Fear Death By Drowning

FEAR DEATH r. He takes careful aim and fires.

The dungball hits Joe in the mouth just as he pops in his last slice of
battered cod. Joe spits out chunks of cod and dung. He looks around. He
spots Paul whose eyes widen as he realises what he has done. Joe is off
the wall like a whippet, but Paul is faster tearing along Whorterbank
like a bat out of hell. Joe is taller, wirier, stronger but Paul has
sheer terror in his tank. He almost makes it.

Paul has sometimes wondered what dung tastes like; that night he finds
out.

"Revenge is mine," sayeth the Lord, but surely he wouldn't mind a
helping had. Paul could slip out of bed, drink a bellyful of water,
then sit with his feet in cold water in the sink.

"Aw, mum, he's pissed a' ower me again," would be his wake-up call.
There would be a few moment of dreamy satisfaction, then Joe would belt
the crap out of him. Better not. Better to bide his time. He still had
God on his side. Joe had given up being an altar boy, and, like his
mother, would be sentenced to an outer circle of Hell. So Father Bone
had pronounced, so it would be.

That was something, but it was not enough. Paul would bide his time. He
does not have long to wait.

They are playing over in the gravel pits, in the Wary, Joe and John
Patterson and George Gardiner. They won't let him play. Joe is meant to
be looking after his wee brother, but he won't let him play.

They are playing with Mary O'Donnell. They are tickling Mary O'Donnell.
Joe chases her around. John kneels down behind her. Then Joe pushes her
and she falls backwards over John.

She doesn't hurt herself. George Gardiner catches her every time, but
her legs fly up in the air, and her frock goes over head, and you can
see her knickers. Joe told Paul some of the Irish girls Boag don't wear
knickers.

Mary's knickers are black, like the knickers the girls wear when they
do gym in school. They wear vests and knickers; the boys wear vests and
shorts. If you forget your shorts, Miss Watt makes you do gym in your
underpants. It's okay except when you have to do the crab. You lie on
your back, then push yourself up using your hands and feet. It's really
difficult for the boys, but the girls like doing it. Mostly the boys
just collapse and lie there watching the girls. That's when you can get
into sin.

Father Bone has explained to Paul the nature of sins venial and mortal.
Paul finds it hard to explain them, but he can recognise them when he
feels them.

"Here's the hoose key," says Joe. "Tak' the key and fill up this bottle
wi' water. It's got licorice in it. Stay in the hoose and shak' it for
about twenty minutes, then bring it back and we'll gie you a
swally."

Paul loves sugarelly water but his mother won't let the boys make it.
"That stuff rots your teeth," she says.

"That's why we like it," think Joe and Paul.

Sugarelly water is a ritual; boys love ritual; mothers don't understand
the ritual is as important as the black, sweet liquid that results from
the ritual. Cutting up the lengths of hard, black licorice into half
inch pieces, squeezing them into the narrow neck of a bottle, filling
the bottle three quarters with water, shaking the bottle, passing it
around for others to shake, watching the liquid turn brown, then black
as the licorice dissolves slowly, ever so slowly, into a muddy residue
that settles on the bottom.

The sugarelly water must be left for several hours, overnight if
there's sufficient patience, but that's rare. Sugarelly water cries out
to be drunk, so the bottle is passed around and shaken vigorously to
speed up the process, to hasten the alchemy that renders simple
licorice and plain water into the elixir of childhood. Then it can be
gulped, not sipped, but gulped so that it spurts down your nose, down
your jersey, to the delight of drinker and observers alike.

Teeth blackened, you stand there grinning like an idiot while the next
boy, drooling in anticipation, shakes the bottle to renewed life and
gulps his share. Girls neither like nor make sugarelly water. Why not?
Who knows? That's just the way it is.

"I dinna wanna go. I wanna stay here and play."

Mary O'Donnell sits on a gravel pile, flanked by John and George. Their
faces are red and streaked with sweat and dirt. You can hear their
breathing. Mary's socks are round her ankles. Three buttons on the
front of her frock are open. She sits with legs pulled up but open.
Paul catches a glimpse of her knickers. He feels as if he were doing
the crab in school.

"Ah'm no goin'," he says. "Mum told you to look efter me. So ah'm gonna
stay here."

Joe drops his hand on my shoulder. His big spatulate thumb seeks out a
nerve and he squeezes. "You're only eleven and you're going, and if you
tell mum..." He applies more pressure. Paul reaches for the
bottle.

"Twenty minutes, mind."

Paul climbs the broken dyke out of the Wary and trudges home. He fills
the bottle three quarters full with tap water. He shakes the bottle and
watches the liquid cloud and darken. He hopes it will choke the three
of them, no, the four of them.

Mary O'Donnell is as much to blame, she with her fancy frock and her
black knickers. He needs a pee. He leaves the house, locks it, and
climbs the stairs to the communal lavatory. He closes the door behind
me, fishes myself out, and realises that sin is almost upon him.

He looks at the bottle in his left hand and his growing part in his
right hand. With pleasing dexterity, he squirts two or three bursts
into the narrow neck of the bottle and watches it run into the inky
liquid. A couple of shakes and the transubstantiation is as complete as
anything Father Bone manages with the wine at a High Mass. The thought
of Father Bone kills the sin in him outright.

Joe, John and George gulp the sugarelly water down in three goes,
leaving nothing for him or for Mary O'Donnell who sits disconsolately
dishevelled in the long grass that fringes the gravel.

"You'd better get hame," Joe told Mary. "We're goin doon the High
Street."

No explanation is needed. Joe and I are piskies; John and George are
proddies; Mary is a pape.

Mary gets to her feet, fixes her hair, hitches her knickers,
straightens her dress, and dances away across the gravel pits.

"Dirty wee bugger," says John Patterson.

"Papes are a' the same," says George Gardiner.

"That kelly water was no hauf bad," says Joe.