Between the Bridge and the River Read online

  Between the Bridge and the River

  Craig Ferguson

  Chronicle Books (2006)

  * * *

  BETWEEN THE BRIDGE AND THE RIVER

  CRAIG FERGUSON

  BETWEEN THE BRIDGE AND THE RIVER

  A NOVEL

  Copyright 2006 © by Craig Ferguson.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual people, places, or events is entirely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available.

  eISBN: 978-0-8118-7303-1

  Cover design by Volume Design, Inc.

  Chronicle Books LLC

  680 Second Street

  San Francisco, California 94107

  www.chroniclebooks.com

  This is for Milo.

  A love so big I couldn’t run.

  And for his great-great-grandfather

  Adam.

  APOLOGIA

  This story is true. Of course, there are many lies therein and most of it did not happen, but it’s all true.

  In that sense it is deeply religious, perhaps even biblical.

  HISTORY

  Nine of the first thirteen signatures on the American Declaration of Independence were from Scotsmen or men of Scottish descent.

  CONFESSION

  Is a sacred rite enhanced by allegory, exaggeration, and lies.

  TIME

  Is only linear for engineers and referees.

  SCIENCE

  The laws of physics state that given the mass-to-wingspan ratio of a bumblebee, it is impossible for the creature to fly. But it does.

  ALPHA WOLVES

  CLOVEN-HOOFED CREATURES passed this way.

  They were never sure what kind. Some weird brainy kid like Gordy McFarlane or Freckle Machine might know but Fraser and George’s limited information about wildlife came from children’s television and the free posters that they got with their Pathfinder shoes. The ones with the little compass in the heels that they wouldn’t be caught dead wearing now. Those were for kids. Thirteen isn’t a kid anymore, you can’t walk around with wee plastic compasses in your heels, not if you ever want to get off with Sharon Cameron and maybe feel her diddies.

  No compass would point you in that direction; you have to do that kind of thing for yourself or get your friend to tell her you like her and see how that goes.

  Toys, crying, and novelty footwear were definitely out.

  Fishing was still okay, though, thank God.

  They jumped over the muddy track where the cattle, unicorns, satyrs, and devils had trodden and headed down the shingle footpath to the canal.

  The Forth and Clyde Canal connects the east and west coasts of Scotland and had, for a tiny moment in history, been used as a means of industrial and commercial transport. Horse-drawn barges carrying coal or machine parts or sheep.

  The barges were long gone by the 1970s and the man-made waterway that cuts through the green valleys of the country’s central belt had become a mecca for amateur anglers.

  Professional anglers prefer a body of water that’s stocked with more than a broken pram and some old tires.

  The canal was reputed to contain two types of fish. Perch, a small, tasteless lump of tiny bones—a kind of aquatic hamster—and pike, a big, nasty, admittedly delicious freshwater shark that liked to eat perch.

  It seemed to Fraser and George that both species were totally fictional; neither boy had seen or caught one of these elusive slitherers and they had never seen anyone else catch anything either.

  The story went that when there was a pike about, the perch would all swim away, so that’s why no one caught any, and that no one could catch a pike because they were super-intelligent and could spot a fishing hook underwater from fifty feet or hands or whatever fish measure distance in.

  Fins, supposed Fraser.

  George said that if the perch always buggered off to avoid the pike, then the pike would die of starvation and then the place would be teeming with perch.

  The truth is both boys sort of knew there were no fish in the canal and they didn’t care. The canal was a long way from their homes and school and church and all that trouble, so most weekends they took their fathers’ neglected fishing rods and a few unfortunate earthworms and trudged five miles across the spongy green farmland to get away.

  Fraser was Church of Scotland (Protestant).

  George’s father was a Protestant but his mother was a Catholic and she had insisted that he be raised Roman Catholic (Catholic).

  The divisions between the two faiths are small and nitpicky at best.

  Things like: “Take this, eat, this is the body of Christ” vs. “Take this, eat, this represents the body of Christ.” (Millions all over Europe had died for that one.)

  And: “We want to put up some nice pictures of Jesus in the church” vs. “A picture of Jesus in the church is idolatry and God will smite those who commit that heinous sin. And if God doesn’t smite them it’s probably because he wants us, his chosen ones, to do it for him.” Etc. etc.

  Neither Fraser nor George was in the least interested in the theological arguments of the two factions but they understood that they were expected to take sides and so when they had to, they did. They knew the rules, so they tried to avoid each other during the week, even though they attended the same school and were in many of the same classes. This was highly unusual because normally in Scotland, Catholics attend special Catholic schools and Protestants go to the nondenominational state schools, but a fire had burned down Our Lady’s High a year ago and the papist pupils had to attend the regular school until further notice.

  As a result they had to attend a Mass in the assembly hall every morning before their secular lessons.

  Conspiracy-theorist Catholics (and if you are a Catholic, it certainly helps to be a conspiracy theorist) suspected that the fire was the result of arson by an extremist Protestant group (and if you are a Protestant, it certainly helps to be an extremist).

  In fact the fire had been caused by Sadie Meeks, a twenty-year-old assistant lunch lady who had forgotten to turn off the deep-fat fryer in the school kitchen. The temperature had built up overnight and by three a.m. the heat from the machine had reached such an intensity that it melted the adhesive on the ceiling tiles above it. The fiberglass squares fell into the boiling, molten lard and ignited violently, shooting magnificent fountains of napalm all over the tubs of chicken morengo and vats of purple custard.

  By morning light the place looked like a black Southern church after a visit from the demons in the white hoods. Sadie had been doped to the gills on mogadon, a powerful sedative given to restless geriatrics in nursing homes. She had gotten the drug from her mother’s prescribed stash in the old biddy’s bedside cabinet. Sadie suspected the fire was her fault but didn’t mention it because she didn’t want to get into trouble.

  So no one except Sadie knew the truth. Everyone, Catholics and Protestants, presumed the flames were the fault of religious bigotry.

  It certainly was the most feasible explanation.

  So due to the combustible nature of cheap tiles and chip fat, Fraser and George were allowed to continue into their teens, in a slightly clandestine way, the relationship they had since they were infants living next door to each other.

  This pleased them both.

  But drugs, fire, and secrets won’t keep the world away forever.

  The boys had been sitting at the otherwise deserted canal bank not catching anything fo
r about an hour before Willie Elmslie arrived. Willie was considered by the other kids to be “bugsy,” which meant he was dirty and probably had head lice. He did not in fact have any parasites on his scalp but he had some nasty little critters grubbing around in his brain.

  He was a tall blond boy of fifteen with vivid pocked acne on his white, white skin, which was irritated by his habit of picking and squeezing it for its precious creamy pus. He had the makings of a ruddy threadbare mustache that advertised the color of his pubes, and he smelled badly of Brut, the cheap aftershave that his stepfather wore.

  He was carrying a plastic shopping bag and he approached the boys and asked them if they had had any luck. Fraser lied and said they had seen a pike jump out of the water and Willie told them that that was cool, man.

  George and Fraser watched as Willie nonchalantly took a bottle of Eldorado from the bag, cracked the seal, and took a swig, grimacing as he had seen others do when ingesting alcohol.

  Eldorado was an extremely inexpensive fortified wine from South Africa, a sweet, cloying, sickly brew that had enough alcohol in it to preserve a cadaver. It was famous as the rocket fuel preferred by street alcoholics. Willie had bought it from an Asian grocer in Abron-hill who wasn’t too tough on the age restrictions; plus, to Mr. Patel, Willie looked eighteen.

  You can’t really tell with white kids.

  Willie offered the bottle to them. George declined but Fraser accepted. He retched when the noxious crap hit his taste buds but he forced it down.

  Willie was impressed.

  “Yer like an alky, man,” he said.

  “I know,” said Fraser, trying not to sound too proud.

  Again the bottle was offered to George but he declined once more, shaking off the derision from Willie.

  Over the next hour Willie and Fraser drank the entire bottle, with Willie artfully making sure that Fraser took the lion’s share. Both boys were drunk, but Fraser hideously so. He vomited cornflakes, eggs, and bacon into the canal and then passed out on the bank.

  Willie laughed hysterically.

  George, who had not touched a drop, pretended to concentrate on his fishing.

  Willie told George he was a poof for not drinking. George ignored him. Willie told George he was a poof for being a Catholic and George let that one slide too. Then Willie decided he wanted to take off the comatose Fraser’s trousers and underpants and throw them in the canal. He said that would be a great laugh.

  Willie bent over Fraser and started to unbuckle his belt. He was salivating, his face near the unconscious boy’s crotch.

  He yelled in agony and surprise as he felt George’s fishing rod strike the back of his neck like a cat-o’-nine tails.

  George administered another fierce stroke of the fiberglass lash.

  “Whit the fuck ur yae daen?” cried Willie.

  “Leave him alone.”

  Willie stood and faced George. He swayed, trying to look as dangerous and unpredictable as his stepfather.

  George stood his ground, ready to fight.

  Willie saw that and backed down.

  “You jealous ah wis gonnae see yer bumchum’s tadger?”

  George said nothing.

  “Youse two are poofs, fuckin arsebandits, man. Ah’m tellin ivrybody.”

  He staggered off, pretending to be more drunk than he really was.

  George rolled Fraser onto his side so that if he threw up in his sleep he wouldn’t choke on it, then he went back to his fishing and waited for him to wake up. He had been around drunk people before; his father was Scottish and his mother was Irish.

  He didn’t wonder why he had attacked Willie, he sort of knew. He had sensed that Fraser and he himself were in danger, that if Willie had gotten away with taking off Fraser’s clothes, that somehow things would have gotten worse and that he would be implicated too.

  He had reacted instinctively in the presence of a predator.

  Willie was later convicted of the rape of an eleven-year-old girl. He was sentenced to six years in a young offenders’ institution, where eventually he hung himself in his cell.

  The girl, Susan Bell, grew up to be the well-respected art critic on the Glasgow Herald. She had, predictably, trouble in her relationships with men and suffered periodically from deep depressions. At thirty-eight years old she finally entered psychotherapy and began to get some relief.

  After two hours Fraser awoke feeling utterly miserable and sick. George told him what had happened and the boys were quiet on the long walk home.

  George had been forced into a situation he didn’t want by Fraser’s stupidity and he resented that. Fraser was embarrassed and blamed George for his discomfort.

  And it came to pass that the innocents were cast out of paradise.

  Although they were always polite and they palled around for a few years to come, their friendship pretty much ended on that day.

  HOLY FOOLS

  IN THE BEGINNING, Saul took the worst of it, and in the end, Saul also took the worst of it. Leon was lucky, one lucky son of a bitch. An absolutely crazy bitch.

  Leon always thought that his spectacular singing voice and incredible vocal timing were gifts from God. Sometimes, in an orthodox groove, maybe even from G-d. Praise God, Praise Jesus, Amen, Hallelujah, my friends, please send your donations to the number on the screen.

  Saul, his younger brother, was less prone to preaching. He was the mystic, the brains, and plain grateful to be alive. He just ate, sat in his chair, and had hookers masturbate in front of him. He couldn’t touch them anymore. Couldn’t even jerk himself off anymore, no point anyway. Fuckin dead from the neck down, had to have staff just to wipe his ass.

  He could count money, though, he still got a little solace out of that.

  They weren’t Jewish (Mom’s family were Italian, originally from Rome) but she was a great admirer of the late Sammy Davis Jr. If Sammy had converted to Judaism, then surely there must be something in it. She gave the boys their names because she figured they would be helpful if the boys ever ended up in show business like their fathers.

  Sophie, Saul and Leon’s mother, had been a showgirl at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas toward the end of an era when the Rat Pack were fatter and drunker and already halfway dead. Frankie banged her in the penthouse suite and even gave her a bracelet. “To Sophie, love Frank.” She hocked it immediately.

  Ring a ding ding.

  Sophie thought about Frank’s cock sometimes, how famous it was. Not as famous as his voice, sure, but famous in cock terms. Most cocks were seen by only a handful of people: Mom, Dad, creepy uncle, priest, bunkmates, and lovers. Frank’s cock had been seen by thousands of showgirls. It was a well-known cock; more than well known, it was a star. Jesus, Frank’s cock probably had anecdotes.

  Sophie thought how ordinary Frank’s cock looked, thought about the famous women it had been inside. (She fleetingly compared her pussy to Ava’s but quickly came to the conclusion that that was a way to make her feel even more inferior. Ava’s would be warmer, sexier.)

  Like many of her sex, Sophie was fiercely competitive with other women, working on the crackpot theory that if she could be better in some way, men would like her more, respect her. Make her happy. She never cottoned on that the men she was attracted to, the men who found her attractive, didn’t like women.

  They liked variety. And fucking.

  She never thought about Ava’s dotage and death. She never thought how booze-sodden and miserable Ava had been at the end, hacking and shaking with DTs as she sat on the precious, much-envied cooze, now as dry and unused as an old hymnbook.

  Sophie was too busy thinking about herself. Which was a major contributory factor in Leon’s narcissism and Saul’s staggering obesity.

  By the time he was thirty, Leon had been variously diagnosed by a wide array of sources as talented, misogynistic, gay, straight, bi, a genius, a moron, sexy, shut-down, crazy, and cute. He was charismatic.

  By the time Saul was thirty, he had been described as schizophre
nic, manic depressive, bipolar, alcoholic, addictive, ADD, ADHD, sociopathic, deviant, sinful, and disgusting. He also weighed over three hundred pounds. He had a big appetite, it damn near killed him.

  Their daddies weren’t around to keep an eye on them.

  They knew that the only person watching them was God. They knew God was on their side.

  God saved them from their mother, Hollywood, and the killer ducks. What also saved Leon was his mother’s belief that he was Frank’s kid, and that if she harmed him in any way, Frank would somehow find out and would send the boys round, but Frank didn’t even know Leon existed. It was never proven he was Frank’s anyway.

  There had been no DNA testing, no paternity suits. She was terrified of Frank being angry (she told him she was on the Pill), that he’d set his friends on her. That’s why she moved back to Atlanta.

  Leon had that wonderful voice and that incredible timing, so his mother steered clear of him. His mother concentrated on Saul, who was the result of a knee-trembler with Peter Lawford in the parking lot of “Love-it’s” Frozen Custard. No one was afraid of that English pansy. He had lovely hands, though.

  Munchausen by Proxy, the psychiatrist called it in court. The judge, a fat, old, pompous idiot used to dealing with drunks and winos, made him explain. Munchausen by Proxy was a condition that Sophie had: It meant she harmed Saul to get attention for herself. If he had mysterious stomach upsets (a little rat poison in his Cheerios) or strange episodes at school (LSD on rye with Oscar), then she would be a martyr. Long suffering, single parent, victim.

  Special.

  Helped.

  This was before everyone in America became a victim.

  The judge was appalled. This floozy had gone from Atlanta to Las Vegas and returned with two illegitimate children. Now she was physically hurting one of them and driving both of them crazy. He ordered Sophie placed in a mental institution and placed the boys in the custody of the state.

  Saul was dismayed. He had resigned himself to the life of a gastrointestinally challenged mystic (LSD and rat poison), it was his identity, and now a court-ordered shrink told him he wasn’t who he thought he was, that his mom was a fruitcake. He couldn’t accept that, so he set out to become what he thought he was, as many do.