Jon McGregor - Even the Dogs

Got out the cells and there weren’t no one around. But he found a dealer he knew, got himself a bag, got himself off down the carpark basement which was the closest place he could find to cook up and he was pretty fucking desperate by then.

And how long had Ant been lying on his back in that wasteground, waiting for someone to come by and help. All night it must have been. Spent the evening drinking with some kids he didn’t know, and when he woke up they’d all gone and they’d taken his crutches with them. Couldn’t get far without them. Couldn’t get nowhere but. So he’d stayed where he was, and waited. He’d done it before like. What else could he do. Watched the stars going out above him, the sky going purple as the night drained away out of it, the sun breaking into the morning from somewhere in the corner of his eye. Weeds and flowers coming into focus, dew forming on petals and leaves. A spider stringing up a web between two thistle stems. Moths and bees spilling out into the day. Weren’t all that bad a place to have spent the night. Bit cold though but. Bit boring after a while.

And then there was Steve, looking down at him, the glare of the sun behind his head and his knob already poking out of his trousers. Great big-bellied sod with his ruined hand hanging by his side and his eyes all screwed up with drink and confusion.

Like some kind of saviour but.

The two of them hobbling out of there, Ant’s arm around Steve’s shoulder and Steve’s arm around Ant’s waist and Ant hopping along the trodden-down path. Looking like brothers in arms or some bollocks like that. Talking all the way to the day centre. Looking like a couple of kids in a three-legged race. I did have a peg-leg but would you credit I managed to lose it, Ant said. He was on the waiting list for another one but he was going to have to go back to his home town for it and it was taking him a while to deal with a few like situations. Like someone nicking his crutches the night before, for one.

His empty trouser leg hanging and swinging like a long wet rag.

Soon found out they’d both been in the army. Ant had only done a couple of years but that was good enough for Steve. Hadn’t even been out long. Went to Afghanistan, he said, Helmand. Came back without firing a shot.

The clock on the wall pointing almost to morning now and our waiting coming to an end. Robert somewhere behind those doors. Boxes of gloves on shelves along the wall. Deep stainless-steel sinks. Voices somewhere in the building, laughter, doors opening and closing. Someone saying We’ll be bringing that big one through this morning. All of us here, standing or sitting or leaning against the wall, still waiting. It’s something we know how to do. Something we’ve had the practice at. We’ve got the time. All the time in the world.

Steve waited a few weeks before asking Ant what had happened to his leg. Waited until they’d sorted out a new place to stay, got it cleaned up and settled in. Told him about Port Stanley again, and about going to Bosnia although he left out all the stuff about what was her name, Maria, Martina, Marie. Marie. Got to the bit where the policeman shut the doors of the truck again, and gave them back their passports, and said So, now, where you want go?

Ant cooking up a big spoonful of gear while Steve told the story, and Steve watching carefully to see what he did. The spoon, the filter, the water, the citric, the handful of wrapped needles and syringes. More complicated than I thought, he said, and Ant only nodded, concentrating.

So we told him the name of the town again, Steve said, and this policeman just shook his head. Just like that. Looked off down the valley and shook his head. And he goes, No, no. You do not go there. You can not.

Ant looked at him, holding the syringe up to the light and tapping the barrel as he eased a single drop of liquid from the needle’s eye.

And then, Steve said, then this policeman goes No. You do not go. There is nothing for you there. There, even the dogs are dead. Ant shuffled across the floor, rolled up Steve’s sleeve, and looped a belt around his arm. Steve watched him. Even the bloody dogs, he said, shaking his head.

Ant looked up at him, stroking the pale skin on Steve’s inner elbow, and pressed the needle against the thin blue line of his vein, and just before he pushed it in Steve said, like to distract himself, What about you mate? What happened to your leg? Ant smiled, and slowly pushed the plunger down, and Steve didn’t say any more.

Didn’t have to wait long to find out what all the fuss was about. Like being wrapped up warmer and warmer and warmer. Like being cocooned in blankets and silk. Like more than any of these things. Like being held.

We stand, and we sit, and we lean against the wall. We wait. What else can we do. We look at the clock, and we see its hands stretch towards the morning. We hear footsteps, and the jangle of keys. The door is unlocked and opened, and the lights are turned on, and the room fills with people.

Ant knows about waiting though but. We see him now, we look and we see him now, waiting for help, bleeding into the silenced ground, lying in a field beside a road with the plants flattened beneath him as if he’d fallen from the sky. None of the pain he would have expected. Not yet. None of the screaming and panic and flailing around for something to be done. Only this whispering numbness, this stunned state in which it takes him a moment to understand where he is. To understand that some homemade bomb has thrown their Land Rover into the air, has blown another hole in the road, has probably killed one or more of his mates and done who knows what to him. Lifted him from the surface of the earth and hurled him down into this field of waist-high stalks. The flower heads looking down at him where he lies, waiting. For someone to come. For some sensation to come seeping back into his body. The tips of his fingers, the ends of his toes. The blue sky. The poppies. The nodding poppy heads. The smell of smoke, and burning, and hot, baked earth. The sounds coming back with a rush, like he was being lifted from water. Gunfire, and shouts, and heavy bootsteps across the dry soil. Faces over him, helmeted faces, and bodies dangling with equipment, and then hands upon him, searching him, cutting away his clothes, touching his face. Hands which come away from his body covered in blood. Gloved hands. Voices telling him he’s going to be okay. Voices telling him they’re going to get him out of there. Voices asking where the bloody helicopter is, where the hell those bastards are now. Someone saying they were giving him a shot of morphine to keep him going until the helicopter arrived. And everything then okay but. The fading away of the gunfire, and of everything else.

The many hands holding him tight and holding him warm and holding him safe above the good dark earth. We see the poppy heads, nodding and bowing in the breeze. We see the farmers coming to inspect their crops, walking slowly through the planted lines, treading on fallen petals, checking the curling crowns of the ripening pods. We see the farmers returning in the mid-afternoon to score shallow wounds in each pod and let the milk-white sap seep out into the warming sun, and harden and cool until the farmers come back and scrape blisters of blackened gum into tin cans dangling from their necks. As he lies there watching, waiting but. We see the gum scooped out of the tin cans and wrapped in leaves and laid out to dry in the sun, and pressed into dung-like lumps which are sold for good money to men who come rattling into the valley in old Russian saloons with loose floor panels which open up to swallow the merchandise and go clattering away again into the hills. The sound of the helicopters in the distance. The cars grinding over the mountain passes and turning off the road by an old hill-trail, the men slinging the black opium lumps into bags across their shoulders and walking a few miles to a pair of old iron shacks beneath an overhanging rock, where boys stripped to the waist are tending fires and oil-drums and squatting over fat sack-cloth bundles which ooze dark stains into the earth. We see the banked fires beneath the oil-drums burning all through the night, the boys stirring the mixture and scooping out twigs and soil and leaves. Other boys hoisting bags of fertiliser into the drums, stirring it up and straining the mixture through rice sacks and into vast cooking pots placed over other, smaller fires. More chemicals, more straining and pressing and stirring, as dawn lights up the horizon and an oily dark gunge is spread out to dry in the rising sun. Strange light falling through the fields. Golden light. Faces set against the sky and the sound of a helicopter somewhere and a voice saying Hang in there, pal, you’ll be all right. Boys’ voices chattering on in some language like Afghanistani or whatever it is, boiling up a kettle of tea and chewing on handfuls of bread, pressing the coffee-coloured powder into brick-shaped blocks the size of those pocket-dictionaries the officers use when they’re out in the villages winning hearts and minds. Or maybe the size of those fat satellite phones they use for calling down airstrikes but.