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“I don't blame ye, lad,” the prisoner mutters, answering some absent voice of memory or hallucination. “Ye've shared and dared it all with me, son. Now…”

His head drops for a second then pulls up again.

“Leave me alone. Don't let it worry you. Ye'll not convince them; they're not easily convinced. But you just mind or it's yerself that'll be in the drink.”

MacChuill reaches out his hand to touch the prisoner's shoulder, to step back into his dreams.

Another memory of sorts. Another reconstruction of the past…

TIMES CHANGE

Seamus passes the cigarettes out to the soldiers, takes one for himself and lights a match, holds it up first for the one, then for the other. He blows it out without thinking before lighting his own cigarette with another; it's an old superstition from the trenches—you light one ciggy and the German sniper sights it, light a second and he takes aim, light a third and
bang,
somebody's dead. Ye never light three cigarettes with the same match.

He leans against the ornate painted ironwork of Kelvinbridge, a cart clattering across the cobbled stone behind, beneath him water flowing white and wild over a natural weir of sorts, rocks cropping out into the shallow river. So Maryhill Barracks has some would-be mutineers. Sure and it's what Lloyd George was scared of, so it is, enough that when the tanks arrived in Glasgow on the morning after Bloody Friday and the city turned into a fortress in a grip of iron, the hands that held the guns weren't native-born. Two weeks later, the soldiers up in Maryhill were still confined to barracks in case fraternizing with the Clydesiders brought their loyalties into question. The soldiers that patrolled the streets to keep the peace were sent in from outside by a prime minister and a king shitting themselves that the Red Clyde was about to see a full-scale revolution.

That was four years ago now, though. Times change. Maclean is dead, health broken by prison sentence after prison sentence, by constant hunger strikes and beatings. Gave his coat away to a beggar on the street and caught pneumonia. Sure and the whole city is in mourning for him, so it seems, some of them sad and others angry, like these two. Seamus tells them not to be such bloody fools.

“Ye give advice to others better than you give it to yerself,” says the one called MacChuill. “Do as I say, not as I do, eh?”

And what can he say to that, sure, eedjit that he is? By Christ, he's famous enough for being an eedjit that these two recognized him, called him by his name as they passed in the morning gloom. He would have walked on without even acknowledging it, thinking them drunk and maybe looking for a fight, expecting a bottle to fly past him any second, but they called again, they called him comrade and, in their mouths, he knew, it wasn't a dirty word.

So he had stopped and turned and nodded his hello. Sure and they
are
both drunk, actually, pissed out of their heads, the smell of whisky on their breaths sitting uncomfortably with memories deep under all his thoughts. He's tired with the end of his night shift and two Glaswegian soldiers off on leave, out on the piss, are a little more than he can handle right now, sure, but, no, they only want to talk to him, they do. They only want to talk to one of the men what knew Maclean, so it ends up as just one of those passing moments of maudlin friendliness that you get sometimes with total strangers in this city, all the
aye, big man
and
och, away
of people who'll open up their hearts, it seems, to anyone.

They tell him that they want to help and he remembers how he said the same thing to Maclean, back when it seemed like just one man could make a difference.

“There's nae way,” says Corporal MacChuill, “that ye'll dissuade us. Ah mean, come on, if it's the
army
coming out with it, the dukes, they huv to listen to whit we huv to say.”

They've no shortage of zeal, sure; he admires that in a man and always will, but he just doesn't think now that the suffering will ever cease, that his poor fellow man will ever find release. What can he say? Strive not; ye'll only strive in vain. There's still a part of him says,
nothing ventured, nothing gained.
But still. He thinks of Ireland now, only just coming out of its two years of bloody civil war, partitioned, riven. They have Home Rule, sure and they do, but with the North still British…Christ, forgive them. Don't they see what's coming?

“Hold yer peace,” he says, “and hold yerself out of harm's reach.”

And all he wants, all that he fookin wants now, is to see an end to it, and that no more should suffer, not on his account.

A heron flaps down languidly to stalk the shallow Kelvin down below.

Ah Jesus, no, thinks Seamus. All ye've got to do is look at a fookin atlas and what else is there to do but weep for the fortunes of yer brothers standing in the distant lands past the horizon, bearing their hard loads on their shoulders, those poor fookin pillars of the Empire? Look at the massacred natives of Armenia in their graves. Pity the savage monster with a hundred skulls of Indian slaves around her neck, eyes flashing gorgon light, her frightful jaws hissing the truth of all the slaughter, sure and it's the fookin Age of Kali, so it is, goddess of chaos and death, Amritsar's fookin typhoon of a daughter.

Christ, thinks Seamus, and ye want to stand against the lords, ye think that ye can overthrow the sovereignty of dukes? Let's see.

A revolution in Iraq, is it? Well, then, the dukes send fookin airstrikes, thunder falling, fire spitting from the sky like lightning bolts, to strike out from the rebels their high hopes. They'll cut the very heart out of ye and leave yer strength all scorched and thundered out.

How goes the revolution now, in Italy, with Mussolini now in power? A fookin useless, bloated corpse it is, buried under the fookin mountain of a fascist state, while industry hammers the flaming masses, sure, in their dire fookin straits. By Christ though, but one day there will be a fookin real eruption there—and not just Etna's rumbling threats to Linguaglossa either; no, it won't be Sicily's smooth fields of fruit and flowers facing the wild jaws, but everywhere it will be rivers of fookin fire bursting out, devouring. Sure and as long as one rebel still breathes, the anger seethes below, a fookin tempest nothing can appease, a rage that rises, boiling, ever higher. It may be burnt to ashes now by the lightning bolts of dukes; one day, though, sure, the blasting furnace will blow storms of fire. Sure and today though, Seamus thinks, what is it that they have? Unholy Roman fascist fookin Empire.

Seamus realizes that his hands are gripping the cold iron of the bridge, his knuckles white. Ah fookin Jesus fookin Christ. Where does it end? Where do they start?

NOTHING CHANGES

He tells them that there's nothing to be done. Go home. It's over.

“What harm is there in asking?” says MacChuill. “What harm is there in trying? Tell us.”

“Pointless pain, and empty-headed folly,” Seamus says, aware of just how bitter he sounds. “But anyway,” he says, “ye're not without experience. Ye don't need me to tell ye what to do.”

So save yerself, he thinks, if ye know how, and as for me, I'll bear my present state, until the minds of dukes are turned from hate, 'cause what can one man do against a whole establishment, against a world ruled by the rich and powerful, against these new lords sitting all-powerful on their seats? Jesus, it's like the fookin heavens themselves, and God and all His fookin angels are on the side of all that's worst in us. What kind of fookin eedjit stands up against that?

Well, him, of course, the fookin big gob that he has and can't keep shut.

“And just what fookin use is there in talking anyway?” he says. “Take care in case their anger's turned on you.”

He takes a draw of his cigarette and accepts the bottle of Bell's whisky that MacChuill offers him, takes a slug. Sure and the lad's got his heart in the right place and Seamus has no right taking it out on him, it's just that he's so fookin tired of fighting other people's battles. Christ, but it's cold in Glasgow in December, but the whisky warms his chest. Down in the water of the Kelvin, the heron splashes, catches a fish and guzzles it back. It flaps up with a flourish, distracting him. Sure and what is a heron doing here in December?

“Huv ye no heard, Forsythe, that anger's a disease that's healed by words?” says this Corporal MacChuill.

“If words,” he says, “come at the right time to ease the soul and don't just crush a heart about to burst. Don't let your pity turn into hostility.”

He turns back to MacChuill, about to say his name's not
Forsythe
anyway, sure and it's Seamus Finnan, but—the heron flaps over his head. And what
is
a fookin heron doing here in December?

The bird's wings beat and MacChuill's greatcoat flaps in the cold wind and Seamus feels that old, old creeping horror. MacChuill takes the bottle out of his hand, shaking his head.

“If it's prudence does most good, as bloody foolish as it looks,” MacChuill says, “well, ah guess that makes me an incurable fool.”

He looks at Seamus with something more confusion than disgust, a young man looking for a hero, seeing only the reality, and oh, by Christ, sure and he couldn't be satisfied with just the truth, could he? The truth is, Seamus knows, that Bloody Friday was the day, and if it didn't happen then it never will, not here in Scotland. No, not now. The tanks rolled in and revolution rolled right out the door.

“If anyone's a fool it's me,” he says.

Mad Seamus Finnan with his fear of birds. Mad Seamus Finnan with his ghosts and fookin flow of words all pouring through his head, sure, like the river flows below, like the cold wind that blows.

“
Ah get the message loud and clear,” MacChuill says with disdain. “Go home, sit on yer arse, do nothing. Aye, Forsythe. Thanks. Ye've been quite an education.”

Forsythe?
Why does he know that name? Forsythe. Four scythes. Foresight. He's shivering. By Christ, it's cold, so cold his hand feels frozen to the metal of the bridge. He glares at MacChuill and the dark shape behind him, another soldier, smiling quiet, savage, cruel. Ah, Jesus, it's fookin happening again, isn't it? He can't breathe. The wind howls in his ears, and underneath his feet the voices of the river rise.

“Go on, fook off,” he says with desperation in his voice.

And keep yer mind intact.

MacChuill's backing away, a look of horror on his face, his one-eyed face with that black hole in it, the crow sitting on his shoulder with its beak probing into the depths, picking away at him and pulling out the flesh, the red, the white scraps, and there's carcasses all round them like a fookin abattoir and Seamus feels the terror rising and the rushing.

“You speak this word to willing ears.”

The bird's wings sweep through the smooth air, and horses' hooves clatter on cobbles and German machine guns rattle as Seamus staggers back from him, falls to his knees.

“Leave me alone!”

And MacChuill jerks both hand and mind away from the prisoner, gasping for air himself and stumbling as he steps back, bumping into one of the frozen carcasses, reaching behind, in part to stop it swinging and in part to steady himself, to ground himself back in the real world. Aye, but is it real?

“What are you doing?” says Henderson, behind him.

He shakes his head, looks at his shaking hand where the black dust of bitmites, scrawling across his palm, is settling back into a stable pattern, sinking down into the flesh and disappearing. The moment of disorientation passes and he turns and strides past Henderson, pushing through carcasses, leaving them swinging behind him in his wake.

“MacChuill,” snaps Henderson. “You have your orders. Get back here.”

But he's already pushing through the plastic strips of the doorway, flapping them out of his way with an angry backhand, and he doesn't stop walking until he's out of the bloody building itself and standing in daylight, in the hot and blinding sunlight, thank fuck, of a scorching summer day in Mexico.

He leans against the wall of the slaughterhouse, looking out past the trucks in the loading bay, to the green mountains, up to the blue sky, where black dots circle in the air, some native birds of prey. They're tiny in the distance, so high up, like the bitmites crawling in the prisoner's mind, the bitmites that can do Metatron's bloody job for him. Let
them
tear the poor man apart, get under his skin and “bond with him.” They're just machines. They won't be troubled by a conscience, by sympathy. He watches the circling birds.

Buzzards, they are, he thinks. Bloody buzzards.

A TITANIUM ATLAS

Outside, the deep sea groans and roars, waves dash dark caves of shades, and murmur somewhere underground as if to mourn his ruined state for him.

A painting hangs on the wall of the doctor's office, and Seamus recognizes it as based on one of Michelangelo's slaves, so he does, because Thomas once showed him a drawing of it in his sketchbook—sure and it was one of the things he worried about with the lad, him being just a bit too fookin
sensitive
for his own good and all those pictures of half-naked men, and Seamus doesn't care what fancy words ye use, if it's
contrapposto
this or that, well it's still a bloke with no fookin clothes on, all twisted-up white marble muscle in agony or ecstasy, in chains. But here and the man is painted as a titanium Atlas, with the vast globe of the heavens on his shoulders and it's all like that wee Spanish fellow Thomas was so fond of, bits of it in the wrong places, like, so you can't tell what's the man and what's the world, with painted streams flowing from springs and fountains on the globe, running in crystal rivers, to wet the fellow's cheeks like tears distilled from tender eyes.