.     .     . It’s very handy to have Mikey Molloy living around the corner from me. He’s eleven, he has fits and behind his back we call him Molloy the Fit. People in the lane say the fit is an affliction and now I know what afflic- tion means.Mikey knows everything because he has visions in his fits and he reads books. He’s the expert in the lane on Girls’ Bodies and Dirty Things in General and he promises,I’ll tell you everything,Frankie,when you’re eleven like me and you’re not so thick and ignorant. It’s a good thing he says Frankie so I’ll know he’s talking to me because he has crossed eyes and you never know who he’s looking at. If he’s talking to Malachy and I think he’s talking to me he might go into a rage and have a fit that will carry him off. He says it’s a gift to have crossed eyes because you’re like a god looking two ways at once and if you had crossed eyes in the ancient Roman times you had no problem getting a good job. If you look at pictures of Roman emperors you’ll see there’s always a great hint of crossed eyes.When he’s not having the fit he sits on the ground at the top of the lane reading the books his father brings home from the Carnegie Library. His mother says books books books, he’s ruining his eyes with the reading, he needs an opera- tion to straighten them but who’ll pay for it. She tells him if he keeps on straining his eyes they’ll float together till he has one eye in the mid- dle of his head. Ever after his father calls him Cyclops,who is in a Greek story. Nora Molloy knows my mother from the queues at the St.Vincent de Paul Society. She tells Mam that Mikey has more sense than twelve men drinking pints in a pub. He knows the names of all the Popes from St.Peter to Pius the Eleventh.He’s only eleven but he’s a man,oh,a man indeed. Many a week he saves the family from pure starvation. He bor- rows a handcart from Aidan Farrell and knocks on doors all over Lim- erick to see if there are people who want coal or turf delivered, and down the Dock Road he’ll go to haul back great bags a hundredweight or more. He’ll run messages for old people who can’t walk and if they don’t have a penny to give him a prayer will do. If he earns a little money he hands it over to his mother, who loves her Mikey. He is her world, her heart’s blood, her pulse, and if anything ever happened to him they might as well stick her in the lunatic asylum and throw away the key. 114