Hate Man

Most days, I see him at the Turf, cutting into a jacket potato with Taw Valley Tickler Cheese. Sometimes, he’ll order a half lager/half cider with a splash of currant, calls it a “snakebite.” He doesn’t enjoy it.

Hate Man isn’t really a misanthrope, in the sense that he doesn’t hate man. He surrounds himself with people. It’s effing Oxford, there’s people everywhere! It’s more Hateman, in that he probably comes from a long line of haters. Like me who, being a Smith, descends from blacksmiths or wordsmiths or silversmiths. Except that the name was originally Schmidt, and later changed at Ellis Island. So, bad example.

Liam says Hate Man couldn’t ever have been an Oxford Don. I had to ask Liam what a Don was, and he couldn’t explain it, so I won’t either.

One night, I decided to follow Hate Man as he made his rounds.

We –I say we, even though it was really he then I– began by sneaking into New College. It’s a misnomer really, New College being the second oldest at Oxford University. Liam also wanted me to let you know they shot the exteriors for Harry Potter there.

Hate Man moved with real purpose, like the hateful usually do. After a few minutes, we –he then I– entered a huge clearing. In the center there was a lump of a hill, with a set of built-in stairs up the middle, and a small corpse of trees at the top. Don’t ask me what kind. I later asked the porter about the trees, and he told me it was a copse, but at the time, it sounded like corpse.

I crept to the bottom of the stairs, once I was sure Hate Man had reached the top. At this point, he set down the cardboard box he had been holding. I didn’t mention it before? He unfolded the top open in that special way it had been kept closed. That last sentence sure ate its own tail. Hate Man then upended the box, and a dozen of the fattest rats you’d ever seen darted in all directions. Well 12 really. True North. North North East. Like a compass rose. One rat even nibbled at my shoelaces. I think it was West South West.

I now figured Hate Man for a public menace and it was up to me to confront him. But as I stood flush in front of the bottom step, the lump of gibbous moon reflected off my sneakers, and I was made. The porter –that’s Oxford for night watchman– came out of nowhere, and grabbed me by my ear. I tried to tell him about Hate man and the rats, but he wouldn’t have any of it.

“The Mound is off-limits to you lot, it’s sacred ground, it is,” the porter lectured me, still with a fingerful of lobe.

“Waddya talking about, that stupid hill?”

“That’s no hill, lad, it’s victims of the Black Plague, piled up through the ages. Spread by rats, they was.”