The Fog of Peace

“No fucking way. I’m not doing it.”

“I know its mental but it’s what I need ”

“It’s not what you need. What you need is help. Help or a decent ride ya daft cunt.”

Joey’s never seen him this agitated. Even after that two day rollover when they tied him to his bed to stop him wolfing down more yips, he wasn’t like this. His eyes are red — the lack of sleep mixed with the warm Bud. A cloud of nervous desperation rises off Danny Whelan, consuming him and all around him. But even then, this was fucking nuts.

“You owe me. I saved your fucking life and you owe me. You said you’d do anything, and this is my anything.”

Danny knows he’ll do it. Joey has to. He owes him and he doesn’t have a fucking choice, whether he likes it or not. He can fight it all he wants, but he’ll do it.

“For fuck’s sake Danny… how do you know I won’t kill you? There’s a good fucking chance you’ll die!”

“I wont fucking die! Jesus you’re not that strong. I’ve looked into it. If you do it right, I’ll be grand.”

“All this for a fucking bird. She’s just a bird Danny. There’s millions of them out there, millions.”

“Just a bird Joey?? Just a fucking bird? Everywhere I go I’m seeing her. When I look at the empty pillow beside me, I’m seeing her. When I grab out the Honey Nut Loops she liked I see her, When I put a bit too much milk in me tea I see her, I fucking hear her moaning. When I go down and get 20 Carrolls I’m seeing her. When my phone buzzes, I see her. When the 14 bus she used to get to call up goes by, I see her. I fucking see her and beg for her to get off, but she’s not there. When I see one of those little fucking fluffy dogs she loves, I see her. When I’m watching some shite on TV, I’m seeing her. Go into town, I see her. Go to the coast to get a 99 and walk the pier, pointing out the seals and pretending to push her in, I see her.”

Tears well over his eyes and begin to stream down his face, first time Joey’s seen him cry since they were 11 years old and Dickser Nolan kicked the fuck out of him and took his new Nike Air Max.

“At the end of the day, when I get into bed, locked or sober does not fucking matter, I catch a scent of her off my sheets. And I’ve washed the fuckers about a million times. But it’s there. I try to sleep and I see her. I dream and I see her, and here she sees me and its normal and we’re happy and then I fucking wake up and see that empty pillow. Just a fucking bird? Get over it? You don’t think I’d like that? And then the worst part of it all, the fucking worst part of it all, is that when I do actually see her, I see nothing. Seen her down in Centra and she nodded and walked the other way. Bumped into her on Henry Street, she fucking says something to me about the Liverpool result. Is that it? Is that fucking it after four years? And I support United for fuck’s sake!”

He laughs, they both laugh, but the respite is brief.

“So look. I know it sounds fucking mental, I know you hate doing it, but I need this. I need you to take this hammer and knock this shit out of my fucking head.”

“Look, even if I do it, even if I knock you out and don’t kill you, when you wake up again you’ll just remember all the same stuff. It’s not going to work.”

“Maybe… or maybe not. What’s it called… insomnia? When you forget everything?”

“Amnesia you fucking thick bastard.” Fucking hell, Joey thought, it might actually make the prick smarter.

“That’s the one. Look, I don’t want to die or anything. I know I was happy before and I know I’ll be happy again. But I can’t go on like this. I’ve tried everything. Getting locked, getting a blowie in that massage place, even yokes — was grand for a bit but the comedown I was actually calling out her name for hours. scared the shit out of me Mam. So this is my only option — knock all this to another bit of me head. It’s basic science.”

He laughs again. Danny’s never been known for his smarts, but even he knows this is a terrible idea. But he can’t take another day of the pain. Worse thing is, it’s not just in his head. He feels it in his stomach, his chest, he thinks he can feel his heart creaking, like it did after three bottles of Bucky several years back. But he’ll get to that in due course. If he can knock this shite out of his brain he thinks he’ll be able to pull through.

The wail of the siren barely registers as she glances out at the Grand Canal. They tear through a red light, the distinctive red lines of the ASU commanding respect from the curious traffic. She remembers the contentment she’d felt that Monday. Three days ago. Flying across town responding to a potential gangland hit on Seville Place, surrounded by her squad. It had been such a long road to get here. Desk jobs, shitty traffic assignments, dismissive laughs and raised eyebrows. “Armed Support? Jesus there wouldn’t be many Ban Gardai in there.” She’d probably seen Speed a couple of times too many as a kid, but it was always what she’d wanted to do. Not just be a Guard, but be a Guard who did shit. She craved the thrill of kicking doors down and seeing the fear in the eyes of the scumbags who dragged her city through the dirt. She craved it even more when they realised it was a woman behind the balaclava — nice little dose of humiliation for whatever prick they were on that day. She still hadn’t fired the weapon in the line of duty, but she was very much ready to. She was doing what she loved, and she’d had to work fucking hard to get there. But that was Monday.

Tuesday those four fatal words. “We need to talk.” Truthfully, she’d probably sensed it coming somewhat but had chosen to ignore it. They were married, after all. Surely that meant you could let go of all those little insecurities that had plagued her through her 20s? Surely that meant she could let her guard down? Or maybe she hadn’t, and maybe he’d sensed that too. The subtle insecurities pervading their way into her daily life. A slightly needy goodbye kiss in the morning, sending out subconscious signals. And he’d decided to leg it. Five years together, two years married and four fatal words. There still wasn’t anger. Anger would have been easy. Instead just numbness. Wednesday she took the day off and sent out the functional texts. “i thought you should know…. I’m doing ok…” And then the replies “You’re the strongest person I know — you’ll get through this.” “He’s a cunt” “Is it salvageable”. All well-intentioned, but all equally devastating.

Where was the consolation in being ‘strong’ as she alternated bouts of sobbing with episodes of shite on Netflix — all the while too weak or apathetic to dress herself or eat. Where was the sympathy in hearing that she’d wasted 5 years with a ‘cunt’. That she’d allowed herself to feel this immense connection, a love so deep and true, with a cunt. And how the fuck should she know if it was salvageable if she hadn’t been the one to wreck it. Where was she supposed to get finality from with that lingering in her mind, coaxing her towards some pathetic final loss of dignity? “Take me back please… eh I dumped you. Doesn’t work that way” So she decided to go back to work. Reconnect with what she actually loved and forget about the pain lurking behind the door of their dream home.

They get closer to Drimnagh now and the Sarge reminds them of the story.

“Sarah, you listening?”

“Yeah boss, sorry.”

“The report is some old dear who saw two lads in Brickfield Park heading to the bushes. One has a hammer, the other was in a highly agitated state. Could be a cripple fight between two junkies, could be something more sinister — some sort of punishment beating or the like. Either way, nothing like a nice visit into D12.”

The kids on bikes throw a few hostile stares as they pull up by the field and hop out. The scene around her plays out at high speed, but to Sarah it’s all slow motion. It’s not quite real. As she runs into the bushes, she’s thinking of him again. Was he cheating on her? Was she too distant with him? Had she focused too much on her career? Had she got complacent? Too much cuddling and not enough fucking? What if they’d gone on that holiday. Fuck, could she get a refund? The same narrative loops round and round, and she is barely aware of the lethal weapon now raised in her hand and pointed at the two lads 50 metres away.

“Alright… alright I’m ready. Do it now.”

Danny braces himself, guided by the empty promise of sweet release.

“And I just leave you here, yeah?”

“Yeah. Those kids will find me in no time. I’ll be in James’s Hospital in an hour, home by tomorrow. Be grand!”

Fuck it. if this is what he wants, who am I to judge. I’m his mate and he wants my help. I’m doing it. Joey lifts the hammer back and sees Danny mouth the words ‘Ah Bollocks.’ Screams all around him.

“Armed Gardai — drop the hammer. Drop it!”

He turns and faces the Guards, suddenly intensely relieved he hasn’t gone through with it. He doesn’t want to drop this fucking yoke on his foot, so he bends down to place it on the ground. As he looks at the four Gardai facing him, he sees a familiar face. He’s never seen her before, but he’s seen that face. He’s seen that numb, lost, desperate expression. He’s seen that blank state of someone going through the motions, seen it that day in Danny, and every day in him for the last three weeks. But now he sees it and it’s pointing a submachine gun at him. And then he knows. He knows he’s fucked.

The inquest, the trial and the whole investigation invariably came back to that one question. Why. Why did she pull the trigger. And she didn’t know. She knew she wasn’t in immediate danger. She didn’t know the victim. She didn’t give a shit about his three previous convictions, all for fairly minor stuff. She could only think of two reasons. One was that for that brief millisecond as the bullet made its way into his heart, she stopped remembering. The narrative faded, the past was silenced and the present reigned supreme. Relief, no matter how brief. The other was the fog. The fog itself was no reason, but the lack of reason the fog brought with it rendered any explanation irrelevant. She wasn’t human in that moment. She wasn’t anything. She was in limbo between the life she had known and the one she couldn’t imagine. The war was over, and the oppressive neutrality of peacetime had set in.