The door flew open almost at once, and Yankee Eachan stood there, a thick leather belt with a heavy buckle dangling from his hand. This year he was ready for them.
‘Gorram sumbitch!’ he roared into the night. He was a big man. Built, as they say, like a brick shit house after years of manual labour. There was no doubting that if he caught you he would do you some damage. He dragged his old tweed bunnet over his bald head, and charged down the steps towards the boys by the fence. Their initial laughter dissolved quickly into alarm, and they hared off around the side of his house. The old man chased after them, swinging the belt around his head.
When they had disappeared from view, I saw the stealers slip out from the cover of the ruined blackhouse and run across the field to lift Yankee Eachan’s gate from its hinges. It was a galvanized tube gate, filled in with wire, so there wasn’t much weight in it. But no sooner had they removed it from its gate post, than Yankee Eachan reappeared from behind the house. He had only pretended to give chase to the distractors, waiting instead until the gate thieves showed themselves. Now he came charging towards them, cursing and swearing in Gaelic, still swinging his belt through the air.
I stood up, startled, thinking he was going to catch them.
There was blind panic among the boys. A bunch of them detached from the others and took off across the croft, heading down towards the shore. There were only two boys left with the gate. Ruairidh, and a lad with acne that everyone called Spotty. Carrying it between them, they starting running along the road towards the Free Church.
But even as they reached it I saw Ruairidh stumble and fall. He had gone over on his ankle. And although he was up again in a flash, I could see that he was limping heavily.
They ran around the side of the church, out of sight of their pursuer, stopping only briefly to heft the gate up on to the roof of a workers’ Portakabin where construction was under way on a new toilet block for the church. And then they split up. Spotty sprinted away past the lights of the community hall, where the girls were still inside playing music and fantasizing about boys, while Ruairidh limped around the back of the Church of Scotland next door and headed off down a path that would take him past my house.
I could see he was in distress, almost dragging his twisted ankle behind him. His stertorous breathing seemed to fill the night air. I saw Yankee Eachan come around the church, and knew he could see Spotty disappearing beyond the curve of the road. There was no chance that he would ever catch him.
Then he came round the back and saw Ruairidh hirpling away down the path. It was no stretch of the imagination to think that the old man might catch him quite easily. But he hesitated, looking around for a moment, and I knew that he was wondering where the gate had gone. But it was quite safely out of sight on top of the Portakabin. So he started after Ruairidh with another mouthful of profanity.
That’s when I had an idea, and went hurtling down the hillside, arms windmilling to stop me from falling. Coming from the hill I could cut across the curve of the path and get to my house before either of them.
I reached the gate just as Ruairidh was approaching, and I waved to him from behind the caravan, calling his name as loudly as I dared without alerting my folks inside the house. He seemed startled to see me, and stopped dead, glancing back to see Yankee Eachan approaching as fast as a man in his late sixties could. ‘Come on!’ I urged him, and signalled him to follow me around the back of the house. I was at the peat stack before he turned the corner, pulling out peats as fast as I could to open up the entrance to my secret place. ‘Get in!’
He looked at me as if I was mad. ‘In where?’
‘The peat stack. There’s a wee den inside.’
The sound of old Yankee Eachan approaching on the path made his mind up for him, and he clambered quickly inside, squeezing himself into a space that I had made only for myself. It was a tight fit, and he couldn’t move once he was in. I quickly piled the peats I had pulled out back into the hole and sealed it up. And just for good measure swung an old gate lying at an angle against the gable of the house, to lean up against the end of the stack. I even had time to dwell, if only for a moment, on the irony of it.
Yankee Eachan came puffing around the corner and stopped in his tracks when he saw me there. ‘Where’d that boy go!’ he shouted.
‘What boy?’ I said.
‘Don’t you play the innocent with me, young lady. I saw him come around the back of your house.’
‘The light’s not so good, Mr Macrae,’ I told him. ‘Your eyes must have deceived you.’ I’d read that in a book at school — about eyes deceiving you — and it seemed like the perfect use of it.
But it only seemed to infuriate him. He looked at me as if I were the devil incarnate. ‘Don’t mess with me, you wee bugger. You think I came up the Mississippi in a bubble? Where’d he go?’
The back door of our house flew open, and a slab of yellow light fell out across the back garden, the shadow of my father standing right in the middle of it.
‘What’s going on here?’ he bellowed.
‘Your wee girl’s hiding a boy who stole my gate,’ Yankee Eachan said indignantly.
‘What boy?’
‘I’ve no idea what his name is.’
My father gasped his irritation. ‘No I mean, where is he, this boy? Where’s the gate he took? And where would my wee lassie be hiding them?’
Yankee Eachan was at a loss. He looked around. It was evident that there was no boy and no gate, except for the one leaning against the peat stack. My father looked at the belt dangling from the old man’s hand.
‘And what were you going to do with that, might I ask?’
‘Give the bugger a good leathering.’
‘Watch your language in front of the lassie. And you a church elder, too.’ He snatched the belt from Eachan’s hand and examined it. ‘You’d do some damage with this. For heaven’s sake, man, it’s just a bit of fun. It happens every year. You know that!’
‘Aye, and I’ll be out half the night gathering my bloody sheep.’ He snatched his belt back. ‘Gorram sumbitch!’ And he stomped off.
When he had gone my father turned and gave me a dangerous look. ‘Where is he?’ he said.
‘Who?’
‘Don’t play the innocent with me, young lady!’ The same expression that Yankee Eachan had used. I put on my most earnest face.
‘Honest, Dad, I’ve no idea. I’m just back from a walk up on the hill.’
‘I thought you were going to the Halloween party.’
‘Nah...’ I scuffed my toe on the path. ‘Couldn’t be bothered this year.’
He held the door wide. ‘Time you were in anyway. It’s getting dark.’
I had no choice but to go inside. My father hesitated for a few moments on the step, casting an eagle eye all around the garden in the twilight, before banging the door shut.
I spent a restless and frustrating evening then, trying to think of excuses why I should go out into the back garden. But I couldn’t think of any that wouldn’t arouse suspicion. We had plenty of peats in for the night, so that wasn’t an option.
Ruairidh was jammed tight into the peat stack, and wouldn’t be able to get out without my help, and I couldn’t stop thinking of him stuck in there, and hating me for abandoning him. What if he needed the toilet? It didn’t bear thinking about.
Eventually my folks packed me off to bed, and I lay wide awake in the dark, fully dressed beneath the covers. I heard Anndra and Uilleam coming back, and could hear my father cross-examining them about who it was who had stolen Yankee Eachan’s gate. But they were no clypes, my brothers, and so no one ever knew that it was Ruairidh.