James Kelman - Dirt Road

Murdo hadnt thought of it before, just how close they were, Dad and Uncle John, and Aunt Maureen.

Uncle John patted Murdo on the side of the shoulder. You’ve had hard knocks Murdo boy, that’s what ye get in families. So you got to stick together. Folks get hit by things, tragedies and whatnot, they stick together.

Aunt Maureen peered at Murdo. Oh now he is like his mother?

You talking his mother or Tommy’s?

Both, she said.

Uncle John laughed and she did too but it was how Dad laughed! That was the real amazing thing. Dad just burst out with it like a real actual laugh! The three of them laughing away. Murdo laughed seeing them. Uncle John went off talking about some old guy, a distant cousin. Alabama in the old days. Kentucky too, where Aunt Maureen came from. Then a bird landed on the grass a little way down. It walked about. Not hopping, walking. It was weird-looking, with a long tail and a bluish purple colour. Uncle John was saying about another of the old relations, Uncle Donald, who married a woman from Knoxville called Molly.

Related to the Mulhearns, said Aunt Maureen, their daughter married a Gillespie and moved to Arizona.

He was a character, said Uncle John.

He was a mean nasty old man. That’s why his family left; soon as they were old enough.

He had a hard life.

Huh! Aunt Maureen shook her head.

He did.

Dont go excusing him now you know how he was to that poor woman.

Yeah and I’m not excusing him. Uncle John continued on about Uncle Donald and how he was and Aunt Maureen too, who knew the old woman involved. Dad was listening, and seemed to know the people or maybe had heard of them or something and was enjoying it in that relaxed way Murdo hadnt seen for a long while.

That bird was still there, pecking about in the grass. It had a strange face. At the same time ye could see how the face of a bird can be like the face of a human. There was a famous painting of a man with the head of a bird. This one had bright eyes squinting about. Squinty and sharp equals mean and nasty. Maybe it was a human thousands of years ago. Some believed the spirit of a dead person flitted into an animal, a bird or a fish. Or an insect. Some Indian chiefs wore headdresses made of feathers. Uncle John was talking again. Murdo got up from the chair, attracting Dad’s attention to point towards the house. Dad would know he meant the bathroom. But when he exited the bathroom he went downstairs to the basement; he just needed a break.

The basement was the best space possible. Okay it had no air conditioning but so what? The privacy and just like how it was yer own place; ye couldnt beat it. Although the light was so so dim. Heavy shadows, ye wondered about spiders’ webs. That was the trouble being low down; things could crawl onto the mattress. Uncle John had said about cockroaches and how not having air conditioning was a good thing, otherwise they would have been worse. Murdo thought maybe he was kidding but Aunt Maureen said how insects needed moisture and dampness, same for mosquitoes. Dont put ponds in yer garden. Unless ye want mosquitoes. Mosquitoes bring the birds. Ye can shoot a bird. Makes a stew.

*

Next morning he stayed longer in bed. He was awake then back asleep. People said about jet lag so maybe it was that. He needed a shower but was starving. Dad was in the garden when he came upstairs; Aunt Maureen sipping coffee at the kitchen counter. Murdo moved about getting his breakfast. A hot day was forecast. Murdo hoped there was a beach nearby but there wasnt. Up country was a big valley where people went with lakes for swimming and water sports. Uncle John planned on taking them the weekend after next. This coming Saturday he had something else planned if things went right at work and no emergency call-outs.

Aunt Maureen made a pot of coffee. Even the smell was strong. She said to try it like she did: half and half milk. He was happy with fruit juice. She poured an extra coffee: Hey Murdo you take this out to your father?

Of course. I was just like — yeah, of course.

That okay?

Of course, I was just eh…of course.

Nothing, he was just nothing. Dad didnt see him come through the doorway, didnt lift his head from the book until the coffee was on the table. Then he looked up: Okay?

Yeah.

Good.

Dad reached for the coffee. Murdo returned to the house. While closing the glass doors he saw Dad lower the book and clasp his hands behind his head. He rinsed the breakfast bowl and spoon at the sink then downstairs to the basement, straightened out the sheet and duvet. Murdo did most everything back home, including supermarket shopping and laundry. One time making the bed he discovered the bottom end of the sheet was full of stuff; dandruff and old skin, flakes and flakes of it. Every night in life the body sheds skin and the movements ye make while sleeping causes it to reach the bottom, plus yer feet trampling it down. Ye flapped out the sheets and dust microbes were everywhere. Sunlight beamed through the ceiling window and picked them out like in funnels. Each time ye moved millions scattered into the air. Ye coughed and spluttered just to see it. Skin. Flaking old skin, dandruff, showers and showers of it.

Hold yer breath!

Except ye couldnt. Breathe or die. Imagine a lassie seeing it, she would just look at ye. Beyond disgusting.

Maybe beetles lived off it. Parasites and living organisms. Back from the beginning of time. Some things were prehistoric and would have been here since the house was first built. Way before that, back when the Cherokee Indians pitched their tents. In this land the white man was the stranger who killed the Indians. Right where Murdo slept was their land, beneath this very house. Imagine a door leading down, if there was a cellar deeper than that, way way beneath the foundations. If it was a movie it would lead to some gruesome dungeon linked to unsolved terrors and murders beyond imagination. Hellholes and maniacs with chainsaws. Folk getting chopped up and sawn in two. Or black holes, ye open the door and fall to yer doom. If it was a proper black hole it turned a body inside out.

Murdo returned to the stack of books he found earlier, and discovered another stack beside a cupboard; sci-fi tales and detective stories and a few religious ones, with pictures to illustrate the stories. Then inside a cupboard and stuck in at the back were more books, ones with sexy covers. Sexy inside too, jees, that would have been the sons. Ye would read them but not so people would see so like private viewing ye would hide them. Obviously. Murdo opened one and sat down on the mattress. Ye could just about read but were uncomfortable shifting about trying to see better. The light was too bad to be true. The high-up window didnt give enough and the position of the ceiling light didnt help.

Maybe there was a bedside lamp. Stuff was piled into the two small rooms. Cupboards, boxes and bags. Old-style blankets and sheets; clothes and shoes but also plates and bowls, cups. Kettles, pots and appliances with these American-style electrical plugs that were so flimsy-looking ye would worry about explosions; and two electrical extension cables, one forty metres in length.

Even a torch! If there was one he couldnt find it. He stepped over boxes to check out other places. Another cupboard; he knelt down and on the bottom shelf found an old-style top-loading CD hi-fi. He wiped it down with the edge of his T-shirt. No radio but two extra compartments for cassettes; one was for recording. Imagine it worked. Maybe it did. Why not?

The plug was the usual two-pronged thing. He looked for a point and pushed it in. The set-up light came on.

He got the two CDs Sarah had given him and put the first on immediately. It worked! Fast and rocking. Queen Monzee-ay! The tracks she played on the porch. He blasted the volume till jeesoh, people would hear! He turned it down at once. He unplugged it and sought an electrical point nearer the edge of the mattress. He found one and plugged it in, keeping the volume low. The second CD was all different musicians, all accordeon-led. Just brilliant; amazing-mazing stuff. Murdo lay down on the mattress to listen. That sound quality too, the wee sisssss, ssssses. That additional stuff on the old audio system: zzzzsih, sihhh, zzzzsih, different from MP3s, like picking up remote audio pointers. Guys looked for old vinyl records to get it even more. Sometimes it was good but other times ye didnay want it. They said it was better with the interference, like hearing a band live. But it wasnay a band live; just yer own ears connecting, surrounded by audio waves out the machine, with you at the centre — the minutest spec, think of that sonny boy, infinity plus 1. Forgive us our sins and trespasses. Jees, that was Milliken the maths teacher, lessons on compressed data. No such thing as interference. God is great. Infinity plus 1. God is greater. But it was true with the sounds, it wasnt interference.