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The Adventures of Scrap

Chapter 4: Lily & Me

She raced towards her father as fast as her impy little legs could carry her. By this time I had found a tiny eye hole in her jacket where a button was missing so I manage to see the whole thing unravel. He turned to her, his cheeks, a fiery red highlighting the drunken venom in his green eyes… “Lily!” he roared, slurring slightly as he lowered the rake.

“Don’t you hurt her. Don’t you Daddy. Don’t” Lily stamped her tiny gypsy foot so hard that I swear I felt the concrete floor shake. But there is no telling some men now is there?

Well this pathetic excuse of a man shouts back at my little princess… “I’ll do what I bloody like Lily!” and he turns and begins to raise the rake towards mother who is still barking the barn down. So then Lily, lovely, sweet, unpredictable Lily, who was like a soft toy with a real lion inside, reaches up (I swear on my late mothers grave I’m not lying) and snatches the rake off her father.

“No Daddy! No Daddy! No!” And she starts belting him across the bum with the rake with all the strength she can muster. My eye nearly popped out of that button hole as that horrible man tried to fend off his daughters blows. That’s when mother joined in snarling and biting at his legs, tearing the denim away from his flesh. I remember hearing some very high pitched choir boy like shrieking as he fled from the barn… mother still hanging off his buttock and Lily still beating him with that rake.

Lily told me later with much glee, that his ass had been so sore and swollen that the other gypsy men held him down that night and a witch had taken her needle and thread and stitched everything back into one piece. Apparently he didn’t come out off his caravan for a whole week.

Lily’s little heart was still racing at well over 200 beats/minute (mine too) as she turned back into the barn to face mother who had wearily returned to her litter of five boys. Mother was pawing at her mouth trying to get the denim out of her teeth. This time mother didn’t bark as Lily approached.

I remember Lily’s little hand reaching inside the jacket. I remembered her gentle touch as she lifted me out into the light. She held me out in front of her and looked into my big eyes… I would like to state for the record that at this time I definitely smiled. A lot of people think that a dog smiling is just a figment of their owners imagination… not so. We can smile, it’s very subtle, we just don’t like to show it off all the time that’s all. Anyway Lily patted down the fuzzy bit of hair on the top of my head and gently put me back on the ground in front of mother.

“She belongs to you,” she said simply in flemish and she and mother looked at each other for the longest time. Then mother looked at me and moaned, it was a slow gentle moan and I turned and I looked up at Lily and I could see that she was crying again. What mother was saying with that moan was that I could make a choice… that I could stay with her and my brothers in the nest or I could leave with Lily?

It wasn’t the only time in my life that I have been forced to make that choice… to stay or go? To settle down or begin an adventure? It wasn’t the only time but it was the first time. I was young, too young to leave mother and my brothers but Lily was alone and I knew she could do with a friend like me.

Chapter 3: The Red-faced Man.

He was the ugliest man I have ever seen. He was shaped like an egg and almost as round as he was tall. He threw open the barn door with such fury that it fell off it’s hinges and with a large THWACK it fell face down on the dusty concrete floor. When the shower of dust finally settled, through the crack in the door I saw his face for the first time.

The first and most prominent member of his family of chins was square and hard, and like an upside down smile it framed the bottom of a despicable oil painting we shall call his face. The junior members of the “chin” family followed underneath in ever decreasing wobbly and sloppy circles.

He wiped his thin mouth with back of his fat, stubby ring covered hand and roared in pikey flemish… “Lily! Lily!”

Lily pulled me in close to her. I felt the top of my head brush against her smooth skin. She smelt like jasmine. I looked up at her and saw that horrible fear in her eyes and the trickle of tears running down her cheeks. I licked one of those tears and it tasted salty. She looked at me like my lick was the sweetest kindest thing she had experienced in her entire life. She started hugging me so tightly that I could hardly catch my breath.

This whole time of course Mother is barking the house down; baring her old yellow fangs, hissing and spitting at the ugly man. I had never seen this kind of fury in mother before and at the time it confused me some. As I’ve grown older I’ve come to understand it more… a creature will do almost anything to protect the object of it’s love; it wouldn’t be right if it was any other way.

The ugly red faced man came towards mother, stopping only to pick up the rake. Later I found out his name but I will not mention it here , for he was not worthy of such a kingly name. His green eyes were like slits of cold gray steel and his greasy hair clung to his balding scalp in wet stands and I heard him curse at mother as he tossed away his empty bottle of gin.

After the sound of broken glass came a tirade of flemish profanities. He bore down upon her, brandishing the rake like a club. Mother did not back down, she didn’t even stand her ground, she moved towards the ugly man, with the kind of dignified ferocity that I have tried my whole life to emulate. The last thing I remembered seeing was the evil in the ugly mans eyes as he raised the rake above his head.

It was the last thing I saw because Lily opened her jacket and tucked me inside. I was so close, her racing heart literally lumped against the side of my head. Lily. Brave Lily. Lovely, sweet, gentle, easy to love Lily threw open the cupboard door and screamed… “No Daddy. No!”…

Chapter 2: The Little Girl

I remember the first time I saw her, it was mid-March and just before sunset. The door to the barn was thrown open and she stood in the doorway. She could have been no more than three foot six and her bright auburn hair danced around in little circles, kissed and licked by the evening sun. Her name was Lily, she was an impish little Belgium gypsy girl. Her eyes were as wide as saucers as she rushed into the barn.

Lily was not smiling, there were tears gushing from those deep green saucery eyes; eyes that I would come to love more than life itself. Her breathing was ragged and raspy as she slammed the door shut behind her. She raced across the barn, and tripped over a rake and tumbled into a stack of hay bales, scraping her elbows raw on the coarse straw. I still remember her almost childish, voiceless, breathless cries as though it were yesterday.

Lily was looking for somewhere to hide because somebody was chasing her. As she came towards us my mother started barking aggressively, I guess she was trying to protect us but I remember pleading with her to STOP because I could tell that this barking was not going to help Lily; and although in my life I’ve been afraid of many things… I was never ever afraid of Lily

Anyway mother kept barking and Lily kept on running, looking for a place to hide. She ran right past us towards a large old broom cupboard that was leaning against the wall. She jumped into that cupboard and pulled the squeaky broken old door closed to within half an inch. What I did next changed my life forever.

I went to Lily. I wobbled across that room on my little wee puppy legs; I still had four of them at that time remember. There’s always been something about a girl in distress that I can’t resist. Some dogs are born cowards and some dogs are born brave. I may have been small for my age but I had the good fortune to be one of those who was born brave and I would have done anything to help that little girl.

I was half-way across the floor of that barn, when I heard the voice, it is not a voice I will every forget. “Lily. Lily. Where are you?” It was a gravely, old Flemish voice that even then caused a river of shivers to trickle down my spine.

I was so close to the cupboard now that I could see one of Lily frightened green eyes peering out through the crack. Suddenly that eye was looking down right at me; we stared at each other for the longest time. I don’t want to get too romantic or nostalgic on you, but right from that moment there was special knowledge, a mutual understanding that existed between the two of us.

In the background my mother was still barking the house down and I heard the voice again, much closer now almost at the barn door. That was when Lily did something that would change her life forever she opened the barn door and pulled me inside…