I Refuse Read Online Free PDF Page A

the bat in her hand. I had been the best in the school at rounders, I hit the ball hardest, I hit it in the meat every time on its way down and it flew out of the school grounds and all the goddamn way into eternity where no one could find it.
    ‘Is that such a good idea, Tommy,’ Siri said. She was twelve years old, I was thirteen and a half, fourteen soon. We were older than that.
    ‘I don’t know,’ I said.
    I walked towards the door, and then she said:
    ‘Can I stay here meanwhile.’
    ‘You just stay here,’ I said.
    He was still in the chair. I am sure he knew I was coming, but he didn’t move at all, and then I was behind him, and I just lifted the bat over my shoulder so my knuckles touched my ear and with all the strength I had left, I struck out in a fierce blow and hit his leg, the kicking leg, and it broke with a sound I can still remember. And even though he was sitting well back in the chair, he fell forward, over his knees and down on to the floor, and he rolled around and lay straight out on his back. He didn’t reach for his leg although his ankle was bent at an unheard-of angle, an angle never seen, and he did not make a sound, not a sigh, not a groan, and I fell to my knees and held his head and said:
    ‘Does it hurt, Dad’, and then I said: ‘Daddy, Daddy, does it hurt a lot,’ I said, and I didn’t even know why he was at home that day, when he should have been at work. Perhaps he
had
been fired, what did I know, for something that was not his fault, or perhaps he finally had kicked one of the drivers out of his seat, one who had deserved it. One who had always looked down on him because he couldn’t rise to the place behind the wheel, as the drivers had, and ride the shiny dustcart, but instead toiled his guts out on the roads with one bin on each shoulder and was the strongest man in the district. And he had been alone with us for almost two years, and now we were celebrating Whit as we always did, and although it wasn’t much to brag about, still the lilacs were in bloom and their fragrance was drifting from house to house, and perhaps he had kept it a secret from us what had really happened that day while we were at school, or the day before. It could have been many things. I didn’t know, and I hadn’t asked.
    I sat on his bulging chest with the broad shoulders between my legs and my numb, red and grazed hands against the ears either side of his square head. He lay quite still and looked quite small where he lay, quite short, shorter than me, even, I hadn’t noticed until then, and his eyes were squeezed shut, and I had smashed his ankle with the bat, and he smelt faintly of garbage, and I thought, it’s an honest job, someone has to do it, or else it will pile up and stink in the heat, but I couldn’t take the smell any more. It made me feel sick and confused, it lay swathed mummy-like around his body, the filthy bandages from top to toe, around his boots in layer on layer, for ever and always.
    I stood up, put the bat down on the floor beside his smashed leg for everyone to see. And then I called Siri.
    She came down the stairs. She was crying and smiling and was in the same state that I was in behind my one eye. She hooked her arm under mine, around my back, and I said nothing about the pain her arm inflicted as she tried to lift me the way we had seen in films when they helped the wounded soldiers from the trenches, and the war was won, but the battle lost, and she was too light, of course, and I was too heavy, yet we walked through the hall in that fashion, through the door and into the light, and the sun slapped me gently on my face and was still shining from the same blinding white sky as it had early this morning and had stopped in its course on this very special day when something was going to happen that everyone had been waiting for, and now it had.
    In this way, Siri and I walked to the house further up the road, where Jim lived with his mother, there was nowhere else