Runt (3 page)

Glug glug and another bottle was empty. I saw the lump in Drunkle’s throat jump up and down as he made the bottle go empty with his head back over the back of the couch.

—Remember the chrysalis we watched last summer? Remember when it hatched and the butterfly came out?

I went nod cos I did. The butterfly came out like a wet thing like something you’d spit out at school dinner cos it was yacksome and then it opened its wings and it was like something else, something dead different to anything yacka. And then it became even better when it flew away and that was the best thing about that summer maybe even the best thing ever or one of them anyway.

—Well, when the chrysalis was empty, when the butterfly had gone …
that’s
what my body is now. Her death is a shock to my body; this thing I live in was once the body of her lover and now it isn’t so it is completely different to me now. I don’t recognise it. I don’t even
like
it any more. I don’t want to live in it any more. So do I just wait? Or do I follow her? But if I did she could be broken even further and she wouldn’t want me to do it. But if she can observe my sorrow then she knows that there’s nothing she can do to relieve it so her purgatory is made worse, always worse. There’s nothing either of us can do, now, and we did everything we could for each other when she was alive. Except for at the end, when she was alone. Completely and utterly alone.

He drank again from his bottle even tho it was empty so he just drank the air inside it and I was glad cos it made him stop his Words. Putting a big sad in me them Words were and I remembered my Auntie Scantie making a cake for me the summer before it had cherries in it and I remembered her too taking me for a ride on a horse around the lower field I sat between her legs with the horse’s big brown neck between mine and it was great to be between that
horse
and my Auntie and I remembered the two warmnesses around me and Auntie Scantie’s arms holding the reins and driving the horse around the field and I felt her pressing warmness against my back and I went all hot as I did then but in a different way cos never again would I ride on a great big horse around a field with her laughing and pressing all warm behind me. I remembered the smell that came out of her hair. I liked my Auntie Scantie. She made men stare and hide parts of themselves but it was me she took up on to the horse and I’d never ever see her again and that thinking shoved Sad into my body.

The phone rang as Drunkle got up out of his chair. He picked it up and spoke and I could tell then that it was My Mam Bethan cos he said her name. They spoke for a bit and I tickled Arrn’s head but he wasn’t interested in me cos his bone was better but he didn’t growl at me and say his name at me cos he never did but he will say his name at other people even go to bite them sometimes but never me or Drunkle cos he liked both of us and we liked him.

Drunkle passed the phone to me.—Here y’go, bach. Talk to yur Mam.

He went off into the kitchen and I heard him opening another bottle and I talked words with My Mam. I said hello and she said how are you are you okay and I said is
he
still there and she said it was best if I stayed where I was For The Time Being cos they were Going Their Separate Ways and
he
didn’t like it and anyway I loved it Up There didn’t I? Yes I said I said I was happy and didn’t tell her my sadness about Auntie Fay and Mam said do I need my tablets and
I
moved my shoulders up and down but thought then that she couldn’t see me do that moving over the phone so I just said mmm and she told me that I’d been fine recently, she
told
me that and didn’t ask me it and I wanted to tell her that no I hadn’t but I didn’t cos she Had Enough On Her Plate and did not need more worryness but I did not like that her Telling Me and not Asking Me and she said that we’d be good company for each other me and Drunkle and I said mmm again even tho I love my Drunkle but he can talk strange things and she said he needs the company now doesn’t he? And to Keep An Eye Out for him but I didn’t know what that meant and thought it would hurtly blind me halfways. She told me that I was sixteen which of course I knew and that I was now a Man which I didn’t care if I knew or not cos men were either bastard bad people like NotDad or Arthur or not happy people like Drunkle and I didn’t really want to be like none of them even if I did love my Drunkle I didn’t want to be like him in his not-happy ways. And she told me to keep in touch and that she’d come up to the house and see me next week and we could go for a walk and I said okay which meant I know you won’t come and she told me to look after myself and Arrn and Drunkle too and she told me that she loved me and I said okay and she hung up and her voice went and the telephone then went brrrr.

—How is she? Drunkle asked, back on the couch in his place with another bottle. I did the shoulder-up-and-down thing again which this time could be seen by the person I was doing it at and Drunkle did
not
answer with words or with anything else which was okay cos the shoulder-up-and-downy thing wasn’t a question anyway. Drunkle just looked at me. I didn’t want him to start his talk again so I asked him if I could go and see Bala Lake and that made him put a smile at me and we went upstairs to the room which I slept in and he turned his computer on and it made a wheezy-whiny noise and clicked and purred like Drunkle’s cat that lives in the barn and is called Charlesworth and is fat like a furry rugby ball and had just had kittens which I wanted to see but not just yet cos they were too tiny still and Charlesworth would hiss and swipe. Drunkle made the arrow move across the screen and then after a bit of time I could see Bala Lake on the screen with the words ‘MONSTER WATCH’ in red at the top of it. Just the water of Bala Lake all dark and still and I got an excitement in me and got a bit jumpy inside cos of the monster that might come out of the lake and Drunkle laughed and said no one’s seen it yet but he knows a feller who reckons he saw it one day when he was in a rowboat fishing on the lake and that it was like a great big crocodile with hooves which Drunkle had told me before but he told it to me again then cos he was my Drunkle. He said he didn’t believe this feller but I did cos I wanted to. And we sat and watched Bala Lake for a bit just me and Drunkle. He drank and watched the darksome waves on the screen and I did too except I didn’t drink but I could’ve had an orange juice if I’d wanted one or some lemonade but I didn’t. Arrn came up to join us but he didn’t watch too he just took his beef-bone under the bed and went on
crunching
it in the dusty dark under there and me and Drunkle didn’t see any monster but I was happy there like that and I think he was too, just us two sitting there in a togetherness like that and not talking or anything just watching out for monsters.

Drunkle put his head to the side like birds do when they’re listening or maybe they’re not but Drunkle was.

—Can you hear an engine?

I listened with my head straight up and could.

—There’s a truck coming up the mountain Drunkle said and I thought flippin heck My Mam was quick and not telling fibs either. Drunkle went to the window and pulled a curtain back and looked out and the enginenoise got bigger. It got bigger and bigger until it was dead loud and a light came into the room and swooped a slice of yellow across the walls and Drunkle said:

—Aw Christ. It’s Arthur.

Fall then fall went my heart inside, once cos of who it
was
and then twice cos of who it
wasn’t
. I heard a shouting outside and then a banging on the door down below, the door to the house.

—I’ll go down and see what he wants. You stay here and if you see the monster be sure to call me up, eh?

He gave a smile to me but looked worried and the door-banginess went on til Drunkle went downstairs and opened it and then I heard a big, big shouting:

—FUCKING BASTARD! MORE DEAD FUCKING EWES! SOME CUNT PAYS THIS TIME BOY NOT ONE WORD OF A BASTARD LIE!

A growling came from under the bed in the dusty dark. I heard Drunkle say:

—Shh, mun, shh. I’ve got the boy upstairs. The nephew.

—THINK I CARE? THINK I CARE WHEN ANOTHER FUCKING EWE –

A door banged shut downstairs and then I could hear the shouting only through the floor and not proper words just a loud, loud voice. Arrn growled again from under the bed and I told him it was okay so he went back to his crunching.

But it wasn’t okay, really, and Arrn probably knew that which was why he went ‘arrn’ and said his name. Cos nothing was ever okay when Arthur was there to make it not. I was more scared of Arthur being downstairs in the house than I was of seeing the monster on the Bala screen cos Arthur was a kind of monster himself who liked to hurt people. He was always hitting people and he had a wife who he would hurt and a daughter in my class at school before school went away who had a terror-ness in her for him but of course she wasn’t in my class any more cos there was no school any more which should’ve been happying me but it didn’t cos of NotDad and Mam’s eggy eye and now Arthur with his big shouting downstairs and I was scared for Drunkle. Some people there are, some fellers who are born with a black thing inside them as black as Bala Lake and just as sad as that and that’s Drunkle and there are others who are born with another kind of blackness inside them that wants to put hurtings on others and make a kind of blackness in them as well and that’s Arthur. He’s a scary man. I thought he might hit Drunkle and then come up and hit me too but then I thought that Arrn would rescue
me
and bite his bastard head off but that thinking couldn’t make me laugh that time like it normally did cos Arthur was too big and shouty and angry all the time and the only time I saw him smile or heard him laugh was when I saw him hit people like he did that time a summer ago when I was outside the Farmer’s Arms waiting for Drunkle and feeding birds with crisps and Arthur came out with another man smaller than him and I hid in a bush and saw Arthur hit the man and the man fell and then Arthur stamped on his face lots of times and before he went back into the pub Arthur scraped his boot on the sharp edge of the step like I do when I’ve trod in dog poo and it made me think that the man’s face was to Arthur like dog poo is to me and that put a big big sick into me. I wanted to go and see if the man was okay but I had too much scaredness in me and sickness too and after a while the man crawled off. And Drunkle came and got me and we drove home and I tried to tell him about what Arthur did and the poo-facey stuff but he just told me to hush and told me that there are not many people in the world like Arthur and that in fact Arthur was probably from Another World and not this one cos
I
was from this one and
Arrn
was from this one and
Drunkle
was from this one and
Bethan
was from this one so how could Arthur be too? And I remembered that then behind Arthur’s shouting but it didn’t stop me from remembering that poor man with his face scraped off and Arthur’s wife in the shop with her arm in a sling and Arthur’s daughter in the school with her face all black and one time her arm in a sling too and she said she fell off a horse but no one
believed
her cos we all knew what Arthur was like even the teachers but they didn’t say anything cos like everybody else they were scared of Arthur too.

Arthur should live in Bala Lake. Arthur should be That One in the darkness and the slime. Maybe he
was
the monster from the lake come out to hurt people no big croco-horsey thing but a horrible thing shaped just like a man big like a bull standing up on its back legs with red hair and red beard come up out of the deep blacksome water to eat people in his way. I wished he’d go back there, I did. Or if not the lake then some hole in the ground or cave somewhere or something where no one could be hurt by him any more cos that’s the world he comes from not this one with me and Arrn and Drunkle in it that Arthur comes from a Different World one dark and far away in a beneathness and he should go back there I would be gladded if he did that very very much.

Bala Lake just lay flat and darksome with the moon on it shining and I watched it for ages. Sometimes the wind would make the webcam wobble and it would be as if the lake not the camera was moving from side to side but it wasn’t really that. It was too dark to see the mountains on the other side of the lake and all I saw was the water of the lake like all the other times I’d watched it and no monster but there
could
be a monster and that thinking happy’d me in a way and there
was
a fox, tho, skinny fellow come down to the lake for a drink and then went away again and that happy’d me loads seeing the fox like that having a drink. I told Arrn about him cos he and the fox are brothers and Arrn lay on his side under the bed with
his
head sticking out from the darksome dusty underneathness with all grease and bonedust on his face and he looked at me as I spoke to him and listened to me as well because he was understanding every word I said even tho he’s a dog cos I can speak his own Special Words and he can speak mine too.

Arthur stopped his shouting but still he went on talking in an angerment that I could hear coming up through the floor. He was like a war. I could hear my Drunkle’s voice too much softer than Arthur’s trying to make Arthur’s voice softer like his which after a while it did but not as soft as itself cos there was still an angerment in Arthur and always was and would be. Arrn fell asleep with his face all side-pressed to the floor cos he was listening to the voices too and his ears moved flickery and so did his tail but he didn’t do that flat sideways running thing that he does sometimes when he’s in sleep. And a scary thing happened cos it was like a blacksome mist come up drifting through the floor from downstairs and it was like the badness of Arthur trying to find me like the stalking thing Drunkle made His Words about before and it swirled around the room all inksome making a kind of hissy sound like the snake that swallowed the frog but I wasn’t sure if it was Really There or not even tho it was dead dead scary but Arrn didn’t wake up and I hid my eyes with my hands and counted to forty-nine all slow and when I looked out again at the room that blacksome mist had gone and I was gladded by that very much again.