Young Mungo

by Douglas Stuart

“Naw. I’m no ready to go back to an empty hoose. Are ye sure ye willnae come wi’ me? I know a lassie that will let ye finger her if ye buy her a Walnut Whip.”

Poor-Wee-Chickie handed the forlorn whippet to Mungo. She folded into his arms easily, nothing but bones and ligaments, and he held her like she was a pile of jumbled kindling. She was the least cuddly dog Mungo had ever touched.

As he plucked the flowers he made up their names: cowsbreath, ladies’ bumholes, blue-granda-willies.

Every five days or so he would return her like an overdue library book, and she would appear so dog-eared, so sodden with drink, that it looked like she had been dropped in the bath. Jodie said she thought Jocky was a bad drinker too because

“That Pauline, the glaikit bitch. She had the nerve to charge me eighteen poun’ for this. For this! Ah went to her house and had her weans climbing all over me. By the time I came out I was looking like Orphan-fuckin’-Annie.”

Mungo had been delighted to catch a glimpse inside the boozer and spy a cluster of stout women dancing together, gyrating across the floor like washing machines that had juddered loose from their brackets.

The man’s mouth was a collection of broken teeth. He had a grin like a graveyard full of wrecked headstones.

“Och, I had a hunner good reasons back then, none of them make much sense now. Usual shite: ma mammy wisnae well, ma daddy never came back from the war, ma sister would be left to cope by herself, I didnae look guid in short trousers. Utter nonsense. All stories I telt myself to cover my fear. Australia! My wee arsehole was twitching like a rabbit’s nose.”