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    O'Hearn
    O'Hearn
    O'Hearn
    Ebook146 pages1 hour

    O'Hearn

    By Greg Mulcahy

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    About this ebook

    Greg Mulcahy’s new novel opens on a man suffering an accident at his workplace. His colleagues there are known, at least initially, only as O’Hearn and Minouche. In the aftermath of the incident, this trinity begins to fall apart. His career falls apart. His life falls apart.
     
    O’Hearn is the story of the story the man tells himself in confused chronology as he struggles to make sense of a world and a landscape where things have stopped making sense.
     
    The laws of causation are absent or profoundly obscured in this explanatory narrative, but then so is all individual motivation. Action seems to end only in a world of winners and losers and occurs solely to reinforce that world by further enriching the winners at the, sometimes willful, expense of the losers. 
     
    O’Hearn is funny, contradictory, satiric, heartbreaking—a work unlike anything in our contemporary literature.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity of Alabama Press
    Release dateApr 1, 2015
    ISBN9781573668545
    O'Hearn

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      Book preview

      O'Hearn - Greg Mulcahy

      ABIGAIL

      1

      During the incident, he cursed the paramedics. He did not remember this.

      2

      The arrangement changed.

      He was informed.

      New arrangement half-pay for him, no benefits, no promise of ongoing employment. Quarter to quarter though he could be dismissed at any time during any quarter.

      When he said he had had no say in the change in the arrangement, he was told he had no say in the arrangement and in any past or future changes to the arrangement.

      He thought of other things he could do.

      Some kind of product placement?

      Why would he think something like that he was told he was not to read anything to anyone.

      He thought he knew that part. He wanted to read that Yourcenar thing she claimed was Chinese. Apparently someone somehow offended.

      Maybe more than one.

      Whole thing a misunderstanding. He tried to explain. He was told he was no longer to attempt explanations without preapproval.

      Made a list of lethal things in his house: rat poison, bug poison, poisonous household chemicals, flammable aerosols, knives, hatchet, edged tools.

      Electricity?

      Yes in a way. No in a way

      The list not help.

      Maybe if he could talk to O’Hearn. He could not talk to O’Hearn. Not that O’Hearn knew what to do or what could be done, but O’Hearn might have calmed him down.

      O’Hearn might know what to say.

      No one talked to O’Hearn

      No one talked to him.

      He could not talk to anybody he was able to talk to.

      He would, he supposed, talk to someone.

      It was, he supposed, what he was supposed to do.

      Somebody said.

      Somebody not talking to or about him.

      O’Hearn it was, he believed, introduced him—well, all of them—the concept life of the mind.

      The devil, O’Hearn said, now in the light, now in the shadow, always on the periphery.

      That was an example of something.

      All those exemplary things.

      Have some, O’Hearn said, and O’Hearn held out the bottle.

      They told me I cannot, he said.

      I’ve got something else, O’Hearn said.

      Okay.

      O’Hearn with money or always good on the pour.

      Then.

      Leveraged privatization he thought it called O’Hearn made the money.

      Maybe it was not called that.

      He did not know what it was called.

      This, he was told, was part of the problem.

      Problem?

      Could have said that. Could have said he had no living but this.

      Stopped himself.

      No living but—he would not say it—what was it—content coordinator.

      O’Hearn went into money.

      He stayed with content.

      All that passed. No idea of the future where the money was.

      All that past placed, now, if not sequestered, in The Museum of Sentiment. Beautiful perhaps. More likely odd, or simply strange. Reminder of some once thing—arrangement—no longer affordable.

      How about the story, O’Hearn said, like a movie, say, we tell ourselves.

      How about fuck off, O’Hearn said.

      Later he said it. As a quote.

      He paid for that.

      That was wrong, he knew.

      Maybe not what had actually been said

      In one of the two incidents.

      Or in the other.

      Did he not remark this life made of movies, TV, pictures, magazines. This was not his study.

      Someone said to him, this is not your study is it?

      No.

      Neither, he supposed, what O’Hearn had said when O’Hearn was available to say.

      As though life were severable—divisible into coherent units.

      Not in his study.

      In the fullest sense, he had no study.

      No formal study.

      Yes he was asked.

      Used to be in the Cultural Division at the Institute?

      Question as assertion.

      Challenge.

      As though he could not say yes or no.

      Sort of. It was true. What he said.

      Sort of.

      Support Subdivision of the Subdivision of Cultural Support.

      What had anybody else done?

      What was he supposed to do?

      There was O’Hearn.

      Or somebody who said I did some pre-work at the division of future development.

      What was that supposed to be?

      He got burned, okay, when he put the money into the thing, the never-fail with the manufacture of home orthotics.

      O’Hearn did not.

      Was O’Hearn more or less gone by then?

      Paralyzed, weren’t you?

      Asked that as well.

      Financially. He thought everyone thought physically.

      Physically, not exactly.

      True, his bad leg bad. And, at that time, his benefits nearly gone.

      Something black and threatening on his toe.

      Fungus, it turned out. Not gangrene.

      Not really paralyzed.

      Yet.

      Whiskey and medication.

      More, he could not move.

      Nor act.

      Nor think.

      All that accidental as though—what—misfortune the refrain?

      He had heard.

      He could not be sure.

      God gave us the figures/God gave us the figures/God gave us the figures.

      Chant in some office presentation, pre- or post-O’Hearn he could not say.

      Somebody asked if he liked music.

      What could one say to that?

      Now there was to be a report. At the seminar. When did they begin having seminars at work? With conveners. Who were the conveners and how did anybody get to be a convener? Would they be there for report or did they convene something that led to the report?

      Infinite update.

      Replacement for action.

      Or meaningful activity.

      Or clearly articulated knowledge of what exact enterprise they were supposed to be executing.

      No one could explain anything.

      No one could say anything.

      What alternative?

      As though O’Hearn might come back and effect the reinstitution of certitude.

      Why had he read anything to anyone or said he’d read something to someone. Why had he thought he wanted to read anything to anyone—to them—though that was not it.

      Regardless of arrangement, new or old, O’Hearn never read anything to anyone.

      New arrangement, of course, had been discussed for years. For years all they talked about was the coming change. No one believed it.

      He had not understood.

      So much repetition.

      A kind of refrain. Almost. He could not be sure.

      Join the chorus, O’Hearn said. Give up a religious tune.

      He did not know any.

      3

      What the fuck was that, he said.

      Ax, Minouche said, a skinning ax.

      This, he thought, could not be. Head of the department with a skinning ax in the conference room. How could the company allow it.

      It was in a sheath.

      Imitation leather, Minouche said.

      We aren’t selling these, he said.

      No.

      Some kind of promotion or campaign? Gimmick?

      It is an ax, Minouche said. You know, to skin things with.

      Would not need one for anything small. Not a deer. Bear, maybe. Moose. A moose you might skin with an ax. Handy to sever tendons or break some bones if breaking were required. But, the operations meeting.

      Maybe to intimidate.

      Why not just fire somebody.

      Maybe the department head was psychotic.

      Though the department head had not threatened anyone.

      Had not even unsheathed the ax.

      The skinning ax.

      He thought they were there to sell air purifiers. Not to actually sell them, but to develop the marketing. The materials. The deep background, Minouche said, but Minouche was always saying things.

      He did not pay attention.

      Maybe ax had been around before.

      Been around forever.

      Never noticed it in the department head’s office, but it had perhaps resided there concealed as concealed things rest until discovered.

      Discovery of the skinning ax.

      But this was no discovery.

      More a revelation.

      Or, really, a display.

      The ax displayed.

      Minouche had been in sporting goods.

      He had done a number of things—none remarkable—but he had not really been in anything.

      Not like Minouche.

      The boss has that, Minouche said. What have you got.

      I had an ax, he said. Might be in the shed. I never thought to bring it to

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