They stopped some distance away and squatted in the shadows. The air stank of animal piss and wet metal. Wild struggled with the sodden boxes and turned to face him. What should we do?
I thought you had a plan?
Well, we can’t just go up and buy a ticket.
The old guy was right.
Could we . . . jump on one?
On a train?
Yes.
Like bums?
Wild laughed. Yes. Like hobos. Then he looked around, placed his boxes on the wet ground and stood up. Wait here.
Lee panicked. What? Where are you going?
It’s easier if I go alone first.
Lee paused and swallowed. That taste again. Will you come back? How do I know you’ll come back? He sounded pathetic. He knew he sounded pathetic.
Wild put a hand on his shoulder and indicated the boxes on the ground. I’ll be back in ten minutes. Don’t worry. Wait here.
Only partly reassured, Lee watched Wild bob through the darkness with his coat flapping about his knees. He gripped his own new coat more tightly around himself and slumped with his chin on his knees. He wondered how he could possibly describe these past few days. What would he say to someone, to Claire? What could he say when he saw her? He imagined her rebuking him even as she pulled him to her, the way she would shake her head and wind a strand of hair behind one ear. Supposing he made it to her house at all. He didn’t seem to be getting any closer. Would it be raining there, at the foot of the mountain range? Would the creek be full and plopping with bullfrogs? Would they be thinking of him, or would he already have been dismissed as screwing up again? He thought about lying down here and falling asleep, or dying, or whatever. Just to pass into some other place would be enough. Any other place.
A rat scrambled over some nearby stones. The creature paused and gave him a cool, appraising look before scurrying away, as if committing his whereabouts to memory, as if to say I’ll be back for you later when this rain has stopped. This place of silent trains and silvery clouds, with its line of narrow trees. This jagged place, was this as far as he would come?
A whistle sounded and a train trundled past. From his vantage point by the fence, he could see passengers settling in for their journey, standing on tiptoes to stuff coats and bags into overhead racks. They grinned with expectation and shook out their umbrellas. The train looked warm and cosy. A round-faced boy gazed out a window like a patient moon, but if he happened to see Lee in the drizzling darkness, he gave no indication. Just some lucky boy being borne away.
Then Wild was back, breathing heavily. Give me three hundred dollars.
Lee was startled. What?
I need money to get us on a train. Hurry. It leaves in a few minutes.
Three hundred bucks?
Well, I’m not buying a ticket. I’m buying us a favour. Come on, Lee.
But I need it—
Give me the money. The sooner we get away from here, the better.
Lee watched the train sway away into the night, then stood and allowed Wild to rummage through the suitcase in search of suitable bills.
Then Wild grabbed his upper arm and picked up his boxes. Come on.
They stumbled across the damp tracks as silently as possible, keeping low until Wild broke ahead and approached a tall, uniformed man standing beside a freight carriage. They spoke in hushed tones and then the man slid open a carriage door and sauntered away counting his money.
Wild waved Lee over, tossed the boxes in, scrambled aboard and leaned down to help him.
Lee looked around. I don’t know about this. This doesn’t feel right.
For God’s sake. We’re on the run. Of course it doesn’t feel right.
Lee stared up at Wild’s grizzled face above him. The old guy seemed to be enjoying this. The floor of the train carriage was as high as Lee’s chest. There was no toehold and he knew it would be excruciating getting himself on board. It was cold and he was afraid and his fear was of a new and unfamiliar sort. He looked around one final time before throwing his suitcase into the carriage and stretching out a hand for Wild to hoist him aboard. As Wild did so, a pain monstered through him. He feared he might actually break in two. He cried out. Shapes eddied in front of his eyes, pain made visible.
When he was inside at last, Lee rested on the floor on elbows and knees. He moaned and waited, holding his breath. He lost all sense of himself in the physical world, so absorbed was he by the immediacy of the pain through his body. The pain was bottomless, surely too vast to be accommodated in a body as slight as his? His stomach was sticky with blood.
Only after several minutes was he able to move at all and then only gently, afraid of each new jolt on his body. He gathered the pieces of himself and sat with his back against one of the hard carriage walls. There was a graveyard smell of earth and splintered wood.
Finally, he was able to speak. You think we’ll be OK? You think the cops will find us?
Wild shook his head and made a face. He looked scared. They waited for the train to move. Fifteen, twenty minutes passed. The carriage floor was coated with a thin paste of mud. It was cold and their breath fogged in front of their faces. When it seemed as if nobody was coming to arrest them, Lee jammed a cigarette between his lips, lit up and watched the smoke snake upwards and disperse. A cigarette. Pure fucking bliss. He smoked in silence.
Lee was aware of movement from the opposite side of the carriage.
Wild sniffed and scratched at himself. Were you really going to kill that girl back there? On the road?
Lee took a lengthy drag of his cigarette and shrugged, a tiny gesture of the mouth as much as the shoulders. Water beaded on a lick of hair plastered to his forehead by rain or sweat. The bead swelled and broke free to find its way along the ridge of his angular nose and the curl of his mouth. He thought of the girl by the road with her face upturned like some pale flower and wondered how old she was. It already seemed a very long time ago. Was it yesterday? This morning?
He looked at Wild and shook his head. No. I’m not cut out for that kind of thing. Those people are animals.
Those people?
You know, Lee said, and he waved his hand to indicate some point in the distant past. Josef and them.
Wild said nothing. Lee could just make out the flicker of his eyes in the gloom, the soft shine of his rain-damp cheeks. He could smell potatoes stacked in crates beside his head and the earth from where they’d been plucked. It was a smell laden with possibility. He wanted to reach out and pick one up, just to feel its body in his hand and thumb the scabs of dirt from its surface. It would yield a small, tactile satisfaction. He could almost imagine eating one raw, just like that, with the dirt and everything. Experimentally he reached out and slid some fingers between the slats of the nearest crate, feeling like a blind man, by touch and smell.
He resettled himself to relieve the pressure on his ribs. Again he felt the warmth of his own blood beneath his shirt and pulled his jacket tight. Foolishly, he regretted the ruin of his new suit. He attempted to lie back to ease the pain but it seemed to be gaining momentum as if, having suckled on his body, the bullet within him had swollen and was taking up increasing amounts of space. Breathing was difficult. He placed a hand against the curve of his ribs and spat thickly onto the floor beside him. A strand of saliva looped from his lip and caught on his coat. He didn’t bother to wipe it away, but instead waited for it to collapse under its own weight. It was a pathetic derro’s act, something you’d scorn from the safety of a passing bus.
He had a sudden idea and pointed to the boxes beside Wild. Give me some morphine.
Wild jolted upright and reached out a hand protectively to the white boxes of paraphernalia arranged on the floor. Here? On the train?
Yes.
I’m not sure—
Just a bit, for God’s sake. If it wasn’t for me, you would have been pinched by now, back at the chemist.
Oh yes, and you’d be living it up in Monte Carlo, I suppose?
Come on, Wild. I’ve been fucking shot. I’m in actual pain here.
Aren’t we all?
You won’t miss it. How many you get in that bust?
It was difficult to see clearly through the gloom, but Wild sat up and flattened himself against the opposite wall as if attempting to engrain himself further into the darkness. It’s not that, he said in a small voice.
Lee waited in silence—in pain—until Wild finally pushed a box across the floor with his shoe. Then the other box.
Syringes. There you go. Help yourself.
Lee peered through the silvery dark into one of the boxes. A stash of glass ampoules, packed like treasure. He picked one out and held it in front of his face. The ampoule was smooth, with tiny hieroglyphs embossed along its surface. It resembled a weightless, transparent bullet. The liquid moved sluggishly when he shook it. Then he tossed it back into the box with the others. I don’t know what to do with this, he hissed. You’re the fucking doctor.
Wild appeared to have fallen asleep. His head was thrown back and his hands rested limply across bent knees. His closed eyelids shone in the wedge of thin light coming through the barely open carriage door.
He reached forward and swiped at Wild’s shoe. Come on. I don’t know this stuff. This isn’t my scene. I can hardly lift my fucking arm. And he sat back on his haunches. Emotion trembled in his throat. He could feel the curiously satisfying granular crunch of mud pressing into his knees through the material of his suit.
I’m not sure, Wild said, awake again.
Come on. This pain is killing me.
Wild closed his eyes once more. Then he grunted in assent and plucked a morphine vial from one of his boxes. Lee watched him crack it open, unwrap a syringe, draw in the morphine and flick a thumbnail against the plastic chamber.
OK. Take off your jacket.
Lee did as he was told. His entire body felt tender, like newly turned earth. Do you really know where we’re going? Lee asked, partly to distract himself. Or are we just going off to God-knows-where?
Wild jammed the syringe lengthwise between his front teeth, like a buccaneer with his cutlass. He grabbed Lee’s wrist with a clammy hand, pushed up his shirtsleeve and angled his arm in the meagre light. He turned Lee’s arm this way and that. Wild was breathing laboriously, as if struggling with even these minor actions. Lee felt Wild’s thumb stroke the inside of his elbow, luring a vein to the surface.
Don’t worry, Wild mumbled. God doesn’t have a clue where we’re going.
Lee resisted the urge to withdraw his arm. He’d seen men in jail shoot each other up with sloe-eyed concentration and the brutal ritual—part medical, part sexual—always made him feel slightly queasy. But we’ll get there, won’t we? he asked. I mean, you know, we’ll be alright? I’ll be alright? I really have to call my sister. I was meant to be there today, or yesterday. I got to get away from here before Josef tracks me down. He’ll fucking kill me.
Wild removed the syringe from between his teeth. He looked exhausted. Sure we will. We’ll get you fixed up.
This guy will help me?
Yes. He’ll help.
You sure?
I’m sure. He’s a very decent man. Not at all like me.
What’s his name? You never said his name.
Wild sighed. He’s an old teacher of mine. Sherman. Had very high hopes for me in days gone by. We were great friends. When he moved to the country, about ten years ago, he and my wife Jane would collude and pack me off to his place to get me off dope. I spent a lot of time in that old house shivering. Wild held up a thumb. See that? Nearly sliced my finger clean off trying to break into his drug cabinet. I’d sneak off from the house in the middle of the night and break into chemists. Never worked, of course, or only for the weeks I was there. Just got stoned as soon as I got back to the city. And Wild shook his head. But I haven’t seen him for a few years. He rubbed his nose and applied himself again to Lee’s arm. Now just so you know, this might make you throw up.
Lee looked away. The light seemed suddenly too thin. Can you see what you’re doing?
Don’t worry. You do this long enough and you can smell where the blood is running. Like trout. It’s a sort of divining.
Lee held his breath. These words hardly reassured him. Finally the intimate invasion of the needle puncturing skin and his body grew warm as the dull, narcotic glow seeped through him, limb by limb. The world receded, or he from the world. Indeed his entire body seemed to be borne away, as if out to sea. He was dimly aware, however, of Wild watching him for a minute before preparing another injection and turning away.
Lee resettled himself against the carriage wall and thought with distaste of the bullet snuggling against his ribs. He had seen pictures of bullets taken from bodies, the manner in which they change shape and crumple but always remain a bullet. He wondered how they were made. Was there a head-scarfed immigrant woman on a production line somewhere, scanning them through a machine to check for inconsistencies? Lee didn’t know anything about ballistics other than vague terms: bullet, powder, primer, flash. Was there someone, somewhere, who squeezed the finished products thoughtfully between gloved fingers and held them to the light? Did they ever wonder, these people, in whose body these things ended up? A bullet was an object with a single purpose, would never have another.
Wild said something.
Lee heard the words from deep within the meat of his body. What? he asked after locating his tongue.
But you’ve done it, haven’t you? Wild asked.
Lee wondered if they had been having a conversation he was unaware of. His head was woolly. He felt mildly seasick and contemplated whether they were perhaps on a ferry of some sort and not a train at all. Perhaps they had left the train. Done what? he asked.
Wild ran his tongue over his crippled teeth. You know. Killed people.
Lee flinched. He shrugged and closed his eyes. He breathed in the earthy smell of dirt and dry wood. What sounded like an animal scuffled in the rocks beneath the carriage. Probably that rat, he thought. Come back for me. He swallowed. His saliva was like glue. I never killed anyone for this money here, if that’s what you’re worried about.
Wild made no comment, barely seemed to register his words.
But yeah, I’ve done it.
How many times?
The pain of Lee’s wound had dimmed, thanks to the morphine. He was able to move about more freely and cleared a space on the floor to lie on his uninjured side. He was warm, almost relaxed. Nearby was Wild’s leisurely breath. Once. I killed a man once. That’s all.
Killed deliberately?
Lee paused. What are you getting at?
I’m not getting at anything. Why did you do it?
Why?
It’s OK. Forget it. And Wild wiped a sleeve across his nose.
Lee wasn’t sure he liked this conversation but felt he couldn’t leave it dangling. Self-defence. In prison it’s always self-defence.
You were in jail? You killed someone in jail?
Yeah, I was in jail.
For what?
He remembered the last time he’d been asked this question. Nothing serious, he said at last. Burglaries, stealing cars. Kids’ stuff, you know. Petty crime. Judge called me a petty criminal when I got pinched.
Wild sat forward. What’s it like?
What?
Prison.
What’s prison like?
Wild cocked his head. Yes.
You ask a lot of questions.
Well, I’m a curious person.
You don’t want to know.
Yes I do. Were you afraid?
Lee closed his eyes, or rather he allowed them to succumb to gravity. All the time, he said.
Nobody had really asked him much about prison. It was space within him devoid of geography. From his childhood he remembered mock-ancient maps in books about whales and sailing adventures. Scorch marks and tea-stained corners, always a portion of the earth as yet unmapped. There be monsters. He moved his
palm across the floor in a circular motion. He was resting on his right side, using his right forearm as a cushion. There was an unfamiliar scent to the suit, the warm olfactory ghost of another man’s cologne. He wondered briefly if it wasn’t, in fact, another man’s arm he was resting on, that of the man they had left in the grass beside the road. How long until these clothes began to adopt his smell, until he began to inhabit this new self?
I didn’t expect to be doing this shit, he said. I was doing odd jobs, you know, collecting money and stuff. Just bullshit. Running around. It was sort of . . . accidental. I came out of jail a few months ago and met these people—mainly Josef, I guess—and they offered me work. I didn’t have anywhere else to go. He shrugged. His body was mountainous. Mute, dense, unfeeling.
So whose money is that? I take it it’s not yours.
Lee looked at the battered suitcase. The darkness made it easier to speak. It is now. But I took it from an old guy called Stella. That was a job. Grab this coin from this old guy who owed money, that’s all. Gambling debt or something. I was never going to take it back to them. Just fucking take it and get the hell out, but someone shot me. This blonde woman. A blonde woman shot me. I don’t know what happened. But now I’m getting out of here. Going home. I know it’s not a lot of money but . . . I don’t need so much. Those people are, you know, animals. He sighed, embarrassed. I’m not cut out for it. I’m lucky to be alive.
Yes, you are.
The carriage jolted forward. Like a cripple, it stopped, lurched, stopped and finally moved again, each movement accompanied by a metallic groan. The train’s whistle sounded across the oceanic dark. At last. They were moving at last. They were getting away. Lee saw the flash of Wild’s grin and felt one of his own spread across his face.
The train gained speed and settled into its clattering rhythm. Lee had a sense of solitary farmhouses out there in the night, of swaying trees and the tinfoil eyes of small animals observing their passing. A cold wind fluttered through cracks in the floor.
The Low Road Page 10
