Call Me the Breeze by Patrick McCabe Page A

covered in blood. I was just about to go over to him when — like rags being ripped — another fire started up inside in the cab and the windscreen blew out. ‘Let’s get the fuck out of here,’ one of the boys was shouting, ‘before the whole fucking thing goes!’ Boo Boo was walking around in circles repeating: ‘Where’s my arm? It blew off my arm!’
    One of the ‘soldiers’ came zig-zagging back down the road, his white face appearing out of the dark: ‘What happened? Can you tell me exactly what happened?’
    Before anyone could, the ambulance arrived, screaming. I froze when I saw him first — the Big Fellow. Just standing there smiling beneath a tree as the paramedics clambered from the vehicle. He waved genteelly and tipped back his fedora. It was at that point my whole body started to tremble as one of the medics took me by the hand, in a soothing voice reassuring: ‘It’s OK now. You’re going to be OK now. Come on now. That’s right. Take it easy.’
    It transpired that there wasn’t all that much wrong with me — outwardly, at any rate, I remember thinking, still afraid that my ever-so-slightly acid-tinged version of the Big Fellow might appear and cursing Bennett for ever having planted that seed — and they reckoned I’d be right as rain in a couple of days.
    All I’d been able to think about as I lay there in the hospital bed — some nights I didn’t sleep a wink at all — was Jacy and Boyle Henry.And why I hadn’t acted that day in the bar, whenever I had the chance, instead of getting myself into a state. But I hadn’t been able to think straight, his voice — ‘
I’ll leave her! If that’s what you want, I’ll leave her
!’ — ebbing and swelling in my mind.
    In the nights, I’d wake up and see her sitting with him, plucking motes off his jacket and laughing heartily at his jokes. Then I’d imagine her rummaging in her shoulder bag, taking out the hand-sewn
Siddhartha
and passing it over to him. I’d be on the verge of breaking down then. I knew in reality it wasn’t likely to happen, but that didn’t stop me thinking it. Or from hearing her say: ‘
You’re The Only One, Boyle. You know that, don’t you? Boyle Henry is The Only One.’
    Him and his stupid political bullshit. He didn’t even know if he was a Provo or not. He was a member of Fianna Fáil, a consitutional nationalist party which at that time was fooling around, quite dangerously, with the Provisional IRA. There were even those who’d suggested that Fianna Fáil had set up the Provos using money that had been banked in Scotsfield, with a view to ultimately destabilizing the illegitimate northern state.
    There were rumours too that Boyle Henry had been involved from the very start, his money-laundering activities being just the tip of the iceberg. Although you knew damn well that in his case that was all it would ever come down to — money, for the fucker would sell his own mother. He’d sell Jacy too. I knew that. Once he was finished with her, he’d pawn her off and not give it a second thought. And the more I thought about that, the worse things I’d find myself imagining.
    Like the night I saw him in a dope-addled dream. I was supposed to have quit toking but I’d been allowing myself a spliff or two to help me get over the Banbridge affair. I found myself staring directly at him as he approached like an executioner across the stone floor of this darkened basement, the upper part of his body webbed with leather straps. He was wearing a hood, but you knew it was him all right. You could just tell. Jacy begged, but he wouldn’t listen. She was strapped to the wall, naked.
    When I awoke all the blankets were on the floor and the pillow was sodden. I went out to the toilet for a blast but it didn’t help me. I was afraid to go back to bed and remained there for over an hour, bent double over the washbasin trying to make myself sick. When I eventually climbed back into bed, I was more or less