OUT

Chapter 50

Thursday, April 9th 2015

Jack flashed back to himself in a nativity play at the age of five, not a note in his head, as he sang to a packed PE hall of parents and fellow students. He spotted Mick in the audience, capturing it all on a massive tape-recorder almost as big as he that he struggled to hold up. He had been obsessed with the yoke, and took it everywhere. Jack broke character on stage and waved down the barrel of the camera.

'That's my brother!' roared Mick and the room erupted into laughter.

He was ten now. And sitting in the back room of their local SuperValu with Begs, Mark, and Wham Bar - who had just been caught on camera stealing one, and his nickname had been born. The four of them were waiting for their parents to come collect them. The manager, who was as wide as he was tall, was roaring at them, and spitting all over them as he spoke.

'Jaysus man. Say it, don't spray it!' retorted Begs.

Next he was with Mick, his brother, aged twelve a week before they lost him. The pair of them were out in a field near their house with a Gaelic football and Mick was teaching him how to solo - something he always struggled with.

'Yeah, that's it. Jacko! Try bend down over the ball a bit more when you solo. That makes it easier.'

He was thirteen now, in Mark's back garden with a girl from a group of Gaeltacht kids staying with Mark's family for three weeks. He couldn't remember her name, but she had long, ginger hair that hung down past her shoulders. He remembered being really into her at the time. Funny how that had aged.

'Ar mhaith leat shift?' she asked.

Jack smiled and pulled her in for a kiss - his first. He was doing the 'washing machine' routine Mark had told him about and it was messy and awkward, with tongues flying everywhere.

'Thank fuck that's over!' exclaimed Wham Bar on Junior Cert results night, aged sixteen, a few hours before Jack spent an hour lying in a gutter vomiting back up the three pint-bottles of Bulmers he had downed ten minutes previously. His first night properly drinking, which had ended for most of them before it had even began. Although that was the night Begs fingered a girl for the first time. Outside a chipper in Galway City.

Jack seen this, his life, in the blink of an eye, and then he jolted awake.