Neil McCarthy
The Day I Nearly Killed Donal Reagan
with the Bucket of a JCB
The day I nearly killed Donal Reagan with the bucket of a JCB
had actually started well – a 7am cycle through Myross Wood,
out past Rineen at full tide, trees electric with waking birds,
tractors dieseling along the lanes to a creamery on its last legs;
hedgerows thick with that baited combination of
nettles and blackberries, honeysuckle and briars; a spangle of
spiderwebs glistening in the dew, stitching them all together.
Then and there, the first measure of a real man was the ability to run a loaded
wheelbarrow up a plank of wood into the back of a trailer.
Not easily forgotten are Donal Reagan’s eyes
when the teeth of the bucket of the JCB I was driving
came through the cab window of the digger he
was sitting in. All eighteen years of me trying to prove
I had more to offer the world than a wheelbarrow and a plank.
If I quarry deep enough, I can still find a younger version of myself
in a broken pair of boots, ripped jeans, cut hands, shaking on a bed of
slate; doing his best to drown out the sounds of engines growling,
glass cracking, steel scraping off of steel, listening instead to the
call of a corncrake in the adjacent field announcing his departure.
Peter God
From the off, let me state for the record his name was James.
– How are you today, James?
– Ah sure I´m fine, thanks Peter God.
(Nicknames were nailed to your back where I come from)
James commanded the far corner of the bar like a general
surveying his infantry. Customers came and went, saluting.
Fuckle was another favourite of his.
One day my father took him a live lobster as a thank you for
a job he’d done on a car we had – a death trap. Held together
by bailing twine and Hail Marys.
– Fuckle I do with that? said James furrowing his brow.
Apparently, he waited until we’d driven off, thwacked it
with a block of wood and lobbed it over the sea wall, RIP.
Took us all a few months of James telling us he didn’t have
a Toyota until some tower of hope suggested he meant iota.
Those who laughed weren’t sure who they were laughing at –
Tom Thumb, pint-from-halfway-down-the-barrel, tulip glass;
Cidona Willy, Carlsberg Steve, Noel 5-Day-Forecast;
Mary Brandy-and-ginger-no-fuckin’-ice.
– Twill be fine and dry for the week, James, offered Noel.
– Oh, it will indeed, thanks Peter God!
The unbaptized slipped under the radar, only the click of the
door closing itself alerting us to their departure.
The loud ones, the no-homes-to-go-to crew, patted
themselves down religiously before leaving – sang goodbye a
dozen times, holding onto the door like a windsurfer to his boom –
an invitation to twist their arm, to buy a pint of their company.
– Is it coming or going you are, James?
– I don’t have a Toyota, Mary.
So, will you have one more?- Sure, I will. I will, sure. I will.
Neil McCarthy is a poet from West Cork. His first collection – Stopgap Grace – was published by Salmon Poetry in 2018 and subsequently shortlisted for the Shine Strong Award. He now lives in California.