Free The Gamal by Ciarán Collins Page A

straight into a wall and dropped dead. The farmer went back and found the tinker and goes,
    —You rotten scoundrel, you sold me a blind horse.
    —That horse wasn’t blind at all, says the tinker, it just didn’t give a fuck.
    If there was anyone else in Ballyronan bar myself who didn’t give a fuck it might have been James’ mother. Only other thing about her was that she loved hugging people. She used to always hug me and Sinéad when we’d call up and she was hugging James’ father the whole time and he’d say,
    —Watch the paint dear.
    —Yera whisht boy and give me an old squeeze, she’d say. We’ll be dead long enough.
    She had an exhibition sale one time in the hall. I helped James and his father bringing the paintings down. Thirty-six of them. And I helped them bring them back too afterwards. Still thirty-six of them. The paintings just baffled most people as to how anyone would have the cheek to ask someone to pay money for them. And they were called things like, Afterwards and Few and she had a one called Missing too. She got cross with James’ father for not knowing which way was the right way up when we were hanging them.
    She adored Sinéad. Sinéad was good at art but that wasn’t why she adored her. She just adored her. And Sinéad loved her too.
    One time there was this nun came to the school and she collecting money for some art gallery she was trying to set up in Africa. But she seen Sinéad’s paintings and wanted to buy some but Sinéad was very embarrassed and went all red and said she couldn’t cos they were going to be album covers. The nun was nice and said that was fantastic and asked if Sinéad would do one for her like the one that was her favourite. She said, it would be a commission. Fifteen euro. Sinéad couldn’t believe it. There was tears in her eyes with joy. Or disbelief. Or belief. Dawning, isn’t it? The painting was of the human brain. Prawny pink-looking slugs and it faded away into darkness and there was some kind of a living thing up at the top right corner kind of like a seahorse and a bird at the same time and there was a bit of some planet showing in the bottom left corner all bluey and pinky and the rest of it then was all blackness. It was like the other stuff she’d be looking at the whole time in the book she had of paintings by a fella called Joan Miró. All I knew about painting and paintings ever was that it made Sinéad happy and that was a trillion times more than enough for me. I remember looking at it when the nun unwrapped her commission. She kept looking at it, the nun did, for ages just saying,
    —Wonderful. Just wonderful.
    I couldn’t see what she was seeing cos my brain was in the way. To me it was just blaggarding same as Joan Miró and James’ mother used to be at, but the nun was moved. Sinéad gave the fifteen euro back to the nun for her art gallery but the nun would only take a fiver back. Sinéad bought me and James a choc-ice with the tenner after school. She got a tape of Billie Holiday and a record of Edith Piaf in the second-hand bookshop in Cork Saturday. It was called The Second-Hand Bookshop but mostly it was young people were in there, up the top floor where the second-hand music was. Sineád kept her album covers and the rest of her art in James’ mother’s studio for safe-keeping in case her mother and father threw them out. They thought the painting was just a waste of time and just James’ bad influence. They used to say the Kents have fierce high and mighty notions of themselves.
    James had flowing locks when all the rest of the boys had tight haircuts. He played rugby, the posh boys’ game. James spoke in a strange accent. He was quiet in himself for the first few weeks. He was the cause of them all having a great laugh the first time he played Gaelic football. That’s an Irish sport played in a field. Fifteen against fifteen and you can catch and kick the ball or hand-pass it with the fist. Anyway, the first time he