The Last of the Gullivers

by Carter Crocker

  Then he heard the music, coming from the other side. It was very strange music, like none he’d ever heard, peaceful, wild, sad, happy, and all at once, if that was possible.

  And then it was gone.

  He went on around the back garden, walking the length of the long ambling wall, until he came to the cottage again. He found a low window, unlocked, and wrestled it up a few inches. That was enough. They say a rat can fit through a hole the size of a fifty cent piece, and Michael squeezed through this narrow slot and was in the cold dark kitchen. He stopped and listened and heard no one. He moved on and found a door to the back garden. It was open, a crack, moonlight fanning across the floor. He stepped through it and into a small courtyard full of clover, with overgrown shrubs hiding the rest of the garden.

  The music must have come from back there, somewhere farther. Michael was about to start down the walkway when a gunshot tore through the windless air. The boy fell, headfirst, to the brick path and rolled into the clover.

  This, he was thinking, as everything went dark, just isn’t my day.

  When he woke up again—was it minutes, hours, days?—there was a moon and there was blood. His head had been bleeding, a lot, but wasn’t now. He tried to sit up and couldn’t. There were small fuzzy spots of light around him. Was this the will-o’-the-wisp that Freddie and his mates sometimes talked about? A superstition said the lights were the lost, wandering souls of the un-baptized, unsure how to get to Heaven, not meant for Hell. Michael lay there and moaned and the little lights went scattering in every direction, into the untended shrubs.

  He tried to sit up, but was lashed to the ground, held in some spidery web. Fine binding twine crisscrossed his chest, arms, legs, everywhere. He felt something crawl onto him and over him and he tried to see, but his head and neck were bound, too.

  He yelled out—“Shoo, go away!”—and whatever-it-was hurried into the dark. He heard a sound like words, a muddy murmur from the shadows of the clover. The boy had never been as scared as this and could hardly breathe from it.

  Before he found a voice to scream with, a mountainous dog was on him, its hot slaver pouring into his face.

  “All right, Whitby,” came a voice, “settle now,” and the dog settled but didn’t seem happy about it. “No, no,” the voice was saying. “He’s not dead.”

  Michael lay still, eyes shut.

  “They thought you were a bear.”

  He opened his eyes and saw a shape against the moon, a man, tall and bent and old as dirt, wild white hair, a beard glowing with starlight. The man used a walking stick to break the threads and Michael leapt to his feet and went running.

  He ran through the house and out the front door, ran the many long miles to the village, and straight into the big arms of a policeman. He was put in the back of a dim reeking van and wind whistled at the wire grate. A crowd pushed close to see.

  “Is that the boy?” Stanley Ford, the policeman, asked.

  “S’him,” grunted Tiswas.

  The dark-car man was there, too. “That’s the one, that’s the yahoo.”

  “It’s him it’s him it’s him!” said the tiny pet shop woman, Francis Froth, excited and hopping about.

  Gadbury nodded.

  And the cop asked, “What’s your name, boy?”

  “Michael.”

  “Michael what?”

  “Pine.”

  “Your head hurt?”

  “Not too bad.”

  “What happened to you, Michael Pine?”

  “I. Guess. I. Fell.”

  “How old are you?” asked Stanley, tall fellow, decent and patient and often lonely.

  “Twelve. Twelve today.”

  The officer sighed and said, “Now, Michael, is this any way to spend your birthday?”

  CHAPTER THREE

  PIG’S NOSE, PARSLEY & ONION SAUCE

  The wind of Moss-on-Stone was maddening and ever-there. It uncombed your hair, grabbed papers from your hands, and whistled through every unseen crack in your house. On the afternoon Michael went to Youth Court, the wind was very wet and very cold.

  The court buildings sat at the north edge of the town, grim places with stained concrete walls and murky windows. Nick’s Boys were across in a car park, watching, waiting.

  “That little eejit’s going to rat on us.” Robby was oldest and meanest and he hated Michael. “The little eejit’s going to rat us out, you watch, you’ll see.”

  “Y’really think?” asked Gordy. “Y’think, really?” Gordy was as big as a Gloucester pig and half as smart.

  Phil, a quiet boy who had running dreams like dogs, said nothing.

  “Now here’s the way I see it.” It was Peter, the one who thought everything through. “They’ll let squire off easy. He’s littlest and youngest and they go easy on young little ones. He’s, what, ten? They’ll go easy on him.”

  “Y’think, really?” Gordy again. “Y’really think?”

  They’d all been locked up in YOI, the Young Offenders Institution at Ambridge, one time or another. Robby had been in six times. Nick alone had kept out.

  “Michael’s smarter than you lot put together,” said Nick. “He knows what’s expected of him.”

  The building was as plain inside as out and smelled like ink and sweat. There were a few brown chairs in the back and these were for onlookers, but onlookers weren’t let in the Youth Court. There were four bent military desks set in a square, for the Court Usher, the Clerk, and the Magistrates.

  Michael sat, quiet, unsure and ashamed.

  Freddie shifted, edgy and uneasy: he’d been here too many times when he was younger. Michael’s duty solicitor, Mr. Fenworth, was there and silent, too. He was a tall and reclusive man who had no children and didn’t think much of them.

  The Court Clerk came in first: Maxine Bellknap, an intent woman with a gardener’s rosy glow. She had been a barrister here once, a good one, had retired many times, but never found the heart to leave the Court. Her daughter Hetty was Michael’s teacher.

  Mr. Tiswas sat in a chair to the side, alone, staring at the floor. Stanley Ford, the policeman, was in the next row.

  Three Magistrates entered. The Chief Magistrate, Horace Ackerby II, was a giant and weighed a hundred pounds too many. He had cat eyes, a mop of messy hair, and the fiercest, shortest temper in Moss-on-Stone. Once a bank official, he’d become a Magistrate late in life. The other two looked like old children.

  “The first duty of man,” Ackerby finally said, “is the seeking after of truth. It was Cicero said that, not me. But it’s what I’m after. Truth is what I seek. Tell me, child—the Truth—did you steal the, ah, the, um”—he checked his notes—“the Game Machine?”

  Michael sat, silent, uncertain.

  The lawyer Fenworth said, “Answerrr.”

  And Michael answered, “No.”

  Fenworth sighed, “The truuuth.”

  And Michael said, “No, sir, but I tried.”

  “The child spends his day how?” the Magistrate asked, but didn’t wait for an answer. “Drifting, yes, looking for trouble? The parents are where?”

  “Dead, Horace, car crash,” Freddie answered, helpful. “I’m stuck with him now.”

  “I believe you’re paid a stipend by the government,” said one of the other Magistrates.

  “Not much of one, I’m not,” Freddie grunted back.

  “He’s never been arrested,” Fenworth offered.

  “Or never been caught.” Ackerby took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes and said, “I wonder, child, what are your dreams?”

  Michael didn’t know what to say and said nothing.

  “Tell me what—beyond stealing—are the things that interest you? That excite your blood?”

  The boy could only shrug.

&
nbsp; The Chief Magistrate put his glasses back on and raked a hand through his wild hair. “If you were as old as I am—and, yes, I’m old—you’d know that we chart a course for our lives, choosing right paths and wrong ones. Is there a reason, at your young age, you’ve chosen this?”

  And again, Michael had no answer.

  “The course to prison? Will you go where the wind blows you, boy—nowhere else?” Ackerby hit the old steel desk with a huge hammy fist. He was a banshee now in a spittle-spewing fury. The other Magistrates shifted in their small cold chairs. “Do you want to end up like him?!” He meant Freddie. “Is that the best you can dream!?”

  “Ah, c’mon now, Horace,” from Freddie.

  “You keep company with thugs, you’ll amount to nothing! You hear me?!”

  Fenworth quietly whined, “Answerrr.”

  “Yes,” said Michael. “Yes, sir,” he added, “I hear you.”

  The Chief Magistrate grew just as quickly calm. He looked past Michael, to the Court Clerk and some unspoken words passed between them. “We are proposing an Action Plan Order. The boy will be given an after-school job and will work two hours each day. He will no longer consort with gang members. Each weekday, for twelve months, he will check in with an officer at six thirty in the evening. He will meet weekly to review his progress with Ms. Bellknap.”

  “And who’s s’posed to haul him all the way over”—Freddie saw Ackerby’s cold eyes—“that’d be me, wouldn’t it?”

  “Ms. Bellknap will prepare a report,” the Magistrate went on, “for myself and the others. Is this all clear to you?”

  Michael nodded, it was clear.

  “Have you anything to say for yourself?”

  “No. No, sir. Nothing.”

  “Ms. Bellknap will fill you in on the particulars.” The men stood, three at once, and Horace Ackerby turned back to Michael. “There are better courses a life can take. Surprise us, eh? See what else you can find.”

  Michael only nodded and Freddie only grumbled, “Ah, crud.”

  The boy never knew how close he’d come to YOI. The Chief Magistrate was sick of thugs who stole from the people, their Game Machines and peace of mind. He wanted to make an example of Michael and show that he, Horace Ackerby, JP, could put a stop to this kind of thing.

  It was the Court Clerk, Maxine Bellknap, who saved Michael. Her daughter Hetty was his teacher and she knew there was still hope for the boy: she had seen a light in him, a spark that still flickered. “The Court gives you leeway in these juvenile cases,” Maxine had told Ackerby.

  “That’s right, Ms. Bellknap. It does.” The Magistrate was a man who liked routine and leeway bothered him.

  “It isn’t my place to say, but I was thinking—well, of a deferment. A deferment of sentence. Make the boy work and repay the loss to Mr. Tiswas.”

  “He’s too young,” Ackerby grunted. “What is he, ten?”

  “Twelve,” Maxine told him. “Young, but just old enough that a job might steer him away from bad influences.”

  “It’d let him off very easy, too,” Ackerby moaned. “I can give him a harsher sentence than that.”

  “Of course you can. But I was thinking. Maybe it’s structure he needs. Something to give reason to his life. If he had a job. I was thinking, you could draft an agreement with the boy. A contract. He’d sign it and if he missed work or caused trouble—well, then,” said Maxine, making it up as she went.

  “That isn’t a standard sentence,” Ackerby said.

  “No,” Maxine admitted, “it isn’t. But you could give him penalty points for every infraction. Like a Driving License. And if he lost too many points . . . well, then.”

  “Straight to YOI,” the Magistrate said, chewing it over.

  Maxine nodded. “To YOI.”

  “M’hm. I would call it a Liberty License.”

  “Well, then.”

  That evening, as they headed back to the flat, rain fell in a cold wind and Freddie mumbled, “Isn’t fair. Have a life of my own. Now I got to take you to court every week. Cruuuuud.”

  At this same time, a short mile away, Chief Magistrate Horace Ackerby II took his usual table at the pub called Folk-in-the-Clover, by the fire, looking out on the windy and ghostless churchyard. He waited for Bertram, the wiry little cook, to bring him a meal of pig’s nose with parsley-and-onion sauce, sautéed red cabbage, two pints of ale. When the tower bell rang seven, the Chief Magistrate, whose own children were grown and whose wife had died, began to eat alone.

  He thought about the boy and wondered if the scheme would work. When Horace Ackerby had first seen Michael Pine, he’d seen himself as a child. They both had hair that wouldn’t comb, and something else: the light inside, the flickering spark. Maybe, the Magistrate thought, Michael wasn’t so far gone that a rescue couldn’t be made. Perhaps if they got to him soon enough, while the light still burned . . . Or was he wrong? Was he going too easy on the boy? There was a feeling in the country that all effort to reform young criminals had failed. Voices were rising and saying these thugs needed to learn that actions have consequences.

  Maxine had better be right, Horace thought. If something went wrong, if Michael Pine went wrong, this would come back to haunt him worse than any graveyard ghost. The voices would rise against him and he’d be out of a job. That would be the consequence of his action. And being Chief Magistrate meant a lot to Horace Ackerby.

  Words began to come to him and he spoke them, quietly, to himself . . .

  THE ACKERBY LIBERTY LICENSE

  A FIRST CASE STUDY

  by H. Ackerby, JP

  Michael Pine was a boy without dreams, a distrustful and uncurious lad who believed in nothing. He was drifting into crime, and worse lay ahead. Could I, Horace Ackerby II, Justice of the Peace, Chief Magistrate for Moss-on-Stone, change the course of this one young life?

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE EVER-SAME, NEVER-SAME SONG

  They knew something had happened, but didn’t know what. Their eyes were on him, wondering, all through the school day. The cut on his head was deep and should have been stitched, but Freddie said he’d have a scar and so what?

  Ms. Bellknap said nothing and continued their studies. The class learned more about birds, endangered, exotic, extinct, even a mythological bird. The Phoenix, she told the class, was a magic creature that lived five hundred years and could heal suffering with a single teardrop. As its end grew near, the bird built a nest of myrrh and settled itself in and burst into flame. A new Phoenix rose from the ashes of the old.

  “We find this myth all over the world,” she told them. “In ancient Egypt, it was called the Bennu bird—a large heron, perhaps a stork—we can’t be sure. There are versions in China, the Americas, the Middle East. Now you tell me—Jimmy, leave her alone—tell me what you think the story of the Phoenix means.”

  “Ms. Bellknap.” Penelope Rees, as ever.

  “Penelope?”

  “It means sometimes things die and sometimes babies are born.”

  “Yes, Penelope Rees. It does mean that.”

  “What I think,” Charlie Ford wiped his nose and said, “it’s about tryin’ again. It’s like gettin’ a second chance to get it right.”

  Ms. Bellknap thought for a moment. “Well, yes, Charles. It is that, isn’t it?”

  “Ms. Bellknap.” Penelope once more.

  “Yes, dear?”

  “Michael is bleeding all over the place.”

  “Penelope Rees. Let’s mind our own business.”

  The teacher gave Michael a tissue for his head and sent him to the school nurse. As the small and lavender-smelling woman cleaned the blood, he looked out the window and saw Nick’s Boys waiting for him. They were gathered at the fence, like the stout sullen hawks he sometimes saw in the fields.

  When
school let out, they were still there, still waiting. But Michael never came. He’d been given a job at Fenn’s Market and Hetty Bellknap drove him there as her mother, the Court Clerk, had asked.

  The cramped little market was on a far edge of the village, on the road to Ambridge. “All right, come on,” Mr. Fenn spat. He was a solid man, jowly and unmarried, and his words came in wet blasts. “I want every shelf—faced. That means tins, boxes, everything—facing out, lined up, straight across!”

  Michael followed him through a storeroom, stacked floor to rafter with boxes, crates, bins, smelling like old vegetables. Fenn shoved a stubby thumb at an open shelf and told the boy to keep his schoolbooks here during work.

  They moved down another narrow canyon. “Every day you make sure the shelves are full. Myron will—he’ll show you how.”

  Myron was Fenn’s teenaged nephew, friendless and fuzzy at the edges: it was hard to tell where Myron started and Myron stopped. He was usually in the back room, gnawing a peppermint stick. “Why—me?”

  “Why not?” Fenn said as he left.

  Myron told Michael what was expected of him and then he said, “Let’s get one thing straight. I don’t like you.”

  “You don’t know me,” said Michael.

  “I don’t have to know you to know I don’t like you,” Myron grunted and went back to eating peppermint.

  Michael spent the next hours sweeping, stocking, cleaning, learning. As he worked, he quietly counted the minutes until he’d be free. It was almost five, closing time, when the door clanged open a last time.

  The boy looked across the store as a man came in, tall, bent, silver-haired, old as earth. It might’ve been him, no, had to be him, from that night at the stone cottage.

  “Codswallop,” Fenn said to himself. “Crazy ol’ loon. What’s he doin’ here?” Michael stood beside the grocer and watched the old man move slowly through the store. “Usually calls it in.” Fenn waited by the counter. “Crazy—ol’—loon.”