Human Punk

by John King

  –If that man didn’t dial 999 I’ll be after him, the Major warns. I don’t know if it’s a criminal offence, but I’ll nick him anyway. Every one of us has a duty to make sure justice is done.

  I want to grin, but can’t, the clang of an ambulance sounding in the distance, so I stand up instead, look down the road, and it’s going to have a clear run, the bell getting louder, light flashing. At the same time a police car comes over the railway bridge, from the opposite direction.

  –About time as well, the Major shouts. I don’t call that an efficient response. Best not to say anything though. We’re all doing our best. Pulling together against the criminal element, the mindless minority that threatens the fabric of society.

  The car skids to a halt and two coppers jump out, white shirts and rolled-up sleeves. The ambulance passes on the other side of the railings, does a U-turn and comes back up the slope. Two more men run over.

  –You the one who pulled him out, Michael? one of the coppers asks the Major.

  Never knew his name was Michael. They know him, and seem friendly enough, don’t treat him like a loony or anything.

  –Alright, Michael? one of the ambulance men asks.

  The police step back and the ambulance crew take over, peeling Smiles’s eyelids back and using their radio, bringing a canister over and slipping a mask over his face. Next out is a stretcher, and they lift Smiles on, carry him to the ambulance.

  –What happened, son? one of the coppers asks, the first time they’ve spoken to me.

  I tell them some older boys threw us in the canal.

  –Do you know who they were?

  I say I don’t. I’m not stupid. You don’t grass people up.

  –It was a youth called Gary Wells who led the attack, the Major says, taking charge. I recognised the other lads, but don’t know their names. They attacked the younger boys, Joe Martin and Gary Dodds, punched and knocked them down, then kicked them while they were defenceless on the ground. They threw Martin in the canal, and tipped Dodds in afterwards. Wells was the ringleader, but the others are also responsible for their actions.

  I wonder where the Major was standing.

  –Thanks, Michael, the other copper says.

  I tell them that the Major pulled Smiles out of the water. I wasn’t strong enough to lift him up.

  –Well done, Michael.

  –I should’ve come down to the towpath right away. I didn’t expect Dodds to stay under the water and walked to the top of the bridge to see them swim out. I didn’t realise the boy was unconscious. The other lad got out, caught his breath, realised what had happened, and went back in. As soon as I saw Dodds face down I crossed the road and made my way along the path. I couldn’t get there any sooner.

  –You did well, says the same copper. It’s not your fault. You’re a hero. You both did your best.

  They put Smiles in the ambulance, and I follow him.

  –We’ll be down in a bit to take a statement, says one of the policemen before I’m shut inside.

  I sit in a corner of the ambulance as the two men work on Smiles, rubbing his skin and wrapping blankets around his body, one of them feeling his pulse. I just stare at his face and it’s like I don’t know him any more. All of a sudden he’s this giant dummy, his body made of wax, the dirt in the canal smearing his clothes and face, all sorts of brown and green smudges. I look down at the floor, feel the scum inside me, millions of tiny green buds sticking to the walls of my lungs, slime in there mixing with the blood, oily canal water and too much lager. My fingers are red from where I was scratching at the bank, sharp rocks and brambles I suppose, ripe blackberry bushes. I suck my thumb. It’s blood. And the ambulance is heavy with chemicals, the light bright, but still it stinks of death and decay, the men in here busy with Smiles, their faces serious. They check that the oxygen mask is still in place, the bell ringing as we race towards the hospital.

  –What happened? one of them asks.

  Just tell him we got beaten up and thrown in the water.

  –Why did they do it?

  I don’t know what to say really, start choking and puke up over the floor. He reaches for another blanket.

  –Put this around your shoulders, son. You’ll be alright. You’ve swallowed water and it has to come back out. Don’t worry if you make a mess. We’ll mop it up easy enough. At least you’re alive.

  I wrap the blanket around me and he goes back to Smiles, who could be dead, the way he looks, but they’d have covered his head by now, same as in the films. He’s going to die. I know Smiles is as good as dead, think about what the man said, why we got done like that, and it’s just something that happens. I look through the glass and watch the road stretch out behind us, the gasworks the size of a toy now, canal buried away, out of sight. None of it seems real, the sound of the ambulance and the men in their uniforms, Smiles spewing, hair sticking up from the water, thick brown scum pumping out of his guts.

  –Right, let’s go, one of the nurses says when we reach Emergency. Follow us in. We’ll take care of you. Your mate’s going to be alright.

  The next two weeks pass slowly. I catch the bus to work every day except Sunday, sit by the window wondering what’s going to happen next, if Smiles is going to live or die, don’t even bother looking in the windows for that blonde in the red stockings. When the bus turns on to the main road by the gasworks I make myself think about something else, don’t look towards the canal. Smiles is in a coma. He never woke up when they got him to hospital. After the rush, seeing the nurses working on him in the ambulance, loading him on a trolley and running it deep into the building, swing doors slamming shut in my face, everything stops. The police come and ask me questions. A doctor takes me in a room and gives me an examination. Tony and his old man turn up, and I talk to them for a bit, tell them what happened, then the police give me a lift home. Smiles is the one in trouble. I’m lucky, the boy who got off, and until he lives or dies nobody really knows what to do.

  I go back to the hospital next day, and Stalin sits me down and says the best way to get through the bad times is to keep busy, that’s what he’s found in life. He’s been doing it for years, grabbing as much overtime as he can so he can blank out the nightmare of his wife cutting her wrists. The money comes in handy, of course it does, but really he wants to knacker himself out. He misses her like nothing else, and says if he didn’t have the boys he’d probably do himself in as well. He thinks about her every day, talks to her in his head, runs over their life together and the things they had to look forward to, nothing is ever perfect, people make mistakes, but there’s always better times around the corner. If you want them. He knows he’s been hard on his sons and hopes he’ll get a chance to put things right. Just because he’s middle-aged doesn’t mean he has the answers. I feel sorry for him, look at the floor as he talks. I see him differently now, try and feel what he must feel. It’s the same with the Major. I don’t think of him as a loony any more. Stalin says that if you find one woman in your life who you really love you’ve done well, but the woman he loved is dead and there’ll never be anyone to take her place. It’s the same with friends. If you have one or two real mates during your life, proper friends who’ll always be there, then you’re lucky.

  Tony doesn’t hang about, goes straight round Wells’s house the day after with a baseball bat, but Wells and the others have been nicked and are tucked away in the cells. They’re charged and released on bail, but first the old bill go round and tell Tony to behave himself, say they’ll have him if he goes looking for revenge. They’re watching him, and he tells me he’s going to leave it for a while, till after the case comes up in court. But he’s going to have them, specially Wells. When he’s had a couple of days to think about things he realises he can’t get himself nicked right now, not with Smiles sick, that’s not going to help anyone. Him and his dad take turns sitting with Smiles, waiting for him to wake up, and they’re close suddenly, same as a proper family, and it’s obvious Tony is the strong one,
the old man relying on him.

  I take Stalin’s advice and work my bollocks off down the orchard, keep away from the others and get stuck in filling boxes, don’t waste time sitting in the sun enjoying the heat, watching a plane fly across the sky, stuffing my face with cherries. This is the real world now, and things have changed. When I get home at night I’m too tired to think. I go down the hospital every day, see Smiles in bed hooked up to a machine, tubes in his nose and mouth, eyelids swollen, lips bruised, cheeks puffed up same as the bruised apples on the farm, except the smell is different, clean and chemical, the smell of rotting fruit a lot better somehow. The nurses run around trying to cope, but take the time to stop and tell me he’s going to be alright, that everyone has to keep their chin up and be positive. They don’t forget my face.

  Tony says the doctors are worried that if, they mean when, Smiles comes out of the coma, there might be lasting damage from him being under the water for so long and starved of air. They’re talking about brain damage, but don’t use those words. He’s wrapped up tight and one day I see the doctor stick a needle in his arm, push the plunger when he finds a vein, emptying the liquid into Smiles’s blood. There’s nothing we can do, have to leave it to the professionals. If Tony and Stalin are there, I give it five minutes, show myself and get off home, don’t want to be in the way. Otherwise I have a look at Smiles, drink a cup of tea and sit around, not knowing what to do. Stalin is a battered old man, puts his hand on my shoulder one day and says I’m a good boy. Whatever happens he won’t forget how I tried to save his son. I don’t know if he’s right. Maybe I should’ve done better.

  I don’t go out at night, watch the telly with Mum and Dad, sit in my room listening to the radio, phone-in shows, rubbish really, and I suppose the people who call it don’t have anyone to talk to so phone a stranger and share their secrets with the rest of the country. I don’t play any records. Dave and Chris come round and we sit in my room sipping a bottle of vodka. Dave doesn’t take the piss like he normally does.

  Wells and the others are being done for attempted murder and Major Tom is going to be the star witness. Dave reckons the Major will be looking forward to the case, and Chris tries to work out how long they’ll get. One night I get off the bus and walk over to the Major’s house to tell him thanks for pulling us out of the canal and saving our lives, but his mum won’t let me see him, her face split by the chain as she hisses that the evidence mustn’t be corrupted, witnesses should be left alone. I ask her to thank him for me and she smiles and says her boy’s a good boy, one of the best, he’ll always be special, her pride and joy.

  If Smiles dies they’ll probably get done for murder, and there’s a politician on the telly one night saying hanging should be brought back for murder and terrorism. Smiles could die any second. I could’ve died. And revenge makes sense when you’re there and know the truth, but at the same time, even though I hate Wells, I can’t really believe they wanted to drown us. The man on the telly goes on and on, his face red, eyes popping, Dad’s swearing at him, Mum saying to turn it over if he doesn’t like the programme, why bother watching. The idea sticks in my head, same as a scratched single that hops back to the same line, repeating itself over and over. I can see the hangman fitting a noose around Wells’s neck, same as in the Westerns, a quick kick of the legs and instant death. John Wayne rides off into the sunset. I don’t think I’ll ever forget what it felt like being stuck under the water, not knowing which way was up, the panic as I thought I was going to drown. I don’t want the same thing to happen to anyone else, and that’s what hanging would mean. Wells and the others were probably pissed and didn’t think it through. Even if they were sober they must’ve thought we’d swim to the side and climb out.

  I remember how Wells ripped the badge off Smiles and used the same hand to punch him. Smiles liked that badge, and the thing that gets me is that when he was on the ground knocked out Wells pulled the pin straight, leant down and pushed it into Smiles’s skin. He had to think what he was doing and the hook fitting the pin to the badge was stuck in as well. That’s worse than chucking us off the bridge. You sort of accept that getting a kicking late at night is part of life, and it was only that bloke asking why we got done that made me think about it, and all I could really come up with is that’s the way things are, something that happens, but sticking the pin into his face isn’t normal, same as Wells pulling a knife on Ali. Most blokes don’t like that sort of thing, reckon carrying a knife is poofy, or for foreigners, fists and boots fair enough. Nobody should have to go around worrying about getting their heads kicked in for nothing. Not really.

  The days pass, turn into weeks, and it sort of gets accepted that Smiles is in a coma and could be like that for months, even years. Maybe he’ll stay in a coma for the rest of his life. I never thought of that at first, just saw life and death, a choice between the two, one or the other. I dream about the canal, wake up with a choking feeling, but I don’t dip back in to the dreams and try to remember, let them fade, get up and run for the bus, make sure I beat the driver to the stop. I work hard and the money piles up. If Smiles recovers I’m going to buy him one of those flash record cases he always wanted, a professional job. You can get them mail order. Sometimes I think about him as a pensioner, stuck in a coma, or mental, and you get people like that, hidden away behind hospital walls. I remember how he used to go around selling those Sunny Smiles photos, collecting money for the orphans. Doesn’t make much sense it happening to someone like that, a kid who wouldn’t do anyone any harm, but there again, maybe it does.

  It’s a strange time, and I feel fit, speeding right up so the woman checking the boxes asks me what’s the matter, wants to know if I’m on drugs. She’s only half joking, and I tell her it’s practice. Really, it’s making the effort, and I push myself harder, get into a rhythm, stop daydreaming, stay up in the tree when Roy comes wandering past looking for someone to sit and have a smoke with, and I think about the strawberries but they mean working with other people and it’s better here, where I don’t have to speak to anyone, talking bollocks when I’ve got other things on my mind, wondering why it was me who got away. Suppose I feel guilty, but nobody says anything, know it’s just me, except there was a minute or two when I only thought about myself, living in my own little world. It’s something that nags away.

  Then one day I come in after work and Mum says Stalin has been round and Smiles is awake and sitting up in bed. I can see him tomorrow if I want. This big weight slides off my shoulders. I eat quickly and have a wash, change my clothes, knock for the others, pass the good news on. It’s Friday night and we’re out for the first time since it happened. I’ve got a wad of pound notes in my pocket and buy Dave and Chris a drink in the pub, then a couple more, walk to the disco gobbing on the ground, trying to trip each other up, taking the piss, clicking our hands, snapping the fingers, Dave cracking his knuckles, a double-jointed wanker. We pay our money and go inside, buy cans and sip them standing by the wall, watch the girls dancing, and when the DJ starts playing his punk records it goes on longer than normal and it’s obvious punk is taking over the world, smashing the discos and opening music up.

  We’re feeling good, know tonight is going to be the same as any other Friday night down here, more or less, things shifting around a bit, and that’s not a bad thing either, we belong here, this is our world, and the thing is, at the end of the day, when it comes down to it, we’re just three punk rockers, brick chuckers, lucky fuckers, fifteen-year-old boot boys with zero chance of a bunk-up even though we look the business with our stud earrings and cap-sleeved T-shirts, standing on the edge of the dance floor sucking cans of lager getting to love the horrible taste, eyes darting from one pair of bouncing tits to the next straining for an eyeful of anything worth a wank, and the Ramones whizz through ‘Sheena Is A Punk Rocker’, it wouldn’t be Friday night without that one, and a few people start pogoing, taking the piss, things getting back to normal with Smiles on the mend, and he’ll be wishing he was
down here, knows the night off by heart but won’t want to miss out, wishes he was standing with the lads, and the girls are looking good in their black pencil skirts and stockings, skinny bums and legs, C&A tops stained with rum and coke and halves of lager and black, balancing on high heels moving foot to foot so they don’t snap an ankle, hanging around next to the bloke spinning records, and he’s alright, like everyone’s alright, he has to keep all sorts of people happy, Tracy Mercer up close with one of the Jeffersons, Soldier Barry back in Northern Ireland, out on patrol, wandering along a grim Belfast street waiting for a sniper to splatter his brains all over the pavement, nobody deserves that, Debbie dancing round her handbag with three other girls, talking to this boy who normally would be a wanker but tonight is just another kid doing what comes natural, and Debbie’s alright as well, Tracy dressed up nice with a Jefferson hand drifting over her bum, tracing fingers along the outside of her leg, and she gets in closer, sucking at his tongue, Dave going to the bar and buying another three cans, adding lime for a change of taste, bored with straight lager, coming back and handing the drinks out, pointing at a redhead a few feet away, look at the fucking tits on that, Chris’s eyes popping out of his head, and Johnny Rotten’s out of the sleeve, the needle hitting ‘Anarchy In The UK’, and the whole place goes up, the music racing through me, and ten seconds into the song a big bundle starts as the bouncers and the Jeffersons clash on the dance floor, Tracy in the corner looking scared, on her own now, a couple of girls crying, and the DJ can’t be bothered, lets the record run, and the Jeffersons have brought a crew with them tonight, carrying on from a few weeks back, and they’re really sticking the boot in, a big gap appearing now, the bouncers backed up by some blokes they know, and the DJ realises the place is going to get badly wrecked if he’s not careful, rips the needle over the vinyl, goes into Bowie’s ‘Life On Mars’, shaking his head behind the turntable, and he’s still got his sense of humour, isn’t tempted by Elton John’s boot boy classic ‘Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting’, and the aggro spreads towards the door, Micky Todd coming out of the shadows and cracking one of the brothers on the arm with his hammer, stepping back next to Delaney and Charlie May, and he’s a silly boy, a couple of the Jefferson crew peeling off and giving the boys a pasting, and the bouncers move outside as the Jeffersons get all their boys together and leave, breaking the front windows as they go, and while all this is going on some pisshead is trying to tap Dave for 10p, it happens every week, regular as clockwork, there’s always people taking the piss, boys a bit bigger and older than you looking for 10p to tide them over, that’s how it is, they jump you on canal bridges and put the boot in, give you a kicking when you’re not doing anyone any harm, because you’re a punk rocker, a Paki, a pikey, a white boy, got hair that’s too long or hair that’s too short, drink in another pub, live in another street, it doesn’t matter, and I just lean past Dave and tell the bloke to fuck off, never mind he’s twenty or so, and surprise surprise he does just that, and there’s flashing lights outside now, things calming down, and this is my life, this is England, and the DJ must be thinking the same thing because Bowie fades and ‘God Save The Queen’ pumps out, he knows he should play a love song, a brain-dead Top Of The Pops hit that’ll knock everyone out, something mushy to keep us quiet, but he can’t help it, sticks with the Pistols.