The International Writers Magazine: Human Stories

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From the Horse’s Mouth • Wesley Weyers Every significant conversation I have ever had with my mum has taken place in the kitchen. Among the dirty plates and cat litter box we have serious pupil-to-pupil chats about whatever was on her mind. I was pulled over on a grey Saturday afternoon as I cruised for orange juice. My mum fell into her story. ‘On my way over to the shop this morning I ran into Miss Perkins,’ she said.

Sigh. Miss Perkins, I wonder how many conversations have begun with her name. Everyone knows Miss Perkins and Miss Perkins knows everyone. She was an old lady as stubborn as concrete cancer. She spent hours on the streets, staking out a little spot and thickly spreading rumour to passing residents.
‘She told me,’ mum continued, ‘that she had been out last night, minding her own business, when these two thugs came up to her. They were both wearing hoodies and carrying bats, which they waved in front of her face. They told her to hand over her bag, which Miss Perkins refused to do. So one of the lads grabbed her bag while the other one prepared to hit her. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, this guy jumped out, knocked the bats out of their hands and gave them a good hiding. Miss Perkins was in shock, she thought someone else was trying to mug her. The lad came over to check if she was all right and it was no other then Jamie Mason.’ Mum lent back on the sink waiting for my reaction.

I laughed; mum always included Jamie’s surname as if he hadn’t been coming over to our house daily for the last five odd years. Jamie was a regular butcher-shop cad and a very good friend of mine. I was surprised; I have a lot of time for Jamie, but have never thought of him as a vigilante.

‘The lad’s a hero,’ said mum, ‘Miss Perkins has been telling everyone. There was a crowd around her to hear the story. She said that when she got home after her mugging she got on the phone and called everyone in her phone book and told them the story.’

As we were talking Jamie rapped on the front door. I let him into the house, he was wearing his standard heavy boots and baggy jeans. Within seconds my parents were slobbering all over his scornful face, my dad even called him sunshine. They were both eager to talk to him, Jamie glared, a reaction that would normally get my parent’s back up.
‘Ok if you’ll if you’ll let us go,’ I said to them, ‘we’re going down the pub.’

We squeezed past them and out of the house. My parents watched us walk off probably thinking that I could learn more from the man they had spent my whole friendship slagging off. Jamie didn’t look back at them. He wasn’t normally so disdainful, he had that whole cheeky rogue thing going on. Today it was a reversal, Jamie had become moody and my parents seemed to respect him.
‘So, what happened with Miss Perkins,’ I asked once we were outside.
‘Nothing,’ he replied, ‘but my phone hasn’t stopped ring. Everyone keeps on phoning me to say how great I am. Jesus!’

We walked the remaining distance pretty much in silence, aside from a few stuttering attempts at conversation by me. Our local wasn’t local at all, it is a thirty minute walk on the other side of the estate. It was a friendly place. Everyone knew Jamie in there, but then everyone knew the famous Mason family.
Jamie came from the bad part of the estate, where the front doors are painted in drab colours. His family were harmless players who had their fingers and toes waggling in numerous proverbial pies. His house was a chaos of stuff. Crammed with boxes of Royal Dalton plates, cartons of foreign cigarettes, loose microwaves. Everything was in transit, just waiting for someone to pick it up. Jamie tried to distance himself from his parents laissez-faire market place. He slaved at one of those metaphysical jobs where you can’t actually say what they do, like an entrepreneur or promotions person. Despite his attempts at straight living, in the eyes of my utilitarian parents he was a good for nothing and my bit of rough.

My family could say what they wanted, I loved the whole family. They did random acts of generosity without expecting anything back. On my twenty-first birthday the family pulled together and got me a fat silver watch with a brown digital box behind the gleaming dials. I haven’t it off my wrist for more then an hour since I received it.

We walked into the pub, which permanently smelt of beer and wet flannel, within seconds we were mobbed. Miss Perkins had told everyone. We had our shoulders shook and hair ruffled, received playful punches on the biceps and stomachs our patted. Jamie’s face sour screwed, he flinched with every playful moment of contact. I was cheered just for walking in with him. That afternoon we were Persona pro grate, it made a refreshing change from our normal incarnations.

We walked over to the bar, but we couldn’t make it. A crowd had formed around us, all eager to buy us drinks, which were being lined up along the sticky over-varnished bar. They threw complements about like stones at decaying factory windows.
‘You know, I heard what you did for old lady Perkins and I just want to say it was bang on.’
‘No offence mate, but of all the people who would do it, I never would’ve expected it from you. Nice one Jamie for standing up for our community.’

Jamie’s stand had caught everyone’s attention. You often hear about stories about people defending others, but they are calculated stands, like old men shouting at young scruffy girls for trying to get onto a bus without paying. But this was someone actually defending venerable Miss Perkins. Jamie’s face hadn’t once lifted, he glared at them all.

‘What’s up with you Jamie?’ said one of the guys around us, ‘you’re a hero, you should be celebrating.’
‘Have any of you ever tried cutting the tongue out of a horse’s mouth?’ Jamie said unexpectedly. No one responded to the question. ‘Well I have. It’s harder then you might imagine. You have to prise apart the horse’s mouth and stick your hand in. The whole time you’re cutting away at this fat lump of muscle you’re worried that the mouth is going to slam shut and take your hand off with it. You can hear the horse snoring and you know it won’t wake up, but you still worry.’

‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ one of the crowd said.

‘A couple of nights ago my dad and me cut the tongue out of a horse. We shot it with an elephant tranquiliser - you should always use a tranquiliser designed for an animal at least twice the size of the one you’re after – and then we got to work. Blood was squirting all over the place; my knife was practically slipping out of my hand. We got the tongue and left the horse at the bottom of the field with its face in the mud. ‘You see my dad met a guy last week ago who owned some alternative medicine place in Chinatown. There’s a cure for migraines that involves using a human tongue and this guy said he’d pay a thousand pounds for one. Of course, we couldn’t get a human tongue – I’m not from that kind of family – so we tried to fleece him with a horse’s tongue. I arranged this guy and sell him the tongue. Last night when Miss Perkins was mugged I thought she was the guy. I mean you’ve seen her walking about in her grey jacket, she looks like a man with a wispy beard. I’ve never met this guy before I didn’t know what he was going to look like. These alternative medicine people are weird. When I saw it was her I just cleared out of there and left her to it. Now she acting like I’m some saviour, well I ain’t. So fuck you if I’m not jumping for joy for saving some decrepit old biddie, because I’ve lost a thousand pounds and I’ve a horses tongue in my fridge.’ Jamie stopped speaking. He picked up one of the drinks and drank long and heavy from it. Everyone’s face had dropped.

With perfect timing Vince, Jamie’s dad, walked up to the bar and cheered his son.
‘Jamie! Alright lads, did you hear about my son? He’s fucking superman or Batman or someone like that,’ shouted Vince.
‘Alright dad, d’you want a drink? I’ve got loads of them lined up,’ Jamie said passing his dad a drink. ‘Come on let’s get a table.’

We all walked over to a corner table and ignored the clenching fists from the crowd around the bar.
‘What are you doing? They were buying you drinks, are you mad? You did a great thing, it’s the only time you’d ever get a drink out of these people, so enjoy it while you can.’
‘I’ve got to go a Jimmy,’ he got up and walked towards the toilets.
‘Jesus, what’s up with him?’
‘I think he feels he’s cheating people by taking drinks off them,’ I said.
‘What you talking about? He deserves it. I don’t know what’s got into that kid. The phones been ringing non-stop loads of people he hasn’t heard from in ages want to talk to him, but he won’t take the calls.’
‘But he didn’t intentionally save Miss Perkins. It was an accident.’
‘Are you calling my son a liar?’
‘No of course I’m not, it just…’
‘He hasn’t said a single word about it you know. I only heard about it from one of our neighbours.’

I shuddered to imagine all of the calls he received. Grandparents who he hadn’t spoke to in ages all ringing up when he has done something of supposed worth. It made sense why he wouldn’t talk to them.
I realised at that moment that there was no horse’s tongue. He had gone to help Miss Perkins, but he wasn’t going to stand around hearing them talk about how great he was. They were all people who had called him scum bag. It was a ‘fuck you’ to the lots of them. If he did something it would be for his own reasons, rather then that of anyone else.
He came back from the toilet and said nothing. The bar continued to leer at him, still feeing resentment about the drinks that they had brought.

© Wesley Weyers June 2006
wesfly@hotmail.co.uk

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