by Claire North
“This year, give the gift of love to your family and friends, to those who mean the most to you …”
“I am proud to have served my country, and I am proud to say that I am also …”
“That’s right, huh, that’s right, then what about the fucking churches because there’s more guys go to church on Sunday and blast their wives on Mondays than have ever come from a single mosque in this nation …”
“Women-on-men violence has been rising steadily and the law doesn’t protect the rights of men when it comes to …”
“Sweetie, New York is not America.”
“Gas for only one seventy-nine a gallon, yes, I said one seventy-nine, you won’t get better prices this side of the state line …”
“These guys. They behead. They rape. They torture. They aren’t human.”
“I am not afraid.”
Chapter 82
They rode I-75, heading towards I-10 and Alabama.
Charlie drove cautiously, a man used to speed cameras round every bend.
Robinson, when they swapped, drove at 85 mph, skimming down the inside lane, half an eye turned to the traffic coming from the opposite direction. “You’re looking for guys who flash their lights, that means there’s a patrol car ahead, it’s a warning.”
“I see.”
“The patrol cars—they ain’t about enforcing the law, people drive at the speed people gotta drive at to get where they need to go, I mean, seventy miles an hour are you kidding me, country this size? They’re about making cash. Some poor sucker doing seventy-five, boom, that’s a fine, that’s court fees, that’s the city making a packet. You know there’s some cities make nearly most of their budget from taking people to court?”
“I didn’t know that.”
“It’s a tax, man, it’s a tax. The rich can pay it and the poor get burned. ’Cept this is tax that’s also a lottery, you hear me?”
“I think so.”
“The roads are fucked. They’re just fucked.”
So saying, Robinson fell quiet, and they kept on driving north.
Glimpses of America out of the window.
The Spanish moss is a light grey-green, old woman’s hair draped off pale trees. Occasionally flowers bloom and burst, sudden eruptions of purple, orange, pink and blue in front of the courthouses and lovingly cleaned white wooden homes that line the interstate. Sometimes the eight-lane behemoth slows for traffic lights at a crossroads where stand two competing garages, a sandwich joint and a shop selling doughnuts and ammunition. Tiny churches line the roads out of town. Baptists, New Baptists, Evangelical Baptists, Methodist Baptists, Methodists of the New Church, New Anglican Methodists, New Anglican Methodist Baptists, etc. Some are next door to each other, separated only by muddy parking lots. They compete with signs in black letters pinned to white boards, like something from a 1950s movie.
JESUS LOVES YOU ALL
THE REDEEMER AWAITS
And Charlie’s personal favourite:
ISN’T JESUS GREAT?
Outside Tallahassee, they leave the interstate and crawl through bouncing backland roads. Endless shallow bridges cross nameless waterways, the wetlands too inconsistent to ever be mapped or claimed. Houses stand empty, a hundred yards back from the road, walls falling down, windows cracked, no one home. And sometimes, a house that looks as if it should be empty, isolated, away from the world, has an SUV parked outside, polished and loved, while the porch lists at an angle and the American flag wilts in the breathless air.
A delivery to a farmer in fields of ragged grass—an old French textbook.
He weeps when he sees it, and says it was his when he was a child, this is what he learned French from, but he went to work on the farm, because it was his, his home, his life, his love, and now it was all over, all of it, didn’t matter how hard you made the land to grow, the prices kept on falling and there was nothing to be done except sell everything that seven generations had fought to build.
Robinson had got out of the car to watch Charlie speak to this man, but as he wept and Charlie held him, Robinson retreated without a word, and sat, grey stone, in the passenger seat, waiting for Charlie to return.
A motel. Two storeys, pink walls, a smell of damp, best not to look too closely at the mattress beneath the faded blue sheets.
Charlie wasn’t sure he was budgeted to pay for two rooms, but then … Death had said to give Robinson a lift, and it seemed rude to not pay for a hotel room too, so he handed over the extra dollars without a word and Robinson took the key and held it until his knuckles were white, the veins throbbing on the surface of his hand. Charlie wondered if he should offer to buy him a drink, go down the pub, whatever it was you did in motels on the side of the interstate. But Robinson just went to his room and double-locked the door, and when the motel’s Wi-Fi loaded, slowly, so slowly, he discovered the nearest likely venue was fourteen miles away.
Fourteen miles, he was beginning to realise, was nothing in American terms, but the idea of getting in the car again made his whole body hurt.
A flick through TV channels.
“This woman was brutally raped before she was strangled, her naked body thrown into the storm drain to be found by …”
“What I love about cheerleading is it’s like a really amazing way to express myself!”
“Police shootings of …”
human human
“Tornados in central …”
“Abortion …”
“Gun control …”
“The Confederate flag …”
human human!
Charlie turned the TV off, closed his eyes, saw for a moment a hollow in the earth, eyes staring back, heard the flies, smelt liquid flesh, saw the stares of the children gunned down because they weren’t
human human
A drumbeat in his head, he sat up gasping, went to the bathroom, washed his face, looked in the mirror, heard the drums, took a shower, stayed under the thin hot water until the little cubicle was lost in steam, felt a bit better, remembered in that moment why he had needed to feel better, and remembered again
rat rat
In the end, he turned the radio on, and fell asleep to the sounds of either country or Western—he could never work out which was which.
Chapter 83
Robinson drove for the first three hours as they headed towards Mobile. At a pair of traffic lights he pulled a sudden U-turn, swinging round into a medley of high-speed gulching traffic to head back the way they’d come, crossing three lanes in a few moments to pull up in front of a shack selling boiled peanuts and home-made jelly.
Charlie, clinging tight to his seat belt, bit his lip hard as they parked, but without a word, Robinson got out of the car, went up to the shack and knocked on the door. As soon as it was opened by a woman with skin the colour of midnight and nails the colour of tangerines, he began bartering fast and urgent.
A few dollars changed hands, and he returned to the car with a plastic bag, within which were more plastic bags containing the promised goods—nuts, jam, and a few thick slices of bread to spread it on.
“For you,” he said, passing the bag to Charlie.
Charlie’s irritation at the stop, made worse by the wet heat, the long road, the roar of the traffic tumbling past, faded to immediate shame. He took the bag, and wondered how many dollars Robinson had left, having bought it. “Thank you.”
“You’ll never have tasted nothing like it,” Robinson promised him, and indeed, as they rejoined the road, driving five miles back to the next turning before swinging round again to resume their route, Charlie had to admit that it tasted like heaven.
A grand mansion house on the edge of Mobile. At one point it had fallen into disrepair, the roof crumbling, the glass in the old gas lamp posts cracked, the moss and the vine creeping into every scar and tear, pulling it apart until it was on the cusp of becoming a ghost house. Then an investor from Massachusetts bought it and the surrounding marsh, put a new, bright red roof on, a swimming pool
round the back, redid the iron work to its original 1890s condition, repaired the windows, pulled down the vines, cleared back the scrub, trimmed the trees, restored the murals and the crystal lamps in the great rooms inside, laid gravel paths and, after nearly three years of careful, loving labour to bring it up to scratch, reopened the entire thing as a stately home specialising in weddings, corporate events and luxury parties. The money he made from the venture he divided between his four children, of whom one became a doctor, one a computer programmer, one a glass-blower at a workshop in Michigan, which surprised everyone, and one who vanished in Tasmania without a trace, and was never heard of again.
In a land of freedom …
… in a land of dreams …
Robinson and Charlie drove up a gravel path as the sun went down, pink and golden light through the curled, clawed branches of the trees. Torches burned either side, bright yellow flame and shimmering distortions to the air where invisible gas burnt away. The extensive car park, reclaimed from the wetland all around, was nearly full, Alabama and Mississippi plates, a few Florida too, three from Louisiana. Some of the cars were hired: gold stretch limousines that had struggled to make the tight turns up to the front of the mansion; six-door adapted sedans with padded leather seats and minibars inside; cars that lit up the road beneath them with magenta and cyan light, signs draped across the back: PRINCESS ON BOARD.
Charlie’s grubby little hire car felt tiny and obscure as he parked, and an attendant all in black, save for a pair of white cotton gloves, came up to him as he was locking the door and asked if he wasn’t meant to be in the staff car park round the other side.
“I’m a guest,” he replied. “In a manner of speaking.”
His British accent perhaps did more work here than his crumpled clothes, his smell of too-long at the steering wheel. Robinson stretched, bones creaking, huge hands reaching up to the sky as he unfolded. The attendant frowned, then nodded, waving Charlie by.
They walked across a wooden bridge spanning a lake heavy in green lichen, the mosquitoes humming around their faces, citronella candles burning brightly in glass jars every five feet. The trees around, dark against the brilliant open sky, sang with the sounds of life, chittering, scampering, leaping, falling. Robinson paused on the bridge to listen to it, head on one side, and Charlie stopped too, and for a moment they stood and smelt the air and heard the fat-bellied fish leap in the water and the tree frogs sing, and it was beautiful.
Then a grey-haired man in a tuxedo and a young woman in a baby-blue gown, her train held aloft by a Latino woman in a dark purple cocktail dress, came along, and her gown was a little too wide for the bridge and she struggled to get by, so Charlie and Robinson pressed themselves flat against the railing, then followed on behind.
As they neared the house, the sound of music, a ten-piece band in full swing, waltzing, slow numbers for dignified people to dance demurely to. A man, also in black, also wearing white gloves, bent at the hips as they approached, in a manner that, if Charlie hadn’t known better, he might have called a bow, and asked them their business.
“My name is Charlie,” he replied. “I’m the Harbinger of Death. I’m here to see Mrs. Walker-Bell.”
“Are you staff?”
“I’m the Harbinger of Death,” he repeated with a patient smile. “That’s all.”
The man nodded, seemed almost to bow again, then turned his back on Charlie to pull a walkie-talkie from beneath the long curve of his black frock coat, a strangely modern, clumsy object in this seat of elegance. A few words were exchanged, an answer given. He returned again to Charlie, smiling now, relaxed. “Mrs. Walker-Bell requests that you wait inside, and asks if you would like some champagne.”
They waited inside.
Charlie had champagne, because he thought Robinson might like some, and because Robinson wouldn’t have any if Charlie didn’t. The two of them sat in a room where perhaps happy married couples had breakfast the morning after their celebratory feast; a bowl of potpourri between them, flowers bursting up from thick green stems set in clear glass vases on the table against the wall; crisp white tablecloths, high-backed white leather chairs.
They waited, as through the half-open door shadows flitted, voices were raised in laughter, and the music played. They waited. Robinson toyed with his champagne, looking at Charlie’s untouched glass, waited. Waited. Music played, shadows moved, they waited.
In a moment almost of irritation, Robinson picked up his champagne glass and drained it down in one gulp, wiping his lips with the back of his hand.
Charlie looked at him wordlessly, then pushed his glass across the table.
Robinson took it, rolled it between his fingers.
The two men sat, and waited.
Slower, Robinson sipped his champagne.
After thirty minutes, a man dressed in black came to the door. Frock coat, trousers with buttons on the front, white gloves, cravat. Skin rich and dark, hair cut close. It occurred to Charlie, not for the first time, that nearly all the members of staff he’d seen thus far had been black.
“Mr. Harbinger of Death?”
Charlie rose to his feet.
“Would you follow me, please?”
Charlie followed. Robinson half rose from his seat, not sure whether to come or stay, and Charlie smiled, shrugged. Robinson shuffled after them.
Through white corridors lit with warm tungsten lamps and scented candles. Fresh flowers were woven into wreaths and hung from every door; bouquets of pinks and purples had been laced into swagging scarves that drooped from the ceiling, some so low that Robinson had to duck to pass beneath them, sweet petals dropping onto the floor to create a scuffed, shuffled cascade of perfume beneath their feet.
Voices, drifting through doors.
“Presenting … Mr. Dwight-Lee and Miss Dwight-Lee!”
“… it’s such a good opportunity to see my old friends, we’ve moved so far apart but now here, together …”
“Used to be you could only wear white, but they said the dads wouldn’t pay for another white dress so now they’ve changed the rules, pastels, but see she’s got a new style, she’s got …”
“Can you play ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’?”
“A throne, gold leaf, platinum inlay around the …”
“Beautiful beautiful! A little bit … you know … high school prom … but still so beautiful!”
“I know you’re a baroque group, but it goes like this … here we are now … entertain us …!”
“It’s about celebrating who we are, about celebrating our families, our love for family, our love for …”
“Real pearls.”
“… wanted a glass slipper but actually the blisters …”
“Is it … has she worn that dress before?”
A sudden drumming in his head, it came so hard that Charlie stumbled, caught his balance against the wall. Robinson, surprised, came up short behind him, reached out to help, didn’t touch, uncertain. “You … okay?”
Charlie nodded, the pain fading as quickly as it had come, as if every vein had tightened and then relaxed, blood squelching through his skull with the relief of it.
“Fine,” he muttered. “Fine.”
They walked on.
In a room decorated duck-egg blue, soft cobalt flowers painted across the walls, couches pressed against bookcases of unused, unloved ceremonial leather books, gold lampshades and a portrait of someone—probably no one knew who—with huge whiskers and a crooked top hat beaming down from above the unused—this was Alabama—utterly unused fireplace, a woman waited.
She was small—the word diminutive might not be unfair—and had the energy of a tiny hedgehog that has realised that the tiger fears getting spines up its nose. She bristled, she brimmed, she paced a few steps this way, then a few steps that, fingers clenching and unclenching at her sides, gold on her wrists, chain mail of gold around her neck, her white hair pulled back tight from her high forehead, her thin pained brows arching in expectant fury
. She wore cream, a knee-hugging skirt and a careful, conservative top, covered over with a padded jacket. At the back of her skirt, clipped beneath her jacket, was a radio. Two gold earrings in the shape of seashells hung on her long lobes; her lips were crimson, and so were her nails, and she probably wasn’t a day under seventy years old, going on twenty-two.
“Well?” she snapped, banishing with a flick of her hand the man who’d accompanied them to this door. “Which one of you is the Harbinger of Death?”
“Me, ma’am,” replied Charlie, putting his bag down slowly on the floor, lest fast movement set his head pounding again. “My name’s Charlie.”
“I didn’t think you’d have a name.”
“I’ve been told that, sometimes.”
“Why do you have a name?”
“I’m from Birmingham.”
“Alabama?”
“England.”
“There’s a Birmingham in England?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re from there?”
“Near there, yes.”
“Huh.” A reconsidering sound. The woman had had some expectations, these were now being threatened; she didn’t approve of changing her mind. Then a fast shake of her head, discarding the danger. “I thought the Harbinger of Death would be skeletal. Glowing eyes, that sort of thing.”
“I think you might be thinking of Death himself, ma’am.”
“Aren’t you part of Death?”
“No, ma’am. Like I said, I’m from Birmingham.”
“Huh.” Challenge her perceptions once—shame on you. Challenge them twice …? She stepped forward quickly, one hand sweeping up like a castle drawbridge, fingers out. Charlie shook it, smiled wanly, went into his prepared speech.
“Mrs. Walker-Bell, I’ve been sent to give you—”
“There’s nothing wrong with me, you know that, don’t you?”
“I’m sure you’re right.”
“You think I’m gonna be shot? Get hit by a car? Fall out of a plane?”
