Ugly Puggly 44

‘Och, alright,’ Ugly Puggly said. ‘The locks werenae up tae much. Just as you’d expect. They looked solid, but they’re chocolate. You could open up the whole place wae a good crowbar.

I kept my eyes on the road. Windscreen wiper on a higher setting, sloshing backwards and forwards.  I was still spooked and wasn’t really paying attention as he kept talking, until he asked me a question. ‘Whit was that again?’ I asked Ugly Puggly.

‘I said, whit day, or night—I presume it’s at night—dae they burn the bodies?’

The traffic started backing up near the roundup and I went down the gears. ‘Dunno.’

Dave piped up. ‘I thought they done it when the coffin went through the wee curtain thing.’

‘Nah, that’s aw show,’ said Ugly Puggly. ‘Yeh don’t fire up an oven and bake only one roll.’

I tooted the horn.  An old Citroen cut in front of our van and swerved in and out of the traffic to get poll-position at the lights. ‘Fuck,’ I never thought of that, I admitted, remembering my own mum and da’s funerals. The bodies stacked at the back on pallets waiting for the curtains to open and close and mark the end of a performance.

‘There’s lots of stuff they don’t tell yeh,’ Ugly Puggly almost leaned into me as I took the roundabout sharpish. ‘Degloving, means cutting a finger aff, or sometimes a whole hand, and putting it in the box wae the deceased. But that’s usually only when there’s a mass killing and they don’t who’s who. Undertakers are underhand cunts sometimes—an no just wae their prices.’ He stretched his legs out. ‘And that stuff they used to preserve the body, formaldehyde. Too much of that stuff can poison them. Knock them ga-ag if they’re no careful.’  

‘Serves them right,’ Dave chuntered. ‘Hope they choke.’

Ugly Puggly disagreed. ‘They’re jist daeing a job, like any other. Somebody’s got tae dae it.’

‘Rather them than us.’  

We were almost home and I felt less anxious. ‘Yer forgettin somethin,’ I reminded him. ‘That’s the very job we’ll be daeing, as soon as we get organised.’

‘I never thought of that,’ said Dave.

I parked in our usual spot. ‘That’s cause yeh don’t think.’

Ugly Puggly unbuckled his seatbelt. ‘It’ll be worse noo. The body will have begun to putrefy and swell. It’ll be totally mingin and his skin will have turned black and peel aff.’

‘Shit,’ I said, turning the heater and engine off.

‘It’s like yon French philosopher Antoine Cournot meant when he said we do not resolve difficulties we only displace them’ said Ugly Puggly. ‘One case where a black family wouldn’t accept their son had died because his skin was white—until it was pointed out to them, his skin was fire damage, charcoal white.’

‘Jesus, I just hope they counted his hands.’ I got out of the van and locked it. ‘Whit can yeh dae?’

Dave was ahead of me in the path as I locked the van. And I heard Ugly Puggly educating him beyond Primary school, ‘Yeh can act if is yer sane. But I’m no sure it’s possible to leave the past behind. The past is never past and all that shit.’

A wee boy, all bright eyes, stared out a window as we trudged past his house. An almost unconscious ritual hoping to see something better, something more than us grey ghosts, outside time, and we fell silent under his gaze.

We filtered into the kitchen. Ugly Puggly stuck the kettle on. I searched the fridge for a can of beer, knowing I’ll be left clutching nothing but a tin of half-eaten beans. ‘You want tae get a carry-oot?’

Dave was rinsing two mugs at the sink. He turned his head. ‘You mean curry?’

I didn’t mean curry, but I said, ‘Aye’. Figuring I could get a couple of cans when I was picking up the order. Maybe even fit in a pint and half.

‘We could get it delivered!’ Dave shrieked. ‘Save us aw that bother.’

I slammed shut the fridge door. ‘I don’t mind going for it.’  The van keys were still in my hand. Rain tapped against the window, and the thought of going outside with shovels and a pick didn’t appeal either.  

‘I’m no that hungry.’ Ugly Puggly poured boiling water, and raised an eyebrow, until Dave passed him another mug from the draining board. The playboy had a hangdog expression on his mush that said sorry, even though he wasn’t. ‘And we’ve got sausage and eggs in the fridge.’

‘Duck’s eggs,’ I reminded him. ‘You need tae eat, get somethin doon yeh, instead of scribblin aw that nonsense aw the time.’  

He passed me a mug of tea. I wrapped my fingers around it and sat down with my back against the wall. ‘Member when we first had chicken curry? And my da buttered a couple of slices of bread and put in on a piece, as if it was chips?’

Ugly Puggly shook his head and sipped at his tea.

‘That’s totally disgustin,’ Dave said.

‘Aye,’ I agreed with him. ‘Because it wisnae Lurpurk butter but margarine and pan bread. They’re both pan bread noo.’

‘I’ll make you somethin?’ Ugly Puggly squeezed past Dave and pulled open the fridge. The sudden bright light showed how thin his hair was getting. Tiredness created punch-mark pouches under his eyes. He rummaged.  ‘Somethin wae potatoes and carrots and…’ He pulled out a bit of turnip that looked well past the turn.

My stomach was sending pin-needle messages and giving me gyp. ‘Nah, we’ll jist get a carry-oot.’

He shut the fridge door and stared at me dead eyed. His shoulders straight like one of those older boys that grabbed your arm, twisted the flesh and gave you a Chinese burn. ‘You just want to get some booze?’

‘Nah,’ I cried, paranoid that he’d been reading my mind. ‘If you want to make us somethin. That’s aw right wae me.’

The problem with booze was it worked. It helped you get a grip, until it got a grip.

‘How dae yeh fancy a mixed vegetable curry?’

‘That’s fine.’ I agreed rather too quickly.    

Dave rolling the mug between the palms of his hands, cut in with a shrill voice, ‘I don’t like vegetables’.  

I was back on familiar ground. ‘You’ll like whit yer gien.’

Ugly Puggly held his hands up. ‘I’ll put a sausage in it.’

‘Oh, that boy likes his sausage aw right,’ I said.

Ugly Puggy guffawed. And Dave looked pissed off with him. The windmill hit an unfamiliar squeaky note as the wind picked up. It was enough to drive our neighbours batty. I felt the sweat running down the back of my neck, and I needed a drink to help me keep the food down. The thought of food was giving me the boak.

I dashed from the kitchen to the upstairs bathroom.