Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha (15 page)

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 hut 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 half-bags 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 turn-off 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 three-and-in. 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 three-and-in; 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 three-and-in, 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 second-last when we were playing five-a-side; 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 II.

—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.

Five-a-side 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; in-off.

—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 tell: 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.

 

We needed ice-pop 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 knick-knacking 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 ice-pop sticks were for bursting the bubbles; they were definitely the best. You could manage the bubble with an ice-pop 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 ice-pop 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 ice-pop 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.