Shooting in the Dark

eyes for a few minutes, let himself see that the whole world didn’t have to be painted the colours of Hell.
    He remembered Ralph when he was a young boy, when they were both living together with their mother in a Sunderland sham. Ralph had been the breadwinner then, the one member of the family who gave a degree of hope to the others. He’d always been a big lad, forever hungry, and Geordie loved it when he strolled into the house, a grin on his face and somebody’s television set or stereo equipment under his arm.
    There were other times, too, that Geordie’s memory threw up. When he couldn’t sleep at night for bad dreams or when he woke up with his sheets soaked in pee. Their mother’s bedroom was off limits because there’d usually be some guy in there with her, and Geordie would go over to Ralph’s bed and shake him awake.
    ‘Not again, bro,’ he would say. ‘You’re gonna have to grow up soon.’ But he would help Geordie out of his stinking pyjamas and dry him off with a towel. Then they’d cuddle up together in Ralph’s bed. ‘You piss yourself in here and I’ll fucking kill you,’ Ralph would say. But Geordie never did. There was no reason to do it when you were cuddled up with someone else.
    All of his memories were confined to that house in Sunderland. Four rooms and an outside bog, and it was the size of a mansion in his mind. Every other house he’d known was nothing compared to the one in Jeddy Road. It was true, the house you were born in was the most interesting house in the world.
    Janet was worried about him. She tried not to show it, smothered her feelings in a brash display of efficiency. She dressed Echo in half the time it normally took and she had the evening meal on the table an hour before they were going to sit down. Geordie told her he needed to sit and think, that he would be all right in a few days, but she wasn’t convinced. Her face was drawn and there was a shrill note in her voice.
    Celia came and sat with him for a while. Before she left she said, ‘Geordie, it’s all right to sit here the rest of the day, but tomorrow you should do something else.’
    He nodded, grunted agreement.
    She said, ‘It is an extreme evil to depart from the company of the living before you die.’
    Shakespeare maybe. One of her literary heroes. Geordie didn’t think he’d departed from the company of the living. He was still there. Maybe he’d become a little more shadowy, but he hadn’t gone anywhere.
    JD quoted Ezra Pound. ‘For most people,’ he said, ‘life slips by like a field mouse not shaking the grass.’
    T feel like shit,’ Geordie told him.
    ‘A guy feeling like shit,’ JD said. ‘That’s a condition that has changed the world more than once. Not always for the better.’
    Geordie had tried to read Ezra Pound once, all those Cantos things, but he didn’t have the right kind of brain. Celia had told him that Pound ended up in Venice in the early seventies, a madman feeding the city’s stray cats.
    Marie arrived only half an hour after JD had left, which would piss JD off if he found out. If he’d known Marie was coming, he’d have hung on and left with her and tried to make her fall in love with him.
    ‘What’s happening inside your head?’ she asked.
    ‘I dunno. It’s like a whirlpool.’
    ‘It’s important to pin it down,’ she told him. ‘What we can name and understand we can begin to heal.’
    ‘I wanna remember my brother,’ Geordie said. ‘I wanna remember him when he was good.’
    Marie smiled. ‘You’re half-way home,’ she said.
    Sam came late at night. ‘I saw the light,’ he said. Janet and Echo were upstairs, sleeping. He fussed with Barney for a while. ‘You want me to take Barney for a run?’ Geordie shrugged.
    ‘You and me, Barney,’ Sam said.
    They returned an hour later. ‘Dead of night,’ Sam said, ‘and not one fuckin’ killer on the streets.’
    They sat together through the small hours. Sam didn’t speak again and Geordie let his mind tumble around inside his head. It was good to have Sam there; even better that he was quiet. When dawn cracked Sam got to his feet, did a stretch almost as good as one of Barney’s. ‘Got things to do,’ he said. ‘People to see. I’ll catch you later.’ Geordie nodded.
    Sam stood by the door for a couple of seconds. Then he took a step back into the room. He said, ‘It’s all right to look back, but you mustn’t stare.’
     

51
     
    Silence frightens people. The age