COMPASSION FROM READING BOOKS

(Just a wee flash. I do harbour the hope that books serve a greater purpose... and maybe it is to make people more understanding of their neighbours. I do hope for that... even when I see writers being like Morag, and readers, too.)

COMPASSION FROM READING BOOKS

She cried. O’er somethin in a book. I watched her, watched the tears creep up on her and one hand raised o’er her mooth in a pantomime o’ shock and then cryin. I dinnae ken what Morag was readin, except it was fiction. A death maybe, or a loss, or a comin together, and Morag was cryin. I was moved to see her like this.

But the thing is, she could be a heartless bitch when her nose was not in a book. Really heartless. Her words all sharp and heavy and thrown, weighted like a stone in the hand afore the violence o’ the raised arm and the jerk o’ throwin.

‘Sticks and stanes may break ma banes, but words…’

I ken the lie in that children’s rhyme. I hae seen the small she could make o’ men and women by the wicked in her mooth. And men big as doors, and she knocks and knocks with her fisted words, till the door cracks and flees open to all the howl and laughter of her wind.

And even her ain mother and her ain father, and she could make ‘em tremble with just the hiss and spit o’ her tongue. And no one was safe. And a man she loved yince, a fine man and upstandin, and yince he put his hand ‘neath her skirt, as a man will do, and he was not ungentle or coarse, but she slapped his face with her words and slapped it soond, and her love and his took frighted flight and awa’, high as eagles until it could no more be seen.

And here she was cryin o’er somethin in a wee book, and I smiled… couldnae help it. I smiled… not to see that there was a feelin heart in Morag, but because she hurt. And I wanted to know the words she had read, the words that could hurt a Morag so, for they words surely had an uncommon power.