Read The Crow Road for Free Online Page B

two lassies from Glasgow? They’re in the house?’
    ‘Yes, Mary and Sheena are staying in my room, which is why I’ve got to sleep with you.’
    ‘Ffworr!’
    ‘Rory, shut up. Go to sleep, for Pete’s sake.’
    ‘Okay.’ Rory made a great bouncing movement, turning over in bed. Kenneth could feel his brother lying still and tense beside him. He sighed.
    He remembered when this had been his room. Before his dad had unblocked the fireplace and put a grate in it, the only heating during the winter had been that ancient paraffin heater they hadn’t used since the old house, back in Gallanach. How nostalgic he had felt then, and how distant and separated from Gallanach at first, even though it was only eight miles away over the hills, and just a couple of stops on the train. That heater had been the same height as him, at first, and he’d been told very seriously never ever to touch it, and been slightly frightened of it at the start, but after a while he had grown to love the old enamelled heater.
    When it was cold his parents would put it in his room to heat it up before he went to bed, and they would leave it on for a while after they’d said good-night to him, and he’d lie awake, listening to the quiet, puttering, hissing noise it made, and watching the swirling pattern of flame-yellow and shadow-dark it cast on the high ceiling, while the room filled with a delicious warm smell he could never experience after that without a sense of remembered drowsiness.
    It had been a precious light, back then; must have been during the war at first, when his dad was using the probably illegal stockpile of paraffin he’d built up before rationing began.
    Rory nudged him with one foot. He ignored this.
    He ignored another, slightly stronger nudge, and started snoring quietly.
    Another nudge.
    ‘What?’
    ‘Ken,’ Rory whispered. ‘Does your tassel get big sometimes?’
    ‘Eh?’
    ‘You know; your tassel; your willy. Does it get big?’
    ‘Oh, good grief,’ he groaned.
    ‘Mine does. It’s gone big now. Do you want to feel it?’
    ‘No!’ he sat up in the bed, looking down at the vague shape of his brother’s head on the pillow at the other end of the bed. ‘No, I do not!’
    ‘Only asking. Does it, though?’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Your willy; get big?’
    ‘Rory, I’m tired; it’s been a long day, and this isn’t the time or the place -’
    Rory sat up suddenly. ‘Bob Watt can make stuff come out of his; and so can Jamie McVean. I’ve seen them do it. You have to rub it a lot; I’ve tried but I can’t get any stuff to come out, but twice now I’ve got this funny feeling where it’s like heat; like heat coming up as if you’re getting into a bath, sort of. Do you get that?’
    Kenneth sighed, rubbed his eyes, rested his back against the low brass rail at the foot of the bed. He drew his legs up. ‘I don’t think it’s really up to me to have to go into all this, Rory. You should talk to dad about it.’
    ‘Rab Watt says it makes you go blind.’ Rory hesitated. ‘And he wears glasses.’
    Kenneth stifled a laugh. He looked up at the dim roof, where dozens of model aircraft hung on threads and whole squadrons of Spitfires and Hurricanes and ME 109s attacked Wellingtons, Lancasters, Flying Fortresses and Heinkels. ‘No, it doesn’t make you go blind.’
    Rory sat back, legs drawn up too. Kenneth couldn’t make out his brother’s expression; there was a soft glow from the small nightlight candle on Rory’s desk, near the door, but it was too weak to let him see the boy’s face clearly.
    ‘Ha; I told him he was wrong.’
    Kenneth lay back down. Rory said nothing for a while. Then Rory said, ‘I think I’m going to fart.’
    ‘Well, you’d better make damn sure it goes out the way.’
    ‘Can’t; got to keep it under the covers or it might ignite on the nightlight and blow the whole house up.’
    ‘Rory; shut up. I’m serious.’
    ‘... ’sail right.’ Rory turned over, settled down. ‘It