Puckoon Read Online Free Page B

argument
that, for the likes of get-rich-quick abortionists. It's not a child, it's just
formed, it's just
    - it's just
- just anything they want to call it to ease their bloody consciences! A mother
sees her child born deformed due to some drug she took during pregnancy and has
the child put to sleep! What right have we ? When a
man is mutilated in the war we don't kill him! We are the cowards. We can't
stand seeing a deformed child. That child could grow up and enjoy life.
    Happiness is a state of mind, not
body.
    O'Brien paused, then drank his drink, thoughtfully.
    ' Oh yes, oh
yes, I was in der fightin' all of der way.' Little Mister Pearce in the corner
was holding forth. From a parchment dry face, locked under a flat cap,
twinkling blue eyes peered through heavy pebble glass lenses, giving him the
appearance of a goiterous elf. Both his weathered hands rested on a walking
stick.' In all the fightin' and the English never caught me.' He was speaking
rapidly to a Mr Foggerty.
    Foggerty wore a long, foul, ragged
black overcoat, which seemed to have grown on him. It was secured round the
middle with repeatedly knotted string, from which hung various accoutrements,
mug, hairbrush, spoon, fly-swat, tin opener. An outsize greasy brown trilby,
set low on his forehead, gave him the appearance of having no top to his head,
which in fact he hadn't.
    Son of a long line of camp followers,
he had been relieved of his post as lighthouse keeper at the shale rock when he
drew the blinds, to ' stop the light shining into the poor sailors' eyes'.
    The light was closed down, and these days ships have to find their own way on to the rocks. His
father had been drowned after a brawl on the edge of a whisky vat, not that he
couldn't swim; he tried to drink his way out. Alcoholic poisoning was the
Coroner's verdict.

 
    'I tell you, he was so beautifully
preserved, it seemed a shame ter bury him,' said the amazed mortician.
    'Yes,' went on Mr Pearce, 'I was
wounded twice, once by me own side.' He said it with the same surprise
    as when it
happened, and moved his biddy pipe to the other corner. 'You see, the Tans and
the police was lookin' fer rebels; we was hid up in
Clontarragh Street
.
One night we could hear them searchin' the places, all drunk. Finally they
breaks into our place, they smashes up the furniture and lets fly a few rounds into the ceiling, me in the loft I gets it in the leg. In a
few days it goes gangrene, so they smuggles in
Goldstein and he offs with it.
    It was bloody murder, you should have seen the bill he sent me.
    Still, I survived.' He tapped his
wooden leg with his pipe.' It's hollow.... You know why ?'
    ' No ,' said
Foggerty, nodding his head.
    ' It's hollow because I made it so. You see,' he puffed his pipe and looked up at the
nicotined ceiling, 'Michael Leary wanted someone ter smuggle hand grenades out
through the police cordon, so, I hollows me leg and I travels the bombs in
that. And,' he laughed,' they never caught me.'
    Foggerty looked at Mr Pearce.
    Pearce looked at Mr Foggerty. It
appeared to Foggerty that Mr Pearce had finished.
    'Oh!' he said.
    'Oh?' said Mr Pearce, 'Oh? I tell you
a tale of Irish courage and hero-ism and all you can say is, Oh?'
    Foggerty seemed to struggle with his
mind. Gradually a pathetic smile spread over his face. ' Fish !'
he said.
    ' Fish ? '
said Pearce,' Fish ? What about fish ?'
    'Well, it's different from
"Oh".'
    Mr Pearce just looked at Foggerty.
There was something amiss in this lad. Only that day someone had said ' Good
morning' to him, and he seemed at a loss for a reply. Then again, Foggerty was
the only one who had been a failure during the boom.
    'You'da been in real trouble if dem bombs had gone off in yer leg, mate. Yer arse would ha'
been half way up yer back.'
    The voice came booming from Thomas
Rafferty who stood six foot square. The pockets of his dark green jacket were
congealed with blood, fur and feathers. When he wasn't poaching he was writing
bits of poetry,