Alcoholanimalism: Chapter 9: FINIS

Over the river past Crocodile Island, above the slopes of the Big Hill, pale slate creeps across the sky. The floor is cold and hard and I ache awake. The world looks the same through the tattered vintage-car print curtains, but the night plays back and tells me things are maybe very different indeed: I ran away, I left Owen alone on the floor, dead to the world with a raging drunken ball of muscle and mayhem tearing his caravan apart. By now anything could have happened, the chimpanzee must be loose out there somewhere, anywhere, scared-confused-dangerous. Any scenarios I invent to have been able to save Owen and secure Charlie involve braver boys than I, who did not have what it would have taken.

Six in the morning, a round number, as good a reason as any other; rifle raised I make my way back into the menagerie through the cold light to see what I will see.

Animals are hungry. They’re fully aware I’m the one out of place here, now is not the time for strangers, they relay and relate the news to each other, the noise swells as I disturb their fields of vision, my scent offends them, the gravel-grinding of my feet is the sound of a tin drum to a tippler’s morning-after. Cold grey light, caravan door grating softly on those rusting hinges, no sign of life or of death, no way of knowing without looking, closer, closer, whisper, whisper, “Owen, Owen?”, six feet, four feet, two feet, face in the door, no Owen on the floor, “Owen, are you there, are you OK?”

Rush of colour and presence, my field of view is completely swamped, the stale smell of animals, big-as-a-bear it’s Owen in my face bellowing “What the fuck d’ya think, I can’t hold m’piss?” and he’s outside now towering over me as I stumble backwards, he’s bleary, bombastic, blustering.

“Wot the fuck-are-ya doin’ wiv that rifle, ‘oping for a comeback? ‘Libra Lavengro rides again’? The goys’ll be here soon for the mornin’ show, gotta go fire ol’ Charlie up and get ‘im fuggin goin’!”

Sure enough, prostrate in the straw, Charlie has put himself back in captivity sometime in the early hours, closed his own cage from the inside and is slumbering, drooling, snoring-sick with whiskey while his old brow-beaten wife Cheetah preens his threadbare head.

So, it’s actually Owen who has the strength of a beast. He’s hale’n’hearty and the show, as we all know, must go on.

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FINIS