A Hare's Breath 4 - The Horror

A Hare’s Breath 4 - The Horror

Being the owner of a black and white bicycle I’ve noticed that one of the perks of having it is that I can go about on it wherever I want in the lovely County Antrim countryside and whenever I want except for the times my mammy has me doing boring things like going to school or going to bed or bringing a bucket of coal in for the fire because aren’t I just a big strong fella these days and not at all afraid of spiders or whatever other manner of creature you’d find out there living in the dirty blackness of the coalhouse. At Uncle Jimmy’s house on the farm in Glen Dun they burn turf on their fire and it has earwigs living in it so my mammy’s lucky she has the coal and the coalhouse and me to do all the shovelling.

Sometimes I have a ride out with some of the other weans in our street and round about and other times it’s just myself that goes. I like going out along the Stranocum Road that takes me all the way to Stranocum and on the way I can see in the distance the Knocklayd mountain that looks like a volcano. Mrs Morrison the schoolteacher said it looks like a volcano because it used to be a volcano but it isn’t anymore. She said when she was a wean herself she lived near to it but she moved to live in Ballymoney and it’s strange she hasn’t gone back there even though there’s no exploding fire and lava flying out of the top of it anymore.

On the Stranocum Road I also go past the scary faerie hill but I’ve never seen any of the faerie people that live there. My daddy said that’s because they’re invisible and even if they weren’t I wouldn’t see them because they hide in the thorn trees and among the thistles and only come out when they want to trick you. When they’re upset they’ll sour the milk in your cow’s udders and sometimes they hide my daddy’s keys for his white Morris 1000 van. Whenever my daddy can’t find his keys or his cigarettes my mammy says the faeries must have taken them. Nobody goes to the faerie hill at night. Nobody at all. But sometimes you can see flickering lights there when all the mortal world’s asleep so maybe they’re smoking my daddy’s cigarettes.

If I go with my black and white bicycle a few miles further on past Stranocum the road goes to a big peculiar tunnel made out of old twisty trees that look too old to be still alive but really they are. I think it’s probably the work of the faerie people too but I daren’t ask a grown up because I don’t want to hear the answer as I’m already out of my wits thinking about the scary wee men at the faerie hill when I’m in my bed and supposed to be sleeping. And my daddy said I shouldn’t take the bicycle any further than the sign that says Welcome to Ballymoney because if I did he’d be out of his wits with worry and so would my mammy. There are scarier men going about the place than the wee fellas from the faerie hill he said.

It takes a long time to walk down to the Ballymoney Burn which my daddy said isn’t a burn at all because it’s a wee river and he said that if I go down there he’d have the drowning as another reason for being out of his wits with worry. So now I have the black and white bicycle it’s easier to get down there with my friend Bobby for catching fish and frogs and trying not to fall in when we jump across to the other side that you can only get to otherwise by walking the length of the path to the bridge that’s really a big steel pipe with no railings and then back again.

When we go down there we wear our wellington boots that keep our feet dry except my left foot because the wellington boot that goes on that one has a wee hole in it. It’s hard to walk all the way down there and back again especially on a hot day because the tops of the wellington boots make big sore red marks on my legs from all the flapping about they do as I’m walking along. I thought that getting down there and up home again would be easier with the bicycle but it’s not at all easy pushing down the pedals with the wellington boots on and one of them having a wet sock in it and holding on to the handlebars with just one hand so I don’t drop the red lemonade bottle that has the tadpoles or a stickleback in it. Frogs are too big for the bottle so we put them in the saddlebag that my friend Bobby has on his red and blue bicycle.

Another one of the perks for a wee boy with a bicycle to go about on is that the men at Ballymoney Town Council can’t go locking up my bicycle of a Sunday to stop me having the fun I have on it. Any of us can go to the Megaw Park of a Sunday for a walk around or a sit on the grass but if we want to go on the swings or the roundabouts we can’t because they’re all locked up with chains.  And we can’t do the mini-golf either because the man’s not there that sits in the hut to let us have the loan of a golf ball and a golf bat for a shiny Irish threepenny piece with a picture of a hare on it or a yellow English threepence that has nothing on it that looks so nice you’d want to keep it forever even though it’s the same amount of money.

I asked my daddy why we couldn’t have a go on the swings and he said it’s because it doesn’t say anywhere in the Holy Bible that you’re allowed to have a bit of fun of a Sunday and that’s why the pubs are closed unless you’re a good friend of a Protestant who might own a pub and he’d let you in by the back entrance. He said all the Protestant daddies spend most of the day in the pub of a Sunday because the Reverend Robinson’s out on the prowl looking for the sort of people who might have been enjoying themselves a bit but the pub’s the sort of place he’d never set a foot inside so they go there for the safety that’s in it.

Lucky it was for weans like me that God finished all his work creating heaven and earth and what goes on there before bicycles were invented so he couldn’t go making up any of his rules about them. Without a rule to point at on a piece of paper when they’re shouting at weans the men at Ballymoney Town Council can’t stop a wee boy going about in the lovely County Antrim countryside on a bicycle or anything. I’ve read the Bible at school from start to finish so I know my daddy’s right because there’s not a word about bicycles or Ballymoney Town Council in the whole of it. He said if I read it again I might find the word hypocrite and that would account for all of the eejits at Ballymoney Town Hall.  

On the Sunday after my daddy’s accident with the white Morris 1000 van and the poor old hare we had the poor old dead hare for our dinner with potatoes and vegetables. It smelled nice when it was cooking but when my mammy put it on the table I couldn’t stop thinking about the two lovely hares that I watch playing on the Green at the front of the house in the night when the Moon’s shining. I wanted it to be bedtime there and then so I could go up and look out of my window to check that they were still happy and still alive.

I asked my mammy if it was alright for me to only eat the potatoes and vegetables because I didn’t like the look of the meat but she said I had to eat it because of all the trouble that my daddy had been through to put the hare on the table even though it was her that had put it on the table. I saw her do it. She said there are some people in the world who never eat meat and they haven’t a drop of strength in them and if I don’t believe her I should have a look at the black babies in Africa when they’re on the television. They’d love a bit of hare in them with a few fluffy white potatoes and vegetables.

With my eyes closed and my mind set on how gorgeous your woman Penelope Pitstop is in Whacky Races on the television I put the meat in my mouth and swallowed it without chewing. I love hares when they’re playing on the Green in the moonlight but I hate them when they’re lying on my plate with the potatoes and vegetables of a Sunday dinnertime. I was trying very hard not to sick it all up and I wanted to cry because the only person there who could help me was your woman Penelope Pitstop and she’s only a cartoon anyway. Everybody else said they liked eating the poor old dead hare. My sister said she liked eating it but her bedroom’s at the back of the house so when she looks out of her window she never sees the Green and the lovely hares playing in the moonlight so she can’t love them like I do. I wanted to say that I hoped that next Sunday we’d be having her budgie for our dinner and then she’d understand the sadness and sickness I was feeling but I didn’t because I’d already made enough fuss and I didn’t want to be told I couldn’t go out in the afternoon because I wanted to go to Stranocum to get the thoughts of the poor old dead hare out of my head.

While I was flushing the sick down the toilet and wiping some of it off my face with the sleeve of my jumper I heard somebody knocking at the back door. My mammy opened it and then shouted up the stairs to tell me that it was my friend Bobby who had come with his bicycle to see if I wanted to go off into the lovely County Antrim countryside for the afternoon. And I did so I rushed downstairs to see him and my mammy asked me what were the stains I had on my jumper and why was there a bad smell so I told her that I didn’t know but she knew I’d been sick and I thought she might stop me going out because of the filthy state of the jumper.

She didn’t shout at me at all but I think this was because my friend Bobby was standing there with his bicycle and she didn’t want him to tell his mammy and daddy that she shouts at me a lot but if they knew she did that they might like her and become good friends with her because I hear them shouting at my friend Bobby a lot when I go to his house. She said it didn’t matter about all the sick on my jumper and I could just put a clean one on and she’d put the smelly one in the washing machine because she had to do a wash anyway even though she’d only washed every article in the house just two days ago. She’d put them in with my daddy’s trousers that had blood all over them from when he’d been cutting up the poor old dead hare for the pot she said. I didn’t want to put on the clean jumper straight away because I thought I was going to be sick again. 

But I wasn’t sick again and I felt a lot better when I went outside and I breathed in the cold air. My friend Bobby said he would help me take my bicycle out of the shed because there was always loads of stuff in there that was in the way and I didn’t know what it was or why we had it and even my mammy said it was stuff we’ll never ever use so my daddy might as well throw out the whole lot of it. My daddy said that it was good that all that stuff was in there because it meant that nobody would be able to go into our shed in the night and steal my bicycle not even the faerie people. I knew he was joking because the faerie people wouldn’t be big enough to be going about on a bicycle and anyway why would any of them have the need of a bicycle when they can make themselves invisible and fly about the place.

When me and Bobby and my mammy had moved the big load of stuff that was in the way in the shed out of the shed I saw some horrible brown sticky stuff on the handlebars of the black and white bicycle. My mammy told me not to worry about it because it was only the blood out of the poor old dead hare that had dripped onto the bicycle when it was hanging up by its feet from a hook in the ceiling. I couldn’t think why anybody would ever want to hang up a poor old dead hare by its feet from a hook in the ceiling of their shed but she said everybody who has a dead hare always hangs it up in their shed for a few days before they eat it. My friend Bobby said that his mammy and daddy had never hung up a dead hare in their shed. I think that my mammy went within a hair’s breadth of shouting at him but she couldn’t because he’s not her wean. I said I didn’t like seeing the blood and she told me to stop complaining because a bit of blood coming out of a dead hare hanging up from a hook in the ceiling of a shed never hurt anybody. I wanted to be out and as far away as possible from the house and any place where someone might be hanging up a poor old dead hare and I decided to go about the lovely Antrim countryside on my bicycle with my eyes closed so I wouldn’t have to look at the dried up blood on the handlebars. My friend Bobby wanted to go home because when he was looking at the dried up blood he was sick all over the front of his jumper but my mammy said she’d let him have the loan of one of mine and what harm would it do her having to put one more jumper in the wash of a Sunday afternoon.

When me and my friend Bobby got out past our back gate with our bicycles we saw all the other weans in our street and round about waiting for us with their bicycles and they asked us if we’d be going with them out along the Stranocum Road into the lovely County Antrim countryside to see the faerie hill and buy some red lemonade to drink from the wee shop in Stranocum. Then my friend Bobby told them that it would be good to go into the countryside so that the people in Ballymoney wouldn’t see the dried up blood from the poor old dead hare on the handlebars of my bicycle. So they all got off their bicycles to have a good look at the blood and then they laughed at me and started shouting there goes the poor wee boy who goes about on a bicycle with dried up hare’s blood on the handlebars like he’s a mad old hairy fella living in a cave by himself with a black cat and a big long beard.

The next day when I went to my friend Bobby’s house his mammy told me I should try to scrape the dried up hare’s blood off the handlebars with a sharp stick because if I didn’t I’d have people all about the place talking about me and laughing. On Tuesday morning when Mrs Morrison was calling out the names from the class register at school she said ah yes, the wee boy who goes about on a bicycle with dried up hare’s blood on the handlebars after she said my name. On Saturday when I went to the butcher Patsy Oliphant’s with my mammy and my sister for a few pork chops for the Sunday dinner Patsy laughed and said to me that when I’m a bit bigger he’ll give me the job doing the deliveries to the houses round about because there’s always blood from the meat on the delivery boy’s bicycle with the big basket at the front just like there is on the handlebars on my bicycle and I’d already be used to it.

I didn’t like my bicycle anymore because of the blood and the people laughing so one day when I got back from riding out on it all the way to the big peculiar tunnel made out of old twisty trees a few miles further on past Stranocum I was tired and I couldn’t be bothered putting it back in the shed with all the useless old stuff that was always in the way so I left it leaning against the wall of the shed. My daddy said I should never leave a bicycle leaning against the wall of a shed because the rain would make it go rusty. He said that to me every day for a week so I got sick of hearing him saying it and I went out in the rain to put the bicycle in the shed but suddenly I loved it again because the rain had washed off nearly all of the poor old dead hare’s dried up blood.

After that I only went about on the bicycle in the lovely County Antrim countryside by myself and my sister’s budgie died and I was worried we’d have to eat it for the Sunday dinner but my mammy said there’s very little meat on a budgie and what there is would be tough and it would taste of millet. And every night I looked out of my bedroom window for the hares playing on the Green and when they weren’t there I was out of my wits with worry but when they were there I felt only happiness.    

My daddy said I shouldn’t think too much about the poor old dead hare because there are dozens of hares all about the place in the lovely County Antrim countryside and I’ve found out that he’s right. Every time I go out for a ride on my black and white bicycle I see them running about and enjoying themselves. If ever I see one on the road I shout at it as loud as I can you need to get off the road you mad eejit in case a white Morris 1000 van or the like comes along and when it hears me it always runs away. Sometimes I sit on the grass underneath one of the old twisty trees in the big peculiar tunnel made out of old twisty trees to eat an apple and drink a bottle of red lemonade that my mammy put in my new saddlebag and a big old hare sits in the field and looks at me for a few minutes. It’s an altogether beautiful animal and an altogether beautiful place to be sitting. It’s just grand to be living in County Antrim.

Image:

My own photograph of my own pre-decimalisation Irish threepenny piece with a hare on it that I daren’t spend after all these years for fear of the faerie folk getting angry and coming after me.

The next part:

Coming soon!