Bully Boys and Navvy Boots by Pam Knapp

We’d always egg one another on, seeing who’d be first to set her off. Every kid I knew did it. It was just a game. Her mind had long gone. She didn’t remember that it’d been done before. Each time she was teased was like the first. We’d wind her up and the payoff was one of her screams. Major horror screams! And then we’d leg it, pissing ourselves laughing!  Like I say: just a game.

Usually, it was name calling. All the words that, if our folks ever heard us using, we’d get a pounding for, we’d just throw at her. Mostly though, she didn’t even hear us. She’d be mumbling into some bin. Like a witch in story, all bent over and cackling, pushing that old shopping trolly around all day, mumbling spells into it like it was her cauldron. Every so often, someone would tells us to, ‘Leave her alone and clear off!’ and we’d run, giving it to them instead! It was a laugh. No big deal.

That day, Jimmy, who thinks he’s some kind of boss, said that we should pull at her stinking coat. Even in summer she’d have it on, flies following her about. God! She smelt like fish. I’m not joking. She hummed with it. There should be a law against stinking that bad. One time, she stank so much that people must have complained because an ambulanceman was trying to get her to take her coat off, police had been called, it was mad. She got really manic about the coat, shoving the policeman away. She spat right at him! She started her screaming and we stood watching like it was some kind of street entertainment; us laughing, her screaming. 

Everyone was nervous of getting up close to her. I mean, she’s nuts. But Jimmy got in there and pulled at her sleeve. He hardly touched it, but she stopped that muttering and stood stock still. That freaked us out! Caught us off guard for a minute. We all held our breaths waiting for the screech. I thought we were going to run off, but Brian piled in behind her and yanked hard at her collar. He backed off quickly, laughing-shouting that he’d ‘got her’. That was probably why she fell.

She was wearing so many clothes. Layers and layers of them. Once she was down, she was rooting around on all fours across the pavement. She couldn’t get back up. One of her navvy boots went flying off and she was like a pig, grunting in filth trying to find it. Her foot was tarred black with great lumps for toes and crooked nails like some kind of claw. Jimmy was smirking and kept kicking the boot just out of her reach, her scrabbling after it on her knees. Her other boot was held on with rag and bits of string. I felt bad for her then, but that’s how they live, these people. If she’d got herself some proper shoes and didn’t wear a thousand clothes, Jimmy’d never had his fun that day, would he? I mean, when you roam around looking like that, people are going to think you’re some kind of weirdo. They should just get themselves sorted out. Get a bath and some clean stuff. Then they wouldn’t stand out. People like Jimmy wouldn’t notice them. They’d be okay then.

Anyway, he kicked the boot right out into the road, and she was going to crawl straight into the traffic to fetch it, but one of the other lads ran and got it, chucked it down where she was on the floor. He called Jimmy a fucking bastard, spat at Jimmy’s feet and walked off. Jimmy shouted after him, calling him a wanker but the rest of our lot walked away too. To be honest, I wanted to do the same, but I knew that Jimmy’d do me for that later and if you knew the size of his bulldog brother, you wouldn’t cross him either. So, I didn’t do anything. I just stood there. Watching.    

She got the boot and was crouched on the pavement trying to wrap it in place when Brian started to push her trolley. Well, she lost it. I mean full on crazy lady, lost it. I couldn’t make out what she was saying but she was definitely calling us all the bastards under the sun. Brian thought it was hilarious and started spinning the trolley round and round, so even though she’d got to her feet, she couldn’t get to her stuff. It was then that she screamed. It was a noise straight from hell. The sound of it. Real terror. I thought now that we’d got what we came for, we would just leave her alone and get out of it. We’d got the scream, we’d got it and some, she just kept going. Scream after scream. Terror all over her face.

Brian was totally freaked out by it. People were looking over at us and one or two had stopped. Jimmy shouted at Brian to leg it with the trolley.

She might not be able to speak properly, but she definitely understood that. She launched herself at Brian. She was a cat: all claws and teeth, hissing and biting. She bit Brian’s shoulder, right through his shirt! She even drew blood. I thought then, how it would have been better if she’d been one of those tramps with a dog. Something that would’ve made sure nobody took her shit. But it was just us against her. She was on her own. A tiny woman wearing one navvy boot, stinking like fish, clawing and biting Brian before he could take her cauldron-trolly, piled high with crap.

The people who’d stopped to watch had come over and were telling us three to push off. The old woman was mumble-cursing and picking up plastic bottles and carrier bags full of carrier bags that had been thrown from the trolley. Her stench wafted everywhere, I couldn’t get it out of my nose, out of my head. It’s still there clinging on like she was to Brian’s back. Jimmy and Brian bowled off, threatening that they’d get the police to do her for assault. Like that was going to happen – pricks!

But I couldn’t leave.

Her boots, her claw-feet, her stinking coat, hair all matted and thick, that trolly full of crap, they all kept me there. Frozen. I knew that Jimmy and Brian would be back, probably with a posse of other morons. They’d be mad as shit at being shown up like that; they might have done anything. I felt like I had to watch over her like some tramp guardian, like a dog should do.

All day, I shadowed her, following her from bin to bin, listening to her mumble-spells and her curses, thrown mostly at imaginary people coming to get her trolley shit. Jimmy and Brian didn’t come back. Not that day anyway. I was glad they didn’t. What was I going to do? Get between them and take a beating for the crazy batshit woman? I knew that I’d just keep out of the way, let those bastards do whatever kind of messed up torment their sicko minds came up with. But as long as I followed her, as long as nothing happened to her, as long as Jimmy and his maniac brother stayed away, I felt I was doing – something.

It got late, she left the high street and headed to the park. I left her there. There was no way that Jimmy, Brian or any of their dipshit mates would go in there when it was dark.

I’ve cooled it with that lot now. I did take a beating from Jimmy’s brother, though. I knew that shit was heading my way after I told my folks what had happened. I heard Jimmy’s dad knocked him into the following week, so his brother did the same to me. But I managed to get a few gut kicks in, so I didn’t feel like a complete tosser. I saw him coming toward me like some kind of cartoon ogre, all brawn and no brain. He scares the shit out of everyone. And with every punch I took, every kick, every smack to my head, I got angrier and angrier, I was boiling over with it, with the screams, with the boots held by string, with the stupid, stupid following.

I couldn’t get rid of the stink of her. The stink of me.

So, this is me now. Still a coward but one who hands out meals in cardboard containers to homeless who stink like shit and drink their demons away with booze that could pass for paint stripper.

I see her sometimes. That old coat and the layers of clothes. She never takes food from me but she did take the stray dog from the bloke who makes the meals and she was eyeing up the new navvy boots with strong laces that I left by her trolly.  

Pam Knapp

Image Self-published work
Photographs by WayneRay taken with Nikon Coolpix A300 – Homeless persons shopping trolley loaded with sundry items of clothing and with items scattered around it on the floor.