Roddy Doyle - The Van

— Does your bollix not be in bits ridin’ around like tha’? Jimmy Sr asked him.

— Not really, said the young fella. — Yeh get used to it.

— You might, said Jimmy Sr. — I wouldn’t.

— Yheupp! went the young fella, and he was gone, down the causeway road; they watched him from the door of the van, his feet nearly scraping off the road.

That was the high point of the day.

— He was a nice enough young fella, said Bimbo.

— Yeah, said Jimmy Sr.

That was easily their biggest problem though: young fellas. Jimmy Sr like kids, always had; Bimbo loved them as well but, Jaysis Christ, they were changing their minds, quickly. Everyone loved bold kids. They were cute. There was nothing funnier than hearing a three-year-old say Fuck. This shower weren’t cute though. They were cunts, right little cunts; dangerous as well.

There was a gang of them that hung around the Hikers carpark, young fellas, from fourteen to maybe nineteen. Even in the rain, they stayed there. They just put their hoodies up. Some of them always had their hoodies up. They were all small and skinny looking but there was something frightening about them. The way they behaved, you could tell that they didn’t give a fuck about anything. When someone parked his car and went into the pub they went over to the car and started messing with it even before the chap had gone inside; they didn’t care if he saw them. Jimmy Sr once saw one of them pissing against the window of the off-licence, in broad daylight, not a bother on him. Sometimes they’d have a flagon or a can of lager out and they’d pass it around, drinking in front of people coming in and out of Crazy Prices, people that lived beside their parents. It was sad. When they walked around, like a herd migrating or something, they all tried to walk the same way, the hard men, like their kaks were too tight on them. But that was only natural, he supposed. The worst thing though was, they didn’t laugh. All kids went through a phase where they messed, they did things they weren’t supposed to; they smoked, they drank, they showed their arses to oul’ ones from the back window on the bus. But they did it for a laugh. That was the point of it. It was part of growing up, Jimmy Sr understood that; always had. He’d seen his own kids going through that. If you were lucky you never really grew out of it; a little bit of kid stayed inside you. These kids were different though; they didn’t do anything for a laugh. Not that Jimmy Sr could see anyway. They were like fuckin’ zombies. When Jimmy Sr saw them, especially when it was raining, he always thought the same thing: they’d be dead before they were twenty. Thank God, thank God, thank God none of his own kids was like that. Jimmy Jr, Sharon, Darren — he couldn’t have had better kids. Leslie — Leslie had been a bit like that, but — no.

The Living Dead, Bertie called them.

Himself and Vera had had problems for a while with their young lad, Trevor, but Bertie had sorted him out.

— How?

— Easy. I promised I’d get him a motorbike if he passed his Inter.

— Is that all?

— Si, said Bertie. — Gas, isn’t it? We were worried sick about him; Vera especially. He was — ah, he was gettin’ taller an’ he never washed himself, his hair, yeh know. He looked like a junkie, yeh know.

Jimmy Sr nodded.

— All he did all fuckin’ day was listen to tha’ heavy metal shite. Megadeath was one, an’ Anthrax. I speet on them. I told her not to be worryin’, an’ I tried to talk to him, yeh know—

He raised his eyes.

— Man to man. Me hole. I wasn’t tha’ worried meself, but he was too young to be like tha’; tha’ was all I thought.

— So yeh promised him the motorbike.

— Si. An’ now he wants to stay in school an’ do the Leavin’. First in the family. He’s like his da, said Bertie. — A mercenary bollix.

They laughed.

— He’ll go far, said Bimbo.

— Fuckin’ sure he will, said Bertie. — No flies on our Trevor.

— Leslie passed his Inter as well, said Jimmy Sr.

— That’s righ’.

— Two honours, said Jimmy Sr. — Not red ones either; real ones.

Anyway, the Living Dead gave Jimmy Sr and Bimbo terrible trouble. It was like that film, Assault on Precinct 13, and the van was Precinct 13. It wasn’t as bad as that, but it was the same thing. Jimmy Sr and Bimbo could never really relax. The Living Dead would rock the van, three or four of them on each side. The oil poured out of the fryer, all the stuff was knocked to the floor, the cup for the grease under the hot plate went over and the grease got into the Mars Bars. It was hard to get out of the van when it was rocking like that, and it was fuckin’ terrifying as well. There wasn’t much weight in it at all; they could have toppled it easily enough. The second time they did it Jimmy Sr managed to catch one of them and he gave him a right hiding, up against the side of the van; clobbered every bit of him he could reach. He thought he was teaching him a lesson but when he stopped and let go of him the kid just spat at him. He just spat at him. And walked away, back to the rest of them. They didn’t care if they were caught. They didn’t say anything to him or shout back at him; they just stared out at him from under their hoodies. He wasn’t angry when he climbed back into the van. He was frightened; not that they’d do it again, not that — but that there was nothing he could do to stop them. And, Jesus, they were only kids. Why didn’t they laugh or call him a fat fucker or something?

They lit fires under the van; they robbed the bars that held up the hatch; they cut through the gas tubes; they took the bricks from under the wheels.

Jimmy Sr was looking out the hatch, watching the houses go by, when he remembered that the houses shouldn’t have been going anywhere. The fuckin’ van was moving! It was before they got the engine. Himself and Bimbo baled out the back door but Sharon wouldn’t jump. The van didn’t crash into anything, and it wasn’t much of a hill. It just stopped. The Living Dead had taken the bricks from behind the wheels, that was what had happened. It was funny now but it was far from fuckin’ funny at the time.

Jimmy Sr knew them, that was the worst thing about it. The last time he’d walked across O‘Connell Bridge he’d seen this knacker kid, a tiny little young fella, crouched in against the granite all by himself, with a plastic bag up to his face. He was sniffing glue. It was terrible — how could his parents let him do that? — but at least he didn’t know him. It was like when he heard that Veronica’s brother’s wife’s sister’s baby had been found dead in the cot when they got up one morning; it was terrible sad, but he didn’t know the people so it was like any baby dying, just sad. But he knew the names of all these kids, most of them. Larry O’Rourke’s young lad, for instance; Laurence, he was one of them. It depressed him, so it did. Thank God Leslie was out of it, working away somewhere.

The ordinary kids around, the more normal ones, they were always messing around the van as well. But at least you could get a good laugh out of them, even if they got on your wick. One of them — Jimmy Sr didn’t know him, but he liked him — told Bimbo to give him a fiver or he’d pretend to get sick at the hatch every time someone came near the van. And he did it. There was a woman coming towards them, looking like she was making her mind up, and your man bent over and made the noises, and he had something in his mouth and he let it drop onto the road, scrunched-up crisps or something. And that made the woman’s mind up for her. Jimmy Sr went after him with one of the bars from the hatch but he wasn’t interested in catching him. The ordinary bowsies robbed the bars from the hatch, and messed with the gas and rocked the van as well, but it was different. When they legged it they could hardly run cos they were laughing so much. Jimmy Sr and Bimbo nearly liked it. These kids fancied Sharon as well so they came to look in at her. It would have been good for business, only they never had any fuckin’ money. Sometimes, Fridays especially, they were drunk. He didn’t like that. They were falling around the place, pushing each other onto the road. They were too young. They got the cider and cans from an off-licence two stops away on the DART; Darren told him that. Jimmy Sr was going to phone the guards, to report the off-licence, but he never got round to it.