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The first thing JJ remembers is the ocean. It’s not even a proper memory, more like disjointed flashes – faded clips like on those old-timey films, all blurred at the edges. Bright sun rays hitting his eyes, making him squint at the sky. The sloshing sound of the waves in his ears, the water cool on his feet and the salty sea spray on his face. His small toddler hands flat on the white surfboard, so vast underneath him. His dad’s much larger, tanned hands, holding the board still for his little self to stand on. His dad’s laugh, boisterous and sincere. Happy.
The first thing JJ remembers is the ocean, and also his dad. Kildare and family. How fucking fitting.
He stands on the dock, now, squinting at the bright light, looking out at sea as his father takes off towards the horizon for the last time, leaving him behind. In a way, everything in JJ’s life to this point has led him here – helping his dad escape the consequences of his own actions, one last time.
JJ’s never been able to look the other way, it’s the thing. He’s never been able to just say, you know what? You’ve dug yourself into this hole, now dig yourself out of it, I’m done. Not those times, barely a child, when he would bring up a blanket and pillow to Luke, passed out on the couch, leave him a glass of water and two aspirins on the coffee table for when he’d wake up with a raging hangover. Not all those times he lied through his teeth, or stole, or cheated his way through just so Luke wouldn’t end up in trouble. Family is family, Luke would always say, You don’t turn your back on blood. And ain’t that the truth.
The pill bottles are heavy in his hands, the hard plastic searing hot against his palms, red and dark like shame that can’t be shaken off your shoulders. He wonders if Luke has noticed them missing, yet. If he’s swearing and cursing and taking back what he just said about JJ, that You got a good heart that sounded an awful lot like I love you.
JJ could never leave anything well enough alone, and usually paid for it dearly. But this time Luke is gone for good, and no matter what he’ll think or do when he finds out JJ stole his pills, JJ won’t be close enough in his orbit to pay the price for it.
He chucks the bottles into a floatie hanging off the railing of the dock, kicks it in for good measure. He stops in his track, then, catching some movement in his peripheral – his shoulders already preemptively tensing – but it’s just Kiara, walking slowly down the pier towards him. She stops a few feet away, just far enough to leave him space. JJ dries his eyes against the sleeve of his jacket, pulls himself together. Fakes a smile as he walks up to meet her.
He doesn’t need to pretend, with Kie. She can see right through him anyway.
He pulls her in close, rests his arm over her shoulder and she does the same, holds on tight to him. They walk away like that, side by side. It’s such a fucking metaphor – leaving his father behind and heading back towards his friends, his real family, Kie by his side.
Kie doesn’t talk to him as they slide back into her dad’s truck. Doesn’t talk as she drives out of the Island Club, back on the main road. She lets him slouch against the window, eyes glazed over and unfocused, the familiar landscape blurred as they speed past it towards Goat Island. He can practically hear her biting her lip down, mentally warring against her instinct to check on him. He’s grateful she’s letting him be.
He should be happy, is the thing, shouldn’t he. He’s been so scared of Luke, for so long, of his volatile anger that could flip on you like a switch at a moment’s notice. For as long as he remembers, JJ has been trained in the fine art of making himself invisible, approaching cautiously inside his own home, footsteps featherlight to avoid all the creaking floorboards. He’s had a wide collection of bruises to show for the times he got it wrong, over the years, more than he can count, and broken ribs and dislocated joints and so much fear to last a lifetime. Just earlier today, when Luke ambushed him in the surf shack at the Chateau, JJ’s whole body switched into fight or flight mode, adrenaline pumping through his blood, his senses hyper-aware of his surroundings all at once. It’s a familiar routine, one that’s been burned into his bones through years and years of practice.
Even once his brain had caught up to what was happening, once Luke’s words had registered, once JJ had understood what his father wanted of him. Luke was never a danger when he needed something from you – if anything he had the common sense to make himself amenable, once he was asking for a favour. Even then, JJ’s heart kept thrumming in his chest for entirely too long, his skin on fire and nerves on high alert. Your brain can know things, but it’s an entirely different story to convince your body – this JJ has also learnt, time and time again.
He remembers all those times, after Luke had started dabbing into coke and heavier drugs. The mood swings, the highs, the smashed bottles against the wall, angry words shouted across the rooms, sharp as knives. He remembers the first time he found Luke passed out on tranquilisers, his skin almost grey, how it’d scared the living crap out of him. JJ was just a clueless, stupid child back then, he thought Luke was dead. He remembers hiding inside his room, crawling into his closet and crying in there for hours, panic rushing through his limbs, completely lost. Luke eventually got himself out of his drugged out stupor, dragged himself up from the couch. JJ heard him calling out from the living room and let out a sigh of relief like nothing he’s ever felt since. If he closes his eyes and thinks about it, even now, he can still feel the racing heartbeat in his chest, the panicked thrumming of the blood through his temples.
A traitorous memory comes out of nowhere, unearthed after years of neglect. It’s from the time before, when Mom was still around — the light shining through the window into her golden hair, sat on the couch with her legs folded under herself, like a cat. JJ’s tiny body splayed next to her, the cushions soft against his back, his t-shirt climbing up his sides. Dad coming over from the corner with his goofy monster voice that he used to make when he played with him. Suddenly, Dad jumped on the sofa and tickle-attacked. JJ’s limbs flailing wildly, the sound of his childish laugh filling his ears, Dad’s wide smile above him taking over his whole field of vision. JJ jerked his head back as he squirmed away from Dad’s tickling fingers, catching Mom’s laughter in his peripheral, that dimple she had in her cheek.
Then Mom left, and things changed. JJ doesn’t remember ever asking Luke where she was, after she split. And, granted, part of it might be that he knew most likely that question would have resulted in Dad slamming him into the nearest wall, but that’s not all of it. There was an understanding between them, after she left. They had this thing in common now, he and his dad, this shared grief. And sometimes, when Luke had drowned his sorrow in a bottle of liquor and was throwing empties at him, sometimes JJ could vividly recognise his own anger in his father’s bewildered glare. God knows he’d want to smash things and yell and cause havoc, too.
He’d sit in his room, after, barricade the door and wrap himself in a pile of blankets on his bed. He’d spend hours staring at the poster of the Yucatan on this wall, and dream of escapes and sandy beaches and surfing all day. The Pogues were always there in his daydreams, forever and ever, no parents in sight or school or teachers or nosy neighbours, just them.
It was JJ’s mom who put the poster on his wall, years and years ago when he was very little, which is funny because as far as JJ remembers, it was always Dad’s dream to go there. He’d say things like, “We should just pack up our things and leave this cursed island, head to Yucatan instead,” or, “There’s so many lobsters there you can catch them with your hands,” and, “None of us will ever need to work a single day in our lives again.” And now he’s heading there, the bastard. Who says that dreams don’t come true, after all.
Luke didn’t even ask him to go with him. Not that JJ would have wanted that, or maybe he would have, who knows – that’s not the point. The point is, he didn’t ask him. He packed up and left, just like he’d said he’d do. Planned it all out, roped JJ into helping him escape, too, and not once the thought even crossed his mind to ask his only son to join him.
“You okay?”
Kiara’s voice, oozing with concern, pulls him out of his thoughts. He turns towards her, sees the look in her eyes – the way she’s trying her best to hide her emotions from him, and failing miserably at it.
“Yeah,” he says, because she doesn’t need to worry about him, that’s not her job. “Yeah, I’m okay.”
He doesn’t offer anything else. Leans back against the window, goes back to looking at the street side speeding past. He doesn’t quite know what to do with her emotions.
For better and for worse, JJ has always been defined by his father, both in likeness and in opposition. No matter how much energy he put into fighting against it, JJ’s ‘Just another Maybank’, and ‘That Maybank kid’, and ‘You know where I’m from’, on this godforsaken island where everybody knows everybody and their parents and their grandparents, back five generations. Dad always used to say You never know with people, and The quiet ones always hide nasty secrets , which was his way of saying that nice clean facades can be deceiving. But then, he also used to say, You don’t go snooping behind other people’s closed doors, which meant that people should mind their goddamn business and keep their noses out of things that don’t concern them.
Sometimes, when he was little, there was music in the house, and his parents would be laughing at something JJ said, and Dad would come close and ruffle his hair with his hand and say, “That’s my boy.” He’d circle an arm around Mom as he passed her by and smack a kiss on her lips, loud and strong.
Then there were other days, when Mom and Dad would fight and yell and shout and Mom would cry on the floor with her back against the wall after Dad left slamming the door behind him. Then his mom split town, climbed in the passenger seat of her drug dealer’s pick-up truck and never looked back – and suddenly there were no more good days or bad days, just a new kind of days.
He’s always thought he’s gonna grow up to be nothing like his dad. The people he loves will never look at him with fear in their eyes, will never move carefully to dodge his next blow. And yet a part of him also thinks that maybe it’s just inevitable. That one day he’ll wake up to realise he’s just as miserable and useless as Luke Maybank once was.
Those thoughts can’t seem to leave his head now, stuck in this car with Kie as she rushes them through the island to go save the Twinkie, and their friends with it. Too much is going on, and JJ’s never been good at processing big moments, but there’s one thing from today that he can’t seem to shake, and it’s his own hands on Kiara’s arms, clasped tight above her elbows, the way he shook her and made her stumble back towards the car, shouted, “Listen to me!” with his jaw set in a harsh line.
Kiara didn’t look at him like she was scared of him, because Kiara doesn’t believe him capable of hurting her, but JJ is not quite as generous in his self-judgement. And he knows, he knows that that moment was more than she realised. It was good ol’ Luke Maybank, planting his seed in his own offspring for so many years, finally coming to the surface. The one thing JJ swore he’d never do – hurting someone he loves, towering over them and shutting them up with his sheer size and strength – and yet here they are.
“Hey, Kie.” Her eyes flit towards him, a brief look to let him know she’s heard him and then they’re back on the road. “I, uhm– I’m sorry. For before, I mean. For grabbing you. I– I really shouldn’t have done that. I’m sorry.”
She turns back to him once more, as briefly as before, confusion in her eyes. “You… haven’t done anything wrong?”
JJ leans his head back onto his seat. Closes his eyes. Great, so she’s gonna make it difficult for him.
“I did, though. I shouldn’t have, like, put my hands on you.”
“Put your hands on me? JJ what the hell are you talking about, you mean back at the Chateau? You barely touched me.”
“That wasn’t ‘barely’. I pushed you against the car, and–”
“Oh my god.”
She pulls at the side of the road, even though they’re running stupidly late already. Unhooks her seatbelt, turns in her seat, her leg folded up underneath her as she twists to face him straight on.
“JJ. What’s going on? Look, it was a tense moment, you were freaking out about your dad. I get it, I’m not mad at you.”
“Well, maybe you should!”
There’s silence. She’s looking at him in that way she does that makes him want to crawl out of his skin. He keeps his gaze planted in his lap, fingers twitching around the hem of his jacket.
“JJ… I promise, you didn’t hurt me.” Her voice is gentle, soft. Like she’s trying not to scare off a wild animal. Or a very small child. There are fucking tears pooling at the bottom rim of his eyes. He blinks a few times furiously to try and make them go away.
“That’s not the point. The point is that I could have.”
“I don’t believe that.”
The laugh leaving his mouth is completely dry, brittle. “Well. You’re giving me a hell of a lot of credit there, then.”
“No, I’m not. Stop saying shit like that.”
He keeps his eyes determinately fixed in his lap, the tense silence stretching between them. In the corner of his eyes he can feel her scrunching her nose in that slightly confused pensive expression of hers, and not for the first time today JJ feels like pulling his hair out in fistfuls.
“JJ, what is this really about?” she asks, gently. “Did something happen just now, with your dad?”
Did something happen, she asks.
His mind flies back to those last moments with Luke on the boat, the $50 bill JJ slipped out of his wallet – money that was meant to cover groceries and fuel for the week but oh well, he’ll figure something out. JJ always does. All the times over the years that he handed his dad cash for something essential after Luke had blown out his paycheck on booze at the pub, or drugs, or gambled it away.
Luke hugged him, on the boat, held him tight and refused to let him leave without goodbye. And JJ hung on his shoulders one last time, breathed in the scent of his dad, closed his eyes and pictured all the hugs just like this one Luke had given him over the years.
He knows Kie hates his dad. Even now, as hard as she’s trying to be there for JJ and be a good, supporting friend, he can practically see the thought behind her eyes, how she thinks it’s a good thing that Luke’s finally fucked off into the sunset. It’s not just Kie, either, he knows all the Pogues have thought at times that JJ’s life would be so much better if it wasn’t for his dad. Hell, JJ himself has thought that too, more than once. And yet he can’t bring himself to be happy that Luke has now left him. Part of him – the pathetic little child that will forever live nested somewhere deep inside his chest – can’t help but feel like he’s been abandoned, once again. Left behind like an unwanted package, just like his mom did all those years ago.
And the thing is, things were bad a lot of the time, after his mom left. Before that, too, if he’s being honest. Luke had always been angry, and volatile, and quick to raise hands – and Mom had hardly been peaches and cream, either. After she left, JJ has been stuck with Luke for so many years, and it felt like a prison at times, but not always. There were still good times, too.
He remembers those days so vividly, in the sea of jumbled memories of his childhood. All that sadness that he couldn’t express. Luke’s rage at the world, his drunken stupor, the highs and lows. The terror he felt that time Luke found him curled up at the bottom of his closet, his mom’s old pyjamas shirt which still smelled like her clutched to his chest, how he was sure Luke would smack the tears off his face, ‘give him something to cry about’.
But he didn’t.
Luke leaned down over him, took him by the arm and pulled him up to his feet. Took the shirt from his hand and chucked it into his pocket. Dried JJ’s teary face with the pads of his thumbs – his skin warm and rough, dry with callouses from handling his tools.
“Hey,” Dad said, flicking a finger under his chin. He made sure to catch his eyes, gave him a stern look. He then ran an arm around his shoulders and pulled him close, a hand roughly patting on his back. “It’s just you and me, now, boy. Just you and me.”
It’s stupid, maybe, thinking about that now. Only a few weeks ago Luke had beat the ever living shit out of JJ so bad that JJ had pointed a gun to his head, in his desperation, spent neverending moments contemplating what would happen if he just pulled the trigger, one split second to then be free of all that crap forever. Now he’s free, for real, through a far less dramatic turn of events. How many times over the years has he wished for this exact outcome – for Luke to disappear from his life and leave him alone? He should be happy. He should count his blessings and be grateful that this is the outcome life has handed him. And yet, somehow, that is not how he feels.
“It’s fine,” he says to Kie, holding her gaze as if to dare her to challenge him. “Nothing’s happened. It’s all good.”
Kie looks at him like she doesn’t quite believe him, but then lets it drop.
“Okay,” she says, quiet.
She turns on the engine, then, and they drive off.
The winch clunks in the bed of the truck as Kie makes a turn into the uneven road to Goat Island. A heavy weight of metal, rusty from disuse and the salty air of the marsh over years and years of winters, in the exposed surf shack at the Chateau. It feels like a fucking metaphor or something, but JJ’s never been good at English.
Luke taught him how to use a winch. How to attach it right so that it could pull up his uncle’s truck – that time a few years back, after the whole street flooded during a particularly vicious hurricane and all the cars parked outside had ended up a couple of blocks down, stuck in a pile of mud in the ditch. Luke taught him a lot of things, in fact, so many things. How to fix shit. The various names of the various parts that made out a boat engine, and a car engine, and a motorcycle engine, the ways they were different and the ways they were the same. How to set up a fishing line. How to drive a boat. How to change the oil in the car. How to pack his stash right, so the coppers’ dogs couldn’t smell it.
JJ used to hang around Luke all the time when he was working around the house, when he set up shop out on the porch, or in the dining room. Used to follow him like a lost puppy, stare at his every move, ask him all these dumb questions. Some days Luke would grunt, shrug him off as an unwanted pest, and those days JJ knew he had better scram before things turned bad. But some other days Dad would pull a chair next to him and talk him through what he was doing. Pass him the wrench or the screwdriver or whatnot, and let JJ get on with it as he got up to get himself another beer.
“Good boy,” he’d say with a wide smile as he walked back into the room, a cold bottle dangling from his finger. “Yeah. Yeah, just like that.” He’d chuckle in glee, pat JJ roughly on his back. “Look at that. Ain't no-one saying shit about Maybanks, now, we can fix engines in our sleep. It’s in our blood, right son?”
Dad is gone, now – Luke is gone. For good, he ain’t never coming back, this time. JJ is alone.
Kie tucks her stray hair behind her ear with the tips of her fingers, and it’s a gesture so familiar he aches with the echo of the million other times he’s seen her do that before. She sneaks a look his way, so very briefly. Curls the corner of her lips into a smile, then returns her eyes on the road, like nothing happened.
He’s not alone, is the thing. He never has been.
The sun is lower on the horizon as they speed ahead, Freedman Church appearing on the side of the road. In a few more moments they’ll get to the others – who will most likely have things to say about how fucking long they took to fetch a winch and come back, and JJ will flip them off, affectionately. His real family has not been Luke, for a long, long time. Because there’s one more thing JJ learnt from his dad, and it’s that blood might let you down, but you can always find your people, your true family, even if you weren’t born from the same line as them. And JJ knows, he’s known for a long time, that he’ll always have the Pogues. He’s found his people.
And honestly, he could have done worse, for a scrawny low-lifer from the Cut.