Bill and the UFO14

Wendy and Rab strode away from Bill, matching each other stride for stride. They hadn’t stopped arguing since they left Dalmuir Park. Bill heard odd words or phrases; the rest was like the droning of sugar fed wasps.

Todger had an empty feeling in his stomach where food should have been. He slobbered up the doggy notes hitting alto whine, until his oleaginous tongue almost ran dry and impatiently waited for Bill to deliver his next meal. They all stopped and stood at the corner of Clarke Street and Overtoun Road, a crossroads of housing where old four in a block council met detached bungalows; whilst Rab sparked a fag.

‘Twos,’ said Wendy her tongue darting and hanging, for a split second, like Todgers.

Bill hoisted his rucksack up and ignored his dog’s panting foul breath. He’d too much on his mind. One of the straps had snapped on the rucksack and it kept lopsiding him like Long John Silver. He had packed a needle and thread in his survival kit, which also held two aspirins in silver foil, for such contingencies.

‘C’mon you can stay with us.’ Rab casually passed the butt of the lit cigarette from his lips to Bill’s stained nicotine index and middle fingers.

Before Bill even had time to take a draw, Rab pulled at his rucksack weighted Long John Silver arm, pulling him off the pavement and out onto Overtoun and the direction of home.

‘No, he cannae.’ Wendy flicked at Rab’s arm, to pull him away from Bill.

‘Don’t talk about me behind my back; even if it’s to my face.’ Bill righted himself, like a stumbling drunk and stayed in the safety of the same spot, his rucksack sliding down his arms like a lasso. He didn’t seem to be getting a vote in it. ‘It’s alright! I’m going up the hills. Come Todger.’

He was half way across the road before Rab shouted him back. ‘Don’t be so fuckin’ stupid, you can sleep in my tent.’

Wendy gave Bill a quick up and downer, as if she didn’t know what he looked like and then pronounced judgement: ‘He’s minging.’

‘He can sleep outside.’ Rab wasn’t arguing, just pleading.

‘The tent’s already outside.’ Wendy’s unerring woman’s logic always spoiled things.

Bill stood undecided. The chance of finding UFOs were about as pretty and slim as Wendy. He decided to let Todger decide. If he followed the smell of Wendy’s fanny then they’d go with her, if his nose pointed towards the freedom of the Old Kilpatrick Hills then they’d hunt down the UFOs even if their quest killed them. Bill dabbed at the tears filling his eyes, as he began to miss all the good things about himself that had departed so suddenly…

‘He can sleep in the flysheet; if the flies will let him.’ Rab’s mouth sprayed out part saliva to two parts exasperation.

‘We havenae got a flysheet.’ Wendy leaned in towards her brother, with a face that demanded to be slapped. ‘Get that fuckin’ dog away from me.’

Rab wasn’t for giving up on the flysheet idea, even though they didn’t have one. ‘Well, he can sleep inside the flysheet then.’ He began walking down Overtoun Road, his mind made up; Bill was staying with them in his tent, whether he liked it or not.

Todger, however, bounded along out of sight, frothing at the mouth, barking mad, down Risk Street having spotted a grey squirrel. His head flipped from one side to another as the squirrel bounced and dashed from the tip of one branch to the tip of another tree.

Phil and Summy tried shouting him back, but Todger was too caught up in his doggy world, he ran out into the middle of Duntocher Road. One back leg was freeze framed raised in arabesque, and had him turning back towards the gap in railings the squirrel cut through, mocking him with its squirliness. In the other frame the teatime Double-Decker bus brakes squealed, higher than a dog whistle, diesel fumes hanging in the air, trying to stop with Todger under the front wheels.

‘Todger. Todger. Todger.’ Bill rushed by Phil and Summy, the quickest he’d run since coming third last in the 100m in primary three.

Todger bounded towards him, whining pitifully and flinging his paws up, his slobbering tongue licking at Bill’s face.

The bus driver let the engine idle as he stepped down onto the step from the cab and onto the road. His measured step was betrayed by a full moon face set to turnip purple as if he was pulling the bus with a set of ropes, instead of driving it. Bill pushed Todger down from him as he got nearer and tried to set his face to the appropriate sombre mode. ‘Is that dog fucking stupid?’ said the bus driver. Bill couldn’t help smirking and Wendy laughed outright. The bus driver looked from one to another, as if memorising their faces, his hairy hands working and knotting in frustration so as not to strangle them, before he turned and tromped back to the bus. He wasn’t looking at the road when he turned the corner, but at the group of them standing under the overhanging elm trees at Risk Street.

Dougie, Summy’s older brother and his girlfriend Veronica, were revealed as the solitary pair of bus passengers getting off at that stop, standing at the bus shelter, hand in hand. Summy looked behind him to see if a sudden escape route had materialised, but he’d already been spotted. They swung their tight fisted hands together, up and down, like countless kids in school playgrounds, as they played the Green Cross Code and watched for busy traffic as they crossed the road.

Dougie made an almost imperceptible nod to Rab, which meant alright, but his eyes drilled into Summy. ‘I thought Ma’ said you were to go up the road.’

Summy’s eyes started watering and he started sneezing, which, for once, was a blessing. He didn’t want to say that he’d already been up the road and escaped out of the back window.

‘Look at the state of you.’ Dougie smacked him on the back on the head, with his free hand; his palliative cure for hay fever.

The momentum jerked Veronica's small frame forward, almost making her swallow her chewing gum. Phil looked at her out of the side of his eye. And Summy caught the look and the two of them started laughing.

‘Are you daft, or what?’ Dougie casually whacked him again, but it had no effect. He looked towards Phil, like his brother, doubled over with laughter, hardly able to get and breath, and thought about whacking him.

Summy and Phil sneaked a look at Veronica. Then one looked to the other and that set both of them off, laughter lighting their faces like sparklers, but it wasn’t their fault. It was Veronicas. She’d helped baby sit Summy a few times, but she was grim faced, only ever spoke after about a quarter bottle of vodka. Phil had been in Summy’s bedroom to keep him company. They’d been going through the Encyclopaedia Britannica looking for wildebeest and stray woman’s breasts. Summy had found something about cod, which was nothing to do with breasts, but caught their interest at that time.

‘Did you know that cod lay up to about a million eggs?’ Summy asked Phil. He did, because he was reading the same thing over his shoulder, so he just nodded. ‘Who does this remind you of?’ Summy put his index finger in his mouth and pulled his lip upwards.

Phil got it right away. ‘Veronica,’ he laughed in delight.

‘Cod mouth.’ Summy laughed and flicked the encyclopaedia page over.

‘Trout mouth.’ Phil looked at the picture of a trout and there was just something about it that screamed Veronica, maybe it was the eyes. That was it and that was her named.

‘We’ll need to ask her what happened to the lost city of Atlantis,’ said Summy.

Phil got excited with the idea. ‘Maybe in years to come there will be a lost city, with the symbol of a fishhook, the lost city of Troutism.’

‘Maybe. Maybe. The world will be filled with a plague of little trouters. And we’ll need to establish trout cities.’ Summy started giggling.

Phil was creased over. ‘Maybe, they’ll have a trout language that we won’t be able to understand.’

‘The cult of Troutism, with a statue of the head Troutmaster.’ Summy was wheezing, gagging, finding it hard to draw breath.

Summy and Phil calmed down a bit when they went into the living room to watch telly. Veronica and Dougie were curled up into each other, like two molluscs, at one end of the couch, watching One Man and His Dog, because there was nothing else on and because Dougie loved it.

Summy had already told Phil that Dougie may have been on dope of something, but just left it at that because his older brother also said the dogs on One Man and His Dog were on speed. ‘And the thing is,’ Summy had to admit, ‘he nods his head while he’s watching it as if he’s listening to music. And it gets me going. I start watching the dog too. And when you start watching it you begin to think he might be right. Maybe, because see at the end, when all the sheep have been arrested; Dougie always says the same thing, look at that poor dog, look at the way he’s trying to hide.’ Summy took a deep breath, ‘because he’s ashamed that some of his wee doggy mates will be watching. So the only person watching One Man and his Dog, will be one man and not his dog.’

Before they’d even taken a seat on the living room couch, Summy’s head was still filled with Troutism, so when Veronica’s eyes briefly flicked in his direction he said, ‘when does it hatch?’ before instantly correcting himself, pinning a smile to his face, ‘when’s the baby due?’ She didn’t seem to notice, just looked at him with her cod eyes and flicked her hair and her head as if flicking the thought of them away.

The only way that Phil and Summy could watch One Man and His Dog was by tapping each other’s foot, whilst Dougie wasn’t watching. Summy had thought of a new show. ‘One man and his drunk!’

Phil had whispered the rules and got excited with the idea for the new show, his voice rising up an octave and his face growing pink. ‘You could play it like British Bulldog, with police with truncheons on each side, bundling the drunks along.’

‘Yeh,’ said Summy, ‘and the guy at the end holding up a can of Pale Ale for the drunk to come and get. Just as the wee drunky sees the can the man sparks the ring pull and the drunky rushes him.’

‘The cops wouldn’t be able to hold him back.’ Phil could see it all, but he didn’t want to say that the wee drunky guy he seen was Mr Summerville.

Whether they were in Summy’s livingroom, or at Risk Street, across from the bus stop, the trouter effect was the same and Dougie, losing all patience, always said the same thing to his wee brother:

‘Shut up or I’ll kill you.’ And he aways growled it, as if he meant it.

The difference this time was trout mouth’s squeals of ‘I’ll see you later John,’ to Summy. It was probably hormonal, something to do with pregnancy. She tried smiling at Summy and that sent Phil and Summy into even greater paroxysms. Dougie, giving up, dragged her away,

Rab sniffed undecided. ‘We need to go anyway.’ He included Wendy, but not Bill and certainly not Todger in his leave taking.

‘I need to go as well.’ Phil sobered up and spoke apologetically.

‘Wait. I’ll come with you.’ Summy caught his eye, but they were all laughed out.

Bill and Todger stood alone at the corner of Risk Street, as if they were waiting for a bus.