Page 5 of Hang on St. Christopher

“Accountant? Boring bastard, are you?”

That tic of his, repeating the last the last word I said in the sentence, had potential for comedy, but I knew that if I tried any comedy it would not go well for me or, in the end, for him.

“Yes. I’m quite the boring bastard.”

The axeman laughed. “Boring bastard. This is probably the most excitement you’ve had all year, eh?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Aye. I knew it. Go on, then, get out of there before you shit your pants!” he said, and all the other masked men laughed. This was probably the most excitement they’d had all year as well. A chance to exercise power over men and women driving home from work, men and women with actual jobs, men and women who drove fancy cars...

After the third roadblock, I decided to get out of the city west rather than north. Exit through the Catholic neighborhoods, where the UVF wouldn’t have the nerve to string burning tires across the road.

I headed down Divis Street and the Falls Road.

Up Sebastopol Street and Odessa Street.

Quieter here. This district guarded by men in doorways wearing long coats...

Above me, there was a noise like Lemmy from Motorhead clearing his throat, which, in fact, was an army Chinook helicopter flying low over the rooftops. It was only a show of force. There was no way they’d send in the army against those goons on Great Victoria Street. The goons were liable to attack the soldiers, and the soldiers would shoot back, and it would be a goddamn bloodbath.

I finally made it onto the Springfield Road, where there were a lot of ways to leave the city. The mazelike streets and the roadblocks and the aggro had taken their toll. My hands were trembling. I clocked myself in the rearview. Fear in those gray-blue Duffy peepers. Never got used to being afeard, did you? That’s what having a kid does for you. Suddenly, you have skin in the game. Something to lose.

I turned the radio back on, and a song called “Achy Breaky Heart,” by someone called Billy Ray Cyrus, annoyed me so much that the fear vanished by the second go-round of the chorus.

I finally escaped Belfast on the dear old Crumlin Road in the far west of the city. I drove through the relatively benign northern suburbs and pulled in at a quiet-looking cinder-block pub in Jordanstown.

It turned out to be a locals-only joint with tough-looking characters hugging pints of Harp (always a bad sign) and listening to flute-band music from an ancient tape player.

Still, I needed a drink to calm my nerves and quench my thirst. Just a wee half a Bass would do the trick.

I sat on a barstool and caught the barman’s eye.

He was a big lad with a handlebar mustache and a cutoff white T-shirt that showed his jailhouse ink to great effect. The jailhouse ink revealed that he liked his mother, a girl called Denise, Manchester United, and Ulster.

He seemed to be in a foul mood about something, like Van Morrison on any random Tuesday.

“All right, mate? Just a wee half a pint of Bass there, please. I’m off to get the boat,” I said, sticking a fiver on the table. A couple of the locals looked up from their pints and then looked back down again.

The bar had a cigarette machine, but I hadn’t had a smoke in over a year now and I wasn’t going to give those thugs the satisfaction of seeing me fall off the wagon.

“Times are changing, eh?” the barman said wiping down the counter.

“What do you mean?”

“Used to be that if a stranger came into your pub and ordered awee half,everyone would call him a poof.”

“Aye, and nowadays you only attract a few dirty looks and some tedious conversation from the barman. Half a pint there, pal, and be sharpish about it, I have a boat to catch,” I said.

The barman draped his cleaning rag over his shoulder.

“Maybe you should just sling your hook and go and get your boat,pal,” he said.

I sighed. Why was everything such a bloody effort in this town?

I was not in the mood for this. Maybe after a few coffees following a morning sorting through parking tickets, I’d be up for a bit of argy-bargy, but not on the downslope of an adrenaline crash.

In the dark comedy of my life, I wondered how best to play the scene. The easiest thing would be to leave. Just take my money and go. The second-easiest thing would be to flash my warrant card and make him pour the bloody drink. But as old Marcus Aurelius was wont to say, “Πρ? ?ργου γ?νεται τ? το? ?ργου το?του ?φεκτικ?ν κα? πρ? ?δο? τ? τ?ς ?δο? τα?της ?νστατικ?ν.” Yeah, I know, just rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it? He said a lot of things, but the gist is, what stands in the way becomes the way.