Lottery Boy

by Michael Byrne

  “No! What, one of them big ones in the front? You got all that way up there, did you? Right under my nose?” He gave him a big broad smile. “I had a feeling you was. Scoff didn’t find you, did he? He fell off that gun. He let me down. He didn’t do as he was told. So I’m reminding him, like I’m gunna be reminding you in a minute. Do you know what I’m reminding him of? You all know, don’t ya?” he said, looking round, searching each face until he got a nod or a yes out of it.

  “Course you do. Because animals is the same as you, they all need reminding. Now when I first started out with dogs, I used to have a favourite. Arny he was called. And he was always up for getting fed ahead of the rest of the pack, never letting the others near me if he could help it. But one day I wakes up after a night of it and what do I find? No more Arny … just bits and pieces … all over the place. He’d got old and slow and they’d torn him apart. And you know why they did that?” he said, just to Bully now, patiently waiting for him to shake his head.

  “Because Arny was my top dog. And given half a chance, everyone wants to be top dog.”

  And then all traces of a smile left his face. “Right, you two…”

  Tiggs and Chris hesitated. Janks’s gaze drifted down to Bully’s bare feet. “Well, sit on ’im then! I ain’t got all day!” And Bully writhed and twisted, nearly shaking both of them off when he saw Janks pull the skewer from his boot.

  “See this … you know what this is, don’t you? It’s for putting through meat. See.” He slid it between the gap in his thumb and forefinger and Bully was mesmerized, couldn’t look away. “Right, hold his foot… Last chance,” said Janks. “Where is my ticket? I don’t want to hear any more of your little stories.”

  “I never won … nothing,” Bully said as slowly as he could, making it last. He felt the skewer tickle the sole of his left foot.

  “Arrgh!” said Chris, jumping up. “He’s wet himself!”

  “Never mind that,” said Janks. He lifted the skewer up slow and high above his head and then drove it down quick. Bully screamed but felt nothing, and when he looked, there was the skewer, sticking out of the floorboards between his ankles.

  Janks stood up.

  “What?” said Chris, forgetting himself. “You not getting it out of ’im?”

  Janks’s voice took on a mocking hurt tone. “Oh, you want to try, do you? What you saying? You know how to get things out of people, do you?”

  “No, no… I’m just sayin’, Janks, aren’t you gunna torture ’im, though?”

  “Torture ’im! Torture a little boy! What am I? An animal?”

  Janks bent down and pulled out the skewer and it squeaked and squealed as it came out of the wood like a puppy waking up.

  He slid it back down the leg of his boot. “Say I do torture ’im. Say I do. Just say I do. Say that. And then what? He starts yelling and screaming, getting blood all over the place and telling me the first thing that comes into his head; that it’s here or there. And then it’s somewhere else … and gets us racing all over town until the time’s run out on this ticket of his. What’s the good in that, eh?”

  Chris and Tiggs nodded. There was no good in that.

  “So, no. No, I’m not gunna torture ’im, Chris. I’m gunna torture that dog of his and kill two birds with one stone and make some money out of this either way.”

  Outside the drilling on the building site stopped for the day and all was quiet. And then, as if they’d heard what their master said, on the floor below, the dogs started howling again.

  Hours later, Janks barrelled Bully up in the boot of Chris’s car without telling him where they were going. When the car stopped and he heard the dogs starting up, that was the worst, waiting to see what would happen when the boot opened again.

  A man with a squashed-up face he’d never seen before was looking him over, like, what was a half-naked boy doing here, and wanting nothing to do with him. Janks pulled him out, hauled him up and cut the tape around his feet but not his hands. Another man was pointing him out, staring at him, shaking his head and then turning away.

  Bully felt like a whelp, like a newborn puppy, when he stood up, his bare feet tender on the concrete. He looked around. His eyes were puffy from crying and he had to open them on purpose to see anything. He felt he was inside somewhere big, somewhere empty; an old factory or a warehouse, a wet, dirty smell to the place creeping in past his cold.

  “Here,” said Janks. And he led him over to a proper circle of lights, made up of cars, some of them with their boots open, dogs – illegals by the looks of them; nasty mixed up messes – sat there panting and snarling. One car had its boot closed, thumping and barking coming from inside … until it went quiet. He heard a man saying how you had to bait a dog, put it up against something before its first proper fight, just to give it a taste. And Bully could see now that in the middle of all the cars was a pit in the concrete floor, seven, eight metres long, two or three wide, with steps at one end.

  Janks grabbed him by the hair, turned him round.

  “So you want to play games, do you? With me, do you?” said Janks. “You want to—”

  He paused as the man with the squashed-up face tapped him on the shoulder. “It’s not right, this. It’s not right having a lad here.”

  Janks hit him just beneath his chin so that he clutched his throat as if an invisible man was strangling him. Then Janks turned back to Bully.

  “So let’s play.”

  Bully knew what the bait was before Janks signalled Chris to throw Bully’s old green coat into the pit. It made a thud when it hit the floor, something wrapped inside.

  “Last chance – where’s this ticket?” said Janks. “Where is it?” Bully continued to stare at his coat twitching on the concrete. “She’s all taped up in there, dudn’t stand a chance. She’s dog meat. Come on… No? All right then. You’ve had your chance.”

  “Get on with it!” said a voice among the men. Janks motioned to one of them with a nod of his head and at the other end of the pit a black shadow approached the steps, its coat getting darker and darker in the bright light.

  Bully couldn’t help staring at it like it wasn’t real. The way its skin folded up around its face and dripped down under its chin. The way its big black eyes drew you in, like a kid had crayoned them as good as he could. He’d seen one before, just in a picture; something just like it. One of half a dozen lessons he could pick out from his days at school. In the book, the Romans were attacking the English in their little straw huts with these big, big bulldogs. And he’d asked the teacher what kind it was and when she didn’t know, he’d looked it up. It was a bandog, an old mix, not strictly a breed at all, but with a mastiff’s size and weight and a bulldog’s speed, born to fight anything. And this wasn’t a picture in a book, this was real.

  The bandog was pawing the concrete floor, moving forward towards the bundle, smelling the dog but then retreating while it figured out where the dog was. And Bully realized it was its first fight.

  “You wouldn’t think they’d pay good money for this, would you? I wouldn’t waste my dog on this. It’s not even a fight,” said Janks.

  The bandog snapped at Bully’s coat then, and shook it and shook it, thinking it was dog skin, and a cheer went up from the crowd.

  And now the dog had worked out that there wasn’t any meat between its teeth and it spat it out because that was what it was after, squirming on the floor, trying to get to her feet.

  “This is it,” said Janks. “Last, last chance…”

  Bully jumped into the pit. His knees buckled under his jaw, catching his tongue, and blood filled his mouth and he spat it out, spots on the floor.

  A huge cheer from some in the crowd drowned out a smattering of concern.

  “Get him out!” yelled someone, but in that tired, irritated voice that people use in a crowd when a dog or even a child is about to spoil a game. And some men left, and a few of the lights got smaller and smaller as cars reversed away. Didn’t want to see that. Not a
fair fight. But the rest, they stayed. They wanted to watch this.

  The bandog had its back to the steps now, struggling to decide who was the enemy; this skinny black-and-blue thing with wrists full of rubber bands or the other dog. It didn’t know what it was up against because even though its ancestors might have bated bears and lions and even Christians, this one had never fought a boy before. And Bully had to take advantage of this little bit of time, this little bit of confusion, before he became just another funny-looking dog.

  He scraped his hands up and down in a sawing motion on the rough concrete wall, making them bleed but tearing the tape. And then he unwound what was around Jack’s muzzle and legs, wrapping the tape around his fists just to get it off quick. Straight away Jack scrambled to her feet, barking, up for it, back end bristling, nosing past him, anxious to take point. The two dogs started heads up, haunches down, looking for weakness, showing their defences, snapping at the air.

  But Bully was making things easy for the bandog, standing there behind Jack – the pair of them just one target. He needed to outflank it – that’s what Bully had to do. Work his way round the side of his enemy to attack from behind. But what with? He didn’t have his knife. They’d taken that, taken everything. He could use his coat maybe. The pockets were all ripped open, just like the dead man in the park, but even so, if he could get round the bandog and use his coat to strangle it or something…

  So Bully shrank against the pit wall, scraping his back against the concrete as he began to edge past the bandog. He was nearly past the head and neck, at the limit of the dog’s peripheral vision, when its pointed ears twitched and it went for him. It turned incredibly quick; the thin ribbon of white on its belly flashing towards him, the jaws opening, and the last thing Bully saw was his own arm going to protect his face.

  He waited to feel the pain, could still see his arm and when he pulled it away from his eyes, there was the bandog squirming on the floor, Jack hanging from its belly.

  Bully ran at it – his chance – went to kick at its ribs with his bare feet but he slipped and fell.

  He heard men begin to cough and clear their throats over and over again. They were laughing … they were laughing at him, that’s what they were doing, and he began to swear and shout back every name he could think of, as if the words might cut each bobbly face to pieces.

  Clink… He looked down. He was standing on his coat. The metallic sound sent him looking for his penknife but all he found in the inside pocket was the squashed-up tin can he’d saved all that time five days ago. Without thinking he put his coat back on, as if it were a suit of armour. And at least he was behind the bandog now. And that was something. He watched the bandog shake Jack off, leaving her with a mouthful of fur and skin, and then, getting its confidence, coming straight back to catch her leg. Above the din, he heard the bone snap and Jack squeal like words might come out.

  Bully reached for the can and he worked it open and slipped his right fist into it. When some of the men saw what he was doing, they started up heckling and whining, as Bully ran up to the bandog to stave in its ribs. The dog shuddered with the first punch, twisted away, taking his teeth out of Jack to show them to Bully.

  Bully tried to land another one but he wasn’t quick enough. He was tired now, his breathing sending his whole chest up and down, and the dog came back at him, much too fast – so fast it didn’t see Bully’s tin fist swinging under its chin.

  It shivered and went down wheezing, and Bully thought they’d won. But then, as he watched it struggle to its feet, he saw that a dog wasn’t like a boy, it didn’t know it was beaten until it couldn’t go on. And before he could think what to do next, it came straight back at him.

  Pap! Pap! he heard as the dog brought him down, and when he scrambled out from underneath it, he saw its guts glistening like uncooked sausages, a twitching shiny hole the size of his fist there pulsing away.

  He got to his feet, leaned against the wall. The crowd was silent, motionless, cut out of the light as if they were cardboard figures, only one man moving, waving a gun around, giving directions that he was not to be messed with. Two men were standing either side of him, checking their sightlines, looking out for the alpha dog.

  “Your bitch?” He was looking down at Jack.

  Bully nodded.

  “And you Goldy, yeah?”

  Bully looked at him, didn’t understand.

  “You the golden boy, yeah? You got the ticket?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” he said numbly.

  “You tellin’ me the truth, Goldy?”

  “There ain’t no ticket!” Janks said, piping up. “Why d’you think he’s ’ere!”

  Woah… went the crowd because the man was levelling the gun at Janks’s head now, no more waving it about.

  “Shh,” he said.

  Bully got himself to the corner of the pit to look at Jack. She was whimpering, licking her wounds. Her back leg was crushed and mangled and there was a long pink tear in her cheek, like she was showing her teeth and grinning. Bully stroked the top of her head because her fur was torn and grazed across her back and ribs.

  “Yeah. I won it… I got it,” he said, his voice squeaking in the empty space, making him sound like a little kid.

  “So where’s the tic-ket?” said the man with the gun, tapping the word out with the end of the barrel.

  Bully looked back to the man. “I ain’t got it.” And the barrel shifted towards his chest and he pushed Jack back into what bit of shadow there was behind him. “She’s got it. It’s in her collar.”

  “He’s havin’ you on!” yelled Janks. “There ain’t no ticket! Shoot ’im! Shoot the little—” And the gunman flipped his pistol in the air, caught it and clubbed Janks with the stock, flooring him.

  “Now, Goldy… You see this puppy?” he said, still talking with his gun. “Now you tell me lies and I’m putting a hole in your dog. And then you keep on telling me more lies, I put one in you? Understand?”

  “It’s in her collar. I hid it. I hid it in her collar.” Bully looked to Janks and watched his life, the one he could have had – the one with millions in it – blaze up and die in front of his eyes. Whatever happened to Bully now, he was glad.

  “Arigh’, now we getting somewhere… Out the way, boy,” said the man with the gun and took aim at Jack. When Bully didn’t move he adjusted his aim a little and closed one eye, like he didn’t really want to hit a boy but it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. And then he lowered his pistol.

  “Don’t wanna put a hole in this ticket, do we, Goldy.”

  He motioned to one of his men to go down into the pit, both of them shaking their heads and saying no way, no way were they going anywhere near that.

  “Fetch,” he said to Bully. “Give me the collar. Throw it up, easy.”

  Bully felt for the buckle, tried to get his fingers to grip the leather but they were greasy with blood and he couldn’t work the strap.

  “Don’t make me come down there, boy.”

  “I’m tryin’, I’m tryin’…” Bully looked up to plead for more time. The man with the gun was watching him very carefully now and the two men with him, as if he was digging up buried treasure in this pit. What they weren’t seeing, though, was Janks on his knees, looking at the man with the gun and slowly, slowly feeling inside his boot and slowly, slowly, slowly pulling something silvery out of it.

  Bully was already running when he heard the first shot. Like a sprinter with a flying start, he wasn’t looking at the gun. He’d started running the second Janks raised his arm like Superman to drive the skillet through the gunman’s throat.

  Men were screaming, shouting, but he was out of the pit, out of the car lights and into the darkness, his bare feet padding across the concrete floor, Jack skittering along behind him on three legs.

  He was fifty or sixty metres away when he heard Janks’s voice strung out with rage: “Get the dog! Get the dog!” And then a few seconds later the quick chatter of a car starting up, r
agging the engine, spinning smoke and rubber into the air.

  The car lights quickly moved round, stretching into the darkness, turning the concrete floor from grey to white, lighting up the bare brick walls, and him. But now he could see his way out and he adjusted his direction to aim for the sliding doors ten metres off. It would take a grown man, perhaps two, to pull them back but still he tried. He shook them and they rattled, but that was all.

  Bully turned round then to see a tonne of white-eyed metal scorching his shadow away.

  But what could he do? Dive left or right? Like a goalkeeper with a penalty, he’d already made his decision. He cradled Jack up in his arms and bent down until the headlights became just one beam of light … and then he jumped up.

  The bonnet of the car tugged his feet from under him, and he hit the windscreen, bouncing off it just before the estate ploughed through the doors. The sound it made was like an animal squealing, trying to get out, the metal against metal. And when it stopped he heard Janks still inside the car, kicking at the chewed-up door. Bully crawled away underneath the car’s bumper, feeling for where the metal sliding door had been peeled back by the crash.

  “Jacky, Jacky,” he whispered, felt his dog brush against his face, showing him the way. Bully squirmed after her, his coat catching on the jagged metal, and he twisted, ripping through it and skinning his shoulder.

  Pap! he heard, close to his head. And then he was through.

  He was limping faster, the adrenaline numbing his feet, getting into a kind of hop and a skip. He thought maybe he could even sprint, if he had to. And he did. It was like he had scratchy cushions on his feet, couldn’t feel much now, only his breath carrying him along.

  “Come on, mate! Come on!” he said. Every time Bully looked back, Jack put in an extra stride, like she was trying to catch up with herself. And Bully caught a look of how bad her back leg was in the streetlights, a twisted-up mess of skin and bone that looked as if it had been stuck on wrong.