An Encounter

								
It was Joe Dillon who introduced the Wild West to us. He had a little
library made up of old numbers of The Union Jack, Pluck and The
Halfpenny Marvel. Every evening after school we met in his back garden
and arranged Indian battles. He and his fat young brother Leo, the
idler, held the loft of the stable while we tried to carry it by storm;
or we fought a pitched battle on the grass. But, however well we
fought, we never won siege or battle and all our bouts ended with Joe
Dillon’s war dance of victory. His parents went to eight-o’clock mass
every morning in Gardiner Street and the peaceful odour of Mrs Dillon
was prevalent in the hall of the house. But he played too fiercely for
us who were younger and more timid. He looked like some kind of an
Indian when he capered round the garden, an old tea-cosy on his head,
beating a tin with his fist and yelling:

“Ya! yaka, yaka, yaka!”

Everyone was incredulous when it was reported that he had a vocation
for the priesthood. Nevertheless it was true.

A spirit of unruliness diffused itself among us and, under its
influence, differences of culture and constitution were waived. We
banded ourselves together, some boldly, some in jest and some almost in
fear: and of the number of these latter, the reluctant Indians who were
afraid to seem studious or lacking in robustness, I was one. The
adventures related in the literature of the Wild West were remote from
my nature but, at least, they opened doors of escape. I liked better
some American detective stories which were traversed from time to time
by unkempt fierce and beautiful girls. Though there was nothing wrong
in these stories and though their intention was sometimes literary they
were circulated secretly at school. One day when Father Butler was
hearing the four pages of Roman History clumsy Leo Dillon was
discovered with a copy of The Halfpenny Marvel.

“This page or this page? This page? Now, Dillon, up! ‘Hardly had the
day’.... Go on! What day? ‘Hardly had the day dawned’.... Have you
studied it? What have you there in your pocket?”

Everyone’s heart palpitated as Leo Dillon handed up the paper and
everyone assumed an innocent face. Father Butler turned over the pages,
frowning.

“What is this rubbish?” he said. “The Apache Chief! Is this what you
read instead of studying your Roman History? Let me not find any more
of this wretched stuff in this college. The man who wrote it, I
suppose, was some wretched fellow who writes these things for a drink.
I’m surprised at boys like you, educated, reading such stuff. I could
understand it if you were ... National School boys. Now, Dillon, I
advise you strongly, get at your work or....”

This rebuke during the sober hours of school paled much of the glory of
the Wild West for me and the confused puffy face of Leo Dillon awakened
one of my consciences. But when the restraining influence of the school
was at a distance I began to hunger again for wild sensations, for the
escape which those chronicles of disorder alone seemed to offer me. The
mimic warfare of the evening became at last as wearisome to me as the
routine of school in the morning because I wanted real adventures to
happen to myself. But real adventures, I reflected, do not happen to
people who remain at home: they must be sought abroad.

The summer holidays were near at hand when I made up my mind to break
out of the weariness of school-life for one day at least. With Leo
Dillon and a boy named Mahony I planned a day’s miching. Each of us
saved up sixpence. We were to meet at ten in the morning on the Canal
Bridge. Mahony’s big sister was to write an excuse for him and Leo
Dillon was to tell his brother to say he was sick. We arranged to go
along the Wharf Road until we came to the ships, then to cross in the
ferryboat and walk out to see the Pigeon House. Leo Dillon was afraid
we might meet Father Butler or someone out of the college; but Mahony
asked, very sensibly, what would Father Butler be doing out at the
Pigeon House. We were reassured: and I brought the first stage of the
plot to an end by collecting sixpence from the other two, at the same
time showing them my own sixpence. When we were making the last
arrangements on the eve we were all vaguely excited. We shook hands,
laughing, and Mahony said:

“Till tomorrow, mates!”

That night I slept badly. In the morning I was first-comer to the
bridge as I lived nearest. I hid my books in the long grass near the
ashpit at the end of the garden where nobody ever came and hurried
along the canal bank. It was a mild sunny morning in the first week of
June. I sat up on the coping of the bridge admiring my frail canvas
shoes which I had diligently pipeclayed overnight and watching the
docile horses pulling a tramload of business people up the hill. All
the branches of the tall trees which lined the mall were gay with
little light green leaves and the sunlight slanted through them on to
the water. The granite stone of the bridge was beginning to be warm and
I began to pat it with my hands in time to an air in my head. I was
very happy.

When I had been sitting there for five or ten minutes I saw Mahony’s
grey suit approaching. He came up the hill, smiling, and clambered up
beside me on the bridge. While we were waiting he brought out the
catapult which bulged from his inner pocket and explained some
improvements which he had made in it. I asked him why he had brought it
and he told me he had brought it to have some gas with the birds.
Mahony used slang freely, and spoke of Father Butler as Old Bunser. We
waited on for a quarter of an hour more but still there was no sign of
Leo Dillon. Mahony, at last, jumped down and said:

“Come along. I knew Fatty’d funk it.”

“And his sixpence...?” I said.

“That’s forfeit,” said Mahony. “And so much the better for us—a bob and
a tanner instead of a bob.”

We walked along the North Strand Road till we came to the Vitriol Works
and then turned to the right along the Wharf Road. Mahony began to play

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