Pig Iron

by Benjamin Myers

  The shop’s the same as it always was and they’ve got some good cheap clothes in there. Army clobber. Tough stuff. Made to last. For soldiers and that. War clothes. Your body’ll wear out before some of that stuff does.

  So I kit mesel out with the cash Arty has advanced us. I get some trousers, cammo T-shirts, a couple of jumpers because even though it’s the height of summer it’s not going to last forever, a check shirt, a khaki jacket, socks and some boots. Proper clod-hoppers. When I’ve got the gear on I feel brand new and ready for owt. I mebbes look a bit odd wearing it all together but I’ll take me chances.

  On the way out I see this proper good insulated sleeping bag with this hood thing that pulls ower the top, so I end up buying that an all, and some blankets. Then I realise I’m brassic and have got about a bloody quid to live off until the next pay day, but at least there’s tins in the cupboard and there’s always the ice cream. Can man live off ice cream alone? Aye, mebbes. I’ll give it a bloody good go. Anyroad – at least I won’t have to worry about gannin shopping again any time soon.

  Because this place makes us nervous. All them crowds surging around us. People coming at us from all directions. Makes us wonder what they’re all up to, dashing about like mad uns or stood round blocking the street and talking shite, smoking tabs, ogling each other, groping each other, shopping, spending, haggling, cackling, yakking. And everyone’s on them bloody mobiles. You’ll see two people stood together, like a lad and a lass or summat, and when you get closer you’ll see that they’re both on bloody mobiles, each talking to someone else.

  Me, I like to see who’s in front of us and who’s sneaking up behind us because it’s when there’s people all around us like this that I start feeling hemmed in. Me heart starts jumping and me head starts humming and it’s like I cannot breathe.

  That’s how I’m feeling today. The crowds are making me proper shaky and there’s hods of touroids an all, especially by the statue of the horse in the market place. Americans and Japanese and that. All clicking their little cameras and that. Smiling and drooling and talking shite.

  I have to sit mesel down and have a tab to catch up with mesel and take it all in and the funny thing is, after a few puffs and a couple of minutes, I start to see the town through their eyes. I see it as a tourist. Like I’ve never seen it before. And in a way I haven’t – not as an adult anyway.

  It’s been that long since I mooched about town like this, doing anything to avoid gannin home for fear of what me Dad had in store for us.

  Bloody years it’s been. Years of confinement. It does your head in if you think about it too much. All that time locked away just up the road with nowt so much as a bloody postcard or visit from anyone.

  And after the judge said his bit they just packed up and moved on and that was that. Nee messages, visits or nowt, from neebody. Dis-bloody-owned, man. Can you imagine? Cut off from the vine. Cast out.

  I might as well have been sent off to another planet, me.

  Might as well have been dead.

  And here I am, the only Wisdom left in the town, and it’s me that’s the alien in my home land. Nowt but a bloody touroid.

  It’s hard to explain. I mean, the buildings look the same. The same rain-beaten stone, the same wonky slabs smoothed flat by generations of feet. The monument in the market place is still here an all, and the town hall and the statue of Neptune with his git big fork. Even the worn-away steps at the bottom of the monument that holds the horse and the cobbles down Silver Street all look the same.

  And that’s before you’ve even gone up past Bimbi’s chippy and up to the old part of town, up to The Bailey and Palace Green where the cathedral sits all tall and proud and ancient and that, and the castle nestles up next to it, the two of them sat there with the river coiling around their feet like a big wet snake; the proper historic bit with all them listed buildings and snot-nosed students in their stupid bloody scarves thinking they’re about summat.

  But it all still looks different. Feels different.

  I can’t quite put my finger on it. It’s like a dream of the town. I recognise it, but mebbe it doesn’t recognise me. Mebbe the place hasn’t changed at all. Mebbe it’s me that’s different. Mebbe it’s me I don’t recognise.

  *

  For the next fortnight Mac was up with the cock for an hour’s training each morning.

  The night was still bottle blue when he put on his pumps and trackie bottoms that were too tight and took off down the lanes with only the dawn birdsong and the occasional stoat returning home from a night’s hunting for company.

  The sound of rubber on the wet road, his own breath in his ears.

  Sometimes I’d wake up and wrap the blankets around us and watch him from the window as he did a lap of the field as a warm up. Shivering and yawning I’d watch him run round the circumference fence, behind the vans, along past the two taps and the drain that the council put in, past the pile of blue gas canisters ready for collecting, past the chicken coop then a quick hurdle over the stack of pallets they put down when it was muddy. Then it was over to the corner where we dumped the ash into a hole, along the paddock fence to say morning to the tethered horse and down past the edge of the woods where he’d unleash a quick combination on a punchbag that was hanging there like a sheep’s tagnut, slowly going mouldy green from the morning dew. A quick splash and sluice of water and he was off again.

  Some mornings he ran all the way over to the Lord’s country estate, chasing the day-break as the sun slowly rose and the sky shifted through a thousand shades of blue, the mist stalking the fields.

  He laid off the booze and the tabs and the only thing he didn’t give up was that which marriage allows between a husband and wife. I was plump with pregnancy then, and he said I had a special glow that prevented him from keeping his hands off us.

  And he turned his mind to violence. Focused it. Trained it to thoughts of ripped cheeks and broken bones, busted knuckles and ruptured eyeballs.

  I didn’t want him to fight. But I’d not say so. Instead I’d knock up a six egg omelette and bite me tongue.

  It’s nowt to worry about, said your Dad.

  I’ll not break sweat, he said.

  *

  I set out at five each morning because I want this job and I don’t mind Arty but most of all I like the three mile dawn walks to the industrial estate to pick up the van.

  I get up early and quickly get mesel a whore’s bath in the sink. Pits, bits, knackers and that. Sometimes when I least expect it I catch mesel off-guard in the mirror and see mesel for what I really am – how everyone else sees us, like: git big lugs and hair that sticks out at angles no matter how short I keep it or how much I try and smooth it down. I see wonky teeth that have never met a dentist except for the once when I was locked up, and a brow that looks like it’s pushing down on me face. A permanent frown, me Mam used to call it. Like a bloody colliery landslide, me Dad said.

  And them dark eyes I got off him. The part of us that always reminds us of him. Dark eyes that pull us back to dark places.

  It’s this time of the day I enjoy the most – stepping out the door in the early morning just when the sky is changing colour through pinks and peaches, and the birds are chatting each other up from their branch tops and there’s nee-one else about, except mebbe the odd pisshead staggering home sideways and arguing with lamp-posts. I walk and I breathe and I’m still surprised I’m out. I can’t help but think of some of the lads inside waking up to the same bowls of cereal, the stale fug of dead air.

  When I get to the lock-up I let mesel in with the key Arty’s given us.

  Guard it with your life, he said. Don’t let nee fucker get his hands on it. Capeesh?

  Aye, I tell him. What ye said.

  I’m always the first of the drivers up there so I make mesel a cup of tea with water from the dripping tap outside and while it’s mashing I bun up a rollie and spark it.

  By now it’s six or mebbe half six at the latest, depending on how
fast I done the walk, and me stomach is usually stirring so I stub out me fag and gan and empty me back in the one bog that serves the entire industrial estate. It sees more logs per person than the crappers inside. Disgusting.

  And that’s the other thing about being locked up: your body becomes programmed to routine. If they tell you to shit at six, soon enough you’ll be shitting at six on the dot. They don’t just own your time, they own your bowel movements an all. I’m still as regular as clockwork now.

  The industrial estate is silent and still and I like it that way. At this time of the morning, before vans start pulling up and people start opening their shutters, it’s like being on another planet. All the buildings are made from chrome and corrugate and they twinkle as the sun comes up. Future World I call it, because it feels like I’ve stepped into the future: a future where there’s nee fugger trying to start summat with us. Instead there’s just silence. Silence, stillness and calm.

  I stand there with my re-lit tab, smoking and watching the buildings shine like ships in the flat sea of tarmac, feeling content in the perfect stillness of the morning. There’s just me and the sun and the tarmac and the ribbons of smoke coming out me nostrils like a bull’s steaming breath.

  In one of the other units they make frozen curries and you can smell the spices a mile off, even when they’re shut as they are now. It’s proper good. Well exotic. It always gets me belly rumbling: another prison reminder that I’m due some scran any minute now. That can wait though.

  There’s a place that does electrical goods down here an all, and there’s a builder’s merchant and an MOT garage. All that type of stuff. Most of them won’t be open until half eight, nine, by which time I’ll be long gone, out in the lanes and the estates and the B-roads.

  Oh aye, and there’s this place that makes Christmas decorations an all. All year round they’re at it. It’s weird being sat there and looking at plastic Christmas trees stacked up in August and fake snow blowing across the forecourt. Bits of silver tinsel on the breeze. It’s the closest to the whistles and bells of the festive season that I get.

  And now’s the time to take a few minutes to sit and read a book for a bit while I run the engine of the van to get the freezers and the ice machine working before I stock them.

  I lean against the wall outside, reading and basking like a cat in the sun, the engine chugging and purring.

  I’ll read owt, me. Any book will do. It was reading that got us through that five year. I went in hardly knowing me ABCs and came out after having read right the way through the prison library and whatever else one of the screws, a likeable bell-end called Palmer, would lend us. Palmer was alright. He wasn’t a fat lump like most of them key janglers. He reckoned he had a degree or summat. Reckoned he cycled three hundred miles a week.

  Anyroad. Thanks to him and the fact that nee-one else used the library, I got through hods of books and a fair few crusted porn mags that circulated an all.

  It’s adventure stories I like best. Books about men surviving and that. They give you a bit of perspective. Hope and that. Books that make you realise that though you might feel it, you’re not always alone in life. Like, you’re not the first person to experience what it is you’re feeling. The fact there’s others that have gone before and there’s others that’ll come after you.

  I read a lot of a gadge called Jack London inside. The Call of The Wild, the one about the dog in the wilderness. Then I done Huckleberry Finn. The lad on the raft with the slave and that. That was mint. Tom Sawyer an all. Mint. Done them in about a week each. Caned them. And the one about the pigs and that. That’s a good one an all. It reminded us of prison a bit, all them animals scrapping each other to be in charge. Then 1984. Bit of a tough one to get into that. I read some Dickens too. I knew how Oliver Twist felt. We’d have probably been marrers, me and him. Eating gruel and that. Surviving, despite our parents. The Artful Dodger an all. Proper little character, that one. And Bill Sykes. A bit like me Dad, he was. All big and growling and obvious. Your man Dickens knew a thing or two about the wickedness we do to one another.

  That was just some of the good books, the auld ones – the ones you’ll know about – but I’ll read owt, me. The life stories of actors and footballers and that. Books about lasses on horses shagging blokes in the stables. Detective stuff. Books about bloody goblins and hobbits and wizards. There was always plenty to choose from an all, because most of the lads were too thick to bother; they’d rather sit there with their hands down their kecks turning their eggs all day than being called a puff for reading.

  I touch the glass eye in me pocket. I rub me finger round it, then take it out and hold it to the sun. It’s not eye-shaped like you’d think it would be. It’s not whatsit – oval shaped – it’s perfectly round. Because it’s only the eye hole that’s oval, isn’t it. The eyes themsels are orbs.

  I turn it and let the sun bounce off it. It’s a smoky white colour, with the dark brown bit at the front, then the black bit in the middle of it. The pupil. I gently hoy it up and down in me hand. It’s solid like a marble. Heavy and all. It’s beautiful in one way, but ugly in another. Ugly if you know the story behind it, like.

  After a couple more pages of the reading I flick away me tab, stick the eye back in me pocket, fold down the corner of the page then give the van a quick rub down before heading off to the wholesalers to pick up the big tubs of cream, the lollies, tubes of cones and the boxes of flakes and sprinkles. All that shite the kiddies love.

  *

  The morning of the fight your Uncle Eddie came knocking at dawn. He was your Dad’s driver and corner man, there to help his big brother if a miracle befell Henry Bradley and he somehow mullered him.

  Even at seventeen Eddie was the same then as he is now. Boisterous like all them Wisdoms but crafty with it. If Mac was the fighter, Eddie was the hustler. He was thin as a whippet, sly as a fox and full of shite at all times. They said he was born smiling, Eddie. They said that smile could sell owt. They reckoned he could have the watch off your wrist, and you’d still be nodding and listening. And then he’d sell it back to you and be down the track before you knew it.

  The scrap was happening early to avoid attention from the muskers and it was still dark when they left in Ed’s latest banger. He changed his car every couple of weeks, swapping one auld rust bucket for another. It was a running joke in the family: only the paintwork held his cars together. When they stopped working he’d dump them and walk home from wherever he was. Abandoned cars littered the county wherever he went. Where other people left footprints, Eddie left cars. Half of them probably ended up cubed at Milburn’s yard.

  They took the long way round the city. They kept the river to their left and avoided the main roads. It was better this way; better to be out in the countryside with the winders down, away from all the house folk driving to work.

  “Have you got a gameplan?” Eddie asked.

  “Aye. I’m gonna batter him like a haddock.”

  *

  The route lasts five days and takes us all ower the shop. It runs round the city in a massive circle taking us through all the estates, villages, hamlets and holes of the county.

  I start at different parts of the circle each day, but always pass through the housing estates of Belmont, Carrville, Shincliffe. They’re not bad little places. There’s usually plenty of business and most of the kids are as good as gold. Polite and that.

  Then it’s on to Bowburn and Cassop and up to Littletown, Pittington and the Raintons – East and West. That’s one side of the city. Two days at least.

  Then it’s over the private housing estate at Newton Hall – the biggest in Europe they telt us when I were a kid – then through there to Pity Me and Framwellgate Moor, and out to Witton Gilbert and Sacriston – Witton Giblets and Segga to the locals – Bearpark, Ushaw Moor and all them places up there, and on and on and on, the music playing at all times, except when I stop to work the ice pump for snot-nosed kids who take ten minutes deciding whether
they want a 99, a Screwball or a white chocolate Magnum.

  And that’s just the nicer estates, where the bairns have more money to spend. The route also takes us through the dark-hearted backwaters where my Dad used to go get mortal and fight farmhands and drunks for pints and pennies. Those places miles out of the city, nowhere holes with one road in and the same road out, and family names going back donkey’s. Wee places with their own rules, where the people gape at the sight of a wheel and where all the bairns can afford is a mini-milk or some kets from the penny box I keep under the counter.

  I’m out all day, dawn to sundown. That means nine or ten hours minimum. Dropping the van off then the long walk home adds another hour. It’s no wonder Arty’s got a good few bob tucked away, the way he works us. He might blether a load of shite, but there’s nee flies on him.

  I pull over every few hours for a slash and a stretch and a couple of minutes of peace and quiet. Then it’s back on with the music, the engine growling, the hatch open, the breeze blowing. Back to business. Roll up lads and lasses, Vicari’s is here. The nicest ices in the north and beyond.

  Often licked, but never beaten.

  Thursday is different though. Thursday is probation day. The worst day; another pull back into the past. Hours of grunting and scowling at Dickhead Derek the dandruff wonder with his face like a derelict bungalow, and having to fanny around with forms and questions and cups of crappy coffee in that bloody building that’s just a bit too close to the courts for comfort. Always with one eye on me watch, the other wandering out the window.

  Half a day I waste, sat in a chair in a stuffy office being prodded and feeling like a numpty. Then another half day to do me errands, wash me smalls and sit there doing nowt but smoking and reading. And that’s my day off.

  How are you coping? Derek asks us.

  How do you avoid confrontation?

  What about money? Your flat? Your feelings?