“Spanner, you stupid sap.” His whisper was harsh and heavily smoked in the cold. “Oh, right, yeah, I forgot.”
I handed him the spanner or wrench or whatever you want to call it and my brother proceeded to unscrew the give-way sign on the junction of Marshall and Carlisle streets.
“Geez, she’s a bit bloody stubborn,” Rube pointed out. “The bolt’s so rusty that all the garbage is gettin’ stuck on the nut. Just keep holdin’ me up, okay?”
“I’m gettin’ tired,” I mentioned.
“Well, get through it. The pain barrier. The pain barrier, son. All the greats could always break through the pain barrier.”
“The great whats? Sign stealers?”
“No.” It was sharp. “Athletes, you yobbo.”
Then came the triumph.
“Right,” Rube announced, “I’ve got it.” He jumped off my shoulders with the sign just as a light came on in one of the dilapidated flats on the corner.
A woman stepped out onto her balcony and sighed, “Ah, grow up, will y’s.”
“C’mon.” Rube tugged at my sweatshirt. “Go go go!”
We took off, laughing as Rube held the sign up above his head, cheering, “Oh, yes!”
Even when we snuck back into our house, the adrenaline was still crouching in my blood, then springing forward, taking off. It disappeared slowly when we were back in our bedroom. With the light off in our room almost instantly, Rube slid the sign under his bed and said, just for fun, “Tell Mum or Dad about this and I’ll see if I can fit this sign down your throat.” I laughed a little and soon fell asleep, still hearing the gentle sounds of women sighing at undesirables in the middle of the night. I wondered about Rebecca Conlon before sleep came as well, and I remembered moments when we walked down the street and when we were abducting the sign in which I pretended she was watching me. I wasn’t sure if she would like me or think I was a complete idiot. Complete idiot, most likely.
“Ah, well,” I whispered to myself under my blanket. “Ah, well,” and I started praying for her and everyone else I had prayed for lately. In the night, not long after sleep captured me, my dream came — a bad one. A nightmare. A proper one.
You will see it soon enough….
Next day, in the morning, Rube took the sign out to admire it again in the comfort of our room. I was coming back in from the shower.
“Isn’t she beautiful?
“Yeah.” I didn’t sound too keen, though.
“What’s with you?”
“Nothin’.” It was the nightmare.
“Okay.” He put the sign away again and poked his head into the hall. “Aah.” He looked back at me. “Y’ left the bathroom door open again — do you do that on purpose just to let the cold in before I go in the shower?”
“I forgot.”
“Well lift your game.”
He left, but I followed him, with my hair wet and sticking up in all directions.
“Where the hell do y’ think you’re going?”
“I’ve gotta tell you something.”
“Right.” He shut me out of the bathroom. I heard the shower go on, the door unlock, the curtain shut, and then a shout came. “Come in!”
I went in and sat on the shut-up toilet.
“Well,” he called out to me, “what is it?”
I began talking about the nightmare I’d had, and through the heat in the bathroom, an extra heat seemed to come from out of me, overpowering it. I took a minute or two to explain the dream properly.
When I finished, all Rube said was, “So what?” The steam was getting intense.
“So what should we do?”
The shower stopped.
Rube stuck his head around the curtain.
“Pass me that towel.”
I did it.
He dried himself and stepped out, breaking through the steam with, “Well, it’s certainly a disturbing dream you speak of, son.”
He had no idea how disturbing. It was me who dreamed it. It was me who had believed it when it was in me. It was me who.
End.
End this.
No …
It was me who had woken up in the darkness of our triumph with sweat eating my eyes out, and a silent scream pressed down on my lips.
In the bathroom now, I suggested, “We’ve gotta take the sign back.”
Rube had other ideas, at first.
He came closer and said, “We can ring the RTA and tell ‘em the sign needs ing.”
“It’ll take absolute weeks for them to replace it.”
Rube paused, then said, “Yeah, good thinkin’.” Unhappiness. “The state of our roads down this way is a disgrace to the nation.”