Author: allen0997
Shuggie Bain ~ A Capsule Book Review
Shuggie Bain
A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp
Shuggie Bain’s real name is Hugh. He is a slight, sensitive, preteen boy (at school he is called a “wee tiny poof”) living with his mother and his older half-brother and half-sister in a wretched housing complex in Glasgow, Scotland, in the 1980s. Shuggie doesn’t have a very happy childhood. The family is poor and on the “dole,” but his biggest problem is that his mother, Agnes Bain, is a hopeless alcoholic, “hopeless” in the sense that she will never stop drinking, will never “get better,” and will eventually drink herself to death. Shuggie loves his mother and he believes, unrealistically, that if he stays by her side, when everybody else abandons her, he can protect her and get her to stop drinking.
Shuggie’s estranged father is Shug Bain, or “Big Shug,” as he is called. He is a real bastard, a self-centered, womanizing, amoral taxi driver. Shuggie’s mother, Agnes, leaves her first husband, taking her two children with her, to marry Big Shug. From that unfortunate union is born the youngest of her three children, Shuggie “Hugh” Bain.
Shuggie’s older half-brother is named Alexander but everybody calls him “Leek.” Shuggie’s half-sister is Catherine. Agnes if the kind of mother who makes her children want to get away from her. She has good intentions as a mother, but she always manages to disgust and alienate her children with her incessant drunkenness. Catherine marries at an early age and moves to South Africa, thousands of miles away from her mother.
The housing complex where Shuggie lives with his family is called Pithead. It was originally intended for coal miners, but most of the coal mines have closed down. The residents of Pithead are crude, spiteful, and cruel. The women hate Agnes Bain because she dresses up whenever she goes out of the house. People who like her tell her she resembles Elizabeth Taylor. Her good looks don’t help her very much.
The Scottish people in Shuggie Bain speak working-class English. They use a lot of words that American readers probably won’t be unfamiliar with. For example, “boak” means vomit; “biro” is an ink pen; a “grass” is a snitch; a “dout” is a cigarette; “wellies” are boots; “papped” means to be thrown out of the house; “weans” are children or offspring; “scheme” is a housing project; “gallus” is an act of boldness or daring. If you don’t have a dictionary of Scottish colloquialisms and slang, these unfamiliar words can usually be deduced from their context in the sentence.
Shuggie Bain is an ambitious (430 pages), rich first novel by a writer named Douglas Stuart. It is a story as much about a self-destructive alcoholic as it is about being the child of an alcoholic. It is a book steeped in time and place (Glasgow, Scotland, of the 1980s). A compulsively readable book, a book well worth reading.
Copyright © 2021 by Allen Kopp
The Literary Hatchet, Issue 30
The Literary Hatchet, Issue 30
The Literary Hatchet is an independent international journal devoted to emerging and established voices crafting provocative short fiction and thoughtful poetry and prose. Published three times a year! (Stefani Koorey, editor; Eugene Hosey, editor; Michael Brimbau, editor.)
Contributing writers and artists for Issue 30 include Robert Beveridge, Mahmood Bilal, Bhupin Butaney, Shawn Chang, Sally Connors, Barbara Demarco-Barrett, Tak Erzinger, Matt Gleason, David Greske, Himan Heidari, Greg Huteson, Jill Jepson, Ferris E. Jones, Robert Jones, Gloria Keeley, Allen Kopp, Edward Lee, Aurora M. Lewis, Fabiyas MV, Denny Marshall, Bruce McRae, Marshall Pipkin, Emma Raymond, Sandip Saha, Wayne Scheer, Dean Schreck, Michael Seeger, Stuart Stromin, Bill Thomas, John Tustin, Brian Volck, and Todd Zack.
Available for purchase for $12 a copy at this link on Amazon:
*****
(A little note: I have six short stories in Issue 30 of The Literary Hatchet: “Everybody Else Went on Ahead,” “Frozen Charlotte,” “Marrying Quintus Cavender,” “My Father’s Pajamas,” “The Million-Year Experiment,” “Your Time, My Time.”)
The Last of Our Money
The Last of Our Money
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~
Vance Rutherford was a reckless driver, especially when he was mad or upset. He ran through a red light and barely missed hitting a car going in the other direction. A little farther along, he made a right turn so fast that Rachelle hit her head on the side window.
“Slow down, Vance!” she said. “You’re gonna get a ticket!”
“I don’t care! If they try to stop me, I’ll outrun them!”
Rachelle groaned and rubbed her head. “You don’t want them to start shooting at you, do you?”
“I can always shoot back.”
“How are you going to do that if you don’t have a gun?”
“Who says I don’t have a gun? I have a gun in the inside pocket of my coat.”
“You do not! You are such a liar!”
“I know. I’m a fool, too, and lots of other things.”
“Don’t I know it!”
“Are you sorry you married me?” Vance asked.
“Every day of my life.”
“You can always divorce me, you know.”
“You’re forgetting that little bundle of pink flesh we have waiting for us at home.”
“Oh, yeah. Arlene. I almost forgot about her.”
“She’s the only reason I stay married to you.”
“One day you might decide she’s better off without her daddy.”
“And when that day comes I’ll let you know.”
“I’m a loser, Rachelle. I need money. Bad.
“How much this time?”
“Four hundred.”
“I don’t have four hundred dollars, Vance.”
“I know you don’t. If you did, all my problems would be solved.”
“For the moment. Tomorrow you’d be in trouble again.”
“Are you sorry you married me?”
“Never more than at this moment.”
“Have you talked to your grandma this week?”
“No, I haven’t. And I’m not going to ask her for any more money.”
“You know she’s got it, Rachelle. She’s got whole boxfuls of cash stashed away in that house.”
“That’s just what you believe!”
“You’re her favorite grandchild, Rachelle. You know she would never say no to you.”
“I’m not going to ask her for four hundred dollars, so you can just forget about it.”
“Not even if it would save my skin?”
“It might save your skin today, but tomorrow it’ll be something else. Some other trouble. Some other desperate need for money.”
“No, you’re wrong. I’ve grown up a lot in the last year or so. I’m changing, Rachelle. Really I am.”
“Somehow I just don’t see it.”
“No, I promise. If I can just get my hands on four hundred dollars right now, I’ll be all squared away.”
“For how long, Vance?”
“How long what?”
“How long will you be squared away?”
“You’re not very encouraging, you know that?”
“Let’s go home. I can fix us something to eat.”
“How about if I swing by your grandma’s house and you go inside and ask her for a little loan?”
“You know it’s not a loan, Vance. You don’t ever have any intention of paying it back. A loan is something you pay back.”
“She’ll be sitting in her chair watching TV. She’ll be glad to see you.”
“No!”
“It’s the only way, Rachelle.”
“You’ll have to think of some other way. I’m not going to ask my grandma for more money. She needs her money.”
“For what?”
“She’s old, Vance! Old people like to hang onto their money.”
“So the answer is no?”
“Yes, the answer is definitely no!”
“Just tell her we don’t have any food in the house. The rent is past due and you need your asthma medication. She won’t be able to turn you down if you put it in those terms.”
“I’m not going to lie to her on top of everything else, Vance!”
“It’s not a lie!”
“I thought you paid the rent!”
“I was going to but I had to use the money for something else.”
“What did you use it for?”
“I don’t remember now. It was something important.”
“Oh, Vance! You’ll never grow up, will you?”
“I’m as grown up as you.”
“Let’s go home and I’ll cook some spaghetti.”
“No. Grandma’s first.”
Rachelle knew it was useless to object further. In ten minutes, Vance pulled up in front of Rachelle’s grandma’s house.
“I don’t think she’s home,” Rachelle said. “It’s her night for church.”
“All the lights are on, as you can plainly see.”
“Oh, Vance! I don’t want to do this!”
“She’ll be glad to see you. Try to get five hundred.”
“You said four hundred!”
“Well, five hundred would be even better!”
“Oh, Vance, you’re hopeless!”
“I’ll wait right here. Take your time.”
He cracked the window and lit a cigarette and turned on the car radio. He had smoked two cigarettes and was on his third one when Rachelle came back.
“Well, how much did she give you?” he asked impatiently before she was all the way in the car.
“She only had fifty dollars on hand. I think it was her grocery money.”
“Fifty dollars! That’s all she gave you?”
“It’s all she had.”
“She would let you starve to death? Her favorite grandchild?”
“I’m not going to starve to death, Vance. We can use the fifty dollars to get some groceries.”
“Yeah, but it’s not enough! I feel like going in there and talking to her myself! Fifty dollars! The very idea!”
“Leave her alone, Vance. She has a cold and she’s not feeling well.”
“Well, isn’t that just too bad? I’m not feeling very well, either.”
“Let it go, Vance! We’ll use the fifty dollars to buy some groceries. We can get quite a lot with that.”
“I don’t want any of that stuff. I’m hungry. I want a steak. Let’s go to Roland’s and get a steak. I think that’s the best idea I’ve had all day.”
“That’ll take all the fifty dollars!”
“So what?”
“You would use the last of our money for a steak dinner?”
“Sure. Wouldn’t you? That’s how hungry I am.”
“I told grandma we were going to use it to buy food.”
“We are going to use it to buy food.”
“You’re a pig, Vance.”
“No more of a pig than you are.”
They had to wait for a table at Roland’s. Eating there always made Vance feel like an important person. He always hoped he’d see somebody he knew.
Finally they were seated at a small booth in the back of the room. Vance ordered an expensive bottle of wine. While waiting for their food to arrive, Vance sipped the wine and gave Rachelle a sly grin across the table.
“I have a secret concealed somewhere on my person,” he said.
“How nice for you,” she said.
“Don’t you want to know what it is?”
“Not especially.”
He seemed pleased with himself as he opened his jacket and showed her the gun he had hidden there.
“You’re a lunatic!” she said. “What do you think you’re going to do with that?”
“Well, grandma didn’t come through for us. Now things are getting pretty desperate.”
“What are you going to do? Hold up a liquor store?”
“Not a liquor store, but I do have a plan.”
“What plan?”
“Well, since you are my wife, I’ll tell you. I’m going to drive twenty or thirty miles outside of town where nobody knows me and hold up an all-night gas station.”
“That’s the worst idea I’ve ever heard!”
“I won’t really shoot anybody. I’ll just use the gun to scare them.”
“Don’t think I’ll come and visit you behind bars.”
“You don’t like my idea? Do you have a better one?”
“Why not just rob the bank downtown? I’m sure they’d have a lot more money than an all-night gas station.”
“That’s my alternate plan in case the all-night liquor store doesn’t work out.”
They finished eating and the waiter brought the check. Vance stood up to go to the men’s room, taking off his jacket and laying it carefully across the chair.
Rachelle was sure he wouldn’t be back for at least ten minutes. He’d take his time going to the toilet and when he was finished he’d wash his hands thoroughly and comb his hair in the mirror. She reached around the table where he had been sitting and with one deft movement took the gun out of the pocket of his jacket and hid it in her purse. He had drunk too much wine; he wouldn’t notice for a long time that the gun wasn’t where he thought it was.
Copyright © 2021 by Allen Kopp
Literary Fictions 