Excerpt of The Family Wolves

Excerpt from the beginning of “The Family Wolves”, forthcoming novel by Jaki McCarrick. The book is set on the Irish/Northern Irish border. The opening passage is set in 1983.

*

He wakes with so much fury in his heart he thinks he is going to choke. Big Cat has just called, said he’s forgotten the guns, has asked Harry to retrieve them. Harry knows where they are but that isn’t the point. The point is he is only supposed to be the driver. Now he’s the driver and the procurer of weapons. This Big Cat dude is now someone he does not trust. Too loud, too puffed up. Harry has seen him in pubs and in meetings, slapping the backs of men more ranked than himself; he’s slippery, shifty-eyed, and now Harry has to pick up the flack for him.

Just after dawn, Harry drives to the near side of the La Touche forest. It takes him twelve minutes from Dundalk. It’s dark. Morning dark. He parks the car and walks up a path with which he is familiar. Somewhere along it – around halfway – he stops in his tracks at the sound of the two-toned call of the cuckoo. He looks around. The whole place seems ethereal. In the distance, the snag of a branch. He moves on. Eventually he finds the dead bone-pale oak, reaches his hand into the dank pit of its trunk, pulls out a black plastic bag. He opens it, checks the guns are inside: two Kalashnikovs and some magazines. The handguns are wrapped in a black cloth along with four balaclavas. The dump is just as he and Big Cat had left it. He moves quickly out of the forest as he doesn’t want his car to be seen. Because McKevitt’s bar is close by. That’s exactly what he doesn’t need: to be seen by Pat or Bill or Sarah. He is filled with trepidation about the day but he’s gone through it all in his mind, made the steps. This is not a good start. Big Cat and the cousins better be ready.

        *

‘Gimme a Rizzla will ya?’ Sam McBride says, and Big Cat, who is seated in the back seat beside him, gives him the Rizzla pack and they each take out a paper and roll up. When he’s done, Big Cat twists the end of his joint, puts it behind his ear. Sam smokes his in the car though all the windows are closed. The others cough but Sam – who is Bellew’s cousin – keeps smoking. No one says a word about it, not even Big Cat.

Harry stops the car before the chapel as he’s been instructed and Big Cat tells the cousins to be quiet. Despite the blow, they are hyper. Harry lights up a cigarette himself, checks his watch. The service will be over in fifteen minutes so they will want to act bloody quickly. He’d like to get this over with, lie low for a while. He’s met someone – but hasn’t told anyone about her yet, not least these fuckers in the car. He hasn’t told them she’s Sarah McKevitt, daughter of Pat, owner of the mountain bar. And he’s decided – he’s real firm about this – that he doesn’t want to do this shit anymore. Not for a long stretch.

‘Giz one a dem, hi,’ Bellew says, and Harry gives Bellew – who is beside him in the passenger seat – a Carroll’s Major.

‘I’m banjaxed after last night,’ Bellew says.

‘Told yez to get a night’s sleep, youze dipsticks, didn’t I?’ Big Cat says.

Harry reaches down to the bag by his feet. Inside are the four Glocks. He takes them out, one at a time, gives one to each of the men in the car. ‘Be careful,’ Big Cat says, and they check for bullets. ‘Right y’ar boss,’ Bellew says.

‘Where’s the big lads?’ Sam says.

‘Up me hole you stupid cunt,’ Big Cat says.

‘They’re in the boot,’ Harry says.

‘Feeling sick now, our fella,’ Bellew says. Big Cat follows Bellew out to the verge, jumps on Bellew’s back, rattles him as if trying to shake up the puke Bellew says is gathering inside, then slaps him on the back of the head. Sam laughs. Bellew throws up on the road. The cousins are no more than nineteen each, maybe eighteen. Big Cat is in his late-forties but looks younger. Harry’s heard things about Big Cat. Harry is twenty-two.

‘Now listen to me,’ Big Cat says as he goes to the boot of the car.

‘Those inside are the enemy, right? You’re to feel nothing. It’s like you’re in a nightclub. The Rugby Club. Evita’s up in the Fairways. Wherever. And you are mowing down the cunts who raped your mother. Or your sister. Your wee baby sister. Think of it like that. What do you want?’

‘Revenge,’ Bellew says.

‘For what?’ Big Cat says.

‘Raping me baby sister,’ Bellew says and Sam laughs. Bellew spits at his cousin’s feet.

‘When do you want it?’

‘Now!’ the cousins say, in unison.

‘That’s it,’ Big Cat says. ‘Right. Now. See it, Feel it. These are not people, these are cunts.’ Then the four of them attempt to hold this image of a just revenge in their minds and they become steely, roll their shoulders away from their necks. When Harry does it the leather of his jacket crackles. They walk in through the low white gate of the small chapel. The gate clacks behind them. Harry feels sick the closer he gets but says nothing.

As the men walk along the path, Bellew and Big Cat holding their guns to their chests like sleeping children, Harry glances at the headstones in the small cemetery. In the fading light of the chill November evening the headstones appear sad rather than eerie, mostly old, eroded, some at a slant and grassed over. Suddenly, he notices a tall thin headstone, prominent in its row, like a long grey tooth. On it is written:  

HAROLD TEMPEST, died 1897

In this desolate Presbyterian  graveyard, here is his own name.

To be continued …

—

Jaki McCarrick is an award-winning writer of plays, poetry and fiction. Her play LEOPOLDVILLE won the 2010 Papatango Prize for New Writing, and her most recent play, THE NATURALISTS, has just premiered in New York to rave reviews: “Best Bet” International Theatre, Theatre is Easy; “Impeccable, a gift to its actors” New York Times; “Beautifully performed” The New Yorker. Staged by The Pond Theatre Company at the Soho Repertory Theatre, NY.

Her play BELFAST GIRLS was developed at the National Theatre Studio, London, was shortlisted for the 2012 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and the 2014 BBC Tony Doyle Award. It premiered in the US in Chicago to much critical acclaim. Jaki’s short story, The Visit, won the 2010 Wasafiri Short Fiction Prize and appears in the 2012 Anthology of Best British Short Stories (Salt). Her story collection, The Scattering, was published by Seren Books and was shortlisted for the 2014 Edge Hill Prize. Jaki, who was longlisted for the inaugural Irish Fiction Laureate, is currently editing her first novel.

blog/website:
http://jakiscloudnine.blogspot.com/

Follow her on Twitter @jakimccarrick

Tags: featured, women writers

Category: On Writing