Dead Dogs

The red stuff that Seán’s
lying in definitely isn’t blood. It’s too red red. It’s not warm enough and it’s not dark enough and it’s not like the stuff coming from his nose.

For Seán, the world must rock to the concussion of being blind-sided.

Today I’ve lost the best part of my life.

This is the day, with the sun rabies-hot in the sky and every face in the Market Square hanging open. Every mouth is a shocked black hole and I don’t know what I’m screaming but I’m screaming something.

How we, how me and Seán, get here, takes some explaining.

Seán is not a well person. He never has been. We are sixteen years of age and for as long as I’ve known him, Seán has not been like the rest of us. Seán is big. Way bigger than me. He has these
massive hands and a dead splat starfish of blonde hair squashed onto his head. In hurling he’d make a great fullback. If he played hurling. Instead Seán does stuff to things. To birds and cats and dogs. He does
stuff
to them.

Seán is not well.

In spite of this, Seán is my best friend. We grew up, I suppose we’re still growing up, outside town on the road out to the Still. For years I lived out there with Seán until me and my Da had to move back into town. The road is narrow and windy and there are ditches and trees and fields swarming up close to it on both sides. When we were young, there wasn’t a lot of people living out our way. Just a necklace of bungalows and detached dormers. This is what my geography teacher calls
ribbon,
or
linear
,
development
. In the fields now there are fungus growths of half-finished estates chewing gummily at the sky. In their scaffolding the hard accents of Eastern Europe used to rattle amongst the ironwork. They’re all quiet now. This is what our geography teacher calls
urban sprawl
. This is what she calls
economic
migration
. This is what our history teacher calls the legacy of the Building Boom. The aborted twin of the Celtic Tiger. Something misshapen and bawling and coated in concrete dust.

These new estates, they crawl up out of the muck and they slump and spill across our childhood. The field we built our fort in is gone now under a bristle of empty semi-detached houses.
Fairglade
, they called it. Seán wants to know what’s so fucking fair about it.

For years me and Seán had the run of the fields all to
ourselves. For years me and Seán were the only two boys on our road. It’s funny, but even now I’m thinking of it as
our
road. Even when all the others started arriving it was still
our
road. The
others
with their new cars and accents that came from somewhere between Greystones and Pearse Station. Accents that started a million miles from Killann or Monart. A million miles from where they were born.

In a hundred years everyone in Ireland will speak like they’re from the Mid-Atlantic. Everyone will sound like a DJ.

The people arrived on our road and mostly what they brought with them was money and new cars. But sometimes what they brought with them was other children. Now these children were more like me than Seán. This wasn’t hard.

Seán, when he was little, didn’t like this. Seán, when he was little, knew he wasn’t like the others. Knew he wasn’t like me.

The sun’s a spangle of tinsel through tree branches and the
football
hops across the lawn. Me and the lads are kicking and
scrapping
for any sort of a touch. Jumpers for goalposts. Everyone’s a hectic milling of arms and legs and everyone’s a bundle of
laughter
. Everyone except Seán. Seán’s just standing there. And he’s not standing off to one side either. He’s standing in the middle of the lawn and he’s turning as we play around him. Turning with his round eyes flat as stones. Turning with this weird half-smile on his face. His mouth is a shallow, liver-coloured curve and he’s turning, turning, alone in the middle of all our games.

He does this a lot.

Alone in the middle of our games, he stands there and watches all of us lads who are different from him. We all know what’s going to happen next but no one wants to stop playing. To stop our manic football would mean we had to recognise Seán’s difference. And if we recognised it, we’d have to do something about it. So we ignore him and every minute that goes by is one minute closer to what’s going to happen.

Then Seán’s moving and now he’s grabbing the ball and now he’s running away with it. When you’re five or six this is just an excuse to chase somebody, you don’t see anything shifting
underneath
. You don’t care why you’re running. You don’t care that some of the boys, some of the older boys, don’t think this is funny anymore.

One thing that always stands out like a wart in my memory is that Seán would only ever give the ball back to me. No matter who owned it, he would never, ever, give it back to them. Not ever. Not even when next summer the lads start to beat him. Not even when next summer with tears in his eyes and blood climbing the cracks between his teeth and he has to hide in the coal shed, would he give them back the ball.

Ever since that day, I have to get the ball back on my own. The lads make me because the sound of Seán’s big fist breaking Jamie Anderson’s nose, I think, makes everyone afraid. Not me though. I’ve never been afraid of Seán. Not even when the bad things start to happen.

But that was then and this is now.

Now Seán has to take these little red tablets that sort of glisten like they’re moist. They’re the same colour as Mrs Kehoe’s lips. She’s the school’s Home School Liaison Officer and she’s the one who first says that something has to change with Seán. She’s the one who first says that
drastic measures
have to be taken.

Seán’s not great at English, so when he asks me what this means, I tell him it means he’s fucked.

This is a couple of months ago now but Dr Thorpe arrives at Seán’s house and I’m watching him get out of his big black 407 and I’m watching him watching the car as the central locking beeps and the lights flash. In his hand, he has a black, leather, Jack-the-Ripper doctor’s case. It looks bulbous and pregnant. Dr Thorpe looks like what Pat Kenny would look like if he found a sense of humour somewhere. He has perfectly coiffeured hair that has the gossamer glimmer of too much hair spray. How much is too much? When he smiles, his whole face shines and the muscles covering his skull contract and his talk-show host’s hair lifts in a solid, chemically bonded mass. I always thought it was weird the way he smiled and he sees me watching him and now he’s smiling this smile and now he’s waving at me with his car keys still bunched in his fist.

After what happened with my Mam, I’m not sure I like Dr Thorpe. Because of this, I just stand there without waving back
until a JCB comes yellow and rumbling up the road and when it’s gone so is Dr Thorpe. I don’t know why he’s gone into Seán’s house but I’m thinking it must have something to do with what Mrs Kehoe said.

The next time I see Seán we’re in school and he’s showing me these lipstick-red tablets he has to take twice a day after food. He shakes the white tub they come in and you can hear the brittle rattle of each individual tablet. Each individual
drastic measure
.

The tablets aren’t very big so they’re easy to swallow and Seán doesn’t think they could contain much of anything. I’m smiling and then I’m punching him in the shoulder. I tell him he doesn’t need much. That there’s nothing wrong with him. But I know that he knows I’m lying.

I don’t know what’s in the tablets and Seán doesn’t want to show them to Mr Connolly. Mr Connolly’s sound and teaches science and I’m pretty confident he’ll know what they are. Seán doesn’t want anyone to know though. It’s like he’s embarrassed, and when these three girls come along the corridor where we’re sitting, he shoves the tub deep deep into his pocket. I just look at him for a moment as the girls titter and lean together and froth about something we probably couldn’t give two fucks about. Then they’re gone and Seán, not looking at me, shakes his head and says, ‘I’m such a freak.’

My first memory of Seán
comes from so way long ago that I don’t even know what age we were. All I know is we were old enough to be eating Tayto. And I remember the heat. The delicious, honeyed heat of summer. I’m sitting on a wall and that deluge of warmth is emptying out of an open sky and soaking into the back of my neck and drenching through the fabric of my T-shirt. I’m licking my lips and they feel tacky with the drying syrup of Dunnes Stores cola. It must be a birthday party or
something
because my pudgy little boy’s hands are sticky too and their gummy bundles of fingers are clutching a bag of cheese and onion Tayto. I’m not sure if the bags have gotten smaller over the years or whether it’s just that time is a magnifying glass but I’m sure this one was as big as I was.

I’m sitting, baking, on this little concrete wall and my
sugar-sticky
digits are making popping noises against the plastic of the Tayto packet. I’m sitting, baking, on this little concrete wall and
my mouth is watering and now I’m hearing a voice behind me. It’s going, ‘Don’t open them like that.’

I’m turning around on the wall now and as I change position the hot concrete is almost painful where it touches my legs below the cuffs of my shorts. My legs are maggot white. I remember that. They are the colour of fish bellies.

Behind me there’s this thick, tree-stump of a boy. He’s tall but his width makes him look stocky and below his blond Beatles’ fringe these weird flat eyes blink at me once and refocus with the calm deliberation of an owl. And now this thick, tree-stump of a boy, he’s shaking his head and going, ‘You can’t open them like that.’

I remember I’m staring at him and then I’m looking at my mauled and crinkled bag of crisps and then I’m looking at him again. To those weird, vacant eyes I must look like one of those nodding dogs in the back window of a car.

I go, ‘Why not?’

The other boy’s wearing dungarees and they scrape and rasp as he’s climbing up onto the wall beside me. His eyes meet mine, then look away, meet mine, then look away and his big right hand points to the packet of Tayto. His fingers are covered with an
oozing
darkness like he’s been eating chocolate spread with his fists. His big right hand points to the packet of Tayto and he’s saying, ‘You can’t open Tayto on the red side.’

In my hand the Tayto bag is banded red at the top and blue at the bottom. I’m looking at the picture of Mr Spud on the front and he seems to be opening his packet on the red side. I point this 
out to the other boy, ‘The Tayto man’s opening his like I do.’

‘Yeah, but you’re not supposed to.’

The big blond boy won’t look at me properly and the way he keeps snatching glances before staring at the ground again is starting to creep me out.

I was always a petulent child, I probably still am, and just to show him I can do what I want with my own Tayto, my small pink crabs of hands crawl up the packet and curl about its red top. They curl about its red top and now they’re pulling and now they’re stopping because the boy beside me is starting to moan. I’m
surprised
by this and now I’m going, ‘What’s wrong? Are you okay?’

The boy stops moaning and puts his face in his hands. From between his fingers his voice sounds distorted and a long way off, ‘If you open the red side bad things might come.’

Here is the moment to bear in mind that I don’t know how old I am but it’s so long ago that I can’t remember. I’m so young that the blond boy’s words scare the life out of me and I’m suddenly saying, ‘Okay. Okay. I’ll open them the other way round.’

These words of mine, they come out in a wet rush the way later that evening I’ll sick up all the sweets and all the Tayto and all the Dunnes Stores cola.

The boy lifts his face out of his hands and watches silently as I upend the Tayto and tug open the blue-banded bottom of the packet. Looking inside I can see the golden flakes of deep-fried potato all shattered into savoury slivers. Beside me, the blond boy is looking at them as well and his thick lips wriggle wide across his face and split into a grin.

‘Thank you,’ he says. ‘I’m Seán Galvin.’

‘That’s alright,’ I say. ‘Want a Tayto?’

From that day to this, Seán, when he sees anyone opening a packet of Tayto on the red side, he has to either cover his face so he can’t see or he tells them to turn it upside down. I don’t know why he does this but Seán and me spent most of Baby Infants convincing people to eat their Tayto from the blue side. Anyone who went to school for any length of time with Seán Galvin, give them a packet of Tayto and straightaway they’ll turn it upside down. Mr Connolly says this is
Pavlovian Conditioning
. Mr Connolly says this has nothing to do with the dessert.

A lot of people think Seán is strange. Including me. Seán isn’t like any of the rest of us. I don’t believe that bad things will happen if you open your Tayto on the wrong side but even when Seán isn’t around I still open them the way he’d want me to. This is the effect Seán has. A lot of people are frightened of Seán. Not me though. When bad things finally start to happen, Seán says he didn’t mean to. That he can’t remember. But I know he can. There’s a light in Seán’s eyes sometimes. There and gone like a will-o’-the-wisp. I know the bad things hurt him somewhere inside and I know he’s trying to stop. Trying hard. Wormveined and sweating.

I just don’t think the tablets will help.

For a start, I’m not sure his Da can afford them. Seán’s Mam left him and his Da when Seán was ten. No one knows where she
went but my Da says how it was funny that Buckley the milkman shagged off at the same time. Yeah, that’s right. The milkman. Our town is a cartoon.

Seán’s Da works round the clock but dealing with Seán takes up a lot of his time. He had to sell his car when Seán started his tablets and now he drops him to school in a 1990 Fiesta. Seán doesn’t really notice any of this but what he does notice is the fact that men have started to call to his house and argue with his father when they think that Seán’s asleep. Seán says he thinks they’re foreign but we’ve kept quiet about this because people like Mags from next door would run down the road screaming about drugs and the Russian Mafia.

Whatever it is, ever since Seán was put on those tablets, his Da seems to be dying a bad death. His jaws are after sinking in and the skin of his face is all tented up over the bones underneath. Every inch of him is after turning the same jaundiced shade as a forty-a-day man’s fingers. His whole being is a smoky yellow. I don’t want to say it, but coping with Seán is killing him.

Like I said, I don’t think the tablets will help.

Another reason I don’t think the tablets will help is because I don’t think they’re doing what they’re supposed to be doing. I’m no expert but I’m guessing Seán was put on them because he did things to animals and because some people were scared of him. I’m no expert but I’m guessing the tablets are something like that
Ritalin
stuff that Stephen Pepper in Second Year has to take. Mr Cowper, the Guidance Counsellor, is forever trying to get him off the stuff. Mr Cowper says the school, his parents
and society are all
abdicating responsibility
.

I looked it up and what
Ritalin
does is it alters
biochemical pathways
. These pathways are involved in the
screening out
of all the stuff you don’t really need to be worried about. Hear that clock ticking? See how it’s distracting you? Well
Ritalin
ups the levels of
catecholamines
while, at the same time, it increases your
heart rate, blood pressure
and
body temperature
so that you’re more alert and you concentrate better.
Ritalin
basically stops you focusing on
irrelevancies
and simultaneaously
suppresses
hunger
and fatigue
.

What this doesn’t tell you is that the spark that lives in people goes out when they take this stuff. I used to play football with Stephen Pepper and now he doesn’t play anything. He’s just sad all the time.

You take a messed-up teenager, convince them they have a disease and then medicate them until their personality changes to fit your world. The teenager you’re left with isn’t the teenager you started out with. Instead of discipline you get chemical
lobotomies
and instead of children you get automotons.

This is the reason I don’t think the tablets are working. Seán hasn’t changed. He’s stopped doing things. He’s stopped acting when whatever wrongly wired fuse he has sparks; but I don’t think it has anything to do with the tablets. Deep down he hasn’t changed. Not at all.

We’re sitting in the yard this one day a while ago and Daniel O’Hara’s five-year-old brother comes in. It’s lunch time and he must have come in to show his big brother the labrador pup that’s
gambolling ahead of him at the end of its leash. The lolloping puppy is followed by its lolloping master and Mrs O’Hara stands at the school gates, smiling.

Within seconds, everyone’s around this puppy like they’ve never seen anything like it. Some of the Sixth Years amble across, cast their jaded eyes over the scene and then amble off again. If it’s not a porn mag they’re not interested. The rest of us are, though, and hands are reaching out to stroke, to pet, to ruffle the pup’s ears. And, in all this, nobody notices that Seán just stands there. Watching.

Daniel O’Hara arrives. His little frame is charged with
indignation
and his delicate head is creased pugnaciously around a frown. He’s trying to push everyone out of the way and he’s
roaring
, ‘Get the fuck away from my dog, ya pack of spas!’

At the sound of his voice the puppy quails. It’s velvet head droops and a moment later our group gives way. Daniel’s grinning. He’s grinning because he obviously hasn’t seen his Ma bearing down on him like a storm front. She is the blackest thunderhead on the darkest night and she’s spitting lightning.

‘Daniel O’Hara! How dare you use language like that in front of your little brother!’

Then she’s grabbing him by the ear and thumping him in the back and then Daniel starts to cry.

We spill away, laughing. And I know that Daniel knows nobody will ever, ever, forget this. For the last two years of his school life, Daniel O’Hara will never be able to tell a joke or jeer or take pleasure at someone else’s expense. The ring of boys and
girls gathered around that puppy will be a noose he’ll never, ever, be able to shake off.

And, laughing, I turn to find Seán and, laughing, I turn again.

There’s Daniel and his mother. There’s his brother, looking confused and in shock at his warring family. So where’s Seán? And where’s the puppy? Where the
fuck
is the puppy?

And now, not laughing, I turn to run.

I know Seán couldn’t have brought the puppy into the school so now I’m running around to the side of it. There’s a bristling evergreen hedge at the side but there’s a narrow pathway between it and the sports hall. The pathway opens out onto the back of the school and this horrible warren of prefabs that we have to spend half our time in. The prefabs are like ovens in the summer because most of the windows only open four inches before
getting
stuck, and they’re like freezers in the winter because when the windows get stuck you can’t unstick them. Every day we sit in these makeshift classrooms with bellying ceilings and watch hundreds of empty four-bedroom semis rear above the trees across the hurling pitch.

I’ve never run towards the prefabs in my life.

But I’m running towards them now. Towards this plywood ghetto. And I’m thinking, please don’t do anything, Seán. I’m running towards this plywood ghetto and I’m hoping to God that the puppy’s still alive.

Then I stop. There are ten or twelve prefabs at the back of the school and round here there’s not much noise. From over the roof of the sports hall tumble shouts and yells and screams. But here,
between the industrial grey of the prefab walls, there’s nothing. Not even birdsong.

And now I’m running again, shouting, ‘Seán! Where are you?’

Now I’m running right, running left and now I’m running slap bang into Seán.

He’s sitting quiet and serene and on his face there’s the blank look of the hypnotised. He’s sitting quiet and serene on the metal steps of a prefab and the puppy is a limp draping of beige across his lap.

Before I know that I’m saying them, words are hissing from my mouth like blood from an artery, ‘My God, Seán, what have you done?’

And like I’ve said its name, the boneless rag on Seán’s lap
raises
its head and looks at me. The dog is doing this and then Seán is doing this. The two of them silent, doleful. The two of them empty-eyed as addicts.

Then Seán’s going, ‘What do you think I’ve done?’

I’m standing here in the muddy heart of a fibreboard slump and I’m suddenly feeling guilty.

And then Seán says something. He says, ‘I wanted to. I still want to. He’s so soft. You better take him.’

My whole body feels lax and eviscerated.

Numbly I take the puppy and numbly I stroke its head and numbly I watch Seán start to cry.

This is why I don’t think the tablets are helping.

What I do think is that Seán can’t keep this up. I don’t know how he’s stopping himself doing stuff like hurting the O’Haras’
puppy. I don’t know what it’s costing him but I think something’s going to break.

I’m thinking he
can’t
keep this up.

The more I think about it the more I realise that it’s not just that Seán doesn’t
act
like the rest of us; Seán doesn’t
think
like the rest of us either. This is why so many people don’t like him. He doesn’t understand them and people don’t like being
misunderstood
. He just doesn’t get them. Trouble is, nobody gets Seán either.

The more I think about it, the sorrier I feel.

We, Seán and me, are ten years old and we’re sitting in this big tree that used to grow three fields down. We are ten years old and we are playing army. When you play army, what you do is you split everyone into two groups and then each group finds a camp and then each group tries to kill the other.