My Father Brought Me There When I Was a Child by Andrew McCallum
Beside the track by the derelict station, where the railway leaves the cutting and shoots its arrow diagonally across the flat expanse of the Red Moss, the platelayers had built a brick bothy in which to shelter at piece-time. One of those platelayers was my grandfather; and sometimes on his 'spiv-days', when the weather was fair, my father would hoist me onto his shoulders and carry me through Station Wood to have my piece and some craic with the men.
"And whit have ye got in yer piece the day?" the Black Doc would ask, after I’d pushed my way through a turnstile of knees and squeezed into a crevice between the men who crammed the plank benches. The only light came from a doorless aperture let into the gable of the bothy’s lee side, and the men were dark from their labour and the sun. I remember them mainly as redolence’s of stale sweat, damp clothing and tobacco.
I’d peep into the brown paper poke my gran had given me. "Jam," I’d tell him, trying to make my voice sound as deep and sonorous as the next man's.
"Damson or raspberry?"
I’d tear a bite from one of the sandwiches. "Damson."
"Uh-huh?" The Black Doc would weigh this information carefully. "Hame-made or shop?"
"Hame-made!" I’d flare. "Ma granny widnae hae shop-bought in the hoose!"
Then there’d be laughter, and the Black Doc would reach across the semi-darkness and buffet my head with his massive paw.
The Black Doc was a big man. The first time I saw him; I took him for a giant and kept the trunks of my father's legs between us. But after he’d finished his 'piece', drained the dregs of his tea from the bottom of his blackened billycan, and wiped his mouth and nose on the back of his hand, the Black Doc began to sing. He had a fine baritone voice, as rich and warm as polished walnut. Its vibration trembled in my stomach, and it wasn’t long before I was being hoisted up onto his knee to ‘oblige the company wi a sang’.
He must have been almost seven feet tall. He had to stoop to pass through the door; and even when he was sitting down, the bristle of his hair brushed the corrugated iron ceiling. And he was as broad as he was long, with shoulders like the boughs of the three massive beech trees that marked the northern extent of the village, and an immense blustery chest that filled the sails of his shirt. His forearms were the colour and texture of wood, beneath the hardness of which thick ropes of muscle and sinew snaked around hefty levers of bone.
But it was his feet that impressed me most. Shod in muckle calf-length boots, they were as long as my forearm and broad as railway sleepers. His boots were laced with blackened strips of hide, which criss-crossed their way up to the middle of his shins and looped the girth of his calves before being tied off in a small neat bow at the front. I was particularly struck by the neatness and precision of this lacing. Each chevron was the mirror-image of its counterpart. Each lay snug and straight against the leather tongue. Together they rose in perfectly parallel lines like the rungs of a ladder.
This day, my father tossed me onto his shoulders and tramped the path through Station Wood. As we rounded the bend that brought the crumbling platform into view, we saw my grandfather and his workmates gathered in a close knot by the side of the line.
I couldn’t see the Black Doc. The men were conferring in low conspiratorial voices, their brows dark, their jaws grimly set. I wondered how their words could escape from behind such barely moving lips. Then one of the men spotted us and tugged at my grandfather's sleeve.
My grandfather glowered across at us, then detached himself from the group. My father slipped me from his shoulders and placed me carefully by the side of the path.
"You wait here a wee," he murmured, laying a hand on my shoulder. "Don't move. All right?"
He walked towards my grandfather and they exchanged a few words. Then my father turned on his heel and strode quickly back towards me.
The smile that had frozen on my face melted away like snow from a dyke. I looked from my father's face, to the face of my grandfather, to the faces of the other men. They were all watching me closely and their looks were overcast with a louring manhood secret into which I was about to be inducted.
A sudden gust of wind set the trees chattering and dust and debris from the path swirling into my eyes.
"The Black Doc!" I cried. "Where's the Black Doc?"
Panic reared in my head, stomping its hooves and clapping its hands and bleating gleefully. A whirr of sparrows tore through the hedgerow, twittering excitedly in the bright summer sunlight. I ran towards the platelayers, angling my run to avoid the broadcast net of my father's arms.
"Wheesht, noo! Calm doon!" My father smothered me to his chest. His voice was warm and smooth and comforting. The men looked on, witnessing my passage, curious to see how well my father would facilitate it.
"The Black Doc's deid," my father informed me. "He was working by himsel on the line and a train struck him. He couldnae hae heard it comin."
"How could he no have heard it?"
"I’ve nae idea." My father shrugged. "It happens. Onywise," he went on, "he's deid noo and that's an end o it. We'd better get ye hame."
As we turned back along the path, I stole a glimpse down the track to the brick bothy. The Black Doc's feet protruded from the doorway, a hap of green tarpaulin skirting the top of his giant boots.
