Joachim Healy's Ladder

A short story about a holly tree and a sly hoor. 

 
It was the first Saturday in December 1993 when I learned a lesson I’ve not yet forgotten. The ground was solid and stubborn from the countless mornings of hard frost smothering it mercilessly, and yet my cousin and I trod and thudded the length of my uncle’s lawn, kicking a tattered leather football that was as beaten and miserable as the frosted soil beneath us. We’d done this for the last five days after school, wrapped in our jackets and scarves, our breaths like smoke in the crisp air defying the 5 P.M. darkness, neither of us fully committed to the game, always with one eye on the holly tree. Today would surely be the day.

The holly tree rose out of the briars and bushes of the hedge across the road from my uncle’s gate. It was my uncle’s holly tree, and by extension my family’s holly tree. Though, it wasn’t really. He didn’t own the field across the road, the hedge, nor the holly tree – but his Great-great-grandfather, great-grandfather, grandfather and father before him had all dutifully pruned and cared for the tree throughout their lives here, carefully cutting sprigs and twigs in late November to give to the neighbours for decorating their homes in time for Christmas.
There was still a cluster of nine neighbours’ houses could be seen from my uncle’s gate, including mine, all huddled together like a bunch of beautiful bright red berries on a holly branch, and every one of them would be getting their Christmas holly from our tree; it was simply a matter of when my uncle decided to undertake the tradition of cutting it, and my cousin and I best be there when he did if we wanted to get our ten pounds each for helping him. Ten pounds was a pretty penny to an eleven-year-old back then - that could get me a new game cassette in town for my older brother’s Amstrad CPC 464 computer, with enough left over to rent two films from the village shop, as well as a shit-tonne of sweets. It was imperative we didn’t miss out.
​
The Saturday light would soon be fading and my mother’s call to dinner would echo across the field. I was urging my cousin to go inside and ask his Da if he’d be cutting the holly today, when we heard the rumble of an unfamiliar engine on the road getting closer, reaching a crescendo but not fading as we were used to with cars and tractors passing. It mumbled a rattling, rumbling idle drone interrupted only by the dull whine and slap, slap of two doors opening and closing. My cousin and I hurried to the other end of the lawn to investigate. Across the road, a blue HiAce van with its rear-door opened like a canopy emitted smoke coloured red by brake lights into the misty, dimming sky from its exhaust. A young boy, about our age, wrestled a pile of polythene bags from the back of the van onto the grass verge while an older man, likely his father, extended a telescopic aluminium ladder up against the holly tree, stopping just shy of the crown. The man scaled the ladder fearlessly, a hacksaw in his right hand which he quickly put to use.

My cousin and I bolted inside the house to alert my uncle. “Da, Da” called my cousin, loud enough to break through the darts commentary on television, “some man’s cutting the holly down”. My uncle heaved himself from his armchair and marched like it was all one motion. Halting at the door, he gazed across the road to the holly tree. “Fuckin’ tinkers” he snarled through gritted teeth.
​
I first heard the word ‘tinker’ a few years before this as an eight-year-old one Sunday afternoon in the village pub, off my little face on Fanta and Tayto and purple Snacks. The bar-woman slammed the phone receiver down so frantically that it chimed a single ring. “Tinkers”, she howled, “that was the town called, they’re on the way out this way”. The doors were closed and locked, the lights put out, the hurling on the telly switched off, fags extinguished, and pints slurped in careful silence. I still remember it to this day whenever I’m at a lock-in, being inside a pub but pretending to the world outside we’re not. We peered out between the lettering on the windows from within the smoky dark as a caravan of caravans streamed slowly past. I didn’t know what to make of it, but I asked no questions as the last of the convoy trickled past and down the hill. Slowly, the pub resumed from its sudden slumber, the lights came on, fresh cigarettes were sparked, and Limerick had added a goal and a point to their score.

On the walk home I asked my Da what had happened, what are tinkers and knackers and pikies and gypsies, all words I’d heard muttered in the pub in the aftermath of the temporary shutdown. “They’re Travellers”, he told me, “nomadic people. Itinerants. That means they travel around, living in their caravans on the roadsides or in fields until they’re forced to move on by the council or the farmers or whoever. They’re called tinkers because traditionally they worked with tin, making and mending things. They’re great horse people, they even have their own language. I met many a Traveller in my time as a farrier shoeing horses at fairs below in Buttevant. Some lovely singers and musicians among them too”.

“But why did we have to pretend we weren’t in the pub?” I quizzed, confused.

“Ah, fear I suppose”, answered my father, “like all people, there’s good and there’s bad among them. They have a bad reputation when they’ve drink taken, I suppose. One will come in and order a pint and if they get served, a crowd of ten or more will pour in behind them, and then ten more, the women will sit one end all together and the men the other. And if they get a pack of cards or something to fight about after a few drinks, there could be trouble”. I suppose he saw I was anxious or nervous about what had happened because he stopped as we arrived at our gate to look at me. “Don’t worry, a mhic, they’re mostly lovely people, in my experience anyway. There’s far worse out there than Travellers to be worrying about” he said. “Now, don’t tell your mother I had the two pints instead of the one, and I won’t tell her you had crisps and chocolate before your dinner, alright?”.
 
My uncle beckoned my cousin to take up the hurl resting against the door-frame before commencing a beeline down the short driveway and out the gate in strides I now think of as being almost cartoon-like – big, purposeful, over-stretched steps like he’d forgotten the length of his legs.

“Oi, what the fuck do you think you’re at there, eh?” called my uncle, not breaking his stride as he crossed the road without looking left or right, his gaze and finger pointed firmly at the man up the ladder.
My cousin and I had to quick step to keep up behind him, shuffling our feet across the frosted gravel and over the road. 
“That’s my fuckin’ holly yer thievin’!”, exclaimed my uncle with a hint of madness in his voice.
“Oh, sorry boss”, retorted the man up the ladder, “I was just getting a bit for the Christmas. I didn’t realise anyone owned it. I’m sorry, I shoulda found out”.
The young lad had already filled one of the polythene bags by the time we’d gotten out to them and was well on his way to having a second bag full. He stood silent. My cousin and I stayed silent too, trying to look fearless while the men exchanged words.

“A bit, a bit?” cried my uncle, “Ya’ve two bags full here and me fuckin’ tree nearly hacked to bits. The most cavalier holly cutting I’ve ever seen, get down ta fuck before ya do any more damage”.

The ladder bounced gently with every step the man descended toward us. He was wearing a coat the likes of which I’d seen coal-miners wear in old black and white films, a flat cap that old men wore and had the kind of moustache I’d usually be seeing around this time of a Saturday afternoon on Magnum P.I. His hands looked like they weren’t his. They were big and rigid, full of grooves and indentations. Like hands cast in concrete and fused to his wrists, with chips chiseled out of them. They looked like hands that had fought the winds of a thousand winters all on their own. Hard looking hands. Awkward looking hands, though, in constant cups, not quite closed and not quite open, like Lego hands, and their skin dry and tight and taut.

“Tell me”, said my uncle, “who’s Joachim Healy?”.
“Who?” asked the moustached man.
“Is it your ladder’s name?” asked my uncle, pointing to a scrawl running between the fourth and fifth rungs of the ladder.
“I’ll tell ya why ya don’t know who Joachim Healy is”, continued my uncle, “because I’m Joachim Healy and this ladder went missing out of my garage not two weeks ago, along with a load of power tools!”

The man took off his hat and gripped it between his concrete hands.
“Oh Jayziz”, he said, “I bought that ladder fair and square off a man in Clara market below last Sunday, swear to God, swear on me life. Thirteen pound I gave him”.
“Oh aye”, quipped my uncle, “Clara market, where I coulda gone to buy my own holly tomorrow no doubt. I tell ya what, so, I’ll give ya the benefit of the doubt, I’ll take back my ladder, and my two bags of holly there, and I’ll not phone the guards on ya for handling stolen property. How’s that?” 

The moustached man stretched out his cap and flipped it back onto his head once more.
“Aye, no need for the guards, my apologies sir, I’d no idea that ladder was robbed but I’m glad to reunite you with it all the same”, he said, before lobbing the hacksaw into the back of the van and pulling down the door as the young lad handed my cousin and I a bag of holly each.

My Uncle shortened the ladder before threading his arm through the rungs and hoisting it onto his shoulder as the van trundled away. My cousin and I followed him back across the road as my aunty appeared at the door, smoking a cigarette.
“Who’s ladder is that?,” she asked.
“Joachim Healy’s” replied my uncle as he trudged up the driveway.
“Who’s Joachim Healy?”, my aunty responded.
​“I don’t know”, said my uncle, laughing, “but I’ve his fuckin’ ladder”.
 
My father’s words proved wise that Saturday in December, there are far worse out there than the Travellers, and my uncle Brendan is surely among them. I never got my tenner either. 

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