The Game of Shepherd and Dawse

by William Shepherd

  Sally had been made to go to church by her domineering, abusive parent’s right from a young age and it was something she martyred into adulthood. She used religion as her mask. In one breath, she would be gossiping about the less fortunate or stirring up trouble and in the next she would be quoting something from the Bible, as though in some way her religious convictions gave her permission to act a vile little creature.

  Sally's clothes weren’t up to much either, even though she had loads of them. The church she belonged to often had jumble sales to raise money. To feed the need for imaginary power, Sally and the other helpers would always take first dibs on the best offerings before they ever even opened the doors. Sally also always kept a huge pile of clothes behind the table she manned – never completely hidden from view but out of reach to the hoards shuffling past. Should anyone dare to ask how much that nice little frock was on top of her not-so-hidden pile, she would snap back, “Sorry, luv, it’s already sold. You should have come earlier if you wanted it”. Doing this gave Sally a feeling of superiority and raised her up a notch in her own small mind.

  There was no way she could ever have needed all those clothes she took, but the thought of someone else getting them first and enjoying them was too much for Sally Sour. Every now and again she would have a clearing out and chuck bags and bags of them away, but even so, the clothes had given her home a musty smell. This musty smell affected the way Sally smelled, which added to the cheap perfume she always wore, which also had a musty smell. All in all, Sally was a very musty woman.

  Despite her other sins, Sally Sour never drank and never smoked. Never. In fact, she never did anything other people deemed as fun and she believed whole heartedly that anything of a fun nature should be banned. Not that she would say it, of course, but she could always think up some ‘legitimate’ reason like health and safety concerns or, if nothing else, immorality. Yes, it was true to say she was a twisted soul.

  Sally had been an abused child. Her mother and father had put her through an incredibly miserable childhood and when they weren’t beating her for some minor infraction, they used her as an emotional dustbin. Her parents had also been the victims of abused childhoods, which in turn left them twisted. Not surprisingly, Sally’s parents hated each other to the core and most of their hatred was funnelled toward Sally. In this day and age if any two people hated each other as much as Sally’s parents, they would have split pretty much as soon as they got together. But back in Sally’s parents’ day, social pressures kept people in miserable relationships for years, even decades, with untold numbers of casualties. This was merely another way of Dawse energy being able to spread and grow wherever it could to cause maximum damage.

  If you were to go back through Sally’s family ancestry, you would find lots of Dawsey characters. For the most part, the Dawse energy passed from one generation to the next without limitation, and Dawse most definitely had the whip hand in the Sour family. Though every so often a child was born into the Sour clan that, by some miracle, would break the mould. Regardless of how much dark and negative energy was thrown at them, these random children would go on to become good and positive forces in the world. Unfortunately, Sally wasn’t one of them.

  Sally had tried numerous churches in the area but, strangely enough, none of them had wanted her to take the sermons. So Sally had set up her own ramshackle little church in a disused hut that had previously housed a Brownie troop, until it had become so damp that they found another venue. Sally named her group the ‘Sally All Saints’ and including herself there were seven members in total.

  When she first set it up, Sally had grandiose ideas about her congregation becoming the biggest church in the area. When the masses didn't magically appear, Sally consoled herself that what God had really wanted was for her to find just 12 members in total, with her being a messianic thirteenth figure. Sally was well aware of the importance of stroking the egos of her parishioners, who were of a more needy nature, and she took great pleasure in hand picking her so called ‘disciples’. Her sheepish followers would often be told of their own importance as one of the ‘privileged twelve’, as she put it. Nonetheless, eight laborious years later, her tiny flock remained stalled with just six members.

  Angela had come from a family background that was the polar opposite of Sally’s. There was an incredible amount of love that ran throughout the Clark family, generation after generation. There was also a long line of doctors, nurses, firemen, social workers and many other trades that generally made the world a better place. However, just as in the case of the Sour family, every so often the Clark family would produce a child who would appear as if it had been born into the wrong family. The child would be devious and nasty and it would get into all sorts of mischief – much to the woe and despair of its loving parents. For the most part, whatever family was unfortunate enough to have one such child, they could, with patience, dedication and lots of hard work and love, nurture the child to become a better person. It was true to say that over the years there weren’t too many casualties from the Clark family as it was so abundant with love.

  Even though Angela had no time for Sally Sour, she didn’t hate her. Angela had always been taught that hate was an emotion she didn’t’t need and therefore she never used it, along with a lot of other useless emotions that many other people seemed to embrace wholeheartedly. However, Angela had been taught to keep her distance from certain types of people, as they would cause nothing but harm no matter how much you tried to help them.

  One day Sally brought round a smelly bag of second-hand clothes and suggested they would come in handy for young Charlie, being that Angela was a struggling single mother and all. It wasn’t so much the clothes that had infuriated Angela but more the way in which Sally had tried to bully Angela on her own doorstep. Angela knew only too well how bullies operated. Her mother had explained the complex nature of bullies and bullying to her early on and after the added experience of living with her ex, there was no way Angela was going to let anyone get their claws into her again. Why Sally had thought that Charlie would need such rags was beyond Angela. Charlie was always immaculately dressed and if Angela was a little short on cash, she would always go without to make sure her Charlie had the best she could give him.

  “It’s really very kind, Ms Sour’’, said Angela. “But Charlie has enough clothes at the moment. Joe and Mrs Bottal took him on a shopping spree just last week”.

  They hadn’t of course, but Angela needed a polite excuse to get rid of this silly woman. Sally began stuffing the clothes back into her bag while muttering halfway under her breath, “Well, you try and help people and get no thanks for it”.

  Angela heard exactly what Sally had said and gave her half a smile and went back inside the house. But the more Angela thought about it, the more incensed she became.

  “I bet that woman would love to see my handsome little Charlie dressed up in those smelly old tats”, she said to herself. “Evil old witch”.

  From that day forward, Angela kept her distance from Sally Sour. Joe Sadsoul, on the other hand, would allow Sally to come into his house on occasion and do her ‘Home Help bit’. This wasn’t because Joe liked her. In fact, he’d seen right through her the day they first met when Sally was banging on about the tatty little church she had set up and how her church could really benefit from someone like Joe being there – seeing as he had done so much of God’s work during the war. This irritated Joe at the time as he knew full well that if war was the work of anyone it would be the Devil.

  The real reason why Joe allowed her inside his home was because he wanted Charlie to learn just how such people operated. Joe wanted to teach Charlie much about the Shepherd and Dawse theory from The Chronicles of Us and Sally Sour was a prime example of how a modern day Dawse operated. As for the Home Help bit, Sally wasn’t much good at that either, as most of the time she would come in, make herself a cup of tea, then shuffle a few things around, put some bleach down the toilet and end up making more
of a mess for Joe than she pretended to clean up.

  Before she would leave, Sally would chide Joe, “I’ve given the place a good tidy, you mucky pup, so try not to mess it up too much for me before next week”.

  Being called a mucky pup was not the best way to please Joe. His house was always impeccably clean, with never a pin out of place. Being a pilot during the war and always being immaculately dressed reflected his habit of attention to detail and was something that had stayed with him throughout his life. His house reflected this habit too.

  On occasions when Charlie and Joe could see Sally coming up the road, they would put the telly on full blast and pretend they couldn’t hear her knocking or calling at them through the letter box. They would just sit there and silently laugh themselves silly until she gave up and went away. Because of her nature, Charlie and Joe renamed Sally Sour to Sour Sally.

  One hot summer’s day, Charlie and Joe were sitting in the back room as usual. Joe had left the front door slightly ajar to allow a breeze to flow through, when they heard the dreaded sound.

  “Cooee! Home Help here”!

  Charlie looked at Joe and made the kind of sound you hear in a film that lets you know something bad is about to happen.

  “Oh good, I’m glad you're both happy to see me”, Sally said absently, as she breezed in.

  “Are you here to give the place a good clean through, Sally”, Joe asked, in a slightly sarcastic voice.

  “Not today, Joe. I’m afraid you'll have to manage without me, if that’s at all possible. I’m collecting money this week for my church to give to less fortunate people. Would you like to donate something”? The words dripped slowly from Sally's lips like poison from a viper's fangs.

  Joe played his best poker face and told her, “I’m ever so sorry, Sally, but Mrs Bottal hasn’t picked up my pension yet. Once I get it, it’s all going to be quickly eaten up by my bills”.

  This wasn’t too far from the truth, actually, as the government pension was a miserly one and if it wasn’t for the fact that he'd paid off his house years ago, things for Joe would really have been quite miserable.

  Sally shifted her stance and then fixed her sights on Charlie. “What about you, my darling? How about donating some of your pocket money, hmmm”? Sally’s voice took on a syrupy, yet bullying tone.

  “I would, Ms Sour, but Mam doesn’t earn enough to give me any pocket money”.

  This wasn’t far from the truth either. Angela always managed to give Charlie whatever he wanted, as long as she could afford it, and Charlie had never been a greedy child so he never became spoilt.

  Sally was miffed with his reply. “Well, never you mind, dear. It doesn’t do us any harm to suffer from time to time”, she said in her most condescending of tones.

  Their responses to her righteous request had annoyed Sally Sour to no end. While she knew that neither of them really had a pound to spare, in her head she had put Joe down for at least £20 and estimated another £2 for Charlie. A scowl crawled across her face as she realized she'd have to knock on many more doors that week to reach her godly goal, even though this had only been her first stop.

  Realising there were no rich pickings to be found with Joe and Charlie, Sally bade them a hasty adieu. Over the week, she eventually managed to collect £27.32 and at her church that Sunday she took great delight in boasting how she had collected the most out of everyone – with her whopping £7.08.

  After their joyous encounter with Sally, Joe looked Charlie straight in the eyes and said, “There's one thing in your life, Charlie, I don't ever want you to do and that is to have anything to do with Sally Sour and that silly little church of hers. She pretends to be all high and mighty but I've got more faith in my little toenail than that woman has in her whole body! She’s a charlatan, that one. I’m not saying they’re all bad, but places filled with people like her and her mates – just steer clear of, ok”?

  “What’s a charlatan, Joe”?

  “Basically someone who's pretending to be someone they're not and usually for not-so-good motives. Most politicians are charlatans. They give it all smiles and pretend they're in it for the good of the people, but they only tend to look after themselves and their mates in the end”.

  “So are all politicians charlatans then, Joe”? Charlie asked, a bit confused.

  “No, not all of them. Every once in a while, you do get a good one”, Joe said. “But those folks never last long”.

  Charlie found it hard to understand how someone who was good at their job didn’t last long but like Joe always used to say, 'Nothing in politics makes sense – not for the working class anyway’.

  Charlie liked it when Joe used words he didn’t understand and Joe liked it when Charlie asked him to explain what those words meant. Because of this, Charlie was very good at English in school, and even though Joe wasn’t a teacher per se, he did have a good knack for teaching things in an enjoyable way.

  It was Friday evening and Charlie was at Joe’s as usual until Angela had finished work. It had been a few days since Joe had last read about the story of Shepherd and Dawse. They were both sitting in the living room and the light had started to fade. There wasn’t anything on the telly worth watching so Joe decided to get ‘The Chronicles of Us’ down from the bookshelf and share a bit more of the story. This delighted Charlie no end, as he had really been looking forward to seeing what was going to happen to Aman. Aman reminded him so much of his own mum that he felt rather close to the character. Joe put on his reading glasses and opened the book to where he had left off and began to narrate.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE HUNT BEGINS

  “If you expect the unexpected, then it ceases to be the unexpected, just don’t expect it all the time”.

  ~ Billy Herd

  The next morning, Shepherd Wood's best trackers and hunters loaded up a few days’ worth of supplies and made their way to the edge of the wood. There were 10 of them in total: three trackers and seven hunters. They carried two sling-slacks with them just in case. Everyone in the party had an important job to do and this filled them each with an enormous sense of pride and responsibility.

  It didn’t take long for the team to reach the spot where they had found Aman, and this brought sad memories flooding back to those who had been on the first rescue mission. The group was new to this type of expedition, as usually they had no need to go deep into the forest since everything they needed was right on their doorstep. After six hours on the move, they were edging more deeply into the forest than most of them had ever been. The farther they went, the easier it was to see the damage done by this new beast called Dawse. Every bush had been practically stripped bare of its fruit and there was nothing left.

  The team decided to set up camp for the night, as they could all sense what they had been looking for was getting nearer and they wanted to be fresh for whatever they might encounter the next day. They posted watches and slept in shifts, getting their heads down for an early night and as good a rest as they could have.

  Early the next morning, they shared out the food they had brought with them. Makeshaw doled out dried meat and smoked fish, while Teewok handed out nuts and berries. After eating, they gathered up their things and set out in single file with Makeshaw at the front and Teewok at the rear. It was always like this on a hunt, as the oldest member of the party with the most experience led the group. The youngest was always placed at the back, for if they came across an animal that went on the attack, the youngest and most inexperienced would stand the best chance of getting away. As they walked on, the forest took on a darker and more sinister feel which was very different from the friendly wood they were used to. The smells had changed, the overall appearance was different and it was clear to all they were officially entering unchartered territory.

  Just to the left of them, they noticed a particularly large amount of devastation. Trees had been uprooted and there were large piles of mud everywhere. They assumed this was due to an unusually heavy rainfall
which had created a mud slide about 20 meters across. They carried on walking along the flat ground, when all of a sudden Makeshaw ducked down and beckoned the others to do the same. Hearts were racing, as they all could tell by the way Makeshaw acted that they had now found what they had set out to look for.

  Makeshaw was lying on his stomach peering through a slight opening in the leaves. Directly in front of him was a steep drop of about 60 feet. To the left of him was the mud slide that had created an artificial ramp made of mud and debris which wouldn’t have been too difficult to have climbed down. The cliff face stretched for miles and acted as a natural barrier to the rest of the wood with only the mudslide giving access from below. Makeshaw had seen a few things in his time but nothing came close to this. He must have been lying there a good 20 minutes before he beckoned Shiala to come and join him. It would take an hour and a half for all 10 members of the party to take their turn in viewing this spectacle and it would be Teewok, the last one to see it, who would be the most affected by amazement and sadness. For in the distance was a large open dale where there weren’t just a couple of Dawse, there were hundreds.