Chapter 1

Samson was not an old family name. Nor was O'Christ. The latter was the involuntary oath growled by the terminally depressed priest handed yet another squalling brat that child-rich christening day of April 1989. But it had been uttered by the holy man in charge and was duly written down, and from that day forth the lad was known as Samson O'Christ and there was fuck all he could do about it.  

He was born in County Cork, but once named, his Irish mother, Orla Casey-Casey, deCorked him to the brighter lights of Dublin, where she found sufficient employment to keep the pair of them off the streets until she could persuade her stinking rich former husband to send regular funds in exchange for not being trashed to CNN, MSNBC and Fox News as the egotistical philandering shit she often described him as to friends.

Samson's father was Cyrus J. Underbund, flamboyant proprietor of broadcasting and communications company U-Media, which everyone has heard of. What most people might not have heard is that in its earliest days the organization wasn't called U-Media but C.U. Enterprises. The name change came about because the Enterprises part quickly found a short form (NTS) and it was the combination of the five resultant initials that were attached to the top of the fourteen-story headquarters building that Cyrus erected in Washington, DC. It's been speculated that the inner circle of C.U. Enterprises were too close to the name for the contraction to register, while less charitable commentators suggest that they lacked the balls to point it out to the chief. Bloggers had enormous fun with it, of course, but Cyrus did not read or even hear of such comments. He only realized what he'd given to the world when, jetting into Reagan National one starless night, he saw his banner on the summit of Underbund Tower.

'Maybe we should have included the periods,' he mused, staring at the word CUNTS emblazoned in unmissable neon on the Washington skyline.

Next day he changed the company name to C.U. Media, but this too was scrapped when an unsigned note was slipped under his door suggesting that certain individuals would almost certainly call it CUM. Further, more thoughtful reflection, resulted in the name U-Media, which, if also corrupted by abbreviation, was unlikely to cause offence or ridicule. And U-Media it remained.

It was April 2012 now, evening, some days after Samson's 23rd birthday, and he and his father – who had met face to face just half a dozen times in the young man's life – were speaking on the phone. Samson sat on the unmade bed of his poky little flat above the joke shop in Bridge Street, Cambridge, less than a mile from his old college. In one hand he held a telephone, in the other a signed Erich Heckel woodcut entitled Man on a Plain, dated 1917, which he'd been able to buy only by eating out of cans for a month. The man on the plain was holding his head wearily; or perhaps warily. Weary or wary, Samson knew how he felt. He and Cyrus spoke on the phone every so often because the son felt a sense of duty to phone the father, but their Transatlantic chats were rarely easy or particularly warm.

Tonight's fairly typical conversation would get a shade less typical shortly, but they weren't to know about the bomb lying temporarily dormant under Samson's bed. Their first awareness of it would be when the flat exploded, flinging Samson through the window and down to the ancient cobbles of Bridge Street in a flurry of jokes from the shop. Before that seismic event, with a full two minutes and fourteen seconds to go, Samson got to the point of his call.

'Dad,' he said. 'I have something to tell you.'     

Chapter 43

It was Eurin Krapp's fault. Eurin Krapp was a big name country music star and George had just found him on the radio. George loved Krapp. What he loved about him was that he was a whining caterwauling self-pitying sonofabitch in a big stupid hat who sang about beatin' hearts and huggin' and reachin' out and canoodlin' with his baby at the Honeymoon Hotel, without ever actually mentioning what his songs were really about, which was fuckin'.

Eurin Krapp, hailing originally from Flushing, New York, started his climb to stardom three years earlier when, with his backing combo The Eurinators (later renamed The Krapp Artists), he put out his first album, simply called Eurin Krapp. His second album, Eurin Krapp 2, picked up some good reviews in the country music press and fans of the genre started to sit up and take notice. When he brought out an album of self-penned numbers titled Pure Krapp, Eurin was made. It went straight to the top of the country charts and suddenly he was on the Grand Ole Opry every other weekend, showing his dazzling double deck of perfectly crowned teeth and slapping backs and swapping scripted cornball jokes and joshing with all the other tasselled, sparkly, stupid-hatted pluckers like he'd been born to it.

And now his latest was being played everywhere. His latest was a live album, recorded on tour, entitled Krapp on the Road. It was one of the whining caterwauling self-pitying sonofabitching numbers from Krapp on the Road that George was singing along with as they approached the Areola County line. He hadn't heard this one before so he sang different words and a different tune, but he still thought it was great. As the six-hour fadeout began, George, not wanting to miss a single bum note or ya-hoo, took his eyes off the road to seek the volume button – a mistake, because the very moment he did this was the same very moment that the Chevy's unburst front tyre made contact with the broken bottle that had been sitting there all morning hoping some brainless cunt like George would come along and make its existence worthwhile.

There was an unassuming little explosion and the car swerved one last time in order to smack into a blue dumpster crammed with cell phones and George took off vaguely skyward, leaving the stuntmobile to flip windshield over axle and land upside down in the field beside the road. Samson missed George's unscripted departure, being somewhat preoccupied by his own revised position, on his back beneath the vehicle, pinned by the dash panel that had come away, and further restrained by a loose brake cable round his ankle. The one part of him that he could move with grace was his head, so he turned it a little to the left to read the sign beside the dumpster the car had struck.     

YOU ARE NOW LEAVING

AREOLA COUNTY

WHAT KEPT YOU?

If there was one small mercy in all this it was that the country music station had stopped whining and bitching and feeling sorry for itself. How terrible, Samson thought, to survive a car wreck but be unable to reach the off button while a country music station played on, hour after hour, until your brain trickled out of your ears like repeatedly stabbed egg yolk. That made him pretty lucky, he decided.

THE GODAWFUL MISFORTUNES OF SAMSON O'CHRIST

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