Boy and Man. Niall Williams
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The images all fell as he grasped for them. The ache was unendurable and he went from the room and down the stairs where the lights were already out and Josie and Ben gone to bed. He went to the dresser where there was a small metal stand for keys and from these he took the one marked ‘Joe’s Car’ and he let himself out through the back door.
The night was velvet, a soft mild dark. He crossed the yard where Ben had parked the lorry facing outward for the morning and in the hay barn he saw the yellow car that he had been told was his but that he could not remember. It had been repaired since the crash but only occasionally driven by Ben, to keep the engine alive he said. The Master opened the door and sat in the driver’s seat. He sat awaiting epiphany, but none came. The cold damp of the interior, the cracked places in the plastic of the dashboard, the missing cigarette lighter, the twine-tied winder of the passenger window; he looked at the clues of each but they led him nowhere. Did I smoke once? Did I tie that twine?
He held the steering wheel to see if he could find his own hands there, but there was nothing. Then he turned the key. He put the car into gear and released the handbrake. There was something in that, in the feel of the release. Wasn’t there? Wasn’t there something familiar about that?
He couldn’t be sure, and he couldn’t bear any longer the nearness of his own mind and so he drove out of the yard into the night.
I remember how to drive.
I remember this, shifting the gears, first, second, the narrow slot to third. He drove down the country road, lighting it briefly and leaving it back into darkness behind him. A cat crossed into the ditch. He peered forward, gaining speed now. Hum the air, hum it now, come on. How does it go? Remember. He played it. He played it one what one Christmas concert was it in the school was it picture him remember you old fool remember
The road dipped and came around a sharp bend and then out by McInerney’s where a light was on in the calving cabin. A dog barked as he passed, but he had shut it out under the humming of the air and he had it now clearly in his head. He had the first passage and he knew the boy had played it and he knew that something was coming back to him at last. On the edge of revelation he drove more quickly. Black fields flew past. A horse startled and flew off down along the wall, briefly winged with light, a flash of mane and then tail and then gone into the darkness. Hedgerows thickening with April shouldered the road. The Master found his heart was racing and with it the car moving faster. Come on come on. He hummed the air louder still. He sped the car onward, roaring forward when what he wanted was to get back to the past. At the narrow bends not far from the village he came upon four of Daly’s young cattle broken out and grazing the road grass of the ditch. He was upon them before he could think. One hind-kicked at the light and then jumped the straggle of barbed wire, breasting the tangle of it into the field, bellowing, chased by the others. The urgent night noise of the countryside was short-lived. The animals found they were in sweet grass and forgot pain. A car came against him and did not dip its lights and he cursed it on approach but did not slow down and wanted to close his eyes from the dazzlement, and then did.
A silent moment before the crash. A perfect instant of nothing. His own mind trying to make contact with himself. With eyes shut and muscles tensed the instant was forever.
The cars slid past like two knives, a pulse between them.
The Master sped on through the village and past the church and out where Tommy O’Shea was standing at the crossroads, nine pints full and deciding which was the road home. He drove with his foot pressed to the floor now, as though the pursuit was at its hottest and the truth nearer each second. His breath Steamed the windscreen and he sleeved it with his tweed jacket and made a worse smear and sleeved it again come on come on you can remember, remember, everything is in your head, it’s in your head all the time And then, when the revelation should have come, when he felt it was just a fraction from him there on the edge of his mind, it went.
He was blank.
He knew he could not remember and he took his foot from the accelerator and let the car slow until it came to a stop not fifty feet from the wall where he had crashed three years before. He had come there because he thought he was remembering and that was different to being told. He had thought he would belong to himself again, but now, stopped on the road in the night, he was lost once more. He was a white Lazarus, a meaningless resurrection.
Then, because he thought it was in his head, because he thought the entirety of his past was just behind that less- than-inch of his skull, he unsnapped his seatbelt and then he put the car into gear and drove straight at the wall.
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