The Buddha that Cried

Excerpt from Novel The Buddha that Cried by Andy Smailes

Fragley isn’t Irish, but he looks as if he ought to be.
We exchange small talk. The dockyard, the boats. Fragley’s a crane operator on the dockside. He won’t be far off sixty, I guess. He doesn’t have any direct contact with the boats and their cargo, so he doesn’t smell of fish. The ambience of the pub doesn’t seem to bother him too much, though. He’s here more or less every night.
I wouldn’t say he loves his work; it must be a very solitary existence up there in the crane’s tiny cockpit at night. I guess he’s one of those guys who just gets on with it, and grows gently and benignly old. If he didn’t have his crane, his eagle’s eye view over the docks, the ships and the sea, the drinking and camaraderie of the pub, I think he would just fade away. He doesn’t seem to live for anything else, that’s for sure.
“Did you know Hoosey’s closing down?” Fragley has turned and is busy lighting up again. He chain-smokes when he’s at work, too; just himself and a pack or three of Bensons for company in his cockpit up in the sky.
*
Fragley looked older tonight, old and pinched, as if the cold had got to him; as if the warmth of the pub was unable to filter through. The lines of his face, cutting through his cheeks to the angles of his mouth, were deeper, harsher. He turned away from me to cough, hacking away into a tissue. He crumpled it up into a ball and flicked it into the open brass fireplace, but not before I’d sneaked a quick look at it. The stuff he spat out was greyish-white, the phlegm of a chronic smoker, and it was spotted with little flecks of blood.
No, lad, this won’t last forever. I remembered his words from the night before.
“I feel everything’s slipping away,” he said. “Most of me life I’ve worked in this place. And for what? Night after bloody night by meself up in that crane, sleeping away the days… Sleeping away me bloody life, that’s what. What’s the point of it all? Got no money stashed away…no sons to live on after I go…why live at all? Why even bother to bloody exist?”
I’d never seen Fragley down like this. He had always been so determinedly cheerful. I wondered if I could give back some of the empathy I’d had over the years.
“You’ve been here thirty years, man. This is your home…you might not have kids, but you’ve got family here. You belong here. Just walk into the bar, and you know it…you can touch it. There’s a thousand dockers here who’ll shout for you, man…”
“Aye, and what good will that do?” His voice was deep, then, deep and grim.
Only then did it sink in. I noticed he wasn’t smoking any more. Instead, he was drinking hard. Drinking as if there was no tomorrow.
“Given up on the fags, have you?”
“Aye, well…” He shrugged. “I might as well save me money.” His face as he turned away was unreadable.
I bought him a beer. “They’re on me tonight,” I told him. I bought him half a dozen, and his mates as many more. But still it didn’t change his mood.

Author Robert Andy Smailes