Frankie McCafferty

Breakfasted, he leaves the house.

People are waking, going to work in the sleepyhead, drizzly-faced little town of a small village of a hamlet of a crossroads with two churches, one irreputable pub, two shops, a hairdresser's called Supercuts with a K and a Z.

One small green grocer who only opens when he is sober and one proper, up early, spick and span, lick and spittle, see yourself in the window glass, butcher's shop, called Cortland Alexander and Sons Fictular.

Cortland Alexander closes the too squeaky, never gets a squirt of oil, shoemaker's child of a front gate and adjusts his cap.

He has already forgotten the toilet roll.

He looks both ways on the footpath, draws in a deep breath and begins the walk towards his butcher's shop.

On the way, he will pass the small, grass-cut and weed-plucked headstone emporium outside the Church of Ireland church, where ancestor Courtland Alexander I lies, straight as a ramrod, serious and solemn, the bone of his right finger still twitching as he celestially calculates guineas, pounds, shillings and pence, and writes ghostily on paper-wrapped and string-tied packages of meat...

The reckoning.

Cortland walks quickly down the street.

He is not in the mood for talking to ghosts today.

Fonzie Smullen lies, good-humouredly, in the gutter, outside the Crossbar Inn.

He has been there since closing time the previous evening, when his legs declined to make the journey home.

His legs are now waiting for the pub to open again, and there is nothing Fonzie can do about it.

A fag-butt burns between his yellowing fingers and, wincing up against the morning sun, he smiles.

I suppose it could, Fancy, Cortland says, wondering how much worse it could get.

He notices the half-empty glasses of lager left, wasp collecting on the windowsill, and the residue of chips bags and grease walked into the footpath around Fonzie's head.

He glances up at the two neglected rusty footballs that pass for hanging baskets over the front door of the pub.

The shutters go up on Sentra.

Cortland waves over.

A young Stokes boy goes breaknecking by in his small, bejeweled, wheel-spinning boy racer mobile.