Sitting on the bench, a cool Wednesday morning. Tony could hear the traffic from there. Up and down Dundonald Road, all day long, the world going about its business.
Here he was, just like every other day.
The smell of flowers and cut grass drifted on the air.
Sandwiches wrapped in cling film beside him, next to his dominoes.
A bottle of Irn Bru by his feet.
The tombstones before him.
And one in particular.
Words like a prisoner, locked inside. But he was here this morning with his notebook, as always. He had pages and pages unwritten.
He had walked along the gravel path, seen dates born on, died on. Some stretched between centuries, some in weeks, days, hours.
He had gone down to the day centre again, but Wally wasn’t there. Just a crowd of unfamiliar faces watching the news. Wally’s seat empty. No one else liked playing dominoes.
The scores were still up on the wall.
Wally 123 — Tony 122.
Fuck’s sake. Cheeky git.
It didn’t feel right being there without him.
So he’d come back here.
In the silence it felt like he was closer to his friend. He reached a hand out in front of him, like it was reaching out across the great divide.
He breathed in deeply and closed his eyes.
He jumped as a school kid raced down the gravel track, disrupting the stones and shouting, “Ehoooooooooooo!”
And in a moment, he was gone.
Tony sighed.
He eyes drifted to the tombstone:
Wallace Douglas
02/03/1984 to 16/05/2024
Beloved son, brother, and husband.
He opened his notebook, held the pen in his hand.
He looked up at the sky as a great cloud rolled in front of the sun. He shivered a little.
He took a domino from the packet.
Just held it.
Or it held him.
He wasn’t sure.
Like an anchor.
A connection.
To a life lived. All those games. Defeats. Triumphs. But mostly,
The chat.
He held the domino in his hand.
They’d played in the pub till he had given up the sauce.
Then, when Wally got ill, the day centre. Then the hospital.
He sat on the bench, in the cemetery with the silence and the stone before him.
He smiled. He knew that there would always be a piece missing from this pack. It had gone with Wally. In his suit pocket. As he lay there in the open casket.
A parting gift from a friend.
He picked up his pen. He wrote:
‘Do the dead see us?
See us in our grief?
Like the other side of a glass partition?
Screaming at us,
“You’ve still got what I’ve lost.
Get up.
Get up.
Get living.
Now.
While you can.
Don’t waste this.”
Or do they place their hand against the glass,
Smile.
Or would it be
You again mate. C’mon to fuck, should you not be playing dominoes ‘
The notebook open, he picked up his bottle of juice, the gas had built up and as he opened the lid it poured out over the top.
He looked up to the sky.
He’d buy a new set of dominoes on the way home today.
Midnight. Midnight is gone. Deep into the heart of the night. Just speeding through the nighttime, past where the streetlights end. The road is quiet.
Got to get home.
Police cars burling past me down the dual carriageway. Lights flashing as I slow down a little.
Stop at the petrol station and fill up. The lady behind the screen is reading the paper, she looks tired but offers a smile. The air is cold and clean; the silence of the night is weighing down the world.
Smell of petrol.
Advertisement for a new radio station on the back of the paper.
I can’t go the radio these days, man. There are no gospel stations singing tired travellers home tonight. No local stations at all. It’s just a voice beamed in from the home of empire, reading out the latest catastrophes.
Or a 100-sound alike stations.
Same songs from Ayrshire to Aberdeen to London to Paris to Kansas fucking city. I can’t tell if that’s a real human voice anymore.
This is my resistance. While I’m still breathing. You can get yourself to fuck.
I can hear the ghosts of late-night Ayrshire.
I’ve got a coffee, got some kind of microwave food. Is it a burger? Is it a pie? It’s something in between. I can’t decide if it smells of death or heaven.
I’m back on the road. Sun coming up in the rearview mirror, calling my missus. I’m coming home.
They got me working late. Night shift, late shift, midnight ramble.
The world gives you nothing. It will strip away everything that matters if it can.
Sometimes it’s nice to be up before the world. Sitting at the back door till the daylight returns. Rain falling softly. Jason Isbell playing. Cup of tea in hand.
The thing that always struck me about town, compared to the city, is a different kind of quiet. I swear my voice can travel for miles in this town. Like I can hear folk from over in the park, or across town.
The city’s different. I love them both, but this is where I chose. This is home.
Even that old tree out back, the one I don’t want to chop down, but keeps growing toward the wires. Every summer I’m out there pruning like a fool.
I’m like a tree barber.
Putting a cloth round it to gather the branches. Asking it, “How’s the family?” “Any tips on the horses today?”
Chop it down they say and get the space.
Nah.
I’m sitting in its shade here, sipping on a drink.
Paul Andrew Sneddon 