Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart

Author:Douglas Stuart [Douglas Stuart]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi

Every weekday, before the last bell, Shuggie’s guts would tighten, and he would raise his hand and ask most politely to be excused. Dough-faced Father Ewan would inwardly curse the little boy who seemed regular as clockwork. At first he would ask the boy to wait, just wait the extra fifteen minutes till the school day was finished. Shuggie, always biddable, would nod with a wince and sit cocked slightly to the side, looking to be in genuine, desperate need. His wincing and huffing would soon start to distract the other children, and the Father would acquiesce.

Later, in the staffroom, the soft-middled Father would joke about what this miner’s diet of boiled cabbage and ground mince might do for the clergy. The polite little boy, the only one who clearly knew the difference between May I and Can I had been getting the cramps at quarter past three almost every afternoon of the school year. Father Ewan had come to set his watch by it.

So Shuggie would spend the last minutes of the school day sat on the low toilet. He would take his trousers down, only to be safe, but he came to know it was only indigestion. It was the burning bile of anticipation, the rising fear of what might lie at home.

Agnes had gotten sober many times before, but the cramps had never really, completely gone away. To Shuggie, the stretches of sobriety were fleeting and unpredictable and not to be fully enjoyed. As with any good weather, there was always more rain on the other side. He’d stopped counting a while ago. To have marked her sobriety in days was like watching a happy weekend bleed by: when you watched it, it was always too short. So he just stopped counting.

The boy could not remember the change in himself.

At what point the cramps died away and things became different was unclear. He could remember coming home from school one Friday in November and standing outside the house as he always did. Every small detail of the house told of what lay within. This evening the curtains were drawn tight against the cold and the lamps were on. His stomach lifted in hope. Shuggie opened the front door a crack, just enough so he could hear the hum of the house. He knew what to listen for. Wailing and crying foretold a bad night; she would want to hold him in her arms and tell him bad stories of the men who had broken her. If there was the sound of country guitars and sad melancholy singing, then the warm moistness of shit would start to wet his underpants.

To hear his mother on the telephone was not always a bad sign. He had to creep in between the front door and the draught door to listen very closely to the tone of her voice, push his ear against the cold dimpled glass and hold his breath. She didn’t have to be crying or screaming or slurring her words for the drink to be in her.

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