Notes from a Coma. Mike McCormack

But that was all in the past—or so I thought. It all came back to him that night in Thornton’s.

      He’d been drinking since mid-afternoon and by eleven he was well on it. Ger, behind the bar—he was only young at the time—wouldn’t serve him any more. He came outside the bar and tried to lead Anthony to the door. Anthony of course was having none of it. He’d come in under his own steam, he’d go out the same way. And he did too a few minutes later when he saw he was getting no more drink. But that wasn’t the end of it. You’d want to get Eileen Flynn to tell you this story, she was there that night and she has a better telling of it than I have. She laughed about it afterwards but she was lucky she wasn’t killed the same night. Bang! The big window inside the door bursts in and this yellow gas bottle hops off her table and skids along the floor to the counter. Anthony is outside in the pissing rain, the sleeves of his shirt rolled up and the jacket down beside him in the channel. Any man, he was roaring, any fucking man!

      He spent that night in the barracks and he was lucky he didn’t spend a lot longer. Thornton’s didn’t press charges. They knew the craic and they settled for the price of a table and a new window but they told Anthony he’d have to do his drinking somewhere else. I got a call from Jimmy Nevin the next morning and went down to the barracks to bring him home. Of course by then the whole town was talking about him. Driving home with him that day I never thought that three months down the road he’d be giving them a whole lot more to talk about. That’s when he docked up with JJ.

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      ¹ In January of that year one of the first cases of BSE in the republic broke out on the farm of Anthony O’Malley in Louisburgh, west Mayo.

      After two days watching a Friesian cow with two permanent teeth stagger through the yard, unable to keep her balance and obviously disorientated, the beast was isolated and the vet summoned. Simon Conway’s provisional diagnosis was for an incurable neurological disorder. The animal was destroyed, blood and brain tissue samples were taken—sealed, dated, numbered and referred to the national laboratories in Dublin for analysis. Six days later a case of BSE was confirmed and in accordance with control measures brought in the previous year Anthony O’Malley’s entire herd was taken away to be destroyed.

      The destruction of entire herds containing infected animals would only become compulsory nine years later in the UK and other EU countries. Coming on the back of agreed measures drawn up in the Florence Agreement, it represented a further expansion of the offspring cull, a measure referred to unofficially as the Herod Option.

      ANTHONY O’MALLEY

      Not a day’s gone by, not an hour, when I don’t think of him lying out there on that ship in the Killary.¹ And the thing that comes back to me are all the arguments we used to have. How he’d sit there where you’re sitting now, in that very chair, covered in diesel and cement after his day’s work. More likely than not he’d have a few pints on him, probably drinking since after work. And it’d always begin the same way.

      “A consumer durable, Anthony, wasn’t that how it was?”

      “Go to bed, JJ. Have you eaten?”

      “Never mind eating, tell me the story. The bargaining process, tell me that again.”

      I’d make him something to eat then, a sandwich or a bowl of soup, because likely as not he’d have nothing solid in his stomach since dinner time. But he’d have no interest in food. All he wanted to hear was the story, his story.

      “Two thousand dollars, wasn’t that it?”

      “Eat up, JJ, it’s past midnight.”

      “That was the going rate at the time, wasn’t it? Over three thousand Deutschmarks or eleven hundred pounds if you could find someone to take sterling?”

      It could go on all night. He could sit there teasing out every detail of it, hearing it for the umpteenth time and still, after all these years, bewildered by it.

      “And what was the asking price, Anthony, what was the reserve? Was it stamped across my forehead or was there a little tag dangling from my toe?”

      “It wasn’t like that.”

      “So what was your opening bid? I’d say you came in low—low and hard. You wouldn’t want to show your hand too early. Eight hundred pounds, was that it? Not much more surely?”

      “Go to bed, JJ, this isn’t the time.”

      “Did you spit on your hand to seal the deal, like a proper cattle jobber.”

      “It wasn’t like that and you know it.”

      “Of course it wasn’t like that but it’s the truth, isn’t it? And a seller’s market too, wasn’t it? They couldn’t keep up with demand. All of us there up on top of one another in our slatted house.”

      “It wasn’t a slatted house, JJ, it was an orphanage. Christ, you know all this, I’ve told you a hundred times. Why do you have to keep going over it?”

      “It’s a story, Anthony, a bedtime story. Tell me about the wicked witch. We wouldn’t want to forget her. Tell me again about the wicked witch.”

      I’d go along with him from here. He’d be so far into it the best thing was to get through it as quickly as possible and try to get to bed.

      “Her name was Dragana, wasn’t that it?”

      “Yes, JJ, her name was Dragana.”

      “And she had a pair of arms on her like a butcher and a hooked nose with a wart on it. Her broomstick stood in the corner.”

      “Whatever you say, JJ.”

      This was where he’d start laughing, leaning forward in his chair, his favourite part.

      “But you took no shite from her, isn’t that right?”

      “That’s right, JJ, I put manners on her.”

      “Witch or no witch you let her know who’s boss.”

      “Yes, JJ, I sorted her.”

      “You haggled with her, wasn’t that what you did?”

      “Yes, JJ, I haggled with her.”

      He’d be bent over laughing now, laughing or crying I could never tell from the tears rolling down his cheeks.

      “Haggled with her,” he’d gasp, nearly choking. “This is the bit that kills me. You actually haggled her down to two thousand dollars.” The mug of tea or soup would be slopping down the side of the chair. “The going rate for a healthy child was two and a half thousand dollars but you haggled her down to two thousand.”

      “Yes, JJ, I haggled her.”

      “And shook hands on two thousand.”

      “Yes.”

      Some nights it might end here, the worst of it over, but most nights he’d want to take it through to the bitter end.

      “It could have been a lot worse though, couldn’t it? You could have used the old barter system.”

      “Yes, JJ, something.”

      “No, not just something. Tell the story right, don’t be trying to get away from it. Cigarettes and televisions, those were the things, weren’t they? Explain the cigarettes to me again.”

      There was no way out now—I’d have to see it through to the end.

      “The place was in turmoil, JJ, the economy was a shambles and the currency was virtually worthless. The gold standard was a packet of cigarettes. A packet of Kent cigarettes traded at two dollars.”

      “So you could have had me for a thousand packs of cigarettes.”

      “If you want to put it that way.”

      “I don’t want to put it that way but that’s the way