Runt (4 page)

I started to feel sleepy then and wanted to be in sleep like Arrn was but wanted to wait for Arthur to
go
so I’d feel safer and better. But I must’ve fallen asleep anyway cos when I woke up I was floating through the bit of air between Bala Lake and the bed and I landed all gentle on the bed cos Drunkle had laid me on there light as a leaf falling to the ground in the autumn times that I like very much cos of the colours. And he was very drunk my Drunkle was cos when he went to sit on the edge of the bed by me he nearly missed the bed and when he spoke his voice was like a stream being tripped up by the rocks under it.

—Arthur’s gone, he said but it sounded like this:
Thurzzgn
. —He’s mad about finding another dead sheep. This time up a tree. Twenty feet up in the branches all ripped open like the others. Tried to blame it on a dog but what dog climbs trees?

No one else in the world could hear Drunkle’s Very Drunk Words it would just sound like noise to them but I could cos he’s my Drunkle. He rubbed his face in his hands and it made a sound like the sound I get when I scratch the pig’s back with a stick outside in the yard.

—Someone’s been keeping a lynx or something as a pet and it’s escaped or they’ve let it go, that’s what it is. No mystery. No Alien Big Cat or anything it’ll just be someone’s escaped pet.

I thought of all the murdered sheep on the High Parts found ripped into bits and then I thought of a lion out there on the darkest tops of the mountains roaring at the moon over a dead sheep all blood on his face and in his mane or a tiger in the trees just waiting. Those thoughts made me go funny inside me
not
like a badness or like My Times but like something nearly good. I didn’t like the dead ripped-to-bits sheep but I
did
like the thought of the animal that made them that way if lion or tiger was what it was or even lynx or wolf or anything else like that.

—So Arthur’s arranged some kind of …
expedition
. Tomorrow. A hunt, like. We’re gunner be camping out for a day or two.

He rubbed his face again and made that pigscratch noise again then he rubbed my head and it made a different noise not really a noise at all only in my ears and not the room.

—So get some sleep, bach. Early start in the morning.

He rubbed my head again and Arrn’s too nearly falling over cos he had to bend then he went out of the room and closed the door behind him. I heard him go down the stairs and then I heard him make a noise through the floor as if he was having a cry then I went and brushed my teeth and turned Bala Lake off and then I took my clothes off and got into the bed. I slept for a bit and then woke up with a thirstiness in my neck so I went downstairs for some water cos everyone knows you Shouldn’t Drink From The Bathroom Tap and I saw my Drunkle asleep on the couch all curled up and one fist pressed to his ear like a shell, as if in his sleepiness he wanted to hear the sea. I drank some water and went back up the stairs and got back into the bed and lay there slotted into the darkness with Arrn snoring underneath me and I liked it, being there like that. I listened hard til my ears stretched out and could hear all the sounds outside of the house like the wind and the small raining
and
the owls going screech and a lady fox doing that noise that lady foxes do, that screaming noise somewhere in the trees or on top of the mountain next to the moon and I liked it, liked it all. I liked knowing the owl and the lady fox by name. I liked very much knowing every raindrop by name and liked it too that the owl and the lady fox and every last bit of rain knew my name back as well.

It wasn’t proper light when I woke up but I was awake enough as if it was. I lay in the bed all warm for a bit and listened to the noise of no wind cos it had gone somewhere else in the night-time-ness but there was still a raininess outside, just a bit. I reached down over the edge of the bed and my fingers found Arrn’s furryness and tickled it and he stood up and looked at me all happy’d with his tail going wag so I got up and got dressed and went downstairs to the kitchen and Arrn followed me. The couch had no Drunkle on it cos he must’ve woken up and gone to bed so I drank some milk and gave Arrn some too and then I ate an apple and went out into the morningness.

I liked Drunkle’s High Place farm but it was sadding me a bit then cos there was no Auntie Scantie Fay on it and it was all under a messment with barrels and bags everywhere and lots of machines gone all red-rusty and mud and muck in pools and heaps everywhere and it never used to be like that and as well there used to be sheep but there was none then just two pigs which I scratched at with a stick and they closed their eyes cos all pigs like stick-scratchings. Pigs are my friends. They know me, pigs do. Arrn liked
them
too, cos he stuck his nose through the bars and one pig touched it with
his
nose like they nose-kissed and I liked seeing that it made me laugh a bit. Ooo, Arrn fancies Mrs Pig. Then I went back outside and went into the barn and climbed to the top of the strawbale hill and looked out across the other properer hills and saw them in the mist and the sun coming up bright and big birds calling in the mist that was lifting off the mountain and I felt so happy to see it but of a sudden a bit sad too cos I could see down the valley that the Town was in and thought of Mam stuck with bastard NotDad in the house. But then I felt better again cos I looked away from that valley to the top of the biggest mountain which was glowing cos a bit of gleamy rock up there was caught in a sunbeam and it glowed like gold up there on the sky and it happy’d my heart parts inside. I pointed at it for Arrn to look at too but he thought I’d thrown something for him so he bounded off the straw hill and looked up at me from his new belowness and I laughed then he saw something run across the yard and he ran off after it into the byre and it was probably a rat.

I heard someone say ‘mmrpknaow’ and I looked around and saw Charlesworth behind me in the straw with her paws folded to her chest and resting on a little platform of straw and I laughed cos she made me think of a shopkeeper with his elbows resting on the counter of his shop like Mr Lewis in the Town who sells me sweets. I asked Charlesworth for a pint of milk and a bag of sherbet lemons and she looked at me. Then I stroked her head and asked if I could
see
her New Babies and I was waiting for her to hiss at me but she didn’t and behind her in a hole of darkness she’d made in the straw I could see the tiny kittens moving and Charlesworth stood up and started to butt me with her head going ‘prrr prrr’ and I could then see the kittens and they were so small. Their eyes were open but all kind of gummy and they had tails like tiny furry points and when they stood they rocked from side to side like my Drunkle does sometimes and they made sounds so squeaky-high I could hardly hear them with my ears. They were all tiny but one of them was the tiniest and coloured black and white and the others were kind of reddy with white bits and I picked this one up and it didn’t weigh much more than the air I held in my hands with it and Charlesworth gave me a little growl but that’s all she didn’t swipe or hiss just growled a small growl and watched me with her eyes all green. The kitten was so tiny with an angryness in its scrunched-up face too big for that tiny face too big for that tiny body and it made a noise I didn’t really hear then bit me on the thumb and wouldn’t let go and as it bit me it poo’d too but I didn’t mind the pooing or the biting in fact I
liked
it, the biting not the pooing, cos it didn’t hurt and I thought that I was Arthur or even better NotDad and the kitten was me. I thought of how easy it would be for me to hurt or even kill the kitten if I was cruel like Arthur and NotDad and then I thought of how brave the kitten was to bite me but not really brave cos it didn’t know only that it
had
to bite whatever was holding it and I liked that very much. The other kittens didn’t bite but
this
one did even tho it
was
the smallest cos it had been
chosen
to be the one that bit. Everything in the air in the High Parts around had picked it out to be The One That Had To Bite and I liked that very much and I liked the kitten very much and I decided then and there that I was going to choose it too so I did and put my mark on it but only in my mind and the kitten’s bitey mind too.

I put it back into the straw hole and it stopped biting me and I looked at the tiny tiny dinges in my thumbskin made by its tiny tiny teeth and I hoped they would never go. I wiped the tiny poos off my hand on the straw then I stroked Charlesworth again and told her she had the Best Babies Ever and she went ‘prrr prrr’ and went back to her counter and I asked her for a loaf of bread and a jar of bramble jam and she looked at me and then I heard Arrn bark and go woof and saw him at the bottom of the strawbale hill with his tail going mad and no rat in his mouth unless he’d eaten it cos I’d seen him do that before and it made me feel sick. A
lot
sick. Then I saw Drunkle behind him coming across the yard which was why Arrn was shouting and all hot cos of Drunkle and something was happening. Drunkle had a tent rolled up which he threw into the back of his truck then a rucksack with pans and things hanging from it going clink and then a gun which he didn’t
throw
into the truck oh no he lay it down in there all gentle like he put me on the bed from Bala Lake last night, all gentle and kindly but not for the same Whyness as he was kind with that gun. I climbed down the straw hill and patted Arrn to calm him and then went over to Drunkle.

—Bore da, bach. Up early.

I gave a nod to Drunkle and looked at him. His eyes were all in a redness but not like Arrn’s ears and there was a kind of blackness around them too, in the skin. His face was like raw mince behind the sprouty hairs and he looked a bit sick but he usually did look like that in the morning-times cos he’s my Drunkle and that sick-looking-ness would go away after a bit, I knew that. Same with the smell that was coming out of him like sweat and drink and sick I knew that would go away too after a bit. Funny man my Drunkle looking ill then well again then ill again then well again as if he couldn’t make up his mind which way to look or even feel.

—Better go get yurself ready, he said then coughed and spat into the mud and what he spat out looked like one of them mussels in a vinegary jar he sometimes gave me to eat and Keep Me Quiet in pubs. Eat them with little pointy sticks all salty and tastey of the seaside with a taste that went up my nose. I
liked
them mussels in a vinegary jar and the cockles too but I didn’t like what came out of Drunkle. —Get a quick shower, put some warm clothes on. Get wrapped up.

—It’s summertime, Uncle.

—Not where we’re going, bach. Winter all year round up there.

I took Arrn back into the house and had a shower while he went and fetched his beef-bone from upstairs and brought it into the bathroom and lay in the doorway crunching it and licking it and the shower didn’t work properly. The water came out only in
spurtings
like my wee does sometimes when I have to push and it was like the shower was the house’s wee and the whole house was pushing it out. And it wasn’t very hot which was also like my wee and I thought about drinking it to see if it tasted like my wee but I didn’t dare cos it was all brownish and looked bad but it was all just a wee-ey shower and I didn’t like it very much and the towel I used the only one I could find was damp and dirtied and smelled like shoes left out in the rain. I complained about it to Arrn but he just went on at his bone but his red ears did go up a little bit so I knew he heard me. Paint was coming off the bathroom walls like the skin of a snake painted yellow and up one wall behind the bath it was going all black like wet dust climbing and behind the toilet I saw stuff growing like crisps stuck into the wall on their ends so they were sticking out like little wavy platforms or like smaller types of that flat platey fungussy stuff that grows on the trunks of trees and I thought of how it was never like this when Auntie Scantie was alive cos she used to Keep Everything Clean and it sadded me a bit cos it made me think of the aloneness in Drunkle growing in him like the stuff behind the toilet since she died. And the blackness in him growing through him like the black wet dust behind the bath since he had to take her down out of the tree With His Own Hands.

The towel didn’t take the wetness off me very well at all and even made me smellier than before I’d got in the flippin shower which was a bad bastard business cos it meant that my showertime had been wasted and I hate that wasting of time but nothing could be
done
cos I can only turn the time back when I’m in My Times and I wasn’t then and didn’t want to be in them either so I just got on with it and brushed my teeth and put my clothes back on and shivered for a bit and found one of Drunkle’s old fleeces in the room by the Bala Lake screen hanging over a chair and I put it on and it made me warmer but it smelled of oil and drink but I didn’t really care about them smells. Then I went back outside with Arrn and got a bedazzlement in my eyes cos of the sun on top of the mountain like a crown very bright. Drunkle was leaning against his truck and smoking and staring at that gleamy mountain top with his eyes gone all squinty.

—I’m ready, Uncle, I said.

—Good boy, he said but didn’t stop looking up at the high bright sun which reminded me of the fried eggs he made for my tea the day before which made me feel hungry cos I’d only had some milk and an apple so I asked Drunkle if we were going to eat something and he said we’d eat at the pub and flicked his cigarette into the high bright sun and got in the truck so I did too and Arrn jumped in as well, in the back. I saw the leftoverness of his beef-bone in the mud as we drove out of the farmyard but I didn’t tell Drunkle to stop for it or anything cos I was tired of Arrn taking it everywhere with him and crunching it and licking it all the time and ignoring me, bloody crunch crunch on it all the time he was. I wound my window down a bit for the good smells to come in and take over the smells that were coming out of my driving Drunkle and thank the Lord they did. Them good good smells in these High Parts.