rests his legs. I wish they could see me pushing the handcart to South’s pub and having my lemonade with Mr. Hannon and Uncle Pa and me all black and Bill Galvin all white.I’d like to show the world the tips Mr. Hannon lets me keep, four shillings, and the shilling he gives me for the morning’s work, five shillings altogether. Mam is sitting by the fire and when I hand her the money she looks at me, drops it in her lap and cries. I’m puzzled because money is sup- posed to make you happy. Look at your eyes, she says. Go to that glass and look at your eyes. My face is black and the eyes are worse than ever.The whites and the eyelids are red, and the yellow stuff oozes to the corners and out over the lower lids. If the ooze sits a while it forms a crust that has to be picked off or washed away. Mam says that’s the end of it. No more Mr. Hannon. I try to explain that Mr. Hannon needs me. He can barely walk anymore. I had to do everything this morning, drive the float, wheel the handcart with the bags, sit in the pub, drink lemonade, listen to the men discussing who is the best, Rommel or Montgomery. She says she’s sorry for Mr. Hannon’s troubles but we have troubles of our own and the last thing she needs now is a blind son stumbling through the streets of Limerick.Bad enough you nearly died of typhoid, now you want to go blind on top of it. And I can’t stop crying now because this was my one chance to be a man and bring home the money the telegram boy never brought from my father. I can’t stop crying because I don’t know what Mr. Hannon is going to do on Monday morning when he has no one to help him pull the bags to the edge of the float, to push the bags into the houses. I can’t stop crying because of the way he is with that horse he calls sweet because he’s so gentle himself and what will the horse do if Mr. Han- non isn’t there to take him out, if I’m not there to take him out? Will that horse fall down hungry for the want of oats and hay and the odd apple? Mam says I shouldn’t be crying, it’s bad for the eyes. She says,We’ll see. That’s all I can tell you now.We’ll see. She washes my eyes and gives me sixpence to take Malachy to the Lyric to see Boris Karloff in The Man They Could Not Hang and have two pieces of Cleeves’ toffee. It’s hard to see the screen with the yellow stuff oozing from my eyes and Malachy has to tell me what’s happen- ing. People around us tell him shut up, they’d like to hear what Boris 265