Ross Raisin - Waterline

It is getting darker and he is cold. Beans has gone for a crap in the bushes beyond the play area. Away on the road, a streetlamp flickering on. Then another. All along the side of the park they are coming on at random intervals, and he realizes that it’s the ones in the darkest spots where the smaller trees are coming to leaf which are turning on first. Interesting. The wee things you notice.

Beans is shaking him on the shoulder.

‘Come on, gonnae wake up?’

‘What?’

‘Breakfast.’ The familiar grin. His breakfast grin. ‘I’ve been researching.’

He gets himself up off the ground. It is drizzling and his back is soaked, some of it sweat probably, although he doesn’t feel too bad this morning. Their money has ran out, so they haven’t drunk the full bucket the last couple of days. They get walking through the rain until a short while later they arrive at a building that looks at first like an office block, but when they go through the glass doors and bare lobby it opens into a large hall, full of scaffers. Bright overhead lights, tables, din. Beans turns to him: ‘Ye okay? Check the food, eh. No bad.’ He can’t see any food. The place is hoaching with scaffers, shuffling about, yapping, staring. ‘Ye coming?’ Beans is gone ahead and he hurries after him, clinging behind like a wean, he’s that dependent. See what if Beans leaves him? Gets so sick of him laggered onto his back like some diseased lump that he gives him the slip? The possibility of it makes him start to panic as he follows on to a trestle table with large pots of food on it. He waits in behind Beans, copies how he gets his meal and moves to the next area for a tea. They sit down at an empty table and eat hungrily. Toast. Scrambled eggs. ‘Pretty good, eh? I should’ve minded this place earlier. It’s one of the best. Only open a couple of hours but, so ye have to be quick.’

A young guy is watching them. He is sat at another table with a couple of others, forking egg into his mouth but clear enough looking over. Beans doesn’t seem to notice, or else he’s ignoring it. Mick keeks away. He wants to be out of here. Beans has other ideas though: ‘Finish this and we’ll go the showers, okay?’

In another room there are washing and drying machines, and cardboard boxes full of clothes. Beans is off through a doorway and he is left stood there unsure what to do. An old woman with a name badge hung around her neck comes up and tells him to help himself to some of the clothes, so he rummles through and pulls out a faded black pair of trackie bottoms and a grey shirt with a dark smudge on the collar.

In the next room, through a door marked MEN, there is a queue for showers, and Beans is further up the way already. They aren’t communal, thank Christ: there’s five or six separate ones, each with a curtain, though a couple of the men at the front are down to their pants already. Fucking terrible, the state of them. Scars and veins and jaundice.

He waits until he is inside a cubicle before he starts to undress. Even removing his coat feels odd. He’s no took it off since Beans gave it him. Then he peels off the rest, all of it damp and rotten, clabbered to his skin, and he gets in the shower. It’s been that long since he’s seen himself in the scuddy that he doesn’t recognize himself. As if the body isn’t his; it belongs to another time when nakedness was something that had to be dealt with on a daily basis, and now he doesn’t own it — he’s removed himself from his body like he has from everything else. The only clue that it’s there the now: that it hurts. There are bruises on his legs, down his front, his hips, fucking everywhere. His forearm skin is turned loose and chickeny; he pulls on it, the spring gone. The penis down there. Genuine difficult to believe that is his. He puts a hand around it, tries to mind what it means, the having of a penis. Nothing’s doing but. His dobber’s no sure about it either, and the two of them dither there for a while, waiting for something to happen, a connection. There is none. Or maybe it’s just that neither of them are too comfortable about the line of half-naked scaffers queuing outside, which is in fact fair enough, being honest.

He gives himself a good wash, using the soap from the dispenser to rub over his head and his body, and special attention to the feet, which are started looking like a couple of raw beef kidneys. It feels good. The force of the water. Cleaning. Paying attention to all these parts that he’s forgot about. The belly button. Armpits. Nipples, christsake.

When he comes out, he goes in the toilets and takes a very satisfying crap. The first time in a long while he’s no had to sneak into a pub for one, or go in the park with a stolen toilet roll.

He puts his dirty clothes in a washer. Pretty pleased as well with these new ones. The shirt is a decent fit, and the trousers comfy enough around the waist, even if they are a wee bit on the short side. No the less, see even if his socks are on show, he definitely doesn’t look half as daft as Beans does. He clocks him out in the hall and goes toward him, chuckling.

‘Jesus. Check you.’

He is wearing a pair of black jeans and a white denim jacket, the both of them a fair few sizes too small for him. Beans grins. ‘Gallus, eh?’ Then he holds a finger in the air and spins around slowly, showing the back: ATLANTA HAWKS.

‘If you say so, pal. If you say so.’

Beans goes back to the clothing room, saying that he forgot to look for another pair of socks, and Mick moves over to the juice table. There are plenty of name-badge people milling about, topping up cups, handing out leaflets, chatting. They don’t seem like Hallelujahs. Any case, there isn’t anything religious on the walls, only posters everywhere — chiropodist, walk-in clinic, housing advice — things he should be finding out about, probably, but the awareness of it only makes him feel the more sluggish. Through in the clothes room he can see Beans talking to somebody. He is pointing a thumb at his jacket, showing it off, but suddenly a hand shoots out from behind the door frame and grabs him by the collar, pulling him forwards. Beans stumbling, out of sight. There is too much noise in the hall to hear what is going on. He moves quickly toward the room, a few looking in now.

It is the young guy that had been staring. He is stood right up to Beans, putting the face on him.

‘Fucking give it me.’

Another guy as well, behind him, eyeballing Beans, who is rocking on his feet, confused. ‘Look, see I got it out the box, that’s what I —’ but he is getting shoved again, the veins on the guy’s neck standing out and Beans falling to the floor, straight onto his arse. Mick rushes forward, standing in front of him before the guy can stick the boot on. ‘Leave it, come on. What ye doing? Leave it.’ The young guy is looking at him, this odd smile, like he knows him.

‘The jacket’s mine.’

Name-badge men are coming in the door. Beans behind him, getting up. The situation as it is, he looks even more ridiculous right now in the tight denims. The guy’s pal is pulling on his shoulder — ‘Come on, let’s go’ — but he’s a fair solid build and he’s no budging, and it’s pretty obvious that the jacket cannot be his because it’s way too small for him. In an instant the two men are barging out the room, pushing past the name badges, and it is over, just like that. Beans looks shook up. He is fairly shook up himself; but, through it, a small feeling of elation.

Nobody is moving, and it’s Beans who is the first to speak, looking out the door through the bodies. ‘Psychies,’ he says, going over to the box and starting to root about, still after his socks.

On the way back to the park, carrying a new blanket and their cleaned clothes in carriers, Beans doesn’t talk about what has just went on. He patters on as normal, like nothing’s happened, telling him instead about the holidays he went on as a wean. Mick has the incident on his mind but. Wondering if Beans noticed his part in it even. ‘Fair Fortnight, ye mind it? We’d go to Rothesay. Always there, nay discussions. One time my maw says let’s go someplace different this year, maybe go see her cousins and that in Irvine, but the da he tells her we’re going to Rothesay and that’s that.’