Jon McGregor - Even the Dogs

Fucking Sammy. Sitting there all day like the lord of the manor, like a watchman or something, and no one ever gets a straight answer out of his mouth. Never goes in the day centres or nothing, never see him in the benefits office or none of that. Must have like a keyworker sorting it all out. Lives in one of those supported-housing places on The Green, one of the ones for the old blokes who the keyworkers call what is it entrenched and everyone else calls fucked. Old blokes who’ve been drinking for years and can’t hardly remember why they started. They’ve probably got stories and that. But we aint got the time for

Rattles trying to catch up all the time, and every day gets harder to keep ahead. Like that time the police had some big day of action with all cameras and battering rams and whatever and for about two and a half days no one could score a thing. Ended up riding it out in some old caravan he’d broken into down the allotments, laid out on this mildew-rotten mattress that might as well have been a bed of fucking nails and needles and pins. Couldn’t get no rest, couldn’t get comfortable or keep still for the cramps and the pains shooting through him, the sickness and the diarrhoea pouring out long after it felt like there was nothing left. Scoring the new gear after that though, that was something, that was a lifesaver, like a, fucking, a parachute opening or

When it’s been on you once you don’t want it on you again. People talk about detox and if that’s what it means they can go to fuck. Hear that rattle dragging along behind you all day when you’re blagging and scoring and cooking and fixing and it’s all you can do to keep it

Funny thing with Laura was she always made out like she weren’t even an addict at all. That was a laugh. That was one of the first things they’d hit her with if she really did go to the rehab, before they even let her upstairs to unpack her bags and that they’d be giving it all There’s no room for denial here, Laura, the first stage is acceptance, Laura. She always made out that she’d got in to gear by mistake and now she was only taking enough to keep her going, just like to hold her while she sorted one or two other things out. While she sorted her entire life out. Just enough to keep me well, she said. Talking about applying for college courses and access courses and all that, talking about getting some housing sorted out but maybe some housing in another town because maybe she needed to move away from all the influences here. Just enough to maintain me while I sort

But still if he hadn’t laughed, she wouldn’t. Don’t bother talking to me again, she said. Don’t even come looking for me. I don’t want to see your four-eyed face again. I need people around me who can support my fucking choices, she said, and that was mostly something her keyworker had said and she was just saying it again like a parrot. So he’d called her a bitch and a slag, he’d taken his works and his gear and he’d told her to fuck herself, and he’d slammed the door so hard that more plaster came off the wall around the frame. It was automatic. It was part of the script. Never occurred to him to

Or if we lived in a hot country we would more or less just roll him in sheets of sackcloth and put him on a funeral pyre made of olive branches and packing crates and old car tyres and fold him up in the middle of it, all of us stood around saying like prayers and that while we watch the flames lick and tease around his body and the sackcloth glowing and sparking as it fell from off him, raking up the embers and stacking them over his cooking flesh to make sure he burnt completely, fucking praying and singing as his skull opened out with a soft pop and his bones cracked and splintered into ash. Instead of this. Instead of hiding him away in a van and sneaking him out through the deserted

Through the darkened windows we watch him. Danny. Desperate now in a way only we can know, his ragged trousers catching under his feet and his blankets sodden, Einstein leaping and barking as she climbs through a gap in the fence which straggles around the emptied streets and maisonettes of the old Parkside Estate, the last of the tenants cleared out two years ago now and the demolition still hardly begun. Unless you count what the kids have done already, the windows all smashed, the doors torn from their hinges and sent sprawling across the streets and yards. Bathtubs and wash-basins thrown from fourth-floor landings and sinking into shrubberies grown wild on human manure. Black scorch-marks like smudged mascara around the gaping windows of burnt-out flats. And a great red X painted on the front of every flat to tell the contractors that the services have been safely cut off, and to tell the squatters and junkies and dealers that they can settle in for a while without fear of being disturbed. The van moves off along the road again, down into the underpass beneath the railway sidings, and we lose sight of Danny as he steps into a dark abandoned stairwell with Einstein still chasing at his

Mike weren’t even there though. Got up to the flat where the two of them had been staying for near enough a month but he weren’t there. Would have been crashed out on a pile of blankets or standing at the window or even cooking up but he weren’t there. Weren’t no one there. Weren’t nowhere else Mike could be he should have been there if he weren’t at Robert’s, if he weren’t at the centre, but he’d gone off somewhere it looked like so that’s one more cunt letting him

Stairs all slipping with ice and piss and the handrails ripped out from the walls and the sickness coming on bad. Voices coming out of darkened doorways, mutters and murmurs and moans. Shouts from another block across the courtyard, splintering wood and a silenced scream. Dogs barking and being told to stop and barking some more and the flickering orange light of flames against the dark evening sky and the sparks flying upwards into the clouds

Thought Mike had maybe gone in a different flat for some reason but he tried a few and he weren’t in there and the cramping and the aching and the rattling was so bad that he couldn’t hardly stand up straight couldn’t hardly walk and nothing now he needed he

Mike had never ripped him off on a deal except one time or two times and that was different that didn’t

Kids coming up the stairwell shouting and breaking bottles so he went back the other

He’d had a reason those times, Mike had, he’d told him, his voice low and fierce in his ear going I’m sorry and that la but I thought you weren’t coming back. The kid Benny boy said you’d gone off with Laura an that so I thought you were sorted, an I heard these blokes you know those blokes I told you about what I saw down the centre them ones what have been after me since that kid told them I grassed them up, I heard they was on their way round to tax us so I thought safest bet was to use all the gear so they couldn’t take it off us, plus that way if I did get a kicking it wouldn’t hardly hurt anyhow you know what I mean la. So that’s all it was I wasn’t trying to shaft you, you know that la, you know I wouldn’t do that, it was just a pure out-of-necessity thing you know what I’m saying it was just, only it turned out Benny boy was wrong and them blokes didn’t turn up neither, but still like it was I had the best of intentions it was out of necessity it was the mother of what is it like you know what I’m saying la

Been sleeping in any old place before they found the Parkside flats. Doorways and alleyways. A tunnel down by the incinerator where these huge heating pipes go under the shopping centre, it was warm enough in there but there were too many rats, big fierce cunts that even Einstein was smart enough to leave alone, so they gave up staying in there. Tried sleeping in the toilets sometimes but they mostly got kicked out. Sleep weren’t even the right word for it. One last fix to get their heads down and then it was like no more than a blink before they were awake again and cold and sick and crawling around looking for the next score. Might have been a few hours but it never felt more than a minute. Woke in some yard one morning and found a whole bunch of dead mice about the place, frozen solid. Lucky they woke up at all that time. Some cunts don’t. Easy to get too cold and not wake up, easy to get damp and stay damp and not do any fucking thing about it, numbed out by the gear and it don’t feel no different anyway. End up frozen solid like them mice. Take a last dig and curl up and go to sleep and never fucking wake up. Some bloke looks like he’s still snoozing in the morning only he’s gone milky-blue and he’s stone cold to the touch. It happens. There’s worse ways to go. But the Parkside flats was better than that. Four walls and a roof and no one to bother them. They could even leave it and come back, there were plenty to go round and they didn’t have nothing to nick. Made a change. Made the days easier when they knew where they were going to sleep. Sometimes seemed like he’d spent half his life looking for a bed. All the running and breaking and shouting and arguing and stealing and it was all about getting somewhere warm and dry to cook up and get some rest. Somewhere safe and quiet and it weren’t never easy to find. Don’t matter how many blankets there are if it’s in the wrong place. Don’t matter if it’s cotton sheets and feather duvets when there’s no lock on the door and a mean bastard in the house. Don’t matter if there’s a lock when someone