.    .    . It’s early in the morning and there’s a motor car outside our door, the first one we’ve ever seen in the lane.There are men in suits looking in the door of the stable of Finn the Horse and there must be something wrong because you never see men with suits in the lane. It’s Finn the Horse. He’s lying on the floor of the stable looking up the lane and there’s white stuff like milk around his mouth.The stable man who takes care of Finn the Horse says he found him like that this morning and it’s strange because he’s always up and ready for his feed. The men are shaking their heads.My brother Michael says to one of the men, Mister, what’s up with Finn? Sick horse, son. Go home. The stable man who takes care of Finn has the whiskey smell on him. He says to Michael,That horse is a goner.We have to shoot him. Michael  pulls  at  my  hand.  Frank,  they’re  not  to  shoot  him. Tell them.You’re big. The stable man says, Go home, boy. Go home. Michael attacks him, kicks him, scrawbs the back of his hand, and the man sends Michael flying. Hould that brother of yours, he tells me, hould him. One of the other men takes something yellow and brown from a bag, goes to Finn, puts it to his head and there’s a sharp crack. Finn shiv- ers. Michael screams at the man and attacks him too but the man says, The horse was sick, son. He’s better off. The men in suits drive away and the stable man says he has to wait for the lorry to take Finn away, he can’t leave him alone or the rats will be at him. He wants to know if we’d keep an eye on the horse with our dog Lucky while he goes to the pub, he’s blue mouldy for a pint. No rat has a chance to get near Finn the Horse the way Michael is there with a stick small as he is.The man comes back smelling of porter and then there’s the big lorry to take the horse away, a big lorry with three men and two great planks that slope from the back of the lorry to Finn’s head.The three men and the stable man tie ropes around Finn and pull him up the planks and the people in the lane yell at the men because of the nails and broken wood in the planks that catch at Finn and tear out bits of his hide and streak the planks with bright pink horse blood. Ye are destroyin’ that horse. 214