Flood by James Heneghan Page A

you sure it wasn’t a happypotamus?”
    â€œIt’s not funny! I don’t like rats near my bed.”
    â€œThere, there. I’ll get a trap from Rooney and we’ll be rid of him. Leave it to me.”
    â€œA dog would keep the place free of rats, especially a terrier. And he wouldn’t cost much to feed.”
    â€œTerriers are lovely dogs. We had an Irish terrier one time I was working in Edenderry in the bog. He could run the legs off a hare, he was that quick. The rat was in the kitchen, you say? You should have called me.” He kissed the top of Andy’s head. “I’ll not let the rats get you, Andy darlin’. You’re safe with me.” He gave Andy’s shoulder a sympathetic squeeze. “What do you say I make us a nice cup of tea?”
    Vinny disappeared into the kitchen, and from the glassy clinks Andy knew it wasn’t only a nice cup of tea that Vinny was making for himself.
    He woke another night, or early morning, to the sounds of a fight. It was on his floor, at the back of the building somewhere. A woman screamed and a door slammed. This was followed by a man shouting and swearing. Next came violent door-pounding and more screaming.
    He was scared.
    Luckily, Vinny was home. He got up and sat beside Andy and stroked his head and sang a soothing lullaby about a drowsy grandmother falling asleep at a spinning wheel. Andy closed his eyes and went back to sleep.
    Five weeks.
    For Andy, one dreary day was much like another. By now he was thoroughly fed up being alone with nothing to do. What a month ago had seemed glorious freedom was now gloomy captivity. So he asked his father one evening about school — he was never going to find any friends if he didn’t go to school, he’d decided; looking through the wrong side of the iron railings wasn’t good enough; he needed to play some soccer with a bunch of kids his own age.
    â€œSchool is a grand idea,” Vinny said. “I should have thought of it myself. I will pay a call at the education office tomorrow morning, first thing, and see about school for you.”
    But the next day came and went without anything being done.
    Feeling desolate and lonely, dreading even one more day in dreary idleness, Andy resolved to find a school for himself. Friends and soccer were too important to leave to Vinny while he was busy looking for a job. Andy couldn’t expect his father to find friends for him, too, so he picked out the school for himself, St. Dominic’s, the one with the railings, a few blocks from the Mayo, an old gray buildingthat looked more like a fortress than a school. It was Catholic, which was fine. He was supposed to be Catholic anyway, though he and his mother hadn’t gone to church much, especially after Clay entered their lives. He decided to enroll as a new student the next morning. If they asked him about his father, he would say Vinny was working and couldn’t come, which wasn’t exactly a lie.
    In the afternoon he found his way to the dog pound and looked at the strays in their cages. There were only three dogs, two big miserable ones with runny eyes who showed no interest in him, and a smaller, lively one who jumped at the bars, barking with excitement.
    The pound keeper was a self-important man, pale and plump, who wore a Hitler mustache and a black uniform and sat on a swivel chair in a tiny office reading the newspaper. Andy asked him if he could take the small brown dog with the floppy ears, but was told to return with his mother or father. The man didn’t look up from his newspaper. “Can’t hand an animal over to a juvenile, sorry.”
    â€œBut he wants me to take him,” said Andy. “See how excited he is.”
    â€œSorry.”
    â€œPlease,” said Andy. “I’ll take good care of him, I promise.”
    The man remained engrossed in his newspaper.
    A wind started up and the swivel chair started spinning. The pound