Signs of Life Among the Graves

Bryant stood under a tree in the graveyard. The summer twilight threw his long shadow that reached almost to the foot of the young man’s grave. Whereupon lay several little miniature bottles of Jack Daniel’s which had been left during this afternoon’s procession.

The dead young man had been popular.

Bryant eyed the bottles hungrily like they were the only things that mattered to him in the entire world. After a four-day binge on cheap sherry-wine and impossible cider, his nerve-ends were screeching for alcohol. All his last pennies had been donated to the cause of poisoning his blood and creating this mouldy, sick sweat on his back and brow.

Dishevelled could have been a word purely invented for him, he was a picture of grime and toxicity; an ‘Aqualung’ figure that frightened children and respectable women.

In this albeit brief Scottish summer he’d chosen to sleep in the graveyard. He’d hide in the enclosure of one of the bigger vaults until the parkie locked up, then he’d bask or bake in the last glimmer of evening sun and hopefully drop off into some sort of doze after the days peripatetic exertions; a tattered old sleeping bag to help keep out the nip of the night air.

But now…..

Well, the Jack Daniel’s would ease his pain considerably. The stoor of sweat and grime wafted to his nostrils as he took off his coat to lie next to the grave. He looked at the relevant dates – John Burns born 9/10/1994 died 5/7/2014.

“19 years old! Christ son! I could have been your grandfather. Just as well for you I wasn’t”

Bryant reached for one of the wee bottles at the base of the gravestone. He opened it quickly and drank about half the fluid. He coughed violently and was almost sick, but managed to hold his bile down and feel the effects of the alcohol like a welcome, warm glow in the midst of a toxic wasteland. Like Jesus had appeared within his body to heal his sickness. Sometimes whisky (or in this case whiskey, he thought) was like a good religion, but most times it was Old Nick himself.

“How low can a man get” he murmured in the direction of the stone “than to steal booze from a dead man’s grave? Ach well son! It’s not as if you’ll be needing it eh?”

He’d never felt alone in graveyards. Too many times he’d felt alone outside of them, but, in graveyards a man could seek peace and find it. Dead folk welcomed the company and, by Christ, you had a captive audience for these little chats.

“I feel I owe you young John Burns. For these fine wee lifesaving bottles that were left in tribute to you. I promise I’ll no’ make a habit of it”

Bryant rolled a fag and sipped from his wee bottle again. He noticed, with a happy feeling that actually brought tears to his eyes, that they seemed to be bigger-than-average miniatures, not the wee one-shot jobs these. There was a good couple of halves in each. The young man must have been recognised through his choice of drink. There was a couple of cans of coke as well.

“Jack and Coke they cry it, eh John? You were a Jack and Coke man, son…well, here’s tae ye from an auld derelict that ye’ve jist saved”

He raised his bottle to the stone in mock honour. It crossed his mind that he may be glad of the coke in the morning to quench his thirst.

The mid-evening sirens sounded from without this sanctuary for the dead and living. He was well out of sight of the cemetery-keepers house and he re-arranged himself to sit supported by the trunk of the pretty blossom tree which threw its shadow increasingly over the grave of John Burns. There was no-one to disturb him from his palliating drink and his wee bit smoke. He felt like this, against all odds, was the best night of his entire life.

“Strange to be talking about someone’s life in a graveyard but I feel I owe you, John Burns, and since you’re not going anywhere soon, you may as well listen to the sad story of mine”

Bryant lived most of his life these days in his head. As he treaded the streets hither and yon he kept up a constant dialogue with himself. Cheering himself up and knocking himself down. Constantly berating himself for his mistakes, then his spirits would be lifted by a lucky find in a bin or a hand-out from the state and his life would be tolerable until, inevitably, he’d reach a downturn again and life would seem an impossible thing for him to pursue. His inner chattering would then dwell on escape, a leap from bridges, a tumble down Arthur’s Seat perhaps. Or, like that bloke the other week, a ‘heider’ from the Scott Monument and ‘splatt’ all over Princes Street to hold up the morning traffic. 

He must have waited all night until the monument staff opened up then forced himself through and up the stairs. He’d let out a scream when he’d jumped, so it said in the paper. Such patience and determination to end your life so publically. Bryant didn’t have the moxie for that. His was a slow methodical suicide and this latest, most unexpected and relief-giving intake of alcohol, would add to the accumulation that would eventually end his life forever.

“Wonder if anyone will come and talk to me when I’m six-foot under?” Not likely, he thought. They cremate vagrants and down-and-outs, much cheaper.

“Mine’s has been a life ruined and wasted, John Burns, a name by the way, that you shared with a gallant man indeed, a labour leader of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, bet you didn’t know that. A gallant man and a gallant life. You’ll be surprised I know things like that eh Johnny boy? Auld down-and-out like me..but, I was not-always-as-you-see-me-now” He enunciated each word to show the dead man his educational credentials. The intake of booze had given fresh swagger to his demeanour. He felt able to speak both for and to the gravestone. All of a sudden a maudlin thought overtook him. He reflected that he was talking about a wasted life to a lad who hadn’t even had the chance to waste his.

“By Jesus son. I’d give you all my years and lie in that ground in place of ye. For I’ve made a terrible mess of my time. Let’s just get that straight”

The light was fading and a wave of sickness passed through Bryant’s gut to remind him that his bliss was temporary and needed re-fuelling. He opened the second bottle. There was no sound inside the cemetery. The birds in the trees were sleeping. He heard a dog barking in the faraway streets and up in the town centre the world cracked on oblivious to Bryant’s pain and transient joy.

“Which is how it should be. For how could a world bear the pain and joy of so many billions? A man had to keep to himself, and if he spoke at all, make sure it’s only to the dead who welcome the intrusion.

Might be a brand new form of therapy” Bryant coughed convulsively as he laughed “Gravestone Therapy – that’ll have the psychiatrists up in arms. Over a hundred years since Freud and you might as well have been talking to the dead”

Ah Johnny boy. I’ll no’ patronise you wi’ ‘what might you have been’ and all that pish. It’s what I might have been that’s mair to the point.

See when you get like this, son, it’s remarkably difficult to pick yourself up again. You have to have real cause to do so, and I find to my shame that I do not possess such a cause. For what would I rise up Lazarus-like out of this sea of despond and ruin? At my age….?”

As he spoke these words, an old familiar…surge? he couldn’t call it a surge exactly more a hope instantly dashed against the rocks of its own repeated disappointment. It teased only for a second then cowered away ashamed. This maybe I could was like the horse you backed despite years of coming in last.

“Ye have to have a cause in life or else you just drift, and I my dear dead friend am just that very drifter. A multitude of jobs I’ve had over the years, and, by definition, have committed myself to precisely none of them. Same with women. Well, except for the last one. The killer blow you might say.

A wool-gatherer and a bletherer I have been, son. A procrastinator of the very highest degree..”

Alcohol to the alcoholic is a constant process of topping-up, and this laborious routine allows the drinker to resume drunkenness relatively quickly and Bryant, now merry-maudlin, was in the mood for exhortation, a useless effort when talking to gravestones.

“But time runs out on the procrastinator. Pretty soon I will becomes I should have. Maybe you know this more than me, I wouldn’t know…Heh! Maybe I should go on Mastermind with it. Willie Bryant, your specialist subject is ‘procrastination, your time starts now. What is the etymological root of the word ‘procrastination’? I’ll answer that in a minute, Magnus…..

Good one eh, Johnny boy? And I just thought of that. I should have been a comedy writer. See that Johnny, did you see that? Should have been. Three words is all that is, yet they sum up so much…should, could, would there’s another three but, ye, didnae another three that trump the lot.

Anyway, life’s not all what thae bastard Tories claim it is. Maist o’ them have got it all wrapped up from birth then have the cheek to tell the rest of us how we should be living as if it was some sort of level playing field. No’ a’ of us were trained to be good at this Capitalism thing, the vast majority of us didnae even vote for it, then somehow we’re a’ meant tae be good at it or hell mend us. They create the world they’re good at and blame the rest of us for not keeping up. It’s no’ a fair world Johnny boy, but sorry to go on. You’ll have your own troubles”.

Bryant noticed the dark settle down like a shroud around him. He could barely see the outline of the trees and what he could see had become blurred by the second then the third bottle. Like the time-served bevvy-merchant he was, his evaluation of alcohol and the quantity thereof had become acute. Half-pished he may be but he knew that if he could get to sleep by about the fourth or fifth bottle he’d have a few left for the morning which he could dilute with the coke. All good jakey’s had this micro-surgeon-like analysis when it came to the sauce. It really was an ill-used resource that could be more productively applied to industry or economics.

“They should have alkies on Newsnight saying stuff like ‘well, Jeremy, in a purely fiscal sense a cut in the welfare budget would help our trade deficit especially in the third quarter’ and all that pish that no-one knows anything about but somehow it rules our life. I met that Will Hutton once when I was ‘an academic’, Johnny Boy, and do you know I’ve never met anyone with such a giant-sized head. No-one listened to a word he said, we all just gazed at his enormous head”

Bryant could feel all the weariness of his day, and indeed his life, begin to sap his already waning enthusiasm. He was both glad and sad about this, as he’d almost begun to enjoy himself. Here among the dead. Somehow they were more respondent to him than the living. But, strategically speaking, if he could sleep, that was the best thing. He could then face the next day afresh with his wee cache of security.

“It’ll be goodnight from me and goodnight from him pretty soon Johnny boy. I thank you from the bottom of my empty and broken heart for the good deed you have done tonight, however unwittingly. I’ll have one more fag then I’ll be lying right here alongside you Johnny boy, at least you’ll not be lonely the night”

The thrum of traffic was pleasant to his ear. His sickness had been temporarily quelled and wild horses could not keep him from his hard-earned slumber.