The mayor wanted to knock down the whole Village, just as soon as he could get us all out of there. He said they needed the land for the ’67 world’s fair. All our houses were already numbered up for demolition with wooden placards. Walking to school, or skipping class and hanging out in the alley with the gang, I felt like I was part of some broken down museum exhibit.

     Nobody from city hall could understand what the big deal was, paving over our smelly, dead-end streets, wedged in between South-End factories and the CN Rail bridge. My dad ranted about the mayor and his goddamn plans practically every night. He was the Irish Society chairman at the time, and was forever off with the other dads at the Bucket of Blood, planning the defense of Goose Village over a pint.

     As a sort of warm-up act to demolishing our homes, the city sent a team one Friday morning in 1964. The letter from the city said they were coming to plow over the old Irish Bone Yard. I was there, waiting in front of our apartment on Britannia, along with everybody in the Village who wouldn’t have got fired for skipping work. A bulldozer rattled down Bridge Street, behind a city pickup truck and two cop cars. The convoy shuddered to a stop at the chain and cement block barriers of the Bone Yard, and out spilled a city shirt, the police chief, a public works foreman in coveralls, and a priest in full frock. Anybody would have thought this crew was the beginning of a bad joke.

     But this delegation was the furthest thing from funny. The Bone Yard was a soul of sorts for people in the Village, full of Irish who died building the CN Rail bridge. You would have thought that patch of dirt was the Vatican, the way our mas crossed themselves every time somebody mentioned it.

     The dads of the Village roared and shook their fists as the shirt made to address the crowd. Caught by surprise, the city men recoiled up onto the sidewalk. That moment was all my dad needed to squeeze out of the crowd, and chain himself to the bulldozer. The foreman looked in confusion at the shirt. My dad pulled the chains tight in some kind of Jesus pose, arms as pathetic as what I pulled off spiders down by the canal. Chaining himself to heavy machinery was classic Gill Caughlan: getting in your face so bad it was impossible to ignore him. He shrieked at the cops, little flecks of spit flying everywhere. I took a look at the mas and dads around me in the crowd. Some of them were wincing. When my dad got like this, all I could think of was a line from church, where my ma made me spend every Sunday morning of my life. There was some guy in the bible who would talk, but all you would hear were gongs and cymbals. That was a perfect way to describe my dad. Mouthing off, and sounding like a bunch of noise.

     “Ain’t you proud of your dad, there, Sean?” Tank Logan shoved me with his elbow, and I almost fell off the front stoop. 

     I tried to ignore Tank. On my other side, my ma was towering over me. She jabbed a finger at my chest. “Sean Caughlan, you stay clear of that Bone Yard.”

     According to my ma, every time something went wrong in Goose Village, it was the ghosts of the men buried in there who made it happen. If you asked her, them ghosts would kill you just for spitting on their side of the street. Her great granddad was one of them. “He’s the only thing keeping you safe from the rest of them,” she would tell me. She might have had a point, since I had so far avoided joining the South-West body count. A year before, Joey the Scoop had drowned when a barge shifted and trapped him between the hull and the stone wall of the canal. And last December, Eddy Shanahan got crushed between two boxcars in the rail yards. 

     Tank dug his elbow into my ribs again. “Nice shiner, Caughlan.” He was breathing right in my face, old soup and bacon.

     So I forgot to mention I was watching my dad and his bulldozer antics through one eye, on account of my left one being swollen shut from the night before. I had been up in our attic, ripping away the last bits of paper from between the roof beams. I spent a lot of time up there when it wasn’t stinking hot, especially when my dad was home from the tavern. Under that attic paper it was all shiny asbestos. I liked to pretend I was commander of my own personal flying saucer, death ray guns set to vaporize everybody who had ever pushed me around. Unfortunately, I got a bit too fancy practicing my intergalactic kung fu, and tripped on a roof beam. Then I really was flying—down the hatch, just as my dad was climbing the ladder, saying, “What the hell is all that racket?” We both crashed to my bedroom floor. And then, Christ, he beat the crap out of me. I was wailing fit to shatter the windows, until my ma poked her head in. “That’s enough you two,” as if nothing would have pleased me more than to continue getting smacked around.

     The bulldozer man revved the engine, even as my dad shrieked and rattled the chains. The mob of Irish dads surged toward the bulldozer, which was making the whole street shake. The cops formed a line and pushed the dads. The priest was in the middle of the Bone Yard, on his knees between two rows of those sad little tombstones, sticking his face right in the dirt. Our mas yelled at the dads that they better not get themselves incarcerated.

     This standoff was the perfect cover to slip away, and avoid school that day altogether. We hopped the chain into the Bone Yard, and ducked behind the sand mountain of the asphalt works.

     Tank started up again. “Your dad sure is useless, Caughlan.”

     Tell the truth, I agreed with the turd, but on principle you didn’t let a guy slag off your old man. Plus Tank was twice my weight. I needed to shut him up without getting my ass kicked. That was when my one good eye landed on our stash of cardboard liquor boxes, a whole pile of them we’d flattened out and hid behind the sand mountain. Saturday, our gang was supposed to try sliding down the five-story slope—like tobogganing in winter, except without freezing your face off. I grabbed a box off the pile, and held it up above my head.

     “I’m going for it,” I said. “Who’s with me?”

     The Toad shouted, “Yeah,” and then Eddy Ryan, and soon they were all shouting and cheering.

     “Yeah,” Tank said, but his voice sounded as hollow as if he was talking from inside a sewer pipe.

     Maybe he was scared of heights. Who knew what passed for thoughts in those shit-for-brains of his? I would have been lying if I said the prospect of hurling myself down that mountain of sand didn’t scare the crap out of me too, but I took off up the mountain with my box in tow.

     It took forever to get up that slope, sand sucking at my feet—lots of time to think about broken limbs. When I got to the top, I grinned down at the gang far below and gave them all the finger. Then I took a running start down the slope, belly-flopping on my cardboard. Heart slamming, spinning as I slid, sand whipped my cheeks and my one good eye. The asphalt works building and even the massive grain elevators all swam and then disappeared. And then I was rolling on hard Bone Yard dirt, my breath knocked out of me like a kidney punch. 

     By the time I picked up my box and got halfway back up the hill, a couple more guys were whooping it up as they slid down. Not Tank. He was staring downhill, his legs frozen. It was only when he saw me coming up the hill that the turd finally got his thick legs going, building up speed down the slope.

     But he was kicking up way more sand than anybody else. An avalanche was building up behind him. The whole side of the mountain seemed to be sagging, as he tried to pick the right moment to jump onto his box. We all shouted, “Jump, Tank, just jump on.” And then the sand caught up to him, folding over his back, and we were all half-running, half-sliding towards the grey cloud where Tank had disappeared. All that was left was a smooth slope and no sign of Tank Logan.

     I picked a spot, threw myself to my knees, and started digging with my hands. We all did. Wad after wad of sand went flying. The whole world seemed to be made of the stuff. One guy was crying while he dug. Tank could have been anywhere, and hands would never be enough.

     Way off on the other side of the Bone Yard, inside the stockyard fence, I could see my dad. I knew right away the Bone Yard defensive had been less than a success, because he was already back at work. I ran down the hill toward him, willing the distance to close by pure eye contact. Look over here, I thought, fighting to run in the sand. But he just leaned on his shovel, staring at the river. Probably fine tuning his speech for the Bucket of Blood tonight, I thought, as I got to the base of the mountain. Then my legs jammed up. Next thing you know it was a face plant in the dirt, teeth gouging into my tongue. I got back to my feet, spat out a red wad, and took off again across the Bone Yard.

     “Dad,” I shouted, “you gotta come quick.”

     “Seanny?” His eyes flicked from my bloody mouth to my black eye. 

     I jabbed my finger at the sand mountain. “Tank. Buried.”

     My dad cleared the stockyard fence with a standing jump, like his legs were coil springs. “Go to the asphalt works,” he said. “Get some men, and then get home.” He ran toward the mountain with his shovel.

      It didn’t seem like long before I had a crowd of men and their shovels back up the mountain. But when I got there, everything was still. The gang stood in a half-circle around my dad. He was kneeling in the middle of a crater, cradling Tank’s grey face and shoulders in his lap. I met my dad’s eyes. His filthy thumb just kept stroking Tank’s cheek.

     Nobody moved on the mountain for what seemed like a long time. Nobody said a thing. Then Mr Logan was there, and my dad was handing Tank to him, both men weeping. I was, too. I watched my dad wipe the snot on his sleeve, and tug at his coveralls. I watched him watch Mr Logan wail and shake his dead boy.

     When my dad and I got back down to Britannia Street, it was deserted. The city crew was gone, and there were none of the usual mas yelling instructions to kids in the street. My first panicky thought was that everybody from the Village had also been buried alive, the way the bulldozer treads had left dirt zippers all over our street.

     That was when my dad laid one of his skinny mitts on my shoulder. I was just about floored, but he kept on walking beside me, not moving his hand. I probably could have asked him then, what had happened with the cops and the Bone Yard; but I didn’t dare. We crossed the street, Bone Yard all new dirt and treads beside us. For a change, all I wanted was to hear my ma chime in about her great-granddad, my ghost protector. I let my dad keep his hand there till we got to the front door.  

The End