“Thank you, gentlemen. If you could drop the cords and step back, please. Mind your feet.”
He takes a place back on the grass, right up beside his dad. His dad stays solid, doesn’t flinch away, and he is glad of the comfort in it.
“Jeez, Great Grandad wasn’t light, was he?”
“Lighter at the end than he used to be. A big man in every way until the illness got him.”
“Fair does though, Dad. He lived long enough that something was almost obliged to get him.”
“Aye. Do you remember him much before he lost the weight?”
“God, do I? Try being two foot tall and looking up at him from under that belly. It was like being in the shadow of the eclipse. Then he’d smile over the top of it, lift his t-shirt, then he’d jiggle it at me. You find some very weird things funny when you’re a toddler. Even after that, when I was at primary school, if he was picking me up and he saw I’d had a bad day, he’d take that belly in two hands and bounce it up and down, and I was happy straight away. Made no sense, like.”
“Pffft, he did that one time when you were wee and me and Mam met him n the supermarket. Lifted his t-shirt and bounced that ridiculous pot and you laughed and you laughed. I tell you... you loved it, but we were mortified. In the checkout line at bloody Tesco!”
“I’ve been trying to think why it was so funny. But, in some weird, childish, sort it way... it sorta felt like his way of saying he loved me. You know?
“Aye, I know. He did it to me too, you know. Although, you did get the premium belly years. Look at my dad over there. Two sticks to hold him up from falling onto his face. Then I look down at me and I think, it’s been a while since I saw my... knees.”
“And I really need to get back to the footie. But the way work’s been...”
“Family trait, eh?”
“Dad. The minister’s finished. Everybody’s heading for the cars.”
“Aye.”
“Folk’ll be wondering.”
“Aye.”
“Dad. I miss him already.”
“Me too, son.”
“Dad.”
“Whit?”
“This is getting ridiculous.”
“Aye.”
“The grave-diggers are looking at us as if we’re daft.”
“I’ll make it up to them in their tip. They’ll get a few drinks out of it. Add a few pints to their pots.”
“I bet they never put theirs to the good use Great Grandad did “
“You game, son?”
“Aye, dad.”
Two black ties are flung over two shoulders. Two shirts are tugged free of their restraining underwear. Two pale bellies fall over two leather belts. A hair from one gets snagged in a buckle. And they gave the oldest boy one last belly bounce, before hurriedly tucking everything back in and walking away from his grave. Laughing. Just as he would have wanted it.
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