The thing to do is fail but make the effort look genuine. Even so, I risk a clump once I’m in range. My attempted tackle is to one side, making it obvious, even to Griggsy, that he should go the other way. He does but the ball bounces off my shin, and he has to chase it again. He gets one foot on the ball and calls to John. ‘Now you, come on then.’
John refuses. With widened eyes, I silently urge him to do what Griggsy wants. He shakes his head. I’m about to shout at him, when Griggsy relents and dribbles towards him.
The one person John takes notice of is Dad, whose advice on tackling is ‘follow through and you won’t get hurt’. But it can hurt, especially against someone bigger, and if the follow-through contains too much flinch, as it usually does in my case. John shrugs and leans in hard to block the ball. The tackle takes Griggsy’s leg away and sends him sprawling. Silence. Griggsy springs to his feet in a ludicrous attempt to make it look like he’s gone down deliberately. Jojo starts laughing. Griggsy, checks for a smile on my face – not a chance – before dashing over to cuff Jojo across the mouth. Jojo burst into tears.
‘Ah now, Griggsy, de little fellah meant no harm …’ says Michael.
‘You what, fatso?’
Michael has many one-liners for facing down Comanches and other baddies. But this isn’t Jesse James, it’s mental Griggsy. Instead of replying, he holds his chin in the air like Randolph Scott in Colt .45.
Griggsy paces up and down, nodding his head, working out his next move. As he passes Jojo, he yanks the cowboy hat from his head, but the chinstrap holds and pulls him off the wall. He hits the ground hard and stays silent until he realizes he’s not badly hurt and starts screaming.
‘Shuddup you little bastard. Cowboy eh? Well, cop this, Roy Rogers.’
He snatches up the hat in both hands. The tendons in his neck stand out as he snorts up phlegm with such force you’d think he had a muscle inside his forehead. He spits into the hat, throws it on the ground and stamps on it. Forgetting he’s no longer the owner, John dives to rescue it. Griggsy grabs him around the neck.
‘And you … fink you’re an ’ard tackler do ya? Well, this is ’ard.’
He runs John at the wall. I close my eyes until I hear the thud-scrape of his head on the bricks. Griggsy lets go and John wheels round, ready to fight. This startles Griggsy but he recovers and grabs John’s shirt collar, twists it around his fist and shoves it up under his chin.
‘You little shitbag.’
‘Leave him alone, you fucking bully.’ I can’t believe I’ve said this and after one step towards Griggsy, I regret it. He hurls John to the ground and turns to face me. I lose momentum and freeze in the no-man’s land between spontaneous bravery and rising fear.
‘Oh yeah? What’s big brother gonna do then?’
What’s he going to do? Nothing. Anger and courage drain from me as if plugs have been pulled in my ankles. John gets up and shakes his head to tell me to ‘leave it’. This is exactly what I’m going to do. I lift my hands like a cowboy starting to surrender.
Griggsy moves forward. I wait for the first punch, praying that my legs won’t give way before he hits me. The punch doesn’t come. Instead, he drops his fists and takes a penknife from his pocket. He opens it and circles the blade inches from my face. John barges between us, fists clenched. On top of his head, blood is gumming up his blond hair.
Griggsy lowers the knife and steps back sneering, not at John but at me for standing behind my younger brother. Being stabbed couldn’t hurt as much. He makes the quivering arsehole sign by curling and uncurling his fingers. ‘Chicken windy fucker, got your number.’
He has, and I’m close to tears. He swaggers over to pick up our ball and stabs it. The air hisses out and John rushes forward. I grab him and hold tight while we watch a grinning Griggsy plunge the knife in again and again. Then he goes over to Jojo, who is crouching on the kerb.
‘Ere’s a cowboy ’at for ya.’
He moulds the ruined ball into a bowl and jams it on Jojo’s head. Jojo curls up, humiliated but not daring to take it off.
Mrs Johnson appears at her window. Griggsy puts the knife away and says to me as if everything is back to normal. ‘Got any money to borrow me?’
‘No.’
For once, he believes me and I’m not forced to empty my pockets. Instead, he gives me a contemptuous pat on the cheek and bounces off down the street. ‘See ya, windy.’ Before he turns the corner, he snorts again and spits in our direction.
Jojo hurls the squashed ball to the ground, pulls out his guns and fires wildly after Griggsy. And I want to be Audie Murphy, to gallop after him and drag him through the dust at the end of a lasso, before running him out of town.
‘A Comanche if ever I saw one,’ says Michael. He knows no greater insult. Comanches are the lowest of the low; treacherous bastards even attack wagon trains at night.
John gives the remains of our ball a last violent kick down the road and Jojo picks up his soiled cowboy hat.
Michael eases off the wall. ‘Jojo, y’ill need dat disinfectin’. Sure, ye might catch TB, or even vinurial disease.’ Jojo looks at him, then at me, mystified.
Michael strokes the few dark hairs above his lip that he hopes make him look a bit like Richard Boone. ‘Dat bastard deserves a bit of his own Comanche treatment: staked out in de sun, bollick-naked, near an anthill dat I’d be after givin’ a good kickin’.’
I join in. ‘Yeah, balls smeared with honey to get the ants in the mood for something sweet.’
Jojo giggles and our humiliation fades as we imagine ever more painful retribution.
John doesn’t laugh, even when we’re removing Griggsy’s dick with a tomahawk. His revenge isn’t going to be in the Black Hills of Dakota.
Size Matters
‘Go on then,’ says Rooksy, ‘show us.’
Raymond Dunn’s dick was big even when he was a toddler. His nickname is ‘Swole’. It comes from the time he was having a bath with his little cousin who, noticing the difference in sizes, pointed between Raymond’s legs, and said to Mrs Dunn, ‘Look Auntie, it’s all swolled up.’
This remained a private family joke until the day Rooksy saw it during a piss-up-the-wall contest. He claimed it gave Raymond an unfair advantage that should be taken into account when measuring the height of the wet stains. Caught between pride and embarrassment, a flustered Raymond mentioned the story of his cousin in the bath. Rooksy’s growing smile told him that this had been a terrible mistake. Soon, everyone knew about ‘Swole’s snake’, and no one called him Raymond again.
Rooksy, John and I are sitting on Swole’s bed. He’s the only kid we know who has a ‘double’. Swole’s home is an ‘apartment’ rather than a flat. Flats are what we and Peabody tenants live in, although ‘Peabodies’ are posher because they have bathrooms. Our bath is in the kitchen beneath a lift-up board. It doubles as a high table top that we sit around on stools. Inside, the bath is chair-shaped; so there’s no lying back under bubbles as women do in the Camay soap adverts. This is one of three things that would mean luxury to John and me, along with a fridge, so we can drink cold Gold Top milk all year round, and a telephone. We’d like a car most but Dad doesn’t drive.
Swole’s bedroom is above the entrance to the large wood yard that stretches up Morton Hill. We rarely have to call for him by ringing the bell because he sees us first from his window, where he spends a lot of time propped on his elbows and spitting on the timber lorries as they pass through the gates below.
Swole’s bedroom is also his playground. He’s rarely allowed out. His dad doesn’t like