Between the Bridge and the River

BETWEEN THE BRIDGE AND THE RIVER

CRAIG FERGUSON

A NOVEL

Copyright 2006 © by Craig Ferguson.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual people, places, or events is entirely coincidental.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available.

eISBN: 978-0-8118-7303-1

Cover design by Volume Design, Inc.

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This is for Milo.
A love so big I couldn’t run.
And for his great-great-grandfather
Adam.

This story is true. Of course, there are many lies therein and most of it did not happen, but it’s all true.

In that sense it is deeply religious, perhaps even biblical.

Nine of the first thirteen signatures on the American Declaration of Independence were from Scotsmen or men of Scottish descent.

Is a sacred rite enhanced by allegory, exaggeration, and lies.

Is only linear for engineers and referees.

The laws of physics state that given the mass-to-wingspan ratio of a bumblebee, it is impossible for the creature to fly. But it does.

CLOVEN-HOOFED CREATURES
passed this way.

They were never sure what kind. Some weird brainy kid like Gordy McFarlane or Freckle Machine might know but Fraser and George’s limited information about wildlife came from children’s television and the free posters that they got with their Pathfinder shoes. The ones with the little compass in the heels that they wouldn’t be caught dead wearing now. Those were for kids. Thirteen isn’t a kid anymore, you can’t walk around with wee plastic compasses in your heels, not if you ever want to get off with Sharon Cameron and maybe feel her diddies.

No compass would point you in that direction; you have to do that kind of thing for yourself or get your friend to tell her you like her and see how that goes.

Toys, crying, and novelty footwear were definitely out.

Fishing was still okay, though, thank God.

They jumped over the muddy track where the cattle, unicorns, satyrs, and devils had trodden and headed down the shingle footpath to the canal.

The Forth and Clyde Canal connects the east and west coasts of Scotland and had, for a tiny moment in history, been used as a means
of industrial and commercial transport. Horse-drawn barges carrying coal or machine parts or sheep.

The barges were long gone by the 1970s and the man-made waterway that cuts through the green valleys of the country’s central belt had become a mecca for amateur anglers.

Professional anglers prefer a body of water that’s stocked with more than a broken pram and some old tires.

The canal was reputed to contain two types of fish. Perch, a small, tasteless lump of tiny bones—a kind of aquatic hamster—and pike, a big, nasty, admittedly delicious freshwater shark that liked to eat perch.

It seemed to Fraser and George that both species were totally fictional; neither boy had seen or caught one of these elusive slitherers and they had never seen anyone else catch anything either.

The story went that when there was a pike about, the perch would all swim away, so that’s why no one caught any, and that no one could catch a pike because they were super-intelligent and could spot a fishing hook underwater from fifty feet or hands or whatever fish measure distance in.

Fins, supposed Fraser.

George said that if the perch always buggered off to avoid the pike, then the pike would die of starvation and then the place would be teeming with perch.

The truth is both boys sort of knew there were no fish in the canal and they didn’t care. The canal was a long way from their homes and school and church and all that trouble, so most weekends they took their fathers’ neglected fishing rods and a few unfortunate earthworms and trudged five miles across the spongy green farmland to get away.

Fraser was Church of Scotland (Protestant).

George’s father was a Protestant but his mother was a Catholic and she had insisted that he be raised Roman Catholic (Catholic).

The divisions between the two faiths are small and nitpicky at best.

Things like: “Take this, eat, this is the body of Christ” vs. “Take this, eat, this
represents
the body of Christ.” (Millions all over Europe had died for that one.)

And: “We want to put up some nice pictures of Jesus in the church” vs. “A picture of Jesus in the church is idolatry and God will smite those who commit that heinous sin. And if God doesn’t smite them it’s probably because he wants us, his chosen ones, to do it for him.” Etc. etc.

Neither Fraser nor George was in the least interested in the theological arguments of the two factions but they understood that they were expected to take sides and so when they had to, they did. They knew the rules, so they tried to avoid each other during the week, even though they attended the same school and were in many of the same classes. This was highly unusual because normally in Scotland, Catholics attend special Catholic schools and Protestants go to the nondenominational state schools, but a fire had burned down Our Lady’s High a year ago and the papist pupils had to attend the regular school until further notice.

As a result they had to attend a Mass in the assembly hall every morning before their secular lessons.

Conspiracy-theorist Catholics (and if you are a Catholic, it certainly helps to be a conspiracy theorist) suspected that the fire was the result of arson by an extremist Protestant group (and if you are a Protestant, it certainly helps to be an extremist).

In fact the fire had been caused by Sadie Meeks, a twenty-year-old assistant lunch lady who had forgotten to turn off the deep-fat fryer in the school kitchen. The temperature had built up overnight and by three a.m. the heat from the machine had reached such an intensity that it melted the adhesive on the ceiling tiles above it. The fiberglass squares fell into the boiling, molten lard and ignited violently, shooting magnificent fountains of napalm all over the tubs of chicken morengo and vats of purple custard.

By morning light the place looked like a black Southern church after a visit from the demons in the white hoods. Sadie had been doped
to the gills on mogadon, a powerful sedative given to restless geriatrics in nursing homes. She had gotten the drug from her mother’s prescribed stash in the old biddy’s bedside cabinet. Sadie suspected the fire was her fault but didn’t mention it because she didn’t want to get into trouble.

So no one except Sadie knew the truth. Everyone, Catholics and Protestants, presumed the flames were the fault of religious bigotry.

It certainly was the most feasible explanation.

So due to the combustible nature of cheap tiles and chip fat, Fraser and George were allowed to continue into their teens, in a slightly clandestine way, the relationship they had since they were infants living next door to each other.

This pleased them both.

But drugs, fire, and secrets won’t keep the world away forever.

The boys had been sitting at the otherwise deserted canal bank not catching anything for about an hour before Willie Elmslie arrived. Willie was considered by the other kids to be “bugsy,” which meant he was dirty and probably had head lice. He did not in fact have any parasites on his scalp but he had some nasty little critters grubbing around in his brain.

He was a tall blond boy of fifteen with vivid pocked acne on his white, white skin, which was irritated by his habit of picking and squeezing it for its precious creamy pus. He had the makings of a ruddy threadbare mustache that advertised the color of his pubes, and he smelled badly of Brut, the cheap aftershave that his stepfather wore.

He was carrying a plastic shopping bag and he approached the boys and asked them if they had had any luck. Fraser lied and said they had seen a pike jump out of the water and Willie told them that that was cool, man.

George and Fraser watched as Willie nonchalantly took a bottle of Eldorado from the bag, cracked the seal, and took a swig, grimacing as he had seen others do when ingesting alcohol.

Eldorado was an extremely inexpensive fortified wine from South Africa, a sweet, cloying, sickly brew that had enough alcohol in
it to preserve a cadaver. It was famous as the rocket fuel preferred by street alcoholics. Willie had bought it from an Asian grocer in Abron-hill who wasn’t too tough on the age restrictions; plus, to Mr. Patel, Willie looked eighteen.

You can’t really tell with white kids.

Willie offered the bottle to them. George declined but Fraser accepted. He retched when the noxious crap hit his taste buds but he forced it down.

Willie was impressed.

“Yer like an alky, man,” he said.

“I know,” said Fraser, trying not to sound too proud.

Again the bottle was offered to George but he declined once more, shaking off the derision from Willie.

Over the next hour Willie and Fraser drank the entire bottle, with Willie artfully making sure that Fraser took the lion’s share. Both boys were drunk, but Fraser hideously so. He vomited cornflakes, eggs, and bacon into the canal and then passed out on the bank.

Willie laughed hysterically.

George, who had not touched a drop, pretended to concentrate on his fishing.

Willie told George he was a poof for not drinking. George ignored him. Willie told George he was a poof for being a Catholic and George let that one slide too. Then Willie decided he wanted to take off the comatose Fraser’s trousers and underpants and throw them in the canal. He said that would be a great laugh.

Willie bent over Fraser and started to unbuckle his belt. He was salivating, his face near the unconscious boy’s crotch.

He yelled in agony and surprise as he felt George’s fishing rod strike the back of his neck like a cat-o’-nine tails.

George administered another fierce stroke of the fiberglass lash.

“Whit the fuck ur yae daen?” cried Willie.

“Leave him alone.”

Willie stood and faced George. He swayed, trying to look as dangerous and unpredictable as his stepfather.

George stood his ground, ready to fight.

Willie saw that and backed down.

“You jealous ah wis gonnae see yer bumchum’s tadger?”

George said nothing.

“Youse two are poofs, fuckin arsebandits, man. Ah’m tellin ivrybody.”

He staggered off, pretending to be more drunk than he really was.

George rolled Fraser onto his side so that if he threw up in his sleep he wouldn’t choke on it, then he went back to his fishing and waited for him to wake up. He had been around drunk people before; his father was Scottish and his mother was Irish.