• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 828 0

the moment of its slam. His anger urged a clattering and clanging, but Aunt Sawney was nodding in her chair, and the last thing he needed was herself at her jibes. He had to creep making the tea, filling the kettle with a squeak of water, settling it scrapeless on the range. At the sink he stared through the streaky glass at the yard outside, that blank space he could never make up his mind what do with it. In consequence it harbored old crates, old sacks, broken yokes that one day he’d get round to. His passion shrank with the quietness, returned to the tight ball that lodged in his chest, losing none of its intensity, but changing by degrees from anger through resentment to pity. He sank into a chair at the table and soaped his face in his sweating hands.

It had started with the constable and there was no downfacing that twister. Same at the station where they only played the jack at his explanations. It was a great stroke to have him caught redhanded. They bailed him for the police court and the police magistrate without benefit of reflection pronounced his act a piece of blackguardism. The papers made a banner out of that. “Piece of Blackguardism,” letters high as your hand. Calculated and likely to prejudice recruiting. Respectably dressed man giving his name as Arthur Mack, Glasthule, County Dublin. Regulations in pursuance of Defense of the Realm Acts. And the way the papers would distort the facts. “Was there the

SMELL OF DRINK

off him?”

Twenty-two years with the Colors, he told the beak.

“Which makes it all the more disgraceful you should appear before me tonight. Bind him over.”

Case adjourned to a later hearing.

The only hope to be had was the parish priest. If the canon would put in the good word. If that the canon would tell them what’s what and who’s who. The canon would show them the error of their ways. He’d get off with a fine if the canon would speak. A fine? Sure they’d thank him. Stirling act of civic duty.

The kettle was coming on to boil and before it would whistle he snook it off the hob. Water dolloped on the oilcloth as he carried it to the sink. Herself is mighty dozy. She’d need that store of sleep to keep up the vexations.

He listened at the shop door. Mouse sweeping inside. The way he’d make a broom to maunder. Mind, takings is up. Any number of gongoozlers coming in to gloat. Ounce of cut Cavendish while they’re about it.

He peeped the door. “Jim?”

“What?”

“Not what, yes.”

“Yes.”

“Papa.”

“Yes, Papa.”

“Will you take a cup of tea?”

“All right.”

“No no, finish up what you’re at first. If a job’s worth doing. Sweep it out in the road, can’t you? The road is where it belongs. Arrah, give it here to me.”

At last he could let go. He swept away, scraping and scrubbing the floor, scratching the boards with the bristles of his broom, his side tugging with the jerks, till a cloud of dust had risen to envelop him. Then out the door with it, out out in the road where it came from, out in the street where the muck belonged. He closed the door on the returning dust while the remaining dust settled about him. “If a job’s worth doing,” he said, “’tis poor Brother Ass had better see it done.”

While he was pouring the tea Aunt Sawney stirred and her rosary slipped to the floor. She rose in an anguish. “I heard his name. I heard ye say it. What news of me good boy? What news are ye hiding?”

Mr. Mack swapped eyes with his son. “Now now, Aunt Sawney. Was you dreaming in your sleep? There’s no news from Gordie. Wouldn’t we tell you was there any news?”

“Where did ye send me good boy? Ye hunted him away on me.” She saw Jim at the table and her face cleared. “’Tis the little man here ye’ll be hunting next.”

“Will you be quiet, woman, and take your tea. There’s no one hunting nobody.”

She ignored the tea he offered and made her way to the stairs door. On the first step she turned.

“They’re out to make a brother of him. Aye, ye didn’t know that, did ye, Mr. A. Mack, Esquire? They’ll have the little man taken on us, them at the college will. If ye wasn’t so dosed in yourself ye’d know it. If