My Temporary Life (3 page)

“
She threw herself on me, before I could reach them, and we both landed on the bed. Then she started hitting me, over and over. They weren’t hard hits,” I say, remembering the beating that he’d endured from one or both of his parents. “She was just frustrated I guess, and tired. We were both tired, just really tired.”

“
I told her that I wanted my Dad. I told her that I missed Scotland.”

“
You missed this? How could you have missed this?” I look up and see him perched forward on his branch now, peering down at me.

“
It wasn’t
this
that I missed. I just didn’t know how to say what I meant. It was her and him and me that I missed. It was us being together that I missed. It was “normal” that I missed. She just didn’t understand.”

Plans were made quickly after that. She told me that if I missed that ‘boring old Scotsman’, then I could go back to him. She made arrangements to send me back before the school year began, and said she’d see me in the summertime, by then she’d be settled. It would be better by then, better for both of us.

I was at the airport four days later, and held my face hard and rigid, determined not to show any feeling. She was carefree and friendly to everyone around us, and made it sound as though I were going on an adventure, and that I should be happy. After all, I was getting what I wanted.

I was through the first line-up, and with my small carry-on bag in my hand, I looked back, hoping to see some kind of remorse from her, some kind of reaction, some kind of anything. It took a minute before I spotted her in the crowd, leaning over and flicking back her long blonde hair, and smiling. She was talking to a man, oblivious to the fact that I was about to fly halfway around the world.

“
She wanted me gone. So, I was gone, back here. I told you it was simple.”

We sit in silence until the bell rings and then make our way down the tree. I sometimes feel as though he’s going to fall when he jumps and lands on the ground. He doesn’t though. He rights himself just in time, somehow staying upright. Then, he stumbles forward, and runs reluctantly towards the sound of the bell, and back to school.

CHAPTER 3

We’re almost always able to reach our tree during dinner hour. In order to get there undetected, we have to be amongst the first students to leave the dinner hall. To accomplish this, we quickly eat whatever they serve us, and then make our way across the yard to our safe haven.

It’s a routine that’s become familiar to us. Hardly leaves first, dropping his plate into the large metal bucket, then runs to the door, as I trail a few feet behind him, trying not to look quite so anxious. Sometimes, a few heads turn and there’s murmurs of, “Hardly,” or “Hardly drinking,” but we still make it. We almost always make it. There’s only one day that we have obstructions.

We follow our usual routine, but once Hardly is outside, he’s met by McGregor and three of his cronies, and they quickly corral him into a corner. I stop in my tracks, and sit at an empty table, dropping my head, pretending to be engrossed in the design of the table top. The door to the dinner hall is propped open, and I can see him, through the opening, cowering in a corner. My forehead sweats, but I’m not sure if it’s from anger or fear, or just frustration at being held up, and not able to get to our tree. I can hear McGregor’s booming voice. He speaks, then pauses, waiting for the inevitable laughter from his lumbering sidekicks.

“
Is that why you walk funny, Hardly? Are ye always on the booze?”

Hardly doesn’t answer. He just keeps staring down, shuffling his feet and trying to walk between them. They keep it going, not wanting to let him off the hook, as they bounce him back into the corner as though he’s a ball and it’s all a game. I look up occasionally, from the safety of my table, looking for Stuart Douglas, wondering why he isn’t with them, involved in their performance.

McGregor is tall and bulky, but Douglas is the fighter. Douglas has a litheness and arrogance that make the rest of the school fear him. He has an unpredictability and rage that can erupt without provocation. I’ve seen him amble down the halls, swinging his gangly arms, only to start slapping or even punching the heads of boys that he passes. From our vantage point up the tree, I’ve seen him fight too. He attacks with no warning, running towards whatever boy seems to be in his disfavour that day, and mercilessly beats him. He has no qualms about size either. He routinely picks boys who are as tall and broad as him or even larger. Douglas is the one that I’m really afraid of. He’s the one who’ll hurt you just for the sport of it.

McGregor is still being entertained by Hardly and keeps pushing on, showing off for his crowd. Nan McHendry brushes by them, leaving the dinner hall with her girlfriends, trying to take no notice.

“
Nan, luk at this yin. I’ve found me a drunk in oor school. Come and see me kick his arse.” The son of the butcher is larger than life now, and Hardly is reduced to just standing, pinned against the wall, staring, once again, at the ground.

She refuses to encourage McGregor, and backs away, grabbing her girlfriend’s arm. “Leave him alone, Gordon. He’s no daeing you any harm, none at all.”

For a moment, I think she might be looking back at me, and then back at her girlfriend. I start to stand, and I’m sure that I have every intention of doing something, anything, when I hear Douglas’ voice, coming from beyond them, out in the yard.

“
Right, Gordon, it’s done. We’re right as rain, mate.”

I don’t know what they’re talking about, nor do I care. All that matters to me is that I’ve avoided yet another confrontation. I wait until McGregor and his cronies saunter towards Douglas, dismissing Hardly as though he’s a piece of litter lying at the side of the road, before I make my way to my friend, trying to make apologies for my tardiness.

“
It’s fine. You can’t do anything anyways. There’s too many of them. There’s no point in both of us getting into it with them.” He knows. He might not have seen me cowering back at the empty table, but he still knows.

We don’t have enough time that day to reach our tree unnoticed, so, we spend it in our previous manner, walking from open space to open space, trying to be invisible to the Douglases and McGregors of the school yard.

The next day I’m excited, anxious to get back to our routine of watching the world while sitting hidden from the rest of the school. Our schedule has been disrupted, and I feel as though I’ve missed something. I need to get back to the safety and security of our stand-alone tree. We glance at each other while wolfing back our dinners in anticipation. Hardly has an earnest look on his face, and when he does look at me, he smiles, sharing in our secret.

Thankfully, there are no obstructions at the door this day, and we quickly make our run across the open grass. It feels the same way that it always does. I can feel the dampness from the uncut field soaking through my school shoes, but it doesn’t matter. Our tree looms invitingly in front of us. If I’d slowed down a little, I might have seen the rope before we got there, or I might even have heard them, but I don’t. All I can think about is helping Hardly up that first branch, and then hoisting myself up behind him.

He’s up and on his way, and I’ve just reached the first branch, when I hear it. First, there’s the cry of, “Fire,” from a voice up somewhere in the tree. Then, the steady stream of liquid comes at us from different directions. I make the fatal mistake of looking up only to be met with a mouthful of warm piss.

The laughter is unmistakable. McGregor and Douglas and whoever is tagging along with them are up our tree, cocks hanging out, pissing all over us.

I slide down as fast as I can, falling to the ground, covered in their piss, but Hardly stays. I look back up, wiping my forehead and rubbing my stinging eyes, but still he doesn’t move. He just sits there on the tree branch, letting them aim at him, laugh at him.

“
Hardly...Gerald. Fuck...Hardly, come down. Come down.” I can’t reach him. I just stand at the bottom, listening to the sounds of their piss bouncing off of him, too disgusted and scared to climb back up.

Finally, when they exhaust their supply and the sounds of their laughter is almost unbearable, he looks back up at them, then climbs down the tree with purpose, jumping to the ground and gaining his balance without any help from me. It’s then that I notice the rope hanging from the branch at the back of the tree. The planning for this venture has obviously been in the works for some time.

We know we can’t return to the school, smelly and wet, so we cross the road as quickly as we can, trying to ignore the maniacal sounds of the boys who are still sitting up our tree, and make our way home. Hardly doesn’t talk, and when we reach the street that leads to his house, he just keeps walking as though he’s been alone all along.

“
I’ll see you in the morning, then. Hardly, don’t worry about it. They’re assholes, just a bunch of assholes.”

When you’re 13, almost 14, everything lasts forever. You have no concept of things ending or changing. You’re trapped in a monotony of bleak days at school and silent night-time suppers. Then, a tree presents itself, and becomes a bit of light in the darkness and you grab onto it and use it as hope and promise and optimism. And then, just as suddenly as it appears, it’s taken away. We’ll never be up our tree again. I know that, and Hardly probably knows it too. What I don’t know is how we’re going to cope without it. The one place in our lives that we can hide just disappeared.

It isn’t unusual for my father to be home during the day. He takes work when he can get it, and that sometimes means working on weekends, and often having no work at all during the week. He’s working in the yard in front of our house when he first sees me, and stares, stares as though I’ve just wandered in from another planet. I try to ignore his expressionless look and just keep walking sluggishly towards our front door, hoping for once, for the familiarity of his silences.

“
Is there no school? Are you no well?”

I’m almost past him, when he must have caught a whiff of my clothes, and he grabs me as roughly as I can ever remember him touching me.

“
What is that? What’s the smell, Malcolm?”

I’ve had enough. I’ve had enough of waiting for phone calls from Canada that never come and nightly silent treatments. I’ve had enough of trying to fit in where I know I never will. I pull away from his strong grip, and stand my ground, almost gagging on the stink that is coming from me.

“
It’s piss. They pissed all over us. We had our tree, and they took it, and then they pissed on us. They had a rope to get up there, and now we don’t have a tree. It’s piss, just piss.” I don’t remember ever yelling at him before, but still he doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t look away. I can’t tell if he’s angry or concerned or even hurt. He just keeps staring at me.

“
Go, get cleaned up Malcolm. Then, get back out here. Get that stuff off of you.”

I’ve never been afraid of my father. Previous to my mother leaving him, he’d been a good, kind, attentive Dad to me, rarely raising his voice. The man that I met when I got off the plane in Scotland this time is different though. This Dad doesn’t show emotions. He just seems to exist, working when there’s work, and doing the bare minimum to live in a house with a son that he hasn’t asked for.

When I come back outside, he’s leaning against the side wall of our house, watching me, waiting.

“
Come over here Malcolm. I want to show you something. Come on, it’s okay.” His words aren’t menacing, and as I approach him he backs himself against the wall and lowers his stance, so that I’m looking straight into his eyes. His tattered work-shirt is turned up at the sleeves and his muscles are pushing out as though they need a shirt of their own.

“
I want you to do something. Look at the wall behind my head. Pretend that you can see right through my head and then punch the wall behind it. Don’t concentrate on my head, just on the wall. Hit that wall as hard as you want to hit whoever pissed on you.”

I have to stifle my laughter. I won’t hit him. I can’t hit him.

“
I don’t want to hit you. I can’t hit you.”

“
Malcolm, hit me. Go on, hit me. It’ll be okay. I don’t mind.”

We go back and forth a couple of times, before he finally raises his voice one last time, and tells me to hit him. And, I do. I hit my Dad.

I draw my bony little fist back and swing it as hard as I can at his head, concentrating on the wall behind him, just as he told me.