Scavengers

‘Fuck off, don’t be reading it aloud.’

A WOMAN with a limp opened the cafe door with her shoulder and he realised her left arm was also crippled. A stroke? A fella in the queue at the counter dropped a coin on the floor but, after looking, decided it wasn’t worth the effort of stooping to pick it up. The woman with the baby at the table facing him fixed her bra into place since the feed was finished and glared at him for staring.

And what to say about him? Firstly, his collection was growing all the time. He’d picked up a severed, stuffed and mounted deer’s head off the motorway the other Sunday, for example. Someone had thrown it over the wall from the housing estate beyond. That and a brown boot – but the boot was too far gone to be of any use. Motorways were often the best places to pick up this and that. He would drive along in his van, from here to there, to nowhere in particular and stowed beside him he’d have his fluorescent yellow jacket and hard hat and, in the back, the flashing light and triangular men at work sign he’d picked up from outside a building site. Discarded it was. When he spotted anything of interest that had fallen off a lorry or been blown onto the verge he’d stop, taking all necessary precautions, and retrieve. He’d often thought about getting a freezer in the back of the van for the roadkill he came across – generally badgers and cats and a few foxes, never dogs though, funny that – but the carcasses were usually too smashed up by the impact to get any decent meat off them. Besides, he’d hardly get a takeaway or a restaurant that would do business with him. Still, when that man walks away, he would retrieve that coin. Five pence, as far as he could see from his table.

The young fella would be early as usual. His anxiety didn’t let him rest, he said. So he determined to be earlier because he could usually pick up a couple of knick knacks while waiting. An umbrella perhaps. Or a lighter with some fuel left in it. Nothing was of more benefit to one’s collection than simply watching and waiting, which had the added benefit of giving purpose to what he tended to do anyway. And on the stroke of ten-to-nine, there he was – the young fella, that is. Shambling through the door while pulling the hood of his black duffle coat down off his black hair, his black jeans riding above the laces of his red DMs. The strap on his satchel was hanging so low the bag scuffed against his knees. Didn’t know how to tighten it, no doubt.

He looked at Bill – because the man who has been here all this time is not called Bill, but Liam, but in the days when he worked in the factory that built aircraft parts he found it would lubricate matters with his workmates and the management somewhat if he was called Bill, so Bill it is – in a half-hearted attempt at offering him a coffee, but Bill declined. When Thomas – and it is Thomas – sat down facing Bill, he picked up the jar that sat between them and smelt the milk.

‘This is on the turn,’ said Thomas.

‘All’s changed, changed udderly,’ replied Bill.

‘Fucking hell, that’s good,’ and Thomas reached into his coat pocket for his notebook and pen.

‘Write much this week?’

‘A bit. You want to see?’

‘If I can find my glasses.’

‘They’re hanging round your neck Bill and they’re not yours, you got them from that frozen corpse in Castle Place.’

‘Waste not, want not kiddo. And one good turn deserves another, I said the act of contrition in his ear. Anyway, your writing...’

Thomas dove into his bag and retrieved the biggest notebook from among an identical collection that ranged in size from A7 to A3, flicked thoughtfully through to page thirty-two and presented it with a hesitant flourish, ‘Here you go.’

Bill read while licking his chapped lips and moving his glasses up and down on the broad of his nose. The young fella was searching for finality again, he saw. Even when he wrote the most trifling of words, every letter would be finished with a flourish that signified the end. Must be fucking exhausting.

‘Right, here goes.’

‘Fuck off, don’t be reading it aloud.’

‘You have to be able to hear your own work, so you get a sense of how others receive it.’

‘Jesus.’

‘Jesus is neither here nor there... “This place makes me nervous: always wanting to say something, always so few words and tones in which to put it. Read this, observe that. Face up to your own inferiority.” ‘You were a right wee Sylvia Plath this week, when are you putting your head in the oven?’

‘Go fuck yourself Bill.’

‘Don’t get me wrong kiddo, I’m not willing you to do it, it’s just so I know when I can pick up that satchel and those dainty boots of yours. They’d fetch a few quid in the market. Anyway, we’ll proceed, “Names and smiling photos and walls full of promise fulfilled. Books of verse and prose strewn across coffee tables, daring you to try, waiting to laugh,” I think you may need to lay off the glue Tomás, if you think these books of yours may be primed to laugh at you. You’re giving agency to inanimate objects. Pathetic fallacy would be the technical term for it.’

Thomas had his head in his hands and they began to pull at tufts of hair when he heard the word ‘pathetic’.

‘Right, apologies, let’s go no – sorry, Freudian slip – let’s go on, I meant… “Why am I here? Because I’m scared. Why don’t I leave? Because I’ve been scared everywhere else as well. Here fulfils my lust for immediate gratification more than most other places, even if only for a fleeting second. I wrote in my application for this place that I need to give form to the previously unspeakable before someone else gets there ahead of me, and now I get to meet those who will as I fumble about in the dark. In any group, I vacillate frequently between not wanting to be judged and wanting to be judged as a thoroughly nice fella – depending on my levels of courage at any particular time. When the blood is up, I want the inexplicable niceness of all our types to crumble in a cacophony around all our insincerities, chiefly my own. But when the blood seeps from my head and curdles in ventricles somewhere about my thighs, I long for niceties. What have I learnt? To write about stuff and make it sound like you know what you are talking about. To try not to state the blindingly obvious. To interpret a dance. That a photograph is worth no words. To always couch the truth in academic patois. To pull the wire off yourself.  To avoid obscurantism. That context is everything and everything is context for something else. To not say “I love”.’

Bill looked at Tom over the rims of the expropriated glasses.

‘So what do you think?’

‘It’s very fucking ponderous is what I think.’

‘Thanks.’

‘And short.’

‘Stop, you’re making me blush.’

‘All I’m saying is you can’t be writing these diatribes all the time, if you want to write stories, they have to go somewhere, they have to have a point.’

‘I know, but if I could do that, I wouldn’t be buying yarns off you. The way I see it, you supply the raw beauty and I craft it into art.’

‘You fucking think?’

‘I do, I mean artists don’t go around stealing spectacles from corpses, but they can write about it.’

‘But you haven’t written about it. Why is that? I have this fantasy about being a janitor somewhere. Somewhere quiet. Or failing that, somewhere spacious enough to allow the opportunity to slip away and be somewhere quiet. A sense of purpose; always something to be done but with plenty of time in which to do it. “There’s a light needs changing in the refrectory? I’m your man.” “A seat needs fixing in the auditorium? Leave it with me.” “The confessional could do with a lick of varnish? Ahhh, what have you been up to in there, but say no more… I’m on it Father.” Somewhere to be left alone and still belong. Do you think you could get me a job in the university? They’d leave me be like, wouldn’t they? You know what I mean? Too busy trying to find a way out of their own holes.’

‘I’ll get you anything you want if you help me through these next assignments.’

‘What’s the next one on?’

‘Home.’

‘That’s a pity, I’d concocted a hell of a story about a woman I was watching breastfeeding in here earlier.’

‘You’re a pervert.’

‘It’s nothing like that. I was just caught up in the necessity of it all and the grace with which it was done. For me, it was like looking at an early Rembrandt, or a late one – his middle period, I’m not keen on. But that story will have to wait for now. So, home…’

‘Yes.’

‘And?’

‘And nothing. I need you to give me a story about home. Where is that, for you like?’

‘Nowhere, everywhere unreachable and it’s always on the tip of my tongue – I want to go home.’

‘Where is that?’

‘Who knows?’

‘Do you?’

‘Not exactly.’

‘Do you have any idea?’

‘More a general notion. I’ve never ever really wanted to go anywhere but home.’

‘But where is it?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘We’re getting nowhere with this.’

‘Especially not home.’

‘Please Bill…’

‘Our front door was rotten from the rain though.’

‘That’s class, that’ll do to start.’

Thomas began to write while Bill talked. Meanwhile, three elderly men in the corner had gathered, as they did every Monday, for tea and high conversation. Today, it was about sport.

‘Tug-of-war is the only sport where you can win going backwards,’ said their leader.

‘Quite right,’ the other two agreed. But then they thought about it.

‘What about rowing?’

Silence.

‘The high jump?’

Still, there was silence.

Back at Thomas’ table, Bill was talking.

‘So one morning, three envelopes come through the letter box…’

‘Through the rain-rotted door?’

‘No, that was the door in my ma’s house… two were brown and rough while one was white and smooth. Inside the first brown one was an announcement of a tax rebate, informing the relevant good citizen that inside the second brown envelope was a cheque for three-hundred-and-forty-two-pounds, to be cashed within six months. “Six months,” I snorted, “six fucking minutes more like.” Then I noticed the white smooth envelope. It was from a solicitor’s office, never ever a good sign. I hadn’t erred in the eyes of the law in some time, at least not as far as they were concerned – or far as I was concerned either come to think of it, so truly I hadn’t erred – so it could only mean one thing – a debt. I was right. Inside was notice of a civil case against me – at least it’s not a criminal one, I thought – in the name of a plaintiff who sought compensation to the tune of thirty-thousand-pounds for loss of earnings, damage to property and distress. “We trust you will pass this to your insurance company with the utmost urgency,” it read and gave the aforesaid bad citizen twenty-one days and concluded by billing me the legal fee of three-hundred-and-sixty-pounds if I paid within that time frame.’

‘What were the damages for? What had you done?’

‘A cheque for three-hundred-and-forty-two-pounds and a demand for thirty-thousand-three-hundred-and-forty-six-pounds. No insurance company. No bank account in which to cash the cheque. They give with one hand and take with both fucking fists clenched, I thought.’

‘Cunts Bill. Total cunts. But what was the thirty-grand all about?’

The old men rose to leave. Their leader hadn’t said a word since he’d been contradicted on his tug-of-war assertion. It would take him all week to recover his sense of gravitas.

‘Right, now listen.’

‘I’m listening.’

‘What do you hear?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Nothing?’

‘I mean, you haven’t said anything yet.’

‘I mean around us.’

‘Noise, I suppose. People talking.’

‘Din is what you hear. Now, have you your pen ready? Good because I won’t repeat myself… In the beginning was the word. A shard of simple beauty scripted onto papyrus and limestone. Breaking the fathomless silence with the staccato tap of meaning in the making – chiming with yet defying the manic sounds of always. Making the wind and the wolves, the sea and the rain aware that we have a rhythm and a pattern all of our own. Sculpting the unspeakable onto stones and bark. Did you ever realise the very need for literature lies in the need for sparsity of words – of again sculpting a carefully considered riposte to the silence, the unspeakable and the din? We need to shatter the din with the silence of the word.’

‘Jesus Bill, that’s incredible, it’s, I don’t know what, but we can create works of genius together.’

‘You think?’

‘Think? I know.’

‘That’s good, because it’s all balls.’

‘What?’

‘I just wanted to demonstrate you hadn’t learnt anything about what a story actually is in the last half-hour. Now, about that thirty grand. You see, I used to drive a taxi – a big black one that chugged away like a motherfucker. I was driving home one night with a load in the back and…’

‘A load of what?’

‘Of passengers Thomas, do try to keep up. Anyway, I had one of them in the front with me and he was nattering away to me about the installation of water metres in the townships in Johannesburg.’

‘Yeah right, is that supposed to be code for chipping your electric or something?’

‘Seriously. He was a communist. I’m a bit of a communist myself, actually.’

‘Bill, you’re a scavenger.’

‘I’ve simply adapted myself to the omnipotent laws of the all-conquering market. Like the oligarchs in Russia, I’ve made the move from the proletarian factory floor to entrepreneurial acquisition. But as the man himself used to say, it’s not my fault reality is Marxist-Leninist.’

‘Bill, the story…’

‘Yep, I haven’t lost my way, so this boy was nattering away to me and he was getting very animated about the whole thing, hands flailing this way and that. It was “ANC sell-out bastards” this and “those fucking Khruschevite revisionist scum in that looted shell of a Communist Party” that. And he kept demanding my attention, “Do you know what I mean, like” he kept pleading. “I do,” I kept reassuring him. And then he got proper excited when he got to the part about the young ones in the townships smashing up the metres so the men from the government couldn’t read them: “ANC Youth League they are too, fair fucking fucks to them.” But at this point his arse was bouncing off the fucking passenger seat and his hands were going this way and that in front of the windscreen. I couldn’t see shit for his jiving so I turned to him to try to get him to calm down a bit and that took longer than expected and when I put my eyes back on the road, the car in front had stopped for a red light. I slammed my foot hard on the brakes, forgetting they weren’t working anyway and went hard into the back of the other car. Well, those big black hacks have no seat belts in the back, so the girl in the back seat went flying forward and smashed her face clean against the glass partition. She was laughing with her boyfriend about something at the time, so she was still giggling when her mouth hit the glass, which was a bizarre thing to witness. Speaking of which, I have ever told you the etymology of the word bizarre?’

‘Tell me another time, what happened next?’

‘Well, Kelly and Marcus these two were called, nice couple, Marcus is a bit mad though. Kelly was balling her eyeballs out, her boyfriend was screaming blue murder and the psychopath in the front seat had changed topic to the privatisation of healthcare in Laos or somewhere. The boyfriend was banging on the partition with his forehead while telling me he was going to rip my larynx out with his teeth, so I told him the driver in front had hit the brakes without warning and that it was really his fault. So then he was trying to get the back door open, shouting that he was going to rip that fucker’s larynx out instead and his girlfriend was hanging onto his claves to try to stop him, sobbing that her face hurt.

‘And the car in front remained stationery with its hazard lights on, no one getting out. So it was up to me to make the first move, before Genghis fucking Khan managed to extricate himself from his girlfriend’s clutches. So I took my seatbelt off and stepped out. The front of mine was in bits – the bumper was hanging off, the bar behind it was buckled and the headlights were smashed. There didn’t seem much wrong with the other car though – a couple of dents to the bodywork, but that was about it.

‘So I get to the driver’s window and begin to mutter my excuses, but the fella just stays staring straight ahead. I notice he’s opened a can of beer. “Jump in the front,” he says without looking at me and puts his window back up. So I do and when I get in he gives me a can, which I interpret as a peace offering. “We have a number of options here,” he began as I supped the froth off the top of the can. “Go on,” says I, getting into the good part of the can.

“Is anybody in your cab hurt?”

“Girl in the back slammed her gob against the window but she should be alright.”

“Well, the proper course of action in that case is to phone the cops, but we’ve both been drinking so we better rule that option out. Are you insured?”

“I am, are you?”

“Of course. It’s an option. We could exchange details, go our separate ways and let them deal with it; or we could avoid them altogether and I could bill you for any damage to the car.”

‘Which seemed reasonable to me.’

“But there’s another option.”

‘“What’s that?” asks I, knowing what was coming.’

 “How many have you in your cab?”

 “Three in the back, one in the front.”

‘By this point, the boyfriend has made it out of the taxi and he’s banging his forehead against your man’s window , screaming about making piano wire from his vocal chords and hanging him by the balls with it. And his girlfriend’s hitting him on the arm and telling him to calm down and there’s blood streaming from her nose. The fella doesn’t even look at them, just stares straight ahead, like he did with me.

‘”You’d better get your fare to calm down,” says he, “I’m a black belt in taekwondo.”’

At this point, a woman goes up and orders two cappuccinos. ‘Regular ones?’ asked the waitress. ‘As opposed to?’ replied the customer. ‘Purple ones.’ The customer frowned and Bill’s story trundled on.

‘To stop things going south very quickly I bounce out and tell Marcus to wind his neck in, that the driver wants to make amends and I tell both of them to get in the back of his car. So they do. They’re just about settled when the driver tells Kelly not to be getting blood on his upholstery and this starts Marcus off again: “It’s your blood you should be worried about,” he says.

‘“I doubt that,” says the driver, “You’ve five in your cab including yourself, which leaves room for two, and I was all on my lonesome in here, which leaves room for another four. If we decide to contact the insurance people, why not say we both had full cars? Then we all present ourselves, at different times of course, to the hospital with accident-related aches and pains.”

‘“Have you people in mind?” I asked him, which turned out to be a stupid question. “I’ve a fucking list of people for situations like this friend. They give me five hundred quid and I get them in a car crash. Can you get another two people you can rely on, or do you want me to sort them for you?”

‘I turn to Marcus, “Has that oul boy in the back woken up yet?” “Neah,” says he. “I can get another three so.” By this point, Joe Stalin is at my window, so I motion to him to get into the back and he does. “What’s happening?” asks he. “We’re arranging for you to make a few bob,” the driver tells him. “I’ve never put much store in money, but I’ll take what comes my way.” “Who wouldn’t,” asks I, “Are we in folks?” “Aye, why not,” says Marcus, whose girlfriend can’t answer because she’s capped her hand over her face to catch the blood, but I think I see a nod.   

‘So that was us all sorted, or so I thought. I tied the bumper with a length of rope and got my passengers home. The snoozer in the back first and when we managed to wake him he hadn’t a clue what had happened, he even gave me a tip. I said I didn’t want anything from the commie and he didn’t insist as, after all, money didn’t hold great store for him. By the time I got Kelly and Marcus to her house they were feeling all amorous again. He was licking the blood from her lips and she was laughing and moaning a bit every time he bumped against her forehead.’

‘Jesus Bill, we’re in a public place.’

‘She was moaning with the pain you filthy wee fucker.’

‘So over the next couple of days we all presented ourselves at the hospital, including my three volunteers - who were particularly hard up at the time - with what was supposed to be whiplash. Kelly didn’t need to let on of course, and neither did I as it turned out, my neck had been killing me. I had the volunteers well-coached, so they were grand too and, of course, the other fella was a professional at this. But then it all went pear shaped with Marcus and the Communist. The Commie told him he was having severe chest pains to try to up the stakes a little and they admitted him and found his arteries were so clogged up it was a miracle he was still walking about. “Ah here, youse are medical professionals, disciples of the enlightenment, scientific soldiers” he told them, “don’t be running about this palace of progress like witch doctors with your superstitious mumbo jumbo about miracles.” Anyway, by the time, they released him he’d had a triple heart bypass and there wasn’t a mention on his medical record of a car crash. Marcus went in when he’d been on the drink for three days and had put the last of his money on a horse that broke a leg at the 1.45 at Kempton, so he forgot why he was there and he started crying about the horse to the doctor and they referred him to an addiction clinic and he got sent to dry out.

‘Which still would’ve left things okay for the rest of us. But then I get a letter from my insurance company stating that as I’d no seatbelts in the back – as evidenced by Kelly’s dive against the window – they had decided to decline the claim and cancel my insurance for misleading them. Everybody’s claim was finished then – I couldn’t get my taxi repaired and the other fella was out two grand to the four people he’d placed in his car and weren’t going to get not a cent from my insurance company. Well, he’s been looking for me ever since and I moved address in a hurry but now his solicitor’s managed to track me down – which is preferable to him and his black belt, I suppose.’

A man who Bill went to school with sat down at the table next to them and opened two cans of fizzy juice. They ran over their own sides and he lifted each of them in turn and slurped the excess off them. Bill nodded to him, but he didn’t notice - he was too involved in a conversation he was carrying on with himself.

‘We never really eh… do you know what I mean? They never say that, they never say that to me. You see, whenever they come down at – I’m not talking about during the day – they come down at night. They never say that to me. On Sunday night. See the thing is. They say, ‘did you take your tablets?’ Well, he chased her. He asked her did she want a drink of coke. De di de di de di de de… Hee Hee Hee. I agree with you. Hee Hee…’

‘Are you alright there Charlie,’ Bill called out to him, but Charlie didn’t even look, didn’t even hear through the fog, he kept just kept on talking.

‘The trouble is, nobody… something special for them… That’s what I would’ve made today. Brilliant mate. Lasagne and chips. That’s what I would’ve made today. They’re supposed to come down at five o’clock, but they probably won’t come down at five o’clock. Probably do something with them. This is not… Because… Oh, I know. The trouble about five o’clock is… we’re not talking about four o’clock, we’re not talking about three o’clock. So what are you thinking mate? Because see at other times when people came at five o’clock. This is true. This is ammmm… But see in ninety-four, they were doing it, so the answer would be no. Sure how many days is there? Yeah, but even if… fifty quid…. Aggghhhhh.’

 Bill hadn’t taken his eyes off his school friend since he’d sat down, Thomas hadn’t noticed him.

‘You know Thomas, a lot of people think I walk around with my eyes fixed on the ground because I lack the confidence to look up, that I’m too scared to look people in the eye. Most of the time I tell myself it’s because you never know what you’ll find fallen out of someone’s pocket if you’re observant enough, but to tell you the truth for once Thomas, I do it to avoid looking at how cruel things really are.’

Thomas wasn’t listening either.

‘But what are you going to do about the debt you’re in Bill? What will I write for a conclusion?’

Bill wiped what may have been a tear from his cheek.

‘I’m going to pick up that five penny piece kiddo. That’s all.’