bonfire night2

Our old couch and chairs are sitting outside. They’re too heavy for me to carry up to The Back Park for Bonfire night. I hug the cushions to me and stagger the long way up the hill and around the winding lanes, swerving round the privet hedges that aren’t cut on the lane side of the back gardens. My cushions make a little splash on the grass, alongside old beds, rotten back doors, not so rotten front door and old tyres. Every kid on our side of Boquanran triangle with Shakespeare Avenue and Dickens has been engaged in making things disappear. Little moppet heads have been beetling about with old bits of carpets attached to them and they carry rusty broken blades from saws that once sawed. The knowledge of a couch and chair being outside unattended is shared round the drooping shell of the bonfire like a fizzy bottle of ginger beer with Cammy, Jim, and Summy.

‘Where is it?’ Drew, Summy’s older brother, is shouldering an old wardrobe upright and he squints at me as if he doesn’t know me. He’s chunkier than Summy, but with red hair that goes blonder in the sun and a larger forehead that goes redder in the sun. He hangs around with Martin Roberts from up the street who’s always cracking jokes that aren’t funny about Catholics. He’s got dark straight hair and a long laughing puppet jaw as if he’s catching midges. Gary Park stays a few doors down from him, but he’s ok. He’s a bit younger than the other old boys, with wavy hair and light coloured eyes. He’s the best player when we pick the teams from among the younger ones. They’re lucky because they got to Clydebank High School and hardly have to walk to school-- it’s just up the road, at the bend of Dickens Avenue. They take the short cut straight down the grass hail, over the privet hedge and through McLaughlin’s back garden, with us behind them in case they need a hand. They don’t tackle the couch and chairs straight on. They come at it from the gap in the hedge at Cammy’s and skulk at the coal shed of Daft Rab’s house, where they crouch together in confab. Gary Park is meant to have beaten my brother Stephen in a fair fight, but I don’t believe it. Nobody can beat him, because he doesn’t ever give in.

Gary helps Martin put a chair up and over Drew’s head and tortoises it onto his back. The old chair grows legs and walks away. Drew wobbles and stumbles and almost falls into Daft Rab’s hedge, but he keeps going and gets it out onto the pavement before he has a rest. They swap jokes around and put the chair on Martin’s back, who starts laughing and messing about. I watch them walking up the hill together.

Ten minutes later they’re back for the other chair. Bonfires are a serious business. We want to have a better bonfire than the Shakespeare boys who built theirs on the dump. And we want to have a better one than the one up the High Park. Theirs will be brighter because it’s up so high and it will be seen for miles, but we want to have one that melts the sky. But there’s always the threat of being too industrious; stories of bonies that get too big so the fire brigade come and put it out. That hasn’t happened yet, but a couple of times when there’s been nobody up The Back Park some boys from elsewhere have set our bonie on fire before the fifth and we’ve had to start collecting from scratch. The most important thing is getting a good central pole. That’s been pretty easy since they started building new houses opposite my primary school; we just go down and lift a long wooden scaffolding baton. They’re lying about everywhere.

The bigger boys find it hard going lifting the couch. Drew brings an axe from his house. They tip the settee end up and we hear the clang of something metallic. Gary Park kicks the toe of his Weegins into the lining until it gives way and tears from the nails at the sides. There’s a Matchbox white ambulance, two-bob, sixpence and a 1p coin. ‘That’ll get us a couple of roll ups.’ I watch Gary shoving the money into the little triangular side pocket of his Wranglers and don’t say anything though the money should really be mine as it’s my couch. They huff and puff as they carry it away. Summy, Cammy and Jim follow them.

The axe is left behind sitting on the bottom step that separates our piece of grass from Daft Rab’s. I pick it up and feel the weight, flinging it hand to hand. The handle and axe head are made of the same rusty metal that leaves my hand orange, but I do a few practice swings.

Jim’s curly head looks over the hedge and he makes his way through the gap in the privet. ‘Where’d you get that?’

‘Found it. Finders keepers.’ I know he wants a shot of my axe, but I’m not giving him one.

‘Do you think you could chop down a tree?’

‘Aye.’ I stare speculatively at the two Rowan trees in the garden below us. But they’re too close to home. And Da would hear the thwacking sound from his back bedroom. ‘We could chop one of the trees down at Singer’s.’ I image a whole tree toppling and me chopping it up for our bonfire.

‘Let me see the axe first.’ Jim holds his hand out.

He’s not daft. He wants to cut down a tree as well. I place the axe in his hand and let him feel its weight. He swings it like a tomahawk. I’ll let him cut down a tree after I’ve cut down the biggest one. I stick the axe in my snake-belt. The weight drags my hip and stretches the yellow and two thin dark green stripes as I hirple and walk. We keep to the back path at Douglas’s and go down the short cut. My school and the fitba parks are a five minute walk. We slip through the gate where a railing is missing at the football park and begin walking over the gravel park towards Singer’s grass park.

The first tree is on St Stephen’s side of the gravel park. I look up at its light green leaves silhouetted against the blue sky and know that it had its chips. There’s no messing. I take the axe out of my snake-belt and hit the trunk with an almighty thump. The axe head skids away and the reverberations ring through my hand and the axe lies beside the thick roots of the tree. Tree bark hides the extensive damage I’ve done. Jim picks up the axe and waves it at the tree like a woodpecker.

‘Careful.’ I take a step back and around him. ‘It’s pretty hard.’

He tap, taps at the tree until the crust of the bark at shoulder height begins to fray. I use one of the knobbly roots as a stepping stone and pull myself up to the first bough. I begin climbing higher and higher than the birds, until I can see forever, up and down Second Avenue and up over the dump to Shakespeare Avenue. I make out the witch’s hat-shape start of their bonfire, but they aren’t doing near as well as us. I hear Jim’s nasal breathing. He’s rocking back and forwards clinging with white fingertips to the branch as he climbs another bough and stands just below me, looking out and into the top-tier of the Corporation bus that passes. Getting down is harder than getting up. I slither down. At the base of the tree my hands are busy brushing away the green crap from my fawn Simon top that had snagged on a few of the branches. Jim jumps down beside me.

The axe is lying on the red gravel near the spiked fence that runs around the grass and gravel parks. Jim picks it up. ‘You want this?’

‘Nah.’ I shook my head. ‘It’s rubbish. We’d need a bigger axe. One with a big handle.’

‘Or a saw.’ Jim drops the axe into the dirt.

‘Or a chainsaw.’ I kick up a storm along the touchline. The red dust and old sawdust layer the scuffed toes of my black Clarke’s shoes. ‘If I’d a chainsaw I’d finish that old tree off in about ten seconds.’

‘If I’d a chainsaw I’d finish it off in five seconds.’

Jim falls into step with me, but he doesn’t look convinced.

‘I’d just use a tank.’ I look at his face chewing over something bigger and better. He can’t beat that.

We raise a new trail as we slide our feet across the red gravel park towards the unmarked side-lines of whitened weeds, scratch bushes and stunted trees. We slipped through the railing side, for no particular reason other than we could, and stood beside the train track, looking all the way up and down the line. A harsh oily smell from the sleepers coats the air. I wasn’t sure if one of the rails is meant to be electrified but I’m not taking any chances. I stumble behind Jim. He kicks a large dusty bluish stones at the side of the track. He reaches down and pulls a wire metal basket clear of the gorse and puts it on the line. We hear a train coming and stumble backwards and slip like shadows back through the hole in the fence. My heart thumps as the train approaches. I daren’t look, expecting the train to hit the wire net and topple over sideways. The train breezes past us without stopping, but we keep our faces hidden in case the guard spots us and has phoned ahead to the railway police. We make a quick getaway.

I only feel safe when I’m back in the safety of my back garden. I pick up the white matchbox ambulance and roll it up and down the path a few times where the old couch had been. ‘Nee-Naw-Nee-Naw’ I sing as I trail it through the dirt. I stick the ambulance in my pocket before going in the back door.