—Why are we to take our stuff off?
James O’Keefe answered.
—They do other things as well.
—What other things?
The two in front of us were very slow. The nurse had to put her hands on their elbows to get them into the room. She closed the door.
—Is that the one? I asked James O’Keefe.
—Yeah, he said.
She was the one with the ice-pop stick. The one down on her knees staring at our mickeys. She didn’t look that way. She looked nice. She’d been smiling when she grabbed the two in front of us. Her hair was up in a big bun with some down the side between her eyes and her ears. She wasn’t wearing a cap. She was young.
—Dirty wagon, said David Geraghty.
We broke ourselves laughing, because it was funny and because David Geraghty had said it.
—Does your mickey have polio? Kevin asked him.
Kevin didn’t get what he’d expected.
—Yeah, said David Geraghty.—She won’t touch it.
Then we remembered.
—What other things?
Brian Sheridan told us. The blotches were gone off his face. He looked normal.
—He listens to your back with a stethoscope, he said.
—And your front.
—It’s freezing, said James O’Keefe.
—Yeah, said Brian Sheridan.
—Yeah, said one of the others that had just come out.
—It’s the worst bit.
—Did he check your B.C.G.?
—Yeah.
—Told yeh.
I checked mine again. All the marks were there, the three of them. They were very clear, like the top of a coconut. I looked at Kevin’s. His were there as well.
-Any needles? someone asked.
—No, said Brian Sheridan.
—Not us anyway, said James O’Keefe.—Maybe some of youse.
—Shut up, O’Keefe.
David Geraghty spoke again.
—Did they do anything with your bum?
The laughs exploded. I laughed louder than I had to. We all did. We were scared and we’d made David Geraghty nearly cry. It was the first time David Geraghty had been funny out loud, in front of everybody. I liked him.
The two came out. They were smiling. The door was open for us. It was our turn, me and Kevin. I went first. I had to. I was pushed.
—Ask her for a choc-ice, said David Geraghty.
I laughed later. Not then though.
She was waiting. I stopped looking when she looked at me.
—Trousers and underpants, lads, she said.
I only remembered the safety pin on the top of my zip, only now. My ma had put it there. My face burned. I turned a bit, away from Kevin. I got it into my pocket. I turned back and I whistled to get rid of the heat in my face. Kevin’s underpants were dirty. Down the middle, a straight brown line that got lighter on the outside. I didn’t look at my own. I just let them fall. I didn’t look anywhere. Not down. Not at Kevin. Not at the doctor at the desk. I waited. I waited for the feel of the stick. She was in front of me. I could tell. I didn’t look. I couldn’t feel my mickey there. There was no feeling there at all. When the ice-pop stick went under I’d scream. And dirty myself. She was still there. Bent down looking at it. Staring. Maybe rubbing her chin. Making her mind up. There was a cobweb in the corner over the doctor, a big dry one. There was a thread of it swinging. There was a breeze up there. She was making her mind up. If it was bad enough to lift to see the other side. If I didn’t look she wouldn’t do it. I was looking for the spider. If she did it I’d be finished forever. The most amazing thing about spiders was the way they made their webs. I’d never be normal again—
—Righto, she said.—Off you go, over to Doctor McKenna.
No touch. No stick. I nearly forgot to pull up my underpants and trousers. I took the first step. I pulled them up. Between my bum was wet. It didn’t matter now. No stick. Three B.C.G. marks.
—Did she touch yours? Kevin asked me.
At the door, going out. He whispered.
—No, I said.
It felt brilliant.
—Me neither, he said.
I didn’t tell him about his underpants.
Under the table was a fort. With the six chairs tucked under it there was still plenty of room; it was better that way, more secret. I’d sit in there for hours. This was the good table in the living room, the one that never got used, except at Christmas. I didn’t have to bend my head. The roof of the table was just above me. I liked it like that. It made me concentrate on the floor and feet. I saw things. Balls of fluff, held together and made round by hair, floated on the lino. The lino had tiny cracks that got bigger if you pressed them. The sun was full of dust, huge chunks of it. It made me want to stop breathing. But I loved watching it. It swayed like snow. When my da was standing up he stood perfectly still. His feet clung to the ground. They only moved when he was going somewhere. My ma’s feet were different. They didn’t settle. They couldn’t make their minds up. I fell asleep in there; I used to. It was always cool in there, never cold, and warm when I wanted it to be. The lino was nice on my face. The air wasn’t alive like outside, beyond the table; it was safe. It had a smell I liked. My da’s socks had diamonds on them. I woke up once and there was a blanket on top of me. I wanted to stay there forever. I was near the window. I could hear the birds outside. My da’s legs were crossed. He was humming. The smell from the kitchen was lovely; I wasn’t hungry, I didn’t need it. Stew. It was Thursday. It must have been. My ma was humming as well. The same song as my da. It wasn’t a proper song, just a hum with a few notes in it. It didn’t sound like they knew they were humming the same thing. The notes had just crept into one of their heads, my da’s probably. My ma did most of the humming. I stretched till my foot pushed a chair leg, and curled up again. The blanket had sand in it, from a picnic.
That was before my mother had Cathy and Deirdre. Sinbad couldn’t walk then; I remembered. He slid along the lino on his bum. I couldn’t do it any more. I could get under the table but my head pressed the top when I sat straight and I couldn’t sit still; it hurt, my legs ached. I was afraid I’d be caught. I tried it a few times but it was stupid.
Most of us could stand up straight in the pipe. Only Liam and Ian McEvoy had to bend a bit so they wouldn’t bash their heads. They thought they were great because of it. Liam knocked his head off the top of the pipe on purpose. We got down into the trench; it was real deep, like in a war. The men that were digging it—we waited till they’d gone home—had wooden ladders to get in and out. They locked them in their hut. We used planks. We lowered the plank into the trench and ran down along it. It was better than a ladder. You ran into the far wall of the trench and shouldered it and got away fast before the next fella came down the plank.
The trench was right outside our gate for a while, for a week about; it seemed like ages because it was coming up to Easter and the days were getting longer and the workmen still stopped at half-five even though there was loads of bright left. It was a huge water pipe, to bring water to all the new estates being built along the road as far as Santry and for all the factories as well, or to bring dirty water away from the houses and factories; we weren’t sure which.
—It’s for sewerage, said Liam.
—What’s sewerage?
—Gick, I said.
I knew what the word meant. Our drain was blocked once and my da had to open the square manhole below the toilet window and climb into it and prod at the pipe down there with a coat hanger. I asked him what the manhole was for, and the pipes, and he said Sewerage when he was telling me, before he roared at me to go away.
—He’d love you to help him, said my ma.
I was still crying but I had it under control.
—It’s dirty, Patrick.
—He-he’s standing in it, I said.
—He has to. To fix it.
—He shouted at me.
—It’s dirty work. Messy.
Later, Da let me put the cover back on the manhole. The smell was terrible. He made me laugh. He pretended he’d dirtied his trousers and that that was the smell.
—Toilet paper as well, I said.
We were standing in the trench. Liam’s wellington was caught in the muck. His foot had come out. Sinbad was up at the side of the trench. He wouldn’t come down.
—And hair, I said.
—Hair isn’t sewerage, said Kevin.
—It is so, I said.—It gets stuck in the pipes.
My da blamed my ma because her hair was the longest. A big ball of it had blocked the pipe.
—My hair isn’t falling out, she said.
—And mine is, is that what you mean?
She smiled.
The pipes were cement. There were pyramids of them at the top of the road for ages before they started digging the trenches. Our part of Barrytown Road, where the houses were, was straight but all the rest of it, after the houses, was windy and crooked, with hedges high enough to stop you from seeing the fields. The county council had stopped trimming the hedges because they were going to be dug up. So the road was getting narrower. The pipes were going to join in a straight line and the new road over them was going to be straight as well. We’d gone down the pipe, a bit further every evening after the men had gone home. It was outside the shops the first time, then outside McEvoys’, outside our house, further down the road every day. The ripped-up hedges lying on their sides looked the same as they did when they were upright; they were wide and full. My mother thought that they were going to put them back.
Running through the pipe was the most frightening brilliant thing I’d ever done. I was the first to do it for a dare, run all the way down, from outside my house down to the seafront, in the pitch black after a few steps. The dark was only broken once all the way by an open manhole over a cement platform built into the pipe; the rest of the way was back to dark, total black. You judged by the sound of your breath and feet—you could tell when you were swerving up the side of the pipe - until the dot of light at the end that got bigger and brighter, out the end of the pipe, roaring into the light, hands up, the winner.
You ran as fast as you could, faster than you normally could, but the others were always there at the end waiting.
Kevin didn’t come out.
We laughed.
—Keva—Keva—Keva—Keva -
Liam did the gang whistle; he was the best at it. I wasn’t able to do it. When I put the four fingers in my mouth there was no room for my tongue. The back of my throat went dry and I nearly got sick.
Kevin was still in there. We began to drop the muck we’d been going to belt at him; Kevin was in there with the blood pumping out of him. I jumped into the trench. The muck was hard and dry at this end.
—Come on! I yelled up at the rest.
I knew they wouldn’t follow me; that was why I’d said it. I was going to rescue Kevin alone; it was great. I went into the pipe. I looked back, like an astronaut getting into his space-ship. I didn’t wave. The others were beginning to climb into the trench. They’d never follow me in, not until it was too late.
I saw Kevin immediately. I couldn’t see him from the entrance, but now I could. He wasn’t far in. He was sitting down. He stood up. I didn’t shout back that I’d found him, or anything. This was me and Kevin together. The two of us went deeper into the pipe so the others wouldn’t see us. I wasn’t disappointed that Kevin wasn’t injured. This was better.
I didn’t like the idea of sitting down in the absolute dark but I did it, the two of us. We made sure we were touching, right beside each other. I could see Kevin’s shape, his head moving. I could see him stretching his legs. I was happy. I could have gone asleep. I was afraid to whisper, to ruin it. We could hear the others shouting, miles away. I knew what we’d do. We’d wait here till the shouting stopped, then we’d come out of the pipe before they told our parents or grown-ups. They knew we weren’t hurt or anything; they’d do it to get us into trouble, pretending they were saving us.
I wanted to talk now. It was cold. It was darker even though my eyes were comfortable.
Kevin let off a fart. We beat the air with our hands. He tried to get my mouth, to cover it, to stop me from laughing. He was laughing. We were fighting now, just shoving, trying to stop one another from shoving back. We’d be caught soon; the others would hear us and come in. These were the last moments. Me and Kevin.
Next thing, he pruned me.
Pruning was banned in our school. The headmaster, Mister Finnucane, had seen James O’Keefe doing it to Albert Genocci when he was looking out his window at the weather, deciding whether to call us in or let us stay out. He’d been shocked, he said, when he went round to all the classes about it; he’d been shocked to see a boy doing that to another boy. He was sure that the boy who had done it hadn’t meant to seriously hurt the other boy; he certainly hoped that the boy hadn’t meant to hurt the other boy. But—
He let it hang there for a while.
This was great. James O‘Keefe was in bigger trouble than he’d ever been in before, than any of us had ever been in. He had James O’Keefe standing up. He kept his head down even though Mister Finnucane kept telling him to hold his head up.
—Always hold your heads high, boys. You’re men.
I didn’t know for certain if I’d heard it when he said it the first time; Pruning.
—what I believe is being called pruning.
That was how he said it. It was like a big hole fell open in front of me - in front of all of us, I could tell from the faces—when Mister Finnucane said that. What else was he going to say? The last time he’d talked to us it was about someone robbing his big ink bottle from where he kept it outside his door. Now he was going to talk about pruning. The shock made me forget to breathe.
—Come on, James, now, he said.—Hold your head up, like I said.