Runt Read Free

one other is everything. D’you understand me? There is a wound in you where He can enter. D’you understand what am saying?
    I couldn’t hear the big ‘H’ that Drunkle put on his ‘He’ but it was like I could
see
it. Like a giant rugby goalpost standing out all of a whiteness on top of the green mountain with Drunkle’s little house below it that I could now see.
    —Your wound is a doorway.
    —I’m not cut, I told him. —He just grabbed me on the neck, he did. I’m okay. Don’t worry, Uncle.
    He laughed. —You’re not cut in your skin, no. But see in here?
    He thudded the bottle against his chest.
    —And in here?
    He clonked the bottle against his head.
    —
That’s
where yur wounds are. Them Times you have, you know when you go away from everything? That’s your wound, that’s where you’re different to other people. It makes of you His favourite, His chosen vessel among the millions and why should you be so? Why should you have this burden put on you?
    Them big H’s again. Two of them this time but going quick away cos we drove close up to Drunkle’s house then and the top of the mountain was now too steep to see.
    —Cos yur a healer. Hear me? You were put here to help others in their pain. People like you have been around since we first started living in caves and realised that that orange flickery stuff the sun made in the dry grass could be all we needed in the world, the, this, the
physical
world. People like you, aye, but not
many
people like you. Because …
    He stopped his speaking and I was glad because he was speaking things I didn’t know and didn’t want to know really cos I wanted to get out of the truck and into the house and Arrn did too, no rest in him on the back seat there with his claws click-clicking at the windows and his whining. Drunkle drank from his bottle and looked out at the mountain rising up in no noise except for the engine ticking as the truck fell asleep and then he looked at me and he grinned.
    —Teatime, anyway, isn’t it? What d’you fancy?
    Eggs I wanted, two of them fried like suns.
    —Then eggs it is.
    We went out of the truck and Arrn like a mad thing ran across the muddy yard and I went to go shouty at him to come back but Drunkle said no.
    —Don’t bother, bach. He’s as happy to be away from that place as you are. And no more sheep for him to worry no more, is there?
    That made me sad. No more sheep making their noises up here, none of them any more like little clouds on the sides of the mountains. No more lambs when the sun starts to come out for the year moving like springs in the fields with their eyes all big and ears all floppy.
    —Will you get any more, Uncle?
    —What, sheep?
    Nod.
    —Don’t know for sure, but probably not, no. Couldn’t, really, not with Fay being gone and all that. I mean, they were
her
sheep, really, all this was her idea. Her inheritance money that bought this place. City girl too, she was. Never thought all this could get in her blood, like, but … Suppose it must’ve done.
    His face had gone wet again and he shook his wet face and then whistled for Arrn who came running to us with his feet and his face all dirty with bits of straw sticking up out of the muck on him like he had grown yellow spikes. I noticed then that it smelled a bit bad up here and it never used to smell bad and that it looked all dead untidy and it never used to do that either with bits of machines everywhere and empty barrels and stuff and plastic bags blowing across the yard in the breeze. It used to be clean up here and it wasn’t now was what I was thinking but I still loved being up there in the High Bits with my Drunkle and my dog and that NotDad bastard was far away in the Belowness. My Mam’s bad eggy eye was down there with him, far away.
    Drunkle threw his empty bottle away into a pile of mud against the midden wall like a drifty bit of snow but black and smelly and it sank in and went squelch as it did. Then he opened the door to