The Blue-Glow Fire Unbeatable Marble

Chapter One The Town

Chapter Two The School

Chapter Three The Teacher

Chapter Four The Family

Chapter Five The Sweetheart

Chapter Six The Marble

Chapter Seven The Storm ‘n Shelter

Chapter Eight The Cows

Chapter Nine The Milk

Chapter Ten The Weasel Toad

Chapter Eleven The Race

Chapter Twelve The Retaliation

Chapter Thirteen The Uncle

Chapter Fourteen The Bulldog

Chapter Fifteen The Poem

Chapter Sixteen The Dream

Chapter Seventeen The Peplechaun

Chapter Eighteen The Assistant

Chapter Nineteen The Game

Chapter Twenty The Clown

Chapter Twenty-One The End

 

Chapter One

The Town

The town I was born in was different. The people I grew up with were different. The school I went to and the friends I played with were different. I suppose that must have made me different too, but I never felt it.

Sawtip was the name of my town. You could find it in Sawtip Valley just far enough away from any major city to have remained practically unnoticed for most of its existence. It had a population of several hundred people, three times as many pigs and sheep and perhaps as many goats. There were cows as well, of course there had to be cows. It had no factories as such but many of the locals had their own little workshops set up and between them and the farmers much of the town’s needs were met.

The buildings in Sawtip and the valley were a hodgepodge mixture of brick, sandstone, wood, mud, logs and even a few made out of old bottles. They had thatched roofs, wooden slate roofs, terracotta tile roofs, corrugated tin roofs, flat roofs (to enjoy the mild Mediterranean climate although it was half a world removed from the Mediterranean) and high pointed mountain chalet type of roofs (to allow the heavy snow to flow off although it never snowed there but there were mountains nearby). There were houses, hovels, cottages, cabins, mansions and manors. In short there were dwellings of any and all description. Some were left naturally unpainted while others were painted in whatever colour struck the imagination of their owners or whatever colour their owners managed to get their paintbrushes into.

One day my mother said that the only kind of house missing from the valley was one made out of gingerbread. This made, Sally, my little sister pout because she said she loved to see a house made of gingerbread especially as she was hungry. Dad told her not to worry because mum was only joking and that there really was a house made out of gingerbread. It was on the other side of the valley right after the one shaped like a shoe and the ones made out of straw, sticks and bricks. We all laughed at this and mother called our father a big buffoon but we were very young then and not big enough to walk all the way over to the other side of the valley to see if he was kidding or not. We chose to believe him because that was more fun.

The people of Sawtip were as unique a mixture of the unusual as were their homes. It seemed to have been something of a magnet attracting people from all over the world who were either running away from something they didn’t like or running towards something they hoped they would like. In particular they were people who had felt they didn’t belong anywhere until they arrived in Sawtip. When they did they brought a little of their old life and world with them. Whether it was in the form of the homes they built or in the new lives they created, their accents, their clothing or even the way they walked. Sawtip was new in an old way and different in a traditional manner. It was a menagerie of characters, a tapestry of the preposterous and altogether it was home.

Of course all of this is reflecting back and thinking mainly of the pleasures and brushing over the nastier aspects of it. But that is the way of people. We prefer to remember the exhilaration and pleasures of the upward rush of a rollercoaster rather than the stomach wrenching plummets. At least I think it is and as any observation of mine regarding people is based on the people of Sawtip it can’t be taken too seriously.

 

 

Chapter Two

The School

We found school bearable because it finished when there was still daylight left and we didn’t have to go during the weekend. That’s what all us kids thought about school at the time but on reflection it was a place for making friends, getting into trouble and doing all the things that made childhood worth the trouble to outgrow it. The little learning we did didn’t hurt any worse than a toothache so it wasn’t really too bad. To me it meant more because it was the place where Charlotte teased and tantalised me and at that time there was nothing better in the entire universe than to be near enough to her to be teased and tantalised.

One year in particular stands out as I reflect on that old weatherboard which at the time was sorely in need of fresh coat of paint and a raging fire. I’m glad now that it eventually got to quench its thirst for fresh paint but no fire got to quench its thirst on it. That one year was particularly different although in most ways it was like every other year; sitting at a desk inside then running, rolling and rollicking in the dust outside. But also that year was very different as to have been a year that was its own kind of fool.

That was the year when the “pickles and the fleas” came to the Sawtip State School and it was never the same after that. It was never the same in a very good way.

The Sawtip State School consisted of two large classrooms but only one of which was used at the beginning of this narrative. There was a small annex between the two rooms that was cynically called the art storeroom. Any art supply that might once have been stored there had long since withered and forgot they had anything to do with art. Possibly the only thing that could have been called artistic about that room were the attractive cobwebs, however the attractive cobwebs had long since also withered away and only the ugly cobwebs had the tenacity to still cling menacingly to the ceiling. We called this small room The Chamber of Horrors and it certainly was that to us. Over the years many boys had been taken into that stale smelling room and were heard to yelp as the crackling sound of leather slapped against vulnerable flesh. Many a boy came out of that chamber rubbing his welting hand in self-pitying moans lamenting out of his mouth. Of course most of them tried their best to hold their head up high, swagger and grin through the pain as a true hero of the big movie screen would. Naturally those same boys were the ones who giggled at every other boy who exited the Chamber of Horrors and put on a poor show of a grin. We all hated that room like it was the gateway to hell. My very personal memories of it exceed even the most horrible thoughts that the other boys had and with good reason. My experience of it was an episode that is the stuff of schoolboy legend.

At any one time there were up to fifty students enrolled to attend the Sawtip State School from grade three up to grade eight. But the number of kids who actually attended at any one time fluctuated wildly. It depended on the time of year, what work needed to be done at home, how many of the fathers were in the paralysing grip of hangovers and needed their sons to do the heavy lifting at their work or on their farms, how many of the mothers had reached a boiling point with screaming toddlers and needed their older daughters to take charge of the rug rats and of course how many of the kids decided it was too nice a day for school and went swimming or fishing instead. The number fifty was never reached which was a good thing because although there were fifty desks in the room and all students had their own desk the room would have been a sweltering and steaming factory of bad odours during the summer and a shivering and sniffling factory of bad odours during the winter.

We were neatly arranged in rows with the eighth graders at the front and the third graders at the back. This made it impossible for the young ones to see anything going on in the front of the room but it made it easier for the teacher to keep control. Not that he couldn’t throw a piece of chalk or a duster and smack a kid in the forehead clear across the room but as he pointed out it was a matter of inverse proportion. It’s a scientific fact that the further away from the source of the force the weaker was the whack of the smack. He had a unique way of teaching a combination of science and poetry. But at school the unique was common place and we thought nothing of it. Unless you were the boy in the path of the flying blackboard accessory in which case the physical foundation to the theory was made undeniably manifest.

Adjoining the school was a paddock in which we could play and generally muck about provided the cows weren’t using it. The rights of the cows came before ours and periodically we were sternly reminded not to infringe on their territory. The cows of Sawtip were of a particularly delicate breed that needed a children free zone and the serenity that comes with it. They were highly strung creatures and every effort was made by the farmers to provide them with the serenity they required to digest the grass and produce the high quality milk that they did. Like fishermen farmers are prone to exaggerate their accomplishments. If one grew a pumpkin the size of a boulder it wouldn’t be long before another was boasting of his pumpkin that was the size of a tractor. But the creamy rich sweetness and wonderfully high quality of the milk produced by the cows of Sawtip was no exaggeration and nothing to be trifled with.

Of course we ignored all such warnings and not only invaded the paddock when it took our fancy but harassed any cow that dared to “moo” in protest at our invasion. Unfortunately we were not nurtured in a climate of moderation and it was not in our nature be so. We excelled in the excessive until one particular week when we exceeded even ourselves and tormented the poor bovines to the point that they went on strike.

I suppose like most school children once I was home I typically ignored anything good, fun, pleasant or interesting about it and either said nothing at all or complained bitterly and long.; except to my Gran. I made the mistake once to whine about how hard it was and after she gave me a solid whack across the shin with her walking stick and told me not to be such an ungrateful cry-baby she trumped my school woes by telling me of hers.

“School had only one grade, which was grade four, but we did it for four years just to be sure we all learned it proper. Better one done proper than a whole bunch done willy-nilly and nothing getting taught like now,” she started.

“Why grade four, Gran?”

“Because grade four was not too easy and not too hard and by the time we were ready for school we were not too young and not too old for grade four.”

“Goldilocks must have liked it then… Ouch! Sorry Gran.”

“As any eejit knows we had to learn the basics of life before starting school and it took us longer in those days to learn the basics of life on account that they were harder. Then by the time we were finished with grade four we had to go off to work.”

“So what are the basics of life when they’re at home then?”

She gave me a swift tap on the shin with her walking stick for being mouthy. “Don’t they teach you anything at that fancy school of yours? Why do we pay all our good hard earned money to the government if they don’t even provide our brats with proper education?” I doubted even then that anyone in Sawtip had ever paid a dollar in taxes. “The basics of life are the essentials like walking and talking proper like, dressing and washing your grubby faces, eating with a proper spoon and getting out of a room proper.”

“Getting out of a room, Gran?”

“You think it’s so easy? You should try it before you learn how to do it then you’d see just how easy it is. One day my best friend, Mary O’Donnell was stuck in a room and it took her half the day to get out.”

“The door was locked?”

“Of course it wasn’t locked. Who’d lock up a wee child in a room? The door was wide open.”

“And she couldn’t get out?”

Gran started giggling as she recollected her best friend’s struggle. “Poor little creature she just kept bumping into walls and knocking her head on the window.”

“It took her half the day to get out of a room with the door wide open?”

“That it did. You’d think she’d be a lot quicker than that especially with me on the other side of the door giving her directions.”

I thought I’d leave poor Mary O’Donnell alone and asked about going to work at such a young age.

“By the time we finished grade four we were thirteen years old and that was more than old enough to go out and work.”

“What kind of work did you do back then?”

“That was a might bit of a problem. Wasn’t much work around at all even for the men who needed it to support their family.”

“So you didn’t work then?”

“Of course we worked. I said we worked and so we worked. What else were we supposed to do? Stay at school for another year or two when we had already learned all there was to learn in grade four?”

“I guess not,” I agreed.

“So they gave the brats fake work to do to keep them occupied and ready for when the real work came along.”

“So what’s fake work Gran?”

“One was to dig big holes one day and to fill them back in the next. It was hard work but important.”

“The ground was hard to dig, I guess.”

“Of course not! Who’d be so cruel as to give children hard ground to dig? I suppose you’re thinking of those folk who’d lock wee children in rooms and not leave the door open.”

“Yeah, Gran, I was thinking of them folks.”

“It was hard because we had to fill the holes back up with the soil as it was before we dug it out. The top soil on top and the bottom soil at the bottom.”

“And that made it harder?”

“Eejit boy, of course it did. When you dig a hole the soil that was on top ends up at the bottom of the pile of dirt you dug up so to fill the hole up proper again you have to turn the pile upside down so you can get at the soil that was at the top.”

“I see, but wouldn’t it have been easier if when you dug the hole in the first place to put the soil in several little piles so you could easily get at the soil that was on top when you had to fill the hole back in?”

I didn’t know why but she gave me another whack with her walking stick. I didn’t complain because that would surely have been reason for another whack. “And were you paid for the hole digging and the other fake work you did?”

“Of course we were. You can’t have folk working without paying them even if they are brats. That would be criminal. And how would we have learned the value of work if we weren’t paid?”

“That makes sense, Gran. I bet you were happy when you got your pay.”

“Of course it didn’t make us happy. It wasn’t real money they gave us. Fake work earned fake money. It wasn’t any good even for wiping…” My mother interrupted us at this point so I never found out just what she was about to say.

Chapter Three

The Teacher

The teacher who terrorised in the guise of teaching most of our young lives was Mr Cramburn. Of course we called him Mr Crumbum or if we were in a hurry just Crumb and when in a foul mood ‘Crumb the bum’. It wasn’t a matter of wanting to be mean and insulting that we referred to him in such demeaning manner, we simply had no choice. After all we were boys and his name offered such a temptation it was beyond our ability to resist.

We had no doubt that he had walked straight out of a comic book. We could never agree on which comic book he had exactly walked out of and held lengthy arguments over it as we did over many important issues. My best mate Fatty-Freddy-Froggy-Faced-Fergusson (it had to be said rapidly for full effect or simply put at Froggy or Fatty or Freddy or Fergie or Gus) was sure that Mr Cramburn must have been one of the evil villains out of a Spiderman comic. He was passionate about this belief and argued the case incessantly never once listening to reason. How someone who was normally so clear headed and clever as Freddy could possibly not agree with my indisputable reasoning that Mr Cramburn was obviously out of a Superman edition was beyond my reckoning. I could well understand why Hause (the Dutchman) Verbrugge held that he was out of a Batman comic, after all the Dutchman was Dutch and we all knew that the Dutch had porous skulls through which their brains leaked out just like water leaked out of their dykes.

“Well then,” said the Dutchman one day, “if my skull’s always leaking out my brains then where’s it all gone? Eh? Eh? Tell me that if yer so smart.”

“It’s all in your mattress that’s where it is,” I told him.

“Okay then, if my brain’s all leaked out into my mattress then how come it’s not all soggy? Eh? Eh? Tell me that if yer so smart.”

“For all I know it’s the spongiest, soggiest mattress in the world. Who says it ain’t?”

“I say, that’s who says, and I should know coz I sleep on it every night.”

“Of course ya sleep on it, that’s why it’s soggy.”

“Okay then, if my brain’s all leaked out into my mattress then how come my skull’s not empty then and it don’t make a hollow sound when I knock my head? Eh? Eh? Tell me that if yer so smart.”

“Who says it don’t make a hollow sound?”

“I do, that’s who.”

“You saying it don’t make it true,” I challenged.

So to prove his point he rammed his head into the nearest solid object, which was a brick wall. It was always just too easy to win an argument against the Dutchman.

Mr Cramburn had legs that were too long and skinny, arms that were too long and skinny and a head to match with matching accessories, like a stretched out pointy nose and long thin lips. He was more like a long, spindly, hunched over praying mantis than a man. Clearly he had to be a character out of a comic book; a Superman comic book of course.

“If he was from a Superman comic he would have to have something radioactive about him. His nose would be green or his eyes would shoot out green kryptonite beams,” Freddy argued.

Freddy always had logically sound arguments when proving a point. “That wouldn’t be radioactive that would be kryptonactive,” I pointed out in a haughty scientific manner.

“Call it what you wish,“ Freddy retorted. “Fact is fact and there’s nothing green I can see about Crumb and I’ve seen him at night and he doesn’t even glow green.”

“Grass is green and those dumb cows eat it every day,” I said although I had no idea what I meant by it.

“That’s true ya can’t beat that argument,” Hause (the Dutchman) Verbrugge said in my support.

“Maybe not,” continued Fatty-Freddy-Froggy-Faced-Fergusson unperturbed by my irrefutable point of fact. “But we all agree that Crumb the bum is more insect than human so who better to sort him out than Spiderman?”

“True, so true, can’t be any other way ‘bout it,” agreed the Dutchman deserting me.

“Well maybe he is some kind of insect-man but that only makes it more obvious that he must come from some other planet. Everyone knows that only Superman can deal with creatures from other planets.” I peered at the Dutchman to see if I had his support back and Freddy peered at him even harder.

Hause scratched his head as if the strain was getting too much for him. “Wanna see me butt my head into that rubbish bin?” That brought the argument to a sudden end. The prospect of seeing at the Dutchman butting his head into a metal rubbish bin was more fun than repeating an argument we’d had a dozen times before.

We believed Cramburn’s brain was as weirdly configured as his body. There was no other way to explain his odd behaviour. Sometimes he seemed to be in a world of his own just mumbling away about things that made no sense to us at all. He would either smile as if he agreed with himself or shake his head in passionate disagreement with whatever was happening in his head. The most unsettling part of his behaviour was that he didn’t alter the volume or the tone his of voice in the slightest when anyone went near him. Most people when they chat to themselves at least try to be discrete about it but Mr Cramburn was too absorbed in his personal world to notice if anyone noticed his odd behaviour. Fortunately these moods were few and far apart. As much as we dreaded the man we preferred him to be all there rather than just partly so. That was just too weird and it unsettled us. Had we been a little wiser and more sensitive we would have pitied him but what did we know about such things?

When he was off the planet like that the one thing we heard from him more than any other was the word, “mother”. He whined woeful wails and grumbled gruff grunts. He made her appear to be a tyrant who smothered his dreams. But at other times he sounded overwhelmed by her generosity and affection. He would sound triumphant as if he had just escaped the clutches of the creature from the Black Lagoon. “I have broken your chains! I am free!” Suddenly his tone would turn soft and even childlike, “Please no more custard, no more jelly I have had ample. My tummy is about to burst.” Then, “I can’t breathe. For pity’s sake give me space.” Then, “You are so good to me mother dear. What would I ever do without you?” We never truly understood his outbursts but it was obvious that there was a struggle going on somewhere inside his head.

We didn’t know if he had any interests beyond teaching and home but we suspected he hadn’t. Considering he found teaching horrendous and his home was a source of nightmares the poor man was truly trapped in a deep dark pit. But we didn’t appreciate that at the time. To us he was the monster not the victim. I asked my mother about him and his mother and she said that they were a queer pair. But still, she added, the valley was fortunate to have them here.

“What?” I blurted out.

“Who else but he would teach at such a school and who else but her would have married the father he had?” my mum replied.

“Crumb, I mean Mr Cramburn had a mean father?’

“No, he was not at all a mean man. No more than your Mr Cramburn is. He was the schoolteacher here before your Mr Cramburn, just as his father before him had taught school in that same building. It’s not that either of them was a bad man but the fact that they were odd can’t be denied no matter how kind one tries to be.”

She said Mr Cramburn was not a mean man which rattled in my head like a loose marble was bouncing about in my skull. “So why would Mr Cramburn’s mother marry his father if he was so odd?”

“His name was Josiah and some people say that opposites attract but I tend to think that it’s the similarities that attracted those two to one another. When I was younger I knew her although she was a good few years older than me. Her name is Sarafin, which means angel; I bet you didn’t know that. And I bet you didn’t know and won’t believe that she was an angel; a rare beauty in her day. She was truly one of the most beautiful girls in the valley. I know how that sounds but believe me she was. But beauty is only skin deep and beneath her skin was a lonely soul who felt left out because she kept herself left out. It’s what’s called a vicious circle or what clever professors call a self-fulfilling prophesy. That’s when you think something will happen so you do things to make it happen and then you say, “I knew it was going to happen!” That made her a surly person who wanted nothing to do with anyone. Young men would plead with her to go out with them but she just scoffed. Young men sent her gifts only to find them in her rubbish bin. Young men approached her father to ask if they could visit her. That’s how romance blossomed in those days by first asking the parents’ permission. But before her father had a chance she would shoo them off with a broom, as if sweeping out rubbish. She would even go as far as to toss water at them if they persisted. She was a strong willed and determined one, she was. She never joined in any of the fun in town, never went to a dance or a picnic or to a party.

“As it was your Mr Cramburn’s father never joined in any socialising either. He taught in the school and lived with his aged mother. When he wasn’t teaching he read book after book until he didn’t know which book he was reading and which he had already read. He kept strictly to himself just as she kept strictly to herself. And while he was reading she was sewing dress after pretty dress after gorgeous gown. She was the finest dressmaker the valley had ever seen. She made the dresses for every bride at that time, including me. But strangely she never sewed one for herself.

“One sorrowful day Josiah’s mother died.”

“I don’t wish to hear about people dying,” I said. The thought of death always sent a shiver up my spine.

“But that’s what life’s all about or at least where all life eventually ends up…”

“Ma!”

“Alright, alright, freezing little poopsicles! I won’t mention that thing again. So she was buried on a Sunday … can I mention someone dead being buried on a Sunday?”

“No!”

“Just to be clear now, what exactly can’t I mention? Someone being buried or someone being buried on a Sunday?”

“Both.”

“Does that include just mentioning Sunday?” She was grinning more roguishly than a Cheshire cat that’s been swigging on a bottle of Dan Tyrone O’Nacncyitch’s special moonshine brew. I brought to mind my father’s sage advice, ‘Quit while you’re ahead,’ and so I said nothing more.

“Anyway,” she went on, I think she was a little disappointed that I hadn’t carried on any further. “The Sunday following the Sunday when that thing involving a hole in the cemetery ground and a wooden box was done, Sarafin and he were married. Just like that. This came as a complete surprise to everyone because they were considerably older than the typical marrying age and they hadn’t even met one another before his mother’s funeral.” Her eyes darted at mine when she said that word but I kept my lips tight.

“Like I said she never even bothered sewing herself a wedding gown. There was no party and no one was invited to the church to witness their holy union. Father Mulcadey was a younger man then, as we all were except those of us who were younger women, of course. He married them at seven o’clock in the morning and announced it to the congregation at the eight o’clock mass. She moved into the big house by the school with him and their lives went on as if nothing had changed except that she didn’t sew any more dresses. People begged her to sew them a dress or a suit for a special occasion but she just shooed them away. She shooed everyone away including her own family. The only contact she had with people was when she went shopping for food or material for her sewing. That was a surprise to us because as far as anyone knew she wasn’t sewing any longer.”

She paused there to build up a little suspense and taunt me a little. Of course I didn’t disappoint her. “And was she sewing?”

“One day a scarecrow appeared on the lawn in front of their home. Like so much else that goes on in this world it was odd but because it was like so much else that is odd we would have mostly ignored it but for two little things. Not only because there was no crop for it to keep safe from birds but also because it was the most wonderfully dressed scarecrow anyone had ever seen. It was really more like a life sized doll than a scarecrow except that the face wasn’t much done up. It was just a round bag stuffed with straw with the features painted in bright colours including a large happy smile. We knew what Sarafin had been buying sewing material for. Of course knowing ‘what’ was one thing but knowing ‘why’ was something we had no notion of whatsoever.

“Each month a new scarecrow or life sized doll appeared on the lawn and we took to calling them scarecrow-dolls because they were surely not scarecrows and positively not dolls. Then one Friday evening Perez Jaehn Mendez saw Josiah and Sarafin having what looked like a tea party with their scarecrow-dolls. They sat at a table covered with the most elaborate tablecloth imaginable. Now Perez Jaehn Mendez wouldn’t have known a stem stitch from a split stitch or a French knot from a lazy daisy but the way he carried on about that tablecloth you’d think he was a hoity-toity connoisseur of the art of embroidery. There was also an exquisite silver teapot, silver milk jug, silver sugar bowl, silver spoons, delicate china cups and saucers and little fancy sandwiches and fairy cakes spread over the tablecloth. He said when they drank their tea they stuck out their pinkie-fingers real posh-like. He said they pretended to feed the scarecrow-dolls tea and cake, chatted to them, even laughed at the jokes the scarecrow-dolls told. He said they laughed so much that those scarecrow-dolls must have known a great many jokes. He said he wished he knew those scarecrow-dolls because he could use a good laugh himself.

“Naturally no one believed him at first. Perez enjoyed sipping on plum brandy out of a leather pouch too much to make much sense most of the time. But every evening people gathered out of sight to spy on the lawn. And what do you think? The nUnderstand? Comprehend? Fathom?”ext Friday the two Cramburns came out and had their tea party with their scarecrow-dolls.

“Of course we were all stunned but also pleased about it. To see those two exhibit such a quirky spark of life was a joy. It was certainly better than to think of them as just two sad grumpy people living all alone in that big old house. Eccentricity is always preferable to boring and in a place like Sawtip it’s mandatory.”

“Eh?”

“Don’t interrupt. He was wearing such a perfectly tailored tuxedo that you would swear must have been made by those pixies you read about in fairy tales. The material was a regal navy blue and so smooth not even a lizard could have crawled over it without slipping off; and you know lizard feet can grip onto anything and stick on even upside down. He wore a swank top hat, a purple bowtie and although the suit collar was perfectly shiny the white shirt was so shiny that if we had sunglasses we would have put them on.”

I hadn’t even noticed I was grinning and I didn’t see it coming, my mother had a way of moving that was not only graceful but unbelievably fast, when she whacked me across the head. “Now don’t you go grinning that toothy grin of yours. ‘Swank’ doesn’t mean anything uncouth at all. It means posh and glamorous.” I was about to object and swear by Gran’s walking stick that I wasn’t thinking any such thing but I thought better of it. My father had often told me when it comes to mum and Gran and all women in general but especially those two I should learn from a young age to be satisfied when I can quit while I was still ahead, which meant still having a head that hadn’t been bitten off, regardless what other indignities I might have suffered.

She continued, “One evening something even more remarkable happened. We had been expecting something like the Dormouse, Hatter and March Hare to drop in and join Sarafin and Josiah in the tea party but what happened was even more astounding.”

Mum stopped at this point and looked at me with such a mischievous glint in her eye that I thought she was just going to leave her story hanging at that point. I wanted to urge her on but she had told me not to interrupt her. My mother never appreciated being interrupted and I could still feel the effect of her lightning fast hand. She looked at me and I looked at her. I knew she was teasing me and that I should hold firm but I was too impatient for a tactic as subtlety as waiting. “What?” I practically screamed.

“They began dancing. They began dancing but not with each other. They stood up, took a scarecrow-doll each and began to dance around the table. Nothing magical mind you. It wasn’t like the scarecrow-dolls came to life or anything like that. Although no one could understand how the music started up on cue and where it came from. That was a little eerie.

“Neither of them had the faintest idea of how to dance and seeing them holding onto scarecrow-dolls as they whirled and skipped about would have been laughable had it not been so unsettling and at the same time heart-warming. Then to our pleasure they sat the scarecrow-dolls back on their chairs and began dancing with each other. They were even clumsier dancing together then when they danced with the scarecrow-dolls. That was to be expected as the scarecrow-dolls didn’t have legs moving about that they could get their legs entangled with. They surely entangled legs quite a bit when they danced with each other and there was a lot of, ‘Ouch’ and ‘Sorry dear’ and a good bit of tripping and stumbling. But that didn’t bother them one little teeny tiny bit. They giggled and went on dancing until it got late into the evening. Now wasn’t that something?”

“It sure sounds like it was a real hoot,” I said.

“Don’t interrupt.”

“But you asked…” Quit while you’re ahead I told myself.

“Anyway, regardless of your interruption I’ll continue and answer my own question, which by the by was a rhetorical one. ‘Rhetorical’ that’s another good word for you to learn. And the answer is no. It wasn’t ‘something’. Although it really was ‘something’ but it was nothing compared with what happened next.”

She gave me that mischievous glint in the eye look again. Here we go I thought another round of looking and waiting. But to my great surprise she continued without much of a pause. “Even more bizarre then the dancing was one day baby scarecrow-dolls appeared as if the grown up ones had started families. Then they began to change the nappies on the baby scarecrow-dolls and rock them to sleep. I mean Sarafin and Josiah changed the nappies not the scarecrow-dolls. They still had their tea parties and danced but now they were a little more quiet about it so as not to wake the babies.

“In time your Mr Cramburn was born. In those days we didn’t go to hospital or even call on doctors when we gave birth unless something went terribly wrong. It was generally all looked after by the midwife. Adilah Abdallah was the midwife at that time and so she became the only person, other than the Cramburns, to go into their house for a very long time. We were all so curious about it and Adilah, who normally said little more than, ‘It’s a baby girl,’ or ‘It’s one of the other things,’ just couldn’t stop talking about it. According to what she said it was a museum, an Aladdin’s cave and a rabbit warren. The walls were painted in every colour of the rainbow and the ceilings were blue with suns, clouds and birds, except the bedrooms where the walls were grey and the ceilings black with moons and stars.

“Once your Mr Cramburn was born it put an end to the tea parties. He was a sickly child and I suppose with him to look after they just didn’t have the time. He wasn’t sent to school with the other children but his father taught him in the evenings. He spent the day either with his mother or looking at the schoolhouse. He made a pitiful sight on the other side of the fence looking at the other children while they played games that he never joined in. Marbles were as popular then as they still are and he had his own little bag of marbles but never played with any other boy. It was so obvious by the intense way he stared from a distance at the boys playing marbles that he had a love of the game and deeply yearned to join in. But of course the boys never approached him and even if they had he would likely have run off before they could get near enough to talk to him. He was the loneliest boy in the valley if not the world.

“In time Josiah Cramburn died. That was sad and I say it with a little pain in my heart but that is how life is. We are born, we live and we die.”

“I don’t want to hear about dying,” I stipulated once more.

“Regardless that you don’t want to hear about it but that’s how life is.”

“But I still don’t want to hear about it.”

“Too late, you’ve just heard about it.”

“I wish I hadn’t.”

“Then you should have told me before I said it.”

“But I did tell you before and I didn’t know you were going to say it again.”

“So I should tell you what I’m going to say every time I say anything before I say it in case it is something that you don’t want to hear?”

“Yes.”

“Okeydokey kiddo, I’ll remember that.” But judging by the way she grinned as she said it I didn’t think she would remember or that she even meant it. “To continue, after that thing happened to Josiah Cramburn, which I won’t mention since you don’t want to hear about it, he was buried beside his parents.” She looked at me for a long moment. That glint was in her eye again. Then she blurted out, “It was a good thing he was dead as a dodo or he wouldn’t have been very happy about it.”

“Ma!”

“Answer me this then, son of mine. For one who is so squeamish about even hearing of death and the like, how is it that you can go about playing at killing and slaughtering by the thousands with your timmyhalk and busyooka?”

“That’s different. They’re the enemy and they’re out to kill me and anyways I don’t use a tommyhawk or a bazooka, I’m strictly a pistol and rifle man and sometimes a sword.”

“I stand corrected,” she said. “But it is odd.” I thought about it and I figured it was odd so I stopped being squeamish about the thought of death and the like. Such things are very easy to resolve when you’re young and growing up in Sawtip.

“Poor Sarafin was left alone with just her son. For some reason she was never very fond of the boy at all. There’s no telling why but perhaps she was one of those people who only had so much love in her and she used it all up on Josiah. Regardless, she had no one but him and he had no one but her.

“The week after they did you-know-what to you-know-who in a hole six feet under the cemetery ground the younger Mr Cramburn took over as the teacher at the Sawtip State School as if nothing had changed. In fact he looked so much like his father when he was younger that on seeing him at the school some of the older men who had been taught by the older Mr Cramburn at the Sawtip State School when they were boys went to school on several mornings and would probably have tried to squeeze into their old desks had he not sent them packing quick smart. I’m pleased to say your Da wasn’t one of those who did it more than once.”

“But Da didn’t go to school here. He was already old when he came here from the old country.”

“So he was but your Da just enjoys getting involved so much.

“But something had changed. His mother now had only him. She absolutely wanted him to do as she wanted him to do and she absolutely doted on him to the point of suffocating him. Hour by hour, day by day she fussed over him and along with the fussing came the demands on his time and attention. Of course people want back what they give. It’s called reciprocity but never mind that.”

“You said she never was much fond of him.”

“So she wasn’t or she was too fond of him. I don’t know which and possibly neither did she. She was a woman with too much love to give but didn’t know how to give it. But it is a fact that too much of something can achieve the opposite of what it intends.”

“How’s that?” I asked.

She considered my question a while, “Well you see, suppose you wanted to build a tower out of bricks. You can put one brick on top of another and then another and then another and so on. Pretty soon you have a tower of bricks. But then suppose you keep piling on the bricks and what will happen?”

“Well I suppose…”

“Hush, don’t interrupt.”

“But you…”

“Hush. You see what I mean. Too many bricks and the whole thing collapses and not only don’t you have a tower of bricks but a pile of bricks and possibly a broken leg or a badly bruised one.”

She looked at me expectantly for a while and then said, “Well? You’ve got nothing to say?”

“But you told me not to inter…”

“Hush, don’t interrupt. But poor Mr Cramburn was caught between the two of her; one of her wanting to control him and the other of her wanting to spoil him. He was like a ping pong ball being hit by a bat made out of stone at one end of the table and a bat made out of marshmallows at the other. Or should that be paddle rather than bat? What do you think?”

“What’s ping pong? What’re marshmallows?”

“Marshmallows are what we call the eggs laid by ping pongs.

“Her demands grew so that he was nagged or pampered out of his wits. Considering he never left the house except to go to the schoolroom he spent a lot of time between and betwixt. She blamed him for making her life so terrible and she praised him for how wonderful he made her life.

“So you see son, Mr Cramburn can hardly be blamed for being the way he is. He hardly had any choice in it.”

I couldn’t help but agree with my mother and neither could all the other kids who were told the same story by their mothers but it didn’t make it any easier to have to live with him as our teacher.

Mr Cramburn’s foundation of life and his approach to teaching were his rules. He would say that only through the Law of Rules were we able to hold our heads high and proclaim ourselves better than the animals of the jungle. “Those lions and tigers of the forest don’t hesitate to take chunks out of one another’s flesh. But we have rules that forbid us to snap and chew on one another. And is this not better? How would you like it, boy, if I were to suddenly and unceremoniously crunch into your rump and bite a hunk out of it? I daresay you wouldn’t like it one iota. Praise the Law of Rules that your rump is safe from my chops.”

On the front wall of the classroom on either side of the blackboard as well as above and beneath it were written all the important rules of life; at least the ones pertaining to us and which ensured our wellbeing at school. The Law of Rules as proclaimed by Mr Cramburn. They encompassed everything from how often we should wash our hands to why we should not ram pencils up our noses and even that we do not eat one another as animals of the jungle do. It was spirit numbing to have to look up at those rules every school day for so many years and they were not only there glaring down at us off that wall but they featured in most of Crumb’s lessons.

One day we learned about the great dinosaurs.

“The dinosaurs were surely the most terrible creatures to ever walk, crawl, hop, fly and swim on the face of this mighty earth of ours. But they are now gone. They are dead and extinct. They have vanished off the face of the planet we call Earth and home. And why is that? They were big and mighty in stature. No other creature could defy them and yet they are gone. They are now insignificant. Why? Not because they ate up all the food that was there for them to eat. There was still a lot left by the time of their extinction to have kept them living for a good many years more. Not because they were consumed in horrific conflagration or drowned in colossal deluge or starved in everlasting famine or parched by monumental drought. None of those natural events played a role in the extinction of the mighty dinosaurs. They became extinct because they had no rules!” We gasped at hearing that astonishing fact of palaeontology.

“Take for instance the mighty Brontosaurus. Now there was a creature worth talking about. It was a creature so huge that it could only support its weight by wallowing in mud. And is wallowing in mud a good thing? Not unless you are a pig. Mud is dirty and dirtiness is a germ infested terrible thing. Even the heroic Brontosaurus couldn’t survive the mortal evil of dirt. What does rule twenty-nine say? Look! ‘Dirtiness is a germ infested terrible thing.’ Now write that rule out ten times.”

So we wrote rule number twenty-nine ten times under the heading, ‘The Great Dinosaurs and the Mighty Brontosaurus’.

“Now take for instance the strangest dinosaur of all, the Platypusosaurus,” he continued teaching us about those extinct reptiles. “It had the bill of a duck, the fins of a fish, the feathers of a bird, it laid eggs and yet it was warm blooded. It swam by blowing water out of its rectum…” (Without missing a syllable he flung a blackboard duster at Moshe (Mush-Face) Sternstein who dared to snigger at the word ‘rectum’. Later when Mush-Face explained to us what ‘rectum’ meant we all sniggered as well.) “… and it climbed trees by shooting its tongue out, wrapping it about a limb and hauling itself up like a crane. It flew by jumping off the tops of trees and spreading out its flippers as if they were wings while blowing air out of its rectum.” (He shot a challenging look at Mush-Face but as he was now holding a full inkbottle rather than a relatively harmless blackboard duster Mush-Face knew better than to even breathe.) “It was such an unnatural creature that the scientists of the time thought it was a trick of nature and a trick of nature it surely must have been. And what does rule number fifty-three tell you? Look! ‘Children who play tricks end up gobbled up like the boy who cried wolf,.’ Now write that rule out ten times.”

So we wrote rule number fifty-three ten times under the heading, ‘The Great Dinosaurs and the Tricky Platypusosaurus’.

“The most gigantic, monstrous, biggest, humongous dinosaur of all, as any palaeontologist would tell you, was the Whaleosaurus. We know today how those creatures grew so large that they had to take to the sea but in those days they walked on land. They had great fat legs and the largest mouths of anything that ever had a mouth. They bit off the tops of trees and crunched up any defenceless creature that happened to be nesting in them. It would then spit out the leaves like a disobedient child refusing to eat its vegetables. And what does rule seventy-seven explain to you? Look! ‘Vegetables are good for you. Eat your vegetables or your stomach will rot from the inside out.’ And what about rule nine? ‘It is disgusting to spit.’ You see the Whaleosaurus didn’t know about those rules and broke them both. It is now extinct because it disobeyed rules it didn’t even know existed. We must pity the poor Whaleosaurus but be glad we know better. Now write rules seventy-seven and nine out ten times each.

So we wrote rules number seventy-seven and nine ten times under the heading, The Great Dinosaurs and the Disgusting Whaleosaurus.

“Not all dinosaurs were monsters, mind you,” he enlightened us as he continued the lesson. “Some were small, tiny, wicked, little creatures. Take for example the Mosquitosaurus. It buzzed about until it sniffed out the scent of warm blood and then swooped down on its poor victim. But not only did this wicked beast sting and suck the blood out of its quarry it also took a mighty big bite to chew on for dessert. And what does rule number one forty-two teach you? Look! ‘Greed is naughty. Greedy children end up in terrible trouble.’ Now write that rule out twenty times because it is such an important rule.”

So we wrote rule number one forty-two twenty times because it was such an important rule under the heading, ‘The Great Dinosaurs and the Greedy Mosquitosaurus’.

We surely learnt more about the great dinosaurs that day than any school children before or since.

But by far the most disturbing aspect of Mr Cramburn were his darlings. In those days teachers not only had a right to strap and cane their charges, it was called corporal punishment, but they were expected to. Every male teacher had a strap or a cane but Mr Cramburn had his darlings.

Crumb had a set of three straps that he kept in a velvet-lined highly polish wooden case he had specially constructed himself. He held utter disdain for the cane. He would often say with a snicker, “No cane made has enough class for me to use on my class,” and “The pain of the cane is insignificant compared to the slap of the strap.” He called those inferior teachers who preferred the cane to the strap as baboons with bamboo.

He explained his darlings’ special qualities to us on one particular occasion when Charlie (Oodles of Noodles) Wong had been so reckless as to sneeze and then wipe his nose on his sleeve while standing near Crumb. “Now the efficiency of the strap depends on three factors anyone of which can be underestimated by those dullards who erroneously think of themselves as disciplinarians. These factors can either work for or against you.” He looked crookedly at the boy shivering in fear before him. “Of course I have studied these factors and I assure you they will work for me and against you. This wondrous teaching aid we lovingly know as the strap has to overcome the force of air resistance during its descent before making contact with the proffered hand and once it makes said contact the energy it has soaked up during that fateful flight is spread out along the width and length of its contact area. Understand me?”

Oodles nodded his head vigorously. Like many before him he hoped that if he appeased Crumb by showing him how well he was absorbing the lesson he might be spared the agony of having to absorb the strap.

“Of course you do, boy,” he said confident in his teaching abilities. “It means that the width and texture of the strap will slow it down and lessen its lesson, which is to say it will not hurt as much. Now do you understand boy?”

More vigorous nodding from Oodles as he stammered out, “That is very clever of you, Sir.” We knew that trying to butter up Crumb was useless but we knew he had to try.

“Quiet, boy!” Crumb scolded. “The third of the factors that effect the efficiency of this superb education enhancer is the grip it affords. And therein lies the quandary, for the wider and rougher the strap the better its grip but those same qualities are the afore referred to thieves of efficiency. Are you with me, boy?”

“Yes Mr Cramburn, I understand everything, Sir. Indeed I do, Sir. Every word and sillybull I do, Sir.”

“Quiet boy, I didn’t ask you to babble on but should I ever ask you to babble then do it correctly. The word is, syl-a-ble not silly-bull, silly boy.” At this point he lovingly brought out the gleaming case. Oodles gulped as Mr Cramburn opened it and revealed his darlings to the class. The straps had a dark glow about them that made them look sinister. Mr Cramburn referred to them as Miss Quality Number One, Miss Quality Number Two and the Widow-Maker. Miss Quality Number Two was the widest and least effective of the three but it was the most comfortable in his hand and made the loudest noise on contact with flesh. He would use this one when he wanted to stress a point to the entire class. It was the only one he used in the classroom with the class watching to set an example. Miss Quality Number One was narrower than its sister and so more effective. The first put on the better show to impress the audience while the second was quick and efficient. He would use this one mainly when he was in a hurry to get the punishment over and done. The name of the third strap spoke for itself. Obviously none of us was married so there was no wife to make a widow out of and we knew he would never go so far as that but still the implication was there. It was narrow, flexible and slick and it had a specially designed handgrip

There he paused for effect and mulled over the miscreant’s crime to determine the severity of punishment. Then he announced, “Three of the best with Miss Quality Number Two.” If ever a boy heard him pronounce the Widow-Maker terrible things instantly happened in his stomach. In this case Oodles thanked his lucky stars. It was one of the rare times that Crumb was in a forgiving mood.

As soon as a boy knew he was going to ‘cop it’ he started licking and rubbing his hand even if it was just morning and the punishment wouldn’t be doled out until the afternoon. This numbed the palm slightly. On a cold day you licked and rubbed as hard as you could.

Chapter Four

The Family

Like every other family in Sawtip ours seemed to fit right in as if we were meant to be there and nowhere else. My dad owned the leather store in the town. He was a true craftsman and everyone who saw the precise and artistic work he did said so. Laminating, carving, engraving, stamping, shaping and scoring the leather with a beauty that would have brought joy to the cow who originally owned the hide had she still been around to see it. He even tanned and dyed the raw material. I loved watching him working the leather and learning the tricks and skills of the trade from him. It used to puff me up with pride when he’d say that one day if I worked hard he’d make me his number one Purefinder-boy. (I never noticed the glint in his eye when he said this to me and I paraded about as if I had just been crowned king. Years later when I joined him in the shop and found out what a Purefinder did I learnt an important lesson about being gullible and when not to be so proud.) The only thing I didn’t enjoy about my father and his leatherwork was when he used to joke that he would make Mr Cramburn a strap so awesome that it would make the Widow-Maker seem no more painful than a tickle with a feather. That was taking a joke too far.

It was one of those unusual coincidences that saw both my mother’s family and my father’s on the same ship at the same time crossing the same ocean on its way from the northern hemisphere of the world to the southern part, from the old country to the new one, from over there to over here. It was on the ship that they met and fell in love. Although as my dad said, he fell in love first and mum only fell when he tripped her up because he couldn’t think of a better way to meet her.

“Ouch!” was the first she ever spoke to me,” he added. “And such a sweet word I have never heard in all my life both as boy and man. The second, third, fourth and next dozen words she spoke to me were not so endearing mind you. She blamed me for tripping her as if I had done it on purpose, which I confess I had. Your Ma was always as astute as she was beautiful, but what choice did I have? She had walked past me ten times a dozen times and not once looked at me. How could she see what a handsome and suitable young man I was unless she noticed me? It was my clever foot that came up with the plan of placing itself in her path and my besotted heart gladly went along with it. It was a fortunately rare and historic moment when our families made the decision to leave the old country and come here. It just goes to show that clever ideas can come about by pure accident as well as clever feet.”

“Clever decisions come about because clever people make them,” My mother corrected him.

Dad put on an overly exaggerated expression. “You mean to tell me that there was actually a time when there were clever people in our family, Caitlin my love? Will wonders never cease? Do you think that was an accident or a miracle? Should we notify his holiness the pope in Rome?”

“You’re a right fool, Seamas,” said my Gran. She was my mother’s mum and so he was her son in law which in her eyes made him fair game. Of course in her eyes everyone was fair game. “You always was and always will be a right buinneach of a fool ‘till the day they drop your worthless carcass into a hole and cover it over with dirt.” And perhaps to bring that day closer by a few minutes she whacked dad across his shin with her walking stick. (If every time my Gran whacked someone with her stick brought them a few minutes closer to their end Sawtip would long ago have been a ghost town.)

“Ma, be nice now,” said my mother to hers.

That was a joke in itself because Gran hadn’t a notion what the meaning of being nice meant. It surprised us all that dad didn’t say anything on that score but as his shin was still smarting from its sudden impact with the old woman’s walking stick his refrain from aggravating her any further was understandable. So instead of saying something like, “Caitlin darling, don’t you think it’s pushing the boundary of the oxymoron a wee bit too far to place Gran and nice in the same sentence?” She probably wouldn’t have understood what he meant any more than I would have but it wouldn’t have stopped her from lavishing his shin with another whack of her stick just in case he meant something by it. Instead he said, “But it’s good to know that someone in our family had some glimmer of intelligence. Still my sweet Caitlin looking at this litter of ours it’s best you don’t hold your breath on it happening again for at least another ten generations.” I didn’t understand what he meant by that but I had a feeling I should ask Gran for a loan of her walking stick.

“Don’t be so harsh,” our mother admonished him with a laughing tone. “Do you want your children growing up thinking that there isn’t a brain to share between them?”

“My children? Caitlin my darling joy, they’re only mine if they make me wealthy in my old age and I see little chance of that happening,” he laughed.

“Shame on you Seamas O’Seosaimhin to speak of your own children like that. How do you expect them to grow up soaking the knowledge they need to become lawyers or school masters when you don’t encourage them?” At the thought that knowledge would make me a teacher I decided to remain stupid for the rest of my life.

As a rule my father never spoke a word without intending it to make someone laugh. If he had I surely never heard it. Also if my uncle Shanley ever laughed at any word my father or anyone else ever spoke I never heard it either. They were brothers by blood and bone, by birth and parents but certainly not by character and nature. My uncle was a sad figure who moped about as if he had the entire weight of the world pressing down on him with relentless unforgiving callousness. He was once on his way to being a rich man but not on his way to being a happy man. “In his way our darling Shanley is still seeking the joys of life,” dad used to say.

“Bah!” was my uncle’s reply. “I was cheated by the conspiracy of fate and the ticking hands of time.”

“Bah to you,” my father said back at him. “You’re still a young man; at least in your flesh if not in your spirit.”

“Shanley,” my mum implored. “Leave it behind you and move on. It does no one any good to dwell on what might have been and do nothing about what can be. Instead of living for the future you live to dwell on the past.”

“I’m not blinded to what is and I’m not aggrieved by what should have been. I’ve long since just given up on the whole miserable state that’s called my life,” my uncle whispered.

Although my Gran was mum’s mother it was surely not her that mum got her sweet nature. Gran was a crusty old woman. If she was a loaf of bread she’d be just the burnt crust and none of the soft stuff on the inside. She was always old to me and I couldn’t imagine her being anything but old. I didn’t think there was anything wrong with that, everyone grows old if they live long enough, but she must have been born old as well as cantankerous. I learnt the word ‘cantankerous’ at a very young age because of her. Dad told me that before she had even said a cordial ‘hello’ to him she had bruised two of his ribs and given him such a wallop over his head with her walking stick that he saw wavy lines in front of his eyes for a week. In fact he saw so many of those wretched wavy lines over the years that he might as well have been in the navy. At least then he would have been given a measure of rum each day.

It was only because he had fallen head-over heels and then several somersaults in love with mum that he kept courting her in spite of Gran. He winked and reminded me that it was a good thing he had such a thick skull and such a stubborn nature that he didn’t give up on his plans to marry mother otherwise neither me nor my siblings would be a part of this merry world. He said we owed him big for that. I couldn’t help but point out that being part of this merry world meant that I had to be around to cop the wallops from her stick as he was and that perhaps it was him who owed me.

Probably at one time she didn’t lash out at someone with her stick unless she had a good reason to, but I never knew such a time. It seemed to me that she always just struck out as the mood struck her. The problem was that the mood striking her didn’t leave behind any bruises and I was simply too stupid to learn the meaning of keeping a discrete distance.

There were eleven children in our family and I was right in the middle. Not that it made me the centre of attention or brought me any special privileges. I used to think at least I wasn’t the last in line of the hand-me-downs but even that didn’t work out in my favour. By the time the hand-me-downs reached me they were so worn and faded that once I wore or used them they were no longer any good to go down the chain. So my younger siblings got themselves a new set of new stuff.

From the youngest to oldest my brothers and sisters were Mary and Margaret, we called them the lower twins, then came Sally and after her were Patrick and Brian, whom we called the middle twins. Next were Jack and Randy, they were not twins but as they were born on the same day but a year apart we called them the pretend twins. There was Jenny and Maloney, who were the upper twins. Finally came the eldest of us, Gracie, who was married and lived away from home but also in Sawtip.

I was there in the middle of that Seosaimhin brew; after the middle twins and before the pretend twins.

My two older brothers, the pretend twins Jack the Melon and Randy the Barrel, were no comfort at all as older brothers should be. I was never able to use the threat of having big brothers. I never could get myself out of trouble with bullies by threatening to tell my big brothers on them because my big brothers were either the bullies or they were watching and encouraging the bullies. My two younger brothers also never brought me any pleasure for the few times I tried easing my frustration by taking it out on them they banded together and made it very clear I would have to be a dimwit to push my luck with them..

My sisters were another source of tension. When I was very young I was constantly being pounced on and used as a substitute doll. They had enough dolls to dress up, force feed, bathe in muddy water, paint over with gaudy make-up, humiliatingly push about in old prams and brush their hair until it fell out or their skulls turned bright red, but they were of a mind that a living person, especially a younger brother, was more fun than a rag doll and twice as much fun as a plastic one. Of course it was typically my luck that by the time my younger brothers were of an age suitable to be tormented with this form of girlish exuberance my older sisters had lost interest in the game but even if they hadn’t I suspect my younger brothers would have managed to side elude the embarrassment. They had a knack of getting things done.

One year my older brothers, the pretend twins, got especially fine looking caps for their birthdays and my younger brothers, the middle twins, decided they wanted them. For the next few days the pretend twins with the perky new caps constantly saw them whispering. Of course that excited their curiosity. Soon after that little seed had been planted they saw the middle twins in a hyper-conspiratorial state so naturally they followed them. Just how stealthily those two could follow anyone is questionable but they felt confident they could do it without being caught out and it seemed as if they had.

The middle twins led them to the edge of the bush on the south side of Sawtip and not far from our home. Randy and Jack hid behind the undergrowth trying not to jostle each other, sneeze, laugh or start wrestling. They saw Patrick and Brian wrap some pebbles in a sheet of newspaper and stuff it into an old shoe. Then they buried the shoe and began to dance around the sod where it was buried. They flayed their arms about, hopped on one foot then the other, clapped and spat, hit each other’s faces and even acted and made noises like

Impressum

Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 30.12.2017
ISBN: 978-3-7438-4811-5

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