Andrew Hawks

by John Booth

  Before I could say anything to her, June Green’s cultured voice rang out somewhat imperiously.

  “Come on in, Andrew, and don’t dawdle.”

  I shrugged at Kylie and headed into the office like a good little puppy.

  Ms. Green is the reason I’m writing this journal, or rather the excuse, because once I started doing it, I decided it was kind of cool. So though she’s the cause, she is no longer the reason. I’m writing this journal because I want to.

  June Green is twenty-five years old and I suspect she’s as much of a virgin as I am. God alone knows how she ended up as the college counselor, because she has no idea how this place works, let alone the real world. She’s a decidedly sexless person. She wears unisex clothing that hides her figure completely, assuming she has a figure, that is, and she has a haircut like a choir boy’s. She wears baggy green jeans and big wool pullovers most of the time and if she has ever looked me straight in the eye, I’m unaware of it. I suspect the Job Centre got her this career after she graduated just so they wouldn’t have to put up with her turning up there every week.

  She sat down, opening and studying a thick folder with my name on it. I thought about staying standing to see what she’d do, but decided that annoying her wasn’t worth the effort. Instead I sat down and stared straight at her. Her eyes flickered in my direction before retreating down to her notes.

  “I’m very worried about you and Kylie living so close together. She has enough problems without someone with your…” she paused for a second, obviously looking for the right level of insult, “…tendencies to violence.”

  This lie was just too much to put up with and I opened my mouth without thinking.

  “I have no tendencies to violence. I react defensively when assaulted.” I probably said this more loudly than I intended because she flinched as if I’d attacked her physically.

  “You nearly put one of those poor boys in hospital. I understood you cracked his cheekbone. It’s amazing he’s not reported you to the police.”

  I couldn’t stop myself and burst out laughing, which didn’t help the situation at all. Ms. Green stacked the papers on her desk and banged them violently against the surface to straighten them out. My laughter slowly dropped to little more than a titter. But this couldn’t go on. I would have to tell her more than I was supposed to.

  “Ms. Green, do you talk to Mr. Harris at all?” It was a genuine question as communication in the college had obviously broken down.

  “Of course I do.”

  “Mr. Harris spent half an hour after the unprovoked….,” I stressed the work unprovoked, “…attack on me by three boys, one of whom was carrying a knife. He spent that time persuading me not to go to the police, because of the bad publicity it would bring on the college.”

  Ms. Green rolled her eyes as if I was clearly an idiot.

  “Mr. Harris told me quite clearly that there wasn’t a knife.”

  “Harris has that knife in his safe with Brian Shipley’s fingerprints all over it. Giving it to the police would send Brian back to prison for four years. Don’t you know he’s currently on parole for another knife fight? Harris’s assured me those three will cause me no further trouble.”

  “Are you suggesting Mr. Harris is blackmailing these boys?” She appeared outraged, but I could tell from her tone she was finally beginning to get the picture.

  “Mister Harris would never do such a thing. He’s preventing the police forming a detrimental opinion of the college, while holding Shipley’s knife as surety for the future good behavior of the people involved.” I was proud of that sentence, but I have to admit I stole it virtually word for word from what Harris had told me.

  Ms. Green sagged back into her chair. I mentally took back my earlier thoughts. She obviously did know something about how the College really operated.

  “So why did he send you to me for counseling?” she finally asked.

  “To protect me from any comeback from the other kids. It makes it look like I got punished along with the others.” ‘They may have a point,’ I thought, but didn’t say it out loud.

  “But couldn’t you have restrained them? You’re obviously stronger than them. Brian will have to wear a cast for weeks.”

  “They are stronger and better fighters than me, Ms. Green. I never fight if I have a choice. Somewhere in my family’s history we must have berserker blood, probably inherited from Viking ancestors. When I must, I fight all out, without any thought except to survive. I got lucky because they weren’t expecting me to react like that.”

  “You must have done something to provoke them?”

  “I exist, that’s enough.” I didn’t mention Brian was shagging Sheila Armitage and she had probably promised him an extra good time if he hurt me. I didn’t think Sheila wanted me dead, but the knife only came out when I laid out the other two and was most likely a defensive move on Brian’s part.

  At the time, there had been a red cloud over my vision, and when he pulled out the knife, I kicked his wrist so hard I nearly broke it. That was before I clasped my hands together and used them to smash him in the face. Then I came out of the haze and found I was the last man standing.

  “Ms. Brown has some… family problems and you must control your temper around her. She has enough to contend with.” Green said. “You may go now.”

  I wandered out of the office while she continued to play with the papers on her desk. That Harris had set up our sessions just as cover must rankle her, but there was no way to tell from her behavior.

  Outside the office I found Kylie waiting for me. She took me by the arm in a brazenly friendly manner by Green’s open office door whispering, “Smile, I want that cow to see I’ve totally ignored her advice,” before dragging me down the corridor.

  “Is it true…,” Kylie asked as we strolled back to our lesson, “that you’re the most violent and dangerous boy in the whole college? Because I’ve seen what you put up with in class and that story doesn’t add up.”

  “I got lucky and won a fight some other boys started. Green got the wrong idea.”

  “I thought so,” said Kylie with delight in her voice, “I didn’t think you could have grown a set and then lost them in such a short space of time.”

  “Is it fun to insult me?” I asked, smiling at her.

  “It’ll do until something better comes along.”

  The mathematics lesson sped by as they often do with me. I lost myself in the wonder of all that logic stacked up in a neat set of symbols. I guess that might sound a bit weird, but it’s who I am.

  Kylie and I walked out of the college to catch the bus back to the village. She made it clear without saying a word to the usual suspects that she was going to be sitting with me. We sat one row back from the single seat so we could sit together.

  Nobody took the seat in front of us so the view was the same. I noticed Kylie gripping tight to her chair as the bus swung around the hairpins after we crossed over the North Ridge and headed downhill.

  “Is this much different from London Transport?”

  “You don’t need roller-coasters up here, do you? A bus ride will do.”

  “We haven’t lost a bus in over a year,” I said teasing her and then relented as she went pale, “Actually, I don’t think we’ve ever lost one. It’s as safe as houses, honest.”

  “I didn’t look out of the window when we went this morning because Sally and the other were nattering to me. I think that’s a better way to do the trip.”

  “You’ll get used to it. By next week you probably won’t even notice.”

  When we got off at the pub, Kylie staggered a little on the road, “I see why the Pope used to kiss the ground when he got off airplanes.” Kylie reached for the stone wall of the pub and hugged it. “Safe at last.”

  As we set off through the village, Kylie asked me if there were any interesting things to see, so I diverted our route to pass by the Post Office to show her the Old Man of Fell.

  “According to le
gend, which in this case is the stories of a certain Mr. Kelly, who I’m sure you’ll meet soon enough, ‘The Old Man of Fell’ is an ancient monument the village has kept secret from outsiders going back to the dawn of time.”

  “In 1940 or thereabouts, when it looked like Mr. Hitler was going to win world war two, this monument was taken from its original place in the hills and inserted into the wall of the post office, which was being rebuilt at the time.”

  “The villagers felt that if they hid it in plain sight, nobody would pay any attention to it. They told visitors it was carved in 1940 by a stonemason as a grave marker and it ended up in the wall because the man who ordered it couldn’t pay for it.”

  “So which was it, ancient monument or a 1940’s grave stone?” Kylie asked.

  I shrugged.

  “Haven’t a clue, half the village believes one story, the other half the other. But everybody believes it’s lucky if you put your hands in the cups.”

  “The cups?”

  “You’ll see.”

  The Post office is at the western end of the village, with the Fell dancing over stones just yards from its front door. The stream runs behind a tubular steel fence about four feet high. The fence is there to stop idiots falling into the stream. The bed of the Fell is about three foot below street level, and, in spring it often floods the post office. We are used to that sort of things happening and take such events in our stride.

  The Old Man of Fell is a man-sized slab of stone carved like the shadow a man might cast against a wall if the sun was low in the sky. It’s crudely carved and has been cemented into the post office wall. It might be much larger than it looks, as it continues below street level, so you can’t tell. It looks a bit like a granite ‘jelly baby’ and is devoid of detail.

  The only distinguishing marks on the figure are two shallow indentations, which if it was lying on its side, might look like the inside of a tea cup. The indentations are a little higher than the hands of a person might be, so if you approach it with your hands out in fists, bent at the elbow, that’s more or less where the indentations are. It’s supposed to be good luck to put your fists into the cups. Some people say that if you make a wish at the same time, it will come true.

  Having explained this to Kylie, she had to have a go. The novelty wore off for me years ago. I hadn’t believed in it since the day the two Dave’s left, despite me rubbing my knuckles’ into the cups until they bled. It’s a load of old rubbish.

  As Kylie put her fists into the cups, a dark cloud obscured the sun and the wind picked up. From being a warm day, it suddenly became a cold evening. That sometimes happens, and I thought I was used to it, having lived here all my life, but I found myself shivering in the gloom.

  Kylie turned towards me, screamed, and pointed at my feet. I looked down and saw a wave of snakes slivering past me in her direction. They looked like adders, England’s only poisonous snake, though I’ve only seen one a couple of times before in my life. Now there was a carpet of them moving around my feet. I carefully stepped towards Kylie and we looked for somewhere to run. By this time, thousands of snakes were slithering down the street towards us.

  “Over the barrier and into the Fell,” I shouted and we clambered over the railings and dropped into the stream. The water rushed over and soaked our feet, but only came up to our ankles; the problem was that the stones beneath were coated with slippery green slime. We held tight onto each other to avoid falling over.

  The snakes swarmed over the Old Man of Fell. They slid up the wall defying gravity and formed a living blanket covering the ancient stone.

  I must have imagined it, because it seemed to me that those snakes took on the outline of a man.

  Kylie’s grasp on me got tighter as the snakes moved so it looked as though the man raised one of his arms and pointed at us.

  The post office door opened and Mr. Kelly walked out. As he left building, the snakes dropped from the wall before heading down the street and out into the fields beyond.

  Mr. Kelly walked over to the railing and leaned on it as he looked out on the two of us standing like idiots in the middle of the Fell.

  “I suppose you two lovers were scared of a few snakes, were you? Adders bunch like that sometimes at this time of year. People rarely get to see it.”

  “We are not lovers, Mr. Kelly,” I protested, though we couldn’t let go of each other for fear of falling over.”

  “Happen,” he said, “But you’ll both catch your death of cold if you don’t get out of there and back onto dry land.”

  7. Signs and Portents

  It’s been nearly a week since I wrote in this journal. It’s late Friday night and I need to write down everything that’s happened over the last few days before I forget the details.

  Homework has prevented me writing though a lot has been happening in the village, although not to me. After the incident with the snakes, Kylie and our so called romance became the talk of the village. Mr. Kelly knows how to spread a story and some of the old women he talks to are even better at embellishment than he is.

  Everyone who saw me on my own would ask where Kylie was and tell me I should be gentle with her. They do like to take the piss, do my fellow villagers. When we were seen together they would ask, “How are the two young lovers?” and, “Be sure to take precautions,” and so on. However, as it was all said in a spirit of fun and with smiles on their faces it was difficult to do anything but grin and bear it.

  The village was abuzz with more important issues anyway. So they were just as likely to ask us if we’d seen anything and ask if we’d heard if anything else had happened.

  It started on Monday night after the snakes surged through the village. Someone lit a fire on Beacon Point which is above the Long Barrow at the top of the hill. The fire engine couldn’t get within half a mile of it because there are no roads up there and in the end they just kept a watch on it as it burnt itself out. The next day, Ed Barry found four of his sheep in a state of exhaustion and two of them died by nightfall.

  Everybody thought it must be the work of the usual suspects, who tend to be out at night, but naturally, they denied it. The following night someone used whitewash to paint strange slash marks alongside the Old Man of the Fell. The entire population was up in arms about that as graffiti is something we’ve tried very hard to keep out of the village. Words were spoken with the parents of the usual suspects and later that night I understand at least four of the eight were punished. Given their typical behavior they were sure to deserve it for something even if it wasn’t the thing they were being punished for, so I had little sympathy for them.

  On Thursday morning, the usual suspects were subdued when they got on the school bus and I couldn’t help but grin as I saw Sally Heatley sit down extremely gingerly.

  “What’s that about?” Kylie asked in a whisper. We were sitting together at the front of the bus as we had done every day this week.

  “Guess who got a spanking?” I whispered back.

  Kylie looked shocked. But the village is an old fashioned place and traditions die hard, regardless of what the liberals in parliament try to make us do.

  “The usual suspects have been causing trouble all week,” I explained

  “How do you know it’s them?”

  I shrugged. “It always is. It has been since the day they were first allowed out on their own.”

  The bus lurched forward and Kylie giggled. She had got over her fear that we were about to plunge to our deaths and was eager for me to tell her about every feature of the landscape that had escaped my description so far.

  This part of England has an ancient heritage. The hilltops were occupied in the Stone Age and those people raised monuments to their gods. Most of the signs are invisible to the casual onlooker, but if you know about these things, the landscape hums with past times and bloody deeds. It was a hobby of mine and Mr. Kelly was an expert on local history, so he was always telling me new things.

  “Why build a fort on the t
op of the hills? It’s so exposed up there?” Kylie stared at rubble that in no way looked like a defensive wall. Mr. Kelly reckoned the only way to see it for what it was was in a helicopter or a hot air balloon.

  “The land was mostly forest back then and it was warmer than today. Tribes raided each other, so they put their animals and houses behind walls for protection.”

  “I’m glad we live down in the village,” Kylie put a hand on mine and I smiled. It made me think how much my school life has changed since she’s been here.

  For example there was the matter of Shelia. While Sheila knew that while she could shout obscenities at me without me doing anything about it, Kylie took such things far more seriously. I believe there had been an altercation in the girl’s toilets on Tuesday morning.

  All I know for sure is Sheila came out of the toilets with soaking wet hair and hasn’t bothered me since. I heard a snatch of conversation between two of the girls in the class later that day that went ‘…stuck her head down the bog and flushed it…’, but when I asked Kylie, she said she had no idea what they were talking about. She can do innocent really well.

  Sheila’s accomplices have gone to ground as well. I’m actually beginning to like school for the first time since the two Daves’ left. Kylie and I share an interest in mathematics which makes her the first person ever that hasn’t considered me weird, and we enjoy each other’s music. Swapping tracks and talking about them is glorious.

  It was while doing my paper round on Friday morning that I discovered things in the village had taken a severe turn for the worse. The usual suspects were grounded, but the incidents hadn’t stopped. Mrs. Vernon, whose son is a laborer at Padgett’s farm, opened her door before I could stuff her paper through the letterbox.

  “They ought to put those kids in the stocks,” she told me in conspiratorial tone. “In my day none of them would be able to sit down for a week.”

  “What’s happened now?” I may have sounded exasperated.

  Mrs. Vernon leaned closer. She’s in her sixties so it wasn’t a turn on in the least. In fact, quite the opposite, as she was in a nightie and it was practically see-through. There ought to be a law.