Port Brokeferry - still Monday

(Competition news: Another success - Cinnamon Press will publish a story of mine in an anthology next year. 

As for Port Brokeferry - a piece called 'Christine Cuts Hair' should be next but I hung that up here back in May... so skipping onto the one below which was online somewhere else, but the man had a slightly different name there. Now he is 'Dodie' and that feels more Scottish. Other small things changed, too, to fit this new place and the new people here.)

DODIE BREDWELL IS LOVED

Dodie Bredwell has a scarf as red as rust, or a sunset. Wears it knotted to his chin. Looks like a beard. Dodie like one of the patriarchs in the minister’s bible, full of beard. He has spiders in his ears too, and a glint in his green eyes. And he is always laughing. You hear him before you see him, laughing at nothing it seems. Laughing at the thoughts in his own head.

I’d like to know, says Lillian. I’d like to know what he thinks, to be always laughing.

Dodie Bredwell has nonsense in his head, and mischief, mixed in with all the learning. There’s some as think a teacher’s thoughts should not be so arranged. That Dodie ought to be more serious. A man of books shouldn’t be so lighthearted, that’s what they say.

He rides a squeak-squeak bicycle from his house to the school, a crooked line drawn the length of the sea-front road, a bag of books strapped to his back, his scarf flying behind him, and his laughter too.

Evelyn shakes her head when she sees him, and she can’t help smiling. And Edwin smiles, his tax return forgotten in hearing the squeak-squeak of Dodie’s bicycle. Magnus smiling, and Eileen at the open café door, and the baby that Grace carries in her arms, and Guthrie and Sinnie. All smiling. And Huntly in his window notices the smiling. Even Martin, his hands raised to the seagull-sky, or bent to pick Callum’s cigarette stub from the gutter, turns his head and smiles at Dodie Bredwell’s red-beard-scarf flapping, and his laughter trailing after him.

Dodie Bredwell, ‘Mr’ or ‘sir’, stands in front of his class all mornings, hands folded behind his back, his university gown over his jacket. He laughs then too, calling the children by names he has invented, close to the real names, but far from them also. Jellybean for Geraldine. Headboard for Edward. And the names stick, some of them, carried through all the days thereafter, and laughter following all the children he teaches, laughter warm and fond.

And on a Saturday early-night, Dodie Bredwell is the best of company at the bar in the Ship, and full of stories to turn heads, and the whole pub laughing then, it feels like. He has his own chair, sits like a king holding court, empty beer glasses collecting on the table in front of him like trophies easily won.

Yes, Dodie Bredwell’s the laughing king of the Saturday night Ship. Just as long as he is not crossed. For it’s never wise to cross a king. No, not for anything, not gold or silver, and not for anything so cheap as a dare. For Dodie Bredwell, though slow to anger, has a temper that makes the air around him fizz like electricity, and he growls making his own thunder, and others turn white and shrink back from his bullish advance, and with good reason. Dodie Bredwell is a big man, so big he ducks his head under doorways.

And Corinne loves him, thinks she does, though she is only fifteen.