The summer of 1976 in Ireland was extraordinary, with temperatures soaring to unprecedented heights and sunshine lasting for weeks on end. Rivers and reservoirs dropped to critically low levels as the country experienced its most severe drought in living memory — and I was stoned for most of it.

CHAPTER 4

Rope With Occasional Chair

JUNE 16, 1976

There are forty-three pubs in Sugartown, and only two of them will serve underage drinkers. Closky’s, down by the river, has sawdust on the floor and large bottles of stout on the shelves. The clientele is mostly factory workers in brown overalls and sugary shoes.

“I have no problem serving a twelve-year-old,” the wizened Closky once said, “as long as he can swallow his pint like a man and know his place like a woman. This isn’t a kindergarten; it’s a finishing school.” Once, I asked him if I could have some ice.

“Yeah, just wait until winter.”

The purple lips rolled back to show his yellow teeth, and the laughter emerged like the bark of a savage dog.

“It’s hilarious all right,” I said, “Living in the fucking nineteenth century.”

The rage on his face burst like an exploding cigar, and he told me not to come back.

The other pub, located in the shadow of the town hall, is the Duck Inn, all red brick and frosted glass. It has a front bar that nobody ever visits because the owner, Maurice Drake, refuses to install a television.

“Why would you go to a pub to watch little people? That’s all they are, tiny figurines running around on a pitch the size of a playing card.”

His image of television clearly comes from the age of Logie Baird.

Maurice allows me to drink pints of Smithwicks, and fill up my notebook in a quiet corner,

“as long as you don’t upset my regular customers.” This is a joke because, apart from me, he only has one other customer — The Wreck, aka Edmund Fitzgerald, barrister and town drunk. Night after night, the Wreck sits hunched at the counter, mumbling to himself, drinking pints of stout followed by whiskey chasers.

I am scribbling down a passage about the pain and misery of a small town on a Wednesday night when Maurice comes to my table, wipes it with a rag, and whispers sideways, “I need you to do something for me.”

In Ireland, when people say “I need you to do something for me,” it’s usually sexual, illegal, or both. Maurice is bald and scrawny with foul breath and waxy ears, so I hope it is something illegal.

“Mr Fitzgerald is in terrible shape,” he says.

Sure enough, at the far end of the counter, The Wreck sits slumped against the wall, his face lopsided with booze, and a cluster of bubbles inflating and deflating at the side of his mouth.

“Can you help him get home?” Says Maurice.

“Do I have to?”

“If you want to keep drinking here.”

Maurice slips two Baby Powers into a paper bag.

“Give him this whiskey when he gets home. He won’t sleep without it.”

I take the whiskey and go to the end of the counter. “Come on. Time to hit the road. Wakey-wakey.”

The Wreck makes a sound like a wounded animal before toppling off his stool and I ask myself, why are old people always falling over? Once, in my primary school days, I was walking home with Jim Hayden and Conor Brown when we saw this old soak lying in the street, waving his arms like a man drowning in deep water.

“Look at this dumb old cunt,” I said.

Jim laughed, but Conor did not. He helped the soak upright and said, “come on, Daddy, I’ll get you home.” Some school friendships didn’t last long.

I get the Wreck out into the street. We pass the Evergreen Lounge just as the door bursts open. Two women inside screech like torture victims, belting out “You’re No Good” as if it is the national anthem for a recently invaded republic. A dog rambles past —one of those night dogs who will follow absolutely anyone — but it takes one look at the two of us, and decides against.

“Here doggy, doggy, doggy,” says the Wreck, but the dog quickens his pace and crosses the street, pausing at the ‘La Casa Scivolosa’ chipper, where fish-scented oil covers every surface. Inside, the floors are notoriously slippery, and the condiments skate around on the Formica tables like props at a seance. The dog sits down at the entrance and waits for a fallen chip.

The Wreck slaps the pockets on his coat. “I didn’t bring my babies. I forgot my babies. I left my babies behind in the pub!”

I hold up the paper bag containing the two Baby Powers.

“I have your babies right here.”

“I’ve had too many babies. I shouldn’t have any more.” “I could always throw them in the bin,” I say. Horrified, the Wreck makes a snatch for the bag. “You can’t get rid of the babies,” he shouts, “that’s abortion.”

“I’ll give you the bag when we get to the door.”

“Are you looking for a job?” Says the Wreck. “I need a junior assistant to assist with matters of urgent law.” “Like helping you find your way home every night?” “I’m a barrister,” The Wreck sighs, “but the law has been the source of all my troubles. Do you know about me? Have you heard? Did anybody tell you?”

“I know nothing about you, except that you’re a fucking pest.”

“Don’t be like that, young man. You never heard my tale of woe? Don’t you want to hear it?”

“No.”

“I once prosecuted a man for theft. He went home, threw a rope over a rafter, and hanged himself by the neck. I was never the same after that. Never the same. I took up the drink, big time. The law had no mercy on that man, and now I can have no mercy on myself.” The Wreck hiccups into a hand and starts to cry. His face turns ugly, like one of the church gargoyles, but without the nobility. He dries his tears with a cuff. “He stole something insignificant from the workplace, and it was his employer who hired me to prosecute. The man’s reputation was ruined. He’d never get another job. His employer was a Quaker, and the Quakers are very strict on theft. Theft to a Quaker is like murder to a Catholic, or rape to a Protestant.”

We come to a ramshackle house across the road from the courthouse and The Wreck fumbles for his keys. A group of pink-clad women with big hair and clattery shoes run past us like Flamingos tumbling down a baggage chute.

“Hey, girls,” says the Wreck, “want to come to a party?”

“Fuck you, mister sideburns,” says one of the women. “See that?” Says the Wreck, “A woman might overlook a second-rate mind, but never a bad haircut. Come on inside; there’s something I have to show you.”

“No thanks.”

“If you don’t come into the house for two minutes, I’m going to follow you all the way back to the pub.”

“Two minutes, that’s it, and if you think I’m looking at your stamp collection, you can go fuck yourself.” The interior of the house is like the inside of an old shoe: brown, musty and worn. A thousand cracks held together with flock wallpaper, and the wallpaper covered with pictures of sailboats and cricket games. It’s a house lived in by a man who doesn’t know how to live.

“It’s upstairs,” he says.

I fold my arms and stand in his hall.

“For fuck’s sake, you have some nerve. I can tell you right now I’m not interested in men, unless they’re playing rugby.”

“What do you want to show me?”

“I wouldn’t mind, but if I was that way inclined, you definitely wouldn’t be my type. The fucking scowl on you.”

“I’ll follow you up the stairs, but I’m not walking in front of you.”

At the top of the house, the Wreck’s eyes twinkle in the dim light as he twists the doorknob, and pauses. “Are you sure you’re ready for this?”

“I’d like to get back to the pub before it closes.”

He twists the knob another fraction, and then opens the door. With the flick of a switch, an unfurnished room is lit by a naked bulb. There is just one chair in the middle of the floor. Above the chair, hanging from the ceiling—a noose.

“What do you think?”

What am I supposed to think? For all I know, every middle-aged man in town has a rope hanging from a rafter. It doesn’t seem unreasonable. There’s probably not much to live for after the age of thirty.

“Is that it?” I ask.

The Wreck bounds like a cat onto the chair and slips the rope around his neck. From the street outside, raised voices prepare for violence. The heat of the night is driving everybody crazy, and the pot is ready to boil over. All the frustrations of January; all the failures of February; all the fiscal mistakes of March; all the disastrous romantic decisions of April; all the crushing disappointments of May; all the unending self doubts of June; all the upended hopes; casual stupidities and phoney desires of July are about to combine in a coal-dust explosion of black anger

“I have to go,” I say with a deliberate yawn

“Does this mean nothing to you?” He asks.

As I reach for the doorknob, the Wreck makes one last attempt to hold me back.

“I’ll give you fifty quid if you kick the chair,” he says, “I don’t have the courage to jump.”

I pause.

“Fifty quid for kicking a chair, think about that.”

I do.

He reaches into his back pocket, pulls out a wallet and produces a fifty. It features Kathleen Ni Houlihan giving you the old side eye, like a woman dismissing an undersized erection.

“Come on. Give it a good boot,” he says. “I can’t take it anymore.”

I think about what I could do with fifty quid: A trip to the market on Barrack Street where visiting Dublin hippies sell denim bags, vinyl LPs and small blocks of sticky Moroccan hash. The LPs are by bands that nobody ever heard of with names like Jousting Calabash and Saffron Says, and if you ask the hippies, “what sort of music is this?” they just sigh and snort. “It’s Progressive, dude. You buying?”

“Nah. Just give us a fiver’s worth of dope.”

“I’m waiting here,” says the Wreck, who is now impatiently tapping his foot on the chair.

My gaze drifts to the ceiling and, as always, I am preoccupied with practical matters.

“I don’t think that rope will hold you. It’s very dodgy looking.”

“It’s been there for a while. I’ve been trying to work up the courage. If killing yourself was easy, everyone would be doing it. Fifty pounds is a decent sum of money.”

“A hundred would be better,” I say.

His eyes narrow. “Is it a haggle you’re looking for?” “I’m just saying. I would have thought your life was worth more than fifty quid.”

“You’re some fucking chancer. I can see the way the mind is working. Did you ever consider a career in law? I should jump, and then you’ll get nothing.” “That’s not altogether true. I could just take it out of your pocket after you’re dead. Who would know?”

The Wreck’s shoulders slump.

“You’d rob a corpse; what sort of degenerate are you?” I put the two Baby Powers on the table and leave the room, pausing outside the door until I hear him stepping down off the chair. Back on the street, the world has lurched into quietude once more. Sometimes there is an intermission in the violence, and the town holds its breath.

“You were gone a long time,” says Maurice Drake when I arrive back at the pub. I can see there is something on his mind.

“He didn’t start that bollocks with the rope and the chair, by any chance?”

I nod.

“For fuck’s sake. I’ve warned him about that racket. One of these days, it’ll all go sideways. One of these days, someone will want the cash badly enough, and they’ll do it. They will. Mark my words. Two hundred quid is a lot of money.

“Two hundred quid?” I repeat, my eyebrows elevating. Maurice Drake nods, and my mind dives into a deep chasm of financial possibility. For two hundred quid, I could purchase a thousand pints, or a two pound weight of hash, or fifty Wrangler jackets, or an IBM Selectric typewriter with golf ball feature, or a month on the Costa Del Sol...

Should the opportunity arise again, for two hundred quid, I will definitely be kicking that chair.