John the Revelator Read Online Free PDF Page A

slyly over the rim of the mug.
    â€˜Sure I remember you used to spray like a hose when I changed your nappy.’
    There was an almost wistful smile playing about her lips. A porridge blob plopped from my mouth into the bowl. I couldn’t tell whether or not this whole routine was some kind of joke. I wasn’t sure she knew herself. She sighed, fingers twisting her hair, and said, ‘John, are you having fantasies? About girls?’
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜Boys?’
    â€˜Maaaa!’
    That came out as a bleat. She raised an eyebrow and smirked.
    â€˜A
sheep?
’
    Whenever my mother suspected something astray, her cure tended to be more painful than the ailment. Like the time she prised a splinter from my hand with a sewing needle sterilised over her lighter. Or when I got a blister on my heel from wearing new shoes and she burst it with her fingernails and sprinkled the tender new skin with salt.
    â€˜Did I ever tell you the story of Labhra Loingseach,’ she said, ‘the king with donkey’s ears? According to the legend, any barber who cut the King Labhra’s hair was put to death afterwards so they couldn’t reveal his secret. But this one barber begged to be spared for the sake of his wife and children. The king took pity on him and agreed to let him live so long as he didn’t breathe a word. The barber agreed, but as the days went by, he was driven mad by the thought of what was under Labhra Loingseach’s hair, so he went out into the woods and threw his arms around a tree and whispered his secret into a knot in the wood. But one of the court musicians asked a tree-cutter to chop the tree down for wood to make a harp, and when he played the harp in the court of the king, a voice rang out: “
Labhra Loingseach’s got donkey’s ears.
” Then all the trees of the forest joined in and the king fled his castle in mortification.’
    She patted the back of my hand.
    â€˜Y’know, secrets have a way of coming out in their own time. So tell me. What’s keeping you up at nights?’
    I couldn’t put up with any more. I told her.
    â€˜I have bad dreams sometimes, that’s all.’
    She blinked. That’s all she did. Her face zoomed in so close I could smell the smoke on her breath.
    â€˜About what?’
    I shook my head and lifted spoonfuls of cold slop and let them gloop into the bowl.
    â€˜Nothing. Just stupid stuff.’
    My mother’s eyes blazed across the room. They took in the fire, the coal bucket, the sacred-heart lamp, Haircut Charlie. They peered through the window at the trees outside. And they lit on the television set on the counter.
    â€˜That fecken thing,’ she said, her face stony with resolve. ‘The devil’s teat.’
    I had no idea what she was on about.
    She crossed the kitchen, yanked the plug from the socket, grappled the television off the counter and wobbled across the floor.
    â€˜Open the door,’ she grunted.
    â€˜What are you doing?’
    â€˜What I should’ve done long ago. Now open the door and do as you’re bid.’
    I got up and pulled the door open wide. She staggered outside and set the television down on the front path, the flex coiled on the ground like a three-pronged tail.
    â€˜I’m selling that thing. And no more about it.’
    She made good on her threat. Later that afternoon, Har Farrell came to collect it. Money changed hands. But it didn’t cure me of the dreams.

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    The church steeple looms over the village of Kilcody, God’s lightning rod. The old crow’s claws are clamped to the weathervane at its summit. He prances about, a child doing the wee-wee dance, ruffles the black boa of his feathers and glowers at the people below as they shuffle through the chapel arch.
    A gust rotates the weathervane slowly through four points of the compass. West across The Holla, the mountains stand shoulder to shoulder like ogre