Us versus Thingmy.

It seemed a daft Kerr like question. I didn’t give it much thought. The ball rolled from Gordy and sat on the kerb between pavement and road and I flicked a toe out and guided it back to Sammy. ‘Us. We’d just shoot them.’

‘But what if…?’ And that was Gerry off on one of his mad arguments.

I looked at Gordy for support and he sniggered. ‘We’d shoot them as well.’

Sammy started leaning towards Gerry’s side and Gordy backed me up and we’d already nuked everything just to make sure they didn’t win the argument. Then Gerry said ‘what if the birds and all the animals got the insects to gie them hanners?’

There was a Kerr for every season. They lived on the same street, a few doors along from the golden-haired Twinnies, and Bowie nuts, Gordy and Sam. Gerry was the one my age. Stephen Kerr went to St Andrew’s Secondary with my brother. Everybody called him Tebo. It was funny at the time, but nobody can remember why. There were five in my family, but a new model of Kerr was turned out every year. A Kerr was produced to be long limbed and muscley as a Neanderthal. A high forehead with brown curly hair was the vogue. The girls’ modelled slightly lower and thinner foreheads and more hair on their heads. Mr Kerr was well known for being a self-employed painter and decorator and for being bald.

Nobody took bald people seriously. They were cartoon people. Da gave me one piece of advice: ‘Never wear a hat.’ He never wore a hat, and was always ripping off his shirt at the first blink of sunshine. Da’s hair got locked onto his head like a sticky-willow Brillo pad. Mr Kerr exhibited a tweed type hat, sometime even a deerstalker. There were no deer in Parkhall, just dogs that thought they were human and mangy kids that didn’t think they were anything.

But I wasn’t sure about this advice. My Uncle John wore a Russian hat, fur trims and ear muffs, but he refused to go bald in the same way he refused to be grey, slicking his hair with black boot dubbing that rubbed off like a second skin, but McBride, as Da called him, had arthritis. Hat wearing was a malady, acceptable, understandable even.

Gerry wasn’t old enough to wear a hat- yet, but that was the kind of crazy thing he'd do. He yawned at you, eyes jammed open like cocked fists, not bothering about the niceties of covering his mouth, when I went in for him on school mornings. The Kerr boys shared an upstairs bedroom with the curtains closed and the venetian blinds shut that reeked of primordial soup before the big bang. The girls shared another room, but no one was ever seen coming out of there. The boys were always running from the dark cave of their room chewing something, always rushing down hall stairs, two-at-a-time. Mrs Kerr strategically positioned herself at the kitchen door and handed out food-and you better hurry up or you’ll be late advice in a sing-song voice- to any, and every Kerr, girl or boy that passed her in the hall. She’d learned all their names by heart, but sometimes called Stephen, ‘Chris’ and John, ‘Gerry’, before immediately correcting herself mid-sentence. Once, with my mock of brown hair, waiting for Gerry, I also got handed a bit of warm toast and mouthful of tea. Nobody took it off me, so I became for that short time an honorary Kerr.

That day on the street corner, between the Gilmour’s hedge and the dump, we stopped playing football, for a breather, Gordy was in my team and Sammy was twinned with Gerry. The sun stood high in the sky and the score stood even-stephen, at eight all. We slumped, with our backs in the shadow of the electrical box, gasping for breath, sweat and salt on our skin and bleeding crimson with effort. My back was a mosaic of scabs and yesterday’s skin. Gerry kicked at some black ants nest building in sand at his feet, and looked at me, ‘who do you think would win if all the birds and stuff turned against us?’

I kicked Gerry’s leg and Gordy pushed his brother. We scrambled up, all arms and legs, to face each other, the ball slowly picking up momentum where one of us had scuffed it and rolling along the road and sitting on the curve of a stank. Sammy shoved his brother with two hands on the chest backwards. I shoved Gerry and he almost tripped, but he came right back at me.

‘You cannae kill ants and worms and stuff with a nuclear bomb. They’re too wee.’

Gordy slapped Sammy on the face and Sammy flung a punch. They ran up and down the street, calling each other ‘a cunt’ and trying to high kick each other. I squashed some ants into the pavement to show what I thought. I shoved Gerry again. I could see in his eyes he was scared.

‘I’ll tell you what,’ Gerry said. ‘We’ll ask Chris.’

Chris was his older brother and going to Glasgow Uni. All he ever did was sit on his bed and read so many books that his brain began to swell and his hair retreated to give it extra room.

We watched Gordy and Sammy chasing each other like bumble-bees into their house and heard the front door slamming shut. I side-footed the ball along the road and Gerry ran past me and slammed it through the gate and into the Shirley’s garden.

‘I’ll no’ be a minute.’ Gerry walked ahead and pushed his front door open. I watched his back retreating and heard his feet beating time on the stairs. I sat on the front step, underneath the metal canopy, facing the road, waiting for him. After a few minutes I grew restless and stood up, looking up at the closed curtain and blinds of the boy’s room. I wandered a few steps up the path and looked up and down the road. A few doors down a man clipped at his privet hedge. A Morris Minor car passed. I turned slowly, sauntered backwards and resumed my seat on the door step, but my head kept turning and looking at the front door. Eventually, I chapped the door. Mrs Kerr answered. It took her a few seconds to decide if I was one of her family.

‘Is it Gerard, you want?’

‘Yes Mrs Kerr.’

‘Gerrrrard,’ she half-turned and shouted up the stairs, leaving the door open so I could see the cupboard beside the front door. I heard her slippered feet shuffling away, up the hall.

After a few minutes Gerry appeared swinging the door fractionally towards him, yawning and chewing a biscuit. He looked at me as if he was surprised to see me.

‘Who would win?’ I said.

‘Ants.’ He bit his lip and shook his head at me to confirm that was the answer. The front door clicked shut in my face and I heard him turning and walking up the hall.