on to one another.The rain gets heavier and we know we can’t stand under a tree or we’ll be fried entirely so we stand by a door which is opened in a minute by a big fat maid in a little white hat and a black dress with a little white apron who tells us get away from this door we’re a disgrace.We run from the door and Paddy calls back, Mullingar heifer, beef to the heels, and he laughs till he chokes and has to lean against a wall with the weakness.There’s no sense in standing in from the rain anymore, we’re soaked to the skin, so we take our time down O’Con- nell Avenue. Paddy says he learned that Mullingar heifer thing from his uncle Peter, the one that was in India in the English army and they have a photo of him standing with a group of soldiers with their helmets and guns and bandoliers around their chests and there are dark men in uni- form who are Indians and loyal to the King. Uncle Peter had a great time for himself in a place called Kashmir, which is lovelier than Killar- ney that they’re always bragging about and singing. Paddy goes on again about running away and winding up in India in a silken tent with the girl with the red dot and the curry and the figs and he’s making me hungry even if I’m stuffed with apples and milk. The rain is clearing and there are birds honking over our heads.Paddy says they’re ducks or geese or something on their way to Africa where it’s nice and warm.The birds have more sense than the Irish.They come to the Shannon for their holidays and then they go back to the warm places, maybe even India.He says he’ll write me a letter when he’s over there and I can come to India and have my own girl with a red dot. What’s that dot for, Paddy? It shows they’re high class, the quality. But, Paddy, would the quality in India talk to you if they knew you were from a lane in Limerick and had no shoes? Course they would, but the English quality wouldn’t.The English quality wouldn’t give you the steam of their piss. Steam of their piss? God, Paddy, did you think of that yourself ? Naw, naw, that’s what my father says below in the bed when he’s coughin’ up the gobs and blamin’ the English for everything. And I think, Steam of their piss. I’ll keep that for myself. I’ll go around Limerick saying it, Steam of their piss, Steam of their piss, and when I go to America some day I’ll be the only one who knows it. Question Quigley is wobbling toward us on a big woman’s bicycle and calls to me, Hoi, Frankie McCourt, you’re going to be killed. Dotty O’Neill sent a note to your house and said you didn’t come back to 162