Not the End of the World

by Christopher Brookmyre

  It was such donations that led Luther to be introduced to Art Liskey in a hotel suite in Phoenix after a $1000-a-plate fundraising dinner. Liskey was a mercenary whose expertise had been leased to the Contras through the generosity of Luther and other like-minded donors, and he was back on US soil to explain just what their money was buying.

  He and Liskey had a memorable meeting of the minds, discovering a common viewpoint arrived at from such different experiences, and had stayed in touch down the years, albeit infrequently. Latterly Liskey had given up roaming foreign fields and taken the freedom fight back home, founding the Southland Militia with some former comrades-in-arms.

  Luther had thereafter striven to keep his links with Liskey quiet, as conspicuous amity with the militias was an invitation to the FBI to start sniffing around you and yours. Liskey understood that. America, he said, treated the true defenders of freedom like hunting birds: they were happy to unleash them when needs dictated, but at other times they must remain hooded. He accepted with good grace that Luther couldn’t be seen consorting with him. He accepted a lot of covert funding from him too, which probably made accepting the former a lot easier. Luther had been generous in all dealings with Liskey ever since that first night in Phoenix, it having struck him how useful it might be to have a man like that owing him favours.

  Later it proved to have been a prescient investment.

  Blink. Blink. Blink.

  But what an egotistical fool I am, he thought. Looking for some act, some trigger he had pulled, button he had pressed, like it had ever been his decision or even his option to instigate this. He had not set this in motion.

  God had.

  He was merely God’s instrument, and it was a vain conceit to pretend his contribution was anything greater. Luther himself was a flashing icon on God’s computer, moving, progressing, overseen, programmed, controlled.

  The countdown had started before the vision came to him, before he knew what part he would play. It had already been under way back in ’92 when the country he loved so betrayed him; now it soothed the hurt to know that it was part of God’s plan, and that He asks only the most faithful to bear the heaviest crosses.

  Blink. Blink. Blink.

  No. It had begun decades before any of this, when God took pity on the poor wretch who had been Bobby Baker.

  He had been in a dark place, alone, scared and in pain. Terrible things had happened, terrible. He did not know where he was, did not know even whether he was dead or alive. He could see nothing, he could hear nothing, and he could remember nothing. Perhaps the Catholics had been right and this was the place of Purgatory.

  Then he saw a light, somewhere above him. It was a strange light, in that it did not illuminate anything around him or around itself. It just existed in its own brightness.

  The light of God.

  He heard voices too, though he could not remember what they said. He was aware that they were talking about him, though. Somewhere above him.

  He awoke in a bright room, light all around him. The walls were painted crisp white and morning sunshine poured through the large windows. He was in a bed, and his uncle Nathan was sitting on a chair beside him, a tearful smile on his gentle face. He blinked, his eyes adjusting to the warm brightness, and looked around him. Both his forearms were in casts, and he felt as if he was wearing a balaclava. He reached a weighted arm up tentatively towards his face, but Uncle Nathan took his hand and placed it back down on the sheets.

  ‘Lie still, Bobby,’ he said softly. ‘Lie still. God’s brought you back to us. God’s gonna heal you, too, but you’ll have to give Him time.’

  Blink. Blink. Blink.

  Nathan had sat by his bed at the hospital, waiting for him to wake up, and he stayed there after that, when Bobby would need his uncle most. When he had the strength to hear it Nathan told him the tragic news: his mother was dead, killed saving Bobby from the intruder who had come close to putting him in his grave at the age of thirteen.

  In time the police visited Bobby, to ask him what he could remember of that night. Bobby started crying, but Nathan held his hand and told him to draw on the Lord’s strength. He never saw the man’s face, he told them through his tears. He had come in the night, in the darkness. He had woken up and been aware of someone in his room. He’d said ‘Mom?’ and that was when the man attacked him. He remembered being hit in the face with something hard, and remembered trying to curl up in a ball, but the blows wouldn’t stop. He thought he remembered seeing his mom come in, in her nightdress. Or did he only hear her voice, her screams?

  But he couldn’t remember anything else, and it hurt when he tried.

  In fact, not only couldn’t he remember anything else about that night, but he couldn’t remember anything else about his mom. He remembered their house, and the town and the church and the school, but he couldn’t remember her face, or her voice, or anything she’d said to him.

  ‘It’ll come back,’ the doctors told him and Nathan. ‘It’ll all come back in time. The memory can be a funny thing. Sometimes it just shuts things off until it’s decided you’re ready to have them again.’

  When he went home from the hospital, it was to live with Nathan, at his church on the other side of town. He was enrolled in a different school, under his uncle’s surname, and would begin studies there after the summer, which gave him a few months to recover from his physical and mental traumas. To complete this fresh start, Nathan suggested he begin calling himself by his first name, as it sounded more grown-up. Thus, L Robert ‘Bobby’ Baker became Luther R St John.

  The doctors were right. As that long summer wore on, the memories of his mother started coming back, but only slowly, and only in pieces. They didn’t come back by themselves, either. It always took some kind of spark. Sometimes a smell, a taste, sometimes a conversation with Nathan. Sometimes a drive through a certain part of town. Some of the memories he talked to Nathan about. Others he found he didn’t feel like sharing. And others still seemed to remain out of reach, as if, the doctors said, he wasn’t ready for them.

  His mom loved him, he remembered that. When he was very little she fed him and she dressed him, played with him, sang to him as she ironed their clothes or cooked, told him Bible stories as she put him to bed each night, and twice a week she bathed him. She made sure the water was not too hot and not too cold, then she would undress him to his underpants and place him in the tub. She was always real careful when washing him not to get suds in his eyes because that stung and made him cry. Then she’d give him the soap and he’d rub inside his underwear, front and back, only touching with the bar, never his fingers. Afterwards, she would lift him out and rub him down with big, soft, white towels, then she’d wrap one around his chest while he took off his wet underpants and put on a dry pair.

  She taught him how to go bathroom, when he was a big boy, too big for diapers. She helped him climb up on to the wooden seat, and fastened his modesty bib around his neck before he took his pants down. This was a leather strap with a buckle, attached to a stiff piece of Bakelite, which jutted out all around his collar and saved him from catching a glimpse of what was going on below.

  She brought it with her in her bag when they went out to town, and took him with her into a cubicle in the ladies’ restrooms when he needed to go. There were parts of the body that belonged to God, she explained, and it was forbidden by God to look at them. Nakedness itself was a sin, and had been since Adam and Eve were expelled from Paradise. It was a sin to expose those parts and a sin to look at them. It was a greater sin to touch them, except to wipe or clean them. A greater sin still was to look at someone else’s.

  Bobby was worried. Wouldn’t God be angry, then, that he had to expose those parts when he sat down to pee or do number two? But his mom reassured him that God saw him through his own eyes, and if he did not see his own nakedness, neither would God. His modesty bib was a shield from sin.

  When the time came for him to go to school, his mom told him that not all the othe
r kids’ mommies loved them enough to teach them all of God’s true ways. He would have to go to the boys’ restrooms, she warned him, where there were filthy trenches to pee in – standing up! But there would also be cubicles: he was to use those for peeing as well as number two, and he was to take his modesty bib with him in his satchel.

  Bobby thought it sounded disgusting. Peeing standing up, like dogs or cats, when God had made man greater than the animals. He resolved never to use the school restrooms – he would just hold it in until his mom took him home at the end of each day. But on his first morning, his bladder betrayed him after two hours, and with a sick dread he walked into the boys’ toilets. There was indeed a long trench, but to his slight relief it wasn’t the wooden, leaking, farmyard thing he had pictured. It had smooth white walls running around it, and cascades of water at regular intervals washing into the groove at the bottom. Two bigger boys stood with their backs to him, laughing and looking across at one another. He could see arcs of liquid over their shoulders, fanning out where it hit the white surface. He realised with horror that it was their number ones, jetting into the air like garden hoses.

  ‘Beat ya again, Tommy,’ one was saying.

  ‘Did not.’

  ‘Did too. Mine was right up where it says “vitreous china”.’

  ‘Mine was higher than that. Mine was hitting “Shanks Barrhead”.’

  ‘Was not.’

  Bobby looked around him. There were two cubicles, like his mom had said, but one was boarded up with an ‘out of order’ sign hanging off it, and the other was engaged. He had never held off going for so long before, and the pain in his gut was growing. One of the boys turned around and walked to the engaged cubicle, banging loudly on the door with his hand.

  ‘Didn’t you make yet, Kosinski?’

  ‘Get lost,’ came the reply. ‘I got the squits.’

  ‘Oh not again. What’s your mom feedin’ you?’

  The older boy glanced down at Bobby. ‘Hope you ain’t in no hurry, little guy. Kosinski’s dug in for the winter, ain’t ya?’ He banged on the door once more.

  The two older boys left. Bobby gripped his satchel and felt tears begin to form. He had no choice. He walked forward and unzipped his fly, letting his privates fall out by pulling at his shorts, not once touching skin on skin, and peed, eyes shut tight. And in that moment of glorious relief, it occurred to him that if his eyes were closed, then he wasn’t seeing his nakedness, and neither was God.

  He told this excitedly to his mom when she got him home and asked him what his first day in school had taught him. She took hold of his hand tightly, and spanked him on the bare legs again and again until they were bright red, his screaming reverberating around the kitchen. He was sent to bed right away with no dinner, and lay sobbing in his room for hours until his mom came upstairs later with a glass of soda and a cookie for him. He had been a bad boy, she told him, and needed to be punished, but God also forgives. Bobby hadn’t been mean, just stupid. What if another boy had come up to this trough and started peeing alongside? He could have seen Bobby’s private parts, couldn’t he?, and that was a sin for both of them.

  He promised Mom and God always to wait for a cubicle, and always to use his bib.

  Luther performed much better at his new school, living with Nathan. He was a little quieter than most kids, but he didn’t stand out so much as before, and nobody knew anything about his past that he hadn’t told them himself. He’d always liked learning things, liked to hear the teacher tell him stories, of far away lands and of America’s past. But his other memories of school were far less pleasant.

  He didn’t much like the other kids, and they didn’t like him. They weren’t the same as him. Many of them were scruffy, wearing clothes that didn’t fit, and keeping the same ones on every day of the week. They talked differently, too, not at all like his mom had taught him. They used slang words, they cursed, they swore and they blasphemed. Mom had warned him that he would hear bad words at school, instructing him to ignore them and never, never to repeat them.

  Bobby asked how he would know which words these were. His mom said he would know when he heard them, and for the most part she was right. But now and again he’d say something and she’d erupt that way she did, her face boiling into redness and her eyes going as wide as her head, before a hard spanking and no dinner. Like the time he told her about overhearing some big boys say they wanted to see Miss Hathaway’s pussy. He knew he wasn’t allowed to call horses ‘nags’, or a cow a ‘steer’; he hadn’t realised ‘pussy’ was such a bad word, but he knew now always to call a cat a cat.

  The other kids were mean to him. They teased him about the way he spoke, just because he pronounced all his words and letters properly. Johnny Finnegan was the worst. One day he and his friends got hold of Bobby, and two of them held him while Johnny slapped him across the face and punched him in the stomach.

  ‘You think you’re better’n us, don’tcha, Mr Hoity Toity? Think you’re better’n us ‘cause ya talk all fancy, an’ ya never use no cusswords. Well, I wanna hear ya use a fuckin’ cussword now. I wanna hear ya holler “fuck”, an’ I’m gonna hit ya till ya say it.’

  Bobby said nothing. Johnny punched him some more, hitting him between the legs where no-one was supposed to touch. It was the sorest pain Bobby had ever felt; he knew it was extra sore because those parts belonged to God, and God was reminding him of the pain he’d suffer for ever if he sinned. Johnny got angrier and angrier, hitting Bobby more and more.

  ‘Holler fuck,’ he screamed. ‘Holler fuck, ya little prick.’

  But Bobby wouldn’t. He could take the beating, because it was nothing compared to what God could give out, and even less compared to what God would give out to Johnny and all the other kids.

  It was Johnny Finnegan who noticed that Bobby always went to a cubicle in the restroom, never the ‘urinal’, as they called the trench. He’d bang on the door and shout things, filthy things.

  ‘You ain’t never done shittin’, are ya, Baker? Can’t you ever just take a piss without takin’ a dump too? Or maybe it’s ’cause you ain’t got no dick, you gotta sit down. Baker’s really a girl. Ain’t ya, Roberta?’

  Then one time Johnny and his friend climbed up the walls of his cubicle and peered over, seeing him sitting there with his pants at his knees and his modesty bib around his neck. They asked him what it was, and he told them. That just made them laugh even harder.

  The teacher, Miss Graham, was alerted by the shouting from the restrooms, and came in to see what was going on. There were about thirty boys crammed in there, chanting and yelling, gathered around the open cubicle where Bobby sat, crying, under threat from Johnny Finnegan not to remove his bib or pull up his pants.

  Miss Graham took Bobby’s mom into her class when she arrived to pick him up. He saw them talk through the window as he sat on a swing in the yard outside. When they got home, his mom told him he didn’t have to use the bib in school any more, though he had still to wear it in the house. Wouldn’t God be angry? he asked. God would forgive him, she said, for Jesus had known what it was like to be persecuted, what it was like to be made fun of for trying to do what was right. He suggested his uncle Nathan could teach him to box, so that he could fight back and beat up on the kids who made fun of him. That way he could still use his bib and give God His glory. But his mom said he was giving God His glory by suffering with quiet dignity; and besides, he didn’t need to beat up on the other kids – God would beat up on them for all time after they left this earth. They were sinners, she explained, and all sinners would be punished for eternity, while the pure and faithful received their reward.

  The bullying didn’t bother him so much after that. Nothing the other kids said could hurt him, because he knew they were all worthless, all condemned.

  Uncle Nathan didn’t mind him using slang words now and then, as long as he could prove he also knew the correct English for whatever he was talking about. He learned to tailor his language according to who
m he was talking to: perfect grammar pleased teachers, but it won less respect in the schoolyard, so he dropped the right consonants here and there to sound more like his classmates. He was pleasantly surprised to learn that slang could be a rich and inventive vocabulary on its own, rather than the sublingual resort of the inarticulate he had been taught it was. He still never swore or blasphemed, but this was less conspicuous as his language altered and his confidence grew; he could express the extremes of emotion with a blend of wit and imagination that disguised the absence of a swearword.

  The pleasantest surprise at his new school, though, was PT. He really loved it, and made up with sheer effort what he lacked in skill or experience. He was class champ at running the mile, his light frame demanding less effort to maintain pace over distance than his bulkier classmates. He turned out to be a pretty good pitcher, too, and while his batting wasn’t great, his speed still allowed him to steal home often enough. He hadn’t been allowed to do PT before. He suffered slightly from asthma, and his mom got a doctor she knew to certify him unfit for gym class each semester. But his breathing only got bad a couple of times a year, so he knew that the real reason was so that he wouldn’t have to take a shower with the other boys, as he’d either have to go naked or get picked on for not taking his shorts off.

  At his new school he was able to change and shower with the other boys, having been assured by Nathan that it wasn’t a sin. It was a sin to look at girls who had no clothes on, he explained, because that was lust, and that was why boys and girls had separate change rooms. It was a sin for a girl to look at a boy naked, just the same way, but boys could be naked in front of boys, because they didn’t lust after each other. And if they did, then they were already in enough trouble with God that nakedness was the least of their sins!