by Ben Ryan
And now at thirty years of age Mickey Joe was asked by his mother to model a pullover again at the Roggart Women’s Sewing Circle meeting, where she was giving a knitting demonstration. The unfortunate man went into a black depression and said he would rather throw himself under a bus or maybe a train. Kathleen as usual ignored him and said ‘Don’t fret, love, you’ll be a great hit on the night.’
But this time Mickey Joe was intent on showing that he had reached the end of his tether and that he had to protest with some striking gesture which could not be ignored. In The Cozy Bar he tried telling a few men of his own age what he was going to do but they just laughed and started talking about football. The city bus came each evening at seven o’clock and stopped outside Murphy’s Garage. Mickey Joe wandered down towards the garage and felt really good. He would show them once and for all. He came to a bend in the road where a tree half hid him from the oncoming bus and as he leaned out to see if it was coming down the road, he noticed that there was a car in front of the bus. Sitting in the passenger seat was Dolores Mayfel who waved as she passed.
Mickey Joe swore and jumped back into the ditch as the bus sped past.
‘Feck it, that was a close one, Dolores nearly caught me,’ he muttered, ‘I’ll have to plan this more carefully.’
He was walking back towards his home when, suddenly, Dolores stepped out from a side road and walked along with him.
‘How is it going, Mickey, how is life treating you?’ she said in her usual cheery manner.
‘Well to tell you the truth, Dolores, if mother doesn’t stop knitting fairisle pullovers for me, I’m going to throw myself in front of a bus, or maybe a train.’
‘Will you don’t be such an eejit,’ she retorted, ‘I’ll make you an offer, I’ll knit you an Aran sweater and I’ll swop it with you for the fairisle pullover.’
Well, Mickey Joe felt ten feet tall.
‘Dolores is knitting me an Aran sweater,’ he delightedly told everyone he met.
True to her word, two weeks later, Dolores posted a note to Mickey Joe (another boost for him) telling him to come down to the house (yet another boost) and collect the Aran sweater. There was a further triumph at Mass on the following Sunday when Dolores wore the large fairisle pullover like a mini dress. Mickey Joe’s mother was livid when she saw her.
‘Who do you think you are?’ she snapped at Dolores on their way out of the church after Mass.
‘You look ridiculous in that outfit, that pullover was specially knitted for my son and not for some fancy dress parade.’
Dolores simply said ‘and a good morning to you too, Kathleen,’ and quietly went on her way.
This event started a kind of craze among the younger women and they began asking Mickey Joe if he would sell them some of his pullovers because they all knew that he had a huge collection as his mother knitted several every year. And Mickey Joe wooed one particular girl by giving her a present of seven fair-isle pullovers, one for every day of the week. On their wedding day he wore a dress suit and his bride wore a long white dress.
Dolores was credited with lifting Mickey Joe out of his depression and from this time onward many people sought her advice and she always had time to listen no matter how trivial the matter was. This also led to her own special romance, but that’s a story for another day.
The man said this is such a dull place
Not another day here could he face
Trains, zebras nor cattle
Nor cowboy gun battle
Could deter him from packing his case.
15
WAITING FOR A TRAIN
It was a showery evening in late September and Timmy Deery was nearing the end of a ten mile long cattle drive from his home farm to the outskirts of Roggart town. He was delivering seven fat cattle to a dealer who exported them by boat to England “on the hoof.” He walked all the way with the cattle on what was a fairly quiet road and with about one mile to go he noticed that his herd had increased to eight animals. They had been joined by a stray donkey and Timmy observed that it was a rather old female donkey, the kind which was frequently abandoned by a careless owner and left to fend for itself. He was a bit annoyed because this made the drive more difficult but he decided to allow the donkey to accompany the cattle and when he reached his destination he hoped there would be a solution and that some kind of home could be found for it. Timmy himself intended coming home on the one bus which departed from the nearby railway station and this is why he walked with the cattle rather than bring his green bicycle. The station was near to the dealer’s holding pen into which he would put the cattle.
When he reached the pen there were two men waiting to receive the cattle. The donkey brayed loudly when she saw them and ran away from the men who promptly picked up handfuls of stones and uttering loud expletives they threw the stones at the fleeing animal.
‘What did the poor old donkey do to deserve that treatment?’ said Timmy.
‘He’s only an ass and I don’t like asses much.’
Timmy knew there was no chance of a home for the donkey there, so he finished delivering the seven cattle and made his way to the railway station terminal where he would get the bus for home. Dressed in his old farm working clothes and faded check cap he cut a rather shabby figure at the almost deserted station. Another man dressed in a navy suit which had seen better days and carrying a battered brown suitcase also was waiting. He nodded at Timmy.
‘You waiting for the train?’
‘No,’ replied Timmy, ‘I’m waiting for the bus.’
‘Well, you’re always waiting for something in a back-of-the-woods place like this, waiting for something to happen and it never does.’
The man sat down on the iron bench seat while Timmy walked along the platform looking at an empty train which stood silent and waiting.
‘Aye, we’re all waiting, maybe that man is right,’ Timmy thought.
The front carriages, which had number 1 on the doors, were furnished with shiny green leather seats and he gazed in wonder at their opulence. As he moved along towards the rear carriages, with number 2 on the door, the green leather was replaced by rough wooden seats and as Timmy gazed intensely through the dust laden windows he could just about make out the green fields on the far side of the track.
Then he was distracted by what he thought was somebody moving inside the carriage. ‘Maybe there’s someone hiding in there,’ he thought.
He walked back to the seat and noticed that the man in the navy suit had gone and there was just an old newspaper lying on the seat. He sat down and took up the newspaper. The headlines read
“Prisoner escapes from jail, police hunt for gunman,”
“Dangerous wild zebra escapes from travelling circus and zoo.”
Timmy got a fright.
‘The man in the carriage,’ he thought, ‘He could be the gunman.’
He crept around behind a concrete wall and looked at the carriage and then his worst fears seemed to be confirmed. The man had a bag on his back and sticking out of it Timmy saw the shape of a gun handle. He looked around hoping to see the man in the navy suit but there was no sign of him. He stared at the carriage and strained his eyes to try to identify what was going on. The man seemed to be just sitting down waiting. Looking right through the windows of the carriage Timmy made out the shape of a donkey in the field at the other side of the tracks. Or was it a donkey at all? The dirty windows made it almost impossible to be certain, but the animal figure seemed to have vertical stripes, or was that just the dirt on the glass?
While Timmy was engrossed with the carriage figure and the animal, the station was beginning to come to life. Four or five men arrived on bicycles. They wore the grubby dark blue rail company uniform. One had a peaked cap and he walked along the platform in a superior manner. As he passed the seat on which Timmy was sitting he said loudly and without looking at anyone in particular,
‘Passengers get your tickets from the ticket office, platform tickets are requir
ed for others who wish to use the platform.’
‘Have you got your ticket young fellow?’
‘Just going to get it,’ said Timmy.
As he walked out of the station to the nearby bus stop Timmy noticed that more and more people were arriving and the train which was silent was making strange bursts of noise as it blew off steam and warmed up for its upcoming journey. The clock over the station door told Timmy that he had another twenty minutes to wait for the bus. He wondered what to do about the man in the carriage. He still held the paper in his hand. He wished there was a policeman around. He had reservations about informing the railway guard because on a previous occasion he had not been believed when he had attempted to tell a bus conductor that his bus was on fire.
He had seen numerous films about trains. In fact only last week The Lone Ranger had jumped from his horse, Silver, on to the roof of a speeding train, swung himself in through a window and captured a notorious outlaw.
‘Why not, if he can do it on a speeding train then I can surely do it on a train that’s stopped.’
Timmy’s imagination went into overdrive. He slipped back into the station, hiding behind pillars and in doorways until he reached the carriage where the man was. To his annoyance the carriage was now half full of people and the platform guard had his flag ready to send the train on its way. The man with the back pack was standing up and seemed to be arguing with a boy passenger of about ten years of age.
‘But dad, we live in Meath now, they don’t play much hurling up here,’ the boy was arguing.
Then to Timmy’s horror the man opened the bag and was about to draw out the gun. At this point things happened so quickly that there was confusion all round. Timmy sprang forward and grabbed at the bag.
‘Drop it you pesky outlaw or I’ll blow you to kingdom come,’ he shouted.
The poor man was dumbstruck. He dropped the bag and the contents scattered around the floor of the train. Among the items was a hurling stick and a blue and gold coloured Tipperary jersey. The man had bought these for his son but the young lad really wanted a football. This was what Timmy mistook for a gun.
‘What’s going on here?’
The voice was that of the train ticket inspector. Timmy quickly recovered his composure.
‘I made a mistake, I’m sorry Mr, eh, eh, what’s your name?’
‘Joe Ryan, but, but.’
‘I’ll make it up to you, have to fly—’
Timmy jumped out the door while the startled passengers and ticket inspector gazed after him. He raced over to the far side of the track and ducked down behind a clump of furze bushes.
After what seemed like an eternity the train moved off and Timmy breathed a sigh of relief. Then he got another surprise. Something pushed him from behind. It was the old donkey that had joined him on the cattle drive.
‘Something looks different about you, old girl. You look as though someone tried to paint white stripes on your coat.’
The rain had washed some of the paint off and left a kind of silver colour behind.
‘You look more silvery, I know we’ll call you “Silver,” hey, Silver, here comes the bus. I’m afraid this is where we say goodbye.
Two days later Timmy was cycling to the pictures in Roggart and, as usual, he sang a song as he rode along the road. As he came to a little wood at about half way he stopped suddenly.
‘I think I heard a moaning sound in that little wood,’ he muttered.
On investigation he found an old donkey lying on the ground and obviously in trouble. The creature had got a severe wetting from heavy rain the previous day and Timmy knew that a donkey’s coat, unlike that of other animals, was not waterproof. He had to act fast and get the animal dried out and warmed up. This was one of the few times that the cinema was not Timmy’s first priority. He cycled home and told his brother, Sonny, how urgent the situation was. Sonny drove the tractor with Timmy perched behind on the trailer, sitting on a bale of dry straw and holding a can of warm drinking water for the donkey. Silver the donkey (yes, it was Silver) became part of the Deery farm family.
A few days later Timmy found out where Joe Ryan lived. He cycled to the house and delivered a package with his apologies. Joe’s young son, who had recovered from the dramatic incident on the train, could hardly believe it. The package was for him and contained a football and two football jerseys (one in the Meath green and gold colours and the other in the blue and gold of Tipperary). Mrs Ryan, with much laughter at the story, wet the tay for their visitor. The Ryans told how they had come from their native Tipperary twelve years ago to live in Meath. Joe was a hurling man and hoped that his sons would carry on this tradition, but he laughingly accepted that they would probably become Meath footballers. They all came out to the gate to say goodbye to Timmy and just then a man in a navy suit and carrying a brown suitcase walked past. It was the same man that Timmy had met waiting at the station.
‘Good evening, all,’ he said in a rather dreary voice. ‘Sure it’s a miserable day, nothing ever happens in this back-of-beyond. We’d all be better off out of here.’
Timmy Deery at last found his feet
But with no shoes there wasn’t much heat
Strange sounds in the night
Made him shiver with fright
Said Joe “You’re a hard man to beat”
16
ON THE OTHER FOOT
It was a cold winter’s evening. The residue of snow which had fallen one week previously still lay along the shady side of the thorn hedge as Timmy Deery carried the newly born calf in his arms, while the calf’s mother followed along about three yards behind. The cow cried out from time to time in a plaintive manner. Timmy placed the calf in the small shed which he had previously bedded with fresh straw and closed and bolted the door before the calf’s distraught mother could enter. He did not like having to separate them but that was the way that dairy farmers who produced milk for sale worked. If the calf was left to suckle the cow there would be no milk to sell, so the calf had to be fed by other means.
He then steered the cow into the main byre where he tethered her with the cow chain, got his milking stool and bucket and hand-milked her. Then he fed the new calf with the fresh beiscins.
By this time darkness was falling and Timmy finished up his farmyard chores and went into the house. Later that night he awoke to the sound of what he imagined must be a ghost. It was a strange screeching noise and seemed to be coming from outside in the farmyard. Then the noise suddenly stopped and Timmy lay down and settled back to sleep. He had scarcely closed his eyes when the noise started up again. This time the screeching seemed nearer and louder and to be right underneath his window. Although he was scared by the strange sound he, nevertheless, crawled out of bed and over to the window to see what was causing this. Peering through the frosted glass he could just barely make out the shape of two cats fighting.
‘I’ll soon put a stop to this racket,’ Timmy muttered.
Then, taking a shoe in one hand, he opened the window with the other and let fly. The shoe missed by a considerable distance. Timmy threw another shoe, and then another and another until, at last, “bingo,” one of the shoes hit a tomcat on the ear and they both slunk away into the night. Timmy closed the window and went back to bed. Nobody else in the house was woken. The next morning Timmy dressed and then discovered that all his footwear was missing. Then he remembered the tomcats and the shoes and boots which he had thrown out the window.
‘Drat, what am I going to do now?’ he muttered, as he looked out on the frosty cold yard.
‘Maybe, I could lift a pair of boots or shoes with my fishing rod and line.’
He made a hook from a piece of fencing wire that he had in his pocket, tied it to the line and proceeded to “fish” for a shoe. He was sitting propped up against the side of the open window when he heard a rattling sound coming up the lane.
‘Oh, it’s only the milk lorry,’ he thought.
The milk-stand where the lorry stopp
ed was in full view of Timmy’s window. Joe, the driver, gazed up at the figure silhouetted against the morning light in amazement.
‘Did you catch many this morning? Mr D,’ he shouted up at Timmy.
‘No, you’re the first,’ replied Timmy.
Joe laughed. ‘Very droll, Mr D, very droll.’
‘Could you throw me up a pair of those shoes, please?’ Timmy said.
Joe tossed up two shoes which Timmy caught and attempted to put on.
‘No, these are not a pair, throw up a few more.’
Joe, who was a stocky rotund man dressed in a brown overall, shook with laughter as he threw the shoes and boots in Timmy’s direction. Timmy failed to catch some of these and they fell down again. After a while Joe began to lose patience as he hated being delayed on his milk collection round. He thought he had found the last pair of shoes and quickly turned around to throw when he slipped on the frosty ground and the shoe went sailing through the air just as Sonny, who had been having breakfast with Henrietta in the kitchen, opened the door to come outside. The shoe whizzed past his ear and landed in a sugar bowl right on the kitchen table. A startled Sonny quickly shut the door.
‘We’re being attacked,’ he shouted.
Henrietta, meanwhile, had gone to call the children to get up for school. She quickly ran back to see what Sonny was shouting about.