Kit de Waal - My Name Is Leon

Tufty is shouting, “Leave him! Leave him! He can’t breathe!” But DC Green points one long finger and holds it against Tufty’s chest, prodding and poking with every sentence.

“Excitable, isn’t he, your mate? Whereas you’ve always been sensible, up to a point. Now, if you’d like to save him a couple of nights in the cells and yet another offense on his rather dense list of priors, you could tell us where to find Rainbow.”

Tufty takes a step away from the policeman. Everyone is watching Castro being dragged away but not Mr. Devlin and Leon. They are watching Tufty. He goes into his shed and he comes out with a shovel. He holds it like a sword right up in DC Green’s face then slams it into the ground. It slices through the wet earth just in front of the policeman’s toes. It judders back and forth and then stands dead straight.

“This is my land,” says Tufty. “My piece of the earth. My fucking land.”

DC Green puts his hands in his pockets and laughs. He throws his head back and laughs so loud that all the fat on his belly wobbles.

“Oh, dear me, Linwood. Something rattled your cage, has it? You all make me laugh. You’re all the same with your big mouths and your big lips and your ‘pussy’ this and ‘ras-clat’ that. But when it comes to it…”

He kicks the shovel and it falls to the ground.

“Spades don’t scare me, Linwood. Not one bit.”

The policeman walks slowly away, kicking a stone in front of him and whistling. Nothing happens for a few minutes then Tufty looks straight at Mr. Devlin. He opens his arms wide, splays his fingers.

“What? You got something to say? I didn’t invite them in here. Don’t say nothing, all right? Don’t open your fucking mouth.”

He picks the shovel up, goes inside the shed, and throws it down. Everybody goes back to their gardening except Mr. Devlin. He looks at the mess that the police have made of the path. He looks at the plants their black boots have trampled.

“They’re the same all over the world,” he says. “Small minds, big feet.”

He walks away.

Leon has been told over and over always to ask a policeman for help but these policeman didn’t even have uniforms on and they didn’t give Castro a chance. Leon walks over to Tufty’s shed and looks inside. Tufty is sitting on a stool, picking up pieces of paper. All his posters have been ripped off the wall. The man with the fist and the Black Power has had his head ripped off. Tufty’s seeds and little baby plants are in a terrible mess on the floor.

“Don’t come in here,” he says and his voice is sharp like he is still talking to the police. “Can’t you see it’s all a mess? Don’t walk in here with your shoes on. I have to see what I can save.”

But most of the plants are broken or stamped on. All the pictures are torn. Tufty picks one up and shows the pieces to Leon.

“You see this man? He says we mustn’t fight. Says we can all live in peace. Says don’t cause no trouble.”

Leon can only see half a black man’s head.

“Yeah? You see him? Well, they killed him. Yeah, shot him dead.”

Tufty stands up suddenly and looks around, kicking the plants and the torn posters and slamming his stool against the wall and flinging the plastic pots all over the place and making even more of a mess than before. When he stops, he’s panting.

“Let me tell you, Star. Stand up for yourself. All right? You see me?” He stabs himself in the chest with his finger. “I try, you know. I try hard. Keep my head down, don’t cause no trouble. It’s how I was brought up but sometimes—” Tufty kicks the side of the shed so hard that one of the planks comes loose.

“Go home,” he says.

Leon backs away, picks up his bike, and pedals home to Sylvia.

But at bedtime, Leon can’t sleep. He doesn’t want to be in his room on his own and he creeps along the hallway and pushes the door open a little bit. Sylvia is in the sitting room watching one of her programs. He can hear her shouting the answers louder than usual. She’s drinking her favorite dark brown beer with the white foam and laughing when she gets the answers wrong.

“Blankety Blank!” she shouts or “Tiebreak!”

Leon opens the door wide and Sylvia turns around.

“Five minutes, you!” she shouts. “Bed at the end of this.”

They watch until the end of the program, then Sylvia herds him back to his room. She stands in the doorway while he gets into bed.

“What’s up?” she says.

“I saw some policemen today and they were fighting with two black men.”

“Well, as long as you keep out of trouble you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

“Can you tell me about the rabbit’s adventures?”

“What?”

Sylvia sits down heavily on Leon’s bed and flicks her cigarette ash into the palm of her hand. “Rabbit?”

“The one with the permanent wave.”

Sylvia laughs so hard that she can hardly breathe. She takes ages to stop and then she goes to the bathroom and flushes her cigarette away. She comes back and takes a deep breath.

“Right. Rabbit. Let me see.”

She’s smiling now and Leon can smell the beer on her breath; he sees how she’s trying to sit up straight.

“All right. Well, the rabbit ran off into the woods. He’s still waving but obviously the man and the woman have gone now, so he’s just waving at the other animals. He waves at a squirrel and the squirrel waves back. He waves at a beaver and a weasel and, what else, a badger, yeah, a badger, and they all wave back and they say to themselves, ‘Wow, what a really friendly rabbit.’ So word gets around in the woods that there’s this nice little rabbit going about and everyone starts looking out for him. Anyway, he gets into the middle of the woods and, he sees a bear. And he waves at the bear and the bear calls him over. ‘How you doing?’ says the bear. ‘Yeah, I’m fine, thanks,’ says the rabbit. ‘Do you like it in the woods?’ asks the bear. ‘Yeah, it’s great,’ says the rabbit. ‘No problems?’ asks the bear. ‘None, no,’ says the rabbit. ‘I’m A-one okay.’ ”

Sylvia is a little bit drunk.

“The bear says, ‘That’s great. I wonder if I could ask you a question.’ ‘Fire away,’ says the rabbit. ‘Well,’ says the bear, ‘you know when you go to the toilet, for a number two, how do you get the shit off your fur?’”

Leon starts to laugh.

“‘The shit?’ asks the rabbit. ‘Yeah,’ says the bear. ‘Do you find it difficult to get the shit off your fur?’ ‘No,’ says the rabbit. ‘It comes right off.’ ‘Great,’ says the bear and he picks up the rabbit and wipes it over his arse.”

Leon and Sylvia lie on the bed together, rolling from side to side.

Sylvia wakes him up early the next day. The skin on her face looks even more creased than usual and her eyes are hardly open.

“Rough, rough, rough,” she says as she sits at the kitchen table.

“Are you pretending to be a dog?” Leon asks, smiling.

She looks at him and points at the kettle. Leon fills it and flicks the switch. Then she points at her handbag and he passes it to her. She digs around inside and then shoves it across the table and puts her head on her arms.

“Your fault, this is,” she says. “You and your bloody social workers booking themselves in at half past bloody eight.”

Leon finds her cigarettes, takes one out, and puts it in her hand.

“Thanks, love,” she says. She drags her head up and it lolls around on her shoulders. She lights the cigarette and blows the smoke up into the air.

“I’ve got about half an hour to look gorgeous.”

Leon says nothing.

“It’s a new one. A big cheese. The boss of the boss, something like that. A bloke at any rate. Sounds all right on the phone. You never know, you never know.”