When Mr. Dog Bites

by Brian Conaghan

  “Are you sleeping, Dylan?” Mom asked.

  “COW, BITCH.”

  “Dylan.”

  “SH . . . SH . . . SHOUTER SL . . . SL . . . SLUT.” I held my breath. I wanted it to stop. Tears. Bloody tears. Big boys don’t cry, but big boys who go to Drumhill Special School cry all the time.

  “It’s okay, Dylan. It’s okay.”

  “Okay.”

  “I love you.”

  “THANKS.”

  “I won’t let any of this affect you.”

  “LOVE YOU TOO, BITCH.”

  “Night-night.”

  “NIGHT,” I shouted, and pretended to wait for a bus.

  I waited for ages but no bus arrived. Nothing arrived. I waited until the rats had all gone to sleep.

  The stars on my bedroom ceiling were losing their glowing power. I’d have to buy new ones. Amir said his cousin could get ones that never, ever lost their power. He said they were made from bits of real stars, but there was no way on this God’s earth that I believed him. Sometimes he spoke pure gobbledygook. I always thought about Amir when I was lying in bed at night (not in that way). I thought of some of the mad things he’d done that day or some of the eejit things he’d said. And there were usually loads, because he went on and on about stuff, like cricket, whether I was interested or not. I thought Amir could be Scotland’s biggest Pakistani stand-up comedian if he put his mind to it. He told two jokes at the Drumhill’s Got Talent afternoon, but nobody laughed. Doughnut shouted “That’s pure shite” after the first one, which made Amir’s second one bomb big-time. To make things worse for the poor wee fella, Doughnut’s comment got a bigger laugh. Amir was raging, but I told him that Doughnut was a prick-licker and he’d get his one day.

  I didn’t say this to Amir’s face, but

  Who invented knock-knock?

  Two wee chaps

  was a shite joke.

  The thing was, he had mega ones too, like:

  What’s the difference between light and hard?

  You can sleep with a light on.

  That cracked me up. Mr. McGrain, the headmaster, would’ve kicked him on his bahookie if he’d told that one, however. Maybe I could be Amir’s manager/agent. Then we’d be best buds forever and earn some quality cashino along the way.

  Aren’t you forgetting something, Dylan? that little nutty bastard reminded me. I slapped myself on the head.

  It must have been tough for Mom, watching her only son, her only child, deteriorate before her very eyes. She was ultra-brave. George Cross brave. Usually she’d come into my room to give me some soggy pecks and a mega hug and tell me how much she loved me. And the nights when she’d been on one of her booze cruises she’d slobber all over my face like a big St. Bernard dog who’d just discovered me in some manky crevasse deep in Swiss mountain territory. This was just Mom’s way of showing me that she loved me like a crazy woman, and had nothing to do with the fact that the whopping amounts of booze guzzled that evening had shattered and scattered her emotional inhibitions. (We were doing the Alcohol module in social and health education.) Booze cruise or no booze cruise, she was Blackhawk Down, saying she’d protect me from all this palaver and won’t let it affect me. It made me feel Mr. Guilty, as I was the one who should be doing the protecting. Moms are the best things in the world. I often wondered what it would be like being a mom. I don’t have boobs, so it isn’t ever going to happen. Although I think it does in America.

  When I looked at my dimmed stars, I began to think more and more about Michelle Malloy and how I could get her to do the jiggy. Having a top chat would be a start. Women like talking about stuff and all that. She was sooooooooo beautiful. By far the coolest, grooviest, hippest, sexiest chick at Drumhill. I was sure that if Michelle Malloy went to a proper school, she’d be the coolest, grooviest, hippest, sexiest chick there too . . .

  The next morning I had to cut my own banana slices and plonk them in the oatmeal before putting it in the microwave. Mom was still in her kip. I was a raging bull because Mom knew how much I hated taking anything out of the microwave.

  “MICROWAVE PRICK.”

  The microwaves can jump on your brain and kill you stone dead right there and then. Zoom! There have been cases in America, Bulgaria, and Ecuador. But it didn’t matter anymore, so I took the oatmeal out myself. Nothing happened, so I munched the oatmeal.

  12

  Match

  I always loved it when September came along. Not because the sweltering summer sun had finally buggered off to somewhere else. That was me being “ironic,” as I live in Scotland, which is not Papua New Guinea or Torremolinos. A hee-hee moment! No, I loved September because it was the time of the year that men became men and all the girls did arts and crafts. September was when THE SOCCER SEASON started in school. And I, Dylan Mint, was a first-on-the-team-sheet key member of the Drumhill School Soccer Team.

  First game: local rivals Shawhead.

  Bring it on.

  If you didn’t want to do arts and crafts or pretend-reading in the library, students could watch the game and cheer like maddies for the Drumhill boys. It was that silly bugger Amir who egged me on to ask Michelle Malloy if she wanted to watch me playing the game.

  “It’s perfect,” Amir said.

  “Not sure, amigo—the whole soccer thing wasn’t part of my master plan.”

  “‘Put my master plan into action,’ you said, so time to get them out.” Amir wiggled his fingers, all ten of them, in front of my face, like he was planting his thoughts in my brain.

  “Amir, she’ll see my legs.”

  “So?”

  “So there’s no hair on them.”

  “That’s ’cause you’re a white boy.”

  “She’ll think I’m, like, twelve or something.”

  “Twelve isn’t so bad—you know what they say about twelve-year-olds . . .” Amir winked and smiled.

  “No, what?”

  “Erm . . . I do-do-don’t know, really.”

  “You’re not helping, Amir. It’s okay for you—your legs are like an orangutan’s; girls like seeing those, not two baldy wee twigs like mine.”

  *

  And then, without any strategy or an Action Jackson plan, the chance came.

  Location: outside the Senior Toilets.

  Activity: I’d just done my biz (pee). Michelle Malloy was just going (hopefully for a number one. The image of Michelle Malloy doing a number two was mega distressing and a potential deal-breaker).

  Heart condition: my heart didn’t have much time to think about it, but torpedoed into action as soon as I spied her.

  Hands: moist.

  Hair: okay. I fixed it in the bogs’ mirror, pulling it over my eyes. I was trying to get it cooler, like some of the dudes at the normal school. Twitching shifted my hair away from my eyes. No hands! One–nil Tourette’s.

  She came toward me without any warning. Like an angel out of the mist.

  “Hi, Michelle.”

  “What are you up to, Mint?”

  “Erm . . . noth—”

  “Hanging around the bogs, are we now?”

  “No . . . I was . . . I was . . . DOIN’ A SHITE . . . NO. I wasn’t, Michelle, honestly. I was doing a pee. I was only doing a pee. BIG GIANT SHITE.” It blasted out of my mouth. I couldn’t stop it happening.

  “Okay, so you’ve done your piss, now piss off.”

  I laughed at Michelle Malloy’s joke. “Piss off, that’s good,” I said.

  “What planet are you on, moon man?”

  “Erm, planet Earth.” I felt for Green in my pocket and rubbed him as hard as I could.

  “What in the name of fuck are you doing there, Mint?”

  “What? Where?”

  “There!” Michelle Malloy pointed to the pocket where Green was. “Mint, if you’re fiddling with yourself in front of me, I swear to God I’ll cut that fucker off and shove it and you back up your mother.”

  Wow! I didn’t know how she’d do that, but it sounded painfully sore for
everyone involved.

  “No, it’s my stone, Michelle. Look, it’s only a wee stone. See?” I took Green out of my pocket.

  “You better get that fucking thing out of my face, Mint, if you want to keep your nose.”

  “I was just wondering if you’re going to watch the first game of the season next week. We’re playing Shawhead. DICK-CHEWER SHITE-DOER . . . Shit, sorry, Michelle.”

  “You want me to watch you playing soccer, Mint?”

  “Yes.”

  “Mint, I’d rather wank a sheep.”

  “A . . . sheep?”

  “Now, get out of my way.” She made her way to the toilets.

  “BIG GIANT SHITE,” I shouted, then whooped a few times and then headed back to class in a massive daze. No Way, José was Amir getting wind of that chat.

  *

  We kicked off.

  Ping.

  Ping.

  Ping.

  The Barcelona of the spazzie world.

  Goals galore.

  A dodgy penalty decision.

  Criminal refereeing.

  Then it really kicked off. “Kicked off” is a soccer phrase clever-clog people use instead of “fight” or “scrap.” The thing was, we were playing soccer at the time—mad or what?

  It actually all started because Snot Rag (a.k.a. Terence Trower) had to dash like a crazy man into the hospital for emergency kidney stuff, which left Drumhill’s soccer team without a first-choice goalie.

  Holy Moly, no goalie! What were we to do?

  I came up with a quality eureka moment: tell the bold Amir to hit the sticks.

  I pushed for him to get the nod because cricket skills equal catching balls at sonic speed, a top-notch asset for any goalie to have.

  It wasn’t.

  He was rank rotten.

  Worse than rank rotten.

  Pish.

  Pure pish.

  Pure heavy yellow pish.

  We lost 7–4 to Shawhead. Total redneck at this level. The majority of the Shawhead team was full of proper spazzies too. And I mean spazzies who struggle to walk, so playing soccer for them was, like, a miracle. Yet they did manage to rap seven past Amir. Utter, total, complete, scarlet redneck.

  It all kicked off like a Ross Kemp program.

  With the score at 6–4 Shawhead got a butter-soft penalty. One of their club-foot guys fell over in the box, and the ref, Mr. Comeford, pointed to the spot. It was so obvious to everyone that the guy just lost his balance and keeled over; Comeford blew out of pity more than anything. Shocking decision.

  “If you don’t save this, I’m going to boot your Paki balls up your arse,” Doughnut screamed at Amir.

  “Eh?” Amir asked.

  “You’d better save this or else,” Doughnut shouted. Amir looked at me all confused face. “You couldn’t catch syphilis in a Paki brothel.”

  “Wha-wha-what?” Amir asked again. I wanted to say “What?” too, because I had no idea what syphilis was—or what a Paki brothel was.

  “Are you deaf, Pak-man?”

  “No, I’m n-n-not deaf.” Amir didn’t really get these types of questions. His answer threw Doughnut’s brain cells into a tizzy. Doughnut got confused quickly when his mind was thrown into a tizzy, meaning his anger grew to mercury level. You should see Doughnut in class when teachers ask him mad hard questions—he’s like an exploding space hopper.

  “Just fucking save it or you’ll be shitting your balls along with your curry tonight.” I could tell that Amir didn’t have a clue what all this meant, as he was still coming to terms with everyone (including me) shouting and screaming at him for being the crappiest goalie the world of soccer had ever seen.

  “Okay, I’ll try,” he said, as if Doughnut had made a proper soccer request.

  This huge Shawhead player with a mega limp ran up (or limped up) and blootered the ball toward Amir’s goal. The ball blasted off the underside of the bar, scudded Amir on the back of the head, and bobbled into the net. Amir hadn’t the foggiest what had happened. Comeford blew for a goal. The Shawhead players celebrated. And Doughnut headed straight for Amir.

  “You’re one proper Paki fanny.” Doughnut was seething mad, with steamy ears and nostrils.

  Amir half ran away.

  “Come here,” Doughnut said, walking after him, ready to do a hate crime.

  “No,” Amir said.

  “Don’t make me chase you, Pak-man.”

  “I didn’t d-d-do anything,” Amir said.

  “Exactly, you dick. Come here.”

  Doughnut was within an arm’s reach of Amir, while I was within an arm’s reach of Doughnut.

  “Leave me alone.”

  “Yeah, leave him alone. He hasn’t done anything wrong,” I said. Bad move. Major bad move.

  “You stay out of this, Tic Tac, or I’ll knock you into the middle of next week.”

  I hated that name. Amir shook and growled, which made me shake and growl too. It was like we had that weird twin thing going on between us. Twin dogs. Twin dingo dogs. Doughnut grabbed Amir by the neck, shoving him to the ground. Then, I swear to the baby Jesus, he was setting himself up to take a penalty kick into Amir’s napper.

  “WANKER FUCKER!”

  “Arrrrrrrhhhhhhh,” screamed Amir. The sound was like a newborn baby wailing, and it made everyone turn toward the incident.

  “BASTARD FUCKER.” The next thing I knew I was on Doughnut’s back, arms curled around his neck, tugging him to the grass. “FAT CUNT NUTTER.” I couldn’t hear what anyone was saying or shouting at all. What I heard was a ssszzzhhhooooooooooo sound ringing in my head, like a washing machine spinning dead fast trying to get the thick dirt out of the muckiest clothes from the muckiest town in the muckiest country in the world.

  Ssszzzhhhooooooooooo.

  Ssszzzhhhooooooooooo.

  Ssszzzhhhooooooooooo.

  Then the spin cycle slowed right down to a

  stut

  stut

  stutter

  stutter

  stutter

  stut

  stut

  stut

  tut

  tut

  tut

  tu

  tu

  tu

  t

  t

  t

  nt

  nt

  nt

  int

  int

  int

  Mint

  Mint

  Mint . . .

  “MINT!”

  “MINT!”

  “MINT.” Mr. Comeford ripped my soccer jersey as he pulled me off Doughnut. It was A-okay, though, because it was the school’s soccer shirt. “STAND OVER THERE, MINT, AND DON’T BLOODY MOVE,” he snarled at me, pointing to the goal Shawhead had just scored into. “THOMPSON, YOU GET YOUR BLOODY CARCASS UP OFF THE GROUND AND STAND OVER THERE,” he said, pointing to a part of the field that was far away from where I was. “MANZOOR, STOP ROLLING AROUND IN THE GRASS LIKE A BLOODY STUPID STRAY DOG AND GET ON YOUR FEET, SON.”

  I heard him say, “Fuckin’ ******” under his breath as Amir was getting up. I wasn’t 100 percent sure if the “******” was “Paki,” “darkie,” or “spazzie,” but I was almost 85 percent sure that whatever it was, it was a shocker word. A word like that could have made the papers, coming from a teacher. I don’t think Mr. Comeford cared that much for the students at Drumhill.

  “GAME OVER,” he shouted into the air, then blew his whistle really loud.

  The Shawhead teacher shook his head as if this were a ploy to have the game abandoned. But the game was abandoned for real. Would that mean we wouldn’t lose the points?

  As the Shawhead team was hobbling off to get the bus back to their school, Doughnut dished out some flying kung fu kicks to any Shawhead player near him. Skittle and Snot Rag weren’t too far behind him, but they were just dishing out pretend kicks, as if they were playing the Keeping Up with the Joneses game. Being a lover and not a fighter, I decided to do no violent acts.

  But I
couldn’t stop me being me.

  “FUCKING SPAZZIES . . . SHAWHEAD SPAZZIES.” My hands were hurting because of all the tight fist-clenching. “KNOB SUCKER,” I screamed at Comeford. My knees hurt from the banging; two wee twigs crashing against each other, sore as hell. “KNOB NUZZLER.” It was painful, but the words kept coming.

  “YOU, GET INTO THE SCHOOL,” Comeford said, pointing his finger at me and wiggling it toward the school building. “NOW, MINT.”

  And I sprinted there like a young Allan Wells (who won the gold medal for Great Britain in the hundred meters at the Moscow Olympics in 1980 with a time of 10.25 seconds, which is a rubbish time that wouldn’t even get him into the semis nowadays. And he only won gold because all the good sprinters boycotted the games—well, their countries did—because the Soviet Union in 1980 was a place for mentalists). When I got into the school building, I didn’t know what to do or where to go or who to speak to. The place was silent. I took myself to the nearest corner and stood really close to the angle of the corner’s V shape, counted to ten, said all the consonants in the alphabet, then tried to say an animal beginning with each consonant, did my breathing exercises, and played a tune from the air that was streaming out of my nose. The William Tell Overture. We do that in music with Miss Adams—well, we try to, but we end up sounding like the Bonkers Orchestra for the Deaf. I wished I had Green to move between my fingers, but it was in my blinkin’ school trousers.

  No one came for ages. I was on the letter X.

  Tap.

  I was on the letter X for ages.

  Tap.

  I couldn’t think of an animal with the letter X. Or a word.

  I thought of Michelle Malloy, because X reminded me of the word “sex,” and Michelle Malloy reminded me of sex.

  Tap on the shoulder.

  Woman smell gusted up my hooter: makeup and perfume mixed together.

  Boy, was I glad to see Miss Flynn. So glad that I flung my arms around her neck, like when I score a goal. But there was no goal joy. I belted it all out into her chest. Which was mega weird because I could feel her boobs against my own boy boobs and I was worried in case my willy was going to get angry, but this took my mind off the incident with Doughnut. I continued to bubble, though. Just in case. I wanted to be in Miss Flynn’s office sitting on her big comfy chair, listening to the groovy tunes she played to “soothe” me. She also put up these wacky posters to get us “reflecting” and help us feel better. “That which does not kill us makes us stronger” by some dude called Friedrich Nietzsche was my numero uno. Friedrich Nietzsche’s job was to sit around THINKING about all this pure mad stuff.