Adrian McKinty - Dead I Well May Be

She brings out a Free State ten p. with a fish as the head side and a harp as the tails.

He’s under the hut, I say, taking my piece of silver and putting it in my shorts.

She opens the window.

PJ, get in here. I can see you.

He does not come.

PJ, you’re under the shed. I can see you from here.

A minute later he appears in the living room, shooting me a dirty look.

You grassed me up, ya bastard, he whispers as Ma goes to get him a new T-shirt to wear.

I never did.

Oh, you liar.

Are you calling me a liar?

Yes.

I’ll kick your bake in.

Like to see you try.

Like to see you stop me.

Like to see you try to stop me.

Oh, I’ll try.

Try is right.

Try and succeed.

Aye, you will?

Think I won’t?

Uh-huh.

Well, we’ll see, so we will.

Aye, we will?

Aye, we will.

I shoot him a confused expression.

What were we talking about again? I ask.

He grins at me and we both crack up laughing.

Wee bugger, he whispers to me as Ma comes back with a yellow T-shirt.

Put this on, she says. I can’t believe you were crawling under the shed with all those worms and things. Son, I tell you, I think your head’s cut sometimes. Good job your da’s not here.

Aye, when’s he ever? PJ whispers. I don’t answer, and we walk outside into the road.

Is there any way out of this at all? he asks me.

Not if you want any presents this year, I say.

We walk sullenly along the street. It’s dusk and there are a lot of kids out playing kerby and tag and football. For a December night, the weather isn’t bad. A group of girls playing hopscotch and jumping with a big rope. A mild evening and everyone excited about tomorrow.

A big tawny hound sitting right in the middle of the road, cars driving around it and honking at it, the dog paying no attention to them or to anything.

Mr. McClusky is trying to get his pigeons to fly into the coop, but they’re way up on the telephone wires.

Come down, you wee fucks, he’s saying to them over and over. Sooner or later his wife will come and reprimand him for his language in front of the kids. The pigeons will go into the coop anyway as soon as it gets cold.

Davey sees me farther up the road.

Hey, Mikey, what’s the craic? he shouts.

Nothing.

You wanna do nets?

I shake my head.

Can’t, I shout back.

What did you call me? he jokes.

We walk on, and a few doors down come to the house with a big hole in the fence. All the houses on the terrace are identical. They’re all redbricked and joined to one another in rows of six or seven. To get to the back garden, you have to go through the house itself or through a narrow entryway that two houses share. The only thing that distinguishes one house from another is how the gardens are kept. Some people grow flowers, others vegetables, some people have it all grass, and others-for some reason that neither PJ nor I understands-have the whole garden concreted over.

The Millers have gone for the uncared-for look. Their garden has three-foot-high grass and weird mechanical objects lurking in the undergrowth. We know they have a dog because of the amount of dog shite everywhere. The animal itself we have never seen. PJ speculates that it got lost in the grass and never made it back home and was now surviving on crickets and bits of postmen.

Or bits of little boys.

The only obvious concession to the season is a handwritten sticker in the window that says Double Milk Christmas Eve. Christmas they have spelled with no “h.”

We walk up the cracked path and bang on the knocker. At first no answer, and then a lot of swearing from the living room. We shrink back a little as footsteps come closer to the door.

It opens and Mr. Miller looks at us, very confused and angry for a second.

The bloody carols, is it? he says. Why aren’t you singing, ya wee fucks?

Er, it’s not, er…

If you think I’m going to give you a bloody penny without youse even opening your bakes to sing, you’ve another thing coming. Jesus, today youse weans want everything on a plate. That’s what’s the trouble. Fenians have the right idea. You always see them on the TV, working away, singing and doing that Irish dancing. They’re outbreeding us, so they are. Look at the Quinns down the road. They have ten weans, so they do, and she’s still up for more. You’d think they’d come to the door and not sing? Not that I’d give them anything. Bucket of water, maybe. Heh-heh…

Uh, we’re here for a haircut, Mr. Miller, PJ says, nervously.

Mr. Miller looks at the pair of us askance, cocking his head and thinking.

Oh aye, he says at last. Come on in. I’ll tell Mary.

PJ nudges me ahead of him into the house.

Go straight through to the kitchen, Mr. Miller says.

We walk along the hall, past the familiar pictures of war scenes and paintings of the Battle of the Boyne, all done by the head of the house himself with an uncanny and unfailing lack of talent. Mr. Miller has unorthodox views on perspective and characterization. In his paintings, King William looks much more a shipwrecked Ringo Starr than the commonplace image of a bewigged and magnificent King Billy that you can find on almost every Protestant street corner. Mr. Miller always paints Catholic King James to appear devilish and evil, although it’s hard to say which of the two kings looks the most like an actual human being.

PJ is always careful not to comment on the paintings, since the one time he did, Mr. Miller spent the next forty minutes explaining his motives and inspiration.

PJ pushes me in through the kitchen door and we sit down on the stools that are next to the table.

She’ll be down in a wee minute, Mr. Miller says and turns the lights on. He steps out of the kitchen, back into the living room, leaving us alone.

Through the open window all the smells of the street are coming in, teasing us with the promise of the world outdoors. Someone is cooking a fry and you can smell the bacon and the crisping of the potato bread.

There are big swarms of midges out doing maneuvers in the air and a few wasps that have survived the early frosts are buzzing from weed to weed in the Millers’ garden.

Maybe we could still make a break for it, PJ says. Nip out the back and over the fence.

I look at him with disdain.

Are you out of your tree, wee fella? Oul man Miller would shoot us.

How could he do that?

How do you think? With a gun.

He doesn’t have a gun.

He’s in the paramilitaries, I say, my voice dropping to a whisper.

You don’t know that, PJ mocks.

Ask Da when he gets in.

I will, and then you’ll feel wick.

No, you’ll feel wick.

No, you’ll-

PJ stops speaking as Mrs. Miller appears in the doorway.

She must have just gotten out of bed, because she’s still wearing her nightie and slippers. Over the top of them she has pulled a big red dressing gown that’s tied round the waist with a leather belt that has an Elvis buckle in the middle of it. It suddenly occurs to me that she was on the night shift down at the mill and that we had woken her up in the middle of her sleep.

Hello, boys, she says and runs her fingers through her long reddish blond hair a couple of times to take out the knots. I give her over the pound note and she smiles.

Who’s first? she asks.

I point at PJ before he can point at me.

Ok, up you come, PJ, she says, and moves his stool into the center of the floor. She danders to the sink and lights herself a cigarette and puts it in her mouth. She ties a tea towel round PJ’s neck and then pulls a pair of scissors and a comb from her dressing gown pocket.

The comb looks none too clean and I’m glad that PJ is getting his haircut first.