We’re going home for this week’s piece of flash fiction. Or at least to school. Enjoy!
We always took the tanyard shortcut to school after lunch. We only had half an hour and spent a lot of that time queueing for a go on the chip shop’s arcade machines. The school’s principal hated it and used to lie in wait where you came out of the trees that surrounded the school grounds. No one at the tanyard minded us traipsing through, except for Paddy Short and his dog. The tanyard was what nowadays would be called a Business District, or maybe an Incubator. In those days, it was just the tanyard, where businesses went to struggle, shrivel and die. Converted old sheds with battered trucks with telephone numbers on the side.
A dog might scare off intruders, but it was a magnet to schoolkids. Nothing made sneaking into school via the forbidden tanyard more exciting, than first kicking on the gnawed door of the shed where Paddy kept the animal locked up to make it bark, then running off before Paddy came out with his walking stick over his head, his jaws working in rage.
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I hadn’t thought about it in years, but when I went back to the town to take care of matters after my mother died, I found myself down at the tanyard. Ireland was in the middle of a property frenzy, and the rundown sheds had bloomed into large outlet-style “bathroom paradise” businesses. Still right at the back was Paddy Short’s shed.
And then, maybe out of habit, I thought I’d kick at the door where the dog had lived.
“I wouldn’t do that,” said a voice. The principal. I recognised him immediately, though it was thirty years since I had last seen him.
“I suppose he’s no longer there anyway, is he?”
“Paddy? Oh, he’s there, all right.”
“But he must be 100 by now.”
“Something like that.” He had come up to me and I had my back to the shed. “You prick. I was never able to catch you. But I have you now.”
The venom in his voice! Then he kicked the door and ran off. Before I could move, a hand snaked out and grabbed me.
See you next Thursday!
Morgan
