27th
After a month or so they
have his story pretty straight.
The day job stacking shelves and
the public transport are both
a front. It’s just the plastic bag
he that throws them.
“He must keep a little stash of money close
by ‘im.” They decide.
“Just incase, you never know.”
They start calling him ‘Dickie Mint’
“He’s worth a mint, that’s why.” They say.
And then the night he leans into the pub door
pays his pound
and walks with the quiz takings.
The following week they pull him every which way
His rosy cheeks jostle from
table to table, team to team.
Sports are his thing they learn.
Ask him anything about the England cricket team
from 1913 and the answers trip off his tongue
and roll quietly for four.
After that, not a day passed
without someone stopping to offer him a lift
or a wave a cheery hello.
The old man bigger
than God
“You know my old man’s in the will.”
Sarah Bradly chimed in one evening at the pub bar.
The same was said of Dan Tisdale at the sawmill
and then George Wicks
and Andy Barrat and
Phil Caul the postman
lists of names swarmed and circled like vultures
The morning he didn’t arrive for work
Breaths stopped like old clocks
They found him lying on a low bed.
Piles of sports sections from the weekend papers
towering on
either side.
and the carrier bag in his arms.
“There never were no money, of course”
was shrug around the bar that night.
The dull crack of glass on wood
counted off the silence
until shapes moved into the half drunk dusk
to suppers
and to doze in front of telly shows.
There was another quiz that Sunday.
