The Brothers' Lot - Kevin Holohan [111]
“No, Brother.”
“Well then, why did you drop the ball, eh, eh? I’ll tell you why. Because you’re a disobedient, useless little cur!”
MacAeongus picked Maher up by the arm and marched him to the stairs, swiping with his leather at the backs of his thighs below the brace straps.
“I’ll learn you to go dropping ball bearings on our good floors!” spat MacAeongus.
Trying to shield his legs, Maher dropped the other ball bearing he was holding. MacAeongus stood on it, slipped, and flailed for the banister to right himself. With a rending screech the banister gave way and MacAeongus fell to the polished parquet floor of the main hall twenty feet below.
The boys got up from their knees and rushed to see what was happening. MacAeongus was lying dazed on the floor. A hush of indecision hovered over the boys, only to be dispelled by a loud splintering as the ceiling above the prone figure of MacAeongus unburdened itself of the spiked chandelier that it had unwillingly supported for so long. In a few moments the awful weight was gone and the central spike severed MacAeongus’s carotid artery and buried itself deep in the parquet floor.
Small tremors shuddered out from Drumgloom, through the ready earth, and added to the after-hum of Werburgh Street’s collapse. They found many willing resonances. The long-suffering cracked ceiling of Saint Agnes of Birr Home for the Wanton seized the vibrations of this new call to action and collapsed with a relieved sigh on top of visiting confessor Father Cafferty’s furtive groping of one of the girls. The girl escaped without a scratch. The loose staircase of the Poor Sisters of the Threadbare Cowl Boarding School for Foundlings hummed to the pulsations and pitched itself into the vestibule, causing irreparable damage to two load-bearing walls and the immediate decease of Sister Assumpta, who had just returned from caning one of the new girls. The gable wall of the Brothers of the Venerable Lacerations Home for the Unhinged threw itself into the vegetable garden, leaving the roof to hover uneasily before it too unmoored itself. Obdurate Heart Convent tossed all caution to the wind and shook itself to the ground while the nuns were on the playing fields hosing the girls down with vinegar. Saint Rathlin’s Reformatory burst a gaspipe, took a deep breath, and struck a match. In the Jezebel Laundry outside Dullow, Sister Delia, furiously searching the washing room for Sheila Barry, was scalded and then crushed by a falling vat of dirty underclothes just before the roof caved in.
Day after day, for the next three weeks, the country rumbled as one institution after another gave in to the effects of years of corrosive viciousness. Damage was extensive, fatalities and injuries among staff widespread, but not one child was so much as scratched.
Epilogue
Where’s that Head Brother, whatsisname, ehm, Loughlin? He needs to sign me docket.” Matt waved the paperwork that was now fully in order with today’s date on it and accounted for the sixty radiators and eight hundred feet of pipe filling the three trucks he was waiting to lead back to the depot.
Mr. Pollock and the knot of Brothers behind him tried to move away.
“One of yiz needs to sign,” insisted Matt.
“Brother Loughlin is deceased,” said Pollock coldly as he scrawled a signature across the docket.
“Ah, the Head Brother is a Dead Brother. That’s a shame, I suppose, but I have to say he didn’t look too well last time we saw him. Blood pressure, I would have said. Looked like a man with a short temper. Good luck now. Enjoy the rest of yer day,” said Matt, swinging himself up into the cab of the truck.
The Brannigan Brothers scrap metal trucks hauled themselves up the street. Once they were clear, the siren bawled out its three-minute warning and the police moved everyone to the top of Werburgh Street away from the school.
The crowd around the Brothers fell suddenly silent and