Young Mungo

by Douglas Stuart

Mungo had done it again, failed to see the difference between what someone said and what they truly meant.

The earth below him was greedy; as fast as his body could burn, the stones leached the heat away from him.

Mungo had a great desire to talk. He opened his mouth and the words tumbled out. He didn’t even think about it, as though he had sprung a leak and out of him poured an endless story to fill the darkness. It came out in a whisper, without the burden of pause or punctuation.

importance. So many lives were happening only two miles away from his and they all seemed brighter than his own.

Jameses are very constant people. He sounds like a person you can trust.”

the bright snap of bog myrtle, vetch, and gorse, and then underneath it all, the damp musk of dark fertile soil, the cleansing rain that never ceased. But to Mungo, it was green and it was brown and it was damp and it was clean. He had no words for it. It just smelled like magic.

He wanted to keep the unsullied wonders for himself.

“Imagine all that fear and disappointment clogged up in there, and nobody stopped to ask him about it, to ask if he was happy in his life, if he was coping. None of the men could tell ye how they really felt, because if they did, they would weep, and this fuckin’ city is damp enough.”

“Ah’ve known you since ye were in nappies, and ah’ve known that selfish mother of yours even longer. If anybody should understand making excuses for the person they love, then it’s you two. Can ye no forgive me that?”

The saints belong to aw of us.

Mungo shrugged. He extended his arm and held out his index finger, he spun slowly. “Say when.” It was the first smile James had given him that day. It was small and it was crooked but it gave off more brightness than the doocot skylight above them. “Ye’re a fuckin’ eejit.” He watched Mungo spin for several revolutions. “Awright, awright. Stop.”

This is remarkably sweet

Mungo stopped. His arm was pointing eastward. It was as good a direction as any.

Beyond this lay a large pond almost like a small lochan. The pond itself was choked with algae and filmy as a cataract, but pretty swans glided over the green surface. It was peaceful. It was theirs alone. “See. Telt ye. Happy birthday.” James cuffed him in the side, “Jammy bugger,” but he was smiling.

A fissure Mungo hadn’t known about cracked open in his chest; beneath it was a hollow feeling that had never bothered him before. It was an agony not to raise his own hand and touch the hairs James’s fingers had licked. It burned. He wanted nothing more than to feel the warmth left by his touch.

It was a lovely place for two boys to be: honest, exciting, immature.

Mungo’s capacity for love frustrated her. His loving wasn’t selflessness; he simply couldn’t help it. Mo-Maw needed so little and he produced too much, so that it all seemed a horrible waste. It was a harvest no one had seeded, and it blossomed from a vine no one had tended. It should have withered years ago, like hers had, like Hamish’s had. Yet Mungo had all this love to give and it lay about him like ripened fruit and nobody bothered to gather it up.

“What ye want is an easy life. There’s nothin’ easy about love.”

It was only a matter of time before James would be hurt, and for what? For liking Mungo Hamilton, the ruiner of all good things.

“I want to show you something. Don’t run away now. It’s no a big kiddie-catching net, no matter what the other weans might say.”

“That’s easy son. Put yourself first for once.”

She said that you were the softest, sweetest boy she had ever known.”

There he was, James-Guid-and-True.