Bridge of Clay

In the running, we ran at October, when Clay enrolled in athletics—not remotely excited, nor reticent. The club wasn’t down at Bernborough (far too rundown), but at Chisholm, near the airport.

Everyone over there hated him:

He ran only in the 400, and hardly spoke.

He knew a kid, an animal-boy named Starkey:

He was the mountainous shot put, discus guy.

The gun 400-meter runner was a kid called Spencer.

Clay took off with 300 to go.

“Shit,” they said, the whole clubful of them.

He won by half the straight.

* * *

—

At home it was afternoon.

Just one in a series of many:

Fight 278.

Rory and Henry were having it out.

There was a ruckus coming from their bedroom, which was well and truly a boys’ bedroom bedroom—of beached and forgotten clothing, lost socks and fumes and headlocks. The words like strangulation:

“I told you to keep your shit with the rest of your shit and it keeps encroaching onto my side,” and “Like I’d want my shit encroaching (have a listen to you!) on your stupid side anyway—the state of it,” and “You got a problem with my stupid side, you’d think you’d keep your shit away from it!”

And so on.

After ten minutes, I went in, to separate them, and there was blond and rusty argument. Their hair was pointing outwards—north and south, east and west—and Tommy, so small, in the doorway.

“Can we go to the museum or what?”

It was Henry who’d heard and answered, but spoke across to Rory.

“Sure,” he said, “but wait a minute, okay? Just give us a sec to beat Matthew up,” and like that, they were both of them friends again.

They buried me fast and furiously.

My face in the taste of socks.

* * *

—

On the streets, it was almost business.

Clay ran.

I struggled to stay with him.

Him and his burning left pocket.