We needed icepop sticks for it; the tar in the road was bubbling. It was the first time this year, so we’d no sticks ready. There was me and Kevin, and Liam and Aidan—just the four of us because Ian McEvoy wasn’t coming out. He had pains in his legs. Great spurts of growing pain, his ma said when we’d called for him, around the back. We never went to the front doors, unless it was for knickknacking at night. The front porches on my side of the road were always nice and cool, especially on hot days. The sun never got in there. Our porch had great corners of dust: Dinkies bounced over the grit and sometimes crashed. There were three small round holes under the door, for air for under the floorboards, to stop them from rotting. If one of your soldiers fell in one of the holes you could never get him back and the mice got in that way. The icepop sticks were for bursting the bubbles; they were definitely the best. You could manage the bubble with an icepop stick, flatten it, get all the air in one part, that kind of thing.
Great spurts of growing pain. Ian McEvoy was strapped to the bed. He had a bit of leather in his mouth to stop him from screaming, like John Wayne getting a bullet out of his leg. They poured whiskey over the hole in his leg. I poured whiskey on Sinbad’s scab, just a tiny drop. He was squirming before I even did it so I couldn’t tell if it was really sore or not, as sore as John Wayne made it look, or if it cured it.
Kevin and me took one side, Liam and Aidan the other one. We had the shops side; there’d be loads more sticks. Sinbad wasn’t with us either. He was sick again. If he wasn’t better by the night my ma was going to get the doctor. She always believed we were sick when the holidays were on. It was the Easter holidays. The sky was all blue. It was Good Friday.
The roads were cement, all the roads round our way, the parts that hadn’t been dug up. The roads were cement and the tar went between the slabs of cement. It was hard and you didn’t notice it for most of the time but when it softened and bubbled it was great. The top was old and grey looking, like an elephant’s skin around its eyes, but under that, when you got your icepop stick in, there was new tar, black and soft, a bit like toffee that had been in your mouth. You burst the bubble and the clean soft tar was under there; the top was gone off the bubble—it was a volcano. Pebbles went in; they died screaming.
–No no, please—!—don’t—! Aaaaaaaahaaah—
Bees if we could get them. We shook the jar to make sure that the bee was stunned, nearly dead, then turned it over before it could wake up. We aimed for it to fall on the new tar hole. We pushed it closer with the icepop stick. We shoved it down a bit so it stuck to the tar. We watched. It was hard to tell the pain. The bee made no noise, no buzz or anything. We broke it in half and buried it in the tar. I always left a bit showing, as an example to others. Sometimes the bee got away. It wasn’t dopey enough when we turned over the jar. It flew off before it hit the ground properly. It didn’t matter. We didn’t try to stop it. Bees could kill you; they didn’t want to, only if they had no choice. Not like wasps. Wasps got you on purpose. A fella in Raheny swallowed a bee by accident and it stung him in the throat and he died. He choked. He was running with his mouth open and the bee flew in. When he was dying he opened his mouth to say his last words and the bee flew out. That was how they knew. We put flowers and leaves in the jars to make the bees feel more at home. We had nothing against them. They made honey.
I had seven sticks now and Kevin had six. Liam and Aidan were way ahead of us because they didn’t have the shops and we wouldn’t let them cross the road to our side. We’d batter them if they tried. Chinese torture. Whoever ended up with the smallest number of sticks was going to have to eat a lump of tar. It was going to be Aidan. We’d make sure he swallowed it. We’d let him eat a clean bit. I got another stick, a real clean one. Kevin ran to the next one, and I saw one and ran and grabbed it before he did and he got two while I was getting that one. It was a race now. Next it would be a fight. A mess one. I bent over to pick one out of the gutter—we were past the shops—and Kevin shoved me. I went flying but I had the stick; I laughed. Out onto the road.
–Stop messing.
He went for a stick; it was my turn. I didn’t shove him too hard. I let him get a hold of the stick first. We both saw one, and ran. I was faster; he tripped me. I hadn’t planned for it. I was going to fall. I couldn’t control it, I was too fast. My knees, my palms, chin. The skin was off them. My knuckles where I’d been holding the sticks. I still held them. I sat up. There was dirt in the redness of my palm. Spots of blood were getting bigger. Becoming drops.
I put the sticks in my pocket. The pain was starting.
An earwig flew into my mouth once. I was charging, it was in front of me—then gone. There was a taste, that was all. I swallowed. It was far back, too far to cough out. My eyes went watery but it wasn’t crying. It was in the school yard. There was still a horrible taste. Like petrol. I went to the toilet and got my head under the tap. I drank for ages. I wanted the taste to go and I wanted to drown the earwig. It had gone down whole. Straight down.
I didn’t tell anyone.
This fella went to Africa on his holidays—
–You don’t go to Africa on your holidays.
–Shut up.
When he was in Africa he had a salad for his tea and when he came back from his holidays he started getting pains in his stomach and they brought him into Jervis Street because he was screaming in agony—they brought him in in a taxi—and the doctor couldn’t tell what was wrong with him and the boy couldn’t say anything because he couldn’t stop screaming because of the pain, so they did an operation on him and they found lizards inside him, in his stomach, twenty of them; they’d made a nest. They were eating the stomach out of him.
–You’re still to eat your lettuce, said my ma.
–He died, I told her.—The boy did.
–Eat it up; go on. It’s washed.
–So was the stuff he ate.
–That’s just rubbish someone told you, she said.—You shouldn’t listen to it.
I hoped I’d die. I hoped I’d just last till my da got home, then I’d tell him what had happened and I’d die.
The lizards were in a jar in Jervis Street, in a fridge, for them all to look at when they were training to be doctors. They were all in one jar. Floating in liquid for keeping them fresh.
There was tar in my trousers, the knees.
–Not again.
That was what my ma was going to say. It was what she always said.
She did say it.
–Ah, Patrick, not again; for God’s sake.
She made me take them off. She made me take them off in the kitchen. She wouldn’t let me go upstairs. She pointed at my legs and clicked her fingers. I took them off.
–Your shoes first, she said.—Hang on a minute.
She checked that there was no tar on the soles.
–There isn’t any, I told her.—I checked them.
She made me lift my other foot. My trousers were halfway down. She slapped the side of my leg and opened and closed and opened her hand. I put my foot into it. She looked at the sole.
–I told you, I said.
She let go of my leg. She always said nothing when she was being annoyed. She clicked and pointed.
Confucius he say, go to bed with itchy hole, wake up in morning with smelly finger.
He made his hand open and close like a beak, the fingers stiff, right into her face.
–Nag nag nag.
She looked around and then at him.