Roddy Doyle: Paddy Clarke, Ha Ha Ha

– Can lepers swim? said Willy Hancock.

– Yeah, I said.

– We can’t swim, said one of the McCarthys.

– Lepers can swim, said Willy Hancock.

– They don’t have to swim, I said. -You don’t have to swim. You only have to pretend you’re lepers. It’s easy. You just have to be a bit sick and wobble a bit.

They wobbled.

– Can they laugh?

– Yeah, I said. -They only have to lie down sometimes so I can mop their brows and say prayers on them.

– I’m a leper!

– I’m a leper! Wobble wobble wobble!

– Wobble wobble leper!

– Wobble wobble leper!

– Our Father who art in heaven hallowed by thy name -

– Wobble wobble wobble!

– Shut up a sec -

– Wobble wobble wobble.

They had to go home for their dinners. I heard them through the hedge on the path to their houses.

– I’m a leper! Wobble wobble wobble!

– I have a vocation, I told my ma, just in case Missis McCarthy came to the door about the twins, or Missis Hancock.

She was still cooking the dinner and stopping Catherine from climbing into the press under the sink with the polish and brushes in it.

– What’s that, Patrick?

– I have a vocation, I said.

She picked up Catherine.

– Has someone been talking to you? she said.

It wasn’t what I’d expected.

– No, I said. -I want to be a missionary.

– Good boy, she said, but not the way I’d wanted. I wanted her to cry. I wanted my da to shake my hand. I told him when he got home from his work.

– I have a vocation, I said.

– No you don’t, he said. -You’re too young.

– I do, I said. -God has spoken to me.

It was all wrong.

He spoke to my ma.

– I told you, he said.

He sounded angry.

– Encouraging this rubbish, he said.

– I didn’t encourage it, she said.

– Yes, you bloody did, he said.

She looked like she was making her mind up.

– You did!

He roared it.

She went out of the kitchen, beginning to run. She tried to undo the knot of her apron. He went after her. He looked different, like he’d been caught doing something. They left me alone. I didn’t know what had happened. I didn’t know what I’d done.

They came back. They didn’t say anything.

Snails and slugs were gastropods; they had stomach feet. I poured salt on a slug. I could see the torture and agony. I picked him up with the trowel and gave him a decent burial. The real name for soccer was association football. Association football was played with a round ball on a rectangular pitch by two sides of eleven people. The object is to score goals, i.e. force the ball into the opponents’ goal, which is formed by two upright posts upon which is mounted a crossbar. I learned this off by heart. I liked it. It didn’t sound like rules; it sounded cheeky. The biggest score ever was Arbroath 36, Bon Accord 0. Joe Payne scored the most goals, ten of them, for Luton in 1936. Geronimo was the last of the renegade Apaches.

I held up the ball. We were on Barrytown Grove. It had good high kerbs for hopping the ball. The ball was a burst one.

– The object, I said, -is to score goals, i.e. force the ball into the opponents’ goal which is – is formed by two upright posts upon which is mounted a crossbar.

They were bursting out laughing.

– Say it again.

I did. I put on a posh accent. They laughed again.

– Ger-on-IMO!

He was the last of the renegade Apaches. The last of the renegades.

– You’re a renegade, Mister Clarke.

Hennessey sometimes called us renegades before he hit us.

– What are you?

– A renegade, Sir.

– Correct.

– Renegade!

– Renegade renegade renegade!

I had a picture of Geronimo. He was kneeling on one knee. His left elbow was resting on his left knee. He had a rifle. He had a scarf around his neck and a shirt with spots on it that I didn’t notice for ages until I was sticking the picture on my wall. He had a bracelet that looked like a watch on his right wrist. Maybe he’d robbed it. Maybe he’d cut someone’s arm off to get it. The rifle looked homemade. The best part was his face. He was looking straight into the camera, straight through it. He wasn’t frightened of it; he didn’t think it would take his soul, like some of them did. His hair was black, parted in the middle, straight down to his shoulders; no feathers or messing. He looked very old, his face, but the rest of him was young.

– Da?

– What?

– What age are you?

– Thirty-three.

– Geronimo was fifty-four, I told him.

– What? he said. -Always?

He was fifty-four when the photograph was taken. He might have been older. He looked fierce and sad. His mouth was upside-down, like a cartoon sad face. His eyes were watery and black. His nose was big. I wondered why he was sad. Maybe he knew what was going to happen to him. The part of his leg in the photograph was like a girl’s, no hair or bumps. He was wearing boots. There were bushes around him. I put my fingers on the hair to cover it. His face was like an old woman’s. A sad old woman. I lifted my fingers. He was Geronimo again. It was only a black-and-white photograph. I coloured in his shirt; blue. It took ages.

I saw another picture in a book. Of Geronimo with his warriors. They were in a big field. Geronimo was in the middle, in a jacket and a stripey scarf. He still looked old and young. His shoulders looked old. His legs looked young.

None of the pictures in books were like the Indians in the films. There was one of the Snake and Sioux Indians on the warpath. The main fella in the picture had a pony tail and the rest of his head was bald, and shiny like an apple. He was riding hunched down sideways on his horse so that the others couldn’t fire their arrows at him. The horse’s eye was looking down at him; the horse looked scared. It was a painting. I liked it. There was another great one of an Indian killing a buffalo. The buffalo had its head in under the horse; the Indian would have to kill it quick or the buffalo would turn the horse over. Something about the way the Indian was on the horse, with his back up and his arm stretched, ready, with his spear, made me know that he was going to win. Anyway, the picture was called The Last of the Buffalo. There were other Indians on the edge of the picture chasing after more buffalo. The field was covered in buffalo skulls and there were dead buffalos lying all around. I couldn’t put this one on my wall because it was from a library book. I went to the library in Baldoyle. I went with my da. One room was the grown-ups’ and there was another room for children.

He was always interfering. He’d come into our part of the library after he’d changed his books and he’d start picking books for me. He never put them back properly.

– I read this one when I was your age.

I didn’t want to know that.

I could take two books. He looked at the covers.

– The American Indians.

He took out the tag and slipped it into my library card. He was always doing that as well. He looked at the other one.

– Daniel Boone, Hero. Good man.

I read in the car. I could do it and not get sick if I didn’t look up. Daniel Boone was one of the greatest of American pioneers. But, like many other pioneers, he was not much of a hand at writing. He carved something on a tree after he’d killed a bear.

– D. Boone killa bar on this tree 1773.

His writing was far worse than mine, than Sinbad’s even. I’d never have spelled Bear wrong. And anyway as well, what was a grown-up doing writing stuff on trees?

– DANIEL BOONE WAS A MAN

WAS A BI-IG MAN

BUT THE BEAR WAS BIGGER

AND HE RAN LIKE A NIGGER