Big Erchie

There is little known about Big Erchie,
and what there is to know is from a source
who still boasts about the time she bashed him
over the head with the brass vase given
to them as a wedding present, and which
to this day sits on her mantelpiece, the
dent upon the nape of its slender neck,
a wide grin knocked askew by the force of
his skull.

A McGoldrick, he was of Irish blood,
Catholic, and once tried to lift the couch
above his head, while his wife and children
sat hugging their knees and listened to him
roar with cheap wine rage, unable to say
what it was that blocked him up inside and
caused the carpet to wobble from beneath
his legs.

Shortly before reaching forty, he died
without a noise, elbow to elbow with
my gran, stretched out upon their marital
mattress. Later, dust cloth in hand, she told
me whilst polishing her brass antique vase
that although the post mortem cited the
cause of George McGoldrick’s death as myo-
cardial infarction, that was the day
she had laced his night cap with rat poison.