No Meaner City

by Rob McClure Smith

ROB MCCLURE SMITH is an expatriate Scot who currently resides just south of Chicago, Illinois. He has published fiction in numerous American literary magazines like Chelsea, Confrontation, Fugue and Other Voices, as well as in European magazines like Versal, Barcelona Review, Chapman and Dublin Quarterly. This makes him, he tells people, cosmopolitan. Another excerpt from No Meaner City was recently published in Night Train and nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Smith was a previous winner of the Scotsman Orange Short Story Award.
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CHAPTER ONE

An auld and decrepit howff is the Hairy Corner in Brigton. The wooden frame was painted once a plain chocolate brown with a leaven of snot-green trim and on sappy summer days the ancient oil-base buckles and swells and crunkles away from walls upon which ivy can find no adhesion in thin brown strips that hang and fleck and float to the pavement below where visitors to the pub skip gingerly over the crusted brown dawds suspecting dog shite or worse. Bill McGregor, sole proprietor thereof, tells all and sundry that it is his intention to repaint the premises orange and blue as King Billy’s sash, like yon new Star and Garter over in the Gorbals, and he will do so directly as soon as his ship comes in. All then to observe, sotto voce, as McGregor turns his back to pull sundry another froth-capped lager, that this incoming vessel must be the famed banana boat of Glesca lore.

The bar behind which McGregor chawners incessant to his clientele alcohol-sodden nights without end is a straight mahogany counter with a running sawdust track. On the gantry back of the counter bottles range in symmetrical rows, hard stuff to harder to hardest, which is Uisgebeatha in the language of the Gaels, water of life, found first in Eden before our big comedown and given to sinful man afterwards, as recompense for our sad exiling here. (Can there be any question then that God is good?) Tables upon which dominoes click look slick with varnish. Forbye these varnish-slick tables are the rickety wood-slatted stools found only in the city’s dossier hostelries, a few humphy-backit chairs and smoke thick enough to choke a donkey. As of ten o'clock, scattered athwart the room might be discovered some twenty men of ages various and sometimes obscurant, seated or otherwise supported, a few sparingly propped by the countertop, gravity-defying for now, these few aside the two oldsters waiting now great expectantly by the jug bar, eager to replenish for the rigor of later stupors.

Licensed premises are encouraged to cease service at nine, but these are lawless times in the Second City of the Empire. These are most assuredly lawless times.

The two men enter and saunter to the bar, gallous as peacocks in heat. They are noticed. They notice that they are noticed. Chatter falls to murmur and quiet settles in the room besides the domino click occasional. The one is thin and solemn and the other is thickset and solemn. The thin man is young and gawky, with a sticky-up Stan Laurel haircut, but no one here will be laughing at him anytime soon because his eyes are dead as doornails and bode ill to all. His companion bears no resemblance whatsoever to Oliver Hardy beyond a wading girth but approaching the counter now and splaying his hand upon it as a fat white spider assumes a similar façade of chuffy jollity. Upon his cheek is traced the deep livid reminiscence of a deep twelve-stitcher. This man’s face McGregor eyed warily, as well he should, as would we all, if wary.

It's yirsel, he said

It's masel, said the scarred man. None ither. It’s no mah fuckin twin brither.

A long while since ye've been in, Mister Aitken. Whit brings ye?

Charity work, Mac. As usual, nuthin but the same auld charity. Helping the helpless and offering hope tae the hopeless.

Aitken turned, elbows resting on the counter, and surveyed the bar's custom, beetle-browing slightly at the sight. He gauped and then turned back to face McGregor again.

The helpless that can be helped, that is.

This declaration made, Aitken permitted a great globule of spittle to form at his lips and then quirted it to drop slowly in the space between forearms mallet-like. He dabbled at the spit glob with the toe of his boot, oozied it around on the planking, wetting and clumping the sawdust.

McGregor slid two brimming pint glasses carefully across the burnished wood in the direction of the two men. He did not look happy. They looked happy enough now.

Oan the house ah take it?

Aye.

That is generous indeed. And since ah've a drouth oan me like the Sahara in summer a generosity mightily appreciated also.

In the far corner of the room, aneath a print of salmon leaping dexterous cross a swollen weir, two young men, feigning disinterest in the forgoing conversation, might be observed, or so by any observer perspicacious enough, to be actually taking a profound interest in the ongoing exchange. Both men wore workmen’s blue overalls and, given their trim and stature, might have been assumed in the employment of the shipyards, riveters perchance. The one with the piercing pale blue eyes and lank of dark hair watched his cigarette unreel its spinner of smoke upward and then, as though saddened by the aimlessness of its drift, dragged upon it to expel a more lustrous smokecloud from the purse of his lips. His companion, meditative, watched the smoke flow up slow and splash against the reek-stained rafters. The second man wore a bunnet low to his eyes. He pushed it up when they exchanged glances. Such glances that are often of no little significance exchanged.

Blue eyes blinked, here and back they came.

Uh-huh was what he said.

#

Huv ye seen auld Peter recently? speered McGregor.

Ah huvnae seen that individual recently ur itherwise.

So, he went and done himsel in, drooned himsel in the Clyde he did.

Well, there's wan good reason why ah huvnae seen him then.

It wis a terrible thing ah hear. They drug him oot the watter aw bloated.

That’s awright. Ah wisnae looking fur him anyway.

McGregor flapped his dishtowel idly. The towel was dreg-smudged and clarty. He poked the edge of the towel inside a shot glass and shimmied the tartan-checked flannel around with his pinkie.

Jist as weel, since ye widnae find him. Him being deid.

Aitken looked bored with the conversation now.

Nae big loss. Man wis half a halfwit. A quarterwit.

#

The Laurelesque little man with the eyes empty as steel plunker marbles sipped his beer, discreet as a vicar at some Sussex tea party, if such there is suffers perhaps from some dire psychological derangement. Aitken contrastingly quaffed, big man big appetite, slorping the pint down in two swallow gulps voracious. He licked his lips, liked the licking, licked again and added a thick smack for effect, mouth and tongue panoply of sibilance. He examined the settlins, shook the glass as if prospecting for lager gold.

Anither? said McGregor.

Well, tell ye the truth ah wis thinking aboot joining the Band of Hope, going tee-tot. Mibbe ah’ll wait till next weekend though. Whit ye think?

McGregor poured a hauf and hauf.

They recruit year round ah hear.

Tell ye the truth, said Aitken, me and mah fellow do-gooder Mister Walker here ur raising fur the orphans fund this time.

The orphans it is?

Aye, said Aitken. Ah’ll be wan masel in aboot twenty-year. God willing.

Walker laughed, or so it seemed, a strange mirthless keening emanating from the aperture beneath his nose. He had little or no teeth to fill the gap. His teethless status would be explanation enough for his reticence then.

Aitken looked around the bar again, this time declaimed, everyone now to hear.

Aye, Billy Fullerton says its time. Wur taking doon the Conks week after next if no afore. Every wee contribution thenight aids the cause of King and Empire.

Aitken whipped his grey bunnet off and flapped it upside on the counter. He nodded his head. Into it, McGregor dropped a clinking pile of till shillings. Aitken shoogled it and McGregor clinked in a few more.

Well, mind yirsels. The Conks ur well liable tae demolish youse nancy men.

In the bar click of dominoes was heard no more. Walker ceased the sipping, Aitken the quaffing and shoogling, McGregor the rigorous toweling of small thick glasses. Cessation of all and everything, and yet no one drops a pin.

The speaker was the young workman with the cold, pale blue eyes. He had called out to them from across the bar. He appeared amused, that seemly young man. The two Billy Boys wheeled to look at him as one, and it was not to evaluate his comeliness. He looked back, grinning broadly their way. They looked at him and he looked at them. The stand-off was become now this whole big looking palaver.

An auld man by the jug bar started up laughing in his beard.

Whit the fuck you laughing at? queried Aitken.

The oldster stopped dead and discovered his shoes to be immediately of extraordinary interest to him.

Ah do believe the auld fella wis laughing at you.

A cankered expression flitted across Aitken's eyes just then, a look that some Calvinist theologian, given posited existence of same such, might claim to be of vicious intent, but Aitken smothered that thrawn look quick with a slippy smile and lifted his glass to lips again. Slowly he lifted. No one else moved. Nothing did. That slow lifted glass and the drifting slivers of spun-blue smoke were all the stirring in that bar for a long long time.

In truth, Aitken was nowhere that he hadn’t been before, although not recently, and it had been a while-sin. Folks knew better now. Most folks. Not this one, who would require an education in Brigton manners. The polite wumman: Etty Kett. He laid his glass down, niddled it back and forth atween thumb and forefinger so it rattled and whirred on the countertop.

Ah wisnae aware that yir opinion wis asked fur, friend. Mibbe ye need tae haud yir wheesht.

Ah'm no yir friend, friend.

Aitken sighed dramatically now, chapping his glass on the counter and throwing his arms wide. It was the ostentatious appeal of the much put-upon, the long-suffering, the aft-abused, a gesture much employed by politicians and street bookies.

Weel, here's a how-do-you-do. Man comes in a bar fur a quiet drink while raising a few stray pennies fur the lame and blind and ither misfortunates and gits himsel verbally abused by an arse in overalls. Whit’s a fella tae do in a situation like this?

It’ll come tae ye, said the young man.

It’ll come tae me you said?

Aye, it might at any rate. Why don't ye think aboot it some? Take yir time. Ah can tell yir slow oan the uptake.

The speaker nudged his drinking companion and shook his head sadly.

Whit ah tell ye? he said. Ah've seen smarter things than that yin hanging frae a hook in a butcher's winda.

Fullerton's men arose synchronously and began making their way across the bar in lockstep. They were in no particular hurry, albeit on a mission, for what was to come would come regardless. Those drinkers leaning on the counter creamed back from their passage, staggering like men shipboard in a gale, and reassembling in their wake.

He must huv a drink in him that yin, McGregor said. Young fella disnae ken any better. Let him be noo.

Shut yir gob you.

The slow and magisterial progress of the Billy Boys across the barroom was arrested arms-length from the two young workmen. Neither flinched. Neither looked up even, not remotely aflocht, regarding the two-thirds empty whisky bottle on the counter anent them, seemingly intrigued by its glass-green reflected glowing in the wash of gaslight there, or more likely manifesting a sad nostalgia for its now depleted contents. Aitken’s voice purred a diminuendo of menace.

You any idea who we ur friend?

The mouthy young man still did not look the slightest perturbed, looking up at the speaker and grinning wide. He had a right nice smile. His eyes glinted blue as ocean swells, or as those clear and sinister cloud-emptied skies of Glesca June afternoons. He seemed quite jokoh.

Oh, a big daft gomeril so it wid seem. Wan of Fullerton’s crowd fur sure. Am ah supposed tae be feart of you and this wee toty man? Ah think not. Christ, a good fart wid blow that tag-end ower oan his arse. Away and no bother me now, ya fuckin lard-bucket.

The speaker's drinking companion now looked to be working, not at all successfully, at the submergence of some deep paroxysm of mirth. He was being addressed again by his friend now, a big dark haired man, pale as milk, cap asloap low over his eyes, hazel eyes opaque, still, serene, but amused. Not cold, not ice blue, but definitely amused. He jirbled the whisky in his glass, thoughtfully.

Did ye git a load of gumsy here? The wan wi’ hair like straw hanging oot a midden?

The recipient of this verbal encomium began to raise his hand. It wasn't to answer the question presumably.

If you brung that oot, yir deid.

Who’n fuck ur you? said Aitken

Given the inevitable nature of the events about to unfold, acts perhaps ordained by texts unwritten, but immutable, predestined to transpire thus many millennia before the last great saurian reptiles, their skies aflame, lumbered heavy-footed across the swampy clatch which this fine drinking establishment occupied now, neither man chose to identify themselves just then. In fact, as in the bar that night besides the two of themselves McGregor alone knew, their names were James Hepburn and Eric Cumberland and neither had ever fastened a rivet in his life.

He’s a nutter so he is, said Walker. Must be a nutter.

It speaks! Well, this here’s a nutter thinks yir the type'll huv a wee blade ready tae fly oot sleekit-like. Aye, ah do believe ah see wan there tied tae yir wrist wi a length of string? That right? Hid the knife by rolling doon the shirt sleeve did we? Jesus, never seen that afore. That’s a new wan oan me.

In the aftermath of this observation the two Billy Boys were presented with another big chunk of silence to consider. This they considered for a while. Hepburn and Cumberland resumed lepping at their whisky. Aitken looked annoyed. Walker set about discreetly examining the fold of the shirt cuff where the loose little string poked through. Seeing this, Aitken sent a gleet look his way, exasperatedly so it seemed.

This yin here’s got the crap on, said Walker, embarrassed. He’s full of it.

Friend, said Aitken, addressing now the silent Cumberland. Ah'd advise you tae git yir china oot of here afore he gits himsel a bed in the Royal Infirmary thenight.

The two faux workmen exploded with now uncontrollable laughter.

Did ye hear that? said Hepburn.

Come oan, shows yir blade, snarled Walker.

He took a step forward and with the subtlest flick of his wrist the small knife emerged betwixt his fingers. The knife was immediately dabbed at Hepburn’s chest. Hepburn jouked aside and with one sweet evasive motion scooped up the liquor bottle and smashed it down hard upon his assailant’s skull. There was a dull hollow glassy thud and what struck many present that night as the unfortunate sloshing of contents. Blood and whisky sprayed across the floor, a new blend scenting and spotting the sawdust. Walker staggered sidieways and Hepburn smacked him again, an intended ending stroke, backhanding him across the cheekbone with the bottle so hard it shattered. Hepburn was left holding just the neck, which he commenced to study for its new maiming potentiality. As he did so, Walker’s knees buckled and his eyes rolled back, like a man far gone in drink, which in a matter of speaking he was, being now well splarged in it. He took a doup-scud to the floor upon which he thrashed for a moment, legs kicking as though pedalling some invisible bicycle, displacing a heap of sawdust, or as does an insect dazed by the causal flaff of a newspaper against a windowsill, then lay still, unmoving.

Aitken, stunned for the nonce, let loose a great stupid roar and thrust at Hepburn twice with the neb of an ivory lock-back.

Ah’m gonnae kill you, he screamed. Gonnae kill you. Kill you. Kill.

His homicidal chanting proved more successful than his attempted murder. That the attempt failed was due to the intervention of Cumberland who, quickly whipping an open razor of his own out from under the folds of his work jacket, stroked a long steel blade elegant and skeely across Aitken’s exposed cheek. The cut man emitted a wild thin cry of anguish like a mouse sliced sudden in a rattrap and threw up an arm to protect his face from the fast slashing of his assailant’s blade. Soon enough his elbow was a bloody mess and an ear hung backwards upon his cheek in a way that ears do not. It was Hepburn though who booted Aitken hard in the jaw and then, stoopit over his prostrate form, twisted back and forth the jagged remnant of the bottle in his eye, emphatically. Hepburn was a stranger to smiling now.

Isnae naebody killed me yit, he whispered.

There fell upon the old howff then a stranger silence still. It was the strangest silence never heard in that place. This was a silence you couldn't cut with a knife. A silence that was only dispersed in time by the snuffled breathing of the unconscious men and their soft wet blubbering.

Hepburn and Cumberland made a study of the stunned clientele now. The two men were themselves studied in turn. Cumberland held still the bloody razor in his hands. It glinted of scarlet wetly. Hepburn, as he spoke, wielded the dripping bottleneck, all eyes upon it.

Huv youse nae hames tae go tae?

It is well reasoned that a man should not cry fire in a packed picture house. The hostelry emptied in a matter of a few seconds, a wild stramash of colliding and thrashing limbs, the erstwhile drinkers scuttling like apes as they breenged for the door, skeddadling out into the darkle of night on their hands and knees like crazed chimpanzees and pouring thence street-ward pell-mell as bees flee a smoked hive or other creatures wild and inhuman flushed from their deep sanctuary holes, dumb and sick and terrified of hurting. It was something like that.

McGregor remained, back now at polishing beer glasses, uninvolved, huffing on the stems and rubbing carefully, and one tardy customer only, who sat still seemingly paralyzed behind his seven dominoes (and a good hand it had been, four threes and no doubles) shocked into a frozen stasis, except neath the table where his legs doddered like setting jelly.

Hepburn lifted the razor gently from Cumberland's fingers, held it up to the gas jet, and examined the steelman’s fine metallic detail, the weapon’s sharpness of edge. His fingers were slick with blood not his own and his pinkie and ring finger were clammed together with a sticky coagulate.

That's a beezer.

It is a very good piece of craftmanship that. Sheffield’s finest.

These were the first words Cumberland had uttered. The words were heavily accented, the reason why he had not spoken before.

Ah thought that wis whit you wur supposed tae be, said Hepburn. Sheffield’s finest that is.

McGregor inclined across the bar towards Cumberland.

Yir a Southron, sneered McGregor. Ah didnae ken that.

I am.

Ah'm terrible sorry. That’s too bad.

He cannae help it, McGregor, an accident of birth. Manchester. A Manchurian.

Mancunian.

Yir sure it’s no Manchurian?

Sure I’m sure.

Ah could huv swore blind it wis Manchurian.

Hepburn spoke from low on the floor where he hunkered over Walker, the man concussed and hissing strange sounds in his strange and abject dream delirium, the open mouth making the same sucking sound beached fish make flopping upon rocks.

So ye wanted me tae show ye this, eh? Huv a good look then. Here it is.

Hepburn drew the blade back and slit Walker from temple to chin, a downward motion, artistic as you like, a brushstroke Van Gogh would have been proud of, and likely in more ways than one. The skin tore like paper. The face blanched creamy-pale and then the bright crimson came a-gush, the necessity of blood and the outlet. The unconscious man sneezed and the others laughed.

Bless you.

This one should be all right, said Cumberland.

He squatted down alongside Hepburn and contemplated with apparent concern the drip-red bloodmask hung afore him.

Provided nothing splits the wound, right?

Aye.

Hepburn glanced at Cumberland and the two men smiled and shortly thereafter in tandem commenced kicking Walker's face. The exertion soon had them both ramfeezled.

That’ll do, no? asked Cumberland. He was peching.

Hepburn demurred, finishing up with one final vicious boot to the chops, the laces smacking skin.

Goal, he said. Tarnation. Ah twisted mah knee there a wee bit ah think. Got a heid like a diamond that yin.

McGregor keeked over the counter to better view the men's handiwork.

Ah’d huv tae say, as ugly as they two started oot, sure stitches can be nuthin but an improvement.

Mr. McGregor, Ah’d huv tae advise ye no tae serve alcohol tae folks like this again, said Hepburn, with mock severity.

McGregor scowled, reaching down to the nethermaist shelf to replace a glass.

Ah’d sell it tae Satan himsel if the deil hud the money tae pay fur it.

#

The feckless customer remnant was cowering still behind his dominoes. Which same would like as not be offering him little protection anytime in the foreseeable future. The man had gone unobserved till now. No longer. Hepburn and Cumberland walked over towards him and he could do little else but cower the more. Hepburn it was now held the stropped sharp razor. The man looked then as a sufferer of the aping ague.

Didn't we tell youse to git oot?

Ah couldnae move.

Is that right?

Aye, that’s right. Matter of fact ah still cannae.

Whit's yir name?

The man looked like some petrified thing. Eyes like teacups.

Whit's yir name ah says.

Alexander McCarthur.

What do you do for a living, McCarthur?

Ah'm a baker, currently unemployed.

Whit did ye see thenight?

Ah saw nuthin.

Nothing at all? Cumberlund asked.

Aye, that’s right, said McCarthur. Ah didnae see youse playing fitba wi’ nae Billy Boy’s heid, believe me. That whit ah didnae see.

Ye saw nuthin is what ye saw. So wis there a rammy?

No rammy ah saw.

Aye but Alexander, mah good fella, there wis a cangling see? Involving a few Norman Conks, ye hear? Must have hud a staw wi the Billy Boys. Big rammy. Wee fellas they wur, the Conks. Wan fur sure wis Irish. Vicious wee Irish fuck.

Ah hear.

That’s whit happened, see? Conks busy sortin oot the Billy Boys. Mean crowd. Bad business. Revenge will be sweet, so oan, so forth.

And the wan wis Irish, said McCarthur, nodding. Sligo accent ah do believe.

First-rate witness to this unfortunate incident we have, said Cumberland.

The Englishman yarked McCarthur up to his feet and inserted him in his coat. McCarthur’s limbs were still moving only with great difficulty and such movement as there was in his appendages had little to do with human volition. Cumberland dusted off McCarthur’s collar with his palm, patted him down aimiably.

Sorry you didnae git tae play this draw, said Hepburn. He flipped the dominoes faceup one by one. Ah’m hopin it wisnae yir doon tae?

It wis. It wis mah doon!

McCarthur looked now disconsolate.

I think you should quit this establishment now, Mr. McCarthur, don’t you? The streets of this mean city are no place to be wandering at this time of night. There may be thugs in their cups. I hope you don’t mind me saying, since it’s embarrassing, but it looks like you may have gone to the toilet in your trousers also. Which is not good. No. You'd best get yourself home and change don’t you think? That urine soaking in the crotch like would be is how a person catches pneumonia.

That's wan way at any rate, said Hepburn.

McCarthur shuffled slowly across the room like some incontinent Banquo’s ghost, or the man to be strung up on the scaffold seeing for the first the pith of hemp.

Aye, McCarthur said. Ye might huv a point there.

Hepburn sniffed at his sleeve, frowned at the wetting there.

Damn, whit a terrible wastage of good Scotch whisky.

Goodnight, Alex, said McGregor to his departing customer. Sleep tight. Don’t let the bedbugs bite.

Aye, goodnight. Ah’ll see you anon, Bill.

Upon reaching the front door though, McCarthur, inexplicably reconsidering his fortuitous escape, turned heel and scliffed back into the bar. He stood looking at McGregor, glaikit, nervous still but thoughtful now, the pauky type.

Still no away Alex?

No. Bill. Ah wis thinking. Should ye call the polis mibbe? Fur this mash?

McCarthur’s accompanied his remark with a significant jerk of the head towards the two men in the blue overalls, now bent over a table examining their victim’s blades, the slumped figures unmoving still on the floor and the pooling red.

Ya daft eegit. McGregor shook his head sadly. Them two ur the fuckin polis.

###

Copyright © Rob McClure Smith, 2008

Read Rob McClure Smith's Tom Franklin interview