Shuggie Bain

by Douglas Stuart

Something exploded in Shuggie’s chest. He felt his teeth grab the inside of his cheek as he ground them together. Before he knew what he was doing he was flying across the ground and sailing towards the blond boy. Lachlan’s face changed from victory to panic in an instant, but it was too late. Shuggie caught him right in the face. It was an angry punch but a weak one; the wrist bent, and the fist made a slapping sound. The dirty boy stepped back, looked confused, and then grimaced with fury.

  “You’re no gonnae take that, are ye?” shouted Francis, smelling blood.

  The boy answered, “No.” It was a rhetorical question. Shuggie tutted.

  At first their bodies locked in a grapple, a struggle to turn the other one around and drop him to the gravel. Lachlan wrapped his arm around Shuggie’s waist and kept trying to lift him up and put him down on his neck bone. Each time his legs came off the ground they went back down again, as if it were a clumsy dance. Shuggie lifted his arms above the hug and hit the side of the boy’s face with all his might. It wasn’t powerful enough; there wasn’t enough swing, and it wasn’t connecting right. They were evenly weak; the fight was boring even for bored children. It would have to be a fight of humiliation; the winner would have to embarrass the other to submission.

  Francis’s foot hooked the back of Shuggie’s ankle, and the boys spilt like lovers to the ground. With the toe of his school shoe, Francis caught one sleeve of Shuggie’s jumper, pinning him there. One. Two. Three. Lachlan hammered down his free fist into Shuggie’s face. The blood ran backwards into his nose and bubbled into his throat; he turned his head to the side and it poured out on to the grey ground in a great crimson custard.

  Shuggie couldn’t move as the boy sat on his chest and Francis stood on his free arm. He lay there making some gurgling noises as the blood collected in his throat. At least the crowd was delighted. Only then did the tears come.

  Black spidery lines of blood crawled over the left side of Shuggie’s face. He stalked through the long peat grass, as the other children walked down the Pit Road talking excitedly, as if they had just seen a sky full of northern lights.

  The sun was already low in the sky, the grass sharp and hard underfoot, a first autumn frost. He stopped behind the Miners Club and fiddled with some of the empty lager kegs. If you shoved your finger in the button just right they let off a yeasty belch. Some of the bigger boys would gather here and burp the barrels, licking beery dribblings off their fingers, turning in silent movie circles like they were drunk. They didn’t know what drunk really looked like. Shuggie hated that he was no fun.

  He waited in the shadows for a while, half-heartedly burping the barrels, and waiting for the Pit kids to make it home. Skulking through the long reeds he leapt from burn to burn, stepping on old TV’s and upright prams to make it over the choked water. He stopped awhile at the downtrodden circle of grass. He thought about practicing. Instead he pushed big grains of dirt with his toe and started to cry again, sore grating gasps of tears, big angry self-hating poor me’s.

  By the time he climbed the chain-link fence into the back green, he had promised himself no dinner. Shuggie stopped at the upended fridge-freezer and pushed away the scum of dead midges. He pushed his whole bloodied head under the freezing water. He knelt quietly for a minute, holding his breath, but the burn of shame wouldn’t go. He rubbed at his bloody face, and the water streaked and danced with light pink streamers. That’s very pretty, he thought, then he regretted thinking like that.

  Leek was standing over him, his hand on his collar. “Get inside! I’ve been waiting all bloody afternoon for you.”

  The house was full of activity; every big light was greedily burning. Leek and Shona Donnelly, Bridie’s youngest from upstairs, were busy hanging handfuls of gold streamers. Hung across the wall was a pink baby banner that read Baby’s 1st Birthday. Over the word Baby, Leek had neatly taped a piece of graph paper with Agnes written in coloured pencil. The wooden chairs from the dining set had been lined up against the wall and the settee pushed into the corner. Sausages were stuck on sticks, juicy pineapple chunks nestled next to sweaty orange cheddar cheese. On every surface lay bowls of salted peanuts surrounded by plastic litre bottles of fizzy juice, fat and refreshing-looking.

  “What’s all this for?” asked Shuggie, wiping at his damp face.

  “It’s her birthday,” said Shona. She was unfurling a string of knotted fairy lights; she narrowed her eyes at him. “Is that blood on your face?”

  “Just a nosebleed. It happens when your brain grows faster than your skull.” He shrugged. It seemed plausible enough. “Anyhow, Mammy is only twenty-one! She told me herself.” Shuggie slid slyly towards the pineapple sticks. “I think she might really be in her thirties, but please don’t tell her I said that.”

  “It’s her birthday for AA, you diddy, her anniversary for sobriety.” Leek was balanced on a chair taping fat balloons to the edges of the veneer cabinets. He was smiling. It was so rare that Shuggie stopped to watch it.

  Shona scoffed, “You’ve missed too much school, Shuggie. You talk lit such a wee posh boy, I thought ye would’ve been head of the class.”

  “Head full of shite more like,” said Leek. “Probably why he gets the nosebleeds.”

  “Anyhows, your auld mother is forty-five if she’s a day.”

  “Aye. I’m almost twenty-one, you retard.”

  It was hard for Shuggie to take in. “But she makes me buy her a happy twenty-first birthday card.”

  “What? Every year?” asked Shona.

  “Yes.”

  Leek nodded at Shona, his point proven. “I know. I know.”

  “Look, I only do what makes her happy, alright? Anyway, why did nobody tell me about her alcoholic birthday? I would have made her a present.” He was hurt; he fingered the peanuts, dipping his hand in all the way to the bottom of the bowl.

  “Here, leave that you.” Shona gave a sharp slap to the side of his head.

  “Tell you? That’s a bloody laugh. We couldn’t tell the Grass. You can’t keep a secret,” said Leek.

  “Yes, I can.” Shuggie sank on to the sofa and ate the stolen peanuts one by one, savouring the salty taste, savouring the sight of abundant party food in his house. “I’m keeping like five hundred secrets right now.”

  “No, you can’t, you are the number-one grass,” mocked Leek. “Shut it,” peanut, “I know a million things,” peanut, “that you don’t know.”

  “Like what?”

  “Aye, lit what?” said Shona. They stopped assembling the party and turned to look at him.

  The temptation was sweet; the possibilities hung in the air like a thousand doors. He couldn’t help himself. He ate some more peanuts and smiled.

  “Well,” peanut, “I know that Shona,” peanut, “is taking money,” peanut, “from Gino the Italian ice cream man,” peanut, “in exchange for,” peanut, “looking at his hairy willie” peanut.

  Shona flew off the chair as fast as the tight pencil skirt would let her. Banners ripped free, but it was no use. Shuggie was up and through the door. Grasses needed to be skilled at fleeing.

  “See, I telt you!” Leek called after him. “Number. One. Grass!”

  The party was packed, and awkward strangers tried to cut out their own space in the small front room. Neatly arranged around the edge of the room were mismatched chairs that Shona had kindly borrowed from her relatives up and down the street. Sat on the chairs were the assembled members of the Dundas Street group. They arranged themselves in tight clumps and sat chain-smoking, quiet but for the frequent chorus of bronchial coughs. Occasionally someone would speak, about the weather or the misfortunes of wee Jeannie from Wednesday nights, but the fellowship would soon return to sucking on their fags and looking uncomfortably at their feet like it was a doctor’s waiting room.

  Shona Donnelly kept lookout for Agnes, her lithe legs sticking out from under the drawn curtains. Her pale calf muscles were twitching with anticipation, and some of the men in the room drew hard on their short doub
ts and watched the calves go up and then go down as she danced on her tippy-toes.

  On the other side of the room sat a few neighbours: Bridie, some of Shona’s older brothers, and Jinty McClinchy, who looked sore that there was no carry-out for drinking. They had heard it was a party, and now they sat itchy in their clean shirts, lamenting the dry house. They gawped openly at the subdued fellowship, who were still self-consciously looking at the floor.

  Shuggie washed the remaining blood from his face. He dressed himself like a forties mobster in a black shirt with a wide kipper tie. He pressed the shirt himself, leaving thin knife creases down the outside edge of his sleeve, which made him look two-dimensional. He circled the captive guests with paper plates heaped high with cheddar and pineapple. Women delicately held up their half-smoked Kensitas, like they were eating them, and said politely, “No the noo, son.” He would make a full rotation of the room, and then he would pick up the bowl of peanuts or greasy chipolatas and circle the same route. To occupy this busy waiter, the guests started taking food they didn’t want and piling it in pyramids on their knees. The grease stained through their good trousers and skirts. They hoped he would stop, so they could go back to looking at their feet in peace. Shuggie was having the time of his life, and encouraged by the guests’ politeness, he only circled the hot room faster.

  On a table in the corner sat two wrapped presents, odd-looking because of the vast size of the table they sat on. Not everyone had thought to bring one; not everyone understood why they were all here. Of the two presents, which Agnes would open later, one was the complete set of Jane Fonda’s Workout and the other a carton of two hundred Spanish fags that had been wrapped in baby’s-first-birthday paper.

  “It’s lovely, isn’t it?” said a Dundas Street woman, pointing her fag at the party decorations that covered the mantel over the electric fire.

  “Do you like it?” said Shuggie, in earnest surprise. He was still unsure about the baby banners and the pink, girly balloons Leek and Shona had mounted about the place.

  “Oh, ye’ve done her proud.” Her face was cheerful; the rosacea of her cheeks made her look windblown, girlish, and she looked to the boy like she laughed a lot. Shuggie wondered if she was a real alcoholic.

  “Leek was working all day,” he said. “I’ve never seen him so excited.”

  “Aye? You’ve done a grand job. I think she will be over the moon,” the woman beamed.

  “Really?” He was still uncertain. “No. I know my mammy. I think she will go mental when she sees Leek has taped balloons to her good cabinets. That tape will take the veneer right off.” He began to circle with the pineapple sticks again.

  Shona’s legs started twitching faster. “Right! Right! She’s here! She’s here!” She emerged from behind the curtains and drew them closed behind her. She wore a short skirt and all the make-up that her mother owned. “Right, now everybody, shuuush.”

  Everyone adjusted in the creaky chairs, and people who hadn’t been speaking still put a finger over their lips. A few people practiced a smile; it flickered uncomfortably and left their faces. Leek switched off the overhead light, and the room was in sudden darkness.

  Outside there was the sound of a black hackney mounting the kerb and the sound of the grumbling diesel engine being cut off. Heavy doors closed, and the gate was unlatched. Over it all was the happy clack-clack-clack of thin, proud high heels. The glass living room door opened and silhouetted a woman in the lit hallway. The room erupted with a hearty SURPRISE! and cut her off mid-sentence. Some of the older men had been taking a draw on their fags when she entered, and having missed their cue, they added a weak refrain of, “Aye, surprise right enough, hen.”

  Shuggie rushed straight up to her. “Mammy, do you want a pineapple stick? They are to die for.”

  Agnes fell back against the door frame, and her hands shot to her painted mouth. She was dressed as though for a night at the opera, but in reality she had spent the afternoon playing the Buy One, Get One at the Ritz bingo hall. Eugene’s blue eyes peered tentatively over her shoulder. There was Chapel in his stern face, and he couldn’t help but look down his nose at the ragged band sat around the place. He stepped into the room and nodded solemnly, as though he were at a wake.

  “What’s all this, then?” asked Agnes. Her eyes were wide and swivelling, trying to take in the room. She had never seen some of these faces outside the old merchant’s offices in Dundas Street. It was all somehow disconcerting.

  “Happy birthday!” said Leek.

  “What are you talking about?” Agnes was still turning about the room.

  “It’s your first birthday. Mary-Doll phoned to warn us. She told us it was important to celebrate on the road to recovery.” Leek was beaming from ear to ear. He pointed at a tiny brown-haired woman sucking on a cigarette doubt. “It’s been a whole year that you’ve been sober.”

  “It’s true. Leek’s been counting,” added Shuggie.

  “You’ve been counting?” asked Agnes.

  “Yes,” said both boys at once. Shuggie took a tattered paper calendar from the sideboard. Little pages hung below a watercolour picture of the Immaculate shrine at Lourdes. He leafed through a half dozen pages that Leek had marked off with small crosses.

  People started to mill about the small front room, glad of the chance to get up off the hard chairs. Agnes swung from face to face, tearily receiving their hugs and letting them kiss her cheek with their blessings. Shuggie supervised the opening of the swollen bottles of ginger; he poured the sticky acid fizz into paper cups. Shona handed Eugene a bright green cup of limeade, and he looked down into it like it was very foreign.

  “I’ve never heard of this Pithead place afore,” said one of the Wednesday-night women. Mary-Doll was small and reedlike, as though the drink had whittled her away like a piece of soft carving wood. Her cheeks were sunken in under her big chestnut-brown eyes, and her dark hair sat on her rotted frame like a borrowed wig. Agnes had been silenced when she first learned that the woman was only twenty-four. She had touched her hand to her heart and heard Lizzie whisper that there is always someone worse off than you are.

  Agnes cupped the little woman’s hand in her own. “I’ve been praying for you. Any luck with your weans?”

  Mary-Doll lit up, and the youth in her eyes became clear and new again. “Did I tell you already that ma youngest boy is just starting the school?”

  “You must have been proud. Wee children look just smashing all done up in their blazers and tie.”

  A shadow crossed Mary-Doll’s face. “Aye, he did that. I only managed to see a wee photograph, but I was sure and phoned him that night. He was so excited.”

  “Are they still with your granny?”

  “Aye. She’ll still no let me near them.”

  Just the thought of being separated from her boys made Agnes want to squeeze them close; it was enough that she had lost Catherine because of the drink. “There was a time I thought you’d never stop the shakes. Have faith, hen. Your granny will come around.”

  “Aye, I hope so,” whispered the thin woman, not at all convinced. “It’s a lovely photo right enough. I bought a nice frame for it and put it on the wall.”

  A man stood up from one of the borrowed chairs. Monday-Thursday Peter was the same age as Agnes but looked more the age of her father. He dressed in light bleached denims and a thick Shetland wool jacket that had gone out of style in the days when Agnes was first married to the Catholic. The man moved with an odd jangling gait, like he was made up of a pile of plates that threatened to teeter over. He had a gregarious, chatty way about himself, something he affected to cover his loneliness. “Haw, Agnes,” he crowed. “How does it feel to be a born-again? A one-year-old.”

  “To tell you the truth I hadn’t realized,” said Agnes.

  “Aye, well, it’s nice to see yer weans so proud.” Monday-Thursday Peter pointed to Leek. “They were keen to dae a little something. Ye know, tae keep the momentum gaun. Gie ye a wee boost over the hump
of the first year.”

  Eugene had been standing at the mouth of the living room door, not committing to the room but unable to tear himself away from the spectacle of nervous bodies. Shuggie stood by the table of food, wiping the grease and sauce off the edges of the plates. He turned the plates just so, lining up fleshy chipolatas into neat arrangements and rotating the cheese so that the tops didn’t dry out and crack. Eugene watched him fuss. The boy was making a decorative pyramid of paper cups when he finally looked up and saw Eugene silently watching.

  “How’s it goin’, wee man?” asked Eugene, inching forward with his hands in his pockets.

  “Fine, I was just . . .” Shuggie looked at his fussy pyramid of cups and drew his hand through it like a bulldozer. Paper cups spilt all over the floor.

  They turned side by side, watching the party like it was a spectator sport and trying not to look at each other. “Quite the night, isn’t it, eh?” said Eugene, kindly ignoring Shuggie’s display of home-making and then home-wrecking.

  “I suppose. I think Leek has lost his mind.”

  Eugene laughed. “No! It’s a grand thing to love your mother. After all, ye only get the one.” He smiled, then asked abruptly, “You know who ah am, right?”

  Shuggie nodded and answered in a flat monotone. “You are Eugene McNamara. You are Colleen’s big brother. You might be my new daddy.” He was looking at his shoes. “But no one asked me about that.”

  “Oh?” It caught Eugene off guard.

  “Well, I think it’s bad-mannered of a person to claim a thing like that and not even ask the boy if he wants a daddy.”

  “You are quite right. A gentleman should properly introduce himself to another man.” Eugene was holding his hand out for Shuggie to shake. “Ah’m Eugene. Nice to finally meet ye.”

  The boy shook it with trepidation. It was a bear’s paw of a hand, one of the roughest things he had ever touched. “Do you plan on staying long?”

  “Maybe an hour or so.”

  “No, I meant around and about, staying together with my mammy.”