want to get into her own bed and I’m ready to go to the small one against the wall. Instead, there’s the sound of her climbing the chair, the table, the chair, crying up into the loft and telling Laman Griffin, He’s only a boy, tormented with his eyes, and when Laman says, He’s a little shit and I want him out of the house, she cries and begs till there’s whis- pering and grunting and moaning and nothing. In  awhile  they’re  snoring  in  the  loft  and  my  brothers  are  asleep around me. I can’t stay in this house for if Laman Griffin comes at me again I’ll take a knife to his neck. I don’t know what to do or where to go. I leave the house and follow the streets from the Sarsfield Barracks to the Monument Café. I dream of how I’ll get back at Laman some day. I’ll go to America and see Joe Louis. I’ll tell him my troubles and he’ll understand because he comes from a poor family. He’ll show me how to build up my muscles, how to hold my hands and use my feet. He’ll show me how to dig my chin into my shoulder the way he does and how to let go with a right uppercut that will send Laman flying. I’ll drag Laman to the graveyard at Mungret where his family and Mam’s family are buried and I’ll cover him with earth all the way to his chin so that he won’t be able to move and he’ll beg for his life and I’ll say, End of the road, Laman, you’re going to meet your Maker, and he’ll beg and beg while I trickle dirt on his face till it’s covered completely and he’s gasping and asking God for forgiveness for not giving me the bike and punching me all over the house and doing the excitement with my mother and I’ll be laughing away because he’s not in a state of grace after the excitement and he’s going to hell as sure as God made little apples as he used to say himself. The streets are dark and I have to keep an eye out in case I might be lucky like Malachy long ago and find fish and chips dropped by drunken soldiers.There’s nothing on the ground. If I find my uncle, Ab Sheehan, he might give me some of his Friday night fish and chips, but they tell me in the café he came and went already. I’m thirteen now so I don’t call him Uncle Pat anymore. I call him Ab or The Abbot like everybody else. Surely if I go to Grandma’s house he’ll give me a piece of bread or something and maybe he’ll let me stay the night. I can tell him I’ll be working in a few weeks delivering telegrams and getting big tips at the post office and ready to pay my own way. He’s sitting up in bed finishing his fish and chips, dropping to the 295