T.E

You were paler the morning, as drinkers are, you were softer. With this quiet vulnerability; puffy-eyed and suffering the full-blown shakes. The world should have slowed down for you, just to let you to get that first roll-up and mug of cider on the go.

You were not the thigh slapping, heel thumping, roaring-swilling-guffawing-obcenity-singing-blaring-Robert Plant & Jimmy Page-crazy-mentalist of the night before. Banging your fists on tables, shoving them through windows, sticking them in my mother's face. I know, she probably would have spent the last half-hour slapping you, winding you up like clock-work. It's alright, I know that.

But I hated your guts.
It was when I worked at the ice-cream factory, and, coming home late, I'd get this maggots-in-belly-anxiety, a hoping-half-praying that you wouldn't be there when I got in. Wondering how many times the police would be called before anyone got any sleep.

I'm still sorry for kicking you hard in the shin that time.
I surprised myself, I remember recoiling suddenly. I didn't realise I could do that to someone. Not that skinny dope-bar kid who believed in pacifism and Lou Reed. I still wince when I think of it.

That was my adolescence, the years of my coming of age, watching you two spilling Special Brew on the carpet and trying to knock each other's teeth out.

You called me the lion-heart, and at once I saw that you got it. From somewhere behind your bravado you'd pinned something that I couldn't name. You'd seen it; why I stuck around and dug in, why I fought.

There was more to you Terry. Behind the ham-fist-lump-head-White Strike-brute, there was more. Your eyes had this very dark, very soft shade of brown. Mahogany, and rich, warm earth. When they suddenly filled with that seriousness and gravity, it was hard to believe that ten minutes before you'd been calling everybody Eric and spouting those ridiculous one-liners.

I remember the crumpled sheets ripped out of a cheap reporters notebook. Your curly-spidery-half-literate hand-written thoughts; mostly doodles. But some were surprising; clearly from you soul and clearly poetry.

Terry Evans, I can see you now, that limp where you fell off the wall, that green and yellow rugby shirt, your mane of wavy hair, salt and pepper stubble, gravelly Welsh cadence, then I see you tipping your head back and roaring.

Terry Evans, going up Freedom Fields park to sit at the cenotaph, drinking cider, calling out to people passing by. Terry Evans telling stories about his mam in the valleys and the little chapel.

Terry Evans scratching around for a dog-end in the ashtray, hanging on for pay-day. Terry Evans I'm arresting you for drunk and disorderly-for assaulting a police officer-for criminal damage-for shop-lifting-for whatever.

“Whatever, really. Isn't it Officer? Isn't it though?”

It made a holiday for you, a bit of respite. Get your head down for a while, and then you'd come out looking five years younger.