Free Runt by Niall Griffiths Page A

yours. —Good as the stone together with the gospel, bach, eh? Good as the oh Jesus Christ what’s wrong are you okay?
    Drum drum drum. All Times meeting coming together everything
in
me everything
on
me just One Time and it is Mine it is
    My Times.
    —Oh God, bach … oh bloody hell …
    I felt Drunkle lift me and I saw bright lights flash then FLASH in my brain nowhere else not behind the mountain top nowehere else but In My Brain. I heard the laughing water I heard the laughing in the springing water and Drunkle put me down by that laughing water and I could feel the rain pat pat on my face and I saw the sky all grey even tho it was summer and then my eyes went rolling and I could see Arrn he was with me and I could see crows flying they were with me too and then my eyes went rolling some more and I could see the inside of my head where the FLASH was happening that FLASH that FLASH and I could also see
    The world go away. The world go so small like a pea blue and green so far so far away. I could see crows holding me up, holding up my arms and legs and they flapped and lifted me up into the blackness into the highness the very-far-away-ness so the town and the High Parts and the planet they stood on turned into just a pea blue and green so very far away all in a belowness to me. Drunkle was somewhere on that pea. My Mam Bethan and NotDad and Arthur and Rhiannon and everyone was somewhere on that pea so was Arrn oh God uh-oh Arrn was so very far away from me. And everything that had ever happened on that pea and
was
happening and would
ever
happen on that tiny pea blue and green floating in all that blackness and space was
on
me and
in
me and I knew everything about it everything everything oh yes I did. And of a sudden the crows all went, they flew away and I fell a bit but then was lifted again by just one bird this time a hawk his claws in my back holding me up with no pain and I could see his beating wings on each side of me and see his face above mine and he took me even further away from the floating pea and out of the blackness around me and into a kind of bright white light where he let me go and flew away like the crows did but I didn’t fall I just kind of lay in the brightness as if it was a pillow all around me and I saw shapes and I heard noises and Everything was in that light. Snowball the bull was there and Bethan before she met that sod NotDad and Auntie Fay too came out of that light all with a smiling on her and she wasn’t in a tree and she didn’t have a rope around her neck she was just putting a smiling on me and kind of all around me she was cos I mean she had her arms around me from behind like when I would go on the horse with her but I could see her in front of me as well cos of her smiling like she always used to put at me cos she liked me did my Auntie Fay before she became a branch on a tree and I liked her as well. And in that light she told me she was sorry that she’d made hearts break but that she wasn’t sorry for what she did cos there were things Down There that had to stop and she then told me that yes there
are
and
will be
future-times and that I would be better’d when I went back Down There and that Drunkle must be better’d too and she laughed then cos I didn’t know she knew about My Word Drunkle and I didn’t ask a question but she heard it anyway and told me there in that light that she now knew Everything, all that was gone and all to come and she said that we will have Bad Times but that we will Come Through them and I didn’t know what she meant by that and I asked her in my head what she meant but her arms then went away from me and I wanted them back around me but she shook her head and then the shape of her was kind of swallowed by a much bigger shape which wasn’t really a shape cos it was Everything All Around. Yes it was a kind of all-around-ness which was Everything. It was the names of every raindrop that had ever fallen on to the earth and It was