I wanted to talk now. It was cold. It was darker even though my eyes were comfortable.
Kevin let off a fart. We beat the air with our hands. He tried to get my mouth, to cover it, to stop me from laughing. He was laughing. We were fighting now, just shoving, trying to stop one another from shoving back. We’d be caught soon; the others would hear us and come in. These were the last moments. Me and Kevin.
Next thing, he pruned me.
Pruning was banned in our school. The headmaster, Mister Finnucane, had seen James O’Keefe doing it to Albert Genocci when he was looking out his window at the weather, deciding whether to call us in or let us stay out. He’d been shocked, he said, when he went round to all the classes about it; he’d been shocked to see a boy doing that to another boy. He was sure that the boy who had done it hadn’t meant to seriously hurt the other boy; he certainly hoped that the boy hadn’t meant to hurt the other boy. But—
He let it hang there for a while.
This was great. James O’Keefe was in bigger trouble than he’d ever been in before, than any of us had ever been in. He had James O’Keefe standing up. He kept his head down even though Mister Finnucane kept telling him to hold his head up.
–Always hold your heads high, boys. You’re men.
I didn’t know for certain if I’d heard it when he said it the first time; Pruning.
–what I believe is being called pruning.
That was how he said it. It was like a big hole fell open in front of me—in front of all of us, I could tell from the faces—when Mister Finnucane said that. What else was he going to say? The last time he’d talked to us it was about someone robbing his big ink bottle from where he kept it outside his door. Now he was going to talk about pruning. The shock made me forget to breathe.
–Come on, James, now, he said.—Hold your head up, like I said.
Albert Genocci wasn’t in our class. He was in the thicks’ class. His brother, Patrick Genocci, was in our class.
–I know you’re only playing when you do it, said Mister Finnucane.
Henno was standing behind him. He was blushing as well. He’d been out in the yard looking after us; he should have seen what was happening. There was no escape; James O’Keefe was dead.
–only having a bit of fun. But it’s not funny. Not funny at all. Doing what I saw being done this morning could cause serious injury.
Ah; was that all?
–That part of the body is very delicate.
We knew that.
–You could ruin a boy’s life for the rest of his—life. All for a joke.
The big hole in front of us was filling up. He wasn’t going to say anything wrong or funny. He wasn’t going to say Balls or Mickey or Testicles. It was disappointing, only it had stopped another history test—the life of the Fianna—and now he was going to kill James O’Keefe.
–Sit down, James.
I couldn’t believe it. Neither could James O’Keefe or anybody.
–Sit down.
James O’Keefe got halfway between sitting down and standing up. It was a trick; it had to be.
–I don’t want to see it happening again, said Mister Finnucane.
That was all.
Henno’d get him when Mister Finnucane was gone. But he didn’t. We went straight back to the test.
There was no proper road outside our house for months, up as far as the summer holidays. Da had to park the car down at the shops. Missis Kilmartin, the woman from the shop who spied on the shoplifters, knocked at our door: there was no room for the H.B. man in his lorry to make his delivery because of Da’s car and Kevin’s da’s car and three others. Missis Kilmartin was angry. It was the first time I’d ever really seen an angry woman. It wasn’t a bloody carpark, she said; she paid her rates. She was squinting. That was because she was never out in the daylight; she was always behind the oneway glass door. Ma was stuck; Da was at work—he went in the train—and she couldn’t drive. Missis Kilmartin put her hand out.
–The keys.
–I don’t have them. I—
–For Christ’s sake!
She slammed the gate. She grabbed it so she could slam it.
When I’d opened the door she’d said,—Your mother.
I’d thought I was in for it. I’d been framed. She’d seen me buying something and she thought I was robbing it. The way I’d picked it up, it had looked like I was going to rob it.
I never robbed from that shop.
You only went to jail if you robbed more than ten shillings worth of stuff, at one time. People my age and Kevin’s didn’t go to jail when they were caught. They were sent to a home. You went to Artane if you were caught twice. They shaved your head there.
We had to stop running through the pipe; it was too far. It had gone up past my house, out of Barrytown. We took over the manholes. They stuck out of the ground, like small buildings. They’d become level with the ground when they were surrounded by cement; they’d become just parts of the path. We got Aidan and shoved him down the hole. He had to stay down there on the platform and we lobbed muck in. He could hide because the platform down there was much wider than the hole. If we lobbed the muck low it went through the hole at an angle and hit the platform walls and maybe Aidan. We surrounded him. If it had been me I’d have got down to the pipe and charged down to the next hole and climbed out before the others found out what I was doing. And I’d have pelted them and have used stones as well. Aidan was crying. We looked at Liam because he was his brother. Liam kept throwing the muck into the hole so, so did we.
The new road was straight now, all the way. The edges of Donnelly’s fields were chopped off and you could see all the farm because the hedges were gone; it was like Catherine’s dolls’ house with the door opened. You could see all the beingbuilt houses on the other side of the fields. The farm was being surrounded. The cows were gone, to the new farm. Big lorries took them. The smell was a laugh. One of the cows skidded on the ramp getting up into the lorry. Donnelly hit it with his stick. Uncle Eddie was behind him. He had a stick as well. He hit the cow when Donnelly did. We could see the cows all packed in the lorries, trying to get their noses out between the bars.
Uncle Eddie went in one of the lorries beside the driver. He had his elbow sticking out the window. We waved at him, and cheered when the lorry full of cows went through the knockeddown gates of the farmhouse and turned left onto the new road. It was like Uncle Eddie was going away.
I saw him later, running down to the shops before they shut to get the Evening Press for Donnelly.
The old railway bridge wasn’t big enough any more for the road to get under it. They built a new one, made of huge slabs of concrete, right beside the old one. The road dipped down under the bridge so that big traffic, lorries and buses, could get under it. They cut away the land beside the road so the road could go further down. More concrete slabs stopped the cutaway land from falling onto the road. They said that two men were killed doing this work but we never saw anything. They were killed when some of Donnelly’s field fell on them, after it had been raining and the ground was loose and soggy. They drowned in muck.
I had a dream sometimes that made me wake up. I was eating something. It was dry and gritty and I couldn’t get it wet. It hurt my teeth; I couldn’t close my mouth and I wanted to shout for help and I couldn’t. And I woke up and my mouth was all dry, from being open. I wondered had I been shouting; I hoped I hadn’t but I wanted my ma to come in and ask me was I alright and sit on the bed.