Portrait of the Artist with Four Other Guys

As soon as Jimmy Boyle got back from Ireland, he went to see his friends. Roy, the Viper, Magic Frank, and Crazy Lester were hanging out under the viaduct on the corner of Warsaw and Bohemia, near Heart-of-Jesus Park. It was a late Friday afternoon in August, and Jimmy knew he’d find them there because the league games were over by four or four-thirty, and the boys liked to stay around for a while afterward to talk about what happened. Jimmy had gone to Ireland for a holiday with his mother, his grandmother, and his sister. They were there for two weeks, and he was happy to be back in the neighborhood.

The Viper was the first to spot Boyle.

“Hey, Jimmy! Did you kiss the Blarney Stone?”

“Yeah, all of us did, even my grandmother. We had to hold her by her legs. You gotta bend over backwards to do it. My ma got pictures of me and my sister there. What’d I miss?”