Do I? Do I? Well, I’d rather be a messenger boy than the likes of Laman Griffin oul’ drunkard with the snotty nose and his loft and peo- ple climbing up there with him. She  walks  away  from  me  and  I  follow  her  upstairs  to  the  small room. She turns, Leave me alone, leave me alone, and I keep barking at her, Laman Griffin, Laman Griffin, till she pushes me, Get out of this room, and I slap her on the cheek so that tears jump in her eyes and there’s a small whimpering sound from her,You’ll never have the chance to do that again, and I back away from her because there’s another sin on my long list and I’m ashamed of myself. I fall into my bed, clothes and all, and wake up in the middle of the night  puking  on  my  pillow,  my  brothers  complaining  of  the  stink, telling me clean up, I’m a disgrace. I hear my mother crying and I want to tell her I’m sorry but why should I after what she did with Laman Griffin. In the morning my small brothers are gone to school, Malachy is out looking for a job, Mam is at the fire drinking tea. I place my wages on the table by her elbow and turn to go. She says, Do you want a cup of tea? No. ’Tis your birthday. I don’t care. She calls up the lane after me,You should have something in your stomach, but I give her my back and turn the corner without answer- ing. I still want to tell her I’m sorry but if I do I’ll want to tell her she’s the cause of it all, that she should not have climbed to the loft that night and I don’t give a fiddler’s fart anyway because I’m still writing threat- ening letters for Mrs. Finucane and saving to go to America. I have the whole day before I go to Mrs. Finucane to write the threatening letters and I wander down Henry Street till the rain drives me into the Franciscan church where St. Francis stands with his birds and lambs. I look at him and wonder why I ever prayed to him. No, I didn’t pray, I begged. I begged him to intercede for Theresa Carmody but he never did a thing, stood up there on his pedestal with the little smile, the birds, the lambs, and didn’t give a fiddler’s fart about Theresa or me. I’m finished with you, St. Francis. Moving on. Francis. I don’t know why they ever gave me that name. I’d be better off if they called me Malachy,  one  a  king,  the  other  a  great  saint. Why  didn’t  you  heal 341