The Boy Who Lived With Ghosts: A Memoir by John Mitchell

I’m not surprised. And it wasn’t because Tommy hadn’t washed the dog shit off his hands before he ate the cabbage. Tommy said he was starving and that’s why he ate it but Nana said we will be starving too if we have no cabbage and we will be like those people in Ireland who had the famine and ate worms. So he can’t come round again or the next thing you know he will be eating our potatoes and then all we will be left with is worms and dirt.
    We obviously need more food so I have decided to take the eggs from the kitchen cupboard and hatch them into chickens. I think eggs need to be warm to help them hatch so I have put them in my cowboy hat and wrapped them in Nana’s scarf, the tartan one with the tassels. When they hatch, I will make them a small pen in the backyard and then they will grow into chickens and lay lots of eggs and everyone will be able to eat eggs—not just The Irish.
    I have checked the eggs all day and there is no sign of them hatching yet. I am not sure how long it takes for an egg to hatch into a chicken. I hope it will be today, although it is nearly suppertime already and Nana is looking in the kitchen cupboard.
    “What in God’s name has happened to ma eggs?”
    Nana is looking at me and I know she thinks that Tommy has been round here again and eaten the eggs, which is really stupid because one of us would have to cook them first because you can’t eat raw eggs. And we don’t know how to cook eggs.
    Nana will be very pleased when she hears what I have done and how we will have all the eggs we can eat just as soon as those chicks hatch out.
    I will go and check on them again.
    “It’s a mystery to me,” says Dad.
    Dad has no idea what happened to the eggs but he will also be very proud when he knows that we have chickens in a pen in the backyard laying eggs all day. He could even have eggs for breakfast. Yes, he is going to be really proud of me. I know he is. Even more proud than seeing me drink a glass of sherry on the beach.
    But The Irish don’t seem very happy because there are no eggs for their supper and that only leaves potatoes. I will check on the eggs one more time.
    “Och, I know I had a half a dozen eggs in that cupboard! Someone has stolen ma eggs! Who would do such a thing? Johnny? You’ve got that guilty look on your face, laddie!”
    It was when I told Nana my chicken plan that she slapped me round the face, right there in front of The Irish. Eggs are dead and I am a very stupid boy for thinking that I could hatch them into chickens.
    “There will be no supper for you! You need to learn your lesson, stealing ma eggs!” she said.
    “He was just trying to help,” said Dad.
    “And what would you know about that?”
    “Well, I know enough to know that a five-year-old boy was just trying to put food on the table!”
    “Aye! And that’s something that his forty-year-old father cannee do!”
    “And now you’re going to make him go to bed hungry? That’s heartless.”
    “He needs to learn his lesson.”
    And Dad turned away and grabbed his coat from the chair. I ran after him as he walked up the black passageway to the front door.
    “Stay and play with me, Daddy!”
    “I can’t.”
    “Please stay! Stay and play with me, Daddy!”
    “I can’t.”
    He opened the front door and pushed me back but I sprang forward and held onto his leg. He peeled my fingers off his leg and pushed me back again.
    “Your daddy has to go. You’ll understand one day. One day you will be a man. Then you will understand.”
    “But I want you to stay with me!”
    “I have to go, wee Johnny. Be a good boy and go back to your nana. Go back now.”
    He’s gone.
    And I’m going too. I’m leaving home. And I am taking my cowboy hat with me. But not Nana’s tartan scarf.
    I am going to live in the backyard but I only have two planks of wood and five nails. I cannot build a shelter. I also do not have a hammer out here with me. There is only one answer because it’s cold and dark