No title for this one just yet, all ideas welcome!
There was never a bridge out, pop you in a boat
for pennies and a few slices of Pat the Baker, you’d spend the day
handy. One Sunday after mass I went down by the lake and the bird
house was closed. Lines of yellow tape blocking the row boats and
guards shaking their heads, notebooks and pencils, some chap in
handcuffs. Normal face, normal build, his ma could have lost him in a
crowd. It wouldn’t shock you in this day and age, but this was the
seventies in a little summer village like. Yer man swam out there the
night before, knife between the teeth kind of a job and just started
slashing. Feathers and blood. They found him shivering knee deep in
the water.
And that was the end of the bird house on the
lake in Tramore.
I was young at the time, pushing eight maybe, I’d
made the communion so according to the Big Fella I knew the
difference between right and wrong. I’d heard of murder and robbing
and all the rest but here it was right beside the summer amusements.
Nowadays there’s lads getting stabbed in cinemas, or scumbags using
choke wire behind some poor chap on a bus. It's been three decades
but the only thing that puts the heebie-jeebies up me worse then what
happened out there in the bird house is when I get a sense of
‘yellow’ off someone. Same as I did from that 'normal' looking man
in handcuffs. He was the pus behind a white head and I knew something
was infecting him.
A few years later my Grandad died and the mother
moved us down to his old house in Wexford. Rosslare to be exact, the
same place they opened the wildlife sanctuary last year, on the water
with a swell of salt in the air. It’s no joke either the boys have
the big cats, giraffes, zebras, if you can find it in Africa they
have it down in fucken Wexford. That’s where I wound up anyway, the
only town in Ireland with a chip on its shoulder. Ran the pet shop
down there off The Bull Ring, selling young lads Australian Redbacks
and all sorts. One langered conversation down there in The Funeral
Home (a Wexford pub which doubles up as an undertakers, do you a deal
on the wake like) and I was the Big Man, Numero Uno, The Sheriff
round them parts. Yer man in charge of the whole shindig went ahead
and made me the Park Warden.
I’ve read a dose of books on it and they all
agree for every one hundred people you’ll find a psychopath. Now
they’re not all killers but if they sat beside you on a train you’d
have a few palpitations and not be knowing exactly why. Gun to my
head I’d bet animals are the same, for every tonne there’s a
Bundy or Dahlmer or what have you. To be fair the regular ones are
dangerous even if they're not psychos, but most of them will give you
a good three minutes before starting with the teeth and claws. A bear
clicking its jaw, a lion spreading its paws, palm down and gorilla
eyes looking for your pupils. If you don’t cop on sure that’s
that. Good luck. But then there was that one lioness, Mandy they
called her, and you could tell by her look she wasn’t right. Even
the pride kept an eye on her and they never, ever, let her near the
cubs. But at some point the pride forgot and she got three cubs
before we got her.
A young red haired boy comes through the turnstile
in a chequered shirt and blue shorts. The green runners puffy at the
bottom of his skinny legs. The adult with him, his da I suppose,
brings him over to Chimp Island. They stop against the moat
surrounding the monkeys. The chimps ahead of them messing up in the
trees. Doing a jig with thumbs in his ears, the young lad has the
tongue on him stuck out. Normal old stuff, getting a rise off the
monkeys, nothing unusual. And that's why most people would miss it.
But I see it there alright in the eyes and the slant on the brow. You
can almost smell it on the young lad, like fag butts in half empty
cans.
Out here we let a few of the animals go around
the park as they like. Most of the un-caged keep a bit of distance
from the crowds. Not the geese though, they’d get in the car with a
stranger for a few bits of pulled bread. You'd want to be a secret
agent to get a drop on the rest of them but that said there’s a
wallaby with the initials K.C. carved in behind his ear. That’s the
stuff you’ve to be on the lookout for. If any of those animal
rights types caught wind of it’d be hello RTE.
Burgers for a tenner and flat 7-Up but sure they
pay it and the children screaming milk shake this and chicken nugget
that. Jungle Jim’s is the name of the fast food place, across from
the fruit bats, opposite the spider monkeys. Trina’s sweating
bullets trying to take the orders so I jump in beside her and get on
a till.
-Good man Noah, she says wiping her forehead.
-Have I earned a coffee? I ask when the crowds
relax.
-G’wan you cur.
Trina used be a nurse up in Wexford general and
took the early retirement. She does an odd day here and there for the
cash in hand. Sound out she is, and sure we have a bit of the old
back and forth.
-Any craic out there today Noah?
-Ah sure ya know yourself. Just keeping a look
out for the old yellow fellas.
She frowns and tosses a bit of chicken gristle
into the maw.
-Want to be careful with that now Noah, remember
what the boss said.
-But he still bursts gaskets if one of the
animals winds up taking a few slaps.
-I’m just sayin.
I pour out an Americano and wave to Trina.
Families come from as far off as Mayo, on a bad day you’d do a
thousand easily. That’s ten psychos, so the eyes have to be peeled.
The da of the young red-head is sitting with his back to me, a cap
pulled over his eyes. There’s a back pack beside his legs, a bottle
inside of whatever has him asleep. The red head’s gone AWOL.
No sign of him down by Chateau du Cheetah, no
hint of him by Meerkat Kave and Turtle Tenement is a no go. A few of
us questioned the name of the last one, on account of this island's
history but the boss shrugged and said c'est ca. Whatever that means.
After the ‘incident’
we’d a talk and he said I had to make sure an animal was in trouble
before I started pelting lads out. 'Sure he’d a fist raised', I
said and the boss goes 'Yeah but he hadn’t done anything yet.'
How’s that for dull? Like the doctor telling you to fuck off with
your cold and come back when you’ve a dose of pneumonia.
We can't track an individual animal. The boss
said it's too expensive to put chips in the lot of them. There's a
kind of a bracelet thing if one of them needs to be monitored. Other
than that you've got your eyes and your feet, find them quick you're
on the clock. Most of the mara are with the zebras and giraffes
behind the fences. They're like a cross between a hare and a tiny
deer, mad yokes altogether. As soon as they see you they're gone for
dust, if the young lad can catch one of these he'll have a place with
the Irish Rangers.
There's a buzzing now inside the chest, little
waves of tension washing over me. I can't find the red-head anywhere.
The orangutans start screaming, the ducks hold their heads under the
water until the very last second, geese spit bran flakes back into
open palms. The yellow is out there and the animals can feel it,
roots of the jungle recoiling under the soil. I see it then, the work
of powerful morons. The boss was showing some investor around the
park earlier and all that's left is an open gate. It leads to one of
several veterinary stations. This particular one being a maternity
unit.
Grass grows high here, relaxing for the
mothers-to-be they say. I'm crouched down, the head low behind long
strands of grass. The first pen is covered over with thick
plexiglass, a lioness' side rising with the breath. I put my hand
against the glass and she looks at me with half closed eyes before
looking away. I took up Tai Chi for the old head a few years ago. The
doctor said that a bit of yoga or what-have-you on top of the
medication and I wouldn't know myself at all. The old paranoia would settle. Brushing the grass away
reminds me of those movements. I must go back one of these days. The
second pen is empty. On the concrete floor someone's after leaving a
mess, dry blood and straw. Rotten enough alright.
The grass parts left and then right and I feel as
important as Moses.
It sticks against his cheeks, the grass just
underneath his red hair. He's looking down at something below him,
something small. I could stand up now, give him the boot, send him
back to the main park, wake up his drunk da. He's yellow, if I'm sure
of anything this young lad's yellow. He doesn't move, just keeps
there, eyes to the ground. There's a few licks of fur between the
grass, breathing slowly. By the back of it she looks like a wallaby,
one of the cageless. They do that sometimes, go the vetinary stations
when it's time to give birth, a sense they have maybe. The young lad
kneels down beside her and I loose him altogether. Small slits of
colour between the grass. There's no noise, no hissing out of the
animal.
I stay down and wait.
This chap must be yellow.
-The fuck are you doing here!?
The young lad darts up and I hear the wallaby
make a noise. Not a hiss or cry but a sort of shudder. Like something
in the air's after changing.
-Look da, it's after having little babies!
Strands of grass moving under the weight of the
father. The da towards the boy like a langered cheetah.
-Babies da?
The child saying it like a question.
A blunt sound and then the young lad starts
bawling. Another sound, sharper now. And another.
I stay put, the grass cutting into the air above
me.
Another.
And he pulls him by the arm, drags the little
fella through the down trodden grass. The da closes the gate behind
him and I'm left there lying on the dirt. I push the grass away until
I get to the Wallaby, a joey lying there at her teet. The mother
starts hissing at me, teeth under the wet snout like those yokes on
the rooves of caves. I see myself mirrored in her black eyes.
The teeth waiting to snare, ready for the yellow in the darkness
of my reflection.
