Talent B.Hyatt

The Dumbfoundland Stories: Twenty Questions

By B.Hyatt | 2008

‘Damnit Mickey, this place smells of vaginas! Where’s boy?’
‘I’m making fish stu. Hist name in’t Boy, ist Mouse.’
‘Brought Mr. Jenkins for a look.’
‘Oh, don’t be concerned Micky, I’m just here out of curiosity.’
‘He’s on that sofa yonder. I had to pile newspapers round, he’s kepst falling. Flopping like an old sack, was funny mind!’
‘Mickey’s is so juvenell like. I polgise for him.’
‘Not at all.’
‘Would you be stopping for tea then?’
‘What? No thank you Puce, you are indeed right, that concoction is most reminiscent of the pudenda.’
‘So dumbo, he telled you his name didst ‘e?’
‘Nope. But he’s not big so Mouse, seemed a good name.’
‘Sawdust in that head.’
‘You got a gooder name?’

The boy was sleeping slumped to one side. Mickey had indeed built a kind of throne of old newspapers. The first thing that I noticed was how thin he was, wasted completely actually. His bones jutting and poking, his skin stretched, like a kind of boy shaped tent, taut, tight. He slept in an awkward position and breathed so shallowly that I had to check he was still alive, he was the most corpse-like looking human without being a corpse I had ever seen. I felt out of my depth, dead bodies I know how to deal with, light bulbs and fuses. But humans like this? Not mature, a veritable boy. I had not seen such a thing in so long, true to say I was lost.
I lifted a wrist as his chest fluttered and sank and fluttered and sank.

‘What do you suppose this mark could be?’
‘We dint put it there Baobab, swear.’
‘I believe you Puce.’
‘We just brunged him in.’
‘Of course, of course. Just come and see.’
‘I know what is it.’
‘Mickey, get back to yer fanny soup.’
‘What do you think it is Mickey?’
‘Check other one. Ist the same?’
‘Why, yes, Mickey, it is. I know what I think it is, what about you?’
‘I had the same, my momma, gave them to me. When we’s bad we got them. Wan’t her fault, we was bad scurf, we hat be controlled.’
‘Watcha blethering on at? Huh? What is you talking on?
‘I think what Mickey is trying to say is that when he was a child and misbehaved, as children are wont to do, he was tied up by his mother.’
‘Well, I’ll says it now, your momma was one mad bitch. Who ties up little boys, that’s sick, that Morning Starr terratry that’s.’
‘Perhaps so, but that is the case here, if I am not mistaken.’
‘Sure!’
‘This boy, who looks little more than 10 years old, thought he could be older, his emaciation stunting him, has been tied up. Judging by the depth of the wounds, he was tied up quite often and tightly too.’
I encircled his wrist with my forefinger and thumb. His wrist hung limply as if wearing a bracelet too big for him. The wound, an angry red burn.