Hawthorn and Child by Keith Ridgway

are like sticks in sand. This is not like him.
    *
     
    He finds the piggy eyes again. The arsehole eyes. The hood is fallen back now, and the hair is buzzed short like Hawthorn’s. The scarf still covers the mouth. Hawthorn pushes the button, speaks, describes the fat boy. He has to repeat his number three times. He has to describe the boy twice. Someone tells him to move that way, to push out. He pushes. He roars and pushes. He shouts. He remembers the button and stops shouting. The men on either side follow him. He holds the piggy eyes in his. The eyes dart a little. They snap back to Hawthorn, hold for a second. He gets the impression that they’re smiling. Then the hood comes back up and the piggy head ducks and disappears. Shit. The men are still at his shoulder. He pushes his button. He is about to redirect them all when he sees a short-haired girl in front of him with a sneering face and a black scarf around her neck and a red hoodie. Red hoodie, he shouts. He grabs her. She hits his arm. He brings his truncheon down on her shoulder, hard. The men at his side clear a space. He holds her again, by the fabric on her chest. She is screaming. A boy is trying to protect her. Hawthorn sees him hit from the side by a shield edge. His head snaps backward, and falls forward again, dripping blood. Hawthorn drags the girl towards him. She is half crouched, half sitting. He wants to drag her by her hair but her hair is short like a boy’s. She is crying. She wears tight black jeans and her nose is pierced and he can see a tattoo on the skin of her hip where her clothes have parted. Everything about her makes Hawthorn furious. He drags her for a few yards. Someone comes to him, touches his arm. They lift her between them and walk her towards the arrest point. She is clutching her shoulder where he hit her, and she is sobbing, weeping, and looking behind her, for her boyfriend, crying.
     
    – Fuck off, Hawthorn hissed.
    – What?
    – Fuck off, I said. Go lose some fucking weight.
    They both looked at him.
    The bearded man smiled.
    – Who’s he talking to?
    – You, obviously.
    – You sure?
    – Well it can’t be me, can it?
    – I think he’s talking to both of us.
    – I think he is.
    They turned away from him and faced each other. Something in his arm jerked and he had to bite to stop it. He pulsed. He let it recede. He turned around and left the room. He went and stood in the shower. He stayed there.
     
    Later they make fun of him.
    – Whorethorn thought he’d got himself some nice fucking anarchist cock.
    – Whorethorn was hoodwinked by a titless dyke.
    – Whorethorn loves the smell of testosterone in the mornings.
    – Whorethorn’s got a hard-on for truncheon fucking.
    – Whorethorn is a fucking fascist faggot.
     
    He sat in his brother’s garden watching the kids. He called out to them.
    – Where’s your paddling pool?
    The boy shrugged.
    – Dunno, said the girl.
    – Will we find it? Set it up? It’s hot enough.
    The kids looked at each other. The girl frowned.
    – I don’t think so, said the boy.
    They went on with whatever it was they were doing. Something with plastic blocks and the seat from the broken swing. They talked to each other quietly so that he couldn’t hear. His brother and Tess were in the kitchen getting the dinner ready. His father was watching the second half of the match.
    He didn’t know what to do.
    He thought about faking a phone call and going home.
    He thought about going to the sauna. He hadn’t been in months.
    The kids were skinny and they looked like his brother when he’d been their age. Hawthorn watched them. He remembered going with his brother to the swimming pool. He remembered them holding their breath. They would duck underwater and see who could hold their breath the longest. He had forgotten. It was something they did. He remembered being under the water, with his goggles on, looking at his brother a foot or two away from him, both of them by the wall, with