There’s another word he hadn’t heard for years. Menshies. Mentions. People would write stuff on the stookie.
They’d write things like their name, or ‘Get well soon’, or write something funny. The rule was that you shouldn’t write anything dodgy, even for a laugh, because then the person with the stookie would get into the trouble. The teacher would just end up asking who wrote the thing on the stookie, and the person who wrote it would be grassed up.
The nurse finished putting on the stookie, and told Gerry that he’d have to wait a short while in the hospital while the plaster dried.
As he waited, he thought about if he’d get his son to draw some menshies on it when he got home. Alex wasn’t able to write yet, but he could draw some squiggles, or maybe get out his paints and paint some flowers. That would be nice. There was the potential for some embarrassment, going around with a stookie covered in daisies, but it would be a nice embarrassment.
Gerry remembered a boy from school.
There was one boy in school who came in with a stookie on. But he didn’t get any respect. Nothing like it.
People wrote stuff on his stookie, but it was nothing nice. It was nothing but fucking horrible stuff, and he had to just take it. They’d hold his arm and then write all this horrible stuff on it. Nobody had any fear of being grassed on, because the boy knew what would happen if he grassed.
The nurse came and tapped on the stookie with her finger. She told Gerry that the plaster seemed to be dry enough now for him to leave, so he was free to go. He left the hospital and headed for the bus stop.
As he waited for the bus, he felt his arm begin to itch. He looked at his stookie, and thought back to that boy from his school.
He could barely remember the boy’s name. It was maybe William. William McDonald or William Campbell, one of these Scottish surnames ‒ he wasn’t sure. But Gerry remembered what was on the stookie. He looked at his own stookie and he could remember what was on William’s stookie like it was right there in front of him. He remembered that there were lots of things written on it, lots of drawings as well, but biggest of all was the word ‘TRAMP’.
The bus came and Gerry got on. He realised as he tried to get the change out of his pocket that things were going to be a lot harder with the stookie on. It was his right arm that was in the stookie, leaving his left arm free, but his change was in his right trouser pocket. Getting the change out of his right pocket with his left hand felt like he was using his left hand to shake somebody’s hand when they were using their right.
‘Hurry up,’ he heard somebody saying on the bus. Somebody up the back.
He looked towards the voice, but he couldn’t tell who said it. The bus was busy, with most of the people looking at him and the rest looking elsewhere. Nobody looked guilty.
The bus driver, who hadn’t yet moved the bus away from the bus stop, stepped on the pedal and moved the bus away sharply. Gerry stumbled, and banged the stookie against one of the metal bars. It went clink.
Somebody laughed.
He heard a woman somewhere say something about how Gerry was going to break his arm again, or break the other one. A couple of other people laughed at that and said something else.
By the time the bus was slowing down for the next stop, Gerry still hadn’t managed to get his money out. He took a step towards the bus driver and said, ‘Sorry, I’ll just …’ meaning to say, ‘I’ll just be a second,’ but the driver interrupted him.
‘Give me it when you get off,’ said the driver, pointing his thumb to the back of the bus. ‘You’re blocking the aisle. Move.’
‘Thanks,’ said Gerry, and he walked down the aisle.
He looked for a seat, but there weren’t any. There was a guy up the back sitting next to a spare seat, but he had his bag on it. Gerry was sure the guy had seen him but was pretending that he didn’t.
The bus got moving again, and Gerry held onto one of the metal bars so he didn’t fall over. He glanced at a few people, and saw that some were still looking at him, even from close up. He looked away, and down to his stookie.
He kept his eyes there, on the stookie.
As he looked at it, he thought back to the stookie on William, and what was written. He remembered. He couldn’t remember every word, but he could remember their shape, like he was looking at it on his stookie with half-closed eyes. He remembered how the word ‘TRAMP’ was written. They were in capitals, but the line on the letter p dropped down like a small p. It had looked too much like the letter D, so he drew the line down further to make it more like a p.
He remembered that it was him that wrote ‘TRAMP’.
He wrote about half of the other stuff as well. He forgot that. He couldn’t remember if he started it, but he wrote at least half of the stuff on that stookie, or told people what to write or what to draw.
He remembered that he drew a picture of William with flies around his head, like Pig Pen from Charlie Brown. He could see it on his own stookie, down near the fingers, down at the bottom right of the word ‘TRAMP’, near the line that came down.
Gerry looked away.
He looked up from his stookie and saw that he was being watched by a boy on one of the seats. He was maybe about six or seven, a couple of years older than Alex. Gerry looked down so that he wasn’t staring back. He saw that one of the boy’s socks was white, but the other was light grey.
A thought came to him. He never found out how William broke his arm.
Gerry looked at the boy’s face again, and saw that the boy was now looking at the stookie. Gerry turned the stookie away quickly so that the boy couldn’t see what was written there, before coming to his senses and remembering that there was nothing there.
The stookie began to make his arm itch again. His skin felt hot and sweaty.
He thought about getting home, and letting Alex draw some menshies on his arm. The idea didn’t appeal to him as much as it did back at the hospital, but it was maybe because of being on the bus and how much his arm itched.
He looped his left arm around the bar that he’d been holding onto, his good arm, and poked the fingers under the stookie to give it a scratch, where it was itching. But he couldn’t quite reach it.
And oh, it itched like fuck.
Gary had made a stupid mistake.
Him and Linda had a back garden, and at the back of the garden was their garden fence. It was a high wooden fence with a padlock on it, and behind the fence was a lane, where the bins were kept. The key for the padlock was on a keyring that also held a key for the back door of their house.
Gary had taken a bin bag out to the bins. He’d unlocked the padlock and left the key in the lock while he put the bag in the bin. But while he was there, he saw the bin for bottles and glass, and remembered that they had some bottles in the house that he’d like to bin
