In The White City, our council estate where Catholics and Protestants did actually live side by side, there was a practice which involved daubing sheets or walls with Republican/Unionist graffiti.
The Greening of Big
Bessie
It had been
a dare. Much like the others. The tip offs. The phone calls.
Not meant
to cause harm. They chose him because of Joxer, the mongrel. Because Joxer was his pal. He was to wait
till midnight, slip up the entry, placate Joxer, scale the side gate and do the
deed.
They didn’t
say they’d be there too.
The light
from Big Bessie’s bedroom cast a spotlight onto the footpath as he crept up the
gable length entry. Big Bessie with her big ears who could swot a boy with the
back of her fingernail. He should have waited longer, but they’d said midnight.
He heard
Joxer shaping up, a low growl that would soon escalate to a high pitched bark.
But the mongrel must have smelt him or something, the way dogs do, the way they
know it’s not the enemy. Poor bugger! He reached the dog and palmed out his
offering. Enough goose fat to have him farting for days.
Sure enough
the washing line was strung with laundry as they said it would be. Monday. Wash
day. Prod and Teague sheets like shrouds strung out for half a mile along the
row of council backyards.
He prised the
lid off the can, watched it flip in the air, land on the mongrel and set him
off yelping.
Shutters
clicked. The boy crouched. Eyes panned from her watch tower. They hadn’t
thought enough about Big Bessie.
He heard
the whoosh of the blinds raised and the metallic rip of a window flung ajar.
“Get the
hell outta there, ye fenian bastards!” she roared.
Figures
sprang from the shadows. The boy and paint pot were upended and Bessie Johnson
opened her back door to a green boy, a green backyard and a green dog.
Copyright 2023 Cathy Leonard
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