With Love and Squalor (6 page)

The cab driver moaned about working through the night. Told me how much more he earned if he took the late shift. “Pays the mortgage and then some,” he told me. “You know what they say, mate.  No pain, no gain.”

I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about.

Breakfast TV

It was hot under the studio lights.

Even in a tee-shirt and shorts Mitchell was sweating.

They’d told him what to wear a week before filming. Explained they were going with the beach barbecue theme.

No way on Earth he’d ever seen himself being painted as the villain in the piece, but that’s what they’d done.

He’d persuaded Ellen to have the kid. Said he’d be there whatever happened. They could move into his mother’s place until the council offered them somewhere of their own. Nothing would have got in the way on account of the way he felt about her.

But they were twisting it all around.

The audience booed when he tried to defend himself.

Maybe he should have seen through it from the start. Realised when the Daniel Dean story broke he wasn’t going to get a look in. Way the papers told it, Daniel and Ellen had got drunk at a barbecue on the beach and had got carried away. Didn’t mean much by itself, only it made Daniel the youngest recorded father in Britain.

The little shit didn’t look old enough to cross the road by himself, let alone shave. Hadn’t let go of her hand since the ‘LIVE’ sign lit up. Smug bastard.

They must have been coining it in with all the attention they were getting. Front page most days. It just wasn’t fair.

Mitchell might not have minded if the host had given him a fair shot. She was supposed to see it from all angles. Keep it on a knife edge to the end.

Only thing on a knife edge were his nuts.

“You forced her to have the baby and then left her as soon as you heard about Daniel. What kind of a man are you?” Agony Agnes, host and star of the show, seemed to have it in for him as much as everyone else.

“It wasn’t like that…” He might as well have been pissing into the ocean. The audience shouted and jeered so loud he couldn’t even hear his own voice.

Daniel and Ellen lapped it up, circling their arms at the crowd and urging them to call louder.

How the baby slept through it all, Mitchell had no idea. Wouldn’t have surprised him if they’d doped him up for the show.

“So who is the father of baby Nathan?” Agnes said directly into the camera. “We’ll find out after the break.”

One of the chefs served out food as the director counted down to the adverts.

It was the part no one at home got to see.

Daniel took a big bite from a burger and spat it in Mitchell’s direction.

Mitchell knew he shouldn’t let it get to him, but he was raging.

Kept his cool though. Took a bite of his kebab and chewed. When the result of the paternity test arrived he’d be laughing loudest of all.

When the ads were over Agnes reminded everyone of the story in case they’d missed it the first four times, then she clicked her fingers.

From behind a partition wall a lady appeared. In her hand was a silver platter and on the platter the golden envelope.

“And the father is…” Agnes theatrically slid out a slip of paper, read it and held it into the air like a trophy. “…Daniel.”

Something in Mitchell snapped.

He leapt over to the other side of the room and stuck his kebab skewer all the way through Daniel’s chest. Cut the bugger’s celebrations short, that was for sure.

As the bouncers dragged him back Mitchell just stared at the boy.

The boy stared back.

“That the best you can do?” he goaded, his face pale and tight.

“That the best you can do?” he asked as they pressed at his chest with their hands.

“That the best you can do?” he said, his lips turning blue as they moved.

“The best you can to?” he challenged, his pallor turning grey.

“The best you can do?”

Suture

Pony cleared the dust and looked at his reflection. It was none too pretty.
The smaller cuts might heal on their own, leaving only the biggest to deal with.
The mere idea of touching it made him feel faint. He consoled himself by reducing the number of sutures he’d insert.
A doctor, he decided, might use six to do a neat job, but even a doctor might miss a few if working alone.
Omitting alternate stitches meant he could get away with three, maybe two if things didn’t go so well.
Before starting, he needed to clean up, get rid of the blood, make sure he gave himself a chance of avoiding infection.
Having learned his first aid from Westerns, for him the first rule was that the patient needed a good slug of whisky.
All he managed to find were cases of wine.
He returned to the room upstairs.
Beside the bed was a trunk that looked like it hadn’t been opened for a while. It was the only place he hadn’t tried.
The latch was busted and the hinges were gone. He lifted the lid straight off. A moth fluttered into his face. Pony flinched. Took a swing at the insect. Missed.
The pain was sharp, like a knife cut.
If a thing that size could cause him so much hurt, he figured he’d have to take another tour of the house. Start his search over. Unless he could find a little something in the box.
Top of the pile was a photograph of a neat and clean-shaven Lars with his arm around a woman. There were other snaps too, all of the woman and a kid in various stages of development, from babe to High School.
Underneath them were dresses, skirts and more dresses. Pony considered the man downstairs. Maybe Vikings weren’t the only things he liked to get himself up as. You never knew with people.
His face was really heating up. Without booze, all he could think of was freezing it.
In the kitchen he opened the icebox.
His jaw dropped when he saw it, reopening the biggest of his cuts.
“Voila,” he yelled quietly. “Man can not live on wine alone.”
The bottle was so cold that his fingers hurt as he picked it up.
“Jagermeister. The fuck?”
Unscrewing the lid, he took a sip. Practically medicine as far as his buds could make out. His stomach went into spasm as the liquid dropped. Perfect.
Replacing the lid, he wrapped his booty in a towel before returning to the mirror.
Not even the handicap of monocular-vision hampered his threading. He looked up into the glassy eyes of the moose head on the wall above the bed.
“Rich man on a camel could pass through that.”
The moose didn’t respond, which made it the right kind of company.
Religion had never gone down well with Pony, but before he did anything he crossed himself and prayed.
“Moose. Help me out, I promise I’ll be good. A-men.”
Gulping from the bottle, he fought the urge to wretch and poured as much as he could on the wounds and the thread. An almighty sting spread across his cheek, turning into a wild burning sensation that made his knees bend and his hands grab the blanket on the bed. Gritting his teeth, he thought about returning to the icebox to stick his head where the bottle had been.
The heat cooled to a gentle glow.
He stood up and picked up the needle.
Imagining he was fixing old material, he pinched out a flap of skin and rested the point against it.
He pushed the metal through. The idea of the piece of material quickly faded.
Still, the pain didn’t turn into real agony until he pulled and, as if that wasn’t bad enough, the tickle of the
cotton on the inside of the new hole teased his nerves and sent them into overdrive. He butted the wall hoping a new pain might take his mind off things. It only made them worse. He let out a yell louder, even, than Edward Munch could have imagined.
If the experience hadn’t been bad enough, it was even harder to work the other side. Instead of pushing into a neat stretch of skin, he was working the needle into the wound , like a chef preparing a cheap cut of meat.
When his screams were finally done, he sat down on the bed. Looking up at the moose he finally spoke. “I guess we get what we deserve in the end, huh.”
That was how he’d to come to terms with what he was doing. He’d killed the love of his life, snuffed her out with his useless driving, left her on the beach for that policeman to smash off her foot like she were a mannequin.
His memory of the night before was coming back like an unwelcome visitor. He tried to shut it out, but it was way too strong.
An enormous sorrow overwhelmed him, left all his physical pain to dwindle into insignificance. A roar left his throat and filled the house from top to bottom. He looked into his reflection and threw his fist at the glass.
He found himself looking at six faces all staring back at him with the same tortured expression. He was getting what he deserved all right, and a little bit more for good measure.
Pony took a deep breath and gathered his senses. The needle was dangling down by his chin. He picked up the cotton from both ends, tied a simple knot, doubled it to be safe and added another to make certain.
It took a while to realise what was missing.
He turned to the moose again hoping for some direction. It was not forthcoming.
 

Waking his new friend might give him the answer, but he wasn’t ready to hear his voice again.
Instead, he went back through the house again, searching for a pair of scissors.

SAMPLERS

Hoodwinked

from
Beat On The Brat (and other stories)
 

John Campion was always going to do well for himself. Everyone knew it.

Day he packed up and left for college we didn’t reckon on seeing him ever again, not if them tutors could get him to tell stories the way he did down at the tavern. Like he’d swallowed the blarney stone and digested the whole darned thing. Couldn’t burp without embellishing facts and when he puked he threw up a thesaurus.

“Truth be stranger than fiction,” he’d say before he started. The words “I ever tell you about…” always got us in a huddle.

Never had to pay for a beer his whole life far as I know.

Turned out we was wrong about never seeing him again.

It was Easter.

He showed up on the mountain without sending word to man nor beast. Carried the rucksack he left with and a bag of books to give to everyone - signed copies of his very own novel.

Wasn’t alone neither. Had a woman with him. Film director. Wore her hair long and her smile wide, just as I like them.

Word got round about the movie they was planning to make. Based on that novel of his it was. Had the place buzzing like a saw. Biggest news in the hills since McGregor turned on his wife and kids and swallowed the barrels of his gun.

JC and Eve stayed for a couple of weeks. Chatted to just about everyone.

Eve was nice. Kind of lady you’d like to get into the sack. A little modern maybe, a head full of crazy notions, but it didn’t stop me or nobody else taking a crack at her.

We was all spraying the wrong tree anyhow. Only had eyes for the female variety so JC said.

***

They came back six months later, heading up a party of caravans and trucks that carried an army of crew.

Had everything a man could want right there with them, down to the kitchens and the food.

Right off they set to auditioning folk.

My brother Paul got him a part. All he had to do was pretend to fill cars at the gas station. Could have trained a chimp to do that. Wasn’t even going to get to say nothing which was probably for the best.

Meant I had to stay home and look after the birds, set them flying for anyone who’d pay to watch.

First thing Paul did with his dough was to head on in to town. Came back with a brand new pair of jeans and a cell-phone. Bragged that it had a fancy camera in it.

Ask me a phone’s a phone. No need to go putting things together that don’t fit.

Looked mighty fine, I told him, but wouldn’t be no good to a hungry man.

***

Lead actor was Johnny ‘Cupcake’ Owens.