No one was waiting by the passage. I slid down into the hollow. Alan was sitting on a tree stump trying to roll a penny across the backs of his knuckles.
‘I suppose your parents hate me now,’ he said.
I stared at the dirt on the toes of his yellowing runners, the baggy drape of his jeans across bony knees. I looked into eyes that needed me, and was embarrassed for us both. All day, the one thing I’d thought about, my arms heavy with glasses or my cheek red from the washer’s steam, was getting to Alan, but now all I could think about was getting away from him. Climbing out of the hollow was hard. You had to take long strides on the loose earth and grab for a branch at the top. More than once I’d missed and slid back down on my stomach. More than once my shirt had ridden up and stones dug into my chest.
Alan made a fist around the coin. I looked away from him towards the opening of the passage, a jagged shard of dusky sky where the high leaves shook. Then I saw a flailing hand miss a branch, saw Alan slip and fall. The rails began to sing. He picked himself up and ran again and caught the branch and hung on tightly. His feet scrabbled in the dirt as leaves whipped up around him. The horn grew loud and strong. I realized what was happening.
I dived for Alan’s ankle and held on. He kicked me hard in the chin and my vision went black, then red. Black was the train tearing past. Red were the wind and the leaves. Alan finally let go and the two of us rolled back to the bottom. He mumbled something with no breath.
‘The hell were you thinking?’ I said.
Under a torn flap of denim, Alan’s shin was cut and swollen. He reached a hand through the hole and brought it out blood-smeared. We lay together listening to each other’s breathing. Darkness fell around us quickly, the way it does beyond street lights.
‘We’re going,’ I said, but I knew I’d leave alone.
I couldn’t face the climb so I scrambled over the branches and the ridge and set off across the field. The corn stalks were shoulder-high and the ploughed earth was uneven. I kept one eye on Bill Coleman’s farmhouse, black and squat nearby. No light showed in its windows, but I was sure that someone waited. It was quiet but for the breath in my lungs. I ran out of nameless fear. Fourteen is too young to learn that the mind of God may hold two opposing ideas at once, without ever showing a preference for either.
I made it as far as the road before I looked in guilt for Alan. In the darkness I could see back no more than a few feet but I could hear another train in the distance. Before my eyes, the wind moved the branches of a tree. It joined their leaves together like hands in a moment of silent prayer, then divided them again into something else.
Manhood
The pit lies open before me and Puppy as though ready to swallow the sun. Briars swell behind and around us, and the bank slopes away at our feet. The air here is heavy with the tang of dirt and animals. And down there, where once they quarried ballast for the trawlers, are the lime lines and the goalposts and the shipping containers used for changing-rooms. The team that threw Puppy off for fighting are getting stuffed by some shower from Raheny. He speaks his mind:
‘You’re a donkey, Damo!’
‘Big banana feet on you!’
‘I’ve seen milk turn quicker!’
This is the life, panned out on the warm grass with a can and the last of the smokes Puppy got from his Da last week. The Big Dog’s a trucker, comes home only twice a month.
‘Look,’ he says and hunches forward, ‘check it out.’
This right here is an excitable lad at the best of times, so it could be anything he’s pulling from the inside pocket of his jacket. Still, I’m surprised by what he shows me. Of course, I’ve seen johnnies before.
‘What are you carrying that around with you for?’
‘To show you, you virgin prick.’
I try to concentrate on the match below, but Puppy won’t be stopped.
‘You’d think Karen was a quiet one, yeah? Well, I’m here to tell you, son — the noises out of her? My Jesus! Like nothing on earth, she was.’ He scratches his eyebrow with the back of a thumb and pauses. ‘Listen here.’
‘I’m listening.’
‘But are you hearing?’
‘Despite myself.’
‘She has a mate.’
‘Has she, now?’
Damo Daley belts one over the bar from the corner and I surprise even myself with the force of the cheer I let out, so keen am I to show my passion for a sport I’ve never been bothered with.
‘The fuck,’ Puppy says, ‘is your problem?’
‘Nothing, just … Good point, yeah?’
‘Oh, stellar,’ he rolls his eyes. ‘Christ. Get your yoke working and talk to me, yeah? Boys in shorts and here’s you delighted.’
I finish my smoke, grind it into the back of an ant in the wrong place at the wrong time.
‘So,’ I say. ‘Who’s the friend, then?’
Puppy sniffs and clears his throat.
‘Eits.’
Eits. When we were nine years old and kiss-chasing, Eithne Killeen let everyone catch her. Twelve and playing spin the bottle, she let anyone use the tongue. Fourteen, she was suspended from school for wanking off Mark O’Leary in the boys’ jacks at lunchtime. Fifteen, she discovered vodka and ended every party by puking her ring in your living room. She smells like baby powder, bleaches the shite out of her hair, wears thick eyeliner and thin shirts you can see her nipples through. She lives two streets away. Our fathers were friends until Eits’ da died. When I was five and starting school she held my hand in the yard. I always nod ‘hello’ whenever I see her. But she scares the living shit out of me.
Friday night, Puppy has a free gaff. I knock over and he answers the door shirtless, sockless — glowing ginger head on him. He leads the way upstairs towards his bedroom, where he has his stereo set up and where we’re allowed to smoke out the window. But when we get to the landing, he pauses, holds a finger to his grinning lips and flings the door open.
‘Fuck sake!’ Karen says and grabs for the edge of the sheet.
I can’t really see anything good, but what I can see is almost better. A long slope of rib and side-tit. Dark hair hanging in her face.
‘Turn your fucking eyes, yeah?’ she says. ‘The both of yous.’
We study the Scarface poster on the wall, Pacino blasting an M16 in black and white and red. Puppy winks when he catches my eye.
‘Okay, right,’ Karen says. ‘Look, so.’
She wears black jeans and a tight black jumper with fraying sleeves hooked over her thumbs. Her feet are bare, her toenails purple. She pulls her knees to her chest and hugs them. Puppy sits beside her and starts chewing at her neck.
‘Karen? Boyo here needs the lowdown on Eits. I’ve told him she’s gagging, isn’t that right?’
‘Well —’
‘There you go,’ Puppy says. ‘You’re on a promise, there. She doesn’t lie to her friends.’
‘She’d love it if you did,’ Karen says.
‘If I what?’
‘If … you know. I think she likes you.’