Worms came out of the sods.
We made booby traps all around our hut. We buried open paint cans and hid them with grass. If your foot went through the grass into the can usually nothing happened except you fell over. But if you were running your leg could be broken. It was easy to imagine. We buried one with the paint still in it but no one stood in it. We got a milk bottle and broke it. We put the biggest bits of glass standing up in a can right in front of the hut door.
–What if one of us puts our foot in it?
The traps were supposed to be for the enemy.
–We won’t, said Kevin.—We know where it is, stupid.
–Liam doesn’t.
Liam was at his auntie’s.
–Liam’s not in our gang.
I hadn’t known that—Liam had been playing with us the day before—but I didn’t say anything.
We sharpened sticks and stuck them in the ground pointing out towards where the enemy would be sneaking up from. We kept the sticks low. If the enemy was creeping along he’d get a pointy stick in the face.
Ian McEvoy ran into a trip wire and he had to go to hospital for stitches.
–His foot was hanging off him.
It was real wire, not string like we usually used. We didn’t know who’d set it up. It was tied between two trees in the field behind the shops. There was no but near it. We didn’t build huts in that field; it was too flat. They’d been playing relievio, Ian McEvoy and them, in front of the shops and when Kilmartin’s hall door opened Ian McEvoy had thought that it was Missis Kilmartin going to yell at them to go away and he’d run into the field and the trip wire. The wire was a mystery.
–Fellas from the Corpo houses did it.
There were six new families living in the first row of finished Corporation houses. Their gardens were full of hardened halfbags of cement and smashed bricks. Some of the children were the same age as us but that didn’t mean that they could hang around with us.
–Slum scum.
My ma hit me when I said that. She never hit me usually but she did then. She smacked behind my head.
–Never say that again.
–I didn’t make it up, I told her.
–Just never say it again, she said.—It’s a terrible thing to say.
I didn’t even know what it really meant. I knew that the slums were in town.
The road with the six Corporation houses wasn’t joined to any other road. It ended just before the first house. There was a turnoff for the new road off our road, just past the beginning of Donnelly’s first field, but it only went in a few feet, then stopped. Our pitch was on the bit of field between the two roads. We only had one goal. We used jumpers at the other end for the other goal. We usually played threeandin. You only needed one goal. It was easy to score, especially on the left side cos there was a hill there and you could get the ball way over the keeper’s head, but it was always crowded. There were no teams in threeandin; it was every man for himself. Twenty players meant twenty teams. Sometimes there were more than twenty players. There were only ever three or four of us really playing, trying to score goals. The rest, mostly little kids smaller than Sinbad, just ran around after the ball but never tried to get it; they just followed it, laughing, especially when they all had to turn back the way they’d come. Elbowing and pushing kids out of the way was allowed. When I had the ball I’d go so there were some kids between me and the nearest real player, Kevin or Liam or Ian McEvoy or one of them. The kids would run beside me, so no one could get at me, like in a film I saw where John Wayne got away from the baddies by riding in the middle of a stampede, low down, hanging on to the side of his horse. Then when he was safe he hooshed himself back up properly into the saddle and looked back to where he’d just come from and grinned and rode on. The only thing about threeandin, the only bad thing, was that when you won, when you’d scored three goals, you had to go in goal. I was a better player than Kevin but I stopped trying after two goals. I hated being in goal. Aidan was the best player, way easily—he was a brilliant dribbler—but he was still picked last or secondlast when we were playing fiveaside; no one wanted him. He was the only one who played for a real club, Raheny Under Elevens, even though he wasn’t even nine.
–Your uncle’s the manager.
–He isn’t, said Liam.
–What is he?
–He isn’t anything. He just watches.
Aidan had a blue jersey with a real number, a stitched one, on it; number 11.
–I’m a winger, he said.
–So what?
It was a real heavy jersey, a real jersey. He didn’t tuck it in. You couldn’t see his nicks.
He was good in goal as well.
Fiveaside games never finished. The team playing into the jumper goal end were always winning.
–Charlton to Best—Great goal!
–It wasn’t a goal! It went over the jumper, it hit the bar.
–It hit the inside of the jumper.
–Yeah; inoff.
–No way.
–Yeah way.
–I’m not playing then.
–Good.
Sometimes we played when we were eating our lunch. I’d scored two goals already. I hit an easy shot for Ian McEvoy to save. He put his sandwich down on the jumper and the ball bounced past him. I’d scored; I’d won. I was in goal now.
–You did that on purpose.
I pushed Ian McEvoy.
–I did not, you.
He pushed me back.
–You just wanted to get out of goal.
I didn’t push him this time. I was thinking of kicking him.
–He should stay in goal for that, I said.
–No way.
–You have to try and save them.
–I’ll go in.
It was one of the boys from the Corporation houses. He was standing behind the jumpers goal.
–I’ll go in, I said.
He was younger than me, and smaller. Safe smaller; he’d never be able to kill me, even if he was a brilliant fighter.
I pushed him away from the goal.
–This is our field, I said.
I’d pushed him hard. He was by himself. He was surprised. He nearly fell over. He slid on the wet grass.
I could telclass="underline" he didn’t know whether to go away or stay. He didn’t want to turn his back; he was afraid something would happen him if he did. And he couldn’t go; I’d pushed him and he’d be a coward.
–This is our field, I said again.
I kicked him.
My ma warned us about the mangle, to stay away from it, not to mess with it. The rolls were hard but only rubber. I scratched a mark on the bottom one with the breadknife. I loved it in the kitchen—the steam and the heat—when my ma was putting the sheets through the mangle, and my da’s shirts. The sheets were shiny with huge wet bubbles and my ma put a corner up to the mangle and turned the handle and the sheet rose out of the water like a whale being caught. The water ran down the sheet and the bubbles were crushed as the sheet was pulled through the rolls and came out flat, looking like material again, the shininess all gone. Another sheet, the rubber creaked and groaned, then the rest slid through easily. She wouldn’t let me help. She only let me stand behind the washing machine and guide the sheet into the red basin. The sheet was warm and kind of solid and hard. My fingers were safe on that side. The smaller clothes came through and I caught them and put them on top of the sheets. The basin was full. She had to empty the machine now and fill it again for the nappies. The steam in the kitchen was what I really liked, and the wet on the walls.