Runt (14 page)

We watched Charlesworth and her children for a bit then we moved away a bit from her into a space where some bales had been taken away and had made a kind of flat bit like a bed. We sat on that flat bit with our backs up against a kind of bale-shelf so we could see over the edge and into the yard below and further over that the road coming up the mountain and the mountain top too of course with the sun going down slowly to sit and shine on it. Rhiannon drank some of the wine then she passed the bottle to me and even tho I’d never drunk wine before I took the bottle and drank some down and it was like the taste of it had always been in me since before I was born when I was waiting up there in the starness for my birthing and my beingness and my aliveness up here in the High Parts. It was like the wine was a part of me that had been missing and like the glass of the bottle touching my lips and the softness of the wine inside my head and body was Always Meant To Be.

—Go easy. You don’t want to end up like your uncle.

No I thought I do not want my sheep shot or my wife to become a branch but I didn’t have a wife or sheep so I wondered what she meant. I wanted to ask her what she meant but then she took the bottle back from me and put it to her lips and I watched her lips the colour of plums bulge out around the glass O end of the bottle and I felt the hardness coming back into the middle bits of me again and I didn’t know why only that I liked the way her lips went around the end of that bottle. We sat like that with the bottle going between us and Rhiannon’s lips going all bulgey until all the wine had gone inside us making us tell each other stories and I told Rhiannon of My Times and of what I see in them and I told her of the Everything-thing and the Lordy fellers and of Auntie Fay still somehow being alive somewhere and become something else and Rhiannon told me of her fears for Angharad and I told her of the waiting sadness of the world and she told me of how Arthur’s sperm in her is like the poison of an adder and that put a shockness and a sickness into me and then she started to talk about there being a purity in me and I thought of that in there all going glow like the wine altho I didn’t really know what she meant and I asked her and she said that it was Good and Solid and alive in me like it was in No Other and I didn’t know what she meant still but then I kind of did because all in a sudden I felt a Goodness and an Aliveness in me cos Rhiannon’s hand was on me, grabbing the hardness in my middle and I felt my body go open like a flower or a weed on a pond and then I felt nothing at all or no that’s not right then I
thought
of nothing at all cos
I
was just doing things that felt Good and Right and Proper like the taste and the feeling of the wine or like when I watch the morning-times come across the mountain or like in My Times when I don’t have a Thinking in my head just a Doing in my bodyness and It is alive in me and me on the mountain and the mountain on the planet and the planet a bluegreen pea in space and it was something I’d never done before but it was like I’d never stopped doing it so easy was it all.

Hands on heads and faces. Mouths going together all soft and mashy together and tongues around each other like eels in the lake when they make other eels. Hands on clothes all yanky and draggy and then clean blue air on skin like water without a wetness and mouths on bits of that skin making those bits go gluey and warm and tingly like fingers and toes put in front of a fire after being put in snow. Salty tastes and sweetness tastes and tastes like nothing ever else. Fingers going gentle into little sticky caves and moving around gentle in those caves and when I put my mouth over Rhiannon’s caves and my tongue in them to taste them she shouted no words just made shouts that went out over the mountain and the tastes in my mouth were of meat and salt and sugar and fish and jam and bread and herbs and corn and milk. I went on her like the kittens were going on Charlesworth and Rhiannon went on me like that too only on a different bodybit and I lay back in a flatness with my arms going out and I felt the mountain move beneath me and it was like My Tmes a bit cos it was all changing me and making me different and I was growing in it and as
happy
’d as I could ever be. Rhiannon’s legs went each side of me and she moved up my body and I could see her face just above mine but so near with her hair hanging down in a curtain-ness and her eyes closed and her mouth open a little bit to show toothybits and she leaned back and reached under and made us slot together like a gate into a latch and in that coming togetherment everything else came together, it did, Everything In The World, all its badness and goodness and sadness and happiness all went together and made One Thing not Good and not Bad either just One Whole Thing that was Just There and it was like I was flying above it all to see it in its One-ness me and Rhiannon going so high to see it all and it being just there beneath us locked together as we were like that and Rhiannon squeezing me tight to her and me squeezing her tight to me and nothing bad could break us apart so very very tight was our squeezing and then in that Best Feeling Ever both of us turning into an Everything-ness cos it was like bursting open like a cloud too full of rain and the happiness on me was bigger than the mountain and Rhiannon rolled off me and lay at my side and our breathings went like an engine and I wanted Nothing More. Felt I could fly with her off me but that might’ve been because of Something Else not just the new not-heaviness I didn’t know.

The roaring beast on the mountain top and the sheep He takes up trees. Like that snake that swallowed the frog and the frog’s feet going all flappy. Like Arrn and the rats and the buzzards and the rabbits and the fox and the moorhens and like everything
everything
from the mountain in its bigness to the tiny bits of lifeness on every leaf that your eye can Only Just See and even those things that you can’t see cos they’re much too small or are invisible like the wind but you still know they’re there around you cos you can feel them on your face or you can hear them Call Your Name. Like the owls in the trees in the night-time-ness or them jellyish things at the bottoms of ponds and all the things that Call Your Name, oh yes.

Rhiannon’s hand went flat and soft on my belly and I jumped a little bit cos it was a bit of a shock and I thought she might be wanting to Go Together with me again and I would’ve done It too but she just let out a little bit of a laughing and then she gave me some words:

—That was your first time, wasn’t it?

Nod nod yes.

—So now you’ll never forget me. You never forget your first one. I’ll always be in you now, in here.

She put a patting on the bit of my body where my heart was going beat and she patted it twice like I do on Arrn’s head and I heard it go boom boom inside of me. My head went flopsome to the side to look at her but she wasn’t looking at me she was giving a Smiling to the roof of the barn and I saw her give a nod in answer to no question unless it was one that she asked herself. Then she said that we’d better get dressed and Go Inside and so we did that and I felt a bit sadded when our clothes had gone back on and I couldn’t see Rhiannon’s skin anymore or her bulge-some bits or fursome bits and nor could she see mine,
Hidden
we were again from each other and I felt a sad feeling that a Good Time had gone and I would never have it again. Then we said tara to Charlesworth and her children who were all in a sleeping with their sides going in and out cos they were alive and then we climbed down off the straw hill and went across the mucksome yard back towards the house and Just In Time too cos I heard the truck of Drunkle coming up the mountain but we were inside before he could see us together in the kitchen that smelled then of Good Things which put a thunderment in my belly and made spit go into my mouth and Arrn was sitting up and looking at us and going wag and we heard the truck turn off outside and a door close and Rhiannon put her lips on mine just once and then put a Looking on me and I could not stop myself from hotting and harding when I saw my face tiny in her eyes. She put her finger to them lips and made a shushy sound and nodded a question at me and I nodded answerly back at her cos I Understood. Not to tell Drunkle, that was in her shushing and questiony nodment, not to tell my Drunkle about our Going Together and I Understood that and so went nod nod and gave her a smiling then the kitchen door opened and my Drunkle came in.

—Rhiannon. What’re you doing here?

—Making some stew for you and the boy. Hungry?

He stood in the doorway and sent a sniffing around the room then he smiled at everything in that room and I was gladded to see him smile cos he’s my Drunkle.

—Starving, aye. And that smells just the job.

He turned that smiling on me then put a rufflement in my hair with his hand and I gave a smiling back to him and he sat in the old sink-inny armchair by the fire which wasn’t lit and Arrn’s head went up a bit and his tail went wag and Drunkle put a rufflement on his head too then Arrn fell back into his sleeping and looked dead happy cos everything was Right and Proper for him he was in the middle of people he liked and made him go wag. Drunkle took his boots off and waggled his toes in his socks and said that he’d Bought Some Things To Clean Up The Yard With, bags and spades and brushes and things, and that he was going to use them after he’d eaten something cos he was starving and that wasn’t like him cos he’s my Drunkle. Rhiannon was taking things over to the table, bread and bowls and things, and I was watching her move and the swayment in her legs and hips and the way her bum bulged twicely under her jeans and the other bulges on her body and her hair and the jangley bangley things around her wrists but she didn’t look at me back but I could tell that she knew I was looking cos I saw her small smilings and saw her eyes flick once at me fast like the swallows and swifts that were swooshing and flicking around the yard and house and mountain then cos that’s what they do, them birds, in the summernesses. Rhiannon said for us to sit at the table and we did and Arrn carried on sleeping cos he’d already eaten, them rabbit guts were in his guts and that put a puzzling on me to have some guts inside other guts like when motorbikes get put on the backs of trucks it makes me laugh a little bit. Arrn slept upside down on his back with
his
legs in a dangling all four and his lips hanging down nearly to his eyes which fell open a little bit upside down to watch Rhiannon bring bowls of stew over to us and a good smellsome steam came up off and out of them and Drunkle put his face into that steam and sniffed and went ‘aaahhh’ and then Rhiannon sat with us too with her own steamsome bowl and we put our spoons into the stew and raised them and put the lovely lovely stew inside our bodies.

That lovely lovely stew. Thank you Mr Rabbit for the lovely lovely stew and thank you Rhiannon too not just for that stew but for making in me the Best Time Ever I will never ever forget it, no. I ate the rabbit and the vegetables and the stewjuice and looked over at Rhiannon blowing on the tiny pond of stew in her spoon her plum lips going out like they did at the wine bottle and I wanted again to mash my lips on hers and feel her lips again on my bodyparts and wondered if again I ever would. She spoke to Drunkle about Arthur and other things to do with ‘business’ and ‘money’ which made me feel all of a flatness inside so I let myself think about what I’d just done with Rhiannon in the straw and of course that made me Hot and Hard again so when I’d eaten my stew and some bread I went up the stairs and lay on my bed and put my hand on Myself and made another Good Time happen but it wasn’t as good as it had been with Rhiannon but it made the Hotness and Hardness go away which I was happy’d by cos then I could think of other things again. Then I looked at Bala Lake for a bit but saw no monster only some people sitting outside a caravan and eating chips out of the paper
and
some time later I heard a truck start up and I looked out of the window and saw Rhiannon in the orange truck go driving away from the house and off the mountain and I was sadded and inside me it felt like there was a fish biting on a hook. Drunkle shouted my name so I went down the stairs to him and he went to ask me something but before he could get the words out I asked him where Rhiannon had gone.

—Ach, she’s gone home to that caveman husband of hers. He’ll be coming in off the fields soon and wanting his tea and woe betide that poor woman if it isn’t on the table. She took a pan of stew with her so at least she won’t have to cook anything for the idle bastard.

He put a bit of a Looking on me and I put a bit of a Looking on him and there was a small Smiling on him too but only a Very Small One.

—Anyway. Fancy helping your uncle clean up his farmyard?

I nodded yes cos I
did
so we both went and put some old clothes on that we didn’t mind getting dirty and we went outside into the blueness of the day and I just looked at everything around me at all the empty bags and broken machine parts and piles of poo and mucksome puddles and DuwDuw I thought, where the blinking heck should I start? So I just stood there in a stillness looking around and Drunkle went around the barn where the machines that worked were kept and I heard an engine start up and then I heard Arrn go woof inside the house as if he was answering that rumblesome engine and then Drunkle came back around the barn driving the small tractor, the brown
one
with no cab on it but with the bucket fixed on. We took up all the Stuff That Wasn’t Muck and brushed a corner clear and put all that stuff in that corner into a big pile of bags and metal like a skeleton or a car crash or something and then we brushed and spaded all the muckstuff into piles and it stank and ran and was horrible and white worms went wriggle in it and other things with lots of legs ran and jumped away and flies went whining and it was all yicksome and all the time I was thinking about Rhiannon’s skin and her bulgey bits and her little warm wet caves and how it felt when she touched me and put her mouth on me and I wanted her to Do It Again. Drunkle used the bucket on the tractor to shovel up all the piles of muckiness then he tipped it all in the midden then we loaded all the bags and broken stuff into the bucket and he took it and tipped it behind the barn and said that we’d take it to the tip tomorrow or the day after or sometime soon anyway and then we cleaned out the pigs or no
we
didn’t cos I took them into another pen and scratched them with a stick which they loved and Drunkle used the small tractor to take all the poo and stuff out into the midden with all the other muckiness and then he put clean straw into the pigpen and I opened the gate for them to get back in there and they did and went all runny and kicky as if they liked the clean-ness around them which I think they did cos pigs aren’t dirty even tho loads of people say and think that they are. Then we poured Jeyes fluid and other bleachy stuff all over the yard and we brushed it and brushed it and brushed it and then squirted water all over it with a hose and by that time the
blueness
had gone out of the sky but the blackness wasn’t in it yet and we stood in the poo-gone, clean-smellsome yard and watched the bats flapping around us so fast and I liked standing there like that, achey and all in a tiredness as night-time went into the sky and the bats danced around my head and all around me was Clean and Good. Except for me, of course, I wasn’t clean cos some muck had gone on me and Drunkle too so we went back into the house and put our horrible clothes in the washing machine and then we both had showers and ate some more of Rhiannon’s stew with big pieces of bread and Arrn ate some too and we watched the telly but not for very long cos we were all Dead Tired after making the yard clean and so we went to bed and I lay on the bed in the darkness with Arrn below me under the bed and I thought of Rhiannon and put a touching on Myself again and made another Good Time happen which put an even bigger tiredness on me and my eyes went all heavy and droopsome and just before I went off into a sleeping I heard an owl outside in the yard, outside in the world that I had made All Clean and that now had mine and Rhiannon’s Going Together in it and all of that happy’d me and so I fell asleep happy, oh yes.