In
a few minutes he will be asleep.
He
will fall asleep with the light on, again. He is old and, at last, he finds
sleep quickly, or perhaps it is sleep as finds him, in those moments of
uncertainty when he is unsure of its appearance, cannot recognise it and name
it, going ignorant of the sudden swamping of his conscious state.
Skunk:
Oh Jesus I’m so tired.
sighing.
Skunk:
You know, all day I’ve been trying to shake off that
and
again.
Skunk:
It’s like a tension in my guts. When I was walking out this morning and I saw
that dog, just standing there at the gate. I think it was eh, I don’t think it
was an alsatian but it was eh, it was an alsatian cross, a a doberman or some
kind of... breed. Normally I don’t I don’t mind dogs at all but... it’s owner
was just, you know, he’d gone on just a little way, I suppose they were going
to the park but, I saw the dog and just as I was coming down the steps it
froze, it was staring at me and then I saw, you know that thing when you’re
looking at a dog, or, I suppose, any animal, and you can see its ehm, its
centre of gravity sink inside itself, it’s... steadying itself or preparing
itself for something, and I felt an incredible... fear, like a white sweat, you
know that kind of chill that...
From
where he is, he should have access to as much as he’ll ever know of who he is
and where he came from, the whys pertaining to both, but often that knowledge
once withheld appears more intensely real, more lived than the life he knows
himself to have had, and much of that too forgotten now and gone forever.
Skunk:
..and then later in the day I began to make that connection between, some when,
you know when I was a child and I ran away...
He
blows his nose, suddenly become aware his breathing is not quite right.
Not long after starting school (at
perhaps five or six years of age) to avoid the threat of a neighbour’s retarded
dog, something to his smell and the suspect way he walks renders him prey, the
obvious and animal lure of infirmity, Skunk does not go home at the bell. Instead
he wanders stray about the town until resolved by passersby and driven home to
his raw-eyed mother. He is too young to acknowledge fortune; other children are
disappearing into dossiers, bulletins, and headline news.
Skunk:
Hindsight is so damn strange. Maybe I wouldn’t go through this now if I’d come
up... surrounded by relatives and, all that anecdotal stuff that families
have... Jesus I remember my mum that night, and looking back I suppose she
thought my dad had done something, maybe he’d come back for me.
He
is forgetting things. He recalls others that never occurred to him, adapting
them in ignorance and making them fit.
Skunk:
I’m already sleeping. I’m asleep now.
