Survival of Thomas Ford, The (16 page)

Lanski shook his head. He felt dizzy. A wave of weakness washed through him. He should have been able to lift Ford and carry him, but Lanski felt certain he couldn’t manage it. His hands and thighs shook as he stared down. He grabbed one end of the long shape, planted his feet firmly, and started to pull Thomas Ford slowly up the hill, dragging the load painstakingly and reluctantly as though some force from the forest might rescue him, all of them, at any time, so long as there was this reluctance to do the job.

Far up the hillside, Jack McCallum was carrying the girl easily. There was no light to see by, but Jack was sure he could remember every step of the way to the old blue and white aluminium caravan. There had been something healthy about this place, living here, planning to build here. This was the only build Jack had ever planned for love, rather than money, but he had never completed it. The site had been abandoned when the first big money offer came along. Jack could feel the girl’s arse-cheek under his palm as he climbed the hillside blindly. Certainly a healthy girl. Jimmy had good taste in that at least. She should have taken the offer of the job at the office in town. Jack could even have set her up in a flat near the job, visited her there. He had that going with a couple of the other lassies from the office.

But this girl Jack was carrying now had thought she was too good for that. Not too good for wiping up piss and blood at the hospital, but too good for Jack McCallum eh?

Jack adjusted her weight violently on his shoulder.

He heard a dry crack and wondered if it was one of her ribs. Women had one rib more than men, didn’t they? So she could live without it.

Jack stopped walking. He stood still and listened to the wind.

“Lanski!” called Jack.

Far behind, dragging Thomas Ford’s inert weight, Lanski froze in dread at hearing the wind whisper his name. His heart felt like a shard of ice had pierced it.

“Lanski!” came the wind again and Lanski breathed as he recognised McCallum’s animalistic tone.

“What?” called Lanski in a repressed shout.

Lanski was too terrified to call out properly. It was his grandmother, all those stories she had filled his head with. All the stories were still in there, reviving now, like decayed skeletons rising from the tombed cells of Lanski’s brain. His mother had been right. The old grandmother should never have been allowed to put all that folklore of werewolf and ghost and vampire into a boy’s skull. The grandmother had never been bothered by any teacher, had never needed to read or write. She had little curiosity for the modern world’s developments. The developments had never reached her village to affect or help her anyway. But the grandmother could milk any beast, knew which herbs would heal and which would kill, and she knew the old stories as well as the old ways.

“Get up here, Lanski!” the wind screamed as Lanski stared ahead, unseeing.

Lanski bent over and got a grip of Thomas Ford’s tent shroud again.

He pulled, his back aching now already, still not knowing which end of Ford he had hold of. He couldn’t see Ford except as a shadow by starlight, unless the shadow was something he only imagined out of the need to see something there. How long ago had it been since Lanski was lying safe in his bed with Elena in his arms? An hour? Two hours? Ford’s body wasn’t shifting. Lanski dug his right heel into an impression in the earth by a tree-root. There was a moment of shocking strain, then Lanski had the big body moving again, up the hill, away from the already distant Subaru headlights.

Jack McCallum stood alone in the darkness waiting. Although the girl was heavy, Jack was hardly conscious of the weight being a burden. She seemed to fit there snugly enough, on his shoulder, like a pirate’s parrot, sleeping, its head hood-covered. There was a lot of potential action in the weight of her long, drooped body and Jack felt an exhilaration suddenly. He could hear rustling in the trees. That had always been there at night. Jack had always put it down to the gang of cats that lived beneath the family caravan, the rustles in the night, out in the trees. Surely, the cats couldn’t still be up here living could they? Great descendants, feral, insane, alone in the silver birches. Then the memory came blazing and alive before Jack’s eyes. The first day he had known something was wrong with Jimmy. He had found the boy, hardly past the toddler stage, standing alone by a tree, his little brown-sandalled foot pressing down on the skull of one of the kittens. Jack could see its grey fur.
Poppy
. Christ, its name had been Poppy, Cathy had named it, that was it. The whole thing had made no sense. Poppy was Jimmy’s favourite kitten too. Jack had walked away, hadn’t let the boy know he’d been seen. The wee thing was better off dead by then anyway.

Later, when Cathy had spent days in the trees, looking for the kitten, Jack had said nothing. He had only looked at his son’s tiny face, trying to read it.

Cathy never found the kitten and Jack had gone back to the place but there was no sign except a little patch of different shaded earth and then Jack knew the boy had buried it.

That had been the beginning of everything turning bad, it seemed now to Jack.

Within a year of it, Jack had had to take care of his first piece of really filthy business in the town. Some Irish bastard builder had tried to muscle him out of a job and Jack had snapped. It had been a meeting on a hill about a planning application problem, nothing should have gone wrong, then the Irishman had started swearing and Jack had killed him in a moment that seemed now the fastest moment of all his life.

For an hour, Jack had stood over the Irishman, crying, shaking.

Only when he had remembered Poppy’s little grave by the trees on the hill, did Jack stop shaking. It had been his own boy that gave him the idea.

Tears sting Jack’s cheeks in the darkness. He can hear Lanski coming now and he knows by the sound that Lanski is dragging Ford up here, not carrying him.

“Come on, Lanski,” Jack whispers into the wind. “Come on, man, and I’ll show you where the bodies are buried. You don’t know a place or a business until you know that.”

Jimmy was sitting on Marie Ferguson’s couch, his shoulders hunched forward.

“I’ll make us all some tea eh?” he said.

He looked up as he spoke, straight into Robert’s eyes.

Robert felt a searing twist in his testicles, then it was gone.

It seemed to Marie that time had compressed in the living room. The room also seemed to have shrunk. She blinked to see if the sensation would go away, but it remained. Now Jimmy turned his grin on her.

“Cup of tea, Mrs Ferguson?”

She swallowed, as though she wasn’t sure her mouth would work if she tried to speak. She nodded.

Jimmy nodded back and stood up slowly from the couch. It was like the unfolding of an animal. No, a snake, if a snake could just suddenly choose to grow feet and stand. Marie could imagine his secret scales as she sat watching him.

Jimmy walked out of the living room without looking back. He turned right in the hallway. Soon Marie and Robert could hear the slamming of drawers, the clanging together of spoons and cups. Marie and Robert sat silently, occasionally looking at each other. The kettle could be heard now, building up through its powerful crescendo.

“It’s alright mum,” said Robert. “The police will be here in a minute.”

“They should have been here by now, Robert.”

Marie’s eyes were restless, vibrant. Robert nodded.

From the kitchen, the sound of loud whistling overwhelmed the kettle. Jimmy was doing a little dance on the laminate flooring. He had his arms raised in the air, one higher than the other, as though he waltzed some invisible partner around the small floor area. In Jimmy’s right hand, a thin spoon. Clenched between his teeth were three teabags. Jimmy was whistling through the perforations in the bags, enjoying the accoustic challenge. The kettle finished boiling with a final violent bubble, then a pop. Jimmy spat the teabags out onto the work surface.

“Do you want sugar?” he bellowed toward the kitchen door. “For the shock and that?”

In the living room Marie shook her head. She stood up.

“This isn’t right,” she said.

Robert watched her walk out into the hall. He was ashamed at the fear in his knees that stopped him following.

“Mum,” he whispered, but she was already gone.

Jimmy saw her coming in to the kitchen and raised his eyebrows.

“Aye, Mrs Ferguson, I’ll need a hand right enough. Can’t find the sugar lumps and I’ll need a tray to carry it through.”

“That wasn’t the police you phoned, was it Jimmy?”

“How do you mean, Mrs Ferguson?”

“Who did you phone, Jimmy?”

Marie Ferguson’s blood had started to feel odd. She believed she knew who Jimmy had phoned.

“Mrs Ferguson, Marie, you’re getting too stressed out about all this.”

Jimmy saw Robert come out of the living room, over Mrs Ferguson’s right shoulder.

“Robert, man, tell your mum everything’s going to be alright now eh?”

Jimmy grinned and looked directly into Marie Ferguson’s eyes. Windows to the soul, but Jimmy’s were frosted. He had bathroom glazing over both pupils. The black circles round the pupils only emphasised it. You couldn’t trust eyes like that even if it was only your dog that had them.

“It all just is what it is, eh Marie?” said Jimmy. “Just let it be, Mrs Ferguson, eh? Like The Beatles and that. Times of trouble. Bridge over water and that.”

Jimmy blinked. He saw Robert frown.

“Don’t take it all to heart, Bobby, for God’s sake. We’re all just whizzing round and round on a big moving ball called a planet eh? It’s a set-up designed so some folk are bound to fall off and get hurt eh? There’s merry-go-rounds designed with more safety in mind. Naw, we’re here for the ride boy. The buzz. You bet on it. Maybe next life will be the one with the slippers and armchairs.”

Jimmy reached his hand out slowly towards the kettle full of boiling water. Robert watched Jimmy’s hand travel. It seemed to take hours to move through the air. When Jimmy’s fist clenched to grip the handle, Marie Ferguson noticed the perfectly groomed fingernails. There was so much time to move away or move towards Jimmy but the molecules in the air around Jimmy seemed to have densened, making travel anywhere in the room hard suddenly. It seemed to Marie also that the air had grown thinner, her head felt light, and wasn’t the kitchen darker now? Had she blinked or did the energy-saving bulb in the long lampshade at the centre of the kitchen ceiling flicker on and off for an instant?

Jimmy raised the kettle and poured tea into a mug over a teabag. Marie breathed out stale air.
It could have been my face. He could have thrown the kettle of boiling water in my face. He was ready to do it. It was going to be my face but he changed his mind.

Robert stared. He felt as though he had missed something happening in the room.

“There you go, Mrs Ferguson. You don’t take sugar, do you?”

Marie reached her hand towards the mug and was surprised to see it steady, not shaking.

“Thanks Jimmy,” she said.

Jimmy didn’t look at her. He looked down into Robert’s mug. But a wide grin spread across Jimmy’s cheeks, compressing them and stretching them simultaneously, like some paradoxical shift in weather on a satellite photograph taken from space.

Jack McCallum was trying to get the generator working. There were some kinds of job you couldn’t manage in the dark. You had to see what you were doing if you needed to be sure you wouldn’t leave any traces.

Jimmy hadn’t known about that when he was wee, not leaving any traces. He’d left Poppy’s grave obvious where the replaced earth stood out in a patch. No, you had to blend the earth, you had to blend everything.

Jack was trying to remember the last time he was out here. He sniffed at the fuelcap. Summers ago, it must have been. All the petrol was evaporated now then.

Jack blinked into the total darkness. He had sent Lanski back to the Subaru for the spare petrol can. Jack had laid the girl out at the bottom of the caravan, by the hole where the cats used to crawl under for shelter. Jack had felt the old hole with the edge of a rough hand. He wasn’t sure what Lanski had done with Ford before he went back to the car. Jack was half-sure that Ford was already dead anyway.

A rustling sound came from the trees.

“Lanski?”

Jack sniffed.

“Lanski!”

No answer came. Jack tried to feel around the floor of the shed by the old generator engine. There should be something here, even just a spanner. Wind tore abruptly through the leaves above Jack’s head, but he knew that sound.

“Lanski!”

The Pole could have run out on him. If his own boy could do it, then the Pole could too. Jack felt an enormous loneliness that shocked him. Tears pricked his eyes. He wanted to phone Cathy, or even the boy, but he stopped himself reaching for the phone in his pocket.

Jack clenched his fist. It was the place. It had too many ghosts now. That lawyer, Shandlin, he had screamed out here, like an animal, Jack knew the village down below the hill must have wondered that night what it was up here. But even then, no-one had come. People don’t come to find out about sounds like that.

Another sound, not the rustling, not the wind. This time Jack was sure, he recognised Lanski’s tread, even here.

“Lanski!”

Lanski heard the fear in McCallum’s voice.

“Reach the can out to me, Lanski! Pass it to me! Say something man!”

“It’s alright. It’s me.”

“Where’s Ford? Find him. Is he where you left him?”

Lanski walked another step toward McCallum’s voice. Another. Another. Then he felt McCallum’s hand knock against the can.

“There,” said Lanski.

“Got it. Find Ford.”

“You heard him move?” said Lanski.

“No. But find both of them, make sure. Until I get this done.”

Lanski turned his back on McCallum’s voice. He managed two steps towards where the caravan was, or where he hoped it was, then he walked into a group of thin, long, sharp branches. Lanski screamed. He believed it was the girl, free, raking his face with her fingernails. Jack was feeling for the fuel hole in the generator lid when Lanski’s scream nearly made him drop the can.

“Get a fucking grip on yourself!” Jack hissed furiously into the darkness.

Lanski stopped flailing at the branches. He stood still. He raised a hand steadily until he could feel the wood and his own blood there from his scratched face.

“I walked into a tree,” said Lanski.

“Find Ford where you left him. I put the girl by the caravan, near the hole in the bricks. Just check them until I get this going.”

Lanski glared around himself. He thought he saw some huge shadow in the darkness. It was hardly his eyes seeing it, he didn’t know what he was seeing it with. But he felt it must be the caravan so he headed that way, more careful now.

Jack had the petrol can tilted, almost ready to commit to where he felt the generator tank opening had to be. There was always the risk, if you tried this in the dark, of mistaking some other bump in the generator housing for the fuel hole and pouring all the petrol away against the outer surface. Jack had done that before, once, and always remembered to bring a torch since then, until this night. Jack started to pour. It sounded alright, like the liquid was falling through some space before the gurgling sounds. He tried to estimate half the can. He would keep the other half back, in case he was pouring the first half in the wrong place.

At the caravan, Lanski had found the girl. He had his hand on the outer layer of blanket covering her. He knew she was alive, without knowing how he knew or what part of her body he was feeling her life come through the blanket from. He pulled his hand away. He raised his weight and leaned against the caravan. It rocked noisily for a second. Lanski drew back. Keeping his hands light now against the aluminium wall he felt his way along towards where he thought the tree was where he had left Ford lying across a thick root. Lanski’s hands left the caravan, felt empty air, then his boot knocked against something. Lanski bent. No, not Ford, some rotted tree trunk.

Jack pulled violently at the generator cord. It snapped in his hand. Lanski heard McCallum swear.

“Rotted through,” Jack whispered to himself. “Like everything fucking else.”

Jack felt around on the generator roof until he found the snapped cord. He started to curl and twist it against the broken-off end he still had hold of. Jack tried to take his time with the knot, then he tugged tight.

He was almost sure the cord would just snap on the next go too, but it didn’t. Jack’s arm whipped all the way back and the generator spluttered reluctantly. The cord ran back into its housing. Jack pulled again. Another dry hack from the machine’s guts. On the third pull the generator exploded into clanging life. Light flooded Jack’s taut face, the caravan, and the girl’s prone blanket-covered form. Lanski’s broad back was highlighted against a silver birch’s gnarled roots where he had been searching for Thomas Ford’s tent-covered body.

As Jack turned and Lanski stared around himself from tree to tree, both men realised that Thomas Ford was gone.