Read Online American on Purpose by Craig Ferguson - Free Book Online
Authors: Craig Ferguson
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up, put the sword back in his coat, and kicked Paul in the head as he walked away.
“Fucking Feinian prick. Did ye see him? Greetin’ fur his fuckin’ ma!”
We said we did and ha ha and all that shite but I never ran with these guys after that. I felt that their reaction would have been much the same had Billy killed Paul instead of leaving him relatively unharmed but humiliated on the pavement. I remember thinking then, at around fourteen years old, that if there was any God or church that endorsed and inspired this fucking madness, then I wanted no part of it.
I still feel the same.
That’s why I believe in a constitution which separates church from state. I’ve seen what happens when they get in cahoots.
I avoided the real hard guys as much as I could after that. I stopped smoking at school in order to steer clear of them. My absence was noted, but it didn’t matter much until one Saturday Stuart Calhoun and I were on our way to the center of town to look for girls. We were halfway across the footbridge that traversed the railway line near my school when a crowd of about thirty or so guys, someof them classmates, appeared at the far end of the bridge, singing songs proclaiming their love of Glasgow Rangers Football Club and their hatred of the pope. They had been drinking beer and were on their way back from a soccer match in the center of Glasgow. They were riled up and looking for a fight.
They saw us so we couldn’t run, they would have given chase and kicked our heads in if they caught us. Flight equals guilt; at least it alarms and angers animals. The only hope we had was to appear delighted at the Rangers victory while expressing our common distaste for the Vatican.
It didn’t really work out that way.
When they met up with us a few guys started calling me a shitebag coward because I wasn’t running with them anymore. I said I was just doing my own thing but matters got heated, especially when a few of the guys who I knew (and they knew) I could take in other circumstances were putting it over big on me because they outnumbered us.
The mob decided that because Stuart’s older brother Sandy was a “good guy” (they were afraid of the crazy bastard) he’d be spared, but that I would have to “run the gauntlet.”
This meant that they would form two lines of equal length facing each other, creating an aisle that I had to run down. As I ran down the gauntlet they would kick and punch the living shit out of me but if I made it to the end I would be free to go. It wasn’t a great option but it was the only one I had, so I ran as they thumped and yelled and kicked. Animal instinct allowed me to push and move and at least feel the satisfaction of a few punches of my own landing but I’d seen enough gauntlets to know that there was no escape. And the idea of it all being over once you reached the end of the linewas rubbish. Violence of any kind, once it starts, is like fucking a gorilla—you ain’t done till the gorilla’s done.
So I got to the end of the line and jumped over the side of the bridge, dropping onto the sloped grassy embankment, my heart pumping hard. I ran toward the tracks, convinced they would chase after me. I had the tunnel vision of prey.
I heard the horn before I saw the train, it was deafening. I looked up into the eyes of the horrified driver of a giant British Rail locomotive that could not have been more than ten feet away as I leapt over the rails out of its way.
I hid in the bushes on the other side of the track until I was sure none of those fuckers was coming after me or were going to throw bottles or rocks on my head.
I was pretty banged up from the beating and the jump, but I wouldn’t really feel much of that until later, when the adrenaline crashed.
Stuart was waiting for me on the bridge. Protocol demanded he watch silently as his friend was beaten up.
“If that train’d hit you you’d be fuckin’ deid, man,” he observed sagely.
I
“Fucking Feinian prick. Did ye see him? Greetin’ fur his fuckin’ ma!”
We said we did and ha ha and all that shite but I never ran with these guys after that. I felt that their reaction would have been much the same had Billy killed Paul instead of leaving him relatively unharmed but humiliated on the pavement. I remember thinking then, at around fourteen years old, that if there was any God or church that endorsed and inspired this fucking madness, then I wanted no part of it.
I still feel the same.
That’s why I believe in a constitution which separates church from state. I’ve seen what happens when they get in cahoots.
I avoided the real hard guys as much as I could after that. I stopped smoking at school in order to steer clear of them. My absence was noted, but it didn’t matter much until one Saturday Stuart Calhoun and I were on our way to the center of town to look for girls. We were halfway across the footbridge that traversed the railway line near my school when a crowd of about thirty or so guys, someof them classmates, appeared at the far end of the bridge, singing songs proclaiming their love of Glasgow Rangers Football Club and their hatred of the pope. They had been drinking beer and were on their way back from a soccer match in the center of Glasgow. They were riled up and looking for a fight.
They saw us so we couldn’t run, they would have given chase and kicked our heads in if they caught us. Flight equals guilt; at least it alarms and angers animals. The only hope we had was to appear delighted at the Rangers victory while expressing our common distaste for the Vatican.
It didn’t really work out that way.
When they met up with us a few guys started calling me a shitebag coward because I wasn’t running with them anymore. I said I was just doing my own thing but matters got heated, especially when a few of the guys who I knew (and they knew) I could take in other circumstances were putting it over big on me because they outnumbered us.
The mob decided that because Stuart’s older brother Sandy was a “good guy” (they were afraid of the crazy bastard) he’d be spared, but that I would have to “run the gauntlet.”
This meant that they would form two lines of equal length facing each other, creating an aisle that I had to run down. As I ran down the gauntlet they would kick and punch the living shit out of me but if I made it to the end I would be free to go. It wasn’t a great option but it was the only one I had, so I ran as they thumped and yelled and kicked. Animal instinct allowed me to push and move and at least feel the satisfaction of a few punches of my own landing but I’d seen enough gauntlets to know that there was no escape. And the idea of it all being over once you reached the end of the linewas rubbish. Violence of any kind, once it starts, is like fucking a gorilla—you ain’t done till the gorilla’s done.
So I got to the end of the line and jumped over the side of the bridge, dropping onto the sloped grassy embankment, my heart pumping hard. I ran toward the tracks, convinced they would chase after me. I had the tunnel vision of prey.
I heard the horn before I saw the train, it was deafening. I looked up into the eyes of the horrified driver of a giant British Rail locomotive that could not have been more than ten feet away as I leapt over the rails out of its way.
I hid in the bushes on the other side of the track until I was sure none of those fuckers was coming after me or were going to throw bottles or rocks on my head.
I was pretty banged up from the beating and the jump, but I wouldn’t really feel much of that until later, when the adrenaline crashed.
Stuart was waiting for me on the bridge. Protocol demanded he watch silently as his friend was beaten up.
“If that train’d hit you you’d be fuckin’ deid, man,” he observed sagely.
I
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