always fell asleep and he always wet the bed, and he wakened with the smell of ugly wet and Brother Jude putting his hand in under the blanket and dragging him out by his mickey. You dirty thing, you dirty thing you. He brought him to a room that led off the dormitory. The strap was kept in a refrigerator there, to keep it cold and hard. It was a leather strap with studs down both sides of it. He was beaten on both cheeks of his bottom and on his legs and on his arms, but not his face. He was just punched on his face. When he got back to the dormitory, boys all came around his bed to know what happened, asking if Jude did any bit of fly-fishing or fiddled with his yoke. Lazlo led the interrogation. Lazlo was leader and they were all afraid of him because he was a schizophrenic. A schizophrenic meant that he heard voices and he could attack any boy if the voices told him to. Lazlo said that Jude was a wiggledy-wiggledy wanker. Lazlo trained boys to be tough. He took them into the lavatory and made cuts on their wrists with a flick knife so they’d get used to the pain. Lazlo said a boy had to teach himself one thing, to hate them with a worse hate than they had for him. The flick knife had a wooden handle with a picture of a Labrador on it.

  In the morning he got another beating from the prefect on account of the plastic sheet being wet and smelly. That beating was with the back of a lavatory brush. At Christmas his granny would come for him and bring him home and he would tell her everything and he would never have to come back. In the letters to his granny he had to say that he was a good boy and learning his lessons and getting a star for his subjects. The Brothers made them say that, made all the boys say it. He would not tell her about the beatings when she came to fetch him in the car, he would tell her at night when she tucked him up in bed.