At Swim, Two Boys

by Jamie O'Neill

Mr. Mack could not engage but a rise was being took out of him. The paperman made play of settling his papers, huffling and humphing in that irritating consumptive way. He made play of banging his chest for air. He spat, coughing with the spittle, a powdery disgruntled cough—“Choky today,” said he—and Mr. Mack viewed the spittle-drenched sheet he now held in his hand. This fellow, the curse of an old comrade, try anything to vex me. “I’m after picking up,” choosily he said, “an Irish Times, only I read here—” “An Irish Times, Sergeant? Carry me out and bury me decent, so you have and all. Aren’t you swell away with the high-jinkers there?” Mr. Mack plumped his face and a laugh, like a fruit, dropped from his mouth. “I wouldn’t know about any high-jinkers,” he confided. “Only I read here ’tis twice the price of any other paper. Twice the price,” he repeated, shaking his cautious head. A carillon of coins chinkled in his pocket. “I don’t know now can the expense be justified.”