Trout Lake
by Robin Pridy
“I go down to the corner of 57th and I order three pieces of fish. I get four, but they just charge me the three – you order four, you get five,” Uncle Gerry continues, his voice competing with the din of kids splashing in the lake. His hairy stomach folds contentedly over his trunks as he sits on his towel and tries to keep an eye on his swimming daughter without stopping his conversation. “You order two you get three, one you get two,” his tanned, hairy hands gesture a fish about three feet long. “So I go with my daughter, I slide the fish and some fries onto the side of the plate – for ten bucks I got two meals – and the fish is the most beautiful fish you ever tasted.”
Ronnie tugs at her bathing suit and smiles politely, but her uncle’s not looking at her. The story is for her mother Nora, who lies languid on her back, sunglasses on, bird-like hipbones nudging over her black and gold bikini.
“I’ve never gone there,” Nora props herself up to look for tanning lotion and Ronnie dutifully hands it over.
Ronnie doesn’t blame her Uncle Gerry – he’s not her real uncle and he can like who he wants. Everyone goes gooey-eyed over her mother at some point.
“Well, you know, you never asked – you ask, you’ll go,” says Gerry.
Nora gives him ‘the look’ that says perhaps he should drop it. It’s the look Ronnie’s been trying to perfect all summer and seems to be a cross between daydreaming of sunsets and fairies and ‘shut up or I’ll deck you’. It’s like staring into a beautiful vortex and Ronnie is certain that if she could only crack it, the world of grade 8 would be hers in September. Gerry looks away, dazzled. He adds, softy and to no one in particular, “I call a spade a spade you know. You wanna go, you tell me. I never pull anything.”
Nora rolls her eyes, exasperated.
He must be lonely, thinks Ronnie, without Auntie Jane.
Ronnie and her mother had been listening to Gerry for nearly five weeks now, sleeping in his living room, the two of them sharing the ratty pullout sofa that squeaks with every turn. She could’ve shared a room with her cousin Mandy but she didn’t want to wreck a good thing. Because of Uncle Gerry, Nora was actually paying attention to Ronnie, in snatched glances, smirks and sarcastic asides. Ronnie would listen entranced each night while Nora whispered her disbelief at all the crazy nonsense that had come out of Gerry’s mouth that day. Each night as they lay on the sofa, Nora would find some new misdemeanor, from the hair in his ears – Ronnie, did you see? – to the hideous beach shirt he’d chosen for their night at the movies.
It was true, Gerry could talk for all of them and more, and he did keep repeating the same stories, but even those Ronnie secretly liked. He just got so into it, his whole body twitching, hands playing out the entire thing. And it beat another summer in her grandparents’ backyard, jumping back and forth through the piddling garden sprinkler, tinkling ice cubes in a pitcher of ice tea, sitting on a boring summer lawn.
If not for Uncle Gerry’s letter, and Grandma’s insisting that Ronnie really should finally meet her cousin, her mother wouldn’t have written Gerry back. But Grandma said it was a family responsibility. Nora surprised them all with her response. Oh, I guess it wasn’t his stupid fault anyhow, was it? Let’s see how my little niece has turned out, she said, and that was the end of it. Come the end of June, Ronnie and her mother were on the bus to Vancouver, an eight-hour journey through the parched hills of the Okanagan interior.
When mother and daughter arrived at the Vancouver bus station, an over-excited Gerry yelled out an enormous, “Hey gorgeous!” and laughed himself silly when nearly everyone in the station turned to look. After that, he took them out almost every night after his work at the butchers. They went to Stanley Park, to Chinatown, to the aquarium on 2-for-1 Tuesdays.
And – on the hotter days like today – he’d take them to Trout Lake. There, Ronnie didn’t have to worry. No one knew her or bothered her, not like at home, where boys from school would tease her at the pool, snap her bathing suit straps.
Ronnie wasn’t what she wanted to be. No bosoms, no hips, and a rounded belly and thighs that rubbed together as she walked. She was more like stunted Gerry than her lithesome mother who wouldn’t even let her buy a bikini. Nora wanted a new bathing suit herself, she said, and as soon as she felt they could afford that, Ronnie could try and fit into Nora’s old one. For now, Ronnie was left with what she had: a black one piece that made her look like an abandoned seal pup.
Gerry’s eyes light up and he starts to beam at the figure running towards them. His daughter Mandy silently hunches down beside her father and gives him a wet hug with a toothless smile. Her hair is dark and wavy, in wild ringlets down her back. She’s in a pink bikini and looks more attractive than me, thinks Ronnie. She’s a spitting image of Nora, and Uncle Gerry keeps going on and on about the family resemblance. Ronnie can tell Nora agrees – her mother has even taken to calling the little girl my shadow.
Mandy stares at Ronnie, shyly, silently urging her to play with her in the lake, to splash around like all the other kids. Mandy never asks, never intrudes. And Ronnie knows all about that – she soon learned that asking for anything from Nora would get her nowhere, just like not asking did. Her mother was never interested.
Mandy’s approach seemed to be for opposite reasons. If the little girl did say anything, do anything, Uncle Gerry was all over her like a rash, asking her what she thought, what she’d done, what was next. For Mandy, it seemed like being quiet was a kind of damage control, a kindness to save Uncle Gerry from behaving too stupidly.
But the girl clearly loves her father, and giggles as he smothers her energetically with a towel, like he’s charging her up again. It makes Ronnie’s own body hair stand on end – she can’t remember a time when she was dried off and held in a towel. “You know how long it took yous in the water? I timed yous – 15 minutes – I looked at my watch. It was one minute past one. After you left I just looked at my watch hand and it’s 16 minutes after – to the second,” Gerry rattles on. Mandy shrugs and runs back to the lake.
Gerry sighs and shrugs, too. “I hope she don’t end up like me, a goddamn little ape – everywhere but up here!” Gerry runs his hand through his scalp. “She had more hair at five months than I had nine years ago.” His daughter hovers, half in half out of the water, watches the big kids playing around her. Ronnie feels the heat prickling on her shoulders and wonders if she should join her after all. So what if her hair gets ruined? It’s a rat’s nest anyhow. Gerry continues: “She’s got hair on her back, her legs...”
“Oh, don’t worry about that. She’ll be just fine,” says Nora, who’s sat up again and rummaging in her enormous canvas bag. Ronnie – who’d been thumbing through her mother’s book – passes it quickly over. She’ll be just fine. It’s what Nora always says. To teachers, to her own mother, to whoever’s on the phone. Sometimes it’s “We’ll be just fine,” and then she might give a little wink to Ronnie.
Gerry starts up again, “I try to tell her right from wrong, I read books on it, you hear what I mean? I’m not too strict, and I yell at her sometimes, like when she runs out on the street and there’s a car coming. It’s too bad her mother didn’t have as much brains as that little one...” He looks sheepishly at Nora, and even, this time, at Ronnie.
There is silence as Nora keeps her face in the book.
“I would take her from the foster home, she was five months, and walk her around the block at night, just put her on my shoulder and pat her bum,” he says. “You know, Jane didn’t want her – just wasn’t interested.”
Nora puts her book down sharply. “Jane had her own problems,” she stares out at the lake, her face immobile, sunglasses raked up on the crown of her head, her long dark hair curving delicately around her face, her beautiful collarbone.
“I could’ve left her after... after what Jane did.... ” Gerry squirms on his towel when he mentions his dead wife, “but she’s my blood. I’m losing my brain cuz a her. And I started losing my hair about nine years ago. I did so much worrying when she was younger.” Gerry continues, unaware of Nora’s tightened mouth. “I read all these book about crib death, I’d sit up all night long! The lady from social work would come every few days and I would say, just watch her for an hour cuz I haven’t slept in four days.”
Nora lights a cigarette, silently puffs and continues to stares at the far edge of the lake. Ronnie gives her mother a hopeful smile, seeks out a conspiratorial look, gets nothing.
Gerry rolls on: “I’ll tell you when I quit smoking – it was when cigarettes were 25 cents a pack and they jumped up to 45 cents – I just wouldn’t pay that. I started again though, when Jane was pregnant with that one there. She’s nine now, and that’s when I started smoking again. I would smoke one every two days, then two a day, then got up to eight a day.” He looks at Ronnie this time, finally guessing that Nora has drifted far away, long gone from the conversation.
“What the hell, let’s get some ice cream,” Uncle Gerry jabs a finger at Ronnie, mutters and grunts as he struggles to lift himself off the towel. Nora, too, walks off, in the opposite direction, towards the cliffs where kids insist on jumping off, to gigantic whoops and hollers.
“I’ll crack open that watermelon in half an hour, and then we got the ham in the trunk,” he nudges her as they walk to the beach shack selling fries and ice cream, one eye still on his daughter playing alone on the shoreline. “Can’t let a growing girl like yourself go hungry!”
“You wouldn’t remember your Auntie Jane. That’s a whole other kettle a fish. But my girl down there, she turned out all right,” he points at Mandy and smiles to himself as he watches her dunk her head up and down in the shallows. Ronnie sees that Nora is now a small dot by the cliffs. “Mandy – she’s a good kid. And I make sure I get half the summer off you know. I remember how important those days used to be, just hoping it wouldn’t end –” He catches the eye of one of the teenagers behind the counter. “ – three fudgies buddy, nothing squishy, we want’em as God intended’em – frozen!” Gerry laughs over the crowd of grasping kids’ hands, their mouths full of ketchup and fries and Coke, all the bare shoulders and damp towels huddling on the concrete platform in front of the shack.
He takes Ronnie’s hand in his and smiles at her as they wait. Her hand stiffens, feels suddenly like an alien part of her body, not her own. Her hand, her face, are burning red. Nobody ever holds hands in her family. Is he family even? He was married to her dead auntie. She’s too old for holding hands. She wants to slip her hand away, run away, but feels welded to the concrete. He looks so happy, waiting for his ice creams, watching his little girl. He didn’t even think twice about it. Nobody even knows her here, so why does she care? Her hand sweats, taking on a life of its own.
Gerry sees her red face and quickly lets go. “Aww, no! Of course! You’re too big for stuff like that. Jeez, I’m just used to my little Mandy...” He laughs a little, looks away.
“It’s just so hot,” pleads Ronnie, not sure why she’s lying, not sure if she’s relieved or sad to let go.
“I guess that one’s gonna be too big for all that soon, too,” says Gerry as he retrieves the fudgesicles, passes one to her.
Ronnie bites down hard on the frozen top, the sharp cold reaching up through her teeth, into her gums. “I’ll take it to her,” she grabs the remaining ice cream and runs towards the shore, towards Mandy.
When the girls return from the water, lunch is ready and waiting. An entire watermelon, white stripes bulging, sits in the middle of Gerry’s towel, along with a loaf of white bread, mustard and the biggest hunk of ham Ronnie’s ever seen. Glass bottles of cream soda bead with sweat in the sun, fresh from Gerry’s enormous cooler. Nora is back.
“Watermelons – they gotta be hollow,” says Gerry as he butchers the melon into fleshy pink wedges, black eyes glinting out. He motions to Mandy, who’s already got half a face of pink juice, cheeks full of melon. “I took her out of my wife’s stomach. She had a caesarean – I was all in the gloves and mask and robe. I reached in an’ pulled the baby out by the feet...”
Ronnie looks to Nora for at least a raised eyebrow – there’s no way Gerry could have done that – but her mother just sits there, hunched and cross-legged, sipping a cream soda. She is gazing into the parking lot, away from the beach, away from them.
---------------
Hot, dull air hits them as they open the front door to the apartment – they forgot to draw the shades and the place is now baking. Gerry, unfazed, immediately gets to work on a pea soup from this afternoon’s ham hock. Within minutes, a heavy pea smell coats the air. “The way I trim meat they tell me I should have been a surgeon – debone a chicken in less than a minute.” He opens the kitchen window, but there’s not even a breeze.
Mandy sits at the table, drawing a man who’s waterskiing and making a huge tidal wave behind him that swamps all the kids on the shore. The man looks just like her Dad, and Ronnie whispers to her, “Is that you-know-who?” Mandy nods and they stifle a laugh. Nora grabs her purse and quietly shuts the front door behind her as she leaves. Gerry doesn’t say a word.
The three of them sit down to eat, all of them still in their bathing suits. Her uncle says his trademark, “Dig in kids,” but it’s a pale version of his usual bellow. The soup looks sickly green, Gerry looks tired and Mandy wriggles in her seat.
Gerry takes a long look at Ronnie. “You know, Mandy is in a great school, aren’t ya, kid?” He nudges Mandy, who gives a small smile. “It goes all the way up to your grade – the one you’ll be in this year,” he looks down at his bowl and slurps his soup. “It’s a great school.”
Ronnie blushes. She rubs her hand, which has become hot all over again. She keeps seeing her mother back at the cliffs on the lake. They should’ve known better than to come here to this soggy place with its soggy soup. Where this man is always talking. At home, nobody talks like this. Her face is now so hot it pulses and Gerry waits for an answer. She says nothing, so he continues, this time very quietly. “All I’m sayin’ is it’s a great school, and a great town... even after summer’s all over.”
“We can have bunk beds,” pipes up Mandy, looking quickly at her father and then at Ronnie.
Gerry laughs nervously and coughs. “You’re too smart for yer own good, you know that?” and ruffles her hair. He rests his elbows on the table and sighs. “Ronnie, I know I blab on and on, God I get tired of it myself sometimes and I just can’t help it, I need to talk, but... well – we’ve got a place...”
Standing up abruptly, Ronnie tries ‘the look’, focusing on a place just above Gerry’s eyebrows. But Gerry continues to meet her stare.
“No!”
The strength of her voice startles her, and Gerry visibly jumps.
She runs into Mandy’s bedroom, covers herself in the stifling blanket, eyes tightly shut to stop hot tears. Uncle Gerry starts to rattle dishes in the kitchen and Ronnie imagines herself in a vast black space of quiet and cold, swimming in a pale pink bikini at night in Trout Lake, no one to see her, no one to talk. Just cool, lapping water and black night.
She feels a thin, cold hand on hers, sees the blanket has been thrown off her. “Wanna go find her?” Mandy is quietly sitting on the bed, beside her in the darkened room.
“No,” Ronnie looks up at the girl and feels calm, still. “We’ll be just fine.”
Robin Pridy is a freelance editor and journalist. Originally from Vancouver Island in western Canada, she now lives in St Leonards-on-Sea, in the UK, with her partner, her baby girl called Juno and a rather large black-and-white cat.
ASH
by Kelly Luce
(a few paragraphs)
The year we lived in Japan, the volcano at the edge of town hiccupped, covering everything in six inches of heavy golden dust. The sky turned yellow, with clouds so low they were like ceilings. No one could remember anything like it.
Businesses and schools closed that first day; there was no way to handle the ash, no plows on hand in that tropical city. It was a nuisance, we were told, but not really dangerous; children poured outside to play wearing bathing suits and surgical masks. Housewives vacuumed the street. Dust got into the air raid siren and it blared over the city for the first time since World War II. Our family was freed from obligation—Lou from teaching at the university, Alex from a day of second grade, and me from filling time. We steered our bicycles through the fine dust and joined other families making ash angels in the park; we communicated through exclamations and gestures and in that bizarre world I felt, for the first time in three months, part of something.
I got arrested on the way home from the park. A policeman flagged us down and checked the registration numbers on our bicycles; the name on mine did not match the name on my alien registration card and I was put in the backseat of a police car while my husband and child stared. He told my son, whose brain had soaked up Japanese without even trying, not to worry, that I would be calling them soon, to go and play and enjoy his day off of school. Lou kept pointing to the bike and repeating the name of the university. His voice shook and rose. In shock, I watched them get smaller from the backseat, half expecting my husband to chase us on his bicycle.
The police station was dark; the power must have gone out. A man with eyes too big for his face sat next to me at a card table. Five older men looked on, smoking and chatting. Occasionally they laughed. The man opened a laptop computer, then typed something and angled the screen toward me. A window popped up:
Why do you steal a bicycle?
Ah, the misunderstandings never ended. My fingers flew as I explained.
He read the translation carefully, as if inspecting a scroll. He shook his head and typed. The record of bicycle is not found. University worker has no availability today for the confirmation.
I argued my point. Suddenly one of the older men flicked his cigarette butt to the ground, bent down and shouted, “Why you steal?”
A bored-looking woman arrived in uniform, her black hair still wet from washing. She sat on the other side of me.
When can I go home? I typed.
That is difficult.
Why is it difficult?
Yes, I see. You see, it is not believing you tell the truth. He said something to the woman. They both stood up; she took my wrist. I jerked it away. I yelled, “I didn’t steal the goddamn bike!” They looked embarrassed, as if I were a senile grandmother they must humor.
Handcuffs. Photographs. Fingerprints. Somewhere I gave up speaking; no one could understand me. The jail was half an hour away by car, and before I went outside, the woman fastened a leather belt around my waist. A rope hung from it like a leash. She gripped it in her fist and avoided my eyes...
Kelly Luce's collection of stories set in Japan won the 2008 Jackson Award from the San Francisco Foundation. She is the winner of the 2008 Danahy Prize from Tampa Review, and has recently published fiction in The Southern Review, Massachusetts Review, and North American Review. She keeps a hula hoop in her car. Find more of her work online at Crazy Pete's Blotter: www.thecrazypetesblotter.blogspot.com.
The Savage Breast
by Aongus Murtagh
Mack's is half empty when I walk inside; but it's only eight o'clock.
“Howaya Mack.”
“Guinness, is it?”
Mack puts on a pint for me. He's a grumpy fucker. Personally, I don't mind that. I prefer to be left in peace for my quiet pint before Shakies. If the lads come in we take over the corner near the pool table. Sometimes we don't bother with the disco at all – full of little shits the place is. Besides, they keep putting the prices up.
Maybe the boys went to Murph's. They started going there when he set up the beer garden during the summer. I don't go near the place myself – packed full of children half the time anyway. They say Murph is a millionaire. He had the bouncers throw me out the one night I was there. I bumped into a sun umbrella and knocked it over. I was laughing my arse off; but it wasn't so cool, the way he had the bouncers on me like a shot. I hadn't a chance. They nearly broke my arm in two. There's Joe now.
“Well Joe, are you having a fuckin pint?”
“Howaya. Yeah, sure I might as well.”
“Did you see any of the boys?”
“No. But they'll be up at Shakies after.”
Joe puts his fag on the edge of the table and bends down for the first shot, screws up his eyes and pots the black!
“You stupid bollocks!”
“I've a blight on me tonight. Jaysus, look at the state of them cunts.”
Three of them are walking in. Their spaceship must have got lost or something. Fair play to Mack; he doesn't acknowledge them. Two of them sit down under the television. The other one stands at the bar. He’s hopping from one foot to the next as if he's bursting for a slash. I'm standing down the counter now because our pints are finished. Mack puts on two more for me.
The character at the bar has got long, scraggly hair and there's funny designs on his clothes. I eye him carefully; I don't like the way he looks. He must have a problem or something. He's holding out his money to Mack, but Mack won't catch his eye. The long-hair looks around him, catches sight of me and looks away.
Then the girl comes up, a thin, fierce-looking creature with loads of earrings. Jesus Christ she's no shoes on!
“Joe,” I call over, “Joey.”
But Joe's seen it already. He gives me a wink.
“What's wrong?” the girl says to your man.
“The guy won't serve me.”
“Hey, could we have three pints of cider, please.”
She must have forgotten to swallow the plum she had for lunch.
Mack is eating a bag of peanuts and looking at a game of snooker on the box. He slowly moves towards the taps. He doesn't want to refuse her because she's a woman.
We get back to our game, but I keep my eye on them. Your woman comes over and looks at the pool table as if she wants to play. We have our money down for the night. So they can go and fuck off.
They have to pass us to get to the toilets. They're pure cowards; Joe and I have a bit of craic – when we see them coming we line up for a big shot and block their way for ages. They have to squeeze in against the wall. We hope this will get rid of them so we can enjoy the night in peace, but they order another round. Joe is shaking his head. He can't cope with them at all.
“I'd like to go down and skull one of them with this cue,” he says swinging it around his head.
We're getting a bit locked at this stage.
Joe tells me he's seen the golliwog up the town before, but that he's never seen the faggoty one and the creature with no shoes.
“No wonder,” I remark, “People like that would just be laughed at.”
“Mack'll lose customers if he keeps serving fuckers like that,” I add after my next shot.
The golliwog keeps looking over frightened in our direction. We glare back. The next time he goes past for a piss I wink at Joey and follow him in.
He's swaying there trying to take aim. I stand beside him and stare at him until I can see the sweat popping out of his forehead. He's too scared to piss. He zips himself up and tries to leave. At that minute Joe walks in and stands in his way.
Joe can put a fierce look in his eyes when he wants. He stands there with his arms folded saying nothing. Your man is paralysed for about five minutes. The faggoty fellow bursts in the door like a sheriff in the wild west, but he can’t hide the fact he's shitting it as well.
“Look guys! We just want to have a drink in peace. Why don't you leave us alone?”
There's a stand-off then: a bit of sport. Nevertheless our pints await, and the thrist is drying the mouth off me. Me and Joe push past them through the swinging door.
In the meantime your woman has taken over the pool table. There she is setting them up, with money down for another game. I never start on a woman so I take my pint and sit up at the counter. Joe follows me. He's bullin; he sinks his pint and hammers the glass down. When Joe gets thick there's no stopping him.
The lads come out from their homo piss and see what your woman has done. They don't want to play; they're whispering at her, pointing to the door. But she picks up the cue and breaks.
“She has them both snookered,” says Joe and lights a cigarette.
We watch them play. The light above the table shines down on their fear.
“Whoever wins can ride her tonight,” announces Joe real loud and belches. I can't help laughing. They can hear us, but say nothing.
“Watch her put her hand in their pockets and pull out their balls,” Joe continues when the first game is over.
I nearly fall off my stool.
“The cunts, robbing our table...”
Joe's upset behind it all. He's also upset at Mack for serving them the first place.
After their game they buy a few flagons as a carry out. We haven't spoken for a while, but I know what Joe's thinking as they leave the pub as quickly as they came in.
“I reckon they're camping up near the canal. I saw two tents on the way in.”
“Could be.”
“Will we have a look before Shakies?”
“Yeah, we could have a look.”
“C'mon so. Goodnight Mack.”
“Goodnight lads. Are yez goin up to Shakies?”
“We might. It's got fierce expensive. Good luck.”
A dreary old evening – you wouldn’t think it was only September, I think to myself as me and Joe head off past the market square. We're both a bit locked. I can see a crowd outside Shakies – a few women as well, screaming at some joke. Four or five lads from Cross Hill are standing against the wall throwing shapes at us. Joe shouts over.
“Go on, ya cunts!”
The lads move away from the wall and observe us pass. One or two of them look on for a mill. Unfortunately, the others aren't finished their chips. Me and Joe race down the one way street at the corner. Those lads would never follow us; they know we've friends all around the place. Once they're away from their tractors they don't know what to do.
“There's five of them,” I inform Joe.
“No fucking fear.”
“I hope our lads will show up.”
“I met Peter and Knife-sker last night. They said they were saving their spons for Shakies. They wanted to cruise some beors.”
“Good men to have around.”
“Those Cross Hill lads are cowards when it comes down to it.”
Joe says this and lets a big roar out of him. Then he starts kick boxing the air. I knock over a bin. Joe starts breaking his arse laughing as it rolls down the street.
We cut across by the convent lane and up through the bushes. The spot-lights from the Cathedral carpark blind my eyes.
“Those lights are fierce,” says Joe.
“Shut up, will ya. Someone will hear us.”
“Let them.”
We scale the wall at the nun's graveyard. I'm sneaking along by the headstones when Joe jumps me from behind and tries to throw me onto a grave.
“Come out from around me, you cunt.”
“A dead nun, that's all you'll be getting tonight.”
“Is it? We'll see about that.”
“I saw Knife-sker's cousin in the queue. Jesus I wouldn't say no to that one.”
“I saw her last Saturday. She was lyin underneath that fella with the motorbike what's his name? Jonesy. Right beside the dancefloor.”
“Jaysus. The dirty whore. I'll have to get myself a motorbike. Wha'?”
“If that was what he was doin to her on the dancefloor imagine what he was giving her after?” I remark.
“Stop. I'll be comin thinkin about it.”
“All you need is to buy a one like that a few Ritz's.”
“You need a bit of dough all right. Tell me, did you ever lick the nipple? I'll call you a man when you lick the nipple.”
“Shut up, now,” I say. “Do you hear the music?”
“Yeah.”
We climb the rusty blue gate, make our way past the darkened school then out through the hedge onto the canal line. There are two tents pitched and a small fire is burning. The three of them are sitting around like witches. The golliwog is playing a song on a guitar. I glance at Joe. There's that look in his eye; he wants to have some sport. There'll be no holding him back now.
“What's this?! What's this?! A fire!”
The three of them nearly jump out of their skins. I'm right behind Joe.
“What do you want? What do you want?” asks the golliwog.
Joe steps forward and with one boot, kicks most of the fire into the canal. Then he starts stomping around on the rest of it.
“HEY!”
It's your woman. She's up and has her hands on him, trying to drag him away.
“Go on the Joe,” I yell. I can't help laughing.
“Fuck off! Leave us alone man!”
“Cursing. What do ya think of that, Joe?”
“It's a fucking disgrace. Here give us that flagon there.”
“Don't give it to him!”
But the faggoty fellow isn't an idiot – he hands Joe the flagon.
“Just go! Just go!” pipes up the golliwog.
Joe takes a mighty slug from the flagon and gobs it all over him. Your woman jumps on him now like she’s looking for a piggy-back.
“Help, help, I'm being raped!” screams Joe in a girly voice.
The other two lads get up now and stand there jumping from foot to foot, the golliwog holding the guitar in the air wondering whether to swing it. I hit him a clip on the ear and push his faggoty pal onto the tent. They know what they'll get if they try anything else. I help myself to the other flagon and at the same time hold the guitar over the water. It's a good move because it distracts your woman.
“Stop the racket or I'll throw it in,” I tell her.
That shuts her up.
“Now you people should know it's against the law to light fires around here. You see the poor swans are frightened and can't sleep. We'll take these flagons off yez because it's against the law to be drunk in public. There's people have to use this lane at night, child molesters mostly, but even so.”
Joe's a gas man.
“If we hear any more noise, we'll confiscate them auld tents now.”
There's people up at the bridge: I give Joe the nod. He takes a last Kong Fu kick in the air, then we leap into the bushes with a flagon each, to be skulled before Shakies.
The clouds have dispersed for a moment. We're walking under a half moon knocking back the cider. Joe wants to head back later and kick the shit out of them all.
“I hate fuckers like that more than anything.”
But before that there's the Cross Hill lads to take care of, if they haven't got windy, that is.
We run into Knife-sker and some others at the corner.
“There's some scum up the canal line having an orgy. Drug addicts,” is the first thing Joe says as he passes the flagon. The boys want to sort them out immediately.
“I saw those Cross Hill lads outside Shakies,” I put in.
So we move off in that direction. We're walking quickly; nobody stands in our way. The moon gets wrapped in clouds again. It starts raining; the town is quiet except for a few remaining figures outside the club who the bouncers wouldn't let in. I recognise them, lads a few years older, mad bastards.
“Howaya lads!”
“Well boys. How's the form?”
“The bouncers wouldn't let you in or what?”
“Them bouncers. I'll come back next week and burn the place to the ground.”
“Good man.”
“They said I was drunk and me with only six or seven pints on me.”
“Sure tell me, who'd be able to go into a kip like that without a few pints on him?”
“That's right. Listen have you got a cigarette?”
“Here boss. Here, have a go on my flagon.”
“I will, thanks.”
We head up to the door. Joe whispers to me.
“I don't like cunts like that asking me for cigarettes. Knackers, that's what they are. I only gave him the flagon cos I couldn't finish it myself.”
“Ah, there's worse.”
Joe doesn't answer. The silver door opens outward. We cruise on inside. Knife-sker's second cousin is married to the bouncer.
“Well, lads.”
“Alright, Harry.”
“No trouble tonight, lads.”
“No, Harry.”
“Otherwise I'll have the guards down.”
“It’ll be alright, Harry.”
The Cross Hill boys aren't there – they must have got yellow after all. There's no decent looking beors around either. Joe tells the boys about what happened in Mack's at the pool table. They decide to head up to the canal later. I'm so locked, the coloured lights and the music are swirling in my head. I watch the girls dancing. A shower of yelping dogs, they are. Joe and Knife-sker are laughing at some joke.
Then it's over, the lights come on like an explosion. There's a young one screaming at her boyfriend.
“You fuckin bastard. I'll never talk to you again!”
Joe stands behind her leaping up and down, taking the piss. I can't help laughing. There's nothing her boyfriend can do because he sees the rest of us. I think he used to work up at Tesco’s.
“Goodnight, lads.”
“Goodnight, Harry.”
I get sick on my way up the street. The boys go on ahead without noticing. I stumble up after them wiping the vomit off my face. It's heavy rain now and I step into a puddle. I'm tired and in bad form. Joe is laughing up ahead as I nearly rupture myself getting over the nun's wall.
The two tents are dark forms in front of me. The boys have already reached them. I begin to run through the muck. The tents are being kicked over; there's screaming everywhere. The faggoty fellow leaps out of one and tears off along the canal; but Knife-sker is on him, boxing the head off him as he runs. The golliwog is gone the other direction. Someone else throws one of the tents in the air. It lands in the canal like a space capsule. Then the girl is running past me. I hardly see her, she's that quick. She could get away, only she turns back, screaming blue murder.
I grab hold of her arm. The moon flickers out from two parting clouds. She's only a pair of jeans on. I see her tits with their big round nipples which are all pearly in the moonlight. I’ve never seen any so close apart from the television.
“Stop screaming!” I tell her.
“Fuck you!”
“STOP!” I bark in her face, getting vexed.
Behind me somewhere I hear Joe yell and another voice curse.
I push her over into the bushes and stand above her with my fists clenched.
“Please, please, don't rape me, don't rape me.”
So that's what she thinks, the whore. I kick her in the head – the first time I ever hit a woman. She falls to the side, but is able to right herself. I look down at her again, at the raindrops and tear-drops tumbling down her face, which is turned away from me.
“Look at me!” I command, but the clouds are regrouping, and she vanishes from my sight.
I hear Knife-sker’s whistle and leap into the bushes. We meet up after at the corner. The lads are hungry for chips. There's a wildness in their eyes. Luigi's is closing up; we have to hurry. A squad car cruises by, so close I can hear its wipers’ swish.
“What happened to the girl?” Joe asks slyly, when the tail-lights disappear over the hill at the end of the street.
“Ah, I didn't see her,” I answer, glancing at him quickly.
But Joe’s already stepping into the chipper.
I'm not in the form for chips. I just want to go home, to lie in my warm bed and listen to the rain outside. There's a bad feeling coming on. I just want to get home.
