Bog Myrtle & Peat

When the rain came at last, it found us by chance in the street in the town in a crowd. It came in a shade which rode over the quarry and the river to the kirk and mill in sheets. We stood against it, feeling the hiss and the turning leaves as it rushed through the gardens and gutters like a vandal. There was a cold smell of uneven air, then we were soaked.

We were waiting on a convoy of lorries. Everybody had come to see them, and the pubs poured people onto the street like listing ships. The lorries were cued to pass on a charity run from one corner of Galloway to the other, and people laughed at the rain and one man with blood on his vest stood with his eyes tight shut and his tongue pulled down like a blind over his chin. The rain fell harder and the martins squalled in the eaves as the roads began to flood, bobbing with fag packets and streaks of bark from the sawmill. Somebody said it was a shame that the rain would spoil the show; somebody else said we’ve been needing this.

So we could not have been wetter when they finally came down the Hill Road towards us; forty big engines, nose to tail and belling in the rain. The claxons pealed as they passed the Welcome sign and water rose from the road in a mist which billowed around the massive machines, loud enough to make a small boy cry. Everybody waved and the girls from the bar ran laughing inside because the rain had rendered them suddenly see-through. Kids on too-big bikes yelled like gulls and rode round in circles, giving hidden vees to police cars which had parked to block normal traffic in the High Street.

The lorries boomed through the town, and it was a joy to see them. They were huge and loud and it fairly took your breath away to be near them. All the upstairs windows were open in the houses and folk yelled and waved flags; somebody threw a can of lager which exploded on the kerb and span crazily round upon itself like a cut snake. Each lorry had been polished to a high sheen of pride and perfection; each cab lettered with the livery of haulage firms from Creetown to Lochmaben. The name of the driver himself was stencilled before the wheel; that’s how I know we saw Big Wull and Beady, Simples and The Mole, each one of them with the saltire hung against the cab’s back window.

One truck was painted with a fine design of Sitting Bull against a pack of howling wolves. One had Black Widow stretching her tight breeks tighter in a half-squat. Her hair made for a blaze of colour in the rain and the hiss of heavy tyres in the diesel and petrichor. More claxons rang in the queue behind until every last lorry was cheered for itself and the whole and the blasting horns had passed out of town towards Kirkgunzeon with Tam’s new steers at Dalmannoch running spare up the roadside fence, rolling their eyes and gurning at the shock of it.

Rain fell steadily in the aftermath. Fish nosed the new water in the burn behind the bottlebank, feeling their way upstream like blind men. Clusters of unripe berries felt the rise of new sap and were glad to think they might make a belly after all. And your man with the blood on his vest tried to make it all about himself. Somebody placed him in a headlock and pulled him back to the bar. The rain slipped off him like wax from an old candle.