Steelie 13

Brodie snatched Sharon’s phone from her hand. She’d been smiling and checking her message. He’d read them too. Before handing her back the blank screen.

He swallowed hard. The word, ‘Sorry,’ catching in his throat. ‘I thought it was something else. Somebody else.’

Steelie flinched, his hand tightening on the glass as Sharon lifted the pint next to him and sloshed lager over him.  

‘Satisfied?’ she asked.

He sat drookit and dripping and stared back at her with hard eyes.

Steelie clamped his hand around his wrist as a muffled giggle came from two women by the jukebox. Caledonia blared out from the two speakers near the bar. A sharp intake of breath from the guy nursing his pint at the pillar beside the pool table. The game faltered and they put down their cues and laughed and jeered when they caught sight of Brodie.

They lifted their pint glasses and saluted Sharon as she sailed past them majestically with a tray of empties in her hands and a ripple of laughter caught fire around the pub.

Brodie unpicked Steelie’s fingers from his wrist and downed a half of whisky.

Steelie offered some him some advice. ‘Ishter, the Queen of Heaven. That’s how women like tae be treated here in Dalmuir. We don’t question their wisdom. Or snatch the phone fae their haun. No unless we want it bitten aff. Or huv been married tae them long enough tae know different. Tae see different.’

He smacked his lips together. ‘I thought you were better than that. And she’s a tidy wee bit aw stuff. Then again, you ur American and yer heart is surely set on world domination, whether we, or, eh, Greenland, like it or no. American men huv their needs. And we can go fuck oorsel it seems.’

Brodie dabbed at his chest and shirt-front buttons and sniffed the sour tang on the tips of his fingers. ‘The gun’s gone.’

 ‘Whit gun?’ Steelie quickly recovered, his face becoming serious. ‘Oh, that gun.’

Brodie stared back at him. ‘You were the only one that knew about it.’

‘So yer blamin me?’

He picked up a drink and nursed it as he nursed his anger. ‘I’m just saying.’

‘Yer wet as Ophelia and making less sense. The problem you huv wae yer argument is I’ve no been tae the bog. I’ve been here the whole time.’

‘I’m not blaming you?’

‘Sounds like it. How would I sneak past you, while everybody else is rioting and yer the only wan in the lavvy? And how would I know where you planked the gun?’

‘It was in the cistern,’ Brodie replied.

‘Jesus, you’ve less imagination than Nigel Farage claiming expenses from the same Brussels, he claimed was a fucking waste of money. Waste of space. Nae wonder you lost yer gun.’

‘I didn’t lose it. Somebody took it. And I can’t leave here without it. You know that. So who took it?’ He stared at Sharon long enough to lose track of what he was saying. ‘I thought maybe…she knew something.’   

Steelie shrugged. ‘Why you asking me?

‘Cause you know things. You can see things.’

‘That’s true.’ Steelie nodded. ‘I can see we’re aw oot of drinks, again. The difference is  yer drooning in them. Were as I just like tae drink them.’ He held out a hand. ‘Gie’s a measly wee £50 and I’ll get a round in. I wouldnae trust you anywhere near the bar noo, wae yer track record wae oor Sharon.’

A damp shadow in the seat clung to his clothes when Brodie shifted his bum. Pungent beer from his jacket had his nostrils twitching as he dipped into his wallet, selecting two £50 notes and handed them to Steelie.

Steelie stuffed the cash into his pocket. ‘Is that a bribe? I can smell fear like a caged animal.’

‘Might be.’ Brodie yawned. ‘We’ll see what you’re worth.’  

  ‘Right,’ Steelie glanced towards the toilets. ‘I’m dying for a pish. I’ll go and inspect the damage. The scene of the crime, first, if you don’t mind?’

‘Why should I?’

‘If I find a big shite or a wee shite, I’ll let you know.’

Brodie didn’t humour him with a smile. Knackered and a bit drunk, he shut his eyes for a heartbeat.

***

It’s a game. He has to hold his right arm out and make the pledge, say ‘Heil Hitler’.

You have no idea what is happening. You can’t and won’t because you are a stinking Jew boy. Little Mole.

You run through the snow. Lifted by a feeling you can’t name. Halfway between hate and fear, a whispering of revenge.

Newspapers carry stories about people like you. Guilty of all kinds of crimes because of simple blended truths: Racial inferiority. Degenerate. Life unworthy of life.

Pretty girls in long coats and blue skirts with white waists follow the gang of boys chasing after you, the number of their Hitler Youth troop on their arms and out to get their stripes.

They make a game of it. Make a game of you. Whooping down. Kicking the legs from under you. Punches from all angles. Legs kicking to your head, stomach, face until you roll into a ball and taste your own blood. You deserve to die. You didn’t resist. Just curled up tighter. Listening to your own breathing. The thuds as they kicked harder and tried to separate you from yourself.

Yet some primal survival instinct, before you lose consciousness. You get up and stumble forward into a run like a headless man. Not far or fast

A middle-aged woman cries out, her eyes startlingly blue. She sees you. It’s enough for them to fall back. Then she doesn’t. Looks away and hurries away. It is a crime to criticise the Nazi government. She plunges her hands into her pockets. The pack of children wear thick wool coats and black caps. Uniform. German women are urged to have as many children as possible. To outbreed degenerate Jews and Communists—the same thing— poisoning the healthy red blood cell of the 1000-year-Reich.

Before him Schoeberg Park, its expanse blanketed in a restful white but he would never make it and Jews aren’t allowed inside. A tall man with a moustache and a woman wearing a fur hat hold hands and observe him as he breenges past them. The side-cart merchants stand behind their carts ringing hand bells to sell their wares of charred chestnuts or cabbage. Headlines from the Berlin papers on the stalls outside the U-bahn station, Nollendorfplatz, denounce The Plague of Jews and promise Certain Victory.  

If Mole could just make the glass door.