The Fire-Eaters by David Almond Read Free Book Online Page A

you live, McNulty?”
    “On the ground.”
    “Where do you sleep?”
    “On the ground. In holes, in doorways and alleyways. In the dark where nobody passes. And I wander.”
    He kissed me quickly on the cheek.
    “The sea,” he said. “Mebbes one day I'll come wandering past your place. Keep your eyes peeled. Listen out for us.”
    He looked at our audience. He glared. They shrank away. They laughed. He jabbed his sack at them. He moved away from us. Dad caught at his elbow and he turned and looked into Dad's eyes and there was a yearning in him, as if he wanted to stay with us, talk with us, as if he wanted to stop being McNulty with his stick and sack and his instruments of torture. But he broke away. He hurried to his wheel. He lifted it to his knees. He lifted it into the sky and rested it on his skull and he stamped the earth as he bore its weight and teetered and searched for a place of balance. Soon the wheel thudded back down to the cobblestones and it shattered when it fell.
    “Poor soul,” said Dad.
    And McNulty was lost in himself again. He wept over the broken wheel. Then he opened his box. He took the skewer out. He shoved it through his cheeks. He grunted and hissed and his eyes were filled with fight and fire.

N ext morning I put the uniform on. I put a new leather satchel on my back. Mam could hardly speak. Dad just shook his head and grinned.
    “Who'd believe it?” he said. “Who'd blinking believe it?”
    I rolled my eyes.
    “All I did was get older,” I said. “All I'm doing is starting a new school.”
    He clapped his hands and Mam spoke through her tears at last.
    “Yes, we know,” she said. “It's nothing. It's ordinary. And it's just miraculous.”
    They came out with me. They watched me from the front door as I walked along the lane beside the beach. Seagulls squealed and the sea slapped and a foghorn droned from beyond the lost horizon. I waved once,then turned into the lane toward the Rat. I kept pulling the loose blazer up to my shoulders. My brightly polished shoes were stiff. The shirt collar chafed my throat. One of Mam's tacking pins was still in the blazer cuff. I pulled it out and stuck it in a seam. I shivered and my heart raced.
    “Bobby! Bobby!”
    I couldn't tell where it came from. Then there was a wolf whistle, and my name was called again.
    “Bobby! Little Bobby Burns!”
    There he was, backed into a hawthorn shrub. Joseph. He came out as I passed. His voice was high and singsong, like a girl's.
    “Ooh, Bobby,” he said. “Don't you look so sweet?” He came to my side, walked at my side. He tapped a finger at his cheek; he raised his eyebrows.
    “So, Robert. Do you think it will be mathematics this morning? Or geography? Art history, of course. Or perhaps there will be flower-sniffing. Do you have your dancing shoes today? There will of course be elocution. How now, brown cow? Where does the rain in Spain fall, Robert?”
    I walked and let him talk. I kept my eyes averted.
    “On the plain, of course,” he said. “On the blasted plain.”
    He smiled. He put his arm around my shoulders.
    “Just kidding,” he said. “You know that, eh?”
    “Aye.”
    “Aye. Good lad.” He licked his lips. “I'm proud of you, Bobby.”
    He turned his eyes away. We walked in silence, close to each other.
    “Done you this,” he muttered.
    He pushed a little penknife into my hand.
    “It's nowt,” he said.
    I held it in my palm: a black stock, a shining silver blade.
    “It's nowt,” he said again. “Just something I had in me box.”
    “It's great,” I said.
    His face colored and he shrugged.
    “Thanks,” I said.
    We didn't know what else to say. We saw Daniel coming out of his own lane, walking in his new uniform toward the Rat.
    “Look at the way he walks,” said Joseph. “Like he's a bloody tart. Like he owns the bloody place. Know what I mean?”
    “Aye.”
    “Keep your distance from him, eh?”
    “I will.”
    He gripped my shoulders and squeezed me with his