MALAGA

Do you ever look off into the distance at the trail left by a jumbo jet? When they’re really high up? They look like they’re crashing downwards in a furious droop. Like they’re careering towards the ground, somewhere far off, where you wouldn’t be at risk of the wreckage. My da used to tell me that’s how we know for sure that the world was round. That the plane, from where it’s flying, is actually going in a straight line, but gravity curves around the earth like the fuzz on a tennis ball, so the plane is really bending with the earth. That’s why, from the ground, where we see it, it looks like it’s dropping hard. Perspective, he called it. He said perspective is what we gain in life, and my lack of it was why I wasn’t old enough to take a shit on Daniel O’Connell’s head.

I was born up in Gardiner Street, behind the flats. My da had shat on Daniel O’Connell’s head, my ma did it, my uncles, my brothers, everyone did it. It’s a rite of passage. You do that, you can get a partner, get your hole. That’s the rule. We spent our childhoods practising outside the GPO on Jim Larkin. You’d hop onto a stop sign. Poise yourself on the edge. Eye up Jim with his brown arms wide open, pounce down, and leave a trail of shite that he’d catch in his massive hands. If you weren’t cautious, you’d get a slap of the number 30 bus to Finglas. A fair few of the lads went to early graves that way. My da would laugh and say they deserved it, it was never meant for them to progress on to O’Connell. On Saturdays, we’d head up Westmoreland Street past Trinity College and Dawson Street. Settle down in Merrion Square and take extravagant shits all over Oscar Wilde’s chest. That wasn’t even difficult, he was secluded in a quare corner behind hedges and protected by a railing. The park was quiet too, usually full of civil servants eating sandwiches. Hot glints of sun snaking through the leaves and warming our backs. We’d just sit on his head, and all of us would take turns on his chest and lap. Extra points if you got the book of poems in his hand. Up to Grafton Street then, at around 7 o’clock. The shops’d be closed and the crowds not out for pints yet. We’d go mental and get a fine feed out of the Burger King bins. Back up to the top of Gardiner Street then, before it got dark, to give each other hugs under the bridge.

Tonight is my last night as a young lad, because tomorrow I’m due to take my first scutter on O’Connell’s head. The uncles, the aunts, they were all talking about their first time doing it. My family were the only ones to chance it in the middle of the 1916 Rising, no other family this side of the river went near the place during that week. But we did, my ancestors braving the bullets and bombs, the smoke, the fire. Straight down from Nelson’s Pillar and then let fly, cascades of bright shit all over O’Connell’s shoulders. I stay quiet while my mother tells me about her first time, during a harsh fall of sleet. Everyone under the bridge listens to her, pure solemn and reverent. It will break her heart if she discovers that I have no intention whatsoever of taking a shit on Daniel O’Connell tomorrow, that I never want to do it, that I want to get the fuck away from this. I want to be like the jumbo jet, I want to fly so high that people think I’m falling to my death, but I’m not, I’m flying straight and they’re just watching me ride the earth’s curve. I want them to think my windows are stars.

My best friend Dara is a wren from Mountjoy Square, tiny hazelnut lad with a big chest. There’s no more wrens apart from him left in Mountjoy due to all the hipsters keeping stoats. He’s the last wren. His parents never came back one day so he climbed out of the nest and walked the whole way down to the bottom of Gardiner Street. He was tiny when he did that, not much bigger than those lumps of chewing gum you pick off when looking up the underside of a bench. The tourists are always taking photos of Dara when they see him, throwing us bits of Romanian pizza from Talbot Street, laughing at the sight of a little wren hanging around with pigeons. Neither me nor Dara fit in around here. That’s why we’re best pals, and if anyone ever touched Dara, I’d peck that fucker up and down Dublin. That’s why tomorrow, we’re both leaving together, getting the fuck out.

When my family and cousins under the bridge aren’t talking out their holes about shitting on statues, they love filling us young ones with fears. People say chickens are always frightened, but fuck that, it’s us pigeons, we’re the chickens. Under the bridge it’s non-stop talking about our weak wings: ‘Only fly in short bursts. Never go so high that you can’t still smell the Liffey. When the air has no smell, you’ve gone too high. A pigeon’s brain conks out when you get the air up there. The wind up there will buckle your tail, and you’ll bomb to the ground in a spin.’ All that shite. That if you fly too far from the city, you’ll starve. That there’s no food in the country. That there’s foxes that will cut you down when you rest. Blah blah. Non-stop terror and rules and limitations. We never leave; we just stay until we die. I’m not having it. I’ve flown high with sparrows over the tall chimneys off Clontarf Bay. I’d watch the way they pull their wings back, make them flat behind their necks in a V, shoulders up, head down, tail straight, and soar, then bob, then soar, then bob, none of this fluttering shit like a moth. I’ve done it, I’ve trained.

It’s morning. We leave. Still dark but with a beige promise peeking over the east horizon. Fat, dry, smoky cold that makes your eyes blink. Us flying among the taxi drivers that leave half-eaten breakfast rolls on the Talbot slabs, no cars around to stop you munching them. The family are still tucked up in the rafters under the Butt Bridge, pure asleep, puffed up and huddled, with the odd little coo from my aunt Brigid when the Dart rumbles above. An ould red battered chimney with chalk hanging off it is where myself and Dara meet, up above below on Belvedere Road. He’d been training with me, training with the Clontarf sparrows. Tough bastard. If you think pigeons aren’t the best at flying, wrens have it worse, but Dara was having none of that either.

We look at each other and say, ‘Fuck Daniel O’Connell and his big brass balls’. We jump with vigour, whipping our wings so fast that you’d hear the cracks from Parnell Street. Our feathers shaking the dawn like distant gunfire, each thrust pushing us up. We keep an eye on each other, we had words about it. Crack as hard as you can until the air has no smell. That’s the difficult bit, the climb. I gape down and watch it all disappear beneath me. Daniel O’Connell is a nare, a small dot, and from here I can see that he’s only a pisser’s distance from Gardiner Street. I can see it all, all of Dublin below. I can see the peaks of Wicklow. The city is tiny from up here.

When I was very young, there was this ould man outside a café on Abbey Street, eating brown bread. I was only small and I perched on the table next to him, pure giving him a side-eye. He put the brown bread in his mouth. I love brown bread, it’s gorgeous. I hopped up closer to him, then on to his shoulder, and he let me eat the bread out of his teeth. When I’d picked most of it away, he opened his jaws wide and put my entire head inside his mouth. I started flapping my wings hard, scratching his cheek with my feet. I could feel the pressure of him biting down on my neck. I hit his face with my wings, then he let go, and I flew off. I never told no one, because I felt fear and shame that he’d done that. I couldn’t understand why it had happened, why a human would do that. When my head was in his mouth, I could see his teeth, all cracked and lined up in a row, a mixture of white, with black, grey and brown stains, uneven and jagged. That’s what Dublin looks like from up here, that’s what the buildings below look like, the inside of that man’s mouth.

We climb as high as the clean air, heading north, myself and Dara starting to sparrow-bob like we’d practised – soar, bob, soar, bob. It’s not even that hard up here. There’s no wind in the way, you cut through the air like weapons. Dara looks like a king, his little fat proud chest out, wings back in a V, the soft feathers on his face fluffing up with the speed, a determination too, gaze fixed north. A rare joy behind his eyes. He’s been through so much. No wren has flown this high. Legend. This is fucking difficult, don’t get me wrong, and it’s terrifying too. My belly isn’t settled at all, I feel like puking, but anger has a way of keeping all that down.

We’ve flown beyond East Wall, over Artane. It’s getting greener below. Dara is struggling, so I slow a bit. His wings are tiny, we’d anticipated this. If he gets tired, we have our plan. I lower myself underneath him, and he takes a hold of the back of my neck with his beak. Then he rests on me as we fly. I feel his breath move across my ears, he’s panting hard, the poor fucker.

‘Have an ould rest for a bit, Dara, we’ll be grand. We’re halfway there, and we’ll fly down and chill out in a hedge if we have to,’ I tell him.

I use the coast to gauge an idea of where we’re at. We’re at about Portrane or Malahide at this stage I’d say – I can tell by the size of the beach. Once I reach Donabate, I’m pulling sharp lefts. The city is gone, we’re out above the countryside, very odd to see all this grass and trees. And then, there in the distance it is, a little grey oasis. Dublin airport with the jumbo jets. That’s when I grab the hard left, and Dara gets his second wings.

‘The finish line is in sight,’ I howl.

I take formation ahead of Dara so that he can ride in my slipstream and keep up. We’re going faster than either of us have ever been, the wind with us too. Propping us up. Two legends we are. I cast looks on my grey-blue destination and hear a most unmerciful wallop beyond my rear flank. I lob back the eye, Dara is gone. I panic and lose my sparrow-bob, start fluttering again. This throws me off and I lose a lot of altitude. Below me I can see a little dark dot spinning down. It’s Dara, fuck, and he’s being chased by a massive buzzard. I thought those lads were gone forever, but I heard a rumour that they’d been deliberately reintroduced to north county Dublin. Nasty fuckers, big, fast, strong bastards, a bit like eagles, who want the likes of me and Dara for dinner.

I drop down, to get to Dara. The buzzard batters into him again. I see feathers flying off Dara, but he isn’t giving up. The buzzard is coming for him for a final slap, and Dara, instead of flying away, turns and goes straight for him. Mad bastard. I watch the huge buzzard and this tiny dot collide with force, then both of them locked together and falling. Dara is wrapped inside his talons and tearing chunks out of his face with the small beak on him, g’wan Dara. Get the cunt. By the time I reach the ground, the buzzard has Dara’s guts ripped out all over a meadow, with his foot down on Dara’s head. His little back wing is still twitching with nerves, and his tongue is out. The buzzard has that dickhead stare that they have, with their snake eyes, and Dara’s blood all over his beak. I flip, I lose all control or sense. The look on that prick’s face when he sees a pigeon coming for him. I draw down hard on his back and bate my wing off his head, knock him over and jump on his chest. Up close, standing over him, he’s twice my size. I see the little face wounds that Dara had given him, they’re hardly worth talking about. The poor lad, he fighting for his life with everything he had, and he’d barely injured this buzzard. I fuck my beak straight into that buzzard’s eye and rip it out, bite down on it, scream into his face. I’ve poor Dara’s guts all over my feet. The buzzard throws me off, wailing with his lost eye.

I leg it. I fly as hard and as fast as I can – not like a sparrow, like a pigeon. I make good ground, I’ve crossed that Dublin Airport fence and am flying low above the tarmac. Buzzard catches up, he’s not letting me away with taking his eye, this is me done for. Ahead of me is a jumbo jet, just after landing, driving along the runway. It looks unreal, this big giant white bird. I can’t believe I’m seeing it up close. If I’m dying by that buzzard then let that mighty plane be the last thing I see.

I fly straight for the aircraft. I hear the screams of that buzzard behind me, baying for my blood, getting closer. I’m twenty feet from the plane. I fly for the space under the wing, I go underneath and then: Brrrzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. No more screams. The buzzard had gotten sucked into the engine, with a mighty noise, the engine spitting out blood and feathers at the back.

I can’t believe my luck. I fly straight down into an open luggage compartment of a Ryanair airbus that’s getting ready to leave for Malaga. Settle myself on a nice soft suitcase at the rear, and just flop. Everything has been taken out of me. I can’t even hold myself up.

Across the tarmac, I watch the fire engines inspecting the jumbo to see what caused the left engine to stop. Hosing the buzzard off the runway they were. As the door of the luggage compartment closes, I puff up my feathers and think about Dara, and how I wish he was coming with me to Malaga.