I’m sitting on the edge of Ma’s seat in the front of our car that Da’s driving awful slow toward our holiday’s in Kilkee.  This is where I sit when our car is packed full with children and towels and swimsuits and stuff for our holidays. 

With Mole, Ratty and Toad, the lads from The Wind In The Willows running round inside me brain and in the book on me lap, and two weeks ahead swimming in the Pollock Holes, climbing the rocks back at Burn’s Cove and playing on the beach, I was so happy I coulda farted!

“Somehow now, I seem to remember the orange light still on,” Da says, twist-nodding his head, squeezing his lips together. “I saw it when I reached in for me swimming trunks.  I haven’t taken them things out since this time last year.”

He’s been going on about how the Immersion Heater is probly left on since we left Ballinrobe.  Now we’re driving through Headford so slow that an ould fella, in a cap, a dark suit and turned-down wellingtons, pedals past us on a black-nellie bicycle.

“It’ll be fine, it’s off, I turned it off meself,” Ma snaps, a bit-cranky, but breathing in to get ready to distract him. 

“An’ sure, lookit all the terrible things goin’ on,” she starts.  “Sure 1975 is goin’ to be as bad as a year as any of them.  An’ that leibide Cooney, some minister for Justice he is.  He was the one said 1974 was to be the worst, an’ that he’d be making all better this year.  Sure ‘tis worse it’s improving.  Lookit them poor lads in the Miami Showband getting shot last weekend.  That Fran O’Toole had a lovely voice ….”

Ma shakes her head and blesses herself before she goes on: 

“I read in the Press that they found a piece of an arm in the field next to the explosion, with a tattoo on it that said: ‘UVF.’”

“What’s the U…V…F?” I ask.

“Be quiet,” Ma says. “Read yer book.”

“Ulster Volunteer Force,” comes out of the back.

“Be quiet!”

She does be saying things like this for to distract him from going on and on about “t’Immersion.”

Da has an awful fear of this electric thing that just heats the hot water tank so you can do the dishes or take a bath.  He thinks it’ll get so hot that it could blow up our house: Every time we’re heading off for a Sunday drive, just before we leave, all eleven of us packed into the Cortina estate, he gets out and half runs back inta the house, only his legs moving, his body, arms and head all still, the Yale key sticking out between the fingers of his closed fist. He’s back a few minutes later, nod-nod-nodding:

“Ah, it ’twas off awright.”

“Sure, I told you it ‘twas,” Ma says, squeezing her lips together.  “I turned it off meself.”

“Ah,” he twist-nods backwards.  “I thought wan a them mighta turned it on.”
Now the start of our holidays is getting attacked by Da’s Immersion-explosion fear.  Twice since Ballinrobe, when he thunk this idea, he’s pulled in on the side of the road and said we should go back and check.  Now, stuck behind a stupid tractor that’s letting bicycles pass us out, he’s at again.

“And what was that at-all-at-all-at-all about the jockey getting threatened with kneecapping over losing races?” Ma asks.

This a great question to ask, ‘cause Da knows a lot about horseracing and trouble.  Plus he mighta heard from other Gards in the barracks what really happened.

“Ah, it’s terrible really, he’s a good jockey too that Tommy Carmody,” he nods at the windshield.  “He musta ben riding horses that IRA fellas wanted to win, but didn’t, probly for other reasons.”

He raises his eyebrows like he knows something he can’t say.

“Ah, ‘tis like the joke about when the horse trainer is talking to his jockey who was riding a horse with clear instructions not to win, an’ the trainer asks the jockey if he coulda beaten the other horses in the race.  ‘Oro sure,’ the jockey says, ‘this horse coulda beat any of the four ahead of us, but I can’t vouch for the three behind us!  Oh, Irish horseracin’!”

He throws his head backwards hard.  

“Sure only mugs or crooks put money on an Irish horserace.”

The tractor turns into Joyce’s of Headford and we get going sorta good again.  I pick up me book and read about what Mole and Ratty and Toad are up to – Toad’s an awful gobeshite altogether.  He’s only interested in everything new; all new stuff is bad.  Sure that’s how the Trouble started in the North; people moved there who shouldn’t have.  I put the book down and daydream about running through knee deep water at Kilkee beach: Me pretending I’m an Indian on a brown horse, with a star on its forehead, no saddle, and I’m galloping in to kill the US Cavalry attacking my family. 

How come anyways the Cavalry are so mean to the Indians?

The way the car does kinda-sorta shake-jiggle as it drives along makes me sleepy.  Maybe I’ll nap and dream about being a real Indian warrior, whoop-whoop-whooping around on me horse.  We’re coming up the hill to that yellow school that we always pass when Galway is about twenty minutes away. 

Me eyes are getting droopy. 

How come anyways schools are always painted that yellow you never see anywhere else?  It’s not like the yellow in the Pope’s flag or the Roscommon jersey.

My eyes get droopier.

The sound of branches walloping the side of the car undroops me. 

The car is headed toward the ditch, the bushes racing towards us.

Ma’s arms raise up to protect her face.

She turns and stares wide-eyed into the back at her children.

 

“Fucking Headford!” Mick says from the drivers seat.  “I never drove through this shithole without getting stuck behind a tractor.  What are they saying about the Fijians in the paper?”

“Well this morning the radio was all talk about ‘Connacht’s cen…teen…ary year – 1985!” I say from the back seat, unfolding the Irish Times.  “Can you imagine the snobby-prods playing for Connacht way back in 1885?  Anyways, let’s see what ‘lies they’re vomitin’ out onto newsprint today!’ Who was it said that at-all-at-all-at-all?”

I shake the newspaper under control.

“Oho be-Jaysys: First flight outta Knock airport yesterday; Monsignor Horan is givin’ the big thumbs up.  An’ lookit, they’re saying them six fellas from the Birmingham bombing, way back in 1976, mighta been framed?  Sure, who’d be framing them?”

“The British police,” Basq scoffs.  “Who the fuck else?”

“No, no, you’re wrong,” I twist-nod my head.  “Police only want to stop crimes, they have no political age….”

“Ah, shut the fuck up an’ tell us about the match,” Mick snaps.

I turn the page:

“An RAF man killed in a helicopter crash in South Armagh, no fire from the Provos, just an accident, they got themselves this time: Blacks rioting in South Africa … again: Dalglish is going to pick himself today to play for Liverpool.”

“Come on ta fuck, what about the rugby match?”

“Awright, awright here we go, here’s the Connacht team: Henry O’Toole, ‘member he useta play for the Connemara All-Blacks, eh… a few we don’t know, … eh, and then Conor McCarthy from UCG, good man Conor, … and then a rake more, O’Driscoll and Fitzgerald from the Irish team, and lookit two Ballina lads, Deccie Greaney – sound fella – well he’s with Corinthians now, and Moylett.  And then Mick Tarpey – ‘member him from the Wegians’ under 20’s; a big fella – and then Fly Mannion from Ballinasloe.  Jaysys, we might beat the poor ould Fijians, the balls must be frozen off them in this weather.”

“Is that Fly fella the same fucker who destroyed us?” Basq asks from the seat next to me, “nearly all by himself, below in Ballinasloe a couple a year ago?”

Yeah-yeah-yeah everyone nods: We’re not big on reliving our destroyed-bys: We much prefer reliving the fights we won.

“Wasn’t that the day Pa walloped wan a the Ballinasloe tinkers?” Sid, the front passenger, asks; a cigarette shaking in his hands.  “An’ us hardly off the bus!”

We all laugh: The car shimmying.

The sky’s a weak October-blue, cold and crisp, a good day for rugby.  I just came home from college for the weekend last night, but the lads had a plan to go down to the Connacht vs. Fiji rugby game today.  A day on the piss with the lads in Galway was too good to turn down, so now I’m headed south again.

“Sure what do ye four latchikoes want to be headin’ off ta Galway for?” asked the barman in the Humbert last night.  “Cum in here an’ it’ll be on above on the telly.  No need for all that drivin’ an’ strange pubs an’ buyin’ food.  Have a bit a sense would ye!”

The tractor turns into Joyce’s of Headford, and the engine revs hard as Mick takes the open road.

We’re speeding up the hill toward the yellow school – about ten minutes to go for Galway. 

An old sheepdog, scraws of matted hair hanging from its coat, limps across the road towards the schoolyard.

Over the hill a red and white and blue, Denny’s Meats van appears – it’s flying.

 The old sheepdog is right in the van’s path 

 Sid jams the cigarette between his lips; his eyebrows rising high.

The van wallops the sheepdog, firing the poor ould fella, its legs still in a walking stance, into the briary ditch.

“GOOD JAYSYS!” Sid yells out, hands now up over his eyes.

We slow down, pull over, twist our necks to see what’s happening.

The Denny’s Hiace van is pulled over; the door open, the driver running back.

“The poor ould sheepdog,” Sid says, his voice brittle.  “Sure he was only goin’ over the road.  Can you imagine your dog just not comin’ home one day?  It must be awful.”

“Who the fuck are Denny’s anyways?” I ask for a distraction.

“Ah some shower a Northern bastards down here puttin’ Irish meat factories outta business,” comes the reply.

“And where the fuck are we anyways?” I ask, the car still stopped.

“Corandulla, I seen a sign back there said.”

“We got the Corandulla Blues,” I sing, badly, still looking to distract everyone.  “Onliest way ta beat them blues, … is with the booze!”

Twenty minutes later we swagger into Cullens Bar on Forster Street.  The match is about to start, we can see the teams warming up on the television, the pale skin and green jerseys of the Connacht team; the white jerseys and dark skin of the Fijians.

But pints must be imbibed before we journey up the road to the Sportsground.

Josie is behind the bar in Cullens: A man of considerable girth and even greater humor, he rolls his eyes slowly at the sight of us.  At one end of the bar, the Sean-nos singing, lorry driver has already settled in for the weekend: His pint of Guinness yellowing on the counter in front of him.  He sits upright on his barstool, arms folded, eyes peering through thick glasses at the telly.  There’s a spattering of weekend-alcos stuck to stools along the counter staring sullenly into their drinks. 

To our have-another-pint-surprise, at the other end of the bar, with one of his well-shined black dress-shoes up on a stool’s footrest, stands a bank porter from Castlebar.  A stubby man in his fifties or sixties, dressed in a well-pressed, grey suit, a white shirt and a red tie, he eyes us up and down suspiciously, runs his hand oh-so-carefully over the roof his tightly-trimmed-and-oiled hair, cinches his red jowls, and with a disdain-for-latchikoes sigh, grabs his glass of whiskey and turns, disowning us.  

“There’s Afree…cans in t’country today,” the lorry-driver says, unprovoked, his eyes on the Fijians getting into position for kick-off.

“They’s jus’ up t’road,” Josie lisps, nodding up the hill.  “Up with at the greyhound track.”

“Are ya serious?” his interlocuter fixes his thick glasses closer to his eyes.  “Afree…cans sleepin’ in Galway tanight.  Lock up yer daughters!”

He looks down the line of surly weekend-alcos, none of whom acknowledge the warning.

We start into our pints, loosely debating the merits of traipsing the extra quarter mile to see in actual fact what we can already see, via the magic of television, out over top of our pint glasses.

The bank porter abruptly departs with gait of a man imparted on serious business, but he’s accosted in the doorway by a homeless fella out of Eyre Square.  There’s a kerfuffle as the two men of similar age and build, and equal but opposite commission, try to navigate past one another in the doorway.  As the red jowls tighten, the homeless man concedes, but pushes in roughly past the porter as soon as the doorway is clear.

Josie immediately raises his arm and points his pudgy index finger back out to Forster Street, shaking his large face slowly.

“’Twas down by the sally garden, my luv an’ I did meet,” the homeless fella starts to sing-talk, his eyes forced up at Cullens’ smoke veneered ceiling, one hand stroking his chin, the other grabbing the lapel of his filthy blue suit-jacket.

“Ooouuuttt!” Josie raises his voice.

A few alcos’ heads turn in bitter pity at the unkempt, unshaven homeless fella.

“She passed the sally gardens with little shnow white feet.”

Josie starts to move his bulk along behind the bar.

“She bid me take luv azsy, as the leaves grow on a tree ….”

Josie moves with surprising speed for a big man.

“… but me bein’ young an’ foolish, with her I wouldn’t agree.”

He’s gone by the time Josie’s bulk fills the skinny archway leading to the back door and the open-air toilets.

Five rapid-pints in, I lose the debate – Connacht are doing well – and we depart for the Sportsground.

“Jaysys, I wonder what the Fijians were thinking when they saw all the greyhound shite on the edge of the pitch,” Basq asks.

We ponder that question as we bustle past the Magdalene Laundry and up the hill towards the Grammar School.

“Sure they wouldn’t be shiteing at all, they’re there to race,” Mick says.  “They give them medicine to shite everything out; like they give jockeys pissing tablets.”

“You know a human being carries around one pound of shite inside in them every day,” I offer from the depths of my twenty years of book-bought-wisdom.

“JAYSYS!” the lads all retort.

“There’s a lot a people I know have a couple a stone of shite inside in them.”

We push into the Sportsground; some gobeshite in a gabardine coat tries to collect a pound each off us, but we thick it out, and he gives in, sullenly. 

The one stand in the stadium is as full as the last bus to Salthill of a Thursday night, and the walls to keep the greyhounds from escaping are four-deep with spectators.

“I fucken told ye,” I complain, unable to see anything except the ball occasionally getting kicked high.  “At least below in Cullens, we coulda seen something, … and had a pint.”

Fiji win by a point.

Connacht lose by a point.

Same result – vastly different emotions.

We return to Cullens, then one pint in Rabbits, Foxes, the Skeff, and down to the Cellar to settle in for the evening.

A couple of hours later, full of porter and needing grease to anchor it in our bellies, we head outta the Cellar and up to Supermacs in Eyre Square.

Walking along the street, a man in his sixties, in a mustard trench-coat, tugs hard on his yappy little dog’s leash to get him out of the blindly-busy pedestrian traffic. 

The dog resists as it digs its nose into a discarded Chicken-Box.

The ould fella yanks the leash, pulling the dog off its feet and turning it all once.

“Hey you, ya fucken bastard,” Sid rushes in.  “Leave that dog alone.  We already seen a dog get kilt today.”

Sid grabs for the leash in the ould fella’s hand.

“Give me that dog, you’re not fit ta … .”

The ould fella moves so fast that the rest of us are still frozen in place when he pins Sid to Supermac’s wall; his gnarly fists pumping rapid left-right-left-rights into Sid’s face.

Drunken-stunned, Sid doesn’t even get to raise his hands.

“I didn’t do thirty years in the Army to take shite from hooligans like you!” the ould fella stands back; fists up, feet positioned like a boxer ready to attack.

The little dog’s eyes look up at the humans in confusion.

We clean up Sid’s face in the Supermac’s toilet; wolf down a pile of Chicken Boxes; and then stagger back to the Cellar, onto Garavan’s, the King’s Head, the Quays. 

Somewhere, somehow, whilst wobbling along Quay Street from its eponymous pub to Neachtains, in state of exuberant inebriation, I lost my three companions.

Lost, drunk, and lonely, the pubs all emptying out onto the street and still the lads nowhere to be found, my drunken brain makes a quick plan. 

With eyes down, watching the treacherous footpath for sudden changes in elevation, I tromp the two miles out to my college rental house in Cherry Park.  By the time I make it there, only falling twice, I realize that I don’t have the key with me.  I’ve sobered enough to climb in the upper window above the kitchen sink.  But I haven’t sobered enough to save the pile of dirty dishes in the sink.

I fall onto the bed, with a gash on my right ankle from a broken plate.

When I turn over, it’s already daylight, my unwound-for-days alarm clock lying to me that it’s a quarter past four.    

Forehead throbbing, stomach ready to heave, tongue stuck to the floor of me mouth, I close my eyes again, and lie there with irrational-hangover-self-pity.

The sight of the old sheepdog flying through the air, his life completed, plays and replays inside my mind: The old dog limps into the middle of the road; the red and white and blue Denny’s Hiace speeds down the road: In my head, I stare at the van’s tires eating up the road. 

On a badly needed-to-suppress-a-stomach-heave in-breath the tires age ten years, and it’s no longer a Denny’s Hiace, it’s a black and yellow Barcastle Meats VW van.  Inside my head, I’m not hungover, I’m ten years old again, and all of us are headed off on holidays to Kilkee; all jammed into the Cortina.

The Barcastle van trundles over the hill into Corandulla crossroads. 

It’s not going to hit an old sheepdog, ‘cause that dog is young and vigorous now, out herding sheep in the fields. 

No, instead the Barcastle van suddenly slows down, its engine complaining loudly. 

Da is already out of our car, that he nearly put into the ditch a few seconds earlier, the driver’s door still open.  He’s waving down the Barcastle van, like he’s running his own one-Garda checkpoint to catch the IRA … or maybe now the UVF?

The Barcastle van slows to a halt in front of the school’s low, egg-yolk-yellow wall, not at all like the pale Barcastle yellow.  The VW engine thrum-thrum-thrums, working all the time to keep the meat from the pigs, slaughtered squealingly in Castlebar a couple a days ago, nice and cold for people to fry up for their tea.

Da grabs the front of his sports coat and does his run-not-run across to the van, using only his legs, body-head-arms all frozen. 

The Barcastle van window rolls down in a fast-panic. 

Da leans his leather elbow patches on the van’s windowsill and talks to the driver, his head nodding all the time.

From the Cortina, we all stare silent-confused at Da leaning against the van windowsill, having a chat, in the middle of the Galway Road.

Then he turns, does his run-not-run, back to our car, half sits in and slides the keyring out of the ignition.

“Now, this fella’ll drop the key back to the Gard’s barrack in Castlebar,” he jams his thumbnail into the keyring, and starts pushing the Yale key around the ring. 

“Sure there’s a key hidden under the coal bucket that anyone could use.”

“No there isn’t,” he twist-nods in victory.  “I put that key in the drawer before we left.  I’ll phone the barrack from Kilkee an’ tell Tom Lee the key is at the desk, an’ would he go an’ check that bleddy Immersion’s off before it explodes.”