Runt (12 page)

When I came out of that dream I was in Drunkle’s truck on the back seat and Arrn was standing across me and looking down at my face like he was going to lick it. I pushed him away a bit cos I don’t like him licking my face with the tongue he licks his own bum with but I was happy’d to see him. My head was hurting, the back bit of my head was going ache and had a soreness and I rubbed it and felt a lump. Arrn made a whiney noise and leaned back against the door looking at me all worried. Bastard Arthur. Bite him Arrn, bite his stupid fiery face off and drag him up into a tree and leave him up there to bastard die. I felt another face then in the truck with me with eyes that were putting a Looking on me but not as hard as the Looking that had happened in the pub and I saw Drunkle in the front seat twisted round in his
body
so he could see me. He was putting a smile on me and he reached over to touch my face and I felt the skin of his fingers all rough and raspy against the skin of my face.

—You okay, bach?

I nodded and my head went hurt in that nodness. Which meant that no I wasn’t
really
okay but I didn’t want my Drunkle to know that.

—Good boy. You’re a good boy, you are.

His smile grew a bit and he stopped touching my face then and I wanted him to carry on cos it made my head not so sore and achey.

—Everyone’s cheering you in there, y’know. He nodded the back of his not-sore head at the pub. —Or we would be if Arthur wasn’t raging like a fucking lunatic. But they’re all saying how brave you are and how proud of you I should be. And I am. You know that, don’t you? How proud of you I am?

One of Them Questions again. Always Them Questions that people ask and don’t want an answer to. Usually asked by grown-up people as well and why do they do that? Always asking Them Questions and not wanting you to answer them cos they answer them themselves:

—Yes, I’m sure you do. So, so proud I am. Wish you were my son. The son I couldn’t have with Fay.

No because you can’t have a son with someone who’s dead. I wanted to tell Drunkle about Fay and how happy she was now in That Place up above the pea planet but I didn’t know how to say it so I just asked him when we were going to go home and he said very soon but that he had to go and help Calm
Arthur
Down first and he asked me again if I’d be okay and again I nodded yes and made my head go a-hurting again and Drunkle said he wouldn’t be long and left the truck and went back into the pub and then I was alone with Arrn again which is most times How I Like It. Just me and my dog Arrn together and the world outside the truck and that’s just how I like it best, oh yes.

I sat up on the seat and put my arms around Arrn and he made a kind of whuffle noise with his flopsome lips and lay down across my knees. I felt him all heavy on me and felt his back all strong and felt his heart beat slow against my legs and looked at his ears in their redness in the lightment from the moon. I stroked him and looked out of the window and saw that moon made lots of times over in the windows of the parked cars and trucks and tractors and I looked at the pub all lit up and I could hear a noisiness from in there which was quiet to me but I knew it was loud to the people in there cos I could still hear it even through the bricks and windows and moony dark air. The engine of Drunkle’s truck went tick. Tick. Tick without any tocks and I felt Arrn all warm in his body across my legs and I stroked the back of his neck and I looked out of the truck at the world outside it which at that moment was all just in the shape of a pub and maybe the mountain behind it too which I knew was there all big in the blackness even tho I couldn’t see it cos of the nightness all around. And I saw a shape run fast across the car park out of some trees and into some other trees and I knew it was a hare, a long-eared long-legged feller very fast going
like
dark low lightning across the car park between the cars dead quick shadowflash then gone. I liked that very much and I was happy’d loads to see that hare. That hare my friend. That hare from the moon from that Everything-thing how less we would all be on this spinning pea planet without you.

I saw the door to the pub go open and light and noise came out in a short gush and my heart jumped up a bit in me in case it was Arthur and for a moment I felt it go bang behind my eyes but then it settled back down in me again cos quickly I saw that the person was much too small to be Arthur. But then just as quick it came jumping up again cos I saw by the hair and the shape and the moving that it was Rhiannon and hot I went like soup and just as flopsome inside. Just as hot and flopsome as the soup she handed out yesterday morning nice soup it was with turnips in it with her wrists all bangley and lights in her dark eyes like sun on frosty grass when it goes spear-spikey and white. Nice soup before That My Time before I was me then when I was different.

She looked around the car park with her head going to the left then the right and then she put her head straight on and saw the truck with me in it and came over to it moving out from the lights of the pub into a darkness then into a lightness again this time from the moon and she waved at me by making her fingers on one hand go waggle and she smiled at me through the window of the truck and I saw her teeth white in the nightness and I started to go hotter and hotter and when she opened the door of the truck and got into the front seat with her smells
and
hair and bangleness I went so hot that I was burning. Felt like lightning had struck me like it had struck Crow Tree and all’s I could do was look at her and smell her and she sat there in a big Smiling with half of her in a shadowment and the other half lit up in a bluement from the moon. I looked at her and swallowed but nothing went down into my bellyness where the fire was.

—Your head okay? Caught a hell of a whack you did.

I told her in a voice that didn’t sound like mine that my head was fine and Arrn raised his head off my legs to put a Looking at her but he didn’t go growl or say his name and Rhiannon reached between the seats with her bangley hand and scratched Arrn behind one of his redsome ears and he closed his eyes and took his Looking back into himself and he let her scratch him for a bit then dropped his head back down on my legs again and Rhiannon took her hand back.

—You did a great thing in there, she said and I didn’t know what she meant. Not great to slam your head WHACK on a pool table and go into a sleeping. —Arthur didn’t have a clue what to do. Made him look a right twat, you did. Wonderful it was.

Her hand came back between the seats then and I felt it close to my face and I thought I might blow up like a bomb and not a balloon if that hand were to put itself on my face but when it did I didn’t I just went even hotter and even more soupsome but it wasn’t a hotness that burned like a coal from the fire it was like a hotness that wanted to make all the world
good
and me in it. Rhiannon only touched my face for one tiny moment and then she took her hand back again but I still felt it on my face even when it wasn’t any more.

—I’ve got to go back in, she said. —He’ll be looking for me. Gets suspicious if I’m out of his sight for ten bastard seconds. But I’ll come and see you tomorrow, bring you over some cawl or something. Brave tough boy like you needs feeding up if he’s going to take on the world, aye?

Bigger went her smiling and her eyes more drawy-inny and of a sudden I felt a place on my belly go lovely and warm, just one spot of skin on my belly go all glow-y and nice like a fire in the snow like it was the best place in the world and I realised then that Rhiannon had just touched me on that place. Just kind of poked me all gentle with her finger and now of a sudden that tiny spot on my belly where she touched was marking me out as the Most Important Person in the whole world and I wondered what would happen if she touched me There again.

—Tomorrow then, she said and got out of the truck and an emptiness came into it very very quickly. She turned back to waggle her fingers at me again and I saw her walk across the car park and I saw her move and I saw the shape she made in the moonlight and the dark air around her and I felt my face glow where she touched it and I also felt my belly glow where she touched it and then I felt the back of my head go back into a throbment and I wondered how that could be, how the touch of two people on me Rhiannon and Arthur could feel so very different. And
I
wondered as well why people lived with each other if they hated each other like Rhiannon hated Arthur and he hated her and why people don’t just go away from each other if they don’t like each other and can’t stand each other or why they even thought that living together would be a good thing in the first place and I asked Arrn but he didn’t know and anyway he was all asleep and didn’t hear me.

I lay back on the seat with Arrn like a blanket on me. Bits of me went glow and made a nice hummy noise like a bee on a flower and one bit of me banged and hurt and made a noise like when you switch the telly on and there’s no picture only a cracklement. I felt the High Places all around me outside the truck and I thought of Fay and the Everything-thing and the Lordy people all looking down on it all and seeing all the things on this planet that people do to each other, the puzzlement of it all, and I wondered if they had the Why of it all and if they’d tell me when My Times come again. And I thought of My Mam Bethan and NotDad and if she would ever be happy again and I hoped she would but didn’t think that that would ever be so.

Drunkle got back in the truck quite soon after Rhiannon got out but I was more than half in a sleeping by then. Sleep was on me more than halfway. And I thought of Rhiannon then Arthur then Rhiannon again and then again Rhiannon and then nobody else but her and I felt through my sleeping the truck begin to move and I couldn’t smell the drink in Drunkle which was strange cos he was my Drunkle and I wondered about that as I went properly into a
sleepment
and even in that nice nothingness bits of my body still glowed and stayed warm, oh yes.

I dreamed that night that I lived under the ground in a burrow like a rabbit or a badger or a fox and it was dead nice down in that burrow it was snug in that burrow and warm and I was safe in my soilment. I curled up all cosy and I could see daylight shining from Way Up Above but it wasn’t really
that
far and I lived
in
the mountain in my dream not
on
it. And I heard a voice calling my name and I went all floaty up towards that bit of daylight and I went into and through it and carried on floating up
off
the mountain and up and further up into the daylight of the brightsome bluesome sky where there was no clouds only That Voice calling me and I thought that it might’ve been Fay’s voice but I never found out cos when I looked down and saw the mountain all small way way below me and no crows or hawks or birds of any sort to hold up my arms and legs and keep me from falling I got all scared and started to fall and that’s when I woke up so it was the kind of dream that I don’t know what to do with but maybe I’m not supposed to do anything with it anyway.

But it seems I dreamed a lot, last summer. Every time I fell into the sleepiness a dream would come and get me.

When I woke up I saw Bala Lake on the screen on the desk by the window but no monster, no. I couldn’t see Arrn so I got out of the bed and went in my nudiness over to Bala Lake and saw a note from my Drunkle
telling
me that he’d gone into The Town to get some things to clean up the yard with and I was surprised at that cos he’s my Drunkle. I looked out of the window at the mucky yard and saw Arrn down there and when he saw me he wagged and went woof and I told him in my head that I’d get ready and go down to see him and he ran off behind the cowshed again probably to chase rats like he liked to do. I didn’t mind him chasing rats cos that’s what happy’d him and That’s What Dogs Do but I didn’t like it when he caught them and crunched them and killed them cos the rats were just being rats and not needing painfulness or murdering but Arrn is a dog and That’s What Dogs Do even tho his dogness is different to other dogs’.

I watched Bala Lake for a few minutes but no monster came so I went and had a shower in the new clean bathroom and cleaned myself with soap and amazement cos the bathroom was so clean. Couldn’t flippin believe it. I felt cleaner when I got out of the shower than when I did get in which was the first time I’d ever felt that in Drunkle’s house since Fay went and then I put some clothes on and went downstairs into the kitchen which was all clean as well and I made some toast and ate it with jam on then drank some milk and then took an apple outside into the lovely brightsome day which stayed bright even down there in the dirtment of the yard. The sky was all blue like it had been painted that colour and I couldn’t see any clouds in it only a burning hot sun like them bits on me that went glow when Rhiannon touched them yesterday only much much bigger and far far away of course but still the same and I pointed my face towards
that
sun and closed my eyes and let it dry me and clean me again too with its heat even tho I was already clean cos of the shower and the new clean bathroom. I liked the feeling of the sun’s smiling on my face and I smiled back at it then I went across the yard and up Straw Hill and Charlesworth came out to see me and went ‘mew’. Half-dozen eggs and a pound of butter please. I stroked her with one hand and ate my apple with the other and my teeth of course down to the sharpy pippy centre bit then chucked it away off the hill and it sank into a mud pool with a squelchy sound. I looked into the hole in the straw and saw the kittens all asleep except for the little black-and-white feller so I reached in and picked him up and it was again like I was picking up just furry air cos there was so little heaviness to him and he didn’t bite me this time only his claws dug a bit into my skin and I held him up to my eyes so I could look into his face and I could see that the gluey stuff had begun to go away from his eyes and little sideways slices of his eyes could be seen now and they were green, as green as the sky was blue that morning. I spoke to the kitten then in my head and said to him that he was welcome in the world and him coming into it happy’d me very much and made me better in some ways and stronger even and his eyes slowly closed the tiny bit that they were open and his claws stopped digging so hard into my skin and I put him back into the straw hole with his brothers and his sisters and he lay with them sleeping with his little sides going in-and-out cos he was alive and his tiny pointy tail flicking about a little bit. Charlesworth got down into the hole with her children and curled herself
up
around them and I watched them for a bit and spoke to them for a bit in my head then I heard Arrn bark and saw him below me run over all in an excitement to the gate to the yard and I looked and saw over that gate and still some way away but coming up the mountain towards Drunkle’s farm a truck.