Free Hemispheres by Stephen Baker

said, comes from the Greek, like. For ‘coot-footed’.
    You’re making it up.
    Nah, honest. They have these lobed feet. You know, like a coot or a moorhen. When they swim the feet stir up the sediment
     from the bottom, full of nice invertebrates, and then the bird spins round and snaps up the goodies from the water.
    Right.
    When your mam was pregnant with you I used to wash her feet. She couldn’t reach round the bump. They swelled right up from
     the weight of the baby.
    Why are you telling me this?
    Dunno. Just came into my head.
    The bird bobbed and span gently for a few seconds longer, and then it rose from the water and sprang into the sky like a pale
     swallow, dark wings and silver body. We tracked it in our bins, south over the reeds, a white punctuation mark in the blue
     sky. Eventually it became too small to see.
    And that was it. The phalarope wasn’t seen again on Teesmouth, and Yan left for the Falklands on the Tuesday.
    Yan Thomas would have killed him, boomed Magoo, from above. Remember what happened to Jimmy Dillon?
    And I was wide awake, questing into the darkness like a dog, heartbeat flaring. I heard Magoo subside heavily onto a bar stool
     which complained under his weight.
    Jimmy Bananas? came Kurt’s voice, muffled and indistinct.
    Aye. The bloke came on to Kate, while Yan was on a tour in Belfast.
    She’s a canny splitarse man. I cannot blame the gadge.
    Well he was shiteing his duds when Yan came back and she told him about it. Now then Bananas, he said. You and me need to
     go for a drive. Jimmy was browning it but he went along anyway. They got into that rustbucket of his, that old white Renault,
     and drove off. No fucker ever saw Bananas again.
    Pal, said Gary Hagan, you’re talking out of your jug. Yan took him down the bus station in Boro, stuck him on a National Express
     to sheepshagger land and told him not to come back.
    Tommy Hatton reckons Yan killed the gadge. Told him about it one night, when it was just the two of them in the bar. Somewhere
     lonely out on the brinefields, one of them places only birders go. Ripped his fucking throat out with a Stanley knife, let
     him bleed out on the mud so he wouldn’t mess up the car seats. Told Tom he couldn’t let it go, not even the once.
    Ripped his balls off as well, I heard, said Franco, and fed them to his dog.
    You’re joking, aren’t you? interrupted Kurt.
    There was a pause and I heard him stifle a yawn. Pints clattered against the bar top.
    Tommy Hatton talks out of his back door, he continued. He once tried to tell me his cousin was Muhammad fucking Ali, just
     so I’d buy him a pint.
    A raw splurge of laughter. Hagan plonked his meaty forearms against the bar.
    Local hardmen, he said, are ten-a-penny round here. No fucking shortage. Yan was mean enough, when he wanted to be. But when
     I was on the rigs I knew plenty of lads could have knocked seven shades off of him.
    Fucking cable-pullers, laughed Franco. They’re all meatheads. Every cable-puller you meet has a black eye, apart from the
     ones who’ve got two.
    Nah, said Magoo, persisting. Yan’s another one with some loose wiring. Fucking psycho on the sly, I reckon.
    But he’s not coming back, said Hagan. Is he?
    The conversation drifted away, Hagan reminiscing about his years offshore. Chew. Women. Throwing up on the helicopter, watching
Debbie Does Dallas
on freezeframe. More chew. More women. My feet were cramped up beneath me on the cellar steps, toes becoming numb, my arm
     folded awkwardly against the wall. But I fell asleep anyway, descended into a place where boots reverberated in the sky like
     thunder, kicked and stomped at the wooden clouds until they split.
    Can’t believe it, said Paul, leaning back against the bus stop and necking the can I’d given him. You’re doing a runner.
    You want to watch Franco and them. They’re after giving you a kicking.
    I can handle meself.
    Was it his daughter or his missus you went through?
    He shrugged. The