Open Wounds by Douglas Skelton sampler

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6 douglas skelton the words but they wouldn’t come. He knew she would have questions, but he didn’t feel like yielding to them. He didn’t know what to tell her. He didn’t know how much he could tell her. He looked down at the boy holding her hand tightly and felt something hit him like an open-palmed slap. The kid was dark-haired, his face serious, but it was the eyes that sent his head spinning. He knew who the lad was even before Vari spoke. ‘This is Davie,’ she said.
7 1 Two Years Earlier old jinty was the only one walking in the street that day, pushing her pram as usual, her bare legs milky white but lined with varicose veins that rose from her calves like a relief map of the Pyrenees. There was nothing in the pram, of course, hadn’t been for many a long year. Not since her son choked on the eye of his teddy bear. But she still pushed it through the streets and talked to the ba<strong>by</strong> as if he was there. The sun burned in an unbroken blue sky and the street trapped its rays like a desert canyon, the red sandstone tenements rising on either side soaking up the heat, bleeding it back through the mortar. There was no cooling breeze and the air was heavy and hot and no-one moved, apart from Jinty. In the hottest summer to hit the city in over thirty years, many people chose to stay indoors and swelter in privacy, their windows open to invite the faint promise of cool air, fans whirling, cold drinks near to hand, the ice cubes in them melting so swiftly it was as if they’d never existed. Others thronged the city parks in search of an open space where they might find a pleasing breeze, where they could sit on cool grass and eat ice cream, where the sun worshippers could bake their bodies and burn out the pasty white of a Glasgow winter. The heatwave topped the headlines in print and on screen, while radio jocks dished out advice on staying cool, then segued into The Lovin’ Spoonful singing ‘Summer in the City’. Jinty, though, seemed oblivious to the stifling temperature, for she wheeled her pram along the searing concrete pavement at her usual pace, muttering to herself as she always did. She was well known, and most of the adults – the ones who knew her story – tended to look on her with pity. But the youngsters were a different matter. To them she was a target, a figure to be followed down the street, her ragged appearance fodder for their cruelty along
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Page 5 and 6: Open Wounds DOUGLAS SKELTON Luath P
Page 7: 5 December 2002 funerals in the sun
Page 11 and 12: open wounds 9 Davie McCall said not
Page 13 and 14: open wounds 11 something good. He w
Page 15 and 16: open wounds 13 ‘There’s always
Page 17 and 18: open wounds 15 him cut or his legs
Page 19 and 20: open wounds 17 maverick for Rab McC
Page 21 and 22: open wounds 19 ‘A fuckin mute tal

Open Wounds by Douglas Skelton sampler

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