Blast Radius

by Rebecca McKinney

  R L McKinney is a native of Boulder, Colorado but has lived in or around Edinburgh since 2004. She studied social anthropology at Edinburgh University and has worked in academia, the voluntary sector and local government. In previous lives, she has tended bar, trained horses, worked in bookshops and taught creative writing. Her short stories have appeared in several anthologies and journals. She lives in Midlothian with her husband and two children.

  BLAST RADIUS

  R L McKinney

  First published in Great Britain

  and the United States of America

  Sandstone Press Ltd

  Dochcarty Road

  Dingwall

  Ross-shire

  IV15 9UG

  Scotland.

  www.sandstonepress.com

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.

  Copyright © R L McKinney 2015

  The moral right of R L McKinney to be recognised as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patent Act, 1988.

  Editor: Moira Forsyth

  The publisher acknowledges subsidy from Creative Scotland towards publication of this volume.

  ISBN: 978-1-910124-06-2

  ISBNe: 978-1-910124-07-9

  Cover design by Brill

  Ebook by Iolaire Typesetting, Newtonmore

  For my family in Scotland and America

  Contents

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Chapter VI

  Chapter VII

  Chapter VIII

  Chapter IX

  Chapter X

  Chapter XI

  Chapter XII

  Chapter XIII

  Chapter XIV

  Chapter XV

  Chapter XVI

  Chapter XVII

  Chapter XVIII

  Chapter XIX

  Chapter XX

  Chapter XXI

  Chapter XXII

  Chapter XXIII

  Chapter XXIV

  Chapter XXV

  Chapter XXVI

  Chapter XXVII

  Chapter XXVIII

  Acknowledgements

  This is the story of one fictional veteran after this country’s most recent war, but he could be any veteran after any one of too many wars. This book has been informed and inspired by more sources than I can credit, from Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front to Michael Herr’s Dispatches, Pat Barker’s Regeneration trilogy to Gregory Burke’s stunning play Black Watch: factual and fictional accounts of war and the psychological scars it inflicts on the men and women who experience it.

  I might never have written anything at all without the encouragement of some special people: my parents Alan and Peggy Frank, who raised me with eyes and ears for the world; my university roommate Erika, whom I subjected to my late-night scribblings on a regular basis; my aunts Pat and Nina who surrounded me with love and amazing talents; and my uncle Red Davis, who let me steal just a little bit of his story and run with it. Thank you also to the members of Dalkeith Writers Group for making me better at this craft, and to Moira Forsyth at Sandstone Press for gentle but wise editorial insight. Claire Lamond – friend, filmmaker, artist – thank you for reading, commenting and continually inspiring.

  Finally, to my husband Craig McKinney, for his eternal patience and love, and to Jamie and Susanna: thank you for being here and for understanding why I do this.

  A blast radius is the distance from the source that will be affected when an explosion occurs. A blast radius is often associated with, but not limited to, bombs, mines, explosive projectiles (propelled grenades), and other weapons with an explosive charge.

  Wikipedia

  War does not determine who is right – only who is left.

  Bertrand Russell

  I

  Sad bastards. This town is full of them. You know the ones I mean: the men who wear a rut in the pavement between the bookies, the dole queue and the pub, shuffling along with no clear purpose in life except to survive until the next day. When I was at school I used to watch them and think, you sad, sad bastards.

  Now I’m one of them; fate’s a funny thing. A half-deaf, twitching, psyched-out prick, wandering down Civvy Street with no job and less prospect of getting one than a one-eyed, hump-backed whore. That’s me. Sean McNicol: sad bastard. I still have all my teeth and I don’t smell of piss, but the rate things are going that could change. I even have a beard. A beard is prerequisite for Saddo status. I’ve given up shaving because I don’t like to look in the mirror. When I look in the mirror I have to go through the tedious routine of asking how the fuck I got here.

  How the fuck did I get here? I followed the directions that I was given, and somehow I ended up here. Right back in Saddoville where I started out. This isn’t bloody right!

  Ok, Mitch told me one time, so there’s only two fixed points on this map. You can’t go back to the first and you sure as hell can’t avoid the last, but everything in between is up for grabs. If you look at it that way, I suppose every decision of your life is a crossroads, from which there can be infinite possible roads toward that second and final fixed point. The only thing I can’t work out is how you know which is the right one, because it seems to me that up to now this life has been a series of wrong turns, leading to other wrong turns, and then to those places you can’t get back from, carrying me faster and faster toward that inevitable final stop.

  Anyway, that’s why I don’t bother shaving.

  Helen, the librarian, smiles at me as I make my now predictable appearance on a Monday morning. I’ve more or less read my way through the entire Mystery section (it’s a small town and we have a small library) and am now working on True Crime. True Crime’s pretty good reading as a matter of fact, and it reassures me that there are still some folk out there whose lives are more fucked up than mine.

  Helen’s a canny wee woman. She was a friend of my granny so knows me from the bad old days. She is mostly deaf and has to read lips, but she sees more than most folk. She knows what it’s like when you can’t hear very well: how your world closes in around you and your own thoughts echo like thunder.

  I hand her my book about John Gotti. American crooks are so much more interesting than Scottish ones.

  ‘How are ye the day, Sean?’ she asks in the way you’d ask a cancer patient.

  ‘Still here, Helen.’

  ‘Afore ye go, here’s something ye may be interested in.’ She bends and retrieves a piece of paper from beneath the counter, slides it toward me.

  VAN DRIVER/REMOVAL PERSON NEEDED, IMMEDIATE START, it reads.

  ‘Harry over the road asked me to put it on the notice board, but I saved it for you.’

  ‘The job’s probably gone already,’ I say.

  ‘He was just here ten minutes ago, son.’

  Ya beauty! Get over there, Nic, your name’s on this one. This is Mitch. He shouts in my bad ear when he thinks I need a kick up the arse. I don’t know why I hear him in my bad ear and not my good one, but anyway that’s how it is.

  I read the notice again, looking for the inevitable fine print. Clean driving licence required. Heavy lifting involved.

  ‘Aye, ta Helen,’ I say, and fold the notice into the pocket of my coat. I leave the library and head down the street, chin tucked into my collar and eyes averted in case any of the other local Saddos clock where I’m going and beat me to it.

  The Once Loved Furniture Company occupies what used to be the carpet factory, the town’s largest employer after the pits. It kind of sums
the place up: we don’t make anything anymore, we just sell cast-off shite. I push open the door and enter a cavernous room crammed full of the kind of furniture that filled more or less every living room in Britain twenty years ago: overstuffed suites in an explosion of floral prints, lots of grey and pink, MDF, yellow pine. Smells of mothballs and furniture polish, dusty carpet and upholstery imbued with stale fags and cat piss. Against the back wall are at least two dozen old boxy televisions, perfectly functional but discarded for the latest flat screen models.

  I see a man on his knees at the back of the shop, slowly rubbing a bit of sand paper along the leg of an upturned chair.

  ‘I’m looking for Harry,’ I say and he turns, gets to his feet with some effort, and gives me a lopsided smile.

  ‘Office.’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  He sighs, makes a show of dusting his hands on his trousers. ‘Show ye.’ Then he moves off toward the back of the building, dragging his left leg. As I follow him, a couple of the other staff watch me. None of them look exactly the full shilling, if you know what I mean, and I realise that this must be one of those places that exists to give unemployable losers a token job to keep them off the streets. Saddo Central. I want to run a mile, but seeing as I’m one of them, there’s no point.

  The old boy leads me to a blue door at the back of the shop, knocks twice and then opens it to reveal a small office, cluttered with stacks of paper and pieces of furniture – table legs and broken lamps – strangely like disembodied limbs.

  ‘Felly to see ye,’ my guide says to the man at the desk: a chunky wee guy with a grey beard and a Fair Isle jumper.

  ‘Thanks Al,’ he says, rising from the chair and crossing the room to shake my hand. Gas-flame blue eyes lock onto my face and I immediately look down at my boots. ‘Harry Boyle. I’m the manager here.’ Throaty voice, accent that is vaguely Scottish but impossible to place, possibly public school.

  ‘I’m here about the removals job.’

  ‘Ah, outstanding.’ He pulls over a chair. ‘Sit down just now and we’ll have a little chat.’

  I sit, and immediately my legs begin to jiggle. Once upon a time I knew how to be still as a chameleon on a branch. I could do it for hours. But now I jitter all the time. Don’t blow this, Mitch mutters at me. Don’t tell him any more than you have to. I force my legs to be still.

  Harry Boyle opens the bottom drawer of his desk, shuffles through some files and pulls out what looks like a job application form. Then he sits opposite me.

  ‘The thing is I need someone who can start right away. Our driver left without notice on Saturday and the jobs are already backlogging. There’s not much to explain about the job, really. We’re a charity, we provide affordable second hand furniture. Luton van, load the furniture in, take it to customers. Or pick up from customers, bring it back here. Most of the time, you’ll have another person in the van with you to help with the lifting. Be polite and courteous to the customers. Don’t turn down any furniture; what we can’t sell, we recycle or ship out to Africa. That’s about all you need to know up front; you’ll learn the details on the job.’

  ‘I’m strong enough. I have an HGV licence. I can start anytime, I’m . . .’ The word unemployed smacks of desperation. ‘Available.’

  ‘Excellent.’ He nods and turns the gas flames on me again. I wouldn’t like to be interrogated by this guy. He picks up a pen. ‘What’s your name, son?’

  ‘McNicol. Sean.’

  ‘Sean . . .’ he repeats, jotting this down, then scanning toward the meatier sections of the form. ‘Can I ask about your past work experience?’

  This should be the easiest question in the world to answer. I’ve only ever had one job in my life. But it panics me. Most of my skills are non-transferable, no matter how you package them.

  ‘Royal Marines. Since I left school.’

  He gives away nothing. ‘Did you have a specialism, Sean?’

  ‘Ehm . . . reconnaissance, latterly. I passed the Mountain Leader course in 2008.’

  He writes this down and if it impresses him, worries him or means nothing to him, it doesn’t show on his face. ‘How long have you been out?’

  ‘Pardon?’

  He looks up at me. ‘When did you come out?’

  ‘About a year ago.’

  He smiles and cocks his head slightly to the left, and somehow I think he already knows the answer to the question he is about to ask me. ‘Can I ask why you left?’

  ‘Medical discharge.’

  Mitch starts muttering, and I clear my throat to shut him up. ‘I . . . ehm . . . was injured in Helmand, but . . . I’m fit enough. Physically. I can lift. I can still run forever. I’m just a bit deaf in my left ear. It’s not a problem most of the time.’

  Go on, Nic, tell him about me, I dare you. Tell him about the voices.

  I press my lips together.

  ‘It’s a little awkward to ask about this, but is there anything else that might affect your ability to work? Mental health, wise? Please don’t worry that this would stop us considering you, but we do need to know so we can make sure we support you.’

  Oh no, not at all, he’s perfect apart from the fact that he’ll hit the deck if someone drops a pencil. That, and the dead guy he talks to.

  My jaw is so tight I can feel the muscles pulsing in my cheek. Then I sigh. The only reason he’s asked is that he can see it on my face, so there’s no point lying.

  ‘I was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress, whatever that’s supposed to mean. Sometimes I . . . get a bit . . . nervous, but I can work. I don’t need support, I need a job.’

  Whoa . . . whoa . . . whoa! Crash fucking bang boom, you’re losing it mate. You’re blowing cover boy, and you call yourself a bootneck.

  ‘My old C.O. will give me a reference. The thing is I haven’t even been asked for an interview before now.’

  Shut the fuck up now, Nic. My jaw snaps shut. The general purpose machine gun in my chest rattles away at my own private Taliban.

  ‘Work’s pretty thin on the ground these days,’ Harry says quietly.

  I nod, biting my lower lip so hard I can taste blood.

  ‘How would you feel about a two week trial? See how we get on? I can’t lie and say this job will make you rich, but we believe in paying a living wage so . . . at least it’s better than the dole.’

  He hands over a note of the terms and conditions, and I scan this quickly. Pay: tolerable for an antisocial bugger who lives with his sister and never goes out, but barely. Pension: you’d need a microscope to see it. Benefits: you’re having a laugh.

  ‘You’re serious? You’ll have me?’ I resist the urge to fall crying around his ankles.

  The creases at the corners of his eyes deepen. ‘That’s not an easy thing you just told me. A lot of people undervalue honesty, but to me it’s all important, especially in a charity. You find yourself having a hard time, just let me know and we’ll deal with it.’

  ‘Aye . . . ehm . . . okay. When do you want me to start?’

  He leans back in his chair and laces his fingers behind his head. ‘What are you doing this afternoon?’

  II

  When the dreams come I don’t even bother trying to sleep. Sometimes in the wee hours I go for a run up the Rosewell Road and onto the old railway line that leads through Roslin Glen. Places are different at night. You see things you’ll never see during the day. Every once in a while, you see people who make beds among the trees and stare at you with wild animal eyes as you go past. They’re not like the Saddos in town during the day. These are more like feral people, who have forgotten how to live in the world of rules and manners and expectations, survivors of an apocalypse that slid by unnoticed by the rest of us. The only traces you’ll see of them during the day are the remains of their bivouacs: bits of tarpaulin, a few charred fire rings, discarded bottles and torn, rusted cans.

  I don’t twitch when I run and I’m light on my feet. Running is the only way I can get away from Mitch; I
guess it’s pretty hard to keep up when you’ve had your legs blown off.

  It starts to rain and the icy needles prick my face, but I don’t turn back. The track begins its long descent into the glen, down through the ancient woods toward the river. Because of the strange muffling effect of my deaf ear, I feel like I’m in a long tunnel which is funnelling me down and down into some dark place. Off to my right, across the river, is the site of the Battle of Rosslyn, where the mud turned red with the blood of 25,000 men. This same mud now sucks at my feet like the hands of the dead, but I keep running, leaving the railway line and heading down the brae, over the river, past the ruined gunpowder mills and back up onto the road that climbs out of the glen.

  Janet is having breakfast by the time I get home, soaking wet and mud-splattered. She looks up from her tea, sweeps a lock of limp, greying hair away from her face and gives me a look: pity mixed with irritation. She’s never had any kids, but she’s ten years older than me and in her time she’s been more of a parent to me than our mother ever was. When the Corps finally accepted that the growing catalogue of electrical faults in my brain amounted to a critical overload, Janet appeared and said, ‘There’s a bed made for you, Sean.’

  My sister lives in the same house in the huddled ex-mining town where I spent my first eighteen years. It’s the gable end of a grey, rough-cast terrace, literally the last street in town, overlooking a windswept field which slopes up toward a stand of elderly and wind-bent Scots pines. Their silhouettes above a blanket of ripening wheat used to remind me of the trees on the African high veldt. Sometimes I used to run along the narrow footpath toward them on summer evenings and pretend I was on the trail of a lion or an elephant.

  Many of the fields I used to run through have since been buried under pavement and houses, trimmed and lifeless patches of lawn and monoblocking: dull-as-muck suburbs for dull-as-muck people. But my little patch of Africa hasn’t been built on yet, and it’s one of the few things that pleases me around here. I look over it to the woods beyond and maintain the possibility of escape, just like I used to.