

BONE IDOL

DAVID LOUDEN
Copyright © 2013 DAVID LOUDEN

First published with the author's permission by

VENICE BOOKS, CA

All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended). Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

ISBN-13: 978-1482319446

ISBN-10: 1482319446

Extract from Ask The Dust by John Fante

Copyright © 1939 Stackpole Sons

Extract from The Brotherhood of the Grape by John Fante

Copyright © 2002 Harper Perennial

Extract from Post Office by Charles Bukowski

Copyright © 1971 Black Sparrow Press

For my old friends Arturo & Henry

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Firstly I have to acknowledge the influences of two incredible writers without whom I would have never realized what I wanted to squander my life attempting to do. John Fante and Charles Bukowski, your prose spoke a language that I intuitively knew to a part of me that was vacant and for that I'm forever thankful. Thanks to mum, your belief that we (her children) could be anything we wanted to be simply because we wanted to be was something that I never lost, even though I may have misplaced it for some time. To my fiancé Dawn who has always been there to show me the light, listen to the barrels of crazy spewing from my face and make me see what she sees. You have an endless belief in my ability which is equal parts impressive and insane. Thank you. To Wendy, you read the words my undiagnosed disorder puts down on paper and are still my friend and an incredible writer. Most of all I'd like to acknowledge all those people from school and the streets of North Belfast who'd treat with distain and pull down anyone who they deemed too big for their britches. Your years of you can't do that conditioning has been hard to break but without your negativity the victory over your ideology would not taste as sweet as it does now. Fuck you and your two quid haircuts!

BONE IDOL [bohn ahyd-l]

noun Chiefly North Belfast

  1. a person from the Oldpark, known as "The Bone", with aspirations of a career in the arts or above their socio-economic station.

PART I

1

AND THEN my father said.

"I don't give a shit what you say boy, this is a different banjo!"

I was maybe three years old at the time which would have made it 1979. I stood next to my old man holding his hand in that pawn shop while he argued with the Indian owner that the banjo he had pawned earlier that week, the same one which he was buying back now was a different banjo. He'd have this argument with him every time and every time the Indian guy (who my dad called Gandhi) would offer him his sincerest apologies and an extra few quid for his trouble. I stood with my right hand in the air as my dad's tough-palmed bear claw of a hand held on to stop me from wandering. I was small then so I spent a lot of time in the pawn shop on my tip-toes trying to get some circulation back in my arm.

"You listen here Gandhi, this is not my banjo and I don't know what you think you're playing at but in Ireland we don't try to rob people blind."

"Mr. Morgan we have gone about this merry dance a thousand times, I beseech you this is the instrument you brought in on the fifth of this month and it is the same instrument you have in your hands now."

"This will cost you Sonny-Jim, make no mistake about that." he bellowed, finger wagging all the while.

And it did. It always did.

It was Christmas at the end of that month. My parents would buy me a Spiderman bicycle which I couldn't ride on account of the Bing Crosby Christmas the streets of Belfast were blessed with. It would turn to ice and see us through to New Years Eve. Jack Morgan would pawn my bike that month instead of his banjo which he had restrung and taken back out to make some extra whiskey money. We wouldn't see Gandhi that month to buy it back and even if we did I wouldn't imagine the old man would have protested about it not being the same bike.

Our house on Rosapenna was small. It was small even for two people, thus my sister and I had to share a room. Mum decorated it as schizophrenically multi-sexual as she could to keep the fights between us to a minimum. Every once and a while she'd leave a doll on my side of the room, I'd remind her of the territory's hostile division by scalping the Barbie and giving it a toilet bath, although all too often that resulted in one of my Action Men having Barbie's clothing glued to him. The house was an end terrace that sat on the corner of the Oldpark Road surrounded by an overgrown green. Beside the house lurked an electricity generator which hummed all day and night, as a child I stressed it would overheat, catch fire and crisp us all where we lay, but it never did. We took the bus on Saturdays, all four short stops into town. You could still smoke on the bus back then and all public transportation was stopped at barricaded checkpoints before it reached the city centre. Passengers were paraded past soldiers and large snarling dogs; they'd walk the rest of the way to their final destination.

My mum would send dad out with his kids every Saturday. At the time there was just the two of us; Mum had spent a lot of money having the kitchen in the small terrace refurbished so it doubled as a sweet shop. It was great as a kid but milk teeth didn't last a shit. I was a sucker for the sherbet; even back then I had my vices. Saturdays were her busiest days; she'd work every hour that was sent her way without a break. She'd stop every now and then to chew on a toffee and chat to the neighbourhood parents while their kids greedily scrambled into the queue to surrender their pocket money. Dad was usually hung-over and in piss-poor form from it, he didn't take kindly to people telling him what to do. He put up with it when it came to the shop because it meant we had a few more quid coming into the house, consequently he could afford to drain down a little more of what he brought in.

Every weekend started the same way. It was a god-damn ritual in the Morgan house. Ruth would rise at seven, make herself breakfast and set up the shop. The display cabinets and shelves were all collapsible and she kept them in the locked cupboard under the stairs. It meant that the yellow and green striped kitchen could at least resemble a home when the youth weren't pounding on the door demanding strawberry shoelaces. Tara would wake before me and make enough noise getting dressed that I'd eventually wake grumpy and ready for the micro Israel/Palestine bedroom war of the working class domicile to begin all over again. Our screaming would eventually wake the old man. He'd storm through the door in his white vest, the top of his black and grey mixed head pointing in whatever direction he'd collapsed the night before. He'd clip us both once around the back of the legs for getting him out of bed, the sting would become enough that the slightest sight of his glassy hound-dog peepers in the morning would stop us still as broken clocks. He'd go back to bed and we'd resist the urge to kill one another but within the hour Mum would be up the stairs dragging her beer soaked brute of a man out of his sack and towards the bathroom.

"C'mon Jack for Christ's sake it's almost ten." she'd insist even though all the clocks stated nine-twenty.

"Don't rush me woman, I'm sick. I've a terrible illness this morning and you're starting to wind me right the-fuck up!"

"You want to come lend a hand with the screaming, snotty kids and their sticky money?"

"You see me moving towards the bathroom? Let me drop a deuce and shave my face in peace woman if I'm meant to spend all day running around the town with the kids."

"Be quick about it. I'll get them ready."

In our blue and pink bedroom we'd have heard everything and would be in the process of getting ourselves dressed. I always gravitated towards a Batman tee shirt, which somehow was never clean at the weekend. I don't think I ever got to wear that tee into town. Pulling it up over my head Mum would place a plain one on me; tie my shoes even though I could do it myself and send me downstairs to wait on my father. Tara would appear a few minutes later and the dirty looks we'd traded in our eight-by-ten would cease and be replaced by the same hope. I guess we thought if we both hoped it hard enough we'd get our way.

Queen Street in the centre of town was the home of Leisure World. It was what Toys R Us is to the kids of today only not as flash. The building resembled a carpeted car-park as it had a ramp through the middle leading to the first floor instead of stairs and it was clearly divided. Boy's toys to the left, girl stuff to the right – just like our room. We'd take the bus into town, it'd look like a Rastafarian road trip with the amount of smoke wafting out of it as the driver cracked open the door to let us on. We weren't ignorant about cigarette smoke then, we knew all about the health issues but we didn't give a fuck. We were a country of people killing each other over how the other side pronounced 'H', like it would matter a fuck when we all had throat cancer and spoke with robotic voices.

During the short journey to the edge of Royal Avenue and the military checkpoint I'd wind Dad up by asking him inane questions, I never meant to do it – it was just the developing mind of a child looking up to the only male influence he had around him. What chance did I stand?

"Daddy, did you know dogs can only see in black and white?"

He'd grumble something. He knew this was the start of it.

"If they only see in black and white how do they watch cartoons?"

"They probably don't watch a lot of cartoons Douglas, they're probably too busy dragging their arses across the carpet or chewing on the arms of furniture or shit like that." he replied while sparking up a cigarette with the flick of a match.

"If they don't see in colour do you think maybe they don't hear the same as us too?"

Grumble, grumble.

"Dad, did you hear me? Do you think maybe dogs don't..."

"Do me a favour son, fuck up a little about dogs ok?!"

And that would be our interaction. At the checkpoint Jack would be brought forward and passed through first on account of him having two small children with him. They never worried about men with children. We didn't have anything like child soldiers back then; maybe the odd dwarf but nothing militant.

Once through the checkpoint Tara would squeeze on his hand and ask the question, the only question that ever mattered to a three year old boy on a weekend day.

"Can we go to Leisure World Daddy?" she had learned to bat her eyes.

"Maybe in a bit...not right now." he was immune to eyes.

He'd have us tell Mum we spent the day in Leisure World but the truth of the matter was we'd end up one street down from the pleasure emporium in my dad's own special version of Leisure World – Copperfield's Bar. Back then our lives revolved around three streets. Queen Street with the ever elusive toy store, Fountain Street containing Dad's favourite watering hole and the street running up between both of them, Castle Street. The street where Dad spent a lot of his time busking. All too often the money made from plucking on his four string banjo never made it any further than around the corner onto Fountain Street.

Sitting us in the corner next to the slot machine, the saddest slot machine in the land as the lights had been punched out and never fixed, he set two cokes in front of us and told us to...

"Be quiet, sit still and don't disturb anyone. It's rude, and you don't want me to have to tell your mother about you being rude do you?"

We would both shake our heads furiously and he'd take the five steps over to his stool by the bar where a Guinness and a whiskey were waiting for him. This was most Saturdays. In the afternoon he'd switch to vodka because you couldn't smell it on his breath and he believed he had a higher tolerance for it. The screaming matches when we got home usually suggested this wasn't based on any quantifiable evidence.

It was a Saturday coming up to Easter; I was full up on chocolate. Jack had woken late again, we'd got dressed in silence and ventured into town on the 93 with its windows two inches thick with nicotine stains. Dad needed new strings for his banjo so we called to the only store he liked to shop in and stood around not touching anything while he picked through his pockets for some loose change.

"I think that little fella in that buy-back shop is playing silly buggers with me and fraying my strings each month." he'd comment while waiting for the cashier to ring up his purchase.

On Wellington Place we were tantalisingly close to Leisure World, we could almost feel the glow of the store's display window on our pale little faces. We were equally as close to Copperfield's. Dragging us across at the lights we missed the turn off towards the toys. It was another afternoon in that light absorbing bar, staring at ourselves in the mirror that stretched the depth from the front door to the stooled counter at the back.

"Right!" Dad proclaimed clapping his hands together thunderously "Which one of you fine gentlemen want to buy me a drink?!"

His offer was met with a deafening groan of indifference. Even then I got the impression that my old man wasn't much liked. I'd see it in years to come in a thousand different people; it's all about the company you keep. Full pockets and an inclination to share and you had the world beating on your bedroom door to befriend or fuck you silly but with a pocket full of lint and stray copper coins, you'd know for sure you were a friendless, deadbeat asshole.

"Those your kids, Jackie?" a tall man asked.

"No Clive I won the little one in a raffle, spot me a drink and I'll pay you back."

"When?"

"Now."

"No, when will you pay me back?"

"When I have it Clive, or is my word no good here no more?" Dad barked.

A Guinness and a whiskey appeared before him in a matter of moments and he went about patiently waiting for the dark velvet drink to settle before draining off half of it in one sip leaving him with a funny white moustache and a calmness around him I never saw at home.

"What's your name little girl?"

One of the regular faces stooped over Tara. His balance unsteady, his face hard and spiky. He was as unsure on his feet as a newborn.

"Tara." answered my sister.

"Why don't you come over to my table Tara, you can pull up on my knee and I'll tell you a wonderful story."

"My mummy says I'm not to talk to strangers!" she countered.

"Well I'm Dennis, and since we're no longer strangers Tara..."

"Cut that shit out Dennis!" Clive yelled from behind the hard wood counter "I've told you before, sit your hole in that corner and keep your knee to your-fuckin-self or I'll club you!"

Dad said nothing; only after Clive glared at him with his eyes all but hanging out of his head did he look up from his drink.

"Stay away from Dennis kids, you hear me?!" our education about Dennis and his kind complete.

It was pushing 4PM and Dad was still propped at the bar, we had an hour left to get to Leisure World – it wouldn't happen but we were kids and we still believed strongly in the power of hope. Somehow he had managed to convince Clive to extend his tab to another five or six rounds, he even convinced Dennis to buy him a couple as compensation for him trying to fiddle with his daughter.

The building shook in its foundations. Two large bottles of spirits came off the wall, the chandelier danced in the fittings making a sound similar to that of Santa flying overhead. The wall length mirror cracked in several places with each break racing to be the first to make the middle. Getting to his feet Jack grabbed each of us in his callus-riddled hands and dragged us out of the bar. Clive followed shepherding the weekend Alco-army outside to prevent them from drinking him dry while he figured out what just happened. Fountain Street was rushed with a tsunami of soot coming towards us from Wellington Place. Sirens rang out in all directions and then a second bang shook us in our shoes before the grey wave washed over us blinding everyone.

It took hours to get out of town that Saturday; checkpoints in all directions were queued around the block and the military had their weapons ready and their dogs at work. We made it through under a tirade of insults.

"Fucking Irish bastards!" hurled one of the soldiers.

"You watch your tongue." spat my dad, his eyes were lazy, footing unsure. He got that way on whiskey.

"Or what?"

"Take you out of that uniform and you're just a little shit. If my kids weren't here I..."

"You'd what you fucking Mick?" snarled the soldier.

They looked set to butt heads when an officer came over with a thick well-to-do English accent and instructed the soldier to duties elsewhere. He marched off and the rest of them give their C.O a look of disgust mixed with disappointment. You could tell they didn't respect him. Maybe he hadn't earned his stripes; maybe they just wanted to watch a mouthy Paddy get his dough-hole stomped.

Once past the checkpoint we'd discover the bus service had been suspended due to the bombing in the city centre and would have to walk it home. I knew better to ask my dad any questions when he was like this – Mum didn't.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?! You took our kids to that fucking dirty old bar, almost got them blown up, almost got yourself kicked to death! Do we not have enough money problems Jack? Is life not challenging enough for you?!" she poked.

"Do not talk to me like that Ruth!" he replied, mostly with spit "I will not take this shite from a woman!"

"Well fuck off then and find yourself a man to take it from!"

The thump sounded louder than the explosion as I sat at the foot of the stairs by the living room door listening. I could see Mum fall in the reflection, cast darkly across the glass panel in the living room door which sat half open. Dad stood over her, his hand turned to rock on the end of his wrist and shaking with adrenaline.

"Is that all you got in you, you fucking drunk!" she threw back.

He hit her again and again. She had a delicate little face and he was set on altering it forever. She'd get vertical enough to push him off her and would rush past me in a blur quickly followed by him screaming you want more woman, I'll give you fucking more. The stairs sat between the doors to the kitchen and the living room, I turned on the stair and had a direct view into the kitchen which still looked like a shop. He caught up with her at the worktop and spun her around on her heels. She was prepared though. Make no mistake about it, Ruth Morgan had a temper too. What chance did I stand? Her right hand came round as he rotated her and slammed down on his chest. Jack took a step back, shocked at the sight of a fish fork sticking out of his barrel, a matter of inches from where his heart may have been. He hit her again and she dropped to the ground, her lip was fat and her left eye purple by this point. As he contemplated yanking the cutlery from his chest she rose with a hammer and took a swing for his face. She missed and he got out of there fast.

"You touch me again Jack Morgan and I will cave your bastard head in!" she screamed chasing him out of Rosapena and on to the Oldpark Road.

I stood by the door as houses and shops evacuated in a show of extreme curiosity as my parents tried desperately to kill each other. An elderly woman threw me a look of sympathy as she dithered by our front door. Me, this dirty little child covered in soot like a Victorian chimney sweep, my mum with her multi-coloured punch-bag face swinging a hammer at a drunk with a fork in his chest. She shook her head and pitied my situation, pitied my life before it had even begun. Defiantly I snarled back at her and give her the finger; my three year old stumpy little middle finger cocked and loaded with a big old fuck you. I turned and walked back into the kitchen and helped myself to a pocket full of sweets. Mum hadn't learned yet what Clive knew. I sat and raged at that sorrowful sign of compassion from that stranger all the while eating cola cubes.

2

MY PARENTS HAD been childhood sweethearts, pulled apart by the fluidity of the Northern Ireland working man's job market. Mum remained in Belfast, Dad shepherded by his disciplinarian/borderline alcoholic father to Coleraine, then Bangor, then Larne before eventually turning twenty-one and severing the ailing chord. He returned to his native Belfast and a chance encounter with the newly single Ruth, my poor mother; they'd call it fate, if anything it was bad luck.

Mum fell pregnant with my big sis not long into their second turn around; she was still very much in love, the smitten kitten of the Cliftonville. She wasn't experienced or objective enough to see that Jack cared for two things, Himself and The Liquor. There was barely room in his tobacco-stained blood-clotted heart for her, let alone a child and definitely not for two. Jack got the son he instinctively desired a few years into married life when my mum pushed me out the tunnel and into the 'World according to Jack Morgan'.

Nineteen-eighty was a tough year. Money slipped away from the family like quicksilver. On Tara's birth certificate it stated the father was Jack Morgan – Occupation: Building Contractor, by the time it came around to declaring my existence to the world of the British Government it had become Jack Morgan – Occupation: Labourer. He had long since lost the ability to see a project from conception to fruition thanks to him going weak at the knee at the mere sight of a bottle of Grey Goose. By the time I was three turning four he was down to casual hours; being called in when another more reliable guy had broken his arm or fallen sick or ditched his family to run away with the babysitter. Something had to give and that something was the profit margin of my mum's little house shop. It became the Jack Morgan benefit fund for the weeping liver. He'd go busking, and on those days when we were lucky would forget to darken our door. On the occasions when he did remember how to get home he always stank of basement shelf scotch and sported those Charlie Manson eyes Mum hated so much. They fought more and more, he'd slap her down she'd kick the shins off him while she was there. He put the hurt on her pretty thorough one time which took her a few weeks to fully recover from and each time after that she fought back a little less until she was little more than a cowering lamb, an imitation of the woman who'd tried to cut her Father-in-law's head off with a sword for calling her a Stupid Wee Woman. Unrecognizable to herself never mind her offspring.

Nineteen-eighty was a tough year for sure. When Mum told us we were to expect a little brother or sister to play with Tara clapped her hands and prayed it wasn't a stinky little boy.

"Mum, if it's a girl can we dress her up? Can we call her Sue-Ellen, Mum?"

I met the news with indifference. It might be cool to have a brother to play with. Someone to dispense my four year old wisdom to, someone to join the alliance against Tara, though the thought of drawing out more borders in the already cramped bedroom was terrifying.

"Can it not live somewhere else?" I asked.

Jack's hands tightened around the corners of the newspaper he had propped in front of his face while he sat smoking in his undershirt. After that, Dad was just angry. Angry all the time, he'd stop by Copperfield's or Kelly's Cellars when his tab was too huge to barter another drink and fuel up his anger engine and give off about the brood at home that was sucking the marrow from his whiskey-damp bones.

"I would be playing music by now, playing music instead of being this..." whatever this was.

Most of all he was angry at how hopelessly trapped he was; how the woman and the two (soon to be three) brats expected so much from him. During the fights he had taken to accusing Mum of trapping him in this life and trying to fix their problems with another mouth to feed. The Mum of old would have spat back with something about being able to afford another baby if everything didn't go down his neck but the line never passed her teeth. The stealing would become more constant, soon the bottom line was too thin for anything other than the basics and soon after that it was gone.

When Jeff was born Tara and I had to go and stay with Mum's sister Beth for a couple of days. Beth would take Tara up to the hospital to see them both and she'd come back glowing with happiness, most likely because she knew more than me but she claimed it was because she was helping Mum raise the baby.

"Where's Dad Aunt Beth?"

No response came so I asked again and threw in a tug at the bottom of her skirt for good measure as she went about her daily grocery shop. It had become her and my daily grocery shop even though I hated grocery shopping. I wanted to go to Leisure World yet somehow nobody fucking saw that.

"Where's my dad Aunt Beth?" tug, tug.

"Your dad's away working at the moment son, he'll be back soon but it's very important that you help me here."

It didn't make sense to me; Jack didn't need to go away to work. If anything Jack worked closer to home than ever now that the Oldpark was getting two dozen new houses erected on it.

"Working where?"

Nothing.

"Working where Aunt Beth?" tug, tug.

"He's making movies darling now c'mon stop being an annoyance and help me with this."

Beth handed me a blue bag full of potatoes and the like. I carried them without a word, not because I was looking to change my ways – there are some things too deeply rooted to turn around. I was in my head. I was familiar with movies but I'd never known anyone who had been in one. I wondered how it came about and when I realized that Tara hadn't boasted about this I smiled. It warmed me to think of my dad the movie star, it warmed me more knowing I knew more than her. I'd hold it over her good and proper, I smiled all the way home.

Mum came home with our baby brother so we ended up back at our house. It was good to be home. I had my own room in Beth's house; it was enormous – four storeys and the top floor had been turned into one large room. Scaffolding sat in corners to support the beams that no longer had walls to hold them up. My uncle was a world-class squirreler. He emptied old houses in his youth and in lieu of payment was allowed to take whatever took his eye. He'd make a lot of money at auction, he could have made a lot more if he stopped bringing so much of his junk home – nobody needs a room full of spare tires. He had two little cars that looked like Sinclair C-5s before the C-5 was out which he got from a Japanese guy. One was little more than a shell but the other was in perfect working order and I drove it around and between the scaffolding in the top room for hours.

Dad was still gone. Mum had been home a few hours when I jumped on her, rupturing her stitches and sending her back to hospital for the night. She took Jeff with her; me and Tara had to go back to Beth's. I felt bad about it but played in the Japanese C-5 for most of the night anyway.

3

JACK PITCHED in more for a little while when Jeff came along but it didn't last. It never lasted; not while there was a spot saved for him at Copperfield's. I was four years old and not playing well with others in my Nursery school. One day amongst the brightly coloured walls and finger paintings of suns with large smiles wearing Roy Orbison sunglasses I played with a bag of green plastic soldiers in the sandbox. I was re-enacting a scene I had watched on TV from a film called The Great Scout & Cathouse Thursday. There was a tall dark haired actor in it with a brooding face. I was pretty sure in my own mind it was my dad and I watched with awe. A small smelly kid with nostril frosting all over his face stepped into the sandbox while one set of green men were chasing after another. He stood before me like he was about to say something then proceeded to piss himself; the patch spreading dark in a circle around his crotch before fleeing down the leg and out the bottom of his trousers. He had done this on purpose, he'd ruined my game and not only that he had drowned half a dozen plastic men in his dribbling cock juice. I stood up and slugged him square on the nose setting him off on a wailing tear-soaked cry.

Mum and Dad would come to the Nursery at the end of the week to discuss my behaviour. For a man who liked to throw his dukes around Jack looked pretty pissed when he fired a glance towards me as Mrs. Martin explained all.

"Though this is the first occurrence of Douglas using violence as a means to communicate his general behaviour is, shall we say, troubling."

"Troubling? How so troubling?" quizzed Mum protectively.

"He seems to spend his days playing by himself, he rarely gets involved in group activity and doesn't demonstrate a great deal of social skills. Have you ever considered having him tested?"

Mum sprang to her feet like someone had just plugged her blue padded chair into the wall.

"That's quite enough," she said grabbing my hand and yanking me out of my seat. Even the old man followed her lead "there's nothing wrong with Douglas, he's a quiet boy that is confident enough to enjoy his own company. Maybe the activities you're trying to engage him in don't stimulate him enough to want to get involved. What about the kid who can't control his bladder? You going to advise his parents have him tested? What kind of four year old still pisses himself, huh?"

Martin sat in her chair stunned at the debris from the verbal landmine she had just trod on before finally offering "Well Mrs. Morgan his toiletry habits are a concern but not as much..."

"We're done here. Douglas will be going somewhere else before he's enrolled in Primary school, one more word!" Mum barked cutting the administrator down with the point of a finger.

We'd stop for ice cream on the way home and Mum would try desperately to ruin my licking rhythm by continuously petting my mop of black hair as though I was a pound puppy. Dad left after the ice cream, he had been co-opted into coming along because I was his child too but he wasn't back in the house full-time yet. He mustn't have wanted to be back in Rosapena otherwise it would have been a different case.

That night I felt Mum's eye burn white hot into the back of my head as I played in the corner of the living room while Mum, Tara and now Jeff interacted as one entity. She burned a hole in my melon for weeks after the meeting with Mrs. Martin but she never sent me to be tested and I never asked what for.

It was the beginning of the summer and I had said goodbye to the Nursery school, come August I'd be heading to Primary school and a whole new pecking order. Dad was back in the house though he didn't take us into town with him at the weekends anymore, which was no big deal for me or Tara as we never got to go to fucking Leisure World anyway.

"I'll work the shop with you Mum." Tara announced on Friday night.

"Awk no darling, you have your weekend."

"But you need the help Mummy, I'll take the orders."

"We'll see what suits you best, how about that?" Mum haggled.

It was another thing she'd hang over me in her quest to be the most loved, superior child of Ruth and Jack Morgan. Maybe she thought there was a prize, if there was a prize it was never announced so I never competed. Saturday would come and the house would fill from the back door with the chittering and chattering of children all queuing up to give away their pocket money. I had gotten into art by this stage so I spent most of my time with a yellow pencil and a blank sheet of paper under my hand drawing. I was going to be an artist, Mum did her best to steer me towards Graphic Designer or Architect. Architect pleased the old man because it was a skill, a trade.

"You'll not get anywhere with all that artsy fartsy shite. There's no money in it, that's why it's best left to those la-de-da puffter lot!" he'd state sucking down on a cigarette.

I had grabbed myself a bag of sweets from the counter and had taken to spreading them out on to the floor to sketch them. Mum worked the register while Tara busied herself bagging up people's orders only for Mum to have to go over and fix them because Tara had given them £5 worth of sweets when they only had 25p to spend. I'd grin at her each time I'd see Mum having to redo what she was supposedly "managing" and she'd say something about how I was "ruining the stock" and "pouring it all over the floor".

"Leave your brother alone Tara, he's not doing any harm."

She'd then mutter "unlike some people" under her breath and it would make me laugh. Tara was no more useful on shop days than the old man, or Jeff, or me for that matter.

In the summer months we ate the best. Every day kids would be given money to get them out from between the legs of their parents and they'd come to ours to spend it. Sunday came and we got dragged to Beth's house. Mum had started taking us there every Sunday which was a real pain in the ass. I wasn't allowed to play with the sort-of-C-5 when Mum was there, all of Beth's children were a lot older so they had no toys and we were always put in front of the TV to watch whatever was on and for some reason it was always a Bollywood film. They never made a lot of sense to me back then; I'd spend most of the time staring at the clock willing it to skip forward an hour while Mum and Beth chatted about boring shit that somehow wasn't allowed to be interrupted. When we'd leave Beth's house it would be late in the evening, the older kids would be out playing football and I'd know it was time to go straight into the house, start fighting against the bath-time and then be put to bed before I was tired. Even back then I was a night owl and would spend hours under the covers reading, stopping every page to come up for cold air before diving back into my child-made literary womb.

Jeff didn't do much at this point. I barely saw him and he was hardly even on my radar. During the week Mum took the three of us to Leisure World. The moment we stepped in through the doors I raced to the boy half of the store and was struck dumb by just how much of everything there was to choose from. There was almost too much. It got to the point I didn't even want to take anything down from the shelves all I wanted to do was stare at it all and imagine what it would be like to play with them. Tara ran back to Mum's side with a Barbie.

"That's all I want Mum, can I have it?"

Pissing little kiss ass. I wanted everything, I wanted to take it all home and cover the walls of my room with them and just stare unblinkingly at them and marvel in the world of possibilities that lay inside the plastic sealed packaging. Already I knew I'd be disappointed. I wanted it all. I settled for a Batman with a cloth cape and a batarang with a wicked recoil. Jeff lay in his pram clawing at his feet; not even one and already he was cherished enough to be able to squander his first trip to Leisure World. In years to come when he'd spent countless Saturdays in the dark, urine scented corner of Copperfield's, when he'd spent so much time there he couldn't even remember what Leisure World looked like, when that happens he'd regret wasting this opportunity and I'd laugh. I'd laugh and strain something trying to recall all the imprisoned plastic heroes that lined the walls waiting for their chosen one to come along and take them home.

The cab ride home was the beginning of Jeff's hate/hate relationship with travel. His childhood would see him drown us all in chunks of what looked like carrot and rancid slime water as the slightest motion would cause him to projectile vomit everywhere. In this instance all he could muster was a hiccup and grey slippage down the front of his bib.

When we got back to Rosapena the house was like a bombsite. Mum quickly backed out telling Tara to take Douglas and Jeff next door right now. She grabbed the pram and raced to our neighbours; I followed for a moment but then wondered what Batman would do, or my dad. I had seen a movie he was in where he and three others ran around with swords fighting people in funny costumes. I ran back to the house, in through the front door and as far as the stairs. I could see my dad; he was blind drunk and ripping the cupboards out of the wall. Mum's cash box lay empty and discarded in the middle of the tiled floor as he roared about the rest of it.

"Jack! What the fuck are you doing?!"

"Where's the rest of it woman?! Don't you think I don't know you've been holding out on me!"

"Don't you dare take that fucking money, that money is everything we have!" she'd lunge for his jacket pocket which had paper money promising to spew from it but he'd bat her away like a fly.

"You fucking witch! You trap me here!"

"Get the fuck out then but you're not taking that money!"

She'd lunge for him again and he'd punch her before grabbing her and pinning her to the wall. Mum ran her nails down his face peeling off skin as though he was a form of fruit and he'd howl before hitting her again and again knocking her to the ground but the old lady was tough and hung on to his leg. Jack reached down and forced her head into the floor with an industrial thud that turned my stomach and then she was silent and still. A crimson doll. He smashed up the kitchen window for good measure before pushing by me and out of the house. I stood in the doorway; I was too green to venture any closer. That night we all had to stay with Beth and I didn't much feel like playing with the C-5.

4

THEN MUM SAID "We're going home kids."

Her lip sat fat, her right eye closed and as round as a snooker ball.

Beth made our uncle get his van. He hadn't driven it in years but it held all four of us plus him up front and he drove us home. It wasn't Rosapena. The house was bigger, there were fields, no kitchen shop but all of my stuff was in boxes in my new room waiting for me to go through them. Tara got her own room in the new house; I still had to share only this time it was with Jeff. For the first few months he slept in with Mum but eventually the lines of division appeared again and were as clear as ever; only the colour scheme on the walls was unified. Dad didn't come around anymore. Nobody even mentioned his name, at least not to me though he would still appear on TV at weekends and I'd watch and wonder why he couldn't be that much fun in person.

The house felt like it was in the middle of nowhere compared to how built-up Rosapena was. To the rear of the house was an honest to goodness back yard, rich and green and just wanting to be explored. We sat at the end of a six house terrace and from my bedroom window I could see a forest, and a tree with a tire on a rope. I'd make that my own soon enough.

The nearest shop was a good ten minutes walk from our front door and on a Friday night a man would pull up outside the house in a van and all the kids would pile in with amazement. It's every parent's nightmare now but in the eighties there never seemed to be any issue of stranger danger; anyone who bothered to snatch Tara would probably bring her back within a couple of hours when they realised she talked more than they could breathe. On our third weekend in the new house I convinced Mum to let me go to the van. I needed to know what exactly those kids were getting out of this relationship.

"Ok we'll have a look but that's all Douglas." Mum said rounding up Jeff and Tara and stepping out of the house into the cool summer night.

The van had a light in the back and I raced ahead to join the queue to step into it. I was almost sick with anticipation of what it could be. My uncle's van used to shepherd around marble fireplaces, engine parts and copper when he was up to it. I didn't know any of the local kids yet but I had faith in them that they wouldn't be exhilarated over a Belfast sink. I'd take the three steps the van driver set out for us in one as I climbed into the back of this stranger's van, Mum reluctantly watching on from not too far.

It was greater than I could have ever imagined. The man had shelved the sides of the van and stocked them with every action, horror, and martial arts VHS and Beta-Max he could get his hands on in those early days of home entertainment. I stood before them in awe and again I wanted everything, again I didn't want to do anything other than own all before me so that I could look at them and imagine what it would be like to watch them all. We didn't even have a VHS player at the time, I left the van empty handed and raced back to Mum.

"Well, what's so special about that banged up old van?"

"Mum, he has tapes."

"Wow, well that is amazing. Let's go inside now."

She'd herd us all indoors and I'd watch from the window as kid after kid would queue up, disappear inside and re-emerge with a box and a smile on their face. I was young so the art of subtly and nuance was lost on me, I was yet to learn the value of a buck. It would come soon enough but not sooner than a VHS player.

"Can we get one Mum?" I asked.

"One what son?" she'd pretend not to follow the conversation when it suited her.

"A tape machine, so we can watch movies."

"You can watch movies on TV."

"Not like these."

"We'll see ok? There's plenty of other things we need in the meantime maybe if you made yourself a wee friend you could go round their house annoy their parents and watch movies on their tape machine."

She watched carefully as that little spark caught something behind my green eyes and began to burn. She was probably still hearing Mrs. Martin in her head every time she came out of the house to look for me as I was sitting on the front porch drawing instead of running wild with the other boys or pretending to be a ninja or whatever the local kids did to put the hours in. I went to bed that night and didn't read, didn't sleep either. I lay staring into the never ending darkness that began at the bedroom ceiling and in the furthest corner of the darkest abyss could feel something staring back.

I left the house the next morning without my pencil and sketch pad. Mum was right; there were plenty of other things we needed to get before a VHS player. I should have known that, being man of the house, but it was a role I was still coming to terms with and learning the ropes would highlight these things.

A stampede raced past me, boys, all my age with differing colours of hair quickly followed by the tallest girl I had ever seen in my life. She was six foot nine in flats if she was anything and had long black hair that even in a French plat hung around her thick flanks. She caught the tail end of the group and managed to put a hand round the neck rim of a boy's tee shirt tearing it from his frame and sending him hurtling backwards before landing on the ground. She was on him quick as a flash slapping him around the face as he cried for mercy with everyone a safe distance from the girl-giant laughing.

"Teresa dirty hole!" yelled one of the kids, the darkest one.

"Teresa dirty hole!" echoed another.

"Stop it!" screamed who I guessed was Teresa.

As a chorus of Teresa dirty hole sang out in the middle of the newest urban development, a red headed kid flanked her. Slowly he skulked up behind her and right when she was about to charge at the choir of punk kids screaming Teresa dirty hole he leapt at her back grabbing hold of her considerable plat and rang on it like a church bell. She turned kicking but he turned with her and rode on her as though she was a bronco. Teresa would buck him off eventually; the slapped happy child would wriggle free from under her shadow as she gave chase to the ginger boy. She'd thunder up the hill to the top of the street after him. I watched wanting to see what the choir would do next, the ginger kid must have wondered too because he looked behind him – which slowed his escape and in an instant Teresa pounced on him and beat him until he cried.

"I thought I was a goner." the slapped happy kid declared.

"Look at Marty! She's beating the balls off him!" the leader laughed and pointed.

"Who's he?" asked slappy.

"Don't know. Who are you?" they were talking to me now.

"I'm Douglas, I only just moved here."

"I'm Paulie, you want to run around with us Douglas?" Paulie said, stepping forward "You have to kick Teresa in the hole."

"Why?"

"Why not?"

In its own way why not made a lot of sense. In years to come it would be at the centre of my entire decision making process and though the outcome usually caused more trouble than any discovery was worth from ploughing ahead why not always remained the most attractive proposition in life. What chance did I really stand? What chance in a world that contained why not? I hadn't seen any sign of life coming from it during the month I lived across the street from what I'd come to know as the Bogey-house but suddenly as I weighed up Paulie's outlook on life and acceptance the front door opened. Out marched a hard pressed old man with a can in his hand. He reminded me of Jack when he was shook from his sleep too early.

"You little bastards leave that poor child alone!" he hollered, throwing his empty can at Paulie.

"Or what will you do old man?"

For a five year old Paulie had some serious balls on him.

"I'll come over there and put my foot in your ass you cheeky little prick!"

"Lick ass!" Paulie yelled in reply before spinning round and slapping his rump at the old timer.

A chorus of lick ass would ring out from the boys. There were at least a dozen of them but it seemed that only Paulie was able to command the troops into singing out an insult. It had to be admired.

The old man stomped forward and the kids dispersed in the way a glass does when hitting the floor. I watched as all directions seemed to be covered while I stood rooted to the spot with the old drunk running towards me. Paulie stopped dead in his tracks and screamed "Run Doug!" I let out a lick ass directed squarely in the old drunk's face before ducking under his arm which he swung wildly in my direction then raced towards Paulie and away to safety.

We didn't get a VHS player that summer but it was ok we got a dog instead and Paulie had a VHS player so I spent a lot of evenings at his house watching Kung Fu movies. I told Paulie about my dog he said it was "fantastic" and that "our gang needed a good dog for hunting". I couldn't have agreed more with him but the dog turned out to be more than a little hyperactive and incredibly difficult to train. I had wanted an animal that would follow me around on adventures, a dog I could lead through the field at the back of Paulie's house, through the forest and to that tree with the tire on a rope. If we got lost I wanted a dog that could sniff us home but Bosco wasn't that kind of dog. He was more a 'eat your toys then sick them up into the bottom drawer of your clothes' kind of animal but he was playful. You could hug him all day and he wouldn't get bent out of shape about it. He'd even suck a dummy if you stuck one in his mouth but he was no hunter.

Soon we were best friends, the Butch and Sundance of Belfast. One night I was sleeping over at Paulie's. Mum was nervous at the prospect of me being out of the house, even though it was only across the street but she bit the bullet and gave in at the tenth time of asking. It was something I had to hold over Tara. She hadn't been allowed to sleep over at any of her friends' houses yet and her face was like thunder when she had to watch Mum say yes.

Paulie's house was just like ours, the front door opened straight into the living room, the stairs ran between the living room and the kitchen – which was smaller than Rosapena. Upstairs the master bedroom sat to the front of the house, the next biggest to the rear and his room sat between the bathroom and the hot press. That was my room too. Paulie's dad was as white as sheet, ghosts looked exotic next to him. Paulie and his sisters got their colour from their mum. She was Moroccan, with the most striking blue eyes and a figure chipped from marble. I was half asleep when I realised I needed the toilet. I took to the dark corridor like it was my own, without the need of a light. A giggle from the room directly facing the bathroom froze me still as deer in headlights as the door breezed open and Paulie's sculpted mother raced out. Her breasts free and bouncing carelessly. Her hips round and dangerous, her patch of thick woven bush moist and inviting. A man ran after her laughing, he'd lift her into the air and carry her back to the bed, smiling all the way. Her smile lit up any room; she glided through her home effortlessly and set aflutter the souls of all men. I'd love her, all of Paulie's flock would.

5

POLEGLASS WAS PRETTY back then. It was an odd mix of rural and urban and hadn't succumbed to the paramilitary might and drug crime it would later become famous for. Memories of the old man had faded, I watched him play a werewolf on TV one weekend but other than that I hadn't seen Jack in two years, maybe it was longer. School was in session and I was blossoming, Mum was relieved to see that all the fighting and screaming and drinking hadn't put a fist sized dent in her oldest boy's psyche. We played football at break time until the older boys forced us off the pitch so they could play a match. Any disagreement with this arrangement usually saw the objecting boy debagged and their ball hoofed off into the parameter of trees that guarded the school grounds. I didn't have a dad but I had my dog and I had Paulie and the gang.

6

PAULIE HAD TO move school during Primary Three thanks to his parents splitting up. One day he was in class, the following day he was missing and our PE teacher was sporting a black-eye. They'd move house to something smaller and more affordable for his beautiful mother but not just yet, it took a while for the old place to sell. He'd live a few streets away in a new apartment complex so we could still hang out but he had trained our group of friends too well. At the slightest wobble two in particular sensed weakness and made a play for leader of the gang, Paulie barely put up a fight.

A lot of the older kids in the neighbourhood promised, each time they saw him, that the next time they were round at the apartments they were going to fuck his mum good and proper. It would turn his skin red and send him swinging digs towards them. I agreed with them and wanted to tell him that I considered our friendship important and hoped that it would mean he wouldn't mind if I fucked her first but I thought twice about it when he caught a sixteen year old on the nose and covered both their shirts in claret. They still said things about his mum after that only it was no longer to his eight year old face.

The new family that moved into Paulie's house was a husband, wife and two daughters. I had promised myself out of loyalty to Paulie that I would hate them all and not be behind the door in demonstrating it. The two kids were incredibly ginger, so ginger they made our friend Ginge (Marty) look like a tanned Adonis. The dad was little better. He had red hair that was beginning to look a little like auburn straw as it thinned to reveal the shape of his head in well lit areas but he was a good guy. When my mum finally purchased a VHS player he called to the house and tuned in all the television channels on it and showed me how to operate the remote.

"So what's a kid like you doing sitting indoors watching videos?" he'd ask.

"I play out loads, I want to be able to tape Kolchak the Nightstalker and my dad's movies."

"Well that's something then."

Teresa had gotten bigger. On top of her mental disability she had some sort of physical condition that meant her body didn't interpret the message to stop growing. Her two brothers were younger than her but both seemed to be touched with the same physical explosion towards the sky. Teresa dirty hole had stopped being funny so the kids just yanked on her ponytail which now swept at the street. I sat on the porch with my sketchpad and watched as a new group of young ones that included my brother Jeff took turns in tormenting her and belittling her for the sake of getting a chase.

"Stop it! Stop it!" she screamed swinging large shovel-like hands at the small children.

"Teresa dick breath!" roared one of Jeff's friends.

I laughed at that one, it was a funny image.

Paulie called to my house with Malachy. Malachy had a harelip and when he said his own name it sounded like he was saying 'Malarkey'. He also had a wonky leg making him a risk when we were off exploring, something we didn't want to get caught doing. The rest of the kids called him "Sixty-Six" because of the fact that when they tried to make him say Sixty-six silly sausages it sounded hilarious. I wondered when anyone would ever need to say something so fucking stupid but the name stuck. Paulie used to only call for Sixty-Six when he was bored but now since we'd broken away from the gang me, him and Sixty-Six were like the three musketeers. I liked that idea. I would be the one my dad played.

"What are you doing?"

"Just drawing."

"I didn't know you were left handed."

"I am." I said.

"Me and Sixty-Six are going down to the forest, we heard there's a house at the other side filled with bin bags full of money."

"That sounds like bullshit to me."

It was our generation's Nigerian lottery win and even at a young age I hadn't really fallen for it.

"It's not, it's true!" Sixty-Six replied spraying us both on his S's.

"That's shit. It's stuff ones like your brother says so that when we go down there they bust our asses for whatever money we have on us."

"Maybe," offered Paulie "but maybe it's not. Maybe the house is coming down with money. You want to be the one that got left out so you could sit here and watch Dirty Hole beat up five year olds?"

"Let me get my coat."

Mum was on the phone with someone in the kitchen. She was using her secret phone voice so I knew something was up. It wasn't any of our birthdays coming up and it was too early for Christmas so I figured it had something to do with Dad. I grabbed my coat from my room and soft-stepped it back downstairs and out the door with Paulie and Sixty-Six.

The field was like a swamp, the ground unstable and the grass was overgrown. Sixty-Six lost a shoe right out of nowhere. One moment he was limping along the next his foot was soaking wet and we couldn't find it. He muttered something about going home but Paulie correctly pointed out that I had come along for the same reason he should stay.

"You go home Sixty-Six and you'll get nothing you hear me? It'll be split between me and Doug, do you really want that?"

He shook his head and we ploughed on.

We reached the forest as the sun began to slip from the sky. From my bedroom window the tire swing seemed to be the furthest point possible to travel but yet here we were about to pass it surrounded by empty cans of Tenants and skin magazines. The unclothed women plastered across each page excited us all but the magazines were little more than a collection of badly weathered pages; any attempt to move them from their environment would lead to their beauty being lost to the world forever. We'd have to settle for committing as many top pages to memory before pushing on. The forest cleared eventually, though now it was almost as dark outside the woods as it was inside. A duel carriageway was all that stood between us and either a house full of money or a ball-beating from a lot of drunken teenagers. Either way. The only way to know for sure was to look straight ahead and run as fast as your legs would carry you. I had taken part in a couple of school sports days winning a few sprints and considered myself powerful in the legs. I feared for Sixty-Six. The oncoming traffic was fast and indiscriminating; he'd be cut down for sure. There was a momentary break thanks to a red light which set Sixty-Six off like a shot, Paulie sprinted after him and caught him easily. He tried to wrestle Sixty-Six to the ground in order for the two of them to play chicken with the traffic but he was too powerful for Paulie and shrugged him off. I started running as the lights turned green and caught up with Paulie as we raced for the imaginary tape on the other side. We both left Sixty-Six eating our dust as blasts from a multitude of vehicles swore at him to get off the fucking road. He'd reach safety by a hare's breath – had he been two pounds heavier he would have had his ass taken off him by a big rig.

Sliding down the embankment we landed in a sod covered heap at the steps of the money house. I got to my feet and helped Sixty-Six up before the three of us marched purposefully towards our ill-gotten fortune. The house was blind, all the windows boarded up and the wood had been well worn by at least two good winters. The front door had a steel sheet bolted to the frame making it impenetrable.

"You see that door?" asked Paulie "Would hardly go to all that hassle for no reason, right?"

"How'd you reckon we're going to get in?" asked Sixty-Six

I was already halfway round the back of the house when Paulie answered him. If there was anything in that place worth money I was sure to be getting my hands on it. Money had been tight since we moved to Poleglass. Mum wasn't able to work because it cost more money to have someone look after three kids during the summer than she could make and most nights involved her pretending she had already had dinner because there was only enough in the house for three small mouths. That money was going to be mine, fuck those older kids.

The back window's boarding had been pulled away so frequently that it flapped limply in the wind. I pulled it to one side and climbed into the dark, piss stinking abyss. The house was cold and frighteningly quiet. Paulie and Sixty-Six climbed in behind me and we checked our way through all the cupboards and shelves on the ground level before climbing the stairs. The house was a damp wreck. The stairs swayed from left to right and back again as three kids ascended them to the first floor but there was nothing there either. Several of the steps on the stairs to the second floor were missing and when we got to the top I knew we weren't alone. Groaning and coughing reminded me of Saturday mornings as a voice growled from a masked far room.

"What the fuck are you punks doing here?"

"We're here for the money." I answered.

"Oh the money, yeah the money's in here boys."

"Throw it out!" dictated Paulie.

"No I don't think so, you boys want it come in and get it!"

Paulie pushed Sixty-Six forward.

"Go get it Sixty-Six."

"Why me?"

"Because you're strong as a Hulk."

Sixty-Six inched forward, he was on the verge of the doorway and the endless darkness of the money room when an old figure jumped out and grabbed him. The man was dirty from head to toe, covered in ground-on mud and track marks. He was skinny, his ribs sat out like a xylophone on his naked body as he pressed his wiry arms out, grabbed Sixty-Six and began pulling him into the nothingness. Paulie and I charged forward grabbing an arm each and pulling back on Sixty-Six causing him to lose his other shoe as the naked old pervert fell to the ground and grabbed a hold of the kids wonky foot. Running towards the scrambling hobo I flung a boot into his face and he scuttled back into his nest. Sixty-Six leapt to his feet with a level of agility I'd never seen in him before and the three of us charged down the two flights of stairs bringing down slabs of plaster from the wall as the stairwell swung severely from the supporting wall. We hit ground level and rushed to our exit.

When we made it home that night Paulie's mum was camped out in my living room with mine and the rest of the women in the neighbourhood. They had sent their husbands out searching in the pitch black of night for the three little troublemakers of Laurelbank. I barely had a moment to savour Paulie's mum's beautifully firm buttocks, encased in denim and planted squarely on my couch before I was pointed towards the stairs. In the morning we'd be in a position where our parents had finally stopped yelling at us long enough to tell them about the naked old hobo who tried to pecker Sixty-Six.

"Douglas, are you making this up?" Mum asked "Because this is very serious."

"I swear Mum, he was staying in the house and he tried to grab Malachy."

"Leave it to me."

That was the last on the matter. Later that day I came home to find three men in leather jackets sitting in my kitchen with my mum leading the conversation which stopped as I entered the room. I was sent to my room which Jeff had been rummaging around and had managed to find and partially destroy my A-Team van which I cherished. It led to another swinging match, mutual bruised lips and all on the eve of our school photograph day.

I can't remember how long it was after the money house rape attempt but I sat by my window drawing and looked up to remind myself of what the old house looked like before I tried to lay it down on snow white A4 only for it to not be there.

I'd tell Paulie all about how the house was no longer there as he couldn't see it from any of the windows in his apartment. He'd stare into the air for a moment as though he was waiting for the wind to confirm what I'd relayed to him before blinking three times.

"You know what they've done don't you Doug?"

"And what's that Paulie?"

"We got too damn close and they've moved the money, we might never find it again."

7

"Hey Sixty-Six, come tell that joke you know!" screamed Richard McCluskey.

Paulie had been coming around less and less recently. Me and Sixty-Six had found ourselves hanging out with a load of older boys. There was even a couple of girls in the group. Fiona McCluskey was Richard's sister and had the face of an angel; she was in my class in St. Kieran's though I had never dared to speak to her. When I started hanging around with her older brother she'd say hello in the corridor and every once and a while she would come play with us all and send me goofy.

We'd been playing in Richard's backyard for a couple of hours. His old man supplied hay and the like to farmers all over Northern Ireland and had a large silo reaching out beyond his property where he kept it all. Richard had piled up ten stacks and convinced everyone it would be aces if we all jumped out of his bathroom window on to the bales. I stood by the bathroom door waiting my turn to climb over the green sink and out the window. I tried ignoring the frilly little panties that could only belong to Fiona as they hung on the radiator drying. I wanted to own them more than anything I had ever seen in Leisure World; I wasn't too sure why and worried that it made me what my dad called funny.

"Sixty! Come over here and tell that joke!"

I pulled myself over the sink and out on to the window ledge looking down at the hill of hay that lay below ready and willing to catch me. I wished goodbye to Fiona's panties and the little buns they usually wrapped themselves around and pushed myself out off the ledge, off the house and towards the absent arms of gravity. I hit the hay moments later, unsure of whether I had broken anything or not. Another kid landed beside me near breaking my neck with his dropping leg. Rolling off the hay I looked up towards the window and the sight of Jeff. Richard also had a younger brother, Charlie, who was probably why my baby brother was about to chuck himself from a twenty-five foot drop.

"Hey Doug, come here a minute and hear this joke Sixty-Six knows." requested Richard.

I watched Jeff land and roll, he seemed ok. I walked over to Richard who was smoking one of his dad's cigars. It almost completely masked his face it was so large. Inside one of our friends had started scratching with Richard's dad's Black Sabbath LPs and I knew that was going to lead to a beating being put on someone.

"So what's this joke then Sixty?" I asked.

"Tell him Sixty, tell him it..." Richard insisted impatiently.

"So there's this kid called Buckerharder..."

"What sort of stupid name is Buckerharder?"

"Will you fuck up and listen to the joke, continue Sixty..."

"Right, so there's this kid called Buckerharder and every day he walks home from school, goes to his room and pretends he's kissing his girlfriend..."

I figured if I went upstairs again I'd grab a feel of Fiona's panties for sure.

Sixty-Six starts groping the air and pretending he has a girl locked to his lips. He looks stupider than usual.

"And every day his mum comes home after work and yells Buckerharder! Buckerharder! Get downstairs and eat your dinner! And every day Buckerharder finishes off sticking it to his fake girlfriend and goes downstairs and eats his dinner."

Richard is laughing and nudging people who agree it's funny already.

"So one day Buckerharder is walking home from school and there's this big blonde girl with a big hairy pussy standing on the street corner bent over with hunger."

Richard's bent over too, only he's in fits of laughter.

"The blonde says Hey kid I'm starving you got any food on you? And Buckerharder says I don't but I'm going home to practice kissing in my room and then my mum's making me dinner so the blonde says Well if you bring me home I'll kiss you for real, I'll suck your dick and let you fuck my pussy for as long as you want, as long as I can have some dinner. So Buckerharder thinks about it for a moment and then says Yeah, my mum makes too much anyway and your pussy looks pretty fuckable. So Buckerharder takes her home, takes her upstairs and starts kissing her."

Sixty-Six tongue flicks the air as he begins running his hands up and down in front of him.

"Then he undoes her bra and begins sucking on her titties."

Fiona catches me looking at her when Sixty-Six said titties and I start turning red from the collar up.

"Then she drops to the ground," Sixty-Six drops to the ground "and starts sucking his cock. Then he picks her up turns her over and starts riding the life out of her."

Richard is close to pissing himself by this stage. If awkwardness was deadly we all would have dropped stone cold.

"You guys ought to tell your folks this joke, they'll love it!" he said slapping his leg.

"Next thing you know Mum comes home and starts yelling Buckerharder! Buckerharder! No answer, so she walks to the bottom of the stairs slams her hand on the banister and yells Buckerharderrrrrrr! And he screams back I'm trying Mum, I'm trying but if I buck her any harder I'll get my balls stuck!"

Richard collapses on to the ground. Two or three of the other guys pretend to laugh but it doesn't even reach their eyes. Sixty-Six looks at me; I shrug my shoulders and go back upstairs to jump out the bathroom window.

Richard's dad came home and threw everyone out. Richard's friend had scratched through his dad's copy of Black Mass and drank three of his beers for which Richard was getting an ass whooping. I walked home with Sixty-Six and Jeff trying not to think about the panties Fiona wears, or the toilet she sits on, or the bath she bathes in.

"Can I ask you something Sixty?"

"Sure Doug."

"That joke you told, the one about Buckerharder..." I paused for a moment, I felt vulnerable.

"What about it?"

"I don't get it."

"Me neither, my brother told me it and they all seem to find it really funny when I tell it with all the actions."

"You see Fiona's pants?"

"Where?"

"Doesn't matter, night Sixty!" I waved as Jeff and I got dragged into the house.

The living room was in darkness, not even the TV played. Mum stood in the doorway smoking a cigarette as our neighbour Ronan made himself her favourite person by fixing the electrics which had burnt out. The house was recently built but whatever they had managed to do with the electrics meant that the system overloaded quite easily.

"I think it might be the transformer Ruth, but if I'm honest I'm not one hundred percent." came a voice from the downward-facing-spark.

"What's going down, Mum?"

"Going down? No more American TV for you."

"What's Ronan doing?" I asked, correcting myself in the hope she'd forget her threat.

"Electrics have gone again. Ronan's lending us a hand, would you like a cup of tea Ronan?"

"Milk, three sugars Ruth-love that'd be wonderful."

Mum disappeared into the kitchen to make a cup of tea on the gas hob, Ronan wriggled around a little more before the house woke up and everything began screaming again. The TV started playing the football highlights, every light in the house sprang into life and the washing machine started up again. Upstairs I could hear Tara singing along to some terrible music with one of her friends.

Ronan sat at the head of the kitchen table sipping down a cup of tea and eating a sandwich. It had been years since there was a man of the house that wasn't me. It felt good to take the night off. I sat beside him drinking a cup, much to the old lady's amazement.

"So Mum," I said with a slurp "there's this kid called Buckerharder right..."

My face met with the palm of her hand as a crash of searing pain shot through my cheek.

"Don't you use that kind of language..."

My lip trembled; my eyes began to drown under their own moisture. I felt angry with her. She had embarrassed me in front of another guy. I got up from the chair lifting my half empty cup of tea and threw it at the kitchen window. What chance did I stand? It exploded into a hundred pieces cracking and distorting the picturesque reflection that sat in it moments earlier. Mum flinched.

"You didn't have to fucking hit me!" I screamed "How was I to know you don't like fucking jokes!"

I ran upstairs to my room as another hand came down to slam thunder across my body. Banging the door Jeff leapt up from his bed.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"Fuck up Jeff," I cried "nobody even asked you anything!"

I threw myself under the cover, kicking out all the books I had piled up in and around my bed. I was furious and yet sad. There was a knock of the door and I tried holding my breath until whoever it was went away but another knock came and then I heard the squeak of the hinge as the door relaxed closed again.

"You there buddy?" it was Ronan, relief.

I grunted and then felt the pressure of his man-sized frame push down on the corner of my bed. Pulling the cover down from over my head I wiped the remains of the salt water from my eyes.

"So this kid called Buckerharder huh?" he said with a smile.

I nodded.

"Do you find that joke funny?"

I shook my head.

"Do you know why your mum wouldn't have found it funny?"

I shook my head again before breaking eye contact.

"Do you know my kids Douglas?"

"Yeah."

"I got two girls, and if you count the wife that makes three girls...even the cat's a god-damn girl. I'm completely outnumbered. I'm sure I don't need to tell you what that's like, you must have felt that before your brother Jeff came along. A man needs male company sometimes, you know?"

I nodded even though I wasn't entirely sure what he was getting at.

"I thought maybe me and you could hang-out some, maybe go fishing or ride our bikes along the forest trail."

"I don't know how to ride a bike."

"You don't know how to ride a bike?"

"I haven't had a bike. I mean I had a Spiderman bike when I was a kid but my dad had to give it to Gandhi."

"Well," Ronan said, digesting the imagery "if you want to learn how to ride a bike I know a guy who can get us an old bike. We could fix her up over the summer, get it up to riding standard and get you out on the road. You fancy that?"

"That sounds cool. Would it be like Easy Rider?"

"How do you know about Easy Rider?"

"The video man. When he comes around on Friday I get movies from him, I get him to put the good ones in covers for stupid kid's cartoons so Mum won't take them off me."

"What else have you watched?"

"Mainly action movies. I've watched Commando, me and Paulie play Commando all the time out in the field. Other than that I watch movies my dad makes."

"Your dad makes movies?"

"Sure does. I watched one were he's wrestling with another guy in front of a fire, I didn't like it much so I stopped watching."

"You like Alf?" he asked.

"Shit yeah!"

"Me too kid. How about me and you start watching Alf together. My kids don't like Alf... you know, cos of them being girls and stuff."

"I'll watch Alf with you."

"Cool, very cool Doug. So I'll drop in this Saturday and we can watch Alf and plan out our bike trek like men, sound good?"

I nodded. I was fit to bust with the amount of Bromance that was taking place, even with Jeff sitting on his bed watching like a little blonde gooseberry.

"That's aces Doug. You got to do one thing for me though."

"Name it!"

"You've got to go downstairs and say sorry to your mum. That joke isn't the kind of thing you tell ladies and now there's bits of cup and tea everywhere and that ain't cool."

8

WE LAY ON the couch after a hard day's work, like those men who built the skyline of New York City – me with my banana milkshake, Ronan draining down a cold beer with his feet outstretched in front of him. We'd spent a hot morning and afternoon in front of the house sanding off the rust on a neglected Chopper. Paulie had come by and tried to tempt me off on an adventure into the forest.

"Some hobo has stashed a load of old coins in a bean can supposedly." he offered.

But it didn't work and after a few minutes he was off to track down Sixty-Six.

The handlebars were looking buff now. Clean, shining, you could clutch them in your hands with a real sense of pride. It was just the rest of the bike that needed a fixing.

"You'll sleep tonight Doug, right?" toasted Ronan.

"My arms are wrecked."

"That's a good day's work on them, that's what that is."

Alf had reached the end credit roll and I hoped Ronan hadn't noticed. I liked his company.

"My dad says that's a proper job, working with your hands."

"What does he do?" he asked before he'd grab it back "That's right, he's in movies. You interested in going into movies when you stretch up Doug?"

"Nah, I like drawing and I like books but Dad says it's all artsy-fartsy shite and to leave it to the puffters."

"And what do you think?"

He'd stumped me. I hadn't considered the old man's mantra to be flawed.

"I don't know."

"Well what would you rather do, would you prefer to work in a shop and get paid for it or would you prefer to be a writer or an artist and make money doing that?"

"You can make money writing?"

"Not everyone, but some people. Sometimes you get lucky, sometimes you're just good but even if you don't if it's something you love doing then where's the harm?"

"What would I write about?"

"What does anyone write about?" Ronan drained off his beer and disappeared to get another. He came back with a tattered old book and dropped it in my lap.

"You read that, you take your time with it and when you're done you tell me if writing is artsy-fartsy shite that should be left to anybody."

My chest pounded, I had never been given such a wonderful present. I read the cover over and over. I wanted to take it home and place it on a shelf and look at it, imagine what it contained, imagine the change it would trigger within me. I nodded and thanked Ronan before supping down my milkshake and heading home.

After dinner I went to my room while Mum, Tara and Jeff sat in the living room watching TV. I climbed into bed and pulled out Ronan's book and began to read:
Chapter One

One night I was sitting on the bed in my hotel room on Bunker Hill...

9

THAT SUNDAY the police came calling on every house in the district. A lot of the husbands were taken away in vans and our house was tossed. Soldiers in steel-toe capped boots ripped every hanger from every closet, tossed every soft furnishing, smashed every piece of crockery. Mum sat on the couch boiling over, muttering "bastards" under her breath every time they sullied our home. A blonde soldier kicked Bosco in the ribs making him yelp; enough was e-fuckin-nough for the old lady. She sprang from the floral three seater and straight into action marching right up into the face of the British squaddy. She would have stared harmless into his chest but he stooped to eyeball here.

"You're a filthy heartless bastard do you know that?" she had that tone that didn't wait for the answer. "How would you fucking like it if I kicked you, you cunt!"

He looked around him and smirked before replying "Sit the fuck down love, before you regret it."

"Oh I won't regret anything." she said throwing a boot into the soldier's happy sack.

He went to ground like any other bloke, his body armour a little too north to be of any use. The others were on her in a flash and she was dragged away by the hair while Jeff cried, Tara screamed her name and I spat at them and yelled for them to get the fuck out of my house. We all had to go sleep at Beth's house that night and the following day we were sent to school with a dirty uniform.

My relationship with Fiona was complex. Outside of school she had begun to speak to me on some matters but within those gates she was a stranger. I'd pass in the corridor and her name would taste bitter on my tongue as I knew any utterance of it would fall on deaf ears echoed in the giggles of her sisterhood that never seemed to be away from her side.

Sixty-Six and Richard were playing football with the older kids as I sat by the side of the pitch reading my book. I could see a lot of Fiona in it and it only served to drive me wild for her. Three boys from my year had just been taught how to masturbate and were sitting side-by-side smacking out their inaugural cream chuck while watching the girls play with their skipping ropes. The main character of my book smoked, I was giving serious consideration to taking the habit up. The smell of it had sickened me and it still made me think of Copperfield's more often than not but those issues aside I was giving it some real consideration. My ninth birthday was around the corner, it would bring the obligatory presents and a serious awakening. I would know for sure why I wanted Fiona and what I desperately wanted to do with her when I got her. I was becoming a man and in becoming a man was saying goodbye to reason and informed decision making. They should ring a large brass bell to signal the last clear thought created by the brain before all conscious reasoning and planning migrates below the leather equator.

The Maxwell twins pulled up on both sides of me; their grey skirts riding up. The smooth white silk of thigh pressing against the cheaply made, school recommended, trouser. They itched like a bastard but the school preferred to keep their choices cheap so all families could afford to dress their kids. Cathy and Chrissie Maxwell were part of Fiona's girl-herd. They always stared at me whether I attempted to say hello or not.

"I hear you're having a birthday." I think it was Cathy that said this but who can tell with fucking twins?

"So." I said, my nose firmly planted in my book.

"So are we invited?" Chrissie asked.

"Why would you want to come to my birthday?"

"You invited Fiona, do you like her or something?"

"What's it to you Maxwell?"

"Do you not like us or something?" asked the other one.

"I don't know. Do you want to come?"

"Fiona said she wasn't going to go to your party anyway because your mum's a jailbird and she didn't want the army coming to her door."

It stung. I couldn't bring myself to look up at their faces but I could tell they were smiling.

"Fiona doesn't like you anyway, she says things about you. We were just surprised that you'd invite her and not us."

"What stuff does she say?"

"Does it annoy you?"

"Are you going to cry?"

"Wise the fuck up would you." I said slamming my book shut and getting to my feet.

I marched across the middle of the playground, the football rushed into my path and I hoofed it towards the tree line with all the power I could swing through my left pin and continued on. Fiona saw me coming, rolled her eyes and turned to walk away but I started running and caught up with her.

"What have you been saying about me?"

"Seriously Doug, not now, go away you're embarrassing me."

"Hey dickhead go get our ball!" came a voice from behind me.

"Why do you have to be such a fucking bitch all the time?"

"Don't you talk to my sister like that!" now Richard was getting involved.

A human log jam was building up around me.

"Take it back!" demanded Richard.

"Doug just go, do you see what you've started?"

"Dickhead, go get our fucking ball!"

Richard shoved me knocking my book from my hands, I dug deep and came up with a resounding swing and caught his nose before turning round to the kid that stood behind me.

"Who the fuck are you calling dickhead you wanker?!" he was much bigger than he sounded and he beat me where I stood.

Soon Richard was laying in a boot or two too. The commotion had attracted the attention of several teachers who raced over and clawed the two boys off my back. As I got to my feet I threw a punch to the tall kid's beanbag putting him on the ground and leading to me being dragged away by my shirt collar with my book covered in blood.

Beth got covered in sick as Jeff blew his stack on a bumpy road between North and West Belfast. When we pulled up outside the house Mum was there waiting on us. Tara had gotten into a similar scrap with a girl in her class which resulted in two of the Morgan kids sitting in the principle's office waiting for their aunt to bail them out. We both thought Mum would be pissed at us but she smiled through the bruises and kissed all three of us on the heads before directing her sister to a change of clothes in her closet.

We phoned take-out for dinner that night and ate like we were on the run camped out on the floor in front of the TV. Mum sat us down after dinner, she held her ribs like they belonged to a sick bird.

"I appreciate you two sticking up for me, family should stand up for one another but that's the end of it ok?" she had us both nodding with her then she stared through us.

"Why were those men here?" Tara asked.

"They were searching the whole neighbourhood, but they had no right to do what they did to our home, and they had no right to kick our dog, and I probably shouldn't have hit that soldier. If anyone says anything to either of you from now on I want you to tell a teacher, let them sort it out. Don't be getting yourself into trouble, you only get one name and there's no point shaming it for a mouthy little piss-ant."

She'd kiss us on the head, say how she ate already and gingerly climb the stairs to her bedroom.

That night Ronan came calling, he had black ink smudged all over his fingers and a fat lip. I was out front reading the book he had given me but hide it quickly when I saw him so he wouldn't see the blood from my nose that had dashed across it.

"How're you finding it?"

I nodded "I've only just started really."

"But you like it enough?"

"Yeah. I really like it, I like the way he sees things."

"Yeah he's definitely a distinct look on life. You want to work on the bike?"

I tucked the book into my back pocket as I got to my feet, my ribs were sore too, my back hurt and my eyes had blackened up but other than that I felt pretty good about myself though I'd ruin another school photograph.

The night grew dark in colour so we worked under torchlight and supped tea to keep the air at bay. Ronan ran the gears through once as we replaced the rusted brown chain with a newer one and oiled it up to get her running smooth.

"So have you changed your mind on art?"

"What?" I wasn't entirely sure what he was talking about.

"When you said it was artsy-fartsy shite have you changed your mind on it?"

"I like art. I like books too, that was my dad's idea is all. Did that guy make a lot of money from his writing?"

"I don't know. I guess he did ok, I mean you're reading his book over fifty years after he wrote it so someone's doing ok by it right?"

"I guess."

"Well if you like that one I've more of his so let me know when you're finished."

I felt sick. Ronan would be expecting his book back and though it was far from a presentable condition when he had given it to me in a few days of being in my possession it had been kicked about St. Kieran's Primary School and caked in my nose blood. What chance did it stand making it through the entire read? I didn't want to tell him, I didn't want him thinking less of me but I didn't want to lie to him. Dad had made us lie to Mum about our weekend trips into town and it made me feel like this, exactly like this.

"Ronan." I said tentatively.

"That's the name Doug."

"Say something happened to your book, would that piss you off much?"

"It's not my book anymore son, I gave it to you."

I caught the smile just as it was about to explode all over my face and bit down on my lower lip. I liked Ronan, the man had style, he called me son, he was aces. We flipped the bike back up on to its wheels, the tires were almost bare but that was the next step, after that all we'd have to do was tidy up the saddle and everything would be ready. Ronan hopped on and spun round in a circle peddling fast then slowing down and snaking left, then right, then left, then right. He seemed happy with the work done. The bike was looking beautiful; she was a real classy ride. Hopping off he wheeled it round the back of the house and locked it up in his garden shed.

"How's your mum?" he asked, sparking up a cigarette.

"She's ok, she's gone to bed. Her side seems sore."

"She had any dinner yet?"

"She said she ate earlier."

He seemed to consider this. "Come in with me, I want you to bring something home with you."

Ronan's wife was all smiles, she was pretty, though not a patch on Paulie's mum. His kids watched me awkwardly as though I would lay down roots and force their father to divide his love three ways. I tried not to notice as I stood by the island in the middle of their kitchen. Ronan gathered up a little something from the oven, a little something from the fridge and pulled it all together on to a plate and stuck it in some Tupperware.

"Take this over to your mum, if she's resting up she'll appreciate you bringing her dinner in bed and she might not hurt so bad in the morning."

I walked home carefully. I had looked into the Tupperware and there was some chicken and mash floating in a small pool of gravy. I tried to make sure it stayed in the middle of the fine China. I laid everything out on a tray with a can of Coca-Cola and a knife and fork. Tara tried to manage the project but I pushed her away.

"I want to help." she insisted.

"Then shut the fuck up and open the door."

"I'm telling Mum you swore."

"Just fuck up and open it."

Tara held open the kitchen door for me and I climbed the stairs towards Mum's bedroom. Soon I had my own entourage as first Tara shadowed me and then Jeff clambered up after, both of them trying to shoehorn themselves into the scene for a third of the credit of something they had nothing to do with; bloody typical. As I set the tray down on the empty side of the double bed Mum opened her green eyes and pointed them at us, a sly smile escaping.

"And what's all this then?" she asked.

"Your dinner's ready, eat up or no dessert." I mimicked.

Tara had put our uniforms in the wash while Mum was upstairs resting so by the time she came down there was nothing she could do about the fact that my white shirt was now a Prince Adam shade of pink and three sizes too small for me.

"I can't wear this!" I yelled "I'll look like a princess!"

Tara raged in the background at how badly received her helping hand was. The following morning Mum packed us off to school in our own clothes and a note for our teachers. They'd nod their heads understandingly and everyone in class would be visibly shocked at the idea of not being in uniform but little else changed. Fiona still ignored me, only this time I was ignoring her too. I hadn't seen her outside of school the previous day because of the fight with her brother.

I sat in the canteen eating what passed for food in the Belfast Educational and Library Board's understanding of dietary requirements and read my book. He had started frequenting a diner and was chasing a Mexican girl who waitressed there but he was treating her badly. I wondered if this was how it was done, how you're supposed to go about getting a girl interested in you. I was too young to have that talk with Jack and didn't feel my relationship with Ronan was quite there yet. I worked around the chopped carrots, they never got them right. Suddenly there was a shadow over me and then I took a slap to the face that stung and brought my attention out of Bunker Hill long enough to see the older kid who I had smacked in the junk the day before.

"When you're done with your lunch dickhead I'm going to trash you." he growled.

"Piss off, or at least take a step back, your breath smells like pigeon shit."

He went for me but a teacher intervened. I went back to eating what the school called lunch and I considered torture and reading my book. It was my book now. Then Richard appeared. He sat down across from me and I was waiting for the same sort of threat. His would hurt more, I liked Richard and I didn't want to fight him. I didn't want him to beat me up and I certainly didn't want to beat him because that would lead to his sister hating more than she sometimes already did.

"You need any help with that ball bag Doug?" he said, his voice soft and warm.

I looked at him shocked, it took a few moments for my mind to be sure I had heard the words in the order I did.

"Help? With him?"

"I'm sorry I pushed you yesterday, and I'm sorry I hit you too but you hit me first and you were being a dick to my sister but she said to me I should come over and make friends again and stop that cock jockey from ass stomping you so if you need help just say and we'll fuck his shit up together."

"Yeah," I said wide-eyed, my heart racing "I'm sorry too mate. I didn't mean, I mean I'm sorry I hit you and I didn't mean to be a dick to Fiona, those two bitches she hangs around with said she said something about my mum..."

"Fiona wouldn't do that, she likes you. We're both coming to your birthday at the weekend right?"

I nodded, I tried to breathe to stop myself from passing out but when I looked across the sickly lit canteen all I could see was Fiona watching us, watching me, ignoring the chattering gums of those two twits and eyeballing me. She had a look on her face that made me think of those weathered magazines in the forest. Richard left and I returned to my book though the words seemed to move every time I tried to soak them up. I looked over again, Fiona was no longer watching but that didn't matter, not anymore. She had been, she had been watching me talking to her brother and god knows how long before that. It was going to be a weekend to remember.

On the way home from school the tall kid came after me and tried starting something but Richard grabbed him, raised him up over his head and dumped him down on to the grass by the side of the road rubbing the kids face in dog shit. He'd run off screaming how he was going to go blind and we all laughed at him. Fiona walked along beside me and I tried to pay attention to what she was saying and block out the shit that Sixty-Six was whispering in my other ear. Fucking little cock-blocker.

I floated through the door of our three bedroom house in Poleglass happy. The world was coming together just right, Fiona was one step closer, I had set my mind on becoming a writer though I wasn't entirely sure what I was going to work on and Ronan was a pretty solid friend. Mum sat on the edge of the couch in the living room smoking a cigarette. Her face hung from her skull, her hand shaking droplets of ash on to the carpet. A voice boomed from the blind spot by the television set.

"Hello son, why don't you come here and say hello to your dad?"

He stood squared in the shoulder, his hair had a little more salt in it, his face a little more weathered with a few more lines to map springing out from the corners of his eyes and nose but it was him alright. Jack Morgan had come home.

10

MUM SQUIRMED over dinner, Dad sat at the head of the table with a real shit eating grin tattooed across his face and commented "how wonderful it is to be back with my family". He looked along the line of children, exhibits A to C of his existence and heirs to the twisted throne of his corrupt genetics. What chance did any of us stand? Tara smiled earnestly.

"We've missed you Daddy." she added.

"I should think you have princess, what about you Douglas?"

I shrugged my shoulders and could feel the pleading stare of the old lady.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

I wanted to tell him I hadn't missed him at all. That he'd left me hanging without a role model, without a father and he'd been replaced so his services were no longer needed and if he would kindly fuck off and stop monopolising the conversation I could get down to business and tell Mum all about my day. But it came out I've missed you too, can we go to Leisure World on Saturday? He looked me up and down surveying the sincerity of the statement, fired a glance towards his wife and shoved a fork full of tangled spaghetti into his large gub.

That evening I lay on my bed reading, the old man appeared at the door and I caught sight of him out of the corner of my eye. I pretended not to notice, I pretended he wasn't there harder and more determined than all the times before when I pretended he was. He'd invite himself in regardless and took up a point on the edge of the bed.

"What are you reading?" he asked.

My reply was a book. It was too straight for him because he'd snatch it from between my hands to study it. I fought the urge to hit him and take it back.

"D'you know how rude it is to read while someone's talking to you?"

"I was reading before you were talking."

"What was that?"

"Nothing."

"So what is this book anyway?" he asked, flipping it between hands.

"It's about a guy who's a writer and he falls in love with this waitress." I felt myself getting excited about the connection that was blossoming. It was a spark too early.

"You reading about love Douglas? You're reading fucking love stories like some faggot or little girl. You should be reading books about adventures, or war. Who gave you this piece of shit?"

"It's not a piece of shit it's good, it's better than anything you've read."

The slap stunned me before it turned the house silent and my face red.

"You've a mouth on you these days son, I don't know who's been teaching you this shit but it stops now!"

He left the room with my book tucked under his arm. That night when he fell asleep in front of the TV with a beer in his hand I would toss the house looking for it. Mum grabbed both my arms as the search became frantic with each dead end. She knelt before me in the kitchen in front of the heavily packed cupboard that sat under the stairs.

"Douglas, calm down son. You can't take your book back. If your dad finds out you've got it again...look I'll buy you a new book ok?"

"I don't want a new book, I want that one."

"You tell me the name of it and I'll get you that book, a brand new copy for your birthday I promise."

"He's a real fucking asshole isn't he Mum?"

"Ok I'll give you that one but we're going to talk about where you picked up that tongue of yours."

The following night came and I still hadn't got my book back, though I had given up the search in order to insure it wasn't ripped to pieces by the old man. The TV blasted some alien programme. This wasn't one of our shows, we had an evening routine and Jack was stomping it out and re-establishing his own. I stood at the kitchen sink on top of a chair. I'd taken a bottle of beer from the fridge and removed the lid dumping half of it down the drain before topping it up with bleach and patting the lid back down. I'd climb down from my chair and slip the beer back into the fridge alongside the rest of his real children and go back to my room. Tara and Jeff sat lovingly by his side, I shot them a fuck-you glare before climbing the stairs.

Mum had an old Remington portable from her office pool days she kept at the bottom of her wardrobe. I'd catch her looking at it longingly the odd night when bills were high and morale low. Thinking of the life lost then immediately feeling guilty for wishing her young away. I dragged the typer out from the wardrobe and lugged it to my room. Jeff had scattered a bunch of broken toys across the chest of drawers – which was the only piece of communal property in our warzone of a bedroom. He was quickly earning the nickname of Iron-Hands as anything he touched instantly dissolved, shattered, or simply magically stopped working. Mum had replaced the Saturday morning routine of shovelling the old man out of bed and forcing him out of the house to having a face-to-face with Jeff.

"Who broke the vase Jeff?"

"I don't know Mummy."

"Did you touch it?"

"No."

"And how about honestly? Did you honestly not touch it?"

"I held it for a bit."

"And did you break it?"

"No."

"Iron-Hands strikes again!"

With one sweep of the arm I cleared the surface of the Gone with the Wind-like battlefield of broken and scarred He-Man figures setting the Remington pride of place. If the old man was to take my book I'd simply have to write my own, all I needed was paper...and an idea.

At school the tall kid avoided me like I had the plague. Word had gotten around and some of the less creative kids had christened him Shit-Face. I was pushing for the nickname Nugget (as in shit nugget) or even Caramel as I appreciated the subtly and figured it would be a nickname that would stick – like Sixty-Six but I was overruled and Shit-Face stuck; at least for Primary School. At a point after assembly I complained of a stomach ache and was sent to the Nurse's office. I stopped at the supply closet on the way and found it open and empty. One of the older boys claimed he caught two of the female teachers naked in there once. I liked the idea of sharing the same area as them, standing on the same spot as they did and the forest came to mind. Under the bottom shelf sat boxes of blank white paper. I didn't figure it stealing, they had more than enough to see them through the rest of the school year and I needed only a little of it. Loading up my school bag I'd report to the Nurse telling her I had vomited in class – lie.

"Oh my!" she'd exclaim "Well we had better get your parents here to collect you."

"Mr. O'Neill has already called my mum."

"Where is she picking you up?"

"At the gate."

"Ok...on you go then, get well soon."

I'd never realised how easy it was to get myself out of school. All those years, all those classes, all those stupid kids caged up in those classrooms, walls covered in poor excuses for paintings, all trapped until 3PM. The next time I'd liberate Fiona. The next time I would take her with me but today I had work to do.

When I got home the house was empty. Mum kept a key inside a birdhouse that hung from the porch and I used it to let myself in. It would be hours before she was back, it would be hours after that before the old man came back from a fresh day of busking. I raced straight upstairs. I was hungry, my stomach was in knots but I didn't want to disturb anything. If this project was going to work it needed absolutely secrecy. Nobody could know I had left school to become a writer at the tender age of nine. I slipped in and rolled round the first crisp sheet of paper. It looked back at me mockingly, dove shit white and defiant. I had only been a writer for a couple of minutes and I was already experiencing my first fit of writer's block. It took most writers years to get there, I was ahead of my time. After minutes of pacing I sat down and tentatively spoilt the page with my first few clicks. I was committed to the first word, which narrowed down the possible choices for the second word, which further narrowed the third; the fourth would almost write itself as would the fifth, sixth and seventh and before I would know it I would have my first line. That opening sentence that would trap a reader the way One night I was sitting on the bed in my hotel room on Bunker Hill had trapped me. I had figured my main character as a Dan and wrote him as such, he'd be a lot like me.
Chapter One

I didn't have a choice when my dad left, I didn't have a choice when he returned either...

I wrote for hours, I wrote until the page came to an end, only stopping to reload and get underway again. Eventually I heard the front door go and my index fingers stopped millimetres from their destinations. I'd have to hold that thought for a day, maybe more. Slipping the typer off the chest of drawers I tucked it under the bed to protect it against Iron-Hands and climbed out the bedroom window sliding down the drainpipe to the backyard. It was only noon, I had hours to kill before I could legitimately breeze through the door with my made-up day. I headed towards the forest and the ancient skin magazines, with any luck I'd have a chance to practice my masturbating.

Dinner was another tense affair. The old man had cleaned up busking but emptied most of it down his neck in a fit of celebration, now he sat swaying from side-to-side in his seat at the head of the table chewing over his dinner in his cement mixer of a mouth and supping down a beer. I no longer remembered which one was the bleach beer but Mum didn't drink so I no longer cared. After dinner I'd make a pass at trying to get my book back from him pleading Dad can I have my book back now? I've been really good and it's my birthday soon.

"I'll get you a proper book boy, you wait and see."

"But I want that book Dad."

"What's so important about that fucking book?"

"It tells it like it is, I want to be able to do that."

"You want to what?"

"I want to be a writer, and I want to be able to tell it like it is."

"I thought you were going to be an architect? Architect is a good job boy, a real job. I thought I told you before about all this artsy-fartsy shite. You want to be a writer? You want to be a puffter, do you boy?"

I didn't have an answer. My heart sank at the thought of never getting my book back.

"Look boy, you're only ever going to end up piss poor and no good to nobody if you live with your head in the fucking clouds. Knuckle down, get yourself a real job and stop with all this artsy bollocks."

I hated him at that moment but I smiled and offered to fetch him another beer.

Then I was in the bathroom changing my shirt. Jeff had somehow managed to break a pen I was using and which I only noticed had crumbled in his touch when a blue sticky patch spread across my chest. I stood bare-chested in front of the mirror and dropped the shirt into the laundry basket when I saw a streak of brown looking up at me and knew from the shape that it was my book, my beloved. I grabbed it and jammed it into my back pocket and rushed to the bedroom. Tearing through the chest of drawers I liberated a perfectly folded white shirt with little sailboats on it from the orderly mass grave of garments and threw it on. It was still early enough to leave the house, early enough to make certain the safety of my book. I slide down the banister and raced through the living room, Dad was supping down another beer. It wouldn't be long now.

"I'm going to call for Sixty-Six for a bit."

"Don't stay out all night!" Mum requested.

I nodded and fled to the forest.

The forest had a small brook that babbled along in the middle of it. Sixty-Six had used it to wash his feet the time he lost his shoes. There was, what looked like, a rabbit hole to the right of it where the land sloped up towards a denser tree line. I wrapped my book in a blue plastic bag I found and hid it inside the hole; safe from the old man. He had taken my bookmark from the pages but I didn't mind. I'd find my place in the story again.

When I got back to Laurelbank the street had erupted. Dad was in the middle of the cul-de-sac screaming his head off, Mum's old typer and my manuscript in pieces at the front of the house. He saw me and I stood perfectly still as he charged towards me.

"You little bastard!" he roared as Ronan stepped in front of me, taking the verbal bullets the old man was spraying indiscriminately.

"Back off there buddy!"

"Get out of my way, I'm going to discipline that little piss-ant. He'll know better than defy me the next time!"

"No, you won't!"

"Defy who?" I added indignantly.

"Back off Douglas." Ronan instructed.

"Get out of my fucking way ginger before I put the hurt on you!"

Dad swung that shovel hand wildly, I feared for Ronan but the man had some mad skills and before Jack could figure out what exactly happened he was up-ended slammed on to the ground that previously sat firmly below his feet and had his left arm bent halfway round his balloon knot. Ronan knelt down on top of him making the old man wince and I saw the first crack in his armour.

"Now," Ronan started calmly "over the last while I've gotten to know your wife, and your children, especially this young one and he's a good kid. I think he could turn out to be a fine young man but not with the likes of you dumping off your own baggage on his little shoulders. I've had plenty of words with Ruth about the state of your marriage and though I wouldn't wish to comment on another man's relationship I think I can say that your sudden appearance here was a shock to all under her roof. I'm going to let you up now and I'd appreciate your best behaviour as an example to the children."

A crowd had gathered, and it wasn't just children.

Ronan released Dad's arm and the old man tentatively clambered to his feet before pulling his shoulders back and making himself as big as possible, more for Ronan this time than Mum.

"Whatever you've got going on here Jack is your business but when you trash a friend's house, when you hit a friend of mine and threaten another you make it my business."

"You watch your back ginger, you hear me?!"

He turned to Mum. My attention drifted there too and I realised that her little left eye was closing over and I flashed red. If he wasn't going to drink that beer I'd kill him my-fuckin-self. Ronan telegraphed my charge and wrapped a wing around me pulling me in close. Dad took a step towards her, she took a step back and then she said it.

"I want you out Jack. I got away from you once before but I'm not leaving here, get out of my house and don't ever come back. You come back and I'll cut your fucking head off!"

"Don't threaten me Ruth!" he barked.

"Everything ok, Ruth?" asked Ronan.

"Just fine Ron, Jack was just leaving weren't you Jack?!"

The family Morgan sat in Ronan's living room while Dad packed up his few belongings. I watched from the window as he set his banjo and small bag of clothes by the front door and for some reason hoped that he didn't head to the fridge to clean us out of beer. I didn't understand the man but I felt sorry for what he'd become. Ronan's place felt like home. Tara and Jeff asked permission for everything here but I had spent night after night drinking cold milkshakes and watching Alf and discussing adult things like life, the world, and our place in it.

Mum pulled up alongside me and watched for signs of the cloud moving on from our three bedroom end terrace. She'd rub the crown of my head and place her arm on my shoulder. In a few more years I'd shoot up and tower over the little lady but at that moment she could still lean on me.

"You ok kid?" she quizzed.

I nodded.

"Your dad read me what you wrote."

The room was so silent I imagined everyone being able to hear my heart pound with trepidation.

"You want to talk about it?"

I shook my head and watched as Jack stepped outside and threw his banjo over his shoulder. My mouth went dry, my tongue swelled.

"I'm sorry son."

I nodded.

"It's your birthday soon, do you know what you'd like yet?"

11

SATURDAY WAS aces. The sun shone like a September summer do-over. My mum and a few of her friends had catered the bash and everyone was there. I showed Fiona my brand new typewriter that Mum had raced out to buy when she realised the direction her son was heading. She had been stocking up on art supplies for weeks beforehand. Fiona seemed impressed that I was a writer now and more so when I promised to write something especially for her. Paulie had turned up with his mum in-tow and I did my best to keep her away from Fiona. Fiona was beautiful in my eyes, but Paulie's mum was the perfect woman, curvy, sensual, a real Fuck Machine like Richard would say. I watched her longingly as her hips snaked up the steps to the backdoor and into the house. I wonder if it was too late to return the typer and get an evening with her instead. I watched that perfectly shaped ass bob around and cause a stirring down below.

"Happy birthday pig fucker!" Paulie handed me a crudely wrapped gift.

I went to open the present but was immediately shut down by his dirty hand coming down on top of mine.

"Not here," he whispered "open it later, when you're alone...and remember who your best friend is."

"Cheers cock boy, have you seen my typewriter?"

"Sweet!" he exclaimed, immediately running to it and typing ball bag over and over again "What the fuck are you going to need this for? You getting a receptionist job or something?"

"Doug's a writer Paulie." added Fiona.

"Really?"

"Yeah."

"I am yeah, Paulie."

"So you write stories about your cock right?"

"Immature!" Fiona announced before walking off towards those Maxwell twins who had somehow managed to shanghai an invite.

"So is she your girlfriend now then?" Paulie asked, still typing words like wanker and fuck-hole.

"I don't know, maybe."

"You fucked her yet?"

"I'm too busy trying to fuck your ma, would you like me to be your new da?"

"You'd need to learn how to drive, other than that I don't care."

I stirred again. I had never said it aloud before and now I did I wanted it more than anything.

"Let's go get something to eat before Tara and her roller friends scoff it all." I said dragging him away from my typer.

Ronan arrived with his two girls. I hadn't ever really interacted with them but they were welcome because they were with him. He handed me a box wrapped in red paper with a gold bow on top.

"All we had in the house was Christmas wrapping paper for some reason."

"That's ok."

I tore it and popped the box open with my little fingers. Three more books, all from the same author and all mine. I was fit to burst. It was turning out to be the best birthday ever. That evening I walked Fiona home even though Richard was with us. When I got back to the house Ronan was out on the porch fixing up the saddle on our newly restored Chopper. He'd retrieved the gold bow from the bin and stuck it on the handlebars, smiling as he saw me.

"Hope you don't mind but I figured I'd get her up to riding for you coming back."

"Sweet!" I yelled, sprinting at it.

"What do you think about the bow? Too much? Too girlie?"

"Maybe just the right amount of girlie," I quipped "I'm sure I can pull it off."

Ronan laughed, patting me on the back.

"I'm sure you can, you want to learn to ride this thing?"

I climbed on, throwing my right leg over and locking myself into position. We'd been working on the bike for yonks, I had almost forgotten that I would eventually have to tame the thing but I was confident I could do it. I turned my nose up at the idea of training wheels. Training wheels were for little girls, for inexperienced childer, I was a man. I had built a bike for Christ's sake. I could do this. I'd seen people ride bikes, small children who didn't know one end of a spoke from another. I could do this. I pushed off and wobbled across the street, my feet hovering just above the ground as I rolled from the momentum of my initial push. I turned her handlebars as I reached the other side of the cul-de-sac and turned back on myself. Ronan stood by the front door and was now joined by Mum and Tara.

I pushed off again and wobbled back towards the house.

"Use your feet this time buddy," Ronan advised "you won't wobble so much."

"Do you want me to show him how to do it?" Tara asked.

"No darling, let him do his thing." Mum stated before tossing me a wink.

I turned the bike again and sucked it up. My stomach was turning over, I didn't want to make an idiot out of myself by falling over but I was in danger of doing it anyway by not learning right so I pulled my feet up on to the pedals pushed off and started peddling. I was wobbly at first but as I caught some speed I straightened out and soon I was flying. I shot out of Laurelbank like I had stolen something. I rode out of sight and in the wind could hear the cheers coming from home. I rode past Sixty-Six's house, I rode past the shops, I rode around the school before cycling home. I hadn't tried stopping yet, that was probably harder than it looked but it was something I'd deal with when I needed to. The sense of freedom was unlike anything ever. I felt great. I felt happy.

12

A NEW FAMILY moved into the neighbourhood. I didn't know the ones who moved out so it didn't bother me. The dad wore leather a lot and rode a motorcycle; he had legs like bodybuilder's arms and was covered in ink. The son was maybe fifteen and already shaving daily; the daughter was a year older than me but had shot into womanhood like she was propelled from a god-damn cannon; hips and ass and a budding chest that caught my attention and made me wonder why all the other girls in the neighbourhood my age didn't look like that. Her name was Karen, she had soft eyes and a beautiful neck and always smelt like flowers but she was tough; not so girly-girl.

Within a couple of weeks Karen was running with our little crew and even though Paulie liked to think himself the leader she'd tease our torques with hugs and heavy pets to get the results she wanted. There was no doubt about it, in the days post sexual awakening Karen Barlow was the Alpha of our group and there wasn't a voice of dissention.

One afternoon I was sitting on the porch reading my book, Karen was sprawled out beside me; her vest top promising the slightest glimpse of sweater meat that I would intermittently check in on. The kids were out in force running in packs, teasing in swarms, a freckly little mop topped kid jumped on Teresa's back while the rest of them yelled Teresa Dirty Ditties! I was about to smirk when Karen leapt to her feet and marched out into the middle of the street.

"You little fuck nuggets want to start some shit?! Leave her the fuck alone or I'll bury my foot in your hole!"

I watched in awe. She was like a warrior, a beautiful but deadly animal. The kids scattered into the tried and tested dispersal pattern and she returned to the porch, face red with passion. As she lay down again I strained into my book desperately trying not to steal a peak or get caught which was more to the point.

Karen went to a different school but all the talk at mine was of her. Sixty-Six had witnessed her amazing-ness down by the brook when, after an afternoon of climbing trees and building outposts, she pawed through the antique jug mags with us. None of us knew why it was better when a girl was looking, it just was. Her presence in Laurelbank made Fiona make more of an effort. I caught her looking over at lunch and during class, she'd whisper to her little gang of polished pre-teens and they'd look my way and stare. The only problem with Karen was the fighting. For some reason she would end most weekends scrapping with Ronan's two daughters. It left me sandwiched in the middle of two warring families and led to many a day when I'd have to make myself Switzerland, not to mention invisible, in order to prevent being drawn into the matter and having to pick sides.

It was February and the ground was hard as hell. Ronan had arranged to take me camping at the end of the month whenever the temperature picked up and the terrain softened. I'd never been camping, the thought of pitching out under the night sky and heating your food in a tin on a fire you made was magical. It was the work of real men.

Mum had given me my pocket money early that week, as requested. I'd rode my Chopper up to the shop and bought a Valentine's Day card which I would then spend nights staring at, willing the perfect sentiment on to its intimidating white interior. I practiced on some spare scraps of paper that hadn't made the cut of my literary works. The internal turmoil was exhausting. I finally settled on something romantic but not committal...not soppy, strong. The following day in school I could feel the card burn white hot in my backpack, I looked for the opportunity to get Fiona alone but those identical spectres stuck to her side like dog shit to a shoe. I sat behind her after lunch intentionally. It wasn't my usual spot but I needed access to her school bag without her knowing. Knocking my pen off the desk I went under, out of sight from the teacher and reached across thumbing the bag towards me. I eventually had it close enough to slip the card inside, I wanted to see her open it but I'd make due with her getting it away from the prying eyes of those two little bitches. I bumped my head as I returned to my seat but otherwise I was prepared to declare Mission Accomplished until I heard a voice, one of their voices, I wasn't sure which.

"Miss! Miss! Doug just did something to Fiona's bag Miss!" snitched a twin.

"No I didn't!"

"Miss, check her bag Miss." contributed the other one.

"How about you fuck up!" I suggested.

"Language Douglas!" yelled the teacher "Now Fiona, why don't you open your bag?"

Fiona reached for her bag, giving me the filthiest, mistrustful stare I'd ever seen and I prayed for the zipper to stick, for the bag to refuse to open but it didn't. It was more than happy to give me up. Fiona stood in the middle of the class, all eyes on her holding a white envelope while everyone cheered and laughed and the two of us grew redder and redder.

"Did you put a Valentine's card in Fiona's bag?" roared a twin.

"Screw you twin!"

"Ok, everyone quiet down." instructed the teacher and the class returned to a degree of order but I could still hear them.

They were all chittering and gossiping and laughing and whispering and I could feel my face burn and the hatred beam from the back of her beautiful little head. On the way out of class she dumped the card into the bin and stormed towards the exit. Somehow the word had spread; it felt as though every kid in school knew about it. The younger ones laughed and pointed their stumpy little fingers at me, the older ones just shook their head like I was some stupid fucking cuckold. Even the fat kids, who all huddled together for safety laughed at me. A specky kid with nostril cake pasted round his top lip like a disgusting moustache stood before me pointing his dirty little finger and roared with laughter. I grabbed him and shoved him to the ground before filling his mouth with grass and mud from the school lawn, topping it all off by punching him in the face. What chance did I stand?

"That goes for the rest of you dickheads too." I warned.

Fiona barged past me without even making eye contact; the twins began the staring – always fucking staring. The steam went out of me and I was glad it was almost the weekend.

Paulie would call to the house to attempt to cheer me up in his own particular way. I was stretched out on top of my bed reading, Jeff played with what was left of my Batman toys on the floor in front of the chest of drawer when Mum called up "Douglas! Your friend Paul is here!"

"Send him up!" I yelled and she did.

He came into the room all smiles; I didn't want to hear it. I had listened to it all the way home from school and I could only imagine the amount of children who were telling their parents about it over dinner and laughing, laughing while they choked down their dry chicken suppers in their stupid little houses in the middle of their boring streets. He'd crash down on the bed next to me.

"Well, you really got your dick in a jam didn't you?"

"It was just a fucking card is all."

"So what you love her or something?"

"It was just a card Paulie."

"I was talking to Richard."

That got my attention, and I lowered the book.

"Oh yeah?"

"He says Fiona is really annoyed with you, he says she doesn't want to see you again, he says..."

"Cheers Paulie I get it. You want to go play football?"

"I'm going to play a match with Richard."

"Cool, let me get my boots." I said, springing up.

"Fiona's going too. You probably shouldn't bother to be honest mate."

"That's awfully fucking cosy, have fun Paulie."

"Don't be like that Doug."

"Fuck off to Richard and find out how I should be then."

I'd camp out like a leper on the porch the following day after school. The Maxwell's would call to Fiona's door and I'd flip them the bird as they glared over and whispered. I wished the money house was still standing. I'd drag them both down there by the hair and give them over to the naked old hobo for him to do what he wanted to them. Fiona was ignoring me but I didn't care anymore, I felt more embarrassed about my own behaviour than hurt by hers and decided there and then she could go and take a fucking jump off a bridge for all I cared. Paulie and Richard past too, they both nodded their "hellos" and were polite enough but neither of them asked after me or my availability that evening. Even Ronan was busy. He held the door open to the passenger seat of his car for his wife to climb in before firing me a wink and a smile. He was dressed up in a suit, she was in a dress and they both looked aces. I was about to call it a night and retire to an evening in front of the typer when Karen strolled across the street and pulled up next to me. I smelt flowers.

"So I hear that Fiona girl threw a Valentine's card you gave her in the bin." she could be blunt.

"Yeah."

"That must be shitty right?"

"I guess."

"Not as shitty as not getting one though."

"I didn't get one."

"I was talking about me." she said

"Oh."

"So how come you send her one and not me? Do you not like me or something?"

"I didn't think you'd like one. I didn't know we sent cards to people we climbed trees with."

"Well you can if you want."

"Just don't tell Paulie or Sixty. I don't want them feeling hurt when they end up with nothing to open."

She laughed and it made my heart swell.

"Well maybe you get me one and maybe you don't, no worries either way," she said "but just so you know I'll be getting you one."

She left on that note and I knew I needed to go upstairs but it wasn't to thrash something out on the typer.

That night I watched it from Mum's bedroom window. Ronan had come home to a crying set of daughters, they had been out playing in the street and Karen had taken this opportunity to fire the next shot in an escalating war between the two families. She'd tell me later that Ronan's kids were laughing at me, at my Valentine's screw-up and that she was defending my honour – be still my beating loins.

The two men stood in the street nose-to-nose spitting fury and snarling at one another in the way pit bulls in dog fights do before their asshole owners let them off the leash. Karen's biker dad pushed Ronan back before firing a tsunami of insults about what he was going to do if he ever stuck his ginger fucking nose in his business again. Ronan stood his ground swearing back as good as he got. When he upended Jack he had been cool, controlled but this was a different man. I hadn't ever seen Ronan like this before, this angry, this familiar. The wives would enter the warzone and pour cold water on their threats, shepherding them both back to their corners and ultimately indoors. I spent a lot of evenings in my mum's room. We didn't have a lot of money and Tara's after school hobbies, Jeff's dental requirements and my general existence was eating away at what little we did have. I had half an idea to counterfeit the money we did have so Mum could have more of it. I sat on the edge of her bed one night for hours studying the details of the paper money. I figured between drawing, tracing and the typewriter I'd be able to come up with something that would help her out but it never worked.

February was easing early so Ronan appeared before expected with a tent under his arm. He was all smiles and it made me happy that he enjoyed spending so much time with a kid whose own dad didn't.

"I'm going to lend you this, it looks like we could probably go camping next weekend so you're going to need to know how to put it up. You ok for practicing in your backyard?"

"Absolutely!" I said eagerly "What about you?"

"Well I don't need to practice, I know how to do it."

"So why do I have to learn?"

"Because real men know how to camp, so work hard or you'll be sleeping with the bears."

I nodded and placed the tent in the downstairs toilet which sat by the back door. Ronan settled himself in for Alf, Mum brought us both sandwiches.

13

ALL WEEK that god-damn tent tested my patience but I got the little fucker up in the end and it was the sweetest of victories. Over dinner I plagued Mum to let me sleep in it that week so I could get used to the great outdoors.

"Christ Douglas, no means no." she said between bites.

"Oh c'mon Mum it's not like I'm sleeping far I'll be right outside my own window, please."

"No. Not while you've got school, you can't be getting up freezing in the morning having hardly slept and then having to go into school sick and tired, you've been in enough trouble in that place recently and this isn't going to make them any easier on you."

"So what about Friday night then? Can I sleep in it Friday night?"

"No."

"But that's horseshit, you just said..."

"Language!"

"Sorry. What's the difference between me sleeping in it Friday and sleeping in it next Saturday?"

"Next Saturday Ronan will be in it and he'll be able to look after you. Any maniac could do god knows what to you sleeping in a bloody tent alone in the back yard."

Her argument was shit but parents' arguments were usually shit, they always won because they were bigger than you and had Because I said so to fall back on. We'll all grow up and at some point we'll have kids and at that point our arguments will turn to shit too and we'll be forced to rely on Because I said so in order to win. It was all shit.

That Saturday I lay in the tent. The sun had come out, Belfast had an Indian (late) summer or an early spring maybe and I sucked on the stick of my lollipop I had just finished as though it was a cigarette. My books had taken over; everything looked the same as before, it was me that was different. I was interpreting it all through a new set of peepers. I closed my eyes and could feel the heat against my face; I was on the cusp of manhood – I could tell. Paulie and Richard and that lot talked a good game but they didn't know their asses from a hole in the ground. I was reading the world as it was and had pulled ahead because of it.

A shadow crossed my face making me come back from my daydream to find Karen on all fours hunched over me, her mousey brown hair curling into her soft beautiful eyes.

"Thinking about me?" she asked.

"I do that in the evenings."

"Interesting. So my dad said we might be moving again."

Her confession hit me square in the gut. The closer you get to folk the more likely they are to do that to you.

"Well that sucks, where the fuck you moving to?"

"Don't know. I might not even go, I might just hide out here in your tent. You can come out in the evenings and feed me."

"Or we could run away, maybe get our own place." I suggested. It made her smile.

"I like that. Sooo!" she proclaimed, tucking her hair back. "I wanted to come over because I found something belonging to my dad that I thought you might like since you're always talking about taking up smoking and all."

"Oh yeah? And what's that then? Is it a pipe like Popeye?"

She pulled from behind her ear a cigarette but it was different to my mum's. It was handmade for one and it didn't have any writing on it. I was about to ask how we'd light it when she produced a book of matches from some bar in town and tore one off. She stuck the cigarette in her mouth and struck the head of the brown stick down the side of the book sparking it into life. She touched it to the paper and inhaled bringing it to life. It smelt different to my mum's cigarettes, sweeter. After a few hits Karen passed it to me.

"You have to hold it in your mouth when you breathe it in."

She'd watched her folks carefully. I followed her instructions to the last full stop. I took a hit that cut my throat and made me want to turn myself inside out with coughing but I hung on to it for all it was worth. I kept my mouth sealed and my lungs full before slowly letting the air out. It didn't taste anything like how I had imagined. I took another hit while staring wildly into Karen's smiling eyes before passing it back to her. My head began to feel faint and it was as though my skull was filled with ideas I'd never considered before. I lay back to stop myself falling off the side of the planet and after another drag Karen did too. She held my hand as our very souls danced in the smoke inside the well baked tent.

"I want to experience the world with you." she said.

I nodded unsure as to what she meant. I wasn't sure if it had been moments or minutes since I last said anything, I knew that my understanding of time was no longer reliable. Maybe it was time itself that had changed things up and we were all taking the brunt of it.

"I want to see your penis."

"What?"

"Show me it."

"You show me yours." I haggled.

"I don't have a penis."

"You know what I mean, no need to get smart. I'll show you mind if you show me yours."

She undid the brass buttons of her jeans and slipped out of them with ease before removing her underwear. I followed suit like a loyal soldier.

"Can I touch it?" she asked.

I nodded; my heart was racing as her fingers made contact.

"I want you to do something to me." she said straining to maintain eye contact.

"Like what?"

"Surprise me."

Paulie's birthday present was the first thing to come to mind. He'd stolen a load of dirty magazines from his dad's new house and had gift wrapped one just for me. One page had a man with his face buried in a woman's panty peach. I took a shot and tried that.

When I finally staggered inside the house for dinner Mum could smell it on me, she told me so. I wasn't entirely sure what it was, she made no differentiation between the cigarette and Karen's scent, that I could tell was still on my face, but she could smell it and she charged at me like I'd never seen before. I ducked out of her way and made a beeline for the stairs and safe passage but she caught me by the back of my tee shirt and brought the palm of her hand down on my ass, again, and again, and again, and it continued. She was fixed on breaking me for sure as each slap landed within millimetres of the previous one. It took real skill to hit that hard with that level of consistency. I would have marvelled at it if it hadn't been me on the other end of it.

"You little shit! You want to disgrace me? You can go and live with your fucking father!" slap, slap, slap "You disrespect me like that! You little fuck!"

Eventually she gave up, whether she took pity on the crying child who was flopping around uncoordinated in her arms or whether she just got tired or bored with beating me I'm still not too sure but it wouldn't be the last time I'd pay a high price for a bit of cooze.

14

I WAS STILL grounded for smoking a blunt and going down on Karen in a tent in my backyard but school was a little easier. The older kids looked at me with respect; even the PE teacher had a smile on his face when he saw me. It made up for a home life I was suffering through. Tara and Jeff had freedom to roam but I was kept on a tight leash. I wasn't allowed out, I wasn't allowed anywhere near Karen and to top it all off Mum had cancelled my camping trip with Ronan. She'd tell him I have no idea what to do with the boy he'd have my back saying "This was bound to happen eventually Ruth, you just figure they'd be at college and..."

"Not nine-fucking-years-old!" finishing his thought.

"Exactly. Well if you need me to talk to the kid."

"If I knew what was to be said I'd take you up on it, thanks Ron."

I watched from the bottom stair as Ronan left, tent tucked under his arm. Mum saw me watching and marched out of the room in protest of my presence. I'd stray as far as the front door but didn't dare step foot out on to the porch. I was barely sitting right and the price of the porch was too fucking high. Ronan's eldest daughter Chloe ran to him, her face red, her eyes filled with tears and her mouth emitting a sound one step down from an air-raid siren. She'd point and my eyes would follow the path of her finger right back to that house next door and Karen who stood on her porch, hands on hips and as good as I remembered. It amazed me how she wasn't grounded, was she really that untouchable? Ronan's eyes followed too and he stormed across the street yelling at what I guess was my girlfriend.

"You little bitch! I've warned you about this!"

Her dad raced out, pushing her to one side. His arms looked pumped up like they had recently been filled with air. His white vest showcased years of body art rolled out across his chest and arms. As he reached Ronan he threw a punch and connected with jaw sending Ronan to the ground but not for long. Ronan got straight up and connected with two shots of his own and soon the men were toe-to-toe again. Karen's dad disappeared back into his house, Ronan pointed towards his own home sending Chloe inside and was about to follow when a shard of light passed across his throat spilling the contents of his body down the front of his shirt. His pale hands desperately clutching at his throat as though he was trying to convince the red to stay inside. He gargled something as a compromised voice-box struggled against his new physiology before failing to make a sound greater than that of a sick swan. Chloe screamed and ran inside her house; the cul-de-sac that seemed to flirt with rural and urban life equally had never felt so empty. I wanted to run to him, to help my dad but I couldn't. I wanted to run inside and phone for help, to call out, to get my mum to do something – surely Mum could make it better...but I didn't. I simply watched as the life force oozed from the man I loved like family; as it found uncharted paths to a nearby drain or pooled below him. Pouring out like spilt milk, as the red got darker his face got lighter. The panic left his eyes and was replaced by a stillness that couldn't be natural. His wife would rush to his side, sirens and flashing lights would appear in the distance, drawing closer at a speed that would never be good enough and still the red advanced. Mum dragged me inside the house, the police would be looking for witnesses and she wanted to protect me at all costs.

I sat by the window for an hour, staring out beyond the disapprovingly worried glances of my mum, beyond the police tape and resting in the dark motionless pools of black of the once smiling Ronan. The police would do their job, the paramedics and photographers would leave, the street would be washed twice. First by those employed to do so, then by nature.

They'd pick up Karen and her family trying to get a boat out of Dublin. I'd never see her again and the price just got higher.

15

MY BOOKS lay unchecked. I couldn't bring myself to read them anymore, the typer lay silent too. So much for it all, so long everything you'd dared to dream. I watched as the neighbourhood slowly turned to shit. Nobody wanted to buy Karen's house so they boarded it up which only attracted drug addicts. Ronan's wife sold cheap and got her kids out of there, I watched from her bedroom window as Mum hugged them all before waving them off. Mum spent evenings on the phone talking to her sister Ruby in Wolverhampton and all the while making plans to move us all there but it didn't happen and it was almost Summer again only now I had no-one.

One day Mum came to my door in tears, I couldn't imagine what else could have happened to have crushed my mother. She was tougher than most. She took a seat on the corner of my bed, I remembered when Ronan sat there and then I forced myself to forget again.

"Son, I've something I need to tell you." her voice was odd, it was unsure and I didn't like it.

"What wrong? Are you ok?"

"I am son, I'm fine but it's your friend Malachy."

"What's the gimp up to now?"

He'd been coming down from his house to call for me. Mum had seen his old lady out and about and the two had hatched a plan for Sixty-Six to come down and cheer my broken ass up but on the way down he'd somehow managed to trip over his own foot and fall out in front of traffic. I simply nodded and rolled over in my bed to face the wall. The tears sat so thick in my eyes they weren't able to even roll.

16

WE MOVED HOUSE not long after that and I went to school at an all boys school, something which I was not pleased about and made sure I let everyone know. It was a sausage-fest of epic proportions and everyone there hated me for pointing it out. I was in class; I got a tap on the shoulder from a boy with a real round face, fat as a meatball.

"Martin Stewart said he's going to kick your fuck in after school." said the kid.

"Martin Stewart can eat a dick, tell him to go fuck himself."

The teacher overheard and I was sent to the principle's office for the second time in one week at the school.

His office was dark, serious, there didn't seem to be any joy in it at all. He lent forward, his bald head catching light from the blinded window behind him.

"So you're the little smart ass from Poleglass."

I wanted to point out he sounded like Dr. Seuss but bit my lip and remembered the warning the old lady gave me.

"I don't mean to be."

"You've got a mouth on you so I hear."

"Doesn't everybody?"

"Don't get short with me."

"Look it's not my fault I'm here, my mum dragged me here. She dumped me in this school and I've got these pricks in my class telling me they're going to beat me up after school. You want me to sit there and say nothing? Maybe take a pounding?"

He wrote frantically before handing me over a slip.

"You've got detention, two days Mr. Morgan."

"Well this should stop me from getting beat up, much appreciated sir."

I only had two years in that school. I was lucky to see them through thanks to a kid from my class who looted a bottle of vodka from his old man's liquor cabinet only for us to get caught drinking it under the table in the middle of Maths class. It tasted stronger than it looked but it wasn't necessarily unpleasant. When I got home Mum was waiting for me with the belt in her hand. I remembered her war face from the last time; I was older but still couldn't give her the slip.

"Drinking! Drinking!!" she screamed "You little bastard, I ought to kill you! I won't be living through that shite again, do you hear me?!" smack, smack, smack.

I dropped down into a ball in the corner of the kitchen and waited it out as she beat at me with my own god-damn belt. It stung like thunder and she was as skilled with it as she was with the hand but she'd tire and as long as I stayed compact I'd make it out of it with all my teeth intact.

That week we had to attend a meeting with the principle and the school counsellor. They sat across from me and the old lady and read through the report of my behaviour. I had gone from top of the class to rebel without a clue in one change of postcode.

"Mr. Morgan," began the principle, I waited for the rhyme "you haven't been with us very long but in the short time you have I've found your behaviour to be absolutely unacceptable. I understand your younger brother is also attending St. David's and is fitting in well. I wondered whether a new start in another school might be the best thing for you. Your mother has spoken with me and Mrs. Olive on several occasions this week and has assured us that this recent spell of yours is completely out of character and your school transcripts support what your mother says. On this occasion and this occasion only we are prepared to work with you on this matter and attempt to give you the best start in life. You have the Eleven-Plus examinations coming up, you have Secondary school, GCSEs and the rest of your life ahead of you but this is your only second chance at St. David's Mr. Morgan. Do not let your mother down sir."

I could have shit myself I relaxed so quickly. I was certain expulsion and another trip to the woodshed was on my horizon but Dr. Seuss had done me a bona-fide solid and I was beginning to like the egg-headed old guy.

"Please take a seat in the reception area Mr. Morgan, we'd both like a moment or two to converse with your mother."

I looked to her "Get outside now Douglas. Not one toe out of line!"

17

IT WAS EGG SHELLS from there on in. Anyone so much as farted in assembly and they looked to me. I had to make Mother Theresa look like a cheap tart so I kept my head down and my mouth buttoned. Mum had threatened some time with your father in order for me to see the road I was on and all the ghastly stops I'd have to look forward to along the way. I fought it hard. Jack's last cameo appearance in our lives was enough for me to be sure that whatever I was growing up to become it wasn't him, but what chance did I stand?

Eventually the idea took root. I hadn't seen the old man in years, I'd felt bad for him on occasion, we all had each other and though I was still figuring out why that was a good thing at least I knew it was a good thing. What did he have?

I convinced Mum to let me stop over with him for Christmas one year. I came down to a trashed Scaletrix set and Jack sleeping it off under the tree – my grotesque present. We'd try it again under supervision with a twenty-something case worker who was going through his own sexual identity crisis, like we didn't have enough to deal with.

"If you've got a stick of salami then you're not a vegetarian." the old man would say whenever the kid checked in on us.

The next time the old drunk would stand me up like some fugly blind date that the friends doing the match making would call homely and natural looking. I'd sit in the icy blue room with its plain walls, safety covers in the plug sockets and that incredibly loud plastic clock ticking at me for over an hour. My mum sat just beyond the door to the left of me, out of sight and quietly fuming as a social worker sat patiently awaiting the father that simply wasn't coming. Ronan's death hadn't been what triggered it; the desire for a father had been lying dormant under the surface of my skin for as long as consciousness swam through me. His life had awoken it; his death had purely magnified what I was missing. Ronan had been a replacement for the dad Jack Morgan could never be, yet trying to reconnect with Jack would fill the hole that Ronan's untimely and brutal death had caused. As a child, whose logic also accepts Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, it was a good idea at the time.

I could read the dread and acceptance in equal measurements on my poor Mum's face. Ronan made me want my own dad, regardless of how piss poor he was, no matter how unreliable and banged up he was – he was my Papa and I was stupid enough to believe that he'd be happy enough to see me, that it would change him instantly, like a foul-mouthed Disney tale. She never told me how stupid I was and she never held it against me, God bless her. She swallowed hard, tossed aside the stinging ingratitude of her eldest son and knowing all that was to come let me make my own mistakes.

The old man had stood me up. Mum explained how it wasn't my fault, how he was ill...of sorts and that his illness made him very selfish and difficult to be around but that he loved me, she was sure of that – she was lying, as sure as she was that he was really looking forward to seeing me again. The drive to the office just outside of Lisburn was a nervous one, Ronan's dead pools stared at me when I closed mine and life was becoming more complicated, less certain, there was simply too many emotions being thrown forward and they were demanding to be dealt with and all by a boy who wanted nothing more than to build a tree house with a patriarch.

There was no waiting this time, Jack had got there early. He must not have slept long, his eyes hung low and deep in his skull and he'd had a busy night as I smelt the thick, warm day glow of an Irish whiskey on his graying chin but he was there. Mum almost wet herself when she saw him, when he said her name. She left once the social worker arrived – he would sit silent, motionless in the corner of the room. It was just me and my dad. He had brought along a blue plastic bag full of things he thought I might like. Years later I'd know that this was probably the same plastic bag that housed his hooch the night before as he stumbled home drunk from the off license but that morning it carried action figures and comic books. He had listened when he was told about my interests, Batman paraphernalia was the key to this boy's heart and he had picked the lock before we could even sit down.

He was older than Mum, physically not by many years but his true love had worn him out faster, rode him harder than even he was able to accept. His hair though still entirely there was now a mix of black, grey and white. His two day stubble prickled at each hug and was speckled with black, grey, white and tell-tale tabs of ginger – the Irish signature. The colour was long washed from his cheeks which themselves had seen better, fuller days. Even his hands looked small and fragile as the weight lost from years of drinking had picked clean most of the good meat that was left on the bone. He was a shadow of the man that once intimidated us out of our home, a shell of a human being, a fragment of a father.

"So the social worker tells me you're a United man Doug." he said with a level of fondness he had been practicing.

"Yeah." I replied reluctantly, unsure of his allegiances.

"They've not done much in years, what makes you support them?"

"I watched them with Ronan."

"Who's Ronan?"

"You remember Ronan, he lived across the street." side-stepping the fact he was the guy who had schooled him.

"Do you know who George Best is?"

"Yeah." I bragged, proud of my historic knowledge.

"I saw him play once, did you know that?"

I shook my head, I was becoming slowly amazed by the number of facial qualities we shared...though I didn't know how to express this.

"Have you ever been to a football match son?"

"No."

"Would you like to go see a match?"

I smiled. It was enough of an answer as a tear leapt from the old man's eye.

"Can I take you?" he blurted before the tears took hold of him sending his voice up to the gods.

I climbed out of my seat and fearlessly approached the former assailant and wrapped my arms around the weathered old bastard as best I could. He delayed but only for a moment and then he hugged me back.

The drive home must have been hard for Mum. I was full of the joys of discovery and bragging. Bragging and blowing hot air of all the things me and my dad were going to do together, all the football matches and fishing trips and days at the zoo and the tree houses and parks and all the other shit I had jealously watched and secretly coveted from other kids I knew. She simply smiled, she seemed pleased for me. She had even allowed Jack to write to me when he pulled a low down dirty trick and asked her in front of me, knowing all too well that she couldn't say no...not to me. We wrote to one another constantly during the month between visits. I told him about my friend Joe and his pet tortoise and the fact that I was going to be like Arnold Schwarzenegger and live in Hollywood when I grew up. He told me to listen to my mum and always do my homework the second I got home so I could have time to myself after dinner and that he would teach me how to play the banjo. No, that he would teach me to be the best banjo player in Ireland. Our next meeting I didn't see him, I'd sit in the room for twenty minutes before Mum would come in – barely hiding her lack of composure and shepherd me out the side door. I'd overhear later how Jack had turned up late, drunk and demanding to be able to take me with him. The fifth visit he stood me up again and then the letters stopped.

