From Streets of Birdsong.

She walked on. The sounds from the houses were now quieter, a clock alarm buzzing from a street side bedroom window, a dog barking at a nap interrupting cat, an infant announcing his hungry presence in the new day.

She followed the street and left the rows of houses, solitary houses now appeared, the tarmac pathway changed to a small track less well travelled, the traffic that had passed fast and anxious for the morning, thinned. From behind she heard the clip clop of a horse approaching. Instead of the mounted rider she was expecting a low flat hay cart passed her. The driver at the front was talking with three children who sat at the back facing towards her, legs dangling over the back of the cart, between the road and the see-sawing bogie. The fair haired boy in the middle waved at her, and shouted a greeting.

She walked on. Through a gate she saw a farmyard where a woman dressed in a long black dress stood scattering grain for squawking geese, nimble chickens and waddling ducks to squabble over.

A flighty pony, high stepping, quick and skittish, pulling a trap that contained a small whip cracking, YUP, YUP, shouting man passed her heading towards the town.

She followed a road that climbed up a steep narrow bridge and there she found the canal and the still-water and the locks and the tall black water-keeper gates with sluices that leaked bright, splashing streams to the water level below, and the swans, the water hens and the beds of green lilly pads with white flowers.

She sat on the raised grass bank beside the canal side walker's path.

A long, black, narrow barge puttered from the narrow upstream channel and into the harbour, and waited for the lock side keeper, in his black-grey suit, Fob and chain secured waistcoat and puffing pipe, beneath a thick grey moustache and a battered narrow brimmed hat, to winch the splashing, noisy, water into the lower trough, open the gates and then release the water, gates and barge into the lower stairwell of the canal, so that it could continue its journey.

Job completed the keeper returned to his green gated, rose-arched, cottage pathway, and stopped to remove his hat and mop his brow, checked his timepiece before entering the twilight interior to await another puttering summons.

She sat and drew and sketched, and peeled more paper and folder-stored her drawings while the sun climbed higher in the sky and filled the World behind her with brightness and in another time the hotel ended breakfast and prepared for lunch and Coughlan, the harassed hackney driver, roamed the lobby calling Miss Vig-noles, Miss Vig-noles, Dawson Court - Miss Vignoles.

Would you like to do it dogie - she asked.

Pubs in Ireland are fine places, good drink - well most times - nice company and surprising conversation.

I was enjoying me pint, when Beryl arrives and sat on the stool beside me. She leaned in and whispered. "Would you like to come up to my place and do it dogie?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well I will go home and go to the bedroom and take off all my clothes. The latch will be off the door and you come up and join me. Take off your clothes in the hall and come into the bedroom."

"Then what?"

"We get down on our hands and knees on the floor. You can sniff my behind. I will sniff yours and we'll growl. See you soon," she said, walking for the door.

She saw that look on my face. "You won't come up!"

"No!"

"Why?"

"I don't want to catch a disease."

Well - when I got back up off the floor, she was roaring. "I'm clean! I'm not diseased! What would you get from me?"

"Rabies."

From "In The Wicker Wood" - this is rough - beware.

Thud! Thud! The hammer hit the spike and it went further through his wrist and into the wooden railway sleeper. Anto screamed loudly and O’Neill said “No one to hear Anto! Sticky fingers Anto? Sticky with blood this time not my dope. You robbed me. You put a consignment at risk by running away:”

This was a good trip the girl decided, better than the usual buzz, as she looked on with both horror and fascination.

Horror, that Anto was getting this punishment for just feckin' a few grams of dope, and fascination at the scene before her.

Anto screaming and struggling on his back on the railway sleeper: between the tracks, crucified by that one spike through his left wrist, his legs trashing and banging on the gravel, his free arm trying to push the big man off, as each blow drove the spike deeper into the wood and broke his tendons, burst his veins and scraped his bones.

Her shouts and her moans, at the orgasm crashing through her, were drowned out by his screams and the crash of the hammer blows.

She had come before when Anto hit her a dig as he came and she cried dig me again, dig me again Anto, harder, harder, again. But never crashing, spasms like this. The next one not waiting for the previous one to finish, on and on, damp, and breath taking and knee trembling.

Wave after wave, pounding on, as the blood spurted and Anto groaned and the sweat, she was sure it would be cold sweat, ran off his face and mingled with the blood pool, on the in-fill stones, between the train rails.

Almost silence, the hammering outside had stopped. Inside her heart still pounded, her breath gasping air, gulping to draw some more into her lungs.

She fell to her knees, collapsing onto her side. Anto moaned and sobbed,. She thought he was trying to say stop, but only sobs of pain came out from his mouth, bloody also now where he had bitten his tongue and dug his teeth into his lips, red rich, foaming, bubbly blood.

The big man stood up, panting, out of breath. Slowly, with menace, he spoke to Anto. “The next time I will kill you. Find some hole and crawl into it and hope that I don’t fall in on top of you some night. OK!”

He turned towards her, took her left hand and placed it on the cold rail. She tried to struggle free but he held her tight forcing her down with his body weight, digging his groin into her back, she could feel her nipples harden against the cold stones.

“You fucked up as well. Now you will have to work for your fixes, now that this shaggers free supply is gone. Just to remind you though!”

She saw him start to raise the hammer. He crashed the hammer down crushing her middle fingers onto the rail.

As the pain hit her befuddled brain she realized, this is real, this is not another trip, she screamed and still screaming fainted.

http://www.amazon.com/In-The-Wicker-Wood-Secrets-ebook/dp/B00U1SPJ3O

Maybe this is a clue to the card trick!

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25780056-streets-of-birdsong-stories-from-ireland

More Cardman

Johnny also did disappearing paper balls beneath the hat tricks. Then one night, Arthur Guinness let my father see the hidden balls in his hand. When Dad managed to sneak his own hand-hidden paper balls beneath the hat.  Johnny - lifting it to declare and now we have no balls left - instead revealed that the hat was covering three paper balls. He left the house in a fury and retired the trick.

I never learned how he did the card trick, of naming all the cards in the deck I held in my hand. When I told Dad he said Johnny had a rhyme. He arranged the cards in that order and then adjusted the rhyme in his head depending on how well they were shuffled. “Once, he taught me one,” he said.

In the year Three Eighty Seven there was One Queen, in Sixty Four she had Two sons the Jack and the King and their ages were Ten and Fourteen. You make that with the Nine and Five.

“With it you can count out cards in order. You know, O-N-E, putting these cards to the bottom, of the thirteen cards,  and then turning over the fourth card, The Ace, T-W-O the two, right to the end, Q-U-E-E-N and you’re left with the King.”

I can see Johnny as I left him, beside the fire, drinking his sweet Smithwicks, running his rhymes in his head, having a good day, smiling at the past.

Sometimes the truth is hard to believe!

This is from my third book "Streets of Birdsong" and the most amazing part of this story is that it is true: the Cardman did the "Trick" in front of my eyes.

I have never seen any TV or Stage Magic  Person, do anything like this.

The Cardman.

I went over and tried to talk to him. He ignored me as if I wasn’t there, continued stirring his sugaring beer and didn’t look up.

“We used to live near you. I was two or three. We lived in Maloney's house. Dad and yourself were friends. I think you used bounce me on your knee.”

He looked up into my face with eyes as red as the turf coals and the swirling beer.

“You had fair hair, almost white. Pull up a chair and tell me how you are.”

I told him how I was. He told me stories of rabbits snared, Christmas Turkeys Mam raised and sold, Whist games, Twenty Five and Tricks Trumped, House Dances, Card Tricks and Fools Jokes. All the time he sipped beer sweetened for his old taste.

I asked if he still did the Card Tricks. He didn’t he explained: his hands like his taste were old and faltering. But, he said, he was having a good day and he would show me a trick It would remind us of the old knee-bouncing days.

From the deep coat pocket he took a well worn deck of playing cards held captive by rubber bands. He released the bands and passed the deck into my hands. “Box them!” He instructed. I shuffled the deck and proffered them back. “Do it again,” he said, “‘till you’re satisfied.” I boxed them again and then once more.

The normal buzz of conversation had faded as drinkers gathered around. “Johnny is doing a trick,” was the rallying call.

I offered the cards again. He shook his head.

Softly head deeply bowed, concentrating, he instructed, “You hold them and turn over the top card. It’s a ten of spades.”

I placed the ten of spades on the table between us.

“It’s a fine trick!” I ventured. “How did you do it?”

He looked up slightly. “I’m not finished yet!” He tapped the side of his nose with a skinny shaky finger and then this unique human being: who went to school" ‘Til the sixth book only," without hesitation, without looking up at me or at the cards in my hand, named all remaining cards before I turned them over and placed them on the table.

I asked again how the trick was done. He only smiled and sipped his beer.

https://www.scribd.com/book/269366140/Streets-Of-Birdsong-Stories-from-Ireland