Ugly Puggly 51

I felt on the other side of chaos. It was in my head and bones. And I couldn’t catch a breath. Tears gather at the back of my eyes. I heard myself sobbing before I realised I was greeting. Followed by the realisation I was the Judas. I banged my head against the steering wheel and longed for my mum to rise,  Lazarus-like from the grave, put her arms around me and give me a cuddle.

Parking the van outside the Co-op, I hurried inside and stood in front of the well-lit drink cabinet. Picking out the cheapest vodka and strongest cider (even though I didn’t like the stuff), I trailed towards the checkout. My hands full, since I hadn’t brought a basket. I waited for an elderly woman with a walking-stick and tartan canvas shopping trolley to fill it with messages, while sieving through her life story and then looking through every plastic bag ever made to find her purse, which was in her other hand. She spilled change onto the counter and floor, and apologised for her silliness. If her plan was to keep me sober, it couldn’t have been working any better that being hijacked by a group of Christians singing and clapping Kumbaya to save my soul.  

 I felt a dunt on my back. I whirled around. Harry grinned at me. He’d a carry-out in the basket at his feet. We called him Heathcliff at work. I was never sure why. He was wee baldy guy with a pock-marked face and a body made out of gristle. He smelled like he’d crawled out of an ashtray. Everybody was his mate.

‘Mate,’ he said. ‘You better get that van back. They’re aw goin aff their nut in there.’

Heathcliff was one of the labourers who were floaters. He could end up working with any department and sometimes he worked with mine. He was the opposite of being able to turn your hand to anything, perfect floater material.

The wee woman had finally cleared the till. I stepped forward. ‘Aye, I’m hinking about goin back anytime. Maybe the morra.’

I lied and we both played along.  

‘Mate, don’t be overhasty.’ He nudged his basked forward with his foot. ‘Just get the van back and everythin will be alright—they’re talkin about using the tracker and phoning the police.’ He laughed, showing his gums. ‘Fuck sake, they’re treatin it as some kinda theft o Council property—whit the fuck dae they think we work for them fuckers for anyway, mate, fuck?’

I dipped in my pocket and felt for the outline of van keys and for three ten-pound notes. The checkout guy was scanning the vodka, but I held back.

‘They van’s got trackers?’ I asked Heathcliff.

‘Fuck aye,’ Heathcliff’s eyes filled with laugher. ‘The mair modern wan’s. But the daft bastards don’t turn them on because they can’t afford anybody tae monitor them.’

‘Cheers mate,’ I said.

The checkout guy thought I was talking to him. He stared through me and told me how much my purchase was and asked if I wanted a plastic bag.

‘Nah,’ I said, handing over the cash. I mean, ‘Aye.’

I was distracted by what Heathcliff had told me and taking too long. The checkout guy packed my stuff in the bag as if I was an old woman and handed it to me.

‘See ya later, Mate,’ shouted Heathcliff, waving a hand.

Five minutes from home, but it was too long a journey. I opened a can of cider and sucked in my face as I sucked it down. Booze was a great equaliser. It kicked in with a high, but the familiar low was quicker than any roller-coaster. All Ugly Puggly’s work would be undone. The police would just have to switch on the equivalent of sat-nav, and it would tell them exactly where we’d been, and how long the van had been sitting there. Even if I burned the van out, it would sit on some system. That kind of stuff was never lost.

I did the only thing I could do. I waltzed into the house and into the kitchen. Pulled a pint glass out of the cupboard and filled it with vodka. I added a sliver of one of the playboy’s high-energy drinks to add rocket fuel but not drown out the taste. I drunk a half pint and burped.

Carrying the glass in my hand, I stuck my head into the living room. Dave wasn’t there. I bound up the steps and into my room and then his. He was lying on top of the bed, wearing one of Ugly Puggly’s shirts over his on and staring at his phone. His curtains were closed and the room smelled rancid. Red-rimmed eyes stared at me.

‘Where you been?’ he asked.

I sat on the edge of the bed, next to his bony feet. His socks were so white, they were a marvel. Robert Louis Stevenson’s forefathers could have used them for building lighthouses and keeping ships foundering off the coast of Scotland. ‘Sorry for slappin you,’ I said.

‘It’s alright,’ his big toe wiggled. ‘I just don’t like being in myself.’

I gulped down another drink. I wasn’t sure if one toe wiggle meant he was lying. And two toe wiggles meant the wiggly truth.  

‘We were up at the crematorium wae the body,’ I told him. His phone buzzed and he glanced at the screen, but put it down on the pillow beside him.

‘Where’s Howard?’

‘He’ll be alright.’ I took another drink and gulped it down. I put the empty glass on the floor. ‘He’ll be alright. I left him up there.’

His big toe twitched. He swept his phone up into his hand, and slid his legs off the bed. He hugged himself. Ugly Puggly’s shirt hung loose on him. His pale hands and long wrists seemed mismatched with the dull stripes like those on stocks of rock. ‘We’ll need tae go up and get im.’

‘We cannae.’ My head hung over my chest. I stared at the embroidery on the table lamp. I felt a sob in my chest. ‘My van’s got a tracker in it. I’ve already put him in the shit.’ I corrected myself. ‘Put us in the shit.’ I slapped myself on the forehead, again and again. ‘Yah, stupid cunt,’ I kept repeating.

‘It’ll be alright,’ he crooned in a soft voice, and put his hand on my shoulder and cuddled my head, until I stilled.