I’m glad he didn’t all the same. I don’t like the sound of getting made little of from pillar to post. Bobby laughed at that kind of a thing but he never really joined in with it. One time Seanie Shaper kept showing me pictures in a magazine of naked women and I didn’t know what I was meant to do or say so I only smiled down at them naked paper women and all the rest thought it was a howl altogether and were asking to know had I a horn, and would they send me over as far as Lily the Bike and even the Polish and the Russian boys were roaring laughing at me and for a finish Bobby just walked over and grabbed the magazine off of Seanie and threw it into the fire in the tar barrel and said now, leave the boy alone to fuck. You yahoo. Seanie said nothing to Bobby. He was afraid of him when he was in a temper.
I got a woeful hop the day Mickey Briars went at me with the shovel. Bobby and them were hiding all in the yard while Mickey went tearing around, roaring and shouting out of him about how he was going killing Pokey and where was his fuckin money and all. I thought first it was all a mess because everyone that was hiding was roaring laughing and I didn’t duck down behind a load of blocks like Seanie and Rory or climb up into the cab of a digger, only stood looking at auld Mickey as he ran at me. Bobby and them caught a hold of him and thrown him in the back of Seanie Shaper’s van and Bobby gave me a hand to get up off of the ground and asked to know was I all right and I done my level best not to be crying like a baby but that’s the sort of a battle I near always lose. I lid down that night after going home from the pub and the ceiling above me was spinning and spinning and I ran into the back toilet and got sick for ages. My stomach was burning and all. I’d say I was poisoned from the drink. I was quare lonesome that night, more even than all the other nights.
WE WAS ALL sent off different places when we were small. There was six of us in it. My father went stone mad on the drink when my mother died so he did. She died having me. I often do see him outside Ciss Brien’s in the village or the Half Barrel inside in town, smoking a fag. He never says nothing to me. I do hate walking past him. My uncle took us all to the beach one time in a big van with windows. He drove to all the different houses we lived in to collect us: Nana’s, Auntie Mary’s, Uncle JJ’s, his own house to get Noreen, my big sister. Nana told me I was to bring her back a bag of seashells. I gave the whole day to finding shells for Nana. I went up and down the long beach a rake of times. Uncle Noely had to come and find me when it was time to go home. He was vexed over having to look for me. He grabbed me by the arm and dragged me up along the steps from the beach. My big bag of shells fell all over the path at the top. Noely wouldn’t leave me pick them up. My bag was bursted anyway. I looked at them as we drove away from the beach. Seagulls were swooping down for a look to know were they something to eat that was after getting dropped. Then they’d fly off again, raging. Uncle Noely wanted to know why in the fuck was I crying over a few auld shells. I didn’t know what to say to answer him. My brother Peadar laughed at me and gave me a puck. Nana gave out stink to Uncle Noely at home because I was burnt to a crisp. He never put no lotion on me.
Noreen had a baby who died after a few days. The doctor told her the baby wouldn’t live after it was born. Noreen didn’t believe it. She said the baby was beautiful, the baby was perfect, there was nothing wrong with the baby. The baby was brought home and all. All the nurses cried inside in the hospital as they left. They all knew well the little baby hadn’t a hope in the world. Noreen wouldn’t believe it, though. Sure look at him, Nana, look at him, he’s perfect so he is, he’s perfect. He was too, I seen him. There was something wrong with his heart; it wouldn’t stay beating. I stayed close to Noreen’s house the whole time after they brought him home so I did. I didn’t like to be going in, tormenting them and they busy worrying and hoping and praying. I stayed outside in the shade of the big weeping willow that hung out over their wall. I let on to be standing guard against death. He got in, though, in spite of me. I heard Noreen from outside, roaring crying. PJ came out as far as the garden wall and called me in. Noreen had the little baby in her arms. She pulled me in to her arms as well. I couldn’t hardly breathe with the flood of tears and the heat off of her and the little baby squashed into me. I knew you were outside the whole time, my love. I’m sorry, love, I’m sorry. I never minded you properly, love, and now aren’t I paying for it? I’m sorry my little love, my little love, my little love. I didn’t know for a finish was she talking about the baby or me. I think a lot about what Noreen said that day. I think she thinks it was my fault her baby died, like it was my fault Mammy died. I don’t know in the hell.
WHAT WILL I DO for a job, I don’t know? Imagine if Bobby went out on his own and gave me a job working for him! Jaysus, it’d be brilliant so it would. I’d work like a dog for him so I would. I have all the house painted below and I got a lend of a hedge trimmers off of Noreen’s husband and done all the hedges up along the sides. I made a new panel for the back fence to replace the one that got blown down and busted up. I have every single weed pulled up from the roots the way they won’t grow back. Nana would be delighted with me. My brother Peadar said I can go way and shite now if I think I’m having that cottage. He says we’re all the same and equal in the eyes of the law when it comes to who owns the cottage. He says even if Nana wrote a will and left me the cottage, and she didn’t, I’d have to pay a fortune in inheritance tax. You’d be a fine man now below in the Credit Union looking for thirty or forty grand with your no job and one arm as long as the other, Peadar says to me. There isn’t a job to be got anywhere. Peadar wants Nana’s house sold. He has to think of his own children, he says. He came down a few nights ago with a lad from the auctioneers. He had a right cool yoke that you have only to press against one wall inside in a room and it measures the whole room for you. It’s like magic. Lasers, your man said, and winked at me. He was a sneaky-looking fucker.
You’d want to buck your ideas up, Peadar says. I’d love to say ah go way and have a shite for yourself. He’d probably go mad and puck the head off of me, though. He has a fierce short fuse so he does. Noreen told me I could live in their house. I don’t want to; they might look at me and think of how their little baby was took off of them because Noreen didn’t mind me. That’s not true, but if it’s what Noreen thinks, it’s as true as it needs to be. I’d never upset Noreen. She’s lovely, so she is.
I WENT IN as far as the new hotel in town because they rang me from the dole office to say I had to. I done an interview and all. Your man said it was for to be a kitchen porter. I’d have to wash the pots and stuff. It’s a demanding position, your man said. He had a pink tie on him. Nana would’ve called him a right-looking dipstick. I couldn’t stop looking at his pink tie. He showed me the place where I’d have to wash the pots and all. There was a foreign fella inside in it; he was bent over a big sink, scrubbing like mad. His britches was drownded wet and all. He looked at me as much as to say he’d slit my fuckin throat for me if I went near his potwash. Some of them foreign boys do have a fierce dark eye. Your man with the pink tie asked to know who was my referee. I looked at him with my mouth open until he asked who could he ring for a reference. Oh ya, Bobby Mahon, I said. Is he a former employer? Ya, I said. Then No. Ya. No. Ya. Sort of.
Jesus Christ, your man said and shook his head. Look, I’ll let you know.
He will I’d say.