The Linnet's Wings | Page 23

WINTER ' FOURTEEN [EXPLANATORY ASIDE] Sponsored Walk: an annual event organized by the church in which sponsorship is collected on the basis of a money per mile equation. The sponsorship collector is then obliged to walk the eight mile course around the Crooked Lake and finish in the lakeside picnic area where charred burgers and warm cans of coke are served, and the walker can bask in the warm summer glow of riotousness in having collected money for a worthy cause, ie the Catholic Church. “Go on up to the house,” said Da. “There’ll be someone there with a purse.” The boy got on his bike and took it atop a pile of rubble and ploughed toward the back door of the house. [REMINISCENT ASIDE] I took part in the Sponsored Walk for five years from the age of nine. I was guilty of the sin of deception, which I never mentioned in the confessional for fear of offending the priest who had arranged and adjudicated the annual Sponsored Walk. I only ever completed the first section of the walk, which led west from the village along the main road, up steep and twisty Sturgan Brae, south along single-lane Ballynalack Road for another mile… and this is where the shortcut came into effect. It removed half the journey. My mates and I would climb through the vegetation and pine trees down the lakeside, which from there was a short swim to the picnic area and a couple of hours spent peering through the chain link fence at the stock-car racing track. Swimming was the scariest part because the consensus was that this end of the lake contained a vortex that was capable of submerging and drowning children. We’d dry off in the sun and time it so that we trudged past the finish line somewhere in the mediocrity of the middle of the group. The best bit was messing around down on the shore. Áine sure hated my guts but always made me kiss her. Waves lapped against the lake shore … I realized I had been mistaken and it was the echo of a passing car on the road behind the thicket of oak trees where pied wagtails paid out their tune and flitted hither and thither. The sun beamed down like waves in a microwave oven. I came upon on a shard of cardinal-coloured tile, which used to be the floor of our living room, which in turn, before the extension, had been the kitchen of the original two room property. The living room had an open fire for cooking on and the ceiling was so low that by the time I had turned fifteen I could touch it with my hands. The living room floor was covered in carpet and as children my brothers and I would race around the room and where our feet fell the loose tiles beneath clip-clopped like horses’ hooves. “Me and Da laid those tiles,” said Da. “I must’ve been no more than twelve. Do you know what I’m going to tell you, I don’t think I enjoyed one minute of it because it was summer and he was making me work when I wanted to go outside and play. He was an awful one for the work. Couldn’t sit still a minute. Even with the arthritis he never stopped…” Da stopped speaking mid-sentence. His mouth had turned down at the corner, a grimace perhaps, lips thinned to the thickness of a paper cut. We’d been working hard all morning, too hard. I was worried he might be having a stroke. I scrambled to get out of the shore, but his face relaxed and he took hold of the shovel and continued to work. Reluctantly, I returned to the dig and sifted the excavation. I unearthed a leather boot sole that belonged to granddad, a yellow Lego brick that I hadn’t seen since childhood, a mess of fine copper wire from an electric motor that me and my mates had unravelled and strung between two paper cups to use as walkie-talkies in a game of soldiers, a toy plastic farmyard cow, and the wheel of a stroller I had The Linnet's Wings