pENCILS aND hAWSEHOLES*

‘What’s the bother, man, seems to me you got your hat on back to front, silly fucker’. The shamble leg man frowned and laid his hat on the pavement next to the clochard’s alms cap. ‘Silly, silly fucker, you are, damn right, I’d say’. The shamble leg man took a pencil from his inside coat pocket, sharpened to a fine point with a paring knife, and smiled. He raised the pencil, pointing the sharpened end at eyelevel with the clochard, and smiled again, this time with a sneer hidden beneath a masked indifference to beggars and silly fuckers. ‘We’ll see who the silly, silly fucker is,’ he said, raising the pencil over his head. The clochard, now aware that his invectives had drawn out the worst in the shamble leg man, his ire and discontent, swung his left leg over his right and pushed his alms cap under the seat of his trousers. ‘If your going to poke me, ‘he announced, ‘best do it quick, cause if I catches your arm, I’ll drive that silly pencil up your fucking hawsehole.’ The shamble leg man turned to fact the clochard head on; his eyes two black beads in the clove of his brow, and smiled, this time with teeth brown and rosined with tobacco chuff and Catholic Porter, ‘give way,’ he said, ‘or I’ll be forced to give you the give way.’ The clochard raised his hand, a briar root twisted into a scout’s knot, and smiled. ‘You think you’re the only one with a pencil?’ he said, eyes trained on the Shamble leg man’s raised hand, the brim of his alms cap sticking out from beneath the seat of his trousers. ‘If worse comes to worse,’ the clochard said, ‘I’ll kick the faith right out of you, then steal your wallet and hat, even though I find hats, yours in particular, abhorrent.’ The shamble leg man pocketed the pencil, pulling the lapels of his greatcoat tight round his chest, and smiled, his eyes black with hatred, sockets bloodied with disgust, and turned up the sidewalk, the clochard yowling after him, his cap vacant of coins and alms.