CANCER BOB AND THE YOYO

Bob with the Cancer, a charred renegade cowboy scout was puffing and lolloping along on his half-assed, half-blind donkey when he passed two unlikely lads cavorting on the skirted hem of a daisy prairie.
One of the unlikely lads, Pete with a rooster, cried, ‘yo!’
‘Yo,’ repeated his crushed-almond-eyed friend.
Cancer Bob creaked around his saddle to face them: ‘what in the name of sweet Jesus are you two female faggots wanting from me?’
‘Yo yo,’ shouted Rooster Pete and his nutty fiend.
Now the donkey agitated around to bring Cancer Bob nuzzle-up-close to the yoyo pair.
‘I’ll say it only once: why are you rattle-snakes repeating your death rattle claim on my running-out-time?’
‘Yoyo, sir. It’s all the craze in the East. Spare us a dime and we’ll furnish you with our presentation.’
‘What do you think, Dong?’ Cancer Bob asked of his donkey. ‘Shall we give them a dime for their troubles or shall we blast their dim-witted asses back up to Kingdom come?’
Donkey Dong looked heavenward and brayed very loud.
‘Sorry boys, I have my answer,’ said Cancer Bob with a rotten kind of smile. Then out came his pistols and squeeze went the triggers. Bullets flew and the two unfortunate, unlikely lads fell backwards onto the skirted hem of the prairie.
As the rooster cooked on a fire and Donkey Dong hoofed up granules of desert to make two shallow graves, Cancer Bob lay on his back doing an expert cat’s cradle with the yoyo. ‘Those talent less fuckers will be pushing up daisies soon enough,’ he said.
‘And so will you, Bob,’ replied Donkey Dong.
‘Guess I will at that,’ said Cancer Bob allowing a crooked smile to pass across his lips as he offered his donkey dong a drag on his nicotine.

DOGSBODY

Does the dog wag the tail or the tail wag the dog? Such questions kept entering Arnold’s mind of late.

            It started with a heightened sense of smell. Nose up, with a slow turn of the head to catch the scents whirling past on the sea breeze.

            Brighton promenade, early morning. Mother in her wheelchair making sticky with an ice-cream cone, a white frothy milk moustache, sucking through the absence of teeth. Arnold beside her; nicknamed Arnold Layne after the Pink Floyd song by the giggling, sweaty boys in 5B. Now there’s a little grey around the temples, pinches of salt and pepper on the muzzle – a lollypop licked, orange on his lips, gazing at two windsurfers gliding on the horizon. The smell of seaweed, an undercurrent of sewage, salt water drying on rocks, and, close by, some dog wet on the railings.

            ‘A bitch, possibly a Pomeranian,’ Arnold is thinking.

            ‘Cold now, I’d like to go home,’ says Mother.

            ‘Get you a cappuccino? It’d warm you up.’

            ‘No, home, please.’

            Mother and Arnold, chair and walker, both quiet and thoughtful along the front, and then the long push home.

In their lounge, small and bent over, cramped by falling angles of bones into her seat, Mother watches Countdown with the sound turned up, an electric blanket, pink and new from Argos, £15.99, over her knees; an electric coal-effect fire; Arnold perched on the armchair beside her, scratching at a hole in his sweater. On the seafront he’d noticed the smell of coffee, that’s why it had come into his head to ask her if she wanted one, but now he can smell something unpleasant.

            ‘You done a two, mum?’

            Snores.

            Investigating in the bathroom. No sign, but he flushes anyway. Soap scents, citrus at the back of the throat; ammonia too, so he coughs.

Thirty years before in the Mini-Traveller, its log cabin sides, Mother, Arnold Layne, and their Yorkshire terrier he’d named Damien after the Omen film; Arnold had a thing for Lee Remick before she fell out of the playroom window. Mother at the wheel, Damien at the back with Arnold; fur soaked with seaweed.

            Mother spoke: ‘you shouldn’t have let him roll in that stuff. He smells like a drowned rat.’

            A whimper from Damien, Arnold’s hand on the bone at the back of Damien’s head, dog nose nuzzled into his chest. So close the two of them. Boy and dog, dog and boy.

            When they arrived home, Arnold brought out the brush to calm Mother’s nerves.

            ‘Not so hard,’ she said. ‘You should always brush in the direction the hair falls.’

            ‘Like this?’ said Arnold.

            ‘That’s my boy,’ said Mother.  

After the promenade, Mother’s night time snores have become damp and wheezy. It was cold on the front and the sea has settled on her chest, a trickle in her lungs. Her scalp is hot; red patches where hair has moved withArnold’s stroking.

           Arnold’s up, changing sheets, dampening her face with a sponge.

            ‘Will you eat something now?’ he asks.

            She shakes her head. He offers her a teaspoon of pink yoghurt.

            ‘Strawberry, your favourite,’ he says.

            ‘Don’t want it, too ill,’ she replies. 

            ‘Aw, mum, you’ll be okay.’

            ‘No, son, this is it.’

            ‘Please don’t say that.’

            ‘I’m not stupid,’ she says.

            A whine when he’s on the phone to the doctor. ‘Things aren’t so good with mum. Come and fetch.’

            He hadn’t meant to say that. The ambulance men carry her out on a canvas stretcher with a red wool blanket pulled over. An oxygen mask too.

            Medical chemicals in Arnold’s head making him dizzy. He asks if it’s all right to lie on the ambulance floor.

            Cold on his shoulder and his head rattling on the metal floor by their boots; leather uppers, a cigarette recently stubbed out on a rubber sole.

            ‘Do you mind moving, sir?’

            ‘Have you got any water?’

            ‘We’re not a cafeteria.’

            Not a cafeteria, the words sound alien. He falls asleep. Dreams. Running through a field, Mother rolling behind, he jumping over a small hedge, her wheelchair doing a Frisbee-flop a moment later.

            ‘Mum, mum,’ his legs twitching on the floor.

            A rush of wind as the ambulance door opens. ‘Move it, please.’ And the stretcher passes a long shadow over his head.

In the ward, Mother’s chest creaks, and Arnold lies curled in a chair by her side thinking of a head being stroked, forever stroked.

            He remembers running with Damien: a game of throw and retrieve.

            ‘Go boy, go.’

            Two jade eyes spied through the mesh of next-door’s fence. Dainty paws lower down, white trim: Kenneth, the tortoise-shell. Damien’s fur on high alert, arching his back, the ball desolate and unchewed in the middle of the lawn.

            Kenneth sprang on top of the fence, claws folded in, paws gripping like toy felt, slinking across the night sky; his tail like a fanning Yucca. Damien charged at the fence so he stuck, legs held fast in stocks; Arnold trying to tug him free.

            Mother at the kitchen door. ‘Arnold, come in this moment.’

            ‘I’ll be back, Damien, sorry.’

             Back as he promised, after a Fray Bentos, overcooked and black on top – Arnold never liking puff pastry ever since – and Damien was gone; Kenneth looking on, smiling wildly, pupils enlarged and speeding.

            But no Damien, even when Arnold cried his name through the streets that night.           

Arnold mourned then, Arnold mourns now; Mother has passed away. A rose bush planted in the garden, yellow and pink, just as she requested. Smells sickly, like the Indian sweets they give him at the Kybher Pass, his nightly take-away. He’s planted a bush for Damien too, in case he ever comes back – ghost-like – to leave his mark, his marauding impression. His favourite bones still buried in the soft earth underneath. 

            After Damien disappeared, Kenneth fell out of a tree. 

It’s raining. Arnold places mum’s urn on the mantelpiece, lies on the carpet, looks at the electric bars glow, and feels their warmth on his tummy. He closes his eyes and listens for a scratch on the bottom of the door. Tomorrow he’ll take himself for a walk on the seafront, buy an ice cream, and scatter the contents of the urn in the sea.

GOAT KILLS SNAKE

Pablo the goat came over all Diablo when a slimy snake slithered under his hoof.
‘Cotton-picking son of a slitherer!’ yelled Pablo, who up until now had never uttered a word in his life.
‘Rattle’ rattled the snake.
‘Enough of that,’ yelled Pablo as he brought his hoof down on the rattling snake’s rattling spine. ‘And take that too,’ he yelled again, bringing his other hoof down to silence the rattler for good and for bad.
The desert fell silent. The moon glowered like a shiny spoon and Pablo began to eat the snake.
‘What’s come over me,’ he thought. ‘I’m normally a peace loving chap and I’ve always been an herbivore.’
The desert stayed quiet and offered no reply but a ball of dry prairie grass rolled by until Pablo ate that too.

 

 

 

 

picture by Jonny Voss

 

At the Sacred Elephant Thai restaurant in a small Middlesex town near Heathrow, four people take their regular seats at a corner table by the window. It’s an early Saturday evening in December and the restaurant is half full.

‘This is good, we will be served quicker,’ says Krystiana, a blonde woman in her late twenties with a prominent pregnancy-bump swelling her white lace top. She shifts in her seat, and pushes the table away from her. ‘It is not comfortable. I need room, the baby needs room.’

With a loud sigh, she swaps places with a cadaverous, slump-shouldered man in his early forties. He says nothing and drops into his new chair. He now sits opposite his frail, grey haired Dad, whilst she opposes Mother, her aggressively neat, coiffured mother-in-law.

‘We are having starter food, yes?’ asks Krystiana.

‘Yes, dear,’ replies Mother, and Dad clears his throat in agreement.

A young Thai waiter shows Dad the wine list, and he in turn passes it across the table to Krystiana.

‘I will have Coca-Cola. Mother, will you and Dad be drinking tonight?’

‘A little wine, yes.’

Krystiana points out a glass of House Red and House White to the waiter. ‘A lager half-pint for my husband,’ she adds.

‘Sorry, only bottles. Pump faulty.’

‘One small bottle and one small glass, thank you.’

‘Tiger or Singha?’

‘Tiger,’ she replies.

When the waiter leaves, Krystiana is incensed: ‘Their pump is always faulty. Why they don’t fix it?’

‘What’s Tiger, dear?’ asks Mother.

‘Tiger is Thai lager, Mother; more expensive than Carling.’

A tall Eastern European girl in traditional, ornate Thai costume arrives beside Krystiana to take their food order.

‘Mother and I will share vegetable spring rolls twice. Please no prawns, I have a baby,’ she says stroking the bump. ‘Dad, will you be having your crabs?’

Dad clears his throat.

Mother asks her son if he wants anything.

‘No, no, Mother. His stomach is bad. He will have boiled chicken later.’

Mother looks at her son and then at her daughter-in-law. ‘If you’re both sure?’

‘Yes, Mother, we’re both sure,’ replies Krystiana.

 

When the waitress is out of ear shot, Krystiana begins, ‘this new tall one is Lithuanian, I’m sure of it. They will take the jobs from here, you see.’

‘From the Thais?’ asks Dad.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ says Mother.

‘It’s true, Mother,’ says Krystiana. ‘Dad, they are after all jobs, not just from the Thais.’

‘Who are?’ asks Dad.

‘The Lithuanians,’ says Mother.

‘And all those wanting our Euro,’ adds Krystiana. ‘Gypsies and Turks will be taking over everywhere soon.’

‘Gypsies are taking over here?’ asks Dad, confused.

‘Dad is worse today, Mother. Is he more trouble at home?’

‘He’s just upset about all the coloureds,’ replies Mother.

‘Yes, Gypsies are big trouble, Dad,’ says Krystiana, as the waitress returns with their starters.

‘The spring rolls are smaller than before,’ she whispers to Mother as the waitress puts down their plates.

Dad’s teeth tear a string of white meat from a crab claw.

Krystiana looks at him with a sad smile. ‘Dad loves his food, this is something we must all give thanks for, no?’

Mother nods, Dad clears his throat, and their son looks round to see where his Tiger has got to.

 

When the drinks arrive, Krystiana takes each wine in turn and sniffs them. ‘They smell good, but not a drop has passed my lips since conception,’ she says.

At the mention of the ‘c’ word her husband drains his Tiger and looks at the next table where a young couple are leaving. The young woman is more heavily pregnant than Krystiana.

Krystiana surveys their vacated table with a grimace. ‘She was drinking wine.’

‘I’m sure a little drop wouldn’t have hurt,’ says Mother.

‘Not a drop has passed my lips since conception,’ Krystiana says stroking her stomach. ‘This is a discipline. The woman who sat there had none, she is typically English,’ she continues.

‘Steady on, girl,’ says Dad.

‘No, Dad, it is a trait I have observed in English women of a certain class.’

‘I hope you don’t mean . . . ,’ says Mother.

‘Mother, you are not of this class, I promise you.’

‘They seemed like a nice couple,’ replies Mother.

‘Nice but stupid; English women can drink well as fishes but they are not fishes.’

‘That’s silly, I don’t think …,’ starts Mother.

‘Yes, you don’t think, and you are silly’, shouts Krystiana, who then lets out a scream causing Dad to drop a crab claw from his mouth.

Krystiana runs sobbing to the Ladies, and Mother follows.

When they’re out of view, the son beckons over the tall waitress. When she arrives at the table he points at his empty glass.

‘Tiger?’ she asks.

‘Three,’ he replies.

 

The waitress returns immediately with the bottles and he upturns one into his glass, and starts drinking. Dad watches his son and the desperate speed with which he attacks his drink. He remembers a time long ago when he took him to the Bluebell steam railway. It was a perfect sunny Sunday afternoon and his son was so excited and happy that he’d felt inspired to ask the driver of the train if they might look at the driver’s cabin. To his surprise the driver suggested they ride up front with him to the next station. Holding his son, inhaling the delicious burnt coals, and looking ahead through plumes of clearing steam to the green Sussex hills rolling in and out of view, it was the closest he had ever felt to him, and it was the happiest he had known his son be. Dad moves his hand across the table towards his son who eyes it suspiciously. Dad then withdraws the hand and attempts a smile; miserably failing to express what he’d like to be able to say.

Meanwhile in the Ladies, Mother is offering advice.

‘My dear, this has to stop.’

‘Mother, I cannot. My soul is heavy. In my country I had no voice; my words fell on hard stones.’

‘Well, you’re making up for it now.’

Krystiana laughs despite her sadness. ‘Oh, I know I can talk, but I was unloved by all my family.’

Mother looks blank.

‘I was left to take love where I could find it. And now I feel its absence again.’

‘Now look, my dear, we’re doing our best. You ought to be grateful.’

‘Grateful? To whom should I be grateful? I am not asylum seeker.’

‘You’re being selfish, Krystiana.’

‘No, Mother. It is your son who is selfish. He is the one with no love; he is the one who will not touch.’

‘Krystiana, stop! We do not talk like this here.’

‘Then I am dead, and my death will be slow.’

‘You are making such a meal of things. Pull yourself together or people will wonder what is going on.’

‘What people? No-one cares. I could be on fire here and no-one would spit water from their glass to put me out.’

Mother opens the door to leave.

‘I will not let him take his love from our beautiful baby. I will not have his hate filling our home!’

Mother closes the door and slaps Krystiana hard on the cheek.

Krystiana slowly strokes where she has been hit. ‘Thank you, Mother, you have shown me what I already knew.’

Mother shakes her head and leaves.

 

Krystiana comes out a few minutes later. She walks past the bar where the Lithuanian waitress is standing, and goes outside to get some air.

The waitress follows with Krystiana’s coat. ‘Are you okay? It’s cold out here,’ the waitress says.

‘You are kind but it is not your concern,’ Krystiana replies.

The waitress nods, and drapes the coat over Krystiana’s shoulders. They stand still together and look through the window at a tableau of Krystiana’s family seated at the table. Dad is busy breaking into a crab claw. His son nurses the last of his beer; four empty Tigers secreted by his ankle at the foot of the table, whilst Mother looks sternly down at her untouched plate.

‘I know life is not as the films,’ says Krystiana with a shrug, ‘but in my country a meal is a celebration, not a funeral.’

As they look through the window, another jet above them lowers its wheels and begins its slow descent towards Heathrow.

 

 

*

 

The Sacred Elephant won the inaugural InterAct Short Story Competition judged by Ruth Rendell, who wrote that (it) ‘had an atmosphere both contemporaneous and cosmopolitan. I saw in it the hand of an author who could one day be a master of this form.’

It was published in my book with Jonny Voss, Dogsbodies and Scumsters, and in the anthology, InterActions. It was also published in the Sunday Express Magazine.

The story was performed at the Liars’ League and by wonderful  InterAct actress, Sasha Waddell , at the the book launch of Dogsbodies and Scumsters, at Number 68 Project in Dalston, and at a showcase of my short fiction at Kingston’s Rose Theatre in 2014.