Monday morning we poured into our new classroom, and we waited for our new teacher. My heart missed a beat as Ching sailed into the room and a deafening numbness filled my head. I was not alone as jaws dropped together in a silent plea to God who had long since flown away. Larry shot me a look that said, "Easy, Barry, easy." I took a deep breath and held myself but it was not all down hill yet, not this week anyway.

That Thursday, Ching brought us to the recreation hall for music lessons. There was a stage at one end where sometimes plays were performed. Today, we would get a real drama with no actors.

Tone-deaf Ching, who also had the added handicap of not being able to play a referee's whistle let alone a tin one, tried his hand as our conductor. We played our instruments out of tune and off-key and he didn't know the difference and come to think of it, neither did we. We pulled and dragged at the squeeze boxes, blew into a few tin-whistles, and sucked on a few mouth organs, and Ching thought we were great, but he was about to get a lesson that he would never forget and it was the real music to my ears. A boy about sixteen years old entered the building from the opposite end. His nickname was PaMa and I never knew how he got that label or ever know his real name, nobody did. This only added to his persona and dangerous reputation.

PaMa was a boy who exuded a certain menace. His very quietness was threatening, and left alone I would not know he was there. But Ching was like an ankle biting pup who did not recognize size or danger when he saw it as he turned on PaMa, demanding to know why he was walking around the place and not washing floors or cleaning toilets. The boy of few words said nothing. He was on the verge of being released from prison anyway and simply did not give a flying fiddlers fuck.

Ching took his silence as insolence and demanded that he hold out his hand, then delivered several crushing blows from his leather weapon onto the boy's open palm. PaMa did not flinch, nor move, or give emotion, he just looked like a tightly wound spring ready to snap. When the last blow echoed in the hall it was over for Ching for Pa Ma had indeed snapped. He didn't show it and Ching didn't know it, and he just simply walked out of the building. While he was gone music lessons began again with a now smug conductor. Several minutes later we spotted PaMa coming through again - only this time he was armed with a hurling stick, a lethal weapon if used with that intent. Ching noticed our excited look and turned around to see what had caught our attention and it was all a little too late as PaMa swung at him with the hurley from below the stage. Ching pulled back and arched his body to escape the first blow, but by then PaMa was on the stage in front of him delivering the second with lightning speed, catching him with bone-shattering ferocity. Ching doubled over, eyes tightly shut in agony as PaMa delivered his final strike to the back of his head sending this circus oddity into a dream world where he broke bread with other despots. PaMa then tossed the hurley aside, casually walking out of the hall, out of the prison, and into legend. He was never seen nor heard from again.

In the meantime Ching Chong remained motionless on the ground while we were in the same state standing up. Among the low whispering, I stood there looking at him joined in a form of telepathy with the other boys praying that he would just die. When he finally came too, he tried to hide his wounded pride and a few broken bones by telling us he was only "shamming." It was a word we had learned that morning meaning pretending or letting on and it didn't fool us. We thought he was lying, over the next few days we knew he was. Ching had suffered three broken rib and a concussion, and learned nothing from the experience. After beating up a few seven year old kids to get his confidence back, he was soon himself again and spreading his usual terror around the prison. Around that time too, voices from the past came to remind me that I had one, but only turned out be just shadows and light on a clear day.

On that day when my father phoned the prison I remember the sun high in the sky, and at day's end I watched it settle down in Galway Bay. Like a great eye that saw everything, that same sun had been following the shadow of my father over the years in London, and was often his only companion. It followed to where he trudged through a lifetime of smoke-filled pubs full of other men like him of hidden pain, going home to one roomed cells in boarding houses that they called home. The moon stalked him at night and settled over his dreams, hopes and fears along with memories of loving parents and almost none of his children. The next day his world would turn and he would have to face it all over again.

That same moon had already set for my grandmother in the last few weeks of 1965, and my grandfather in the first few weeks of 1966. She had died from a heart attack and he of a broken one, and both believing before they died that their son, Michael, and their grandchildren were one happy family in England. I was only three small counties away and never knew of their passing nor of the three visits by my father to see them. One to borrow money from them and the other two to help bury them. I still would not know this, even as this man calling himself my father now sought to contact me to help ease his guilt-ridden conscience and past which he still denied me for he did not tell me about the only real parents I had ever known. He brought along his alibi, my mother, a drink to steady his voice, and kept several hundred miles of land buffered by the Irish sea to hide his shame.

That alibi, my mother, continued to lead a double life, the one that was real and the other in her head, though it did bring my parents together on that day to make that one phone call to the prison. Brother Hourigan was more excited about it than we were when he sent for Michael and me as we played football in the school yard.

Both of us ended up huddling together, cradling the phone in the small booth of Hourigan's office, the closest we had been in almost two years in every way.

My mother got things going and said, "Hi Barry and Michael, this is your mother." There was a long pause as we looked to Hourigan for guidance and got none. Then our father came on the phone, voice slurred, more subdued and unsure, saying pretty much the same thing, followed by an even more awkward silence. He then tried to say something else but his voice faded into the background as our mother took over again.

"I hope you are been good for the nice Brothers." Michael still said nothing looking unsure as to whether these voices were of our parents or what that even really meant, and I was less sure. In a phone booth with Hourigan listening to every word, there was no space and even less to say. In the end I just said, "yes". Between the two of us, I had spoken one word to our parents in almost six years and perhaps it was more than they deserved. We were both glad when Hourigan took the phone out of our hands to say our good-byes and dropped it into its cradle with a feeling of finality. I wasn't sure whether this was a good or bad thing.

The whole episode had lasted only a few minutes and they never phoned again.

On the way back to the yard, Michael stopped in his tracks to remind me of something and said, "Those people on the phone, they are not my parents", then he tightened his lips and took off running to rejoin the game.

I was back on my team and wondering what had all that been about. The phone call was more of an interruption and meant little to me, but then I probably would be the last to know. As Michael and I played on opposite sides of the match that day, it was symbolic in a way for we had already become so different, moving in ever widening circles with little in common except our blood, both changing fast in the world around us.

Either Protestants had taken over the country or the atheists had, for changes kept on coming in the prison. In reality I think it was Brother Hourigan doing most of it, at least inside these walls, pressing ahead with what he thought was radical reform. We no longer had to eat second-hand or green-molded bread, but now were given sliced pan loaves, and instead of the daily diet of porridge we had corn flakes every other day. The local cinema owners outside the prison decided we could go and watch their films, but at a separate screening so as not to mix or contaminate good people. Well, at least it was a start. Soccer could be played in the concrete yard but not on the green hallowed turf of the playing fields.

It was a game pretty much banned and despised by any God-fearing English-hating Catholic and it also helped to be Irish. On the big screen Sean Connery was James Bond and he was in bed with beautiful women, and hinted it might be fun with your clothes off and the lights on. The old road was rapidly fading. Even the old prison chaplain had left or retired and was replaced by a younger and more vibrant one, named Fr. McLoughlan.

This new priest was subtle in his wish for change and against the Brothers way of doing things. His first action was to cancel the daily mass, except on Sunday, his second was to organize some outings like an excursion bus to Connemara or other scenic spots. The third was to introduce hybrid hymns and ballads with a touch of Bob Dylan to Sunday mass with more up to date lyrics. "The times they are a Changing," and indeed they were, a little anyway and yet still, some things got worse for Ching was never too far away.

After class one evening, Ching asked me to stay back to clean up the classroom and that's where it began and not for the only time"¦. Where do you begin or end to write about a scene where a man masturbates behind your back while breathing heavy as he fondles you.

You have not been beaten which by now was by now routine. You have not been hurt, which was a blessing. And you have not bled, or been cut, but have been violated but you don't know it yet, and years later you realize how lucky you really, really were. I didn't need Ching to remind me not to tell anyone or for it to be, "our little secret." An instinctive feeling in me felt something wrong had happened here and it would take a few years before I knew it to be true and thirty years before I could even speak about it. Back then, with the daily threat of violence and put downs, it became the lesser of three evils and I was unable to tell the difference.

It was to be a love/hate relationship on the behalf of Ching Chong and all suppressed hate on the part of me, for this "brother," a man so unable to love that he loved to hate. He was so full of guilt and confusion over his sexual desires that mercifully it had not reached full perversion scale yet. That made me the object not only of blame but of many physical beatings. My senses were honed and sharpened by extraordinary situations, giving me a heightened awareness of imminent dangers. Problem being, I had the fright, and could not take flight. Ching Chong in the end gave up pretenses of even an excuse and would just beat me anyway. Each day saw me sinking deeper into a cavern of fear and against character as I became very withdrawn and sullen. Every school day was a nightmare, every morning fearful apprehension, every evening I prayed that tomorrow would not come. I gave up trying to force down "breakfast" every morning. This came after too many times kneeling over toilet bowls, and it became easier just to have an empty stomach. Each Friday just after class, every hour was counted and savored that ran all the way until Sunday evening, then started in reverse where each minute was dreaded as they slipped through my fingers at the thought of Ching and nowhere to run. But at least Christmas was getting closer and a two-week break from him would soon come. In the meantime, I kept my eye on the clock on the wall beating time, and that thermometer below it gave me a lot of day dreams and wild imaginings. How would I do it, and could I do it and get away with it? I could not imagine that he would be missed, everything else I could.

The weeks turned slowly and each month a small victory and at last Christmas came.

It would turn out to be a great one and I was with a new family, the wonderful Jennings from Athenry, Co. Galway.

They were a warm and simple living couple with five children, four boys and a girl.

Mr. and Mrs. Jennings were a delight to be with and a little eccentric. She was late middle aged, with dyed jet-black hair with not even a gray hair left to take the edge off the very obvious camouflage. It was kept in a permanent beehive hair style and I often wondered if some nocturnal animal lived up there inside it. Mr. Jennings was almost retired from his postman job, and it was just as well he had a day job with a pension for he would never have made it as a farmer. He looked as kind as he was. They had a small farm of about twenty acres; it was run more as a nature reserve than a farm except Mr. Jennings didn't know it. If a sheep died, he cried, if it went lame, he became depressed at the sheeps' distress. He had one cow called Blaithlin that had given up her milk years ago, was blind in one eye, and had a permanent limp with at least fifteen summers behind her. In a farm inventory she would have been classed as a "tired and worn-out animal," but she was loved here. In the evenings when Blaithin was chewing the cud or munching on plentiful hay, Mr. Jennings would whistle across the field at her, a bell ringer telling her that there was dry straw and supper served. He never had to whistle twice.

Their children ranged in age from five years to twenty-five. The youngest was John, and Frances, then Stephen, Maureen, and lastly Thomas, who was the oldest. John and Frances were still at home, while the others were at college, coming and going. Their daughter, Maureen, came home for the weekends and I thought she was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen and could hardly keep my eyes off her. I hoped she would not notice me looking and was glad when all the rest of the family came for Christmas to at least distract me from her.

I hung around with Frances most of the time as we were about the same age. We were always looking for a new place to explore, when one day we walked up to a long since abandoned house set way back from the main road about a mile away from the farm. Francis said it was haunted.

The front door creaked open to help discourage us but our curiosity won out. As I stood inside its kitchen, I could not help feeling that the people who once lived here were not too far away. It seemed they had just walked out the door for a while and would be back soon. But they would never be back for they had joined the great exodus of the 1950's from Ireland. All that was left here now was their fingerprints with their habits and their rituals caught in a visual freeze frame.

Yellowed magazines and newspapers lay sprawled on the kitchen table, dried and discoloured tea leaves lay in a tea caddie, a calender hung off angle with the year 1957 stuck on the month of march. A crucifix lay above the sink atop an ornamental plate that said 'protect our home and keep us safe in the bosom of the Lord.' In the sink, plates lay with green molded rusty knives and forks, and dried out soap was at the ready beside them.

The bedrooms still had their mattresses, with sheets and blankets still giving some covering.

An old decayed and woodworm cabinet stood in the hall, a mirror beside it to witness its sad decline and dust covering it to help hide it all away. In the cabinet drawers lay a plastic necklace, a comb, and an old snowed photograph of a baby lopsided in a fragile frame. By the frame lay a baby pacifier. At that moment I felt the shivers and told Francis that I wanted to go. I felt an overwhelming sense of grief in this place or else it had stirred an unconscious memory within me. Whatever it was, I wanted out. The freshness of the wind outside was more than a breath of fresh air as it swept away those feelings of grief only moments ago.

The day after Christmas, Francis and I decided to make a few shillings. There was an old tradition held on this day, Boxing Day, or sometimes called St. Stephen's Day, of children going from house to house that tried to play a tune or murder a song. Hopefully some neighbor fueled by the spirit of Christmas and had just watched "Scrooge" on the telly, would drop a few coins into our deep pockets.

That day I also used up another one of my nine lives and all because of a horse. Frances and I had just come from a happy house where a couple and their three sons lived. The father of the home was a big warm man with a smile so wide that it had painted deep crow's feet on his eyes that made them dance with a sense of fun. He asked us to play a tune. Well, that's what we were there for. With me on the accordion and Francis on the tin whistle we made a certain sound that resembled crying. It was followed by an awkward silence and then relief for different reasons as the big man wobbled with laughter. Before going, he impressed us when he thrust a ten-shilling note into my pocket. He shook his head and waved at our leaving with a knowing look as if he had been conned again while we didn't think we were that bad. We did not care anyway for any pride we had left was already bought and his money was now firmly in my right pocket. This was the last house of the day to visit and as Francis and I headed home, several fields lay ahead in the distance and in one of them, there was a tone-deaf horse that carried very little appreciation for music.

As we neared him, I had decided to play him a tune on the accordion hoping for a more appreciative audience than the farmer, but the horse became suddenly hyper and started to jump up and down grunting loudly. Not being too familiar with horse body language, I couldn't tell whether he liked the music or not, but vanity won out and I decided he did and then belted out another bar or two. "Have a dance for yourself and Happy Christmas", I thought to myself with a bit of sarcasm. The horse had enough and bolted in my direction with fire in his nostrils. I was a fast learner and knew well enough now that he certainly was not a music lover and made a beeline for a water filled ditch running along a high barbed wire fence. Francis had read the situation faster than me and was already over the fence and breaking into a run.

With the horse bearing down on me with thunderous hoofs supporting over a thousand pounds of muscle that was now ripping up the grass, I had a hard time holding onto my pee and an even harder one trying to hold onto the accordion. I tried to jump the ditch but instead fell in and scrambled up the other side. The horse had braked to a stop and seemed to be weighing up its options whether to jump in after me or just enjoy the show. Still alive, I climbed the wire fence and started to come down the other side but my feet got tangled and I lost my balance, flipping me upside-down. The only thing that kept me from hitting the ground was because the wire had me impaled on the fence post and was bedded deep inside of my right thigh just above the knee. Every slight movement drove the barbed steel further into and along my leg, the blood dripping and spurting over my face. The horse turned out to have a sense of humour by nodding approvingly up and down. With all my might and full lung capacity, I screamed as hard as I could, "Francis," followed by a more pleading one of "help." At last, he stopped running in the wrong direction and gently managed to lift me off the fence.

I was bleeding badly. I limped and stumbled the rest of the way home, leaning on Francis for support, a sorry sight indeed and an even sorrier one when his parents saw me and became very upset. Mrs. Jennings made a bandage and bound it tightly above the knee and had my leg elevated, while Mr. Jennings served me tea and sympathy. Neither of them fetched a doctor or brought me to a hospital believing they might get into trouble for what happened. They led uncomplicated lives with a country side innocence and instead prayed I would make a full recovery. They were answered and in little time the permanent leg markings would make for a great story and a reminder of nice people.

The leg was healing well and forming nice scars by the New Year. As one scar was healing, a deeper more hidden one was opening up. The now routine anxiety of meeting Ching Chong again gnawed at me and within four days into 1967, the Jennings returned me to the school. Mr. Jennings, before saying goodbye asked me how the leg was, but I think he was really trying to say, "please don't tell anyone about it." He didn't need to ask. This was the last thing on my mind, but it would leave him afraid to take me out again and I was not able to beg him to. I never saw this lovely family again, except for Maureen.

Years later, at a local dance I ran into her. I was seventeen, looking older, and she was twenty-three, looking younger. I asked her out on a date not recognizing who she was, but she had not forgotten my face. I was not able to coax her to go out with a younger man but we had a good laugh anyway, and if she's reading this I forgot to tell her that she has great legs.

While I was away two new Christian Brothers had arrived here over the Christmas period that were polar opposites of each other, Brother McGettigan and Brother Grant. They were there to meet me when I arrived back.  Brother McGettigan was a Dubliner through and through which meant all the elements of a razor-sharp wit and good humor. He was about twenty five years old, of average build with a not so average nose, so we named him "Roman Nose." McGettigan could play chopsticks on the piano but not much else and he laughed like a braying donkey.

Well, that would send us into hysterics but we were careful not to let him know it. He was fair, sympathetic, and an all-round decent man, and everyone liked him except for his fellow Brothers. That alone would make for interesting times.

His nemesis, Brother Grant, was Ching with brains and a man that I always felt in turmoil with who he was, where he was, and what he was doing. He had a prominent false front tooth separated from the rest that was attached to a false gum that would fall out of line whenever he got excited. Overall he was a man composed of bits and pieces, molecules in constant conflict that made him a dangerous contradiction. He was in his early thirties and could only be nicknamed, Gap Tooth.

Grant came to teach sixth class in the room next to ours. With only a thin wooden partition separating us, we could hear everything. The first thing I noticed was there seemed to be a lot less screaming going on in there, and even began to look forward to being in his class. Even more so when he barged his way into our classroom one day to stop Ching dishing out yet another beating. The sobbing cries of the boy under Ching's attack was too much even for Grant, and that day the best of him would overcome the worst of him. All too often it was the other way round. His delicate balancing act was to give the image of fairness and reconciliation that sometimes could be true, while covering up the fact that he was a sadist, a reluctant paedophile and a closet heterosexual. Like Ching, he had a warped idea of celibacy. Years later he came out of the closet and tried his hand at marriage. Unlike Ching, who never really disguised his identity, Grant's true self crept out slowly. More like a crocodile, camouflaged and slow moving until the prey is near enough for a lightening attack.

The first glimpse of the man behind the dog collar was revealed when he attacked my friend, Johnny Doran.

Johnny had some minor dust up with another kid and unfortunately for him, Grant had some twisted affections for this boy and intended to extract revenge on his behalf. He way laid Johnny on a Saturday night after our weekly shower. Johnny was a little ahead of me with the two of us being the last ones leaving the shower stalls, and was making his way to the top of the stairs leading to the dorms when he was taken by surprise and attacked by Grant. Beneath the black cloth of Grant's robe, he produced a three-foot long hard plastic hose and beat Johnny with incredible savagery across his exposed back, stomach, and legs.

With only a small towel as his only protection covering his naked body, his cries bounced off the stairwell walls joining him as one in a chorus of agonising screams. Blood oozed from broken skin as Johnny cowered on bended knee, losing his towel under the onslaught. Grant slashed away unmoved, driven by sexual sadism and an inner hate of what he had become. I hid beneath the stairs, not sure was I next, as no reason was needed to be beaten around here.

Eventually, the sadist tired and Johnny fell to the floor semi-conscious crying for a mother he never knew. He was dragged naked to his bed by his friends while I was still in hiding. I watched Grant brush past me, wearing his half smile of guilt and pleasure. This was my first close encounter with this monster and I was about to have a closer one only two Saturdays later, only this time I almost became the victim.

That Saturday, while all the boys were marched up the road to watch a film in the local cinema, I was ordered to be left behind to answer the main door of the Brothers quarters. A carton of cigarettes arrived for their smoking pleasure and to test my sense of danger and dare I say, honesty. I easily failed the latter and decided to take a packet while leaving the brown paper wrapping and string seemingly untouched to give the impression that the carton had come shortchanged. My plan only looked good to me though, because Grant quickly decided I was the only suspect. He found me in the recreation hall that evening and accused me of stealing them. I denied point-blank that it was me and offered that they probably came a packet short. To fatten up the story, I added that I had left the front door area several times while leaving the carton on a window sill, suggesting anybody could have done this. In a last attempt to throw him off the scent, I showed him the inside of my pockets in a great show of indignation and asked that he search me. It was now a game of deadly bluff and there were no cards left to play. I had been running and playing around just before he confronted me, and had worked up a sweat with blushing cheeks that hid my guilty look. The packet was inside my right sock pressed against my leg, its touch accelerating my heartbeat and burning my skin with fear. Grant's searching looks didn't convert into action yet and reluctantly left me alone for a short time, all the while trying to keep me in his gun sights as I played with my friends. At the first opportunity I headed for the toilets to flush away the evidence.

As I stood in one of the toilets among the row of cubicles, the first flush looked hopeful as the cigarette packet disappeared in a swirl of bubbled energy but then came back intact. My heart missed a beat and after a long minute I tried again. It reappeared once more and I could feel my head going numb. To add to my mounting fear, I could now hear the other cubicle doors being kicked in with brute force and Grant shouting, "Come out, Clifford!" I quickly undid my trousers and underpants and sat on the toilet and braced myself for the inevitable, then the door came crashing down almost hitting me in the face. I decided that offense would be the best way forward and stood up half-naked with a look of shock and pleaded, "Look, I didn't take them," in my best outraged look. I felt my voice was betraying me for it had been reduced to a low whisper and I was all out of fight for the guaranteed beating would have been easier. All he had to do now was push me aside and look into the toilet bowl and see the evidence. Tense seconds passed until a resigned sigh exited Grant's teeth.

"Clifford, you will never amount to anything and the long acre will be for you," he hissed, and threw a last parting stare before he walked off defeated.

'The long acre' was the piece of grass that sides with any road which meant that I would be a 'hobo' or homeless person that would amount to nothing with the open road as my bed. The rebuke stung long afterwards, even years, for some strange reason. Words to children really do hurt the most and can inspire or destroy. Then I really did go to the toilet.

Fear and tension added to the weight of it as a great relief passed over my body and finally sent the stubborn cigarettes to their watery grave. A pound or so lighter and a final flush delivered with a smile, I left the building on happy but unsteady   THE MEANING OF LIFE AND A DOG "Who did this?" John Wayne asked his friend who was dying with two bullet holes in his back. After a little last speech about how much their friendship meant to him, and of course confirming who it was that shot him, his friend died on cue. John then rode off into the sunset and screen history to find his killer and that was that. That was death on the screen and it had not touched me in reality, even when I was sick in the hospital I had not understood then what it was. Now, its understanding came knocking on my door for the first time, and it could not have happened to a nicer man.

Mr. Heneghan was employed as the prison shoemaker. In his workshop he didn't stop at making shoes; he was also a devoted craftsman in the making of leather weapons to be used against us that would tear our skin and break our bones. His creations were about a foot long, about an inch thick with stitching of metal studs along its borders, hand curved, lovingly made, and individually crafted for each Brother to suit the size of his sadistic urges.

This troll wanted to be like them as well. If we passed him in the company of a Brother, Heneghan's voice would rise and bark with some remark about our appearance on just how low and pathetic we really were. This made him feel that he was breaking wind as an equal among them. His laughing hyena voice would stay with many a boy as they cowered under his attacks. Heneghan was a gaunt and stringy fellow at sixty years old, who smoked too much, laughed too little, and he was about to find out that it would all be over too soon. It all started one night at his home, just a couple of doors away from the prison, where he suffered his first heart attack. This was a surprise to us for we did not know he had a heart.

When the news reached the Brothers, it was as if one of their own suffered one. We were roused out of our beds in the wee hours of the morning to attend church and pray for him to recover. Mixed emotions weaved their way through us during seemingly endless decades of the rosary and other repetitions. Some prayed with relief that we would not be seeing him again, the very young prayed that he would just die quickly so that they could go back to bed, the more kinder ones prayed that he would burn in hell. This was a bit of a stretch because most of us did not understand the journey of how to got there. What we did know was that, according to the Brothers, most things we did were a sin anyway which guaranteed our seats in it, but you had to die first. This was indeed confusing, because weren't we already in hell? Our prayers for Heneghan for the most part were heard for he died a few weeks later. I was not sure that we would not get a beating out of it because I think the Brothers thought our praying was a bit suspect anyway.

Death was not finished around here yet. Only hours after Heneghans passing and only feet away from his front door, the grim reaper came knocking again looking for more blood and got it in buckets. That night, the crash of twisted metal, fumes, fire and death, jolted me awake with it's terrible roar on the street below from where the dormitories were.

In the silence that followed, four faces we could barely see lay in the ruins of steel and rubble, their spirits curling upwards with the charred smoke. The next morning, what was left of them, was washed away by the rains and the public road sweeper. This was troubling for me as I had believed everything had a sort of never ending life to it. Those of us who looked out the window that night at the carnage and its post mortem, with people running in every which way with blankets and prayers, took away many different messages. For me now, I was just grateful to be simply alive, yet, the crash victims were people I did not know and the shoemaker one I didn't even like. The tragedy of death could only come hard for me when it was someone I knew and loved, and that's when Rosy, the prison mascot and beloved pet, had her days numbered.

Rosy, forty pounds of loyalty, love and cuddles had not been seen for days. Her habits made her quickly missed for they rarely changed. Her food had piled up in her bowl and had fattened a few rats and mice instead. She eventually arrived back in the prison one evening, badly cut from barbed wire that carried disease to open infected cuts that promised relief only in death. The Brothers thought it was cheaper to kill her than treat her. Delivering release would be a shotgun blast that rang out from the farm area. Being such an unfamiliar sound to us, it stopped most boys in the recreation yard. Everyone went quiet as they looked in the direction of the farm buildings and waited, craning their necks to the silence. Long seconds stretched into longer minutes that were suddenly broken by Rosy as she trotted in our direction bleeding badly from the lead pellets that had shattered her hind leg. Her look was one of fading hope and resignation as a three-piece-suit with a beard was bearing down on her fast.

She limped to her last place in refuge of a corner near the entrance of the mess hall and laid down shivering and timid, and waiting for the rubber stamp of death to a life already finished. The second blast rang out only inches from her head and sent her to doggie heaven where only the good doggies go. The silence was oppressive as children could not hold back any more defiant tears from daily cruelty at the sight of the bleeding, lead-ridden, lifeless body of Rosy who left her last paw prints in a trail of blood. For a long time she lay there until Gaynor at last arrived with her hearse, a wheelbarrow, to bury her somewhere. I fretted when he handled her too roughly and as the hearse creaked past me, I felt her spirit passed me too. The energy that I knew and loved, and something that I was a part of had moved on to another place. Would she leave me a reminder of her, I wondered, and apologized silently for not giving her more of my time and for having taken her too much for granted, and so did we all. She had been so alive, so loving, so giving, with that look in her eyes that made me wonder whether she was happy or sad, and I knew this look in every child's face around here.

Either it was my sometimes loneliness or the cruelty of her death, but Rosy would help me believe that the ending of life was not an end in itself but a continuation of something else. A force moving and influencing gently all the time that was sometimes called a sixth sense. I was not done telling her I was sorry for several weeks to come and often would whisper to her before I fell asleep when it all began. A strange event that happened one night and to this day, I can offer no explanation. One of my wishes in life is to meet again that force that moved me like no other. At the time I thought had Rosy came to lend a hand, but it might also have been some far off ancestor whose partial DNA still coursed through my veins. Whatever it was that came, I believe it was not of this world, and it all started because of a race that I would win against all odds, helped by an unseen force that I have yet to understand.

I always tried to avoid exposure to my athletic inabilities and was happy enough to leave it that way, until one evening when Grant announced that the next day a race would be held for everyone in a free-for-all from the age of seven to sixteen. This race was to be run over two football pitches and back, no categories, no separation, just an all-out adrenaline fueled run. That night I felt someone had awoken me at around two in the morning, but there was no one there, at least none that I could see. When I cleared my eyes I was filled with a strange sensation, a feeling of invincibility and detachment all rolled into one was washing over me. The next day throughout class, I knew I was going to win and knew absolutely it to be so.

That evening, as we all togged out for the race, my certainty was such that I wondered why the rest of the boys even bothered to change. Did they not know that I was going to win? Two hundred of us jostled for a place in the lineup looking towards Grant to give the word, when the whistle blew. I took off like a gazelle quickly pulling away from the pack. The other boys surprise at my little chubby body churning dirt in front of them only slowed them further with the sight of it. My legs were on fire and nothing was going to put them out and I was beyond the pain barrier. By the time I rounded back I was a quarter field ahead. When the race had ended I had beaten the best of the bunch by a half field and I still had plenty left in the tank. Bodies fell around me shocked, exhausted, and bewildered. It even prompted Grant to give a special mention that even those of extremely limited athletic ability, like me, can achieve great success. But I may be giving him too much credit here for he probably meant to say, "lucky fat boy." But, I'll settle for the former plaudit. Then just like magic, the strange sensation left me that evening and I returned to form, a plumpish armchair sports kid.

Over time in the school, the event went from fact to fiction. One look at my waddling gait gave a lie to the truth of the legend. But it was real and left me with a lifetime curiosity as to what happened and hope that someday I can recapture that sensation again in a more permanent way. Thereafter, it was one itch I couldn't scratch and I would never feel completely alone again because of it.

One Sunday, we were all assembled in the recreation hall. On the stage stood one table and a tape recorder. One of those big clunky old fashioned ones with the large reels.

McGettigan turned it on with a smile enjoying our anticipation. After a few beeps and crackles, the unmistakable sound of Devaney came over the hall. He mentioned a few of our names including Larry Sullivan and hoped that he was behaving himself. Then he told us about life on the other side of the world and ended his sorry with a warning.

"Out here in Africa boys, its very hot and a lot of snakes about. I keep a hurley under my bed just in case. I miss you all and hope to see you soon." And just like the TV show "This is Your life," a few seconds later in walked the real Devaney to great applause for he had been sorely missed. The old rhino was back and many of us gathered round him as if he was a long lost favourite uncle, and also because of the munchies he always kept with him and was now throwing around again like confetti. It was business as usual and he was also just in time too to save Ching from a severe beating.

Another, soon to be sixteen-year-old, called John , had some row with Ching, (There was none left that had not). Only this time Ching, looking for an edge, decided to ambush the boy.

Every evening at about 5:30 p.m., we had to attend the second religious service of the day, a fifteen to twenty minutes' recitation of prayers with supper to follow. As we made our way out of the first floor church, all of us scrambled down the stairs heading for the mess hall directly below, and at the bottom there was Ching. He was kitted out for ambush, replete with leather gloves that gripped a strap that was being carried by a face that carried little emotion and a lot of determination. It was a question of who was more determined for John had already developed a naturally muscular and strong physique beyond his years and a will that was stronger. He pushed several boys out of the way, including me, when he saw Ching at the bottom of the stairs. From about the last four steps down, he launched himself into the air and landed a perfect head butt on a now cowering Ching Chong, who simply was taken unprepared by the "Flying John." His nose opened up like an over-ripened tomato with puss and blood spilling out of a face of poison and moral decay. John didn't break rhythm as a flurry of punches delivered with both hands left Ching defying gravity hanging onto a rail that was not there. He would not fall over even though his body had gone limp. A thin smile had just crossed my lips and was about to break into a laugh when suddenly, and in the nick of time for Ching, Brother Devaney stepped in to save him. He placed his eighteen stone, 6'0" tall frame between Ching and the still punching John, and gently but firmly held John while coaxing him to calm down. Devaney had long won respect from all of us and in deference to him, John, after taking a few more ambitious swipes at Ching, stopped. The little man hid behind the big man as we all poured past him and it was really the beginning of the end of him around here, only a spent force was left. He had already been challenged by Grant because of his violence and now by Devaney, and he began to slowly implode.

The air supply for his hatred had been slowly cut off, and anything over five foot tall was proving more than a threat. For the most part as spring started to welcome summer, Ching even became bearable, or it was just a case of knowing it must end soon. I couldn't trust it. Like any dormant volcano or retreating enemy, I would never know when he would erupt or exact revenge and ever more constant vigilance was needed. Mercifully, the summer arrived with its usual promise for change that gave me a chance to breathe, and even look at a daffodil or tree, or at the very least notice they were there. I did not even realize it then, despite the fear, I had now become used to violence and was battle hardened, and there would be no sniveling or flinching when the next display of savagery erupted in the mess hall several weeks later when Gaynor was about to run amok, again.

During supper, Gaynor told us all yet again that we were worthless, no good, scum, dirt, the usual heartfelt praises. He then made us all line up in single file so that he could give several blows from that fearsome leather weapon to each boy's hand. After the energy expelled so far by his anger, he was still not satisfied. He noticed a seven-year-old "gypsy" child with a clubbed-foot, named Tommy Cleary, and the brother of Michael, who had escaped the mass punishment by pretending he had already been hit. This enraged Gaynor to such a level of anger that I thought his manic eyes were going to pop out of his head. He was now salivating, grabbing poor Tommy by his ear and suspending his small frame several inches from the ground. While Tommy dangled, Gaynor ranted on at the rest of us in what was now unintelligible drivel and seemed to have forgotten Tommy hanging from his tight grip. Blood was now pouring from his ear as it tore away from his head against the gravity of his body. Gaynor at last looked at him as if wondering how he got there, changed his grip and grabbed Tommy by his jacket collar and threw him several feet in the air. He connected head first to a concrete stone wall and fell into a crumpled heap on the floor, motionless save for a nervous twitch in his clubbed foot. At almost eleven years old I had already become so used to extraordinary violence that this, for me, was just "ordinary cruelty." There was another kind of cruelty put on display every Sunday too, a ritual where the "have littles" were put up against the 'have nots.' For those boys who were lucky enough to have a relative or friend on the outside that sent them money, or for those who came back from their holidays and had earned or been given some, were the 'have littles.' Either way it was against the rules of this place to keep the money and it had to be given up. A record was kept of the booty and its owner.

But all was not lost. The Christian Brothers would wheel in an Alladin's cave of donated candy [donated to them but meant for us] over flowing on a small tray while holding a list of these boys names. As each one was called out, they lined up like happy dolphins to pay a heavily inflated price on their selections. The 'have nots' looked on with envy. They had fallen into the same line but at the back of it, carrying nothing but a false glimmer of hope that somebody might have remembered them. Trying to edge closer to the candy, some boys threw away what was left of their pride. Often the candy was bartered for food or toys. It became a favoured currency, so being on the list was held in high position in this "banana republic." There was even a sub group below that again which were "have nevers." A constant on that list was Larry Sullivan, always along with a few more boys. The forgotten among the abandoned as the lepers among the sick.

In this school we would always be on the inside looking out, and felt its chill. Larry was feeling like an outsider from within and felt its cold wind, an isolation that was blowing both ways. In the shower room one evening his inner turmoil was showing where a tragic comedy was being played out and he was the star.

Larry was alone, hunched over a wash hand basin and lost in his actions. He was so lost that he was completely unaware that I was standing only a couple of yards away, absent mindedly watching him. He was starting to get my full attention. White soap covered his face in an even spread and down his chest and arms. Not happy with the results, he spread some more.

Still not pleased, he began to scrub himself with a coarse brush. He was slow at first until frustration quickened his hand, and then faster and faster until his ebony skin turned red and its tissue ached to crack. The tears welled up in his eyes. He was lost in a trance until the sound of my voice broke it.

'"What are you doing? " Caught completely by surprise, his answer was even more so, "I want to look like you." A slow half smile crossed both our faces. What was left in our eyes was a plea from him and a promise from me to keep this pantomime between us. I had not realized that Larry had felt that far from everything around him and so near to despair. I was soon to realize how different he seemed to many others with that difference setting him so far apart that he became the object of deep prejudice and a missile attack. One was fueled by ignorance and the other guided by hate. The attack would come from outside the prison and on a Sunday.

That day we were all frog marched to the local cinema, by now a weekly event.

Normally it would have been just us, but on this day the local 'Claddagh boys' were there and they had taken their seats in the balcony area. If you were bad-minded enough to want to launch an attack, this was the place to sit yourself. The lights dimmed. As the moment unfolded when Clint Eastwood started to draw his gun from its holster and he was getting ready to fire on the big screen, somebody was already firing at us. In the darkness, an unseen beer bottle smashed into Larry's head as he sat beside me. His blood sprayed into my face and in those few seconds of delayed reaction, it led to only one question, who? Larry then quickly moved and I with him, and we were quickly joined by many others as we scrambled towards the stairs that led to the balcony. The lone Brother in charge was still scrambling his thoughts as we poured past him, not sure was this part of the movie or a side show.

The Claddagh boys were waiting for us, fear had replaced bravado by now and their courage slipped into their underpants as they backed into a corner. Four of them facing twenty of us and rising. One of them timidly prodded the air with a beer bottle as if testing the quality of it, while another was guessing the distance between the balcony and the floor below. Fifteen feet, give or take. His guess drained what colour was left in his face as we charged forward, aiming to put a few different shades of it back in. Just then the lights came on, along with the theatre manager a Brother, and an usher roaring at us to stop. Larry took advantage of a confused truce, breaking it with a powerful kick to the boy holding the bottle, catching him in the groin. The bottle fell followed by the boy, his breath exhaling to the rhythm of his pain.

Even our sense of outrage from this was held in a cage as we were marched out of the cinema passing the Claddagh boys who were raising their version of events to the level of martyred sainthood to the theatre manager. For a change though, the Brother in charge was on our side shown only by a bowed head.

Larry developed a cool looking scar on his head, his trophy of that day, though his many retellings of the story made me wonder what happened at all. Within a couple of weeks, it was lost in so many versions it was now reduced to a secondhand fable. The latest being that Larry had knocked all four of them out by himself with not a soul in sight to help him, a different film had been showing, and the scar was the result of a knife attack rather than a bottle. One part never changed that was true and all the truth that was needed, it had all happened because his skin was a darker shade of pale.

A few weeks later, as we trudged wearily into Ching Chong's classroom on a Monday morning, I was met by a sad sight. Laying on the wooden floor, were the remains of the thermometer in tiny fragments, its mercury gone between the floorboards or into another boy's pocket who shared my vision of Ching's death. In the fast pace of a childs mind, it took me several days to get over it. I did not have a backup plan and Ching took no time to reflect on how close he had come to lying in a box on his last taxi ride to anywhere. He did nothing in revenge for he knew that was walking a certain tightrope, and was held in check too by the contempt he knew that all felt for him. But before he was to leave this prison for good as the summer holidays loomed, he would leave me with one last parting shot on his sure road out of this place and it was all about a ball.

That week Ching picked a five-a-side soccer team. That was nice except he was on one of the sides and I was on it too. The game was steaming ahead but our team was getting left behind. I was badly miscast in the role of mid-fielder and was expected to run a lot. I tried to and even showed some promise but one I couldn't keep up as I slowly started to stumble and fall under Ching's relentless badgering and threats. Then without warning, he just attacked. The onslaught of fists and kicks drove me cowering into a corner, my blood mixing with his dripping saliva. That night, what was left of my emotions along with the great welts from the beating, I made a vow to myself, a sacred vow, that one day I would find this man when I would be one too. I would kill him and not too quickly. I promised he would suffer as I suffered, know fear as I had known fear, and understand what it was to die a little every day.

It would take me thirty years to getting round to finding him and thirteen days before he was found. A great disappointment awaited me.

When he opened the door of the communal house for Christian Brothers on that day all those years later and he came face to face with part of his past, the outcome could not have been more different. He looked pretty much the same, even though the hair had a lot more grey and the beard a lot more salt and pepper. He did not remember my name at first and he could barely make out where I was standing, even though I was in front of him. His eyesight was never good, but now he was almost blind. The old eyeglasses that he wore had always been thick but now they were binoculars and I was peering down at him. My thirst for revenge and my anger died right on the spot. I needed something that could hit back to get things going and it just was not there. The adrenalin in my mouth instead made me cough and I felt suddenly out of place. A taxi lay waiting outside with the engine idling. It was my intended getaway, and I left it so, not sure what to do next. Ching invited me in for a cup of tea and I accepted. As he rambled in his talk, I also began to realize there was nobody home in that head of his. He never realized the wrongs he had committed and never questioned why I was there to see him. In a strange way he was almost an innocent to me as I looked at his pathetic figure. He was now studying to be a marriage counsellor. I couldn't wait to get out of there. The only thing I had left to show for the meeting was not revenge, but a rather large taxi fare.

Way back then after that beating, that also marked the last one I would get or ever take without fighting back, by the time school ended I found reason to live again because Ching finally had to check out. One July evening, I was playing in the yard, and in my favourite position, goalkeeper. It required less stamina than the other players and maybe a tad more courage. I had found my position at last. Being the final line of defense for my team, it took the very brave to try to go through me, and the very fast to go round me. I was an ambush of kicks, punches, trips, and bites narrated with a bunch of insults. I got as much in return. This was some of the best fun of my life. That day, my eye caught sight of a boy falling down the steep steps in the yard.

His name was Peter, who was mentally impaired and carried himself awkwardly. He lay on the ground at the bottom of the steps, semi-unconscious and bleeding badly from a cut to his head while murmuring softly to himself his distress. I ran to him and cradled his head in my arms while hearing the bellow of hearty laughter coming from the top of the steps. It was the guttural laughter of Ching. His hands on his hips, his eyes feasted on the weak and helpless body of Peter. He did not move to help. Just then, Brother Devaney came charging through the door behind Ching, tossing him aside like a rag doll. Ching fell to the ground, a bewildered figure and victim of his own narcissism, for he was never aware that he was the bad guy. Devaney descended the steps picking up the fragile body of Peter as tenderly as a lion would its cub, the very powerful in perfect harmony with the weak. He walked past the cowering figure of Ching glaring at him with utter disgust, only to be met with the facial reply of "who me?" Devaney just shook his head, signalling a sarcastic pity for Ching, and went to bring Peter to the Hospital. Thankfully he made a full recovery, at least from the fall.

Shortly after, Ching and Devaney left the prison for good. Through the grapevine, we heard the former had been transferred to another prison to wage a one-sided war on more helpless children, while Devaney was gone for having been the whistle-blower against this monster.

We would miss Devaney but it was a small price to pay to be shut of Ching Chong.

For me though, life was going to get even better. The next week, I was called into Brother Hourigan's office to be met by a plumpish young woman, unsure of what she was looking at which happened to be me.

"He is older than I expected," she lamented, as if been lied to at the cattle market of the pedigree of the animal that she had just purchased. I don't mean to be hard on her, it was just how I felt at the time.

"He is a good boy though," Hourigan said hopefully.

Maybe she didn't want to disappoint for she decided to take me anyway. It was the beginning of a long and happy summer with this woman, Bridgit, and her wonderful family, the Lyons. We rode together on the bus to Loughrea for me to spend the summer holidays with them. A journey un-spoilt by rain which to me was always the promise of a good time in a new adventure. I would not be disappointed.

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