ah he’d have sickened your hole ~ half-fucking-six he picked us up in the end, half-fucking-six ~ after telling me be in Salthill for half-five when I’d called the number in The Advertiser ~ Erection Specialists Needed ~ well now ~ that’d got me attention ~ labourers wanted to put up a marquee ~ where in Salthill? I’d asked him ~ the bit near the sea, he’d said and then just hung up ~ the bit near the fucking sea and sure I should’ve known then ~ so there was meself and the young lad ~ Murtagh his name was ~ I found out ~ in the end ~ when I read it ~ in the paper ~ waiting for nearly an hour we were ~ walking laps of a flickety streetlamp ~ circling it like a pair a bicycles afraid we’d fall over if we stopped ~ trying to stamp our feet awake in our boots ~ blowing billows of warm breath into the cups of our hands and both dreaming of being back buried deep in our beds ~ not much chat between us at that hour ~ could both tell that it was shaping up to be a cunt of a day ~ something about it ~ the grawness of it maybe ~ and I was only ayting through the fags ~ one after the other ~ nom nom nom ~ nearly quarter of the box gone when the sour cunt finally screeched up in the van ~ a brand new Mercedes Sprinter ~ ah he had no problem spending money on his van~ ah he looked after that right enough ~ and he rolled down the window and I saw his big shlab of a head for the first time ~ red ~ bloated ~ sweating ~ a pure thick-necked prick from Gort and he wearing one of those black Thinsulate caps ~ a brand new Mercedes and the auld prick wouldn’t even buy himself a proper fucking hat ~ I mean that was what we were dealing with ~ and he let off a snarl like an abscess falling out of a badger’s arse ~ come on to fuck ye’re late I told ye be up by the hotel ~ well by fuck I knew what way it was going to be now ~ oh I had his jib well and truly cut then alright ~ but I’d been up out of the scratcher over an hour and I thought I might as well get paid something ~ stop the whole morning being a complete woejus ~ a total meowl altogether ~ so I walked round to the passenger door and opened it ~ and what dropped out ~ only a fucking rolled-up marquee wall ~ hit me right on the fucking knee ~ put back that fucking wall and get in he says ~ and more fools the two of us because that’s just what we did ~ turned out the fucking toffee-pockets kept all the canvases in the front because he’d put all the hardware in the back ~ all the aluminium for the frame and the steel footplates and the fixing pins and the pegs ~ oh the fucking pegs ~ oh gooood Jeesus the fucking pegs ~ and the apexes and sledge hammers ~ actually sledge hammer ~ singular ~ so the whole van filled with every bit of sharpened metal shite you could think of but he still only brought the one hammer ~ well I’m not counting the plastic-headed mallet for tapping in the floor boards ~ so of course he didn’t want to put the soft canvases in the back with all that ~ just in case a loose Stanley blade or a self-tapper ripped a gouge in a wall ~ or worse ~ in a roof ~ now that’d cost him see because the roofs are all special made in Germany ~ have these thick nylon seams that need to be fed into the eye-channels on the roof beams once the marquee frame is standing and then be pulled over from the far side with ropes ~ and if they’re out by even a few mill they won’t pull at all ~ made a shite of my hands more than once trying to pull a four-metre roof some gowl had fed into a twelve-foot bay ~ and they have to be specially fireproofed ~ so basically no one trusts anyone to make them right only the Germans ~ who else but the bloody Germans ~ and of course what the shlab-headeded prick should have doneis pay a joiner to fit out the back of the van ~ properly ~ with boxes to put the canvases in ~ and separate trays to keep all the small stuff ~ all the bolts and the butterfly washers and the spring-pins ~ but he was too cheap ~ so all the canvases were in the front  seat piled up so high he could barely see out the window ~ and that’s the why of how me and the young lad ended up sitting in the back perched up on a screed of aluminium ~  the bolts and screws all just fucked in loose ~ not even in a white plastic mayonnaise bucket  ~ and every time he’d brake I’d get a belt of a bolt or the hook of a purloin would jam sharp into me hole ~ sat in the back of a Sprinter from Salthill to Letterfrack with two ton of untethered metal ~ every fucking lump ~ every bump ~  and there’s some amount of the both once you get out of Spiddal ~ didn’t go direct of course ~ along the N59 ~ just to spite us ~ and unless we got the hands up quick the whole bed of the metal would lift off the floor ~ and us with it ~ and we’d cop a clatter of the roof on our heads ~ before all the aluminium would come smacking back down with a sickening rattle ~ throwing up a cloud of dust that tasted like a nosebleed ~ but not that we could see any of this ~ because it’s pitch black ~ save one chink of light slicing up from the footwell  ~ the same footwell where the young lad Murtagh ended up ~ twice ~ in a tangledy heap when The Ignorance slammed on the brakes ~ and the ear-battering noise ~ every pebble and flake of a stone shooting and smacking against the wheel arches ~ all the bars and the poles shaking ~ shaking until our ears are whining violence across the dark ~ that’s how it went ~ the whole way out past Letterfrack ~ right until the soft and merciful cringle of the van rolling slow over loose chippings ~ chickens I used to think it was on the road signs ~ when I was little ~ beware of loose chickens ~ can you imagine ~ and then the engine cut and we heard him get out and were both waiting ~ but not wanting the door to slide open ~ because even though we were gone feral from being in the back we both knew when the door opened that was it ~ out we’d have to get ~  start pigging around tons of aluminium ~ but sure enough the door slid open with a metal cough ~  a long day’s work clearing its throat ~ and even though it was mizzle-grey out we were still blinded from sitting in the dark so long ~  and we unfurled ourselves ~ a pair of snail’s eyes ~ slithered out over the aluminium ~ then stood half-crooked trying to rub the stiffness out of the small of our backs ~ we were parked in the corner of a basketball court ~ the cracked asphalt playground of some small white-washed primary school ~ and I could tell the young lad was already thinking the same as me ~ which was this ~ where the fuck was the forklift ~ because no forklift meant lifting the entire frame up by hand ~ all twenty bays of it ~ and it’s Röder gear we’re talking here ~ the stuff with the really heavy fixings ~ but before I can think about it too much more auld Shlab-head is off on one again ~ effing and bloody blinding ~ get that fucking stuff out of the back of the van ~but he hasn’t told us where anything is going ~ not there you fucking apes ~ and the best way to do it would have been to lay everything out where it needed to go ~ instead of double-handling it all by just fecking it out of the van into one random pile ~ and then having to sort that fucking random pile out all over again by moving things to where they actually should have just gone in the first place ~ by fuck there’s nothing worse than double-handling on a day-rate and he had us on a day-rate right enough ~ over there you pair of thicks put that fucking apex here ~ and I could feel his eyes ayting into us as we worked~ so even the simplest thing like carrying a poxy-arsed wall bar and I was gone all fumbly~ and that’s why two hours later and we’d done an hour’s work ~ and he was really bulling at this stage ~ losing it~ and he marched over to me and grabbed me hard by the arm ~ can you square a fucking tent ~ I nodded ~ done it many a time ~ and off he stomped to the van and fucked out two tape measures from the front seat ~ I want it squared and fucking pegged by the time I get back ~ and then drove off to fuck knows where ~ and with him gone it got almost pleasant ~ the mizzle started lifting and I could see we were right on the coast ~ right near a long sweeping beach where the sea looked like you could walk about a mile out into it and still only be up to your shins ~ and the breeze was fresh ~ and I started showing the young lad how to square the marquee ~ how to set out the first two footplates by running  an orange string-line down the side of the marquee ~ making sure there was exactly five metres between each one ~ then how to hold both the tapes ~ making sure he was holding the zero end mind ~ to form a  3-4-5 triangle in order to square off the third plate ~ and then how to lay out the rest by making sure to measure from centre-fixing to centre-fixing ~ and finally to start driving in the pegs ~ four into each footplate so it won’t move an inch ~ now when I say pegs I don’t mean thin bits of wire for a tent like you’d bring to a festival ~ no I’m talking iron pegs two-and-a-half foot long ~ with a tread cut into the length of them to bite into the ground ~ big thick iron spikes with wide heads so you can really bury them with the sledge ~ and I started grabbing them up from the rusty pile on the tarmac and as I laid them out by the footplates they seemed to me to come from every genus and family of marquee peg in the world ~ some had diamond heads and some had wide round heads like huge thumb-tacks and others had square heads with a nub in the centre and some even had patterns on the shafts ~ spirals or raffia effects etched into them ~ and who is it that spends time cutting ornate patterns into a lump of iron whose sole purpose in this world is to be battered to shite by a sledgehammer ~ now that right there is a quare kind of love indeed ~ and maybe if we all had a quarter that kind for each other the world would be half-right ~ and where and why and how in the name of Jeesus had fucking Slab Head gathered such a far-flung collection ~ like he was some demented pirate of the seven seas of tent-mongery ~ and there indeed was an odd love inside of him too though none of it was left for us or anything else not made of metal ~ but by fuck it was the fucking pegs where the problems started ~ all eighty-four of the big iron bastards ~ first up that insufferable prick had left us with only the one sledge hammer ~ here we were ~both on a day-rate ~ eighty-four fucking pegs to drive before we could even stop for lunch and only the one sledge between us ~ and even that was a gammy yoke ~ a head that’d been fixed on the cheap by driving down two small wedges of wood in-between the hole in the lump and the top of the handle ~ to stop the fourteen pounds of metal flying off when it swung ~ we hoped ~ but worse it got ~ the first peg sunk down a foot or so easy ~ just two solids smacks with the sledge ~ the tarmac was old and soft as pudding so the peg punched right  through ~ went easy through the compacted layers of hardcourt ~ and we thought then it was going to be a handy one ~ but then nothing ~ frigging nothing ~ not a budge not a peep not a smidgen ~ and we both taking it in turns to burst the peg with all our might ~ but it was not shifting ~ only sinking a few mil each time ~ and the reverberations were kicking back up the hammer and right up my arm ~ rattling my shoulders sharper than a cat’s cock ~ like the ball was going to jump clean out of the socket ~ and it turned out the whole playground was sitting on a bed of solid rock ~ some huge lump of miserable West of Ireland schist or quartzite ~ and be fuck it was to hell or to Connaught now alright ~ and a line of fat crows nesting on the mossy school roof sending caws clattering through our ears ~ and what the tight South Galway prick should have done is paid for a ground survey first ~ then he would have known to bring a pneumatic hammer ~ or better two pneumatic hammers ~ or better again a forklift ~ I’d driven down pegs with a little three-wheeled Moffet before ~ lined it up just right and dropped the forks down with a tap of the paddle ~ now how could a man who runs a marquee company not own a forklift anyway ~ well that right there was all the love he bore us ~ and every other peg the same ~ every single one ~ and because the pegs weren’t going down when we were hitting them they were moving from side to side instead ~ widening out the hard one holes we’d made and then falling off at an angle so it meant hammering them straight was impossible ~ so we had to take turns holding the shafts for each other ~ crouched down ~ one hand grasping the peg as low down as you could get away with ~ your head held back as far the other way as possible ~ holding tight the rusty iron while staring hard at your foot ~ trying to ignore the huge and arcing lump of the sledge cracking down on the peg-head ~ the sparks kicking off it ~ its metallic whine ringing out like a bullet ~ and if someone missed ~ or the wobbly head came off ~ then that was it ~  arm broke ~ worse ~ lying on the ground with a head like a pulped fig ~ and a long way from a hospital we were ~ so that’s how we spent all the morning ~ and half the afternoon ~ alternating between shitting ourselves inside-out for fear of losing our fingers ~ and then flaahing our shoulders arthritic by hammering iron spikes into what might as well have been concrete ~ fat dark blood-blisters welling under our fingers ~ stripped to our waists ~ the sun had well burnt of the mizzle by now ~ eyes stinging ~ sweat dripping from the tip of our noses ~ layers of salty dust caked onto the slopes of our eyes and working so hard we had to smoke entire fags in our mouths ~ as we swung the hammer ~ the ear-splitting rings drowning out the laughter of those fat feathered fuckers sitting up on the lichened roof behind us ~ each peg going down millimetre at a time ~ a millimetre ~ and a millimetre ~ but we got it done ~ by fuck we got it done ~ at it since eight until near two o’clock but every fucking peg bar one sunk all the way down ~ at last all the pegs bet ~ finally finally bet ~ we fell down on the ground caked in blood and sweat and dust ~ neither of us having stopped for a bite to eat ~ only to skull some water ~cup a palm of it onto our face ~ and the young lad pulled a sandwich out of a plastic Dunnes bag ~ and it was then I realised  ~that Slab Head was after driving off with the lunch I’d left in the fucking van ~ ah the poor young lad didn’t know what to do ~ the work we’d just done and he only desperate to horse into his measley sandwich ~ to drink his creamy pint of milk off in one go ~ but fair play to him ~ because he broke me off half the sanger ~ didn’t make too much effort with the ham when it wouldn’t tear first time though ~ and poured a good glunk of milk into my empty water bottle~  and we sat there without speaking ~ chewing ~ looking at the tent we’d squared ~ at the eighty-three pegs we’d bet ~ and then looking out further beyond it all to the haze over the Connemara coast ~ dusted by the sparkling of the high sun on the sea ~ and I started thinking ~ do you know what ~ I was thinking ~ do you know what this isn’t that bad yeah some days are better than others but when you weigh it all up there are worst places to be ~ the breeze blew in and it was fresh and wet ~ and the sun was warm ~ perfect for tanning ~ I felt myself browning like a nut even as I sat there ~ I mean I could be stuck in an office all day ~ or be out there on one of those poxy boats scrounging for a few fish ~I checked my phone ~ we’d only been stopped fifteen minutes and so I turned to the young lad ~ come on, I said ~ come on and we’ll go for a swim ~ and he looked at me and the big daft bastard cracked out his first smile of the whole bloody day ~ the sea was actually deeper than I thought and I was up to my waist soon enough ~ and it was cold too ~ but it was great to feel layers of dirt lift off me ~ to take deep breath ~ duck my head under ~ feel my chest shrink like some huge claw was grabbing me ~ then burst up ~ shake my head to make the grey dust-slime slide out of my nose ~ and when we were finished in the water we sat on the beach ~ free of the casings of our boots ~ feet buried in the coolness of the sand ~ watching the small clippers crawling silently over the horizon ~ the breeze was softly flaying us ~ and I rooted out my last two fags from the side pocket of my heaped-up disk of my Snickers ~ crumpled up the box and handed one out to the young lad ~ he took it gladly ~ sparked up and leaned back on my elbow ~ Why do is Syl such a cunt I said ~ the young lad stiffened ~ the knobbled curve of his spine disappeared into his back as he sat up straight and I knew he had something for me then ~ something worth listening to ~ and turned to me ~ a look on his face like his brain was sliding around tiles inside to unscramble a picture ~ he wasn’t always a prick he said as he lit up his fag ~ I worked for him a few years back ~ he was flying it then ~ thirty people under him ~ five just in the yard ~ but a lad from Donegal started ~ Decky I think his name was ~ and Syl asked him to drill a few drainage holes in a steel gutter ~ the tide had come in a little I leaned forward to save my boots getting wet from a charge of white water rolling up the beach ~ but your man Decky was too lazy to get the drill battery ~ so he decided to just use a nail and a lump hammer ~ and sure the first whack he hit didn’t the nail just fly off ~ and then the hammer bounced back up because of the spring in the steel and plant him square in the face ~ he stopped speaking to smoke some more of his fag ~ the crinkling sound of burning paper ~ the spa I said ~ fucking spa he said ~ knocked out six of his teeth and then he got in such a rage that he fucked the hammer clean through the windscreen of Syl’s van ~ what did Syl do? ~ sacked him ~ on the spot ~ but then Decky sued him for twenty grand ~ I let off a low whistle ~ the young lad nodded ~ and Syl had a few other things like that too ~ another lad he hired took a shite in the corner of a wedding marquee and the bride’s mother stepped right in it ~ Syl had to give them all the money back and more on top ~ and one time some Polish fella went AWOL and Syl found him pulling his plank into a pile of silk lining bags ~ and then the recession came ~ wiped him out altogether ~ no one had money for marquees anymore ~ and there were contractors not paying him so Syl had to sell just about everything ~ even the forklifts ~ and now Syl’s sure we’re all out to fuck him so he tries to fuck us all first ~ he stopped speaking and flicked the smoulderings of his butt awayoff down the beach ~ why are you back with him I said~ the young lad gave me his second goofy smile of the day ~ I’m over to the brother in Perth next week ~ going working in the mines ~ out of this shit hole ~ so I need a few bob ~  and Syl always pays on time ~ even when he was gone to the wall he always paid ~ well he’s still a miserable prick I said ~ sure wouldn’t you be a miserable prick too he said is that all happened to you ~ the little clippers and trawlers were still crawling silently across the water far out in front of us and the sky was now cloudless ~ the blue of a memory of a summer ~ and my skin had gone taught from the evaporating salt water and the bit of the sandwich was sitting nice enough in my stomach ~ and I took my phone out of my pocket ~ quarter to three ~ Erection Specialists? I said ~ well come on then Crocodile Dundee let’s get this marquee sorted for the poor bastard ~ and the young lad smiled for the third time and we both got up and walked back toward the school yard ~ swinging our boots in our hands as we went so that we could enjoy the last few minutes of freedom on our toes ~ when we climbed over the low white-washed wall and back into the yard we saw the van was back ~ and hooked to the back of it ~ front wheels still up the tow bar ~ was an orange forklift ~ a small one ~ a Toyota I reckoned ~ more suited for shunting pallets around warehouses ~ but I could see the gas cylinder on the back just over the counterweight block ~ that’ll do I thought ~ that’ll lift the frame up right enough ~ and I turned and hit the young lad a playful dig in the arm ~ we’ll be home for dinner yet ~ but as we crossed the yard ~ boots still in our hands ~ Syl appeared from round the back of the van ~ and still wearing that fucking hat ~ and he started stalking across the asphalt toward us ~ like he’d just caught us both riding his wife ~ really effing and blinding now ~ worse than ever ~ waving a claw hammer about over his head ~ I’m not paying youse two to go fucking paddling he was yelling ~ youse fucking lazy bollixes ~ but I looked around at the work we’d done ~ at the eighty pegs we’d driven into the cunting Connemara stone with only one poxy sledge ~ it’s because of fuckers like ye I’m gone broke ~ I saw all the blood and sweat I’d left on each of them ~ and the waiting around Salthill for an hour in the grey rain ~ and my lunch that was still in the van ~ that lovely tuna sandwich ~  how I’d got up at five just to make it and now it was gone all soggy and sour and shite ~ because of lazy good-for-nothing hoors like ye ~ and here was Syl still coming towards us ~ still roaring and bawling ~ and waving a hammer ~ calling me a lazy cunt ~and I lost it ~ just lost it ~ whirled my boot by the lace ~ swung it round in a vicious loop ~ and by Christ did I let it fly ~ watched it spiral through the air ~ toe over heel ~ heel over toe ~ straight for Syl’s face ~ and then I watched ~ Syl bob his bloody head ~ and the steel toecap went whizzing past without leaving a mark ~ by now we’d reached first footing of the marquee and he was still coming at us ~ face really purpled in rage ~ hammer cocked in violence over his shoulder ~ and I bent down ~ pulled up the peg I’d used to run off the string line earlier ~ and I’m thinking ah fuck it ~ ah here it is now ~ ah christ I’m going to have to brain this bastard and then do life in the Joy all because Decky from Donegal couldn’t be arsed to use a drill and some other gouger took a shite in a marquee ~ he was right on us ~ hammer raised even higher ~ and I spun back ~ chin over my right shoulder ~ twisted my hips and coiled my stomach ~ and then I ~ lashed the fucking peg around ~ at the full length of my arm ~ feeling it gather its terrible and pendulous momentum ~ and I turned my head back round with it ~ just in time ~ to see ~ that the fucking young lad had come around from my left ~ trying make a grab for Syl’s hammer ~ but Syl had ducked again ~ and so I watched again ~ in silence ~ as the pointed end of the peg ~ sailed right over ~ Syl’s hunched shoulders ~ and caught the young lad ~ flush in the face ~ with a wet slop like a dollop of mortar being dropped on a trowel ~ his fourth and final smile of the day ~ the one I carved across his face ~ with the sharp end ~ of that patterned iron spike ~

it was late the next evening when the ferry left Belfast ~ and it was later again near a week after when I picked up the Indo in a greasy pub in Neasden ~ to read what I most-already knew ~ that Yvonne Murtagh’s youngest son ~ was buried somewhere ~ out in the cold Connemara earth