Free The Vintage and the Gleaning by Jeremy Chambers Page B

and the girl. He thumbs behind him again.
    Look at him will you, he says. Still running around like a bloody teenager. Nearly sixty years old, thinks he’s sixteen. Bloody Roy.
    Roy’s all right, says the boy.
    Wallace drops his hands onto the table.
    Roy’s my mate, he says to the boy. And I’d never say a word against him. But he never growed up and that’s a fact. That’s truth.
    Wallace leans back into the vinyl cushioning. The cushioning wheezes from holes burnt through by cigarettes, showing grubby tar-stained foam inside. It squeaks with the movement of Wallace’s sweating back. He puts his elbows on the table and his arms are brown and hairy. Muscles tighten and disappear.
    Now you look at me, says Wallace. I got my own house, a wife, kids. I got responsibilities. I got a family to take care of. But that’s leaving a legacy, right? Because my family’s going to keep on going long after I’m dead. Makes me a part of history. A part of human civilisation.
    He leans back against the wheezing, squeaking vinyl and tilts his pot, draining the last trickle. He puts it down on the table.
    Yeah, but Roy’s got a better car than you, says the boy.
    Wallace sits there with his hand wrapped around the empty pot and swears.
    Over at the pool table, the girl has gone after Roy with her cue, trying to pummel him in the crotch. Roy is backing off fast, spilling his beer, his cigarette falling from his mouth. She has him against the wainscotting and he shies away from her into the cue rack, the cues falling as he backs into it, one of them hitting the side of his head. Roy holds one hand above him, the other splayed between his thighs. The men at the bar laugh. The other girls move in on Roy, hurling abuse. The back pockets of their jeans have flowers stitched into them, each petal perfectly traced. They surround him, yelling and swearing, and then leave him cowering against the rack.
    Roy just about lost his balls, says one of the boys, who has turned to watch the whole thing. He turns back, grinning.
    The men at the bar and the other pool table are all laughing at Roy as he sidles away from the girls. Even Les is laughing and he blinks his eyes as slow tears squeeze out. Les’s wife comes from behind the counter, her face red and angry. She tells the girls that they’re barred if they pull a stunt like that again and that she has never seen such unladylike behaviour in all her days.
    And if you’re going to act like an animal, then you can go and sit outside with the dogs, Roy Thompson, she says.
    What’d I do? Roy whines, still hunched over.
    Wallace turns back around to us, shaking his head.
    Well, it wouldn’t be the first time, he says to the boy. And I mean for real. On that very same pool table with a pair of bull knackers. Nearly had them cut right off.
    That’s bullshit Wallace, says the boy. You talk so much bullshit.
    No. No bullshit, says Wallace. Why’d I bullshit you about a thing like that. That’s truth, isn’t it Smithy?
    I wasn’t there, Wallace.
    Yeah, but you heard about it, didn’t you? And you was there that day, wasn’t you? Day Roy didn’t have his hat.
    Yeah, that’s true, I say.
    Roy is sidestepping around the girls to the bar. The men are cheering him on and calling out to him.
    Wasn’t a fair fight was it, Roy boy? they say. Outnumbered, weren’t you Roy?
    So one day Roy comes to work without his hat, says Wallace. And he’s whingeing about it, come late because he couldn’t find his hat.
    At the bar the men are patting Roy on the back and making fun of him, holding their fists up.
    And you know Bob Carter?
    No, says the boy.
    Course you do. Big bloke. Works at the abattoir.
    Oh, yeah.
    One of the men at the bar buys Roy a brandy.
    Dutch courage, he says.
    Well, Roy was having it off with his wife. So day before, Bob Carter comes home and finds Roy’s hat hanging on the bedpost.
    Roy is