Dead Dogs Read Free Page B

invade the other’s camp, sometimes people start wrestling or stabbing with invisible bayonets. When this happens Seán sometimes loses the run of himself. He’s only ten but in the middle of this do-or-die struggle, in the middle of this flail where no one shouts ‘Ya missed’, Seán can’t hold back. It’s as if the world in his head and the world where everyone else lives are all tangled up together. For Seán, it’s like things leak from one to the other without anything getting in the way. So Seán stands there, with his hurl hefted like an axe and he’s the centre of a slowly expanding circle of empty space.
    And then Nicky Sullivan starts to cry.
    This is why I take Seán up into the tree.
    The tree is this huge old conker tree that grows in the corner of Stafford’s field. It’s easy to climb because its bark is ancient and fissured and full of handholds. It’s like someone has covered thetrunk in wrinkled wattles of elephant hide. If you tuck your gun into your belt you can be up it in a flash. This tree stands in Stafford’s field until me and Seán are twelve years old and then a man with a chainsaw and a hi-vis jacket cuts it down.
    This summer though, with our rifles, me and Seán are sitting on this massive big branch and peering out through the foliage. I’m sitting with my back to the trunk and the world around me is a sphere of green. Around me leaves overlap and spill, spreading like splayed hands. Each of these green hands hangs broken-wristed and drooping in the sunlight, swamping me, swamping Seán, swaming us, in shadow. Seán sits, straddling the branch with his bare calves and ankles twined together to steady himself. Along the back of one of his legs, briar scratches are red on white. Like raspberry ripple ice-cream. We are fifteen feet off the ground and every breath we take is vital with the cut-grass joy of summer.
    I’m sitting with my back to the trunk and an ant is crawling across the back of my hand. I’m not looking at the ant though. What I am looking at is Seán. He’s sitting with his back to me but there’s a set to his too-square shoulders that, even at ten years old, I’ve learned to recognise. Beneath his T-shirt, Seán’s too-big muscles are making one solid block of his torso and I just know that his broad face is horribly vacant. Looking at Seán now would be like looking into a marl hole. The hurl he’s holding rocks gently in his grasp. Rhythmic as a pulse.
    I’m looking at Seán’s back and I’m thinking the walls have come down in his head again.
    From fifteen feet up through gaps in the leaves you can see anawful lot. You can see the Blackstairs, bruise purple against the sky, the slopes of Mount Leinster diffuse in the heat haze. You can see Stafford’s farmhouse with its whitewashed walls glaring from out of the browns and rust-reds of its yard. You can see mile after mile of fields and woods, all sutured and stitched together by the dark olive seaming of ditches and hedgerows. You can see all this and you can see the bumbling form of Cha Whelan making his way towards our tree.
    Cha’s wearing a white T-shirt with a picture of Homer Simpson on it. Homer is scratching his ass and eating a doughnut. He also looks weirdly out of proportion because Cha’s cumulous puppy fat has stretched the T-shirt into widescreen format. Cha is wading through the long grass along the ditch and in his right hand he carries a Wild West Winchester. A roll of caps licks up from the Winchester’s cocked hammer.
    I watch Cha coming and I know that Seán is watching him too. Seán has stilled. Even the metronome of his hurl’s rocking has stopped. I’m sitting there watching Seán watching Cha and I know something’s going to happen. This is like all those times playing football.
    The sweaty ball of lipids that is Cha Whelan is now standing in the shadow of our sniper’s nest. He’s fifteen feet below us and maybe ten feet to our left. Seán is still as a gravestone but I