She says I'm getting odd and goes back to the lane and her chat with Mrs. Hannon and I blink and bathe my eyes with the boric acid powder in warm water. I can hear Mrs. Hannon through the window, Your little Frankie is a godsend to John for 'tis the climbing up and down on that float that was ruining his legs entirely.
Mam doesn't say anything and that means she feels so sorry for Mr. Hannon she'll let me help him again on his heavy delivery day, Thursday. I wash my eyes three times a day and I blink till I get a pain in my eyebrows. I blink in school when the master isn't looking and all the boys in my class are calling me Blinky and adding that to the list of names.
Blinky McCourt
beggar woman's son
scabby-eyed
blubber gob
dancing
Jap.
I don't care what they call me anymore as long as my eyes are clearing up and I have a regular job lifting hundredweights of coal on a float. I wish they could see me on Thursday after school when I'm on the float and Mr. Hannon hands me the reins so that he can smoke his pipe in comfort. Here you are, Frankie, nice and gentle for this is a good horse and he doesn't need to be pulled at.
He hands me the whip too but you never need the whip with this horse. It's all for show and I just flick it at the air like Mr. Hannon or I might knock a fly off the horse's great golden rump swinging between the shafts.
Surely the world is looking at me and admiring the way I rock with the float, the cool way I have with the reins and the whip. I wish I had a pipe like Mr. Hannon and a tweed cap. I wish I could be a real coal man with black skin like Mr. Hannon and Uncle Pa Keating so that people would say, There goes Frankie McCourt that delivers all the coal in Limerick and drinks his pint in South's pub. I'd never wash my face. I'd be black every day of the year even Christmas when you're supposed to give yourself a good wash for the coming of the Infant Jesus. I know He wouldn't mind because I saw the Three Wise Men in the Christmas crib at the Redemptorist church and one of them was blacker than Uncle Pa Keating, the blackest man in Limerick, and if a Wise Man is black it means that everywhere you go in the world someone is delivering coal.
The horse lifts his tail and great lumps of steaming yellow shit drop from his behind. I start to pull on the reins so that he can stop and have a bit of comfort for himself but Mr. Hannon says, No, Frankie, let him trot. They always shit on the trot. That's one of the blessings horses have, they shit on the trot, and they're not dirty and stinking like the human race, not at all, Frankie. The worst thing in the world is to go into a lavatory after a man that had a feed of pig's feet and a night of pints. The stink from that could twist the nostrils of a strong man. Horses are different. All they have is oats and hay and what they drop is clean and natural.
I work with Mr. Hannon after school on Tuesdays and Thursdays and the half day on Saturday morning and that means three shillings for my mother though she worries all the time over my eyes. The minute I get home she washes them and makes me rest them for half an hour.
Mr. Hannon says he'll wait near Leamy's School for me on Thursdays after his deliveries on Barrington Street. Now the boys will see me. Now they'll know I'm a workingman and more than a scabby-eyed blubber gob dancing Jap. Mr. Hannon says, Up you get, and I climb up on the float like any workingman. I look at the boys gawking at me. Gawking. I tell Mr. Hannon if he wants to smoke his pipe in comfort I'll take the reins and when he hands them over I'm sure I hear the boys gasping. I tell the horse, G'up ower that, like Mr. Hannon. We trot away and I know dozens of Leamy's boys are committing the deadly sin of envy. I tell the horse again, G'up ower that, to make sure everyone heard, to make sure they know I'm driving that float and no one else, to make sure they'll never forget it was me they saw on that float with the reins and the whip. It's the best day of my life, better than my First Communion day, which Grandma ruined, better than my Confirmation day when I had the typhoid.
They don't call me names anymore. They don't laugh at my scabby eyes. They want to know how I got such a good job at eleven years of age and what I'm paid and if I'll have that job forever. They want to know if there are any other good jobs going in the coal yards and would I put in a good word for them.
Then there are big boys of thirteen who stick their faces in mine and say they should have that job because they're bigger and I'm nothing but a scrawny little runt with no shoulders. They can talk as much as they like. I have the job and Mr. Hannon tells me I'm powerful.
There are days his legs are so bad he can hardly walk at all and you can see Mrs. Hannon worries. She gives me a mug of tea and I watch her roll up his trouser legs and peel away the dirty bandages. The sores are red and yellow and clogged with coal dust. She washes them with soapy water and smears them with a yellow ointment. She props the legs up on a chair and that's where he stays the rest of the night reading the paper or a book from the shelf above his head.
The legs are getting so bad he has to get up an hour earlier in the morning to get the stiffness out, to put on another dressing. It's still dark one Saturday morning when Mrs. Hannon knocks at our door and asks me if I'd go to a neighbor and borrow their handcart to take on the float for Mr. Hannon will never be able to carry the bags today and maybe I'd just roll them on the handcart for him. He won't be able to carry me on his bicycle so I can meet him at the yard with the handcart.
The neighbor says, Anything for Mr. Hannon, God bless him.
I wait at the gate of the coal yard and watch him cycle toward me, slower than ever. He's so stiff he can hardly get off the bike and he says, You're a great man, Frankie. He lets me get the horse ready though I still have trouble getting on the harness. He lets me handle the float out of the yard and into the frosty streets and I wish I could drive forever and never go home. Mr. Hannon shows me how to pull the bags to the edge of the float and drop them on the ground so that I can pull them on to the handcart and push them to the houses. He tells me how to lift and push the bags without straining myself and we have the sixteen bags delivered by noon.
I wish the boys at Leamy's could see me now, the way I drive the horse and handle the bags, the way I do everything while Mr. Hannon rests his legs. I wish they could see me pushing the handcart to South's pub and having my lemonade with Mr. Hannon and Uncle Pa and me all black and Bill Galvin all white. I'd like to show the world the tips Mr. Hannon lets me keep, four shillings, and the shilling he gives me for the morning's work, five shillings altogether.
Mam is sitting by the fire and when I hand her the money she looks at me, drops it in her lap and cries. I'm puzzled because money is supposed to make you happy Look at your eyes, she says. Go to that glass and look at your eyes.
My face is black and the eyes are worse than ever. The whites and the eyelids are red, and the yellow stuff oozes to the corners and out over the lower lids. If the ooze sits a while it forms a crust that has to be picked off or washed away.
Mam says that's the end of it. No more Mr. Hannon. I try to explain that Mr. Hannon needs me. He can barely walk anymore. I had to do everything this morning, drive the float, wheel the handcart with the bags, sit in the pub, drink lemonade, listen to the men discussing who is the best, Rommel or Montgomery.
She says she's sorry for Mr. Hannon's troubles but we have troubles of our own and the last thing she needs now is a blind son stumbling through the streets of Limerick. Bad enough you nearly died of typhoid, now you want to go blind on top of it.
And I can't stop crying now because this was my one chance to be a man and bring home the money the telegram boy never brought from my father. I can't stop crying because I don't know what Mr. Hannon is going to do on Monday morning when he has no one to help him pull the bags to the edge of the float, to push the bags into the houses. I can't stop crying because of the way he is with that horse he calls sweet because he's so gentle himself and what will the horse do if Mr. Hannon isn't there to take him out, if I'm not there to take him out? Will that horse fall down hungry for the want of oats and hay and the odd
apple?
Mam says I shouldn't be crying, it's bad for the eyes. She says, We'll see. That's all I can tell you now. We'll see.
She washes my eyes and gives me sixpence to take Malachy to the Lyric to see Boris Karloff in The Man They Could Not Hang and have two pieces of Cleeves' toffee. It's hard to see the screen with the yellow stuff oozing from my eyes and Malachy has to tell me what's happening. People around us tell him shut up, they'd like to hear what Boris Karloff is saying, and when Malachy talks back to them and tells them he's only helping his blind brother they call the man in charge, Frank Goggin, and he says if he hears another word out of Malachy he'll throw the two of us out.
I don't mind. I have a way of squeezing the stuff out of one eye and clearing it so that I can see the screen while the other eye fills up and I go back and forth, squeeze, look, squeeze, look, and everything I see is yellow.
Monday morning Mrs. Hannon is knocking on our door again. She asks Mam if Frank would ever go down to the coal yard and tell the man in the office that Mr. Hannon can't come in today, that he has to see a doctor about his legs, that he'll surely be in tomorrow and what he can't deliver today he will tomorrow. Mrs. Hannon always calls me Frank now. Anyone that delivers hundredweights of coal is not a Frankie.
The man in the office says, Humph. I think we're very tolerant with Hannon. You, what's your name?
McCourt, sir.
Tell Hannon we'll need a note from the doctor. Do you understand that?
I do, sir.
The doctor tells Mr. Hannon he has to go to the hospital or it's a case of gangrene he'll have and the doctor won't be responsible. The ambulance takes Mr. Hannon away and my big job is gone. Now I'll be white like everyone else in Leamy's, no float, no horse, no shillings to bring home to my mother.
In a few days Bridey Hannon comes to our door. She says her mother would like me to come and see her, have a cup of tea with her. Mrs. Hannon is sitting by the fire with her hand on the seat of Mr. Hannon's chair. Sit down, Frank, she says, and when I go to sit on one of the ordinary kitchen chairs she says, No, sit here. Sit here on the chair of himself. Do you know how old he is, Frank?
Oh, he must be very old, Mrs. Hannon. He must be thirty-five.
She smiles. She has lovely teeth. He's forty-nine, Frank, and a man that age shouldn't have legs like that.
He shouldn't, Mrs. Hannon.
Did you know you were a joy to him going around on that float?
I didn't, Mrs. Hannon.
You were. We had two daughters, Bridey that you know, and Kathleen, the nurse above in Dublin. But no son and he said you gave him the feeling of a son.
I feel my eyes burning and I don't want her to see me crying especially when I don't know why I'm crying. That's all I do lately. Is it the job? Is it Mr. Hannon? My mother says, Oh, your bladder is near your eye.
I think I'm crying because of the quiet way Mrs. Hannon is talking and she's talking like that because of Mr. Hannon.
Like a son, she says, and I'm glad he had that feeling. His working days are over, you know. He has to stay at home from this out. There might be a cure and if there is sure he might be able to get a job as a watchman where he doesn't have to be lifting and hauling.
I won't have a job anymore, Mrs. Hannon.
You have a job, Frank. School. That's your job.
That's not a job, Mrs. Hannon.
You'll never have another job like it, Frank. It breaks Mr. Hannon's heart to think of you dragging bags of coal off a float and it breaks your mother's heart and 'twill destroy your eyes. God knows I'm sorry I ever got you into this for it had your poor mother caught between your eyes and Mr. Hannon's legs.
Can I go to the hospital to see Mr. Hannon?
They might not let you in but surely you can come here to see him. God knows he won't be doing much but reading and looking out the window.
Mam tells me at home, You shouldn't cry but then again tears are salty and they'll wash the bad stuff from your eyes.
XII
There's a letter from Dad. He's coming home two days before Christmas. He says everything will be different, he's a new man, he hopes we're good boys, obeying our mother, attending to our religious duties, and he's bringing us all something for Christmas.
Mam takes me to the railway station to meet him. The station is always exciting with all the coming and going, people leaning from carriages, crying, smiling, waving good-bye, the train hooting and calling, chugging away in clouds of steam, people sniffling on the platform, the railway tracks silvering into the distance, on to Dublin and the world beyond.
Now it's near midnight and cold on the empty platform. A man in a railway cap asks us if we'd like to wait in a warm place. Mam says, Thank you very much, and laughs when he leads us to the end of the platform where we have to climb a ladder to the signal tower. It takes her a while because she's heavy and she keeps saying, Oh, God, oh, God.
We're above the world and it's dark in the signal tower except for the lights that blink red and green and yellow when the man bends over the board. He says, I'm just having a bit of supper and you're welcome.
Mam says, Ah, no, thanks, we couldn't take your supper from you.
He says, The wife always makes too much for me and if I was up in this tower for a week I wouldn't be able to eat it. Sure it's not hard work looking at lights and pulling on the odd lever.
He takes the top off a flask and pours cocoa into a mug. Here, he says to me, put yourself outside that cocoa.
He hands Mam half a sandwich. Ah, no, she says, surely you could take that home to your children.
I have two sons, missus, and they're off there fighting in the forces of His Majesty, the King of England. One did his bit with Montgomery in Africa and the other is over in Burma or some other bloody place, excuse the language. We get our freedom from England and then we fight her wars. So here, missus, take the bit of sandwich.
Lights on the board are clicking and the man says, Your train is coming, missus.
Thank you very much and Happy Christmas.
Happy Christmas to yourself, missus, and a Happy New Year, too. Mind yourself on that ladder, young fella. Help your mother.
Thank you very much, sir.
We wait again on the platform while the train rumbles into the station. Carriage doors open and a few men with suitcases step to the platform and hurry toward the gate. There is a clanking of milk cans dropped to the platform. A man and two boys are unloading newspapers and magazines.
There is no sign of my father. Mam says he might be asleep in one of the carriages but we know he hardly sleeps even in his own bed. She says the boat from Holyhead might have been late and that would make him miss the train. The Irish Sea is desperate at this time of the year.
He's not coming, Mam. He doesn't care about us. He's just drunk over there in England.
Don't talk about your father like that.
I say no more to her. I don't tell her I wish I had a father like the man in the signal tower who gives you sandwiches and cocoa.
Next day Dad walks in the door. His top teeth are missing and there's a bruise under his left eye. He says the Irish Sea was rough and when he leaned over the side his teeth dropped out. Mam says, It wouldn't be the drink, would it? It wouldn't be a fight?
Och, no, Angela.
Michael says, You said you'd have something for us, Dad.
Oh, I do.
He takes a box of chocolates from his suitcase and hands it to Mam. She opens the box and shows us the inside where half the chocolates are gone.
Could you spare it? she says.
She shuts the box and puts it on the mantelpiece. We'll have chocolates after our Christmas dinner tomorrow.
Mam asks him if he brought any money. He tells her times are hard, jobs are scarce, and she says, Is it coddin' me you are? There's a war on and there's nothing but jobs in England. You drank the money, didn't you?
You drank the money, Dad.
You drank the money, Dad.
You drank the money, Dad.
We're shouting so loud Alphie begins to cry. Dad says, Och, boys, now boys. Respect for your father.
He puts on his cap. He has to see a man. Mam says, Go see your man but don't come drunk to this house tonight singing Roddy McCorley or anything else.
He comes home drunk but he's quiet and passes out on the floor next to Mam's bed.
We have a Christmas dinner next day because of the food voucher Mam got from the St. Vincent de Paul Society. We have sheep's head, cabbage, floury white potatoes, and a bottle of cider because it's Christmas. Dad says he's not hungry, he'll have tea, borrows a cigarette from Mam. She says, Eat something. It's Christmas.
He tells her again he's not hungry but if no one else wants them he'll eat the sheep's eyes. He says there's great nourishment in the eye and we all make sounds of disgust. He washes them down with his tea and smokes the rest of his Woodbine. He puts on his cap and goes upstairs for his suitcase.
Mam says, Where are you going?
London.
On this day of Our Lord? Christmas Day?
It's the best day for travel. People in motor cars will always give the workingman a lift to Dublin. They think of the hard times of the Holy Family.
And how will you get on the boat to Holyhead without a penny in your pocket?
The way I came. There's always a time when they're not looking.
He kisses each of us on the forehead, tells us be good boys, obey Mam, say our prayers. He tells Mam he'll write and she says, Oh, yes, the way you always did. He stands before her with his suitcase. She gets up, takes down the box of chocolates and hands them around. She puts a chocolate in her mouth and takes it out again because it's too hard and she can't chew it. I have a soft one and I offer it for the hard one, which will last longer. It's creamy and rich and there's a nut in the middle. Malachy and Michael complain they didn't get a nut and why is it Frank always gets the nut? Mam says, What do you mean, always? This is the first time we ever had a box of chocolates.
Malachy says, He got the raisin in the bun at school and all the boys said he gave it to Paddy Clohessy, so why couldn't he give us the nut?