JAMES M MCGOWAN's influences are Ed McBain, Ross Macdonald, James Lee Burke, George Pelecanos, Ed Bunker, Ice-T and Michael Collins.

He was exposed early to street fighting, hand guns, death from shotguns, suicide and the incipient violence in a working class estate. It affected him greatly. He writes about social, adolescent, family and paramilitary violence (with an Irish setting but transplanted also to Irish cities in the US) and how it influences a child's development. He uses black humour in the writing to ameliorate the intensity of some of the violence and darkness.
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Chapter 1

‘OK walk in slowly’

OK, I walked in slowly

So far, so bad

I had a Glock with a silencer down by my side that he hadn’t noticed yet. The bar was pretty dark and so were the clientele. I used to be in the Aryan Youth in my own youth. I was supposed to be keeping Galway safe for the white man but all I could see around me were pasty-faced thick Irish guys so I had to keep the cross in the back garden until it rotted away. In any event I outgrew the movement and handed in my resignation to the National Shitheads especially when the Aryan Maiden benefits outlined in the membership leaflets were not realized ie perfect skin, perfect genes, perfect teeth, perfect purrs, perfect prefects, perfect perfect. Fourteen years I was.

I knew I was in trouble here but the gun felt good. I had guns in my genes and a backup in my jeans if I had to drop the Glock. There were also some other factors that also compounded my initial latent gun tendency.

One day in Galway I saw three IRA volunteers running down a narrow lane. All were armed with AKs and handguns. One of them was a woman. Everyone else lay on the ground except for me. She stopped for a moment and looked at me and I could see her green eyes and the black eye of the revolver. She started after the others and slipped on the wet leaves near the bottom of the alley. She used her hand on the ground to steady herself and then went out of sight onto Foster Street. I ran down there. They were gone but the impact they made on me never left. After that I started on a self-education course on guns and accessories.

Another uncle in Ireland played football and all night poker and at being a detective. He also carried a revolver in his car and as we drove to our grandmother’s on our holidays I would point it out the window at pedestrians and hitchhikers. His car had a faded stain where he hit a sheep one night and it had etched into the metal of the Beetle in some irreversible weathering process. I pretended it was the blood of informers we shot as we made the journey from Galway to Foxford.

After a while my little arm grew tired and I was unable to keep the gun straight and I would rest by holding the gun downwards where it gently knocked against the door frame to the rhythm of the car in motion. I would drift off into reverie at this point and imagine I was one of those hunters who took train journeys in the Wild West and shot at buffalo till our fingers were tired and our faces scorched with the continuous flashes from black powder and kill lust. When I realized I was back in the wild west of Mayo I would prepare myself again for any potential snipers or informers. My mother smoked cigarettes and blew smoke out the window and ignored me because gun-yielding children was not covered by Dr Spook and she was on her holidays.

During those holidays myself and my cousin, Sean, played with the revolver and recreated executions on the black tar topped country road where the heat of the August sun was like powder burns on our faces. We inhaled the pungent organic smell from the bituminous blacktop as we lay face down waiting for the coup de grace. I never forgot that smell and I mourn for the passing of those days now.

I saw a robbery when I was ten and it mesmerized me. A sawn-off shotgun was used on a wages clerk collecting from the AIB Bank in Galway and he was shot to death at close range when he grappled with the gunman. It was an accident but the clerk was blown in two. I saw his blood spreading on the footpath underneath him and black-red arterial blood trickle over the lip of the path onto the road. My mother pulled me away but I put my shoe into the blood and walked away leaving the imprint on the footpath and on my soul.

In my bedroom I had the poster from Taxi Driver and that one of the execution of a Viet Cong spy in Saigon. I was really far gone.

 

Chapter 2

After college I moved to South Boston and worked for my uncle who owned the Banshee. He walked with a swagger and carried a dagger. His bodyguard Frank carried a Glock and a bullet from an Italian gunman before the Irish and Italians came to a peace deal brokered by the local bishop. At least they were all Catholics. Big families and big fights were the main pastimes in the fifties and sixties but now it’s just business so blood feuds are not a priority.

The first time I visited I was having tea there with my cousin Amy. We got to the Banshee around six and parked out front. This is Rowley territory so we didn’t have a problem. It’s owned by my uncle Gerry Rowley. Rowley rhymes with Growley and Scowley and this fits. It’s on Dorchester Avenue in South Boston. It was Southie territory and that also rhymes with Rowley but that’s just coincidence. It’s a pub and restaurant. It’s a grand day. It’s an Irish story. It’s an Irish American gangster story. It’s a gun story.

I met friends of hers who seemed to be morons. They talked about College courses that a trained rabbit could excel in but I did not say anything. I just sat there and tried to be stoical instead of homicidal. Frank joined us at the table.

‘Hi Amy – your father will be out soon.’

‘Hi kid – how’s it going’ he said to me

‘I’m not a kid’

‘Well you look about twelve’

‘That’s the vegetarian diet – you should try it’

‘I don’t think so – it can’t be healthy’

Amy’s father came out then and kissed her on the cheek

‘Hi Billy the Kid, how is it going’ he said to me

I smiled

‘Look Frank we are making progress’

Frank looked up from the steak and missed the smile but not the bullets.

Two crimson rosettes appeared high on his shoulder.

I looked up and saw three gunmen firing at us. Two were firing with two guns each. A waiter behind us fell and the big tray he carried dropped to the floor with beer and change flying as well as his life blood. I tipped up the table and slid backwards on the floor with Amy behind me. Frank tried to pull his gun from the shoulder holster but he fell to the ground from shock and loss of blood. I grabbed the gun from his holster and waited for it.

I heard all guns dry fire and I got up immediately. The first guy I hit above the left eyebrow. He dropped like a feiceann sack of spuds as they say in Mayo. The second guy was still reloading when I hit him in the throat. His neck disintegrated, basically. The third guy had reloaded and began to fire at me. I felt invincible and that no bullets would hit me. He looked frightened as we traded shots. It was like a classical Wyatt Earp scenario except these guns were more deadly and we wouldn’t be immortalized. He faltered when he looked into my eyes and started to run. I ran after him. Everyone was screaming or crying or both. Fuck that. He slipped on the blood and beer near the exit. He put his hand down to steady himself but before he could stand up I reached him and I leaned down close so he could hear what I said. I put the gun to his head. I said

‘Drop it fuckhead’

He did

‘Open your mouth’

He did

The gun rattled against his teeth on the way in.

I fired

More screams.

He died

The gun rattled against the few teeth on the way out and I had to wipe it clean of blood and mucus and saliva.

I noticed he wore a small swastika charm around his neck. Charming.

I ran back to where Frank and Gerry lay on the floor. I pointed the gun at Frank’s head.

‘You call yourself a fucking bodyguard?’

Then I pointed the gun at my temple.

I pulled the trigger.

I knew it was empty but he didn’t. He recoiled but it dry fired. I had been keeping count of the bullets, but he looked impressed. I dropped it and went to Amy.

 

Copyright© 2004 James M McGowan

 

Read James's review of Michael Collins' Lost Souls