LITMIR.BIZ

      1

      The world’s a frightening place.” Joe McCann scooped up a lump of minced beef with his fingertips and pushed it inside a small white plastic bag. “True as God,” Joe says. “True as God.”

      You stood beside Mrs. Anderson, cleaning the glass meat counter using folded newspaper and water mixed with a couple of tablespoons of vinegar. At the side of Mrs. Anderson’s head where the bandage stopped, you could see the bruising, black and blue.

      “That’s just over a pound’s worth, Mrs. Anderson. Is that all right for you?”

      He didn’t wait for an answer. He sealed the little bag with a string of red tape and set it on the counter like a white balloon.

      Mrs. Anderson’s hand trembled when she reached across the counter with some coins. It was an effort for her to pick up the bag of meat and rearrange her shopping bag to accommodate it.

      “I hope they find them,” says Joe. “I know they will, I know they will,” he says. “Get that door for Mrs. Anderson, will you, Sonny?”

      You tucked the wet newspaper into your armpit and ran and opened the shop door for her. The bell over the door made a thin sound as she left the shop, and you felt the sodden paper through your shirt.

      “Listen, good luck to you now, good luck,” says Joe.

      Mick came from the back room and stood beside him. “Dreadful,” says Mick as he slowly ran his hands over his apron. You could never tell if he meant something or if he was winding you up. You just weren’t good at that sort of thing. He winked at you when he knew Joe wasn’t looking.

      They stood in silence, Joe and Mick, side by side like bookends, suddenly still, as if their last thought was important, something they didn’t want to forget.

      Joe was tall, fifty, or something like fifty. A face so mild you couldn’t look at it for long without turning.

      There was a new supermarket less than a mile away. Mick never said anything about it in front of Joe—how it was only the old people who didn’t drive that came to the butcher shop, how the shop stood between a post office and a Chinese takeaway, like a jilted lover unable to account for its misfortunes.

      When the glass counter was clean, you walked into the back room to get the brush to sweep up the stale sawdust. Mick was bored. You heard him come into the room behind you. He stood in front of the chipped mirror that was hung by a run of rusted wire wrapped around a nail over the sink. He pulled his comb out like a cowboy with a six-shooter.

      “You ever touch one, Sonny?” he says.

      “What?”

      His hair was brown and thin and greasy, the fine comb easily found its way through. “Touch one, did you ever touch one?”

      “Touch one what?”

      “A fanny.”

      “A what?”

      “A gee . . . A growler?”

      “A what?”

      “Are you deaf?”

      “No.”

      “Well?”

      “Yeah,” you say, “course I have.”

      “Where is it?”

      “Where’s what?”

      “You don’t know, do you? Show me, show me where you think it is.”

      You felt your face flush.

      “It’s not where you think it is,” you say.

      “Where? Where do I think it is?”

      The skin across Mick’s face was mottled; he’d been told not to scratch at it when he was young, but he had scratched.

      “You don’t know, you don’t,” he says.

      He put his comb into his back pocket and stood with his hip against the sink a moment, then pushed off it and pulled his apron aside.

      “Here,” he says. “It’s lower than you think . . . It’s . . . Do you know where your balls are?”

      “Yeah.”

      “Do you?”

      “Yeah.”

      “Right, well, it’s between where your balls stop and your arse begins.”

      Mick was bent over himself showing you when Joe came in and told him, “Knock it off, you.”

      Mick winked. Says, “We’ll learn you, lad.” He walked out front, and you heard him say, “Mrs. O’Brien, you get younger every time I see you.”

      Joe looked at his watch and then at you. “Come on, you, shake a leg.”

      “That’s right, Miss O’Sullivan.” “Will that do you now, Miss O’Shea?” “Good enough, Miss McCormick.” “That’s it now, as the fella says, that’s it now.” And on it went, Mick and Joe, their voices came and went all day like a background radio.

      You were paid ten pounds a week, one hour after school, except Wednesdays, when you’d mince the sheep’s lungs for dog food and that took an extra hour. You’d worked there over a year and had saved two hundred and sixteen pounds.

      The light had almost emptied from the sky, and in the shop glass you could sense your reflection under the fluorescent light, brush in hand. Beyond, the car lights streamed past.

      It was near closing time when the bell chimed again and Mr. Cosgrove, holding the amber smell of Higgins pub, nearly fell in the door. He was drunk, and Joe was afraid of drunks. He left Mick to serve him.

      Mr. Cosgrove put his hand on the counter and fanned his fingers out to steady himself. It was only later that you thought about his fingerprints; you had no recollection of cleaning them off the glass. But you must have. They were gone for sure.

      Mr. Cosgrove dipped his chin to his chest and seemed to be waiting to stop swaying, his smeared newspaper pressed into the side of his old man’s overcoat.

      “Is it something for your tea, Mr. Cosgrove?” says Mick. He stood with his arms folded and his head cocked to the side.

      “Mr. Cosgrove! Something for your tea?”

      Mr. Cosgrove raised his head and gathered Mick in his level stare.

      “Something for my tea. Yes.”

      “Well,” says Mick, “I have some nice liver there. You can fry that up with some onions, lovely. Or, eh . . . I have some burgers, fresh made. Ya can buy two, eat them yourself, and give the wife one

      when you get home.”

      Mick glanced over to make sure

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