Runt (11 page)

And the trunk on a tree

And the tree in a hole

And the hole in a bog

And the bog down in the valley-O!

Roll, roll, the rattling bog,

The bog down in the valley-O!

Roll, roll, the rattling bog,

The bog down in the valley-O!

We sang that and got all out-of-breath and laughed and Arrn joined in with some woofs and happy’d we were All Three. I remembered Drunkle first teaching me that song when I was little and we went up the hill at Abergynolwyn and we climbed to the top and looked over at Cader Idris and we saw a load of people on the same hill as us but lower down and they were all singing and I asked Drunkle about their song and he taught me all the words and I like to sing it. I like it when it gets all long at the end and I can’t find my breath to finish it and nor can Drunkle and our voices go all kind of stretched out and it makes us laugh. Auntie Fay used to like it too. She used to like singing it with me and I was waiting for Drunkle to get sad again then but he didn’t he just put a laughing in the car and put a rubbing on my head and he then got out of the truck and I patted Arrn and told him not to worry, we wouldn’t be long and he looked all
worried
anyway with his ears all red and I closed the door and waved to him and went with Drunkle into the pub.

But those people who I remembered singing, Drunkle knew some of them and I remembered him telling me that some of them were dead and some of them had Gone Away and one of them or maybe someone that they knew had become a murderer and a few years ago killed some people in the hills for No Reason he just went mad and killed them and when they found out his friends, maybe some of the ones who I saw singing, well they killed him too. I remembered Drunkle telling me all that one night when he was drunk and it Stuck In My Head like burrs stick in Arrn’s fur but it wasn’t News to me about the world or about the things that live on it it was just something more that Stuck In My Head like the ravens’ voices do and the foxes’ stories and the world with those stories in it could not be bigger than it was in my head but I knew that very much it was, very very much indeed oh yes. People kill and get killed and sing songs together on hillsides and how could that be bigger?

It was people-packed and smokesome inside the pub and loud with all their voices and the song in the grey air behind their voices not loud but it would’ve been without all them voices on top of it. Some of the people standing by the door turned to look at us as we went in and some of them gave a smile to me and Drunkle and some of them rubbed my head and said ‘shwmae bach’ and spoke more and other words to Drunkle but some of them did none of those things
they
just looked at us once then looked away cos they were probably friends of Arthur or if not friends of his then they probably believed his big bad fibs about Arrn killing the sheep and so they did not like my Drunkle or me and did not want to speak to us but I didn’t care about them and nor did Drunkle and nor would Arrn, if he knew. Drunkle went to the bar side-on like a crab and I followed him walking That Way too so’s I could fit through all the people-packedness and I felt a big Looking on me but not like them Eyes I feel on me in the High Places which are everywhere, no, not like that, this was a big Looking from all the people squoze into the pub, a big big Looking from Their Eyes and so I gave a Looking back at them with my own eyes which I mightn’t’ve been able to do had I not met them Lordy fellers the night before and been to That Dark Place above the pea planet. And it was like I had new and bigger eyes after that My Time cos I could look back at that big Looking and see all the people that were making it, see all the people from roundabout who lived in the High Places on the hills and mountains, see them with beards and not with beards and with hats and not with hats and some of them not with ten fingers or not with the normal amount of teeth and one or two even Not With Two Eyes in their faces to do their Looking with. I saw Bobi Cyclops who one summer was putting up a fence and the wire he was stretching went twang and broke and the staple shot out of the post and went in his eye and he had to go to the hospital like that For Treatment with the staple sticking out of his eye as if he was a kind of post himself and that’s how
come
he could then only do a One-Eyed Looking. And I saw Michael the Mittens who was once at the bottom of a deep hole with a ladder going down into it and he called up for a shovel and the feller up above slid the shovel down the ladder but Michael the Mittens altho he wasn’t Mittens then he was just Michael ap Huw was holding on to a rung and the shovel went down and sliced all his fingers off except for his thumb and I saw him there in the pub at the bar, the mitten on one hand hiding his fingerlessness and the fingers of his other non-mittened hand holding a small glass with a bit of brown drink in it. Michael the Mittens gave a smile to me and did a kind of salutey movement with his mitten like a soldier and I gave a smile to him back and he moved away a bit so’s Drunkle and me could get to the bar and buy some drinks which Drunkle did, a Coke for me and a beer for him cos he’s my Drunkle but no whisky to go with the beer and I was surprised at that cos he’s my Drunkle.

I didn’t like my Coke it was warm and bubble-less. The barman told Drunkle to go in the back room where the pool table was kept.

—Some kind of conference going on. Your presence is requested, I imagine.

I heard Drunkle make a sigh but couldn’t see him do it cos of all the packed people and then we went into the back room and I thought great cos we were going to play some games of pool but there was a big board across the table with some food on it, sandwiches and sausage rolls and stuff, and some people were sitting on that board as well and lots of others
were
sitting or standing around it and the air in there had gone all fogsome cos of the smokeness which made my two eyes put out water and also made me cough a bit too. It went a bit more quiet when we went into that room me and Drunkle and I felt another Big Looking go on me, still big but smaller than the first one which was smaller than the other one I feel on me when I’m in the High Parts which is bigger than All Lookings ever. I heard Arthur’s voice say somewhere in the greyness:

—Oh well Christ look who it is. Nice of you to join us. Gracing us with your presence, is it? Sure you can spare the time? I mean brave man like you, got a flock to protect, haven’t you? Stock can come to harm out on them hills.

I heard him laugh and I heard a few other people laugh too but it didn’t sound like they meant their laughing, they were just wanting to be like Arthur. I saw Drunkle throwing a Bad Look from his two eyes across the boarded pool table and I followed that Bad Look with
my
two eyes and saw Arthur sitting on two chairs put side by side at the end of the pool table on the other side of the room drinking from one big bottle with one hand and his other hand was on the back of Rhiannon’s neck who was sitting next to him. It looked like Arthur was holding the back of her neck quite hard and it looked like Rhiannon didn’t want him to do it cos she was looking down at her two hands which were wrapped around a glass held in her lap which meant that I couldn’t see her two eyes which meant that she wasn’t looking at me which meant that I didn’t go burning hot but my belly did go a bit
wobblesome
when I saw her and my brain did bang a bit at the grippingness of Arthur’s hand. Arthur was pouring drink into his beard from his bottle and I wished Arrn was there with me with his ears all fire-some red but he wasn’t he was alone in the truck outside in the car park and probably going all fret-some and whiney like he does when he’s alone and I knew that cos I can hear him even when I’m not with him.

—Not
my
animals getting ripped apart and thrown up trees, Drunkle said and I heard some people make a gaspy kind of sound and saw heads swing to put their Looking on Arthur and I did the same with my head and saw Arthur slowly take the bottle out of his beard and saw Rhiannon look at him side-on like Drunkle and I had to walk to the bar with her two eyes dark and her two eyes big and then I went just a little bit hot.

—No, cos you’ve got no fucking animals left, have you? Arthur’s voice was like a rock falling far away and in a rumbleness getting closer. —Cos the MAFFmen come an shot em all, didn’t they? An you were a-cowering in your fucking cowshed. Where, if I remember it right, you’d already lost a bull cos you can’t control your beasts. Give us all a bad fucking name, do people like you. Can’t even control that hound of yours. Wild fucking goose chase across the mountain and everyone knows it’s that fucking dog of yours. Got it outside, have you? Fetch it in here. I’ll do the job with a snooker cue, boy.

I wondered what job Arthur was talking about and imagined him playing pool with Arrn, Arrn on his
back
legs lining up a shot with a cigarette in his mouth at the corner and one eye all squinty with the smoke like I’ve seen fellers do and that then put me in a puzzlement but then another voice sounded from a feller sitting on the board on the pool table, a feller who I knew a bit cos he was the vet and I’d seen him up at Drunkle’s farm a few times to look at the animals when Auntie Fay was still alive and riding on her horse. I liked that feller, that vet; he told me stories about when he was in Africa working with African farmers and I liked them stories. Liked thinking about the elephants and giraffes and hippos and things.

—It’s not a dog, Arthur, he said, even tho everybody in that room was listening to him. —I’ve told you before, mun; it’s not a dog. No dog has the muscle to drag a full-grown sheep up a tree and what kind of dog climbs trees anyway? Plus the nature of the wounds, mun; it’s a feline of some sort responsible for wounds like that. I saw similar damage in Africa. Want my opinion, you’ve got a leopard loose out there. Someone’s had it as a pet and it’s grown too big and they’ve thought ‘oh shit’ and let the bastard thing loose out on the mountain. It’s not a dog, mun. You’re barking up the wrong tree.

Only me and him and Drunkle laughed at his joke and Arthur of a sudden was standing up with his head nearly touching the ceiling-beams and he slammed his bottle down BANG on the pool-table board and people jumped and quickly I looked at Rhiannon and saw her face looking like Arrn’s does when I leave him alone all in a worryment and then I quick-looked up at Drunkle’s face and I could see his teeth and a
jumping
thing in his cheek and his eyes with sparks in them. Lots of eye stuff going on tonight, I thought. Lots of stuff happening in people’s eyes as if nobody could speak to each other out of their mouths only their eyes or if they did speak with their mouths then they were telling lies and it was only out of their eyes either one of them only or both if they had two that their proper meanings were coming.

—Well, let’s see then, shall we? Arthur’s voice was like a bull’s. —I’ll go and snap that fucking dog’s neck and let’s see if I or anybody else loses any more stock, eh? Leopard be fucked. It’s that bastard dog and I know it is.

He came towards me through the people like a bull on its back legs and people moved apart for him and I looked up at his head way up there in the rafters and his beard all like a fire and he was like a mountain moving towards me and then in a sudden his face was below mine all in a looking-up-ness cos I heard Arrn woof in my head and things went FLASH like lightning in my brains like Fay’s ghost and the Everything-thing and the sadness and the danger of the whole world and I knew what to do and so I jumped up on to the pool table to be in a biggerness than Arthur and that’s how come he was looking up at me and I wasn’t scared in fact I was so very burning hot and his face was down there not as big as usual and I felt my hand go up with the Coke glass in it to hold it above both our heads and the little biting kitten was in me and Arrn was in me and the buzzards were in me and Auntie Fay as in me and the Everything-thing was
in
me and
on
me and I
raised
that glass above my head and above Arthur’s head too and I felt the mountain I was on turn and move in
me
.

And I would’ve put that glass down hard on Arthur’s head like he put his bottle down BANG on the board, I would’ve, I was going to whack whack whack that bastard Arthur on top of his stupid head with my glass of horrible no-bubbles drink but I got of a sudden a big distractment with my head all the way up there in the rafters cos it was a place I’d never been before, way up there in the beamy ceilingness, and I could smell years and years of cigarette smoke coming out of it and it was horrible and I saw a web right by my two eyes with no spider in it but some dead flies in it and one still alive kicking its legs and going buzz with its wings and I started to think then about how lucky spiders are cos they live in their own chip shops, they don’t have to go out and find their food cos their food comes to their houses like knock knock who’s at the door oh it’s a beefburger or knock knock who is it it’s chips with peas and gravy oh thank you. And that thinking made me forget why I’d jumped up on to the pool table and it must’ve been only a second but it seemed like ages and I went into a long spiderness in my head and I could see everything with my eight eyes cos that’s how many eyes spiders have and they must be able to see Everything with their eight eyes. Lucky spider fellers to be able to see all around them and live in their own chip shops and then in a sudden I realised where I was again and I looked down and saw all the starey faces and saw Arthur’s face fiery red looking up at me and saw his arm swing out
behind
my knees all that way below and he pulled my knees quick into his chest and I went backwards very very quick and heard a THUNK and felt that THUNK too in my head like a bomb going off a bad big noise inside my brainbits which made Everything go black.

I must’ve slept for a bit then cos of the dream I had, a dream of playing pool with my head as the ball, little so’s it could fit into the pockets. And I must’ve had a normal head on me as well cos I could see my own other head little on the table all worried and I was playing pool with Arthur which wasn’t Right cos I’d never have a Happiness with him in it and I went to break the balls and my second head the little one was going no no and screaming and Arthur was looking at me and going grin all big.