Dad says, One, one more pint, just one, eh? and the man says no. Dad shakes his fist. I did me bit for Ireland, and when the man comes out and takes Dad’s arm, Dad tries to push him away. Uncle Pa says, Come on now, Malachy, stop the blaguarding.You have to go home to Angela.You have a funeral tomorrow and the lovely children waiting for you. But Dad struggles till a few men push him out into the darkness. Uncle Pa stumbles out with the bag of food. Come on, he says.We’ll go back to your room. Dad wants to go to another place for a pint but Uncle Pa says he has no more money. Dad says he’ll tell everyone his sorrows and they’ll give him pints. Uncle Pa says that’s a disgraceful thing to do and Dad cries on his shoulder.You’re a good friend, he tells Uncle Pa. He cries again till Uncle Pa pats him on the back. It’s terrible, terrible, says Uncle Pa, but you’ll get over this in time. Dad straightens up and looks at him. Never, he says. Never. Next day we rode to the hospital in a carriage with a horse.They put Oliver in a white box that came with us in the carriage and we took him to the graveyard.They put the white box into a hole in the ground and covered it with earth. My mother and Aunt Aggie cried, Grandma looked angry, Dad, Uncle Pa Keating, and Uncle Pat Sheehan looked sad but did not cry and I thought that if you’re a man you can cry only when you have the black stuff that is called the pint. I did not like the jackdaws that perched on trees and gravestones and I did not want to leave Oliver with them. I threw a rock at a jack- daw  that  waddled  over  toward  Oliver’s  grave.  Dad  said  I  shouldn’t throw rocks at jackdaws, they might be somebody’s soul. I didn’t know what a soul was but I didn’t ask him because I didn’t care. Oliver was dead and I hated jackdaws. I’d be a man someday and I’d come back with a bag of rocks and I’d leave the graveyard littered with dead jackdaws. The morning after Oliver’s burial Dad went to the Labour Exchange to sign and collect the week’s dole,nineteen shillings and sixpence. He said he’d be home by noon, that he’d get coal and make a fire, that we’d have 76