Utterly Monkey by Nick Laird

a tight black perm that looked like a helmet her glasses were securing to her head. Micks seemed to be looking towards something she was pointing at. She lowered her bare arm then and said something to him. Then the peak of his baseball cap turned towards them. Danny told them, but breezily so as they wouldn’t think him scared.
    ‘Here, boys, Micks McManus is over there.’
    ‘Fuck him. There’s four of us. Let him come and try it.’
    Del was the worst possible combination for a friend: mouthy and very fast on his feet. The marches were starting. In front of them the Drumgavy Loyal Sons of William Flute Band were assembling. They were all in peaked military-style caps, purple with yellow piping, and purple jackets buttoned to the neck with yellow epaulettes, although the women and girls flapped in grey A-line skirts whereas the males sported trousers. All the banter had stopped now. The parents of the youngest flautists had waved to them and now stood waiting, a little anxious. The players ceremoniously lifted their silver flutes to their mouths and stood there in silence. Theirheads were all inclined a little, as if each one were trying to see round the marcher in front. The crowd hushed suddenly when the bandleader, facing sternly forward, shouted something incomprehensible and very loud, then stamped his foot once, twice, and a hundred exhalations made the flutes all squeal together. ‘And they’re off,’ Del shouted, like a horseracing commentator.
    The last of the Drumgavy majorettes were going past, twirling their batons and flashing the kind of smiles that would turn a dentist suicidal. Danny thought how this could almost be the stadium of the Denver Broncos, say, or the Washington Redskins, or some other fabled team, and that this could be the half-time of the Superbowl, rather than a Thursday lunchtime turning grey on Ballyglass High Street. Through the gap that the band were leaving behind them the boys could see, across the street, that Micks had been joined by Slim and Philly Stewart, a spindly ginger kid who, the rumour went, had been caught getting intimate with his neighbour’s labrador. The boys discussed it endlessly. Philly was pointing across at their bench. Next thing they were sauntering over through the gap behind the band. All of the boys saw it. Wee Jim exhaled an Oh fuck . Danny felt his legs go tingly, as if he’d just finished a long run. He also felt curiously secure by being in the middle of the bench, with Jacksy to his left and Del and Wee Jim to right. It was like sleeping in the middle of the tent when they’d go camping out at Drum or Davagh: even though you might hear noises outside or things brushing against the canvas, you knew you weren’t going to be the first to suffer.
    ‘Well girls, how are we today?’ Slim was standing in front of them, his crotch pushed out as if someone wasbehind him, trying to shove something into his bum. Micks had picked the rucksack up off Del’s lap. Del had made a sad little grab for it and Micks had pushed him, hand on forehead, back into the bench. He opened the rucksack carefully, as if something might jump out, and peered into it.
    ‘Top Deck, heh boys? Fucking shandy. You wankers . Here, I’ve been needing a new school bag. Slim, what do you think?’
    Micks chucked the bag to him and he caught it one-handed. Del half stood up and tried to grab it again. This time Slim smacked him on the forehead, open-palmed, and Del flopped back onto the bench. Danny looked round to see if anyone was watching or he could see someone he knew. The bands were in full flow now and everybody was facing them. The bench was a few feet away from the edge of the pavement, so that when he looked to either side all he could see were people’s backs. Slim was swinging the bag round and round and bringing the trajectory nearer and nearer to the boys’ faces, before pulling it back. Jacksy reached up to shield his head. Philly Stewart, who was standing behind the