Gitcha looked back as he walked past and saw Snowy heading towards the dumpsite. Without his bike Snowy looked a lot less threatening and less sure of himself, walking slowly and using the stone walls for support. To the kids this just made him a softer target.

“I bet I could get him with a chestnut,” whispered Two Slices, whose nickname nobody seemed to know the origin of, and who was a gamey little swine.

They all hunched behind the low wall of the Strand Road and took aim with a chestnut each. Snowy was about fifty yards from the kids, heading into the old dumpsite. When he heard the cry of, “One Two Three Fire!” he threw up an arm to cover his head.

A hail of chestnuts headed for him, some hitting their target. Without turning around he just kept walking, trying to protect his head. Snowy had learned it was better not to confront kids in a group. Confronting them would make things worse. He just accepted it.

Lick The Walls, who was gang leader, finally shouted, “Stop! We don’t want to waste all our conkers on that ould shite.”

The gang headed on toward home with the rest of their chestnuts, which would be placed up their chimneys on ledges for about a week until they were hard enough to be threaded onto pieces of string or old shoelaces. The whole game of chestnuts was played on the honour system. Every time you broke an opponentís chestnut you got his total of kills added to yours, although everybody’s chestnut always seemed to start with a huge number of kills which they’d claim they’d acquired playing other kids who remained nameless.

Two Slices was sent to the Post Office to buy a stamp for his Da. While he was waiting in the queue he overheard some women talking about Snowy.

“I saw that ould pickarooney Snowy on the strand on Tuesday acting very weird,” Mrs. Caulfield was saying.

“What do you mean?” Mrs. Murphy asked her.

“Well, he had a piece of stick and a burst ball and he was whacking the ball along the beach, walking after it and whacking it again,” Mrs. Caulfield continued.

“Well, I ask ya, what sort of thing is that for a grown man?”

“Ah, no. Sure that Snowy used to be a hurling champion years ago,” Mrs. Murphy informed her.

“Go away. Him a hurling champion? I don’t believe it,” Mrs Caulfield derided.

“Ah, no, it’s very sad really,” Mrs. Nolan chimed in.

“He was due to play in an All-Ireland semi-final for some country team, Galway I think, and the girl he was to marry the following week ran off to England with his best friend.”

“So how did he end up in that state then?” Mrs Caulfield wanted to know.

“Well, I heard he went off his rocker and spent a year in England looking for her. He couldn’t cope and became a recluse on the dump,” Mrs. Murphy answered her, nodding.

Two Slices listened intently to everything that was said.

“I donít believe a word of that,” huffed Mrs. Caulfield.

“Are you calling me a liar?” Mrs. Murphy demanded, waving her finger at the doubter.
“Well, if the shoe fits,” Mrs. Caulfield answered while looking at the other women on the queue.

As the row developed and the whole shop got involved, Two Slices slipped to the top of the queue, got served, and left them to it.

He caught up with the rest of the kids who were hanging out at Cuddys Corner. Cuddys was the kids’ meeting spot. It was their corner. The men had their own corner at the other end of Thorncastle Street, no kids allowed.

Two Slices shared the story he’d just heard, with a few embellishments of his own creation. He had the women pulling hair and kicking the shite out of each other. Gitcha listened to yet another version of Snowy’s life, which confused him even more.