Dead Dogs (14 page)

A few desks away from where I’m sitting there’s another guy from football, Simon. He’s sitting at a desk with his girlfriend. Simon’s girlfriend is beautiful. I can’t say it any better. I won’t say anything else. The fact is she is just that. Beautiful. Simon’s
showing
her off. He’s sitting beside her with his arm draped around her shoulders like a hanging flap of something dead. A small group of friends crouch around their table and they whisper in dry leaf merriment. In the middle of the library.

I’ve heard that there’s this college library in America
somewhere
that when it was built they forgot to factor in the weight of all the books so that when it was fully stocked the whole thing started to sink. According to the story it’s still sinking. Year by year. Millimetre by millimetre. I’m pretty sure that story’s a pile of crap but that’s how I feel watching them.

I feel like I’m sinking.

I’m on my own here. Ignored by everyone and I don’t know
what Ms Herrity and Mr Cowper are saying to Seán. I don’t know why I’m being included in this. I haven’t done anything wrong. It’s like being friends with Seán is enough to make you catch whatever’s wrong with him. It’s like he’s contagious.

I’m sitting at this table, my chin propped in the cradle of my palm, a book, unread, lying open before me like something on a dissecting table. The veneer of the desk is peeling at the corners and people have cut things into it over the years. The words ‘cock’ and ‘fuck’ feature prominently. This in a building full of books. On a two inch by one inch space someone’s carved a straining penis and used a blue pen to ink its veins into a livid imitation of life.

I sit sinking at this mutilated desk and watch Simon and his girlfriend and their gaggle of friends.

She is the only girl amongst them. All the boys have a kind of spiky, tousled look to their hair. You take one fat slug of styling gel, one messy head and mix thoroughly. What you get is
something
hard and bristling. Like anger.
Her
hair falls in a wavy sheet. It is the colour of autumn. They all rustle with whispered
laughter
and the book remains unread at my elbow.

The library is policed by teachers who don’t have a class right at the minute. They amble about with expressions of stupid,
simmering
fury on their faces. Simon’s Da is the manager of the Bank of Ireland in town and you just know that the teachers have to keep in his good books.

One of these teachers walks up the aisle between the
no-colour
study desks. She’s only young and this is her first year in
here. She stops at Simon’s little group and bends, telling them to be quiet or get out. They look past her and say, ‘Yeah, okay, in a minute.’ Her mouth opens, works silently, then closes and she walks on. Simon’s group have already forgotten her.

Simon’s head is on his girlfriend’s shoulder and he lifts it at the new teacher’s approach. Strands of her hair are caught on his
artful
spikes and remain strung between her head and his as the teacher talks and then walks. They scrawl across the air, red and alive like capillaries across skin.

I sit sinking and waiting.

Waiting for Mr Cowper to come and get me.

Waiting for Ms Herrity to say, ‘It’s okay, it’s alright. It’s not your fault.’

Me and Seán both went
to the Christian Brothers Primary School in town. Looking back on it, those years were the
happiest
we’ve ever had. Both our Mams were still around. Seán hadn’t really started to go off the rails yet. I still lived out beyond Cherry Orchard on the road out of town. We went to school. We did our homework. We played games. We were children. We were
real-life
, actual children. Not the in-between state we’re in now.

The Brothers is this huge slab of a building, clad in
pebble-dash
the same chalky colour as bird droppings. Inside is all wood and wrought iron and the air of the place is a cold soup. With every breath you can taste the dust of ages past and when you run, the slick walls bounce back every footfall. The whole
building
chimes.

How it works is like this. On this side of town everybody, boys, girls, the whole shebang, goes to the Presentation. This is a mixed primary school run by the nuns. This is the place that Seán
first started to preach the gospel of the Upturned Tayto Bag. Now, nobody tells you this but what happens is when you hit about seven years of age, at the end of First Class and after your First Holy Communion, Brother O’Neill comes to take all the boys to another school.

One day, towards the end of the year, Brother O’Neill arrives and every single First Class boy is lined up and taken to the Brothers. Until you hit about fourteen and start taking a serious interest in the opposite sex you won’t see even half of the girls again.

How it happens is all the boys are called out of class and we line up in the yard. We line up in twos and we hold hands because that’s the way you’re taught to line up in the Presentaion. Brother O’Neill is all smiles and good humour and he’s like that uncle that you only see at Christmas but who’s full of craic and one-liners.

All of us chaps are all standing in line with our bags on our backs and we’re all kind of nervous about heading off to the big boys’ school. It’s about a twenty minute walk away on our stubby little legs. Brother O’Neill walks us out of the Presentation yard in a double line of pale pudgy faces and pale pudgy hands linked to other pale pudgy hands.

When we’re out of sight of the Presentation the first shock happens.

Brother O’Neill turns around and produces a ruler out of thin air. Then he walks back down our double line flicking his ruler at our clasped hands. He doesn’t do this hard and he doesn’t do it with any kind of venom or malice but he does it pointedly so that
you get the message. One by one we all let go of our partner. Even Seán lets go of my hand before Brother O’Neill is anywhere near us.

When Brother O’Neill gets to the back of the line we’re all turning around to look at him. Without a hand to hold on to some of the lads are sticking their fists into their mouths and drool is swagged in membranes over chins and fingers. We stand there clogging the entire footpath so that people have to walk in the gutter and others are stopping to stare at us in fond memory of their own sons taking this same trip. Year on year. Over and over again like some sort of annually migrating ant colony.

We’re all watching Brother O’Neill and he puffs out his chest and he says in a voice that isn’t loud at all but which has
harmonics
in it that cut through the traffic noise and the hubbub around us.

We’re watching him and he goes, ‘Ye’re not babies anymore, lads. Ye’re young men. Ye’ll not hold hands like that again. By the time I’m done with ye, ye’ll all learn how to stand on ye’re own two feet.’

When he says this I remember thinking, this isn’t like
anything
I’ve seen before. This teacher doesn’t do that weird
soft-voice
thing. I remember thinking, he’s speaking to us like he’d speak to anyone. And just like that I know I’m going to like the Brothers.

There’s two of every class in the Brothers. Two Second Classes and two Third Classes all the way up to two Sixth Classes. No matter what anyone says, kids aren’t stupid and it takes us about
two days in the place to figure out that there’s one smart class and one stupid class for every year.

Me and Seán are both in the smart class. I told you before that Seán isn’t stupid.

One day when we’re in Third Class we’re all out playing Cops and Robbers. What happens is the two classes in the year all play together and at the start of lunch time we get a teacher to toss a coin and depending on who calls what, one class are the cops and the other class are the robbers.

The game’s pretty cool and what you do is you catch the
robbers
if you’re a cop and you make them stand in the shelter. The shelter is a huge concrete awning supported by reinforced
concrete
pillars with a wall at each end. It’s built so that we have somewhere to stand if it rains. When you catch the robbers you stand them against the long back wall of the shelter with one of their arms extended out and their palm flat against the concrete. This is so that if one of the other robbers is quick enough and brave enough he can run underneath his friend’s arm and free him from jail. And on and on it goes until everyone is caught and we do it all again tomorrow.

Describing it now it seems pretty lame but I bet if we did it for P.E. everyone would love it.

This one time we’re playing Cops and Robbers and nearly all the robbers are caught. My class are the robbers this time and I’m standing there with my hand against the wall with the rest of my class waiting to be freed. I’ve been standing here now for nearly ten minutes and every minute another one of my class gets stuck
against the wall. The cops, stupid class though they may be, have this all sewn up and they’ve set guards all along the arcade of the shelter. Still, I’m pretty confident that at least some of us will be set free because Freddie Masterson is still loose.

Freddie, with his blond hair and blue eyes, always always wins gold in the sports day hundred-metre sprints and he’s like
lightning
on the hurling pitch. He does everything perfectly. The star of the school.

I’m watching the yard with everyone else. It’s getting into October and little fists of spectators are knotted around conker matches and over the shrieks of the younger kids come the roars of ‘Stamps!’ and ‘No fuckin’ way! No stamps!’

Then, like a golden hare coursed by exhausted hounds, Freddie comes slaloming through the crowds. Behind him two lads from the stupid class are floundering like their feet are buried in mud.

We all straighten up because we know that Freddie’s going to bob and weave and duck under our arms and set us free. He’s
running
hard but not in the way you sometimes see children run, all pounding feet slapping off the cement, uncoordinated and slow. No, Freddie runs like a race-horse. His head is pushed forward and his limbs are strong and graceful. Even in Third Class he moves like an athlete.

The trouble is one of the cops sees him coming.

The trouble is one of the cops sees him coming and pretty accurately gauges that there’s no way in hell he’s got any chance of catching Freddie Masterson in full flight. Instead he just
sticks out a leg and clips Freddie’s ankles.

Freddie does a cartwheel. He’s moving so fast that he actually leaves the ground and the clean lines of his elegance are replaced by this weird panicked flailing. I’m watching him do this kind of spastic fit in mid-air and then he hammers into the ground. His hands go out to try and save himself but it’s too late and the noise of Freddie’s face mashing into the concrete sounds wet and soft and solid all at the same time.

The dead meat smack of it.

When Freddie comes to a stop he leaves a red smear behind him. When Freddie comes to stop he leaves a red smear behind him and then he doesn’t move. Everyone in the shelter is just watching him not moving and then he starts to cry. Then he’s pushing himself off the ground and every sob he lets out sprays blood onto the backs of his hands and onto the hard, grey floor of the shelter. When he lifts his face you can see his nose is squashed flat and his broken teeth have torn his lips to shreds.

Brother O’Neill wants to know what happened.

I’m standing in front of his big wooden desk in his big
wooden
office and I’m looking at a leather that’s been pointedly left in plain sight. It sits on the edge of the desk like the desiccated tongue of an unimaginable monster.

I’m only in Third Class but I’ve enough cop on to figure that Brother O’Neill would never use that thing in a bazillion years. All the stories of it though are winging around inside my head on little flittering rags of bat leather. All the stuff my Granda and my Da tell me to frighten me, telling me how they’d get a skelp of it
just for getting a sum wrong. I know I’m never going to be on the receiving end of it but even so there’s this sort of genetic
memory
associated with it. My eyes keep flicking to the leather and back to Brother O’Neill and I can see he notices.

Brother O’Neill goes, ‘Who tripped him?’

My mouth is all dry and I can feel, actually
feel
, the leather cracking down across the backs of my hands. In spite of this though, I’m possessed of that boyish horror of ratting anybody out.

I’m weighing the likelihood of Brother O’Neill using the leather against the concrete fucking definite of the lads in the
stupid
class hammering the shite out of me for squealing and then I’m going, ‘I don’t know. I think he just tripped over himself. He was running really fast.’

Brother O’Neill is nodding to himself and then he says, ‘That’s what everyone says. Even the boy who tripped him.’

My mouth opens to say something but my brain catches up just in time and shuts it again.

Brother O’Neill’s nodding and Brother O’Neill, still nodding, goes, ‘Loyalty is an admirable trait. But I’d be careful about who you owe that loyalty to.’

Then he reaches for the leather and he lifts it off the desk and then I’m terrified and panicking and I get this horrible spasm in my abdomen. I’m going, ‘Paddy tripped him. Paddy Courtney.’

Brother O’Neill pauses and his face opens up in an expression of pity and contempt. I can see that his other hand is about to open a drawer in his desk. And just like that I know he was
putting the leather away. Not going to hit me. Not going to threaten me. Just stowing it away in its drawer.

I feel about two inches tall and Brother O’Neill is looking at me and like he’s doing me a favour he goes, ‘Don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone.’

I’m annoyed with myself. I’m appalled at the yellow streak that all of a sudden I know runs just beneath the surface of me. Standing there, sickened, I say, ‘Thanks, sir. They’d kill me if they knew I squealed.’

Brother O’Neill is frowning now and he goes, ‘No, I don’t mean that. I mean …’ and he points to my crotch.

There, against the dark grey of my trousers a darker charcoal is dappled. Just a few drops but enough to show that I’ve pissed myself.

And not caring about where I am and not caring that I’m only ten-years-old and not caring that this could get me into more trouble, at the top of my voice I’m going, ‘
Fuck!
’

I’m sitting in front of Mr Cowper and Ms Herrity and I might as well be back in Brother O’Neill’s office. I’m watching them sitting behind the single no-colour desk and they’re whispering to each other. Ms Herrity is taking notes in a hardback A4 copybook. I’m watching them and I’m hoping that whatever happens my yellow streak doesn’t show through. I’m hoping that I’m not going to land Seán in trouble. I’m hoping that at least I can manage to not wet my pants this time.

They finish whispering and they both turn to me and smile like I can’t see that they don’t mean it. They’re only smiling with the bottom half of their faces. Their smiles don’t touch their eyes and I can see the little cogs and wheels spinning behind them.

Ms Herrity kicks things off by going, ‘Tell us about your friend.’ She then makes a show of rifling through her notes as though this isn’t very important, like Seán’s name isn’t tattooed on the front of her brain.

She pauses and says, ‘Seán Galvin.’

I look at her. I look at her pretty face and her tight blouse and I look at her pen poised above the A4 pad.

I look at her and I say, ‘What do you want to know?’

She looks at Mr Cowper and Mr Cowper nods slightly and he says in this undertone that I’m meant to find reassuring, ‘He’s a good boy. I told you he’d want to help.’

Ms Herrity makes this little noise in the back of her throat that you could take as anything you like and then she’s talking to me again. She’s going, ‘Tell us everything you can about Seán. Everything.’

I’m talking then but there’s no way I’m going to land Seán in any more hot water. I’m talking but I’m being careful and my yellow streak is staying deep deep down. I tell them about the duck and about the dead dogs. But I don’t tell them about Cha Whelan. I try to make Seán look as good as I can.

Then Ms Herrity is going, ‘Tell us about this incident with Dr Thorpe. This was the night of the dead dogs, I believe. It’s formed
quite a jumble in Seán’s head and he seems quite badly affected by the events of that night.’

Before I’m even conscious of it, my voice goes, ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

Mr Cowper frowns and leans forward in his chair. He looks genuinely concerned and I figure this is what he must look like to all the scumbags who come in to make up excuses for acting the prick. All earnest and intense.

He goes, ‘Why not.’

Something that feels like a python is coiling inside me,
something
torsional and muscular and cold. I’m swallowing now and it’s like my mouth is filled with cinders. I’m swallowing now and I’m saying, ‘Nobody believes us. They say we’re making it up to hide what we were up to that night.’

Ms Herrity is smiling her plastic smile again and she says, ‘We’re not here to judge. We don’t care what you were doing at Dr Thorpe’s, and what Seán did with those dogs is really a cry for help. We’re just here to make sure that Seán gets that help. He needs that help.’