Aloysius Tempo Read Online Free

there.’
    But the priest would have went bonkers. This was a man who said women were to blame for all the sin in the world, who said nuns were wise only because they knew of their natural shame, who said females carried ‘the devil’s doorbell’ in their knickers, that we were lucky to learn at an early age that women are ‘rich with danger’.
    So I switched my answer from seven to six. And the old goat dropped his head back, went silent and, I don’t know, maybe let the image of six breasts gather some space in his sludged mind.
    You have to wonder what it was for him, you know? Breasts ease, don’t they? They ease and cushion and feed. They engage the senses, don’t they? They make joy, they’re incapable of causing pain. Was that what it was for him? Did he never know a breast in his life? I don’t know.
    Anyway, you wanted an example.
    So he got up, walked to me, took my right hand, my little finger, folded it at its knuckles. He pressed the nail, pushing the finger back into itself, hard as he could. And it was sudden, colossal pain. Pure, sharp pain, something tearing up through the flesh in my arm. A sting that doesn’t stop, a break that stays breaking.
    I know now that’s one of the pressure points, one little drop-a-man trick they teach police, teach bouncers. Everyone goes weak, anyone is all yours, when you bend and press their wee finger like that.
    He goes, ‘You dirty little bastard.’
    He goes, ‘You nasty wee bastard.’
    And I shut my eyes so tight my face hurt. I opened them and saw this blur, saw him cupping and swinging his free hand. He clapped me over the ear so hard he knocked me clean over.
    He always hit ears that way, Father Barry. He always caught air the in his palm, slammed it into your head that way, leaving you deaf and sore for an hour, leaving you with a headache like a brick had hit you. He always knew the best ways to hurt someone with nothing but his own body.
    You get to thinking how, one day, you will turn the tables on a man like that. You get to thinking about reversing the roles, avenging it all. When you’re eleven and he’s making you stand naked in front of him all day and knocking you into bookshelves and trophies, you think, One day I’m going to bash the brains right out of his head and all over the floor .
    But it’s so hard to find a day when you can even look him in the eye. You struggle to find half the feeling you need to not run when he calls you. You’re the opposite of him. You’re the giant when he’s not around, you’re nothing when he’s there.
    You get to thinking that the only thing you can fight a man like that with is time, because you know one day you will be gone, out of there, away from him. And he knew I used to think about that.
    He said to me one time, ‘Months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, seconds, Aloysius. All of those little numbers are in my hands, all of those little facts – do you understand?’
    It’s tough when you have nothing to fight with, when you’re too small or weak or scared. Fighting back is as natural as rain, as natural as stones and trees.
    But when you can’t, the only thing you can do is take it to your dreams, to the only place where you can change things. You can lie down at night and float away to a place where you have what he has, where you can use fear and time against him, where you can reverse and avenge. And night after night I was killing that man.
    You know, it’s a funny thing, one of the funny things about what Irish children were put through by so many holy men and women. The funny thing is you never hear people asking, ‘Why weren’t some of these guys killed?’
    You never hear that.
    No one says, ‘How did all of those fuckers avoid getting strung up, beaten to death or shot in the head?
    ‘How come no abusive priest was nailed to a tree by the balls? How come no freaky nun was tied to a friggin’ bonfire?’
    People want to not look back, they work hard to reach a place where they