Chapter 2
The Gift May Be the Wrapping
Saturday wakes me up with the sound of carts taking fish to market. Up past the Cowtown toll they meet other carts carrying all God’s living things, and dead ones too. Turkeys and chickens, turnips and onions, mackerels and cockles: anything you can kill and put in a pot is going off to get sold so that someone can eat it. I shove your shoulder a couple of times but you’re worn out from scouting so I’m first down to breakfast, except there isn’t any, because of Ma’s fright at the harbour. Ma sends me to Clowter’s for brisket. I hate John Clowter’s and she knows, but she never minds how I feel about anything. All those dead animal bodies hanging from Clowter’s ceiling, the rabbits stretched out like they were leaping away before they got bloody, the half pigs showing the side of their ribs no-one was meant to see, the chickens all naked and their white fishy eyes staring pure deadness, right into my heart like its own winter. I start upstairs to wak…