I’m standing on the edge of town watching as he drives past. He’s wearing a big hat, like a cowboy hat. I’m trying to figure out why someone around here wears a cowboy hat, when he turns at the top of the street and drives back out of town again. Slower this time. Further away, he’s watching me, but as he gets closer, he fixes his stare straight ahead. This time, he goes as far as the bridge and turns in a wide circle, kicking up wet gravel. He drives back into town again. Hauls himself up out of his car, glancing sideways beneath the huge brim. He’s tall, his car seat must be almost on the floor. He looks old, like someone’s grandad. He has a round face. He’s round all over, like one of those toys you push over, and they wobble for a few seconds until they roll back up.  

He shakes out his body in sections pressing his hands behind his back. Pushing his stomach out, he grips both sides of his jeans, tugs them up by his belt and strolls into the shop. When he comes back out, he makes a shelter with his hands and lights up, takes a long drag of his cigarette. Looking up and down the deserted street, tips his hat beneath the hazy rain and gets back into his car. It drops low with his weight. My hands are freezing from holding my cardboard sign and water pours off my rain jacket. The wind whips my hair against my face. I’ve lost my grip on my sodden rucksack, too heavy to hold, and let it fall behind me. 

The car slices through mucky water at the side of the road and slows to a stop. The window slick with rain, slides down. The driver raises a fat hand in salute. His milky eyes blink against the rain. 

‘How’ya,’ right day to be out hitchin,’ so it is. An’ you only a young wan. I’m headed up the road to Portumna. Where ya goin?’ He leans across, his great belly resting on the handbrake while he pushes the door open. 

‘Yeah … that’s where I’m goin. Thanks,’ I say, and climb in, settle my rucksack at my feet. My hands are still trembling. His cloudy eyes rest on me. 

‘So, who are ya then? I’m Seamus.’  

A tiny wet drop of spit lands on my face, when he says his name. 

‘Grace.’  I like that name, Grace. I could have been Grace. Maybe. 

I watch the black shiny road getting sucked beneath the car, hedgerows alongside seem to rush in applause. I don’t know if I was right to have taken this lift. Has he taken the wrong road, or have I misunderstood the signs.  

His voice goes up and down, like he’s two people. He’d spent the weekend with his brother and his family, on what had been the family farm, said it was like being a child again. He draws out the word ‘child,’ long in his mouth, like a posh person and looks over at me.  

‘I’m fifty-eight now,’ he says, ‘although lots of people say I don’t look a day of it,’ and he flashes me a row of straight, plasticky teeth. 

I was glad when he stopped. It’s good to be back in the warmth. I’d been hitching for hours. This time. The clouds are a menacing grey. ‘With promise of worse to come,’ the weather man on the radio says. I have an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach.  

The rain is landing on my window, using the glass as a runway to speed down and rest in the scruffy misshapen rubber seal at the bottom. I hate rain. The way it brings the sky into a big swell, clouds my mind. A darkroom develops grey faces. Heavy thoughts try to find their way home.  

Not the home with the door that’s locked when its shut.   

‘Put something else on the radio there, something you like yourself.’ His hand slides over and squeezes my knee. I push it away and turn the dial, a floaty voice sings, ‘I was born to make you happy.’  

‘Ah grand girl y’are aren’t ya. Skinny though, you’re like a pinkeen with the skin off.’ 

The blue denim of my jeans stains dark and cold where his hand has been. 

‘D’ya want a smoke,’ he says, shuffling the packet at me. 

I shake my head.  

‘G’wan, I won’t tell anyone.’ He winks at me. 

I shake my head again. 

'Open up that cubby box then. There’s chocolate in there. There’s not a pick on ya. Get some of that out and we’ll treat ourselves.’ He coughs up a little laugh. 

I don’t want his hand to come near me again, so I take out the chocolate and break it in two. The velvety melting makes my jaw sting for a second and then my mouth fills with its dark creamy taste. My mind whirls, bubbling to the surface, hands unwrapping purple foil, crinkling, reaching out to me, a perfect square placed on my open hand. 

I close my eyes. This is where I want to be. The warmth, the music, the taste. 

‘Ah ya like that, don’t ya, can’t beat it, a little bit of sweet, sure doesn’t everyone need that.’ 

I want him to stop. He’s trying to be nice, but I want to stay in my head. 

'Who are ya goin to. Have ya family in Portumna or are ya only visiting. Do you live back in Ballinasloe?’ His voice gets a bit narky. ‘You’re quiet for a young wan aren’t ya. Sure, have ya nothin to say for yourself at all.’ 

So many questions, not one I can answer. 

'Have ya someone waiting for ya. Why’d no one come for ya.’ 

And there it is. The question I’ve asked myself for the last six years. 

The voice in my head screeches. ‘You can remember but keep your mouth shut.’ So, I do. 

Mam got sick. Well, that’s what I’d been told, but there had been no end to the secrets, even before she went into hospital.   

Days and weeks when she didn’t get dressed from one end to the other. On those days the silence in our house was like a scarf tied too tightly around my head, but worse, more frightening was the awful wait for the silence to be shattered by her screams and shouts. An angry vicious voice. Didn’t sound like Mam’s.  

Even before I’d been sent away to my aunt’s house in Ballinasloe, I missed the mother who had held me close and smiled while she stroked my hair. Talking quietly to me, humming between her words.  

She did. The memory cracks a bit when I try to hold it, but she did. I’m almost sure …  

In my aunt’s house I missed her even more. The room they gave me was cold. Bare except for the single bed. The deep hollow in the mattress swallowed me whole where I lay staring up at the broken light fitting swinging in the draught when the door opened. I had one photo with me. Me with Mam. She was crouched beside the toddler me, in our kitchen at home and it was as if the camera captured her love for me and held it. I tried to make it stand on a box beside the bed, propped it up against an old jar holding a goop of candle dotted with shiny dead bluebottles. 

When I woke the next morning, the photo was gone. Left me stranded with that aunt that didn’t believe anything I said and her son Patrick, he was older than me, and he let me know he was in charge of me every chance he got. Her snarling face telling me to watch myself. To keep my mouth shut and do exactly as I was told. 

‘There’s places for kids like you.’   

I didn’t know what these places were but the thought of them did something horrible to my insides. Echoes of screaming from behind locked doors filled my head. So, I did what I was told. Whatever job they gave me, I did it and every couple of months when they put me in the back of the pick-up truck, covered me with a stinking blanket and drove into town, I stayed silent.  

The third time they brought me. I realised if I lifted my chin slightly, I could see through the slats of wood on the sides of the truck. I watched them going into the store. They came back out and put the pile of stuff they bought into the cab and then headed over to the pub beside it. They were always ages in there.

 A group of teenagers all dressed in black came up the town and sat on the green. They were playing some sort of screaming music. Even the boys had loads of eye makeup on. One of them was busy rolling a fat cigarette. They passed it around. The two girls laughed a bit. I liked watching. I saw one of them write something on the boy’s arm, it was the boy who rolled the cigarette. I leaned up a little bit more, but the blanket dropped. I thought one of them saw and said something to the others. Patrick came back out just then to put something in the cab. They rolled slow eyes over him and moved as one over to the truck behind him.  

‘What you got in there, have you a dog or sumthin trapped in there?’ 

I stopped breathing, heard Patrick swearing at them. He screamed at them then. 

‘Fuck off the lot of ye, brain dead gobshite emo heads.’  

I heard his mother coming over shooing them away.  

When we got back to the farm she told me to break the chicken’s neck. She said it was punishment. She said it was my fault the chicken had to be killed. 

‘G’wan, get it done,’ she cackled, her teeth clacking noisily on one of her precious mint imperial sweets. You’d smell her before you’d see her. The stench filled the room at the front of the house where she sat in the evenings, cracking and chewing watching her soaps. 

The chicken’s warm body was pressed against me, it felt like a raging heart inside a cage.  

Her son Patrick came into the yard.  

‘C’mon, what’s keepin’ ya, do it, stupid bitch. If you don’t I will and I’ll do it worse. Tell her Mam.’ 

I knew he would. I’d seen him and his scummy mates, what they did to the animals for fun. All those poor little piglets and their squealing mothers. Me trapped in that room until he was on his own again. 

Teeth too big for his whiney mouth grazed my neck while he pawed at me on Sundays, while she was gone up to mass.  

‘No one will believe you, so keep your mouth shut.’ he snarled, pulling and dragging me to the shed outback.  

I didn’t know who I’d tell. No one knew I was there. 

‘They’ll say you’re mad. Mad like your mother,’ he said, grappling me to the ground, his heavy weight thumping on top of me.  

The chicken squawked, eye turned in panic up towards me blinking. There was a flurry of feathers.  

The aunt stood watching, arms crossed, face puffed out all smug.   

I wondered would she look like that if she saw what he did to me on a Sunday while she sat above in the church saying her prayers. 

Probably. 

I locked eyes with Patrick and snapped the tiny skull from the chicken’s spine. The wings beat clouds of dust. My eyes watered. I threw the bird at him and ran out of the yard. 

I could still hear his big donkey laugh, ‘She’s goin to gain a big inheritance one day.’ Hee haw. 

 ‘Pity it’s madness. Hee haw hee haw.’

I shiver and try to tune back into the driver’s yakking voice again.  

‘That brother of mine still thinks he can tell me what to do. Bloody upstart, marching up and down the tiled floor. Dragging tracks of loose muck while he waxed lyrical about how I should be living my life. His poor wife scourged with him every day of her life. But she had her chance and she lost it. She could have had me. Many’s the little lady would have been glad to get me, but oh no, miss high and mighty thought she could do better. Well, she’s sorry now, you mark my words. She’s sorry now alright. You ladies should think about what you’re doing, leading us men on and then blaming us….’ His voice got all thick like syrup, ‘you wouldn’t be like that, sure you wouldn’t pet. You’re a good girl.’ 

‘Stop,’ I shout, but he doesn’t, his head swivels around to me, chin wobbling in surprise.  

‘What you shout like that for?’  

‘A fox, just there, look,’ I shout, prodding the air with my finger. ‘Stop.’ The headlights flash over liquid gold eyes blinking in front of us, one paw held up mid run. He’s small, his tail the biggest part of him. The paw drops to the ground again, the run in motion and then the sickening thud against the speeding car. 

‘Pull over,’ I scream at him. ‘Pull over we have to go back. Stop the car.’ 

He doesn’t say anything. 

He puts his foot to the floor, the engine growls. I pull his arm. His fist leaves the wheel and smacks me, knuckles first in my face. 

Behind my eyes beats hot and sharp. He picks up speed.  

‘Cheek of you, ya nasty scut and me feeling sorry for the likes of ya. Picking up a scrawky bitch like ya, off the side of the road. Another one telling me what to do. Think ya will, do ya.’ 

All I can see and feel is pain. The little heart tremoring, trying to keep himself alive. Matted fur where it hurts the most. Hidden wounds beneath the red and orange coat. His mother, wide eyed watching, waiting for him.  

He’s talking too fast. Ranting over and over until my head feels so heavy, my body so cold.  

I have to make him stop. ‘Get the over yourself,’ I roar, ‘you could have killed him, or he might be dying. Turn the car around.’ 

I like the way his big slobby body flinches when the shout shoots out of me. 

Stuttering gom can’t believe it. Phlegm gargles in his throat. 

‘Oh, so that’s how you feel, is it, Miss manky mouth. By God, you’re all the same.’ 

I rub my sleeves hard, with heavy hands, to smooth the bumps, on the road, on my arms, the hairs on my neck shiver into my collar.  

In the grey light, from the dashboard, his sulky face shines.   

A blissful sweet silence settles inside the car then. All the noise is on the outside. The rain becomes heavier, slants in sheets against the windscreen over wipers that are unable to cope.  

 He swings the car over and we bump up some sort of dirt track. I know we’ve left the road, but I can’t tell where we’re headed.

 He’s driving like a lunatic, loony, nutter, maniac. All of them, he’s driving like all of them. I almost laugh out loud. 

There are trees, clumps of them, they stand like emo teens in the dark. They fold in around us, until I can hardly see inside the car. His mouth looks like it’s chewing words. It’s more like the ugly mouth that scuttered those things about me, about my mother.   

I reach down for my rucksack while he’s struggling to drive, the underside of his car tearing, straddling ruts and rocks. I unbuckle the front pocket and pull out my knife. I throw all my body weight behind it and lunge it into his side. He roars and mauls at me catching my throat squeezing hard, pushing me backwards. I shove my knife towards him, but I can’t reach him now. He takes his eye off the windscreen and looks down, his hand releases my throat goes to his side, where darkness is pooling into his jumper.  

His body slumps against the steering wheel. That lovely picture of shock and pain is sucked across his soft balloon face.  

I realise the deafening screaming is coming out of my mouth. I clamp my mouth shut; my teeth rattling out of their sockets. I’m backed up as far as I can from him. The back of my skull pressed hard against the shuddering passenger window.  

The car continues to bump along until his foot weakens and slides off the accelerator. It sputters and cuts out the driver’s door rammed against a tree.   

Silence, wet and cold wraps itself around me. 

I clutch my knife. His blood is on me I can feel it and smell it, even though I can’t see it. Thick spatters of it, sticky. I can feel the red. 

I clamber out with my bag and run. I trip over something, but I save myself I don’t fall. I hear noise behind me, the metal door getting bashed against the tree and then an almighty roar like an animal makes me run as fast as my racing heart lets me. 

I haven’t heard anything for a long while. I’m so tired, the calves in my legs are burning. A huge, ruined house, must have twenty-four black holes where tall windows should be, looks scary, but I could hide. I pull back thick ivy at the front and drop down inside. The stars blink above roofless walls. The upper floor, without stairs to reach it, hangs like a tongue in an open mouth. There is scuffling near my feet, I lift one and then the other in a useless way, knowing there are rats. I hope the fox got home to his mother. Where one of the windows is bricked up looks deep enough to sit in so I curl up in there shuffling my feet to keep the rats away until I fall asleep. When I open my eyes, the dark sky is turning grey. I have to keep moving. I get my other pair of jeans out of my rucksack it’s hard to close the zip and button over my stomach. I stuff the blood stained ones deep beneath loose earth in the huge stone fireplace. There’s a stream gurgling beside the trees outside. A single Heron standing stock still, keeps one beady eye on me. I wipe down my raincoat and clean my hands and face as best I can. The grey sky is lightening a little more. I gather my stuff and stand up, the Heron lifts, his great wingspan flutters past me as he struggles upwards. 

I walk through the fields for hours and then make my way back to the roadside. 

It’s not too long before a car stops to give me a lift.  A nice woman, all motherly, tutting about what a bad evening to be having to hitch a lift.  

I snuggle down in the passenger seat, weary. She stops for petrol along the way. I see the old newspapers bound tight with spidery string, stacked up at the pump. All the banners are cut off, for returning to the printers as unsold. My head lolls on the cool window as I read the headlines. 

‘Mother and son found dead, on rural Ballinasloe farm.’ 

I feel warmer. My hand goes to my stomach, feels the firm tender hardness there. 

The old lady pops a mint imperial sweet into her mouth and holds the packet out to me. The intensity of that sharp smell cuts into me. A silvery shiny trail settles in the corner of her mouth oozing that underlying sickly-sweet peppermint. 

I wish she hadn’t bought them. I wish I never had to smell those sweets ever again in my whole life. The smell hangs in the air long after the sweet is gone. 

She still has the packet stretched out to me while she looks out the driver’s window reversing slowly backwards. I bend down, pull up the front pocket of my rucksack and wrap my fingers around what I’m looking for. The cold of the handle feels dull and heavy. She turns and smiles at me then, twitches the packet making the sweets rustle as they rearrange themselves and settle again. I drop my rucksack and watch while she places the sweet gently on my open hand.