Born & Bred Read Online Free Page A

in the hospital, when he tried to show that he wasn’t afraid. “The sooner they all kill each other the better, as far as I’m concerned. Besides, it’s got feck-all to do with us.”
    “Maybe you’re right, but did you ever wonder where Danny is getting all his money from? Every time he goes out, he buys things for himself.”
    “He’s probably making it busking.”
    “Are you sure? He’s got nearly two hundred under his mattress.”
    “Good for him. He’s getting great on the guitar and he has a good voice. If only he’d sing something good, like Buddy Holly. I’m sick of all the punk shite he does.”
    “But he can’t be making it all from that.”
    “He’s probably got a few fiddles going—down at the Dandelion—you know? Buying and selling shit. Fair play, I say. Anybody who can make any money in this country is a feckin’ genius.”
    “You don’t think we should be worried?”
    “Not at all. Danny is a good lad at heart. He’d never do anything stupid.”
    But Jerry wasn’t so sure. If Danny was anything like him, he’d get himself into more trouble than he could handle. He was probably involved, somehow. It was the only way he could be making money like that. The Ireland that Jerry’s father had fought for had become a hard place and he and Jacinta hadn’t made it any easier for Danny. He knew what was going on. There were drug dealers everywhere like they didn’t fear anybody.
    But there were those that the drug dealers feared and Jerry knew someone who knew someone who knew them all. They might be interested in helping—for Bart and Nora’s sake if not for Jerry’s. He’d have to convince them, though. He had blotted his copybook with them before.
    *
    Danny lay in his bed, listening to them. He had hardly slept. He didn’t dare. He was haunted by Scully’s bruised and swollen face, and that look in his eyes—like he was just resigned. And afterwards, he almost seemed relieved that all the running and hiding was over, lying by the bole of a tree as his blood trickled from his head and mingled with own piss still dribbling off down the hill.
    Danny retched again but his stomach was empty but for the bile that churned like a knife. It had all seemed like a game up until now, playing the hard chaw. He wasn’t going to be like his father, catholically bowing and scraping to bishops, priests and all those that carried out their will. Beaten down from the beginning, but, in the back of the car, he had prayed like a sinner and made promises into the dark.
    He was ashamed of that. Despite all of his posturing and protestations he was just like the rest of them, a craven Catholic to the core, trapped in the limbo of Purgatory, lost and alone now, betrayed by hubris and delivered to the Devil.
    No one was ever going help him—no one ever had. His granny said she was but she was just doing it so everybody could say what a great woman she was, raising a child at her age. His prayers had never been answered and it was stupid of him to think they might. He was cut off from all that.
    He wished he could go down and tell his parents what happened but they had never been the type of parents that could make things better. Usually they just made things worse. They had never really been parents to him when he was growing up. His father had been in England and his mother was in St. Patricks’ Mental Hospital, even when he was Confirmed. But his granny had taken him to see her, just like she said she would.
    **
    “He gave the little wealth he had,” they used to chant in unison as they approached the front door, almost skipping along the path.
To build a house for fools and mad
And showed by one satiric touch
No Nation wanted it so much
That Kingdom he hath left his debtor
I wish it soon may have a better.
    Granny had taught him that verse when they first started to visit, when Danny was very young. It made it all a bit more normal and she always said that she loved to hear him laugh and sing.