Читать онлайн «Purgatory»
Автор Кен Бруен
Ken Bruen
Part 1
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Part 2
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Ken Bruen
Purgatory
Part 1
The skateboarders had that peculiar blend of Irish self-consciousness, dumb persistence. The unusually good weather in early January had led to a makeshift ramp that was ambitiously steep and high. The Council would have removed this but had its hands full with the Occupiers, who had a large tent perched to the left side of Eyre Square.
Too, the skateboarders kept the locals from lynching the Council over various charges.
Water
Refuse
Home
And just about damn everything else.
Three Guards were deemed sufficient to watch the growing crowd for what was rumored to be a spectacular attempt.
A double flip in
He seemed to hang for a moment, the top right side of his brain scattering in a slow mist, then a loud scream from the crowd as his body hurled to the concrete.
Two people were hurt in the panic.
A skater had the presence of mind to steal the almost-famous board.
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“Your crazy daughter is on our short list.”
“There’s nothing wrong with her.”
“She talks to people who aren’t there.”
“No she doesn’t, she only listens.”
My life seemed to have reached a time of calm. New home, new(ish) habits, new people.
Prize bonds.
Who knew?
Who the fuck knew?
A staple of my father’s generation. People bought them for their family’s future. The Lotto and lotteries of every ilk came down the greed pike and these forgotten bonds languished in drawers or the pages of family Bibles never opened.
I had, owing to a threat to my father’s reputation, rummaged among his few possessions.
Kept in a Lyons Tea chest, his few papers scorched my heart. A certificate of loyalty to the Knights of Columbanus, an Inter-Counties semifinal medal in hurling, now as tarnished as the country. A fade to faded picture of
Get this
The fucking beach.
Not exactly a Californian scene. Didn’t evoke a Beach Boys theme.
No.
My parents, in their street clothes, with a summer concession of my father’s, sleeves rolled up. My mother was wearing what might have then been called
A summer frock.
Save they didn’t do
She wore the same item in winter, with a cardigan added. She did have her one habitual trait.
The bitterness.
Leaking from her down-turned mouth to every resentful fiber of her being. I was maybe eight in the photo, an ugly child who grew to embrace ugliness as a birthright. Tellingly, my father’s hands were on my shoulders, my mother’s were folded in that
“What are you looking at?”
