So you see, that’s why, in The Bible, there’s a snake in the Garden of Eden what takes the rap for everything, my da says to us, and when Peter would say to him, but wait a minute, da, wasn’t it Jayzus that was supposed to take on all the sins of the world, wasn’t that his job, then my da would look at us both and he would laugh with those eyes of his, eyes like a happy snake that could shrug all it wanted, and he would grab our shoulders and he would kill himself, he’d be cracking up, as if we were the most naive kids in the world, and he loved it, but one day we were going to have to wake up to the reality of Christ Jayzus and snakes and what goes on in Ireland, and in Eden.

My brother came out as a gay when he was eighteen year old. My da threatened to beat it out him. What about snakes, I says to him, what about innocent snakes? We were having this big fight in the living room the night Peter dropped the bomb. Snakes don’t turn gay, my da says. You don’t know anything, Peter says to him. All snakes do it up the arse. My da knocked him halfways across the living room for that one.

In the end Peter moved to Canada just so as he could get away from the fucking Garden of Eden. But it’s true, I found out later, Peter was right, all snakes do it up the arse.

When my da was killed a few year later, Peter didn’t even come back for the funeral. No snakes in Ireland, he says when I called him on the phone, remember? The night Peter left my da took the big fucking snake that he had bought for him and forced it down the toilet. I watched him do it, just feeding this massive fucking thing head first into the bog. The thing made a dash for freedom. Just fucking scooted round the U-bend, never to be seen again. It would rather sleep in a sewage pipe for the rest of its days, I remember thinking, than spend another night in my da’s house with an endless supply of live hamsters. That says it all.

Then another snake came along and killed my da. A snake what hit him over the head with a fire extinguisher in a pub, and what snapped his head half off his body. Years earlier, when me and Peter were still living at home, his own da had died and his body had lain upstair at my gran’s house in an open coffin. Do you want to see your grandfather? my da says to us, and he has a gleeful look on his face like he is asking us if we wanted to bunk off school and drink a can of cider in a car park. It was another opportunity to teach us, this time about the big one. He took both our hands and led us into this grey room with the last of the light coming through. There was my grandfather, lying there, dead. It’s alright, my da says to us, it’s okay. Have a good look, he says. Take it all in. You need to learn.