The Slingshot

“I tink I saw one in the attic, Da.” Bobby said.

“Aye, go on up dare, and have a look will yer? One more should do it then.” Patrick instructed his eldest son. A chair pushed against the linoleum scratched black beneath the feet, freeing Bobby to the attic for a suitcase hidden under a hundred years of dust. They were packing for America.

“Da, are we going to leave everyting else?” Mikey asked. His eyes wandered around the sitting room. The ratted carpet he and Bobby rolled around on, bare in the spot where some feet, shoved in shoes and others stretched naked, rested in front of the sofa. Three burn marks in front of the stove. Carpet charred black before his ma managed to snuff out the sparks that escaped. Mikey remembered that day. He could still hear the sound of her voice as she cussed them out with her foot.

“Yes Mikey, we will take only what we can carry in suitcases. Go on now, help yer brother.”

Bobby was already dragging the beat-up case down the narrow flight of stairs. It dropped dust on every step. “I got it, Da.” Bobby proclaimed and he swung the box onto the carpet, it straddled the char marks.

Bobby leaned forward and wiped the dust on his hands down his jeans simultaneously before he dug his thumb into the brass buttons. Click. Up popped the right latch. Click, the left. The lid gave and Mikey pulled a corner up. It was empty with the exception of a wooden slingshot, the handle free of bark and aged. Leather hardened over the years. A stiff pouch waiting for a rock. Yellow rubber, cracked, yearning to be pulled but wisdom rested on its skin, pull me and I’ll crack, like aged bones, dry and brittle.

Patrick lifted it out of the case and sighed out a memory, long and slow and deep.

****

He was born mean and had the teeth to match, blighty and crooked, like his soul. They were clenched. Behind thin grinning lips, clenched tight.

“Well Miss Doyle?” he hissed. His breath wafted. Strings of stench wrapped around Gracie’s face. Her bad eye remained motionless, and her good eye watered. Instinctively she moved back. Forcefully he leaned forward. There was no escape. His breath held her prisoner. She gagged. Her white dress dotted with daisies climbed up her thighs. She pushed it back into place with sticky, sweaty palms.

“What does it say?” Mr. Crubs’ hot breath hovered, waiting for a response.

“I….” Gracie looked down and ran the tip of her fingertips across the big H engraved on the desktop ‘Harold’ with a crooked H. The rest of the letters held the dirt from the hands of schoolchildren rubbing on the name years before. “I….” Gracie whispered again.

“I… What? Miss Doyle?”

“I don’t k k know…” she whispered.

“Stupid. Stupid. Little. Ignorant. Wretch.” Mr. Crubs gusted from his gut. Decay draped on each word.

Gracie shriveled small.

“Hold out your hand.” Mr. Crubs demanded.

Gracie stopped rubbing the big H with her fingertip. Her hand shivered uncontrollably as she turned it upwards exposing the soft flesh of her palm toward her teacher. Terror of a six-year-old comes out in tremors and trembles. A tear escaped her good eye and rolled. Her throat constricted. She squeezed her lids tight. A bird, a robin was singing just outside the window, She jumped on its back and flew away as Mr. Crubs brought the whip down. One. Snap! Two. Snap! Three. Snap!

She returned when four didn’t come. She opened her eyes when she heard his feet slide across the wooden floor hammering his steps to the beat of her breath, right back to the chalkboard. He started erasing the word she didn’t know. She didn’t know it because she couldn’t see it. Her one good eye wasn’t much good, and the bad one saw black.

The welts rose red and hot. The burning forced her palm to stay open. Tears stopped. The trembling did not.

Patrick was in the back chewing the side of his cheek. Hot hatred glared, smoldering from behind blue eyes.

In six months Patrick’s blue eyes would be red-rimmed and puffy. He would be sitting on Gracie’s bed holding her pillow, a down-filled gift Nan had given her last Christmas. He would be squeezing it so tight his fingers would freeze into that position even when Ma pried the pillow free.

“Patrick, love. We want Gracie to rest her head on it.” Ma whispered gently, sadly, pulling back sobs of her own as she did so.

And Gracie’s head did rest on it. For all eternity her little head rested on it. In that dark wooden box, her head rested on it.

It grew. Slithering its tentacles and silently squeezing. It was alive inside. Reaching deep, like roots searching for water to feed on. It fed on her, it sucked and gnawed and chewed. It feasted since she was four and by the time it was licking its lips in satiated satisfaction, Gracie was blind and dead. She had just turned seven. Gracie blew out the birthday candles she couldn’t see and the cancer fed on the cake. A handful of crumbs were still visible on the floor the day they lay her head on the pillow.

But Patrick didn’t know this yet.

Patrick was still sitting at his wooden desk, in the little classroom glaring daggers into the heart of Mr. Crubs. A robin at the window twisted its head abruptly, ruffled the feathers down his back to the tip of his wings, lifted them both, and glided off the ledge.

****

The street wasn’t very long, cobbles laid a hundred years ago pushed against his feet. Mr. Pills’ Pills and Sweets shop was on the right. Sometimes Patrick bought a tar baby licorice there from the jar on the counter that held other colored sugar in the shapes of balls, and berries, and sticks. Kerry’s pub was beside it on the corner. People walked past in no rush to get home fast. A mother carried a boy of two on her hip. A baby was crying in the pram she pushed. A loaf of bread peeked out from a bag in the buggy. Patrick paid no notice. He was mindlessly fingering the slingshot in his hand. Pulling back the empty leather pouch, one, two, three inches, then he would release it into a gush of air. Thwack. The rubber snapped to attention. From the corner of his eye, he saw Mr. Crubs come out of Mr. Pills’ Pills with a newspaper under his arm and a scowl on his face. Patrick seethed from the stoop of the pub.

****

A wisp of wind, a puff of smoke, a vapor of heat rising to catch the sky. Where does an idea come from? A dream once dreamed and forgotten to return? An invisible angel kissing the edge of the earlobe? A suggestion from the sinister? The breath of God?

Patrick was just sitting on the stoop with his feet resting on the cobbles pulling the leather of the sling shot back when the idea peaked through. He allowed the thought to continue. It then permeated his mind. He grinned. He went home, ate dinner, brushed his teeth, kissed his ma and da good night, and slept.

Morning was consumed in a bowl of oatmeal and a glass of milk. Patrick climbed the narrow stairs to the attic and opened the window. Daylight bounced its greeting between the rows of buildings built before the cobblestone were set. Mr. Gacy was standing behind the morning papers in the newsstand to the left. The pub, unbathed and snoring on the right. Early risers had already bought their bread and were in their kitchens wiping their knives filled with butter and jam across the tops. Patrick lined up five pebbles on the window sill and breathed deeply, Irish sea air filled his lungs strengthening his resolve. He raised his slingshot, loaded the leather, pulled the rubber taught closing his right eyelid as his left opened to scoped the lane below. His heart quickened. His breath along with it. A rule follower that considers breaking a rule even for a good reason still suffers the effects. Patrick’s hands turned a shade of cold. Drips of perspiration dribbled off his hot forehead. His fingers left a dark sweat mark on the leather pouch. His bowels turned. He shivered. He pulled another deep breath into his being. Like the conductor raising his baton to redirect the anticipation. Calming the apprehension. Patrick steadied his arms on the sill of the window and waited.

Mr. Crubs opened the door from Pills’ Pills & Sweets. Summoned by serendipity, he stepped towards the newspaper stand to buy his paper then turned. A bowler hat covered his head, and a sweater covered his shoulders. He tucked the paper under his arm and started his walk home.

Patrick, from his perch two stories above, lifted the slingshot and loaded the first rock. He steadied his hand on the window ledge and pulled, slowly, deliberately. The rubber responded. He released.

Thaawhack.

Mr. Crubs cried out in shock as he felt a sting on the back of his neck, his hand went up instinctively to the back of his neck knocking his hat off as he did so…

Patrick put the second stone in the pocket and pulled. Mr. Crubs’ bald head was exposed and called to the slingshot, a perfect target…

Thaaawack,

And it cracked.

He went down.

The shopkeepers came running out.

Patrick was stunned that he did that, and started shaking in fear.

Good boys are always good boys even when they do bad.

Hide it, he thought… Hide it, hide it.

He saw the suitcase dusty in the corner, pressed the brass buttons to pop the latches, and threw the slingshot inside.

***

Patrick turned the slingshot over in his hand, rubbing the stiff leather soft between his thumb and index finger.

“Is it yours, Da?” Bobby asked.

“Ahh…” he winked. “My lips are sealed.”