The Folded Man

by Matt Hill

Noah dips under the steering column, pops the bonnet after struggling with the release catch.

  Bloody thing, he says, the bonnet wobbling. To Brian: Stay put and wrap up while I sort it.

  Brian nods, still catching breath.

  Now, Noah’s round the back with the boot up, rummaging in his tools. A wet wind cuts through the car.

  Brian takes this chance to fish out a baggie. He dips his front-door key in the sniff and back to his nose.

  The boys are in their lay-by. Their lay-by on the hill.

  Noah, he’s clicking the light on and off, concentrating. The new bulb works, but only just. A piss-weak yellow beam catching reflective signs ahead.

  You’re not still sulking, he says to Brian.

  Eh?

  Not sulking, are you?

  No, says Brian, eyes rolling. But a man was shot. All that –

  Noah tosses Brian his notepad. You’ve seen worse, I promise. Bigger fish, anyway. Just shut up for five and have a gander in there.

  What for?

  A library of bullshit is what.

  Brian looks. The reluctant kind of looking. He leafs absently through these sketches that Noah made in the auditorium. Noah’s sketches with crosses through. Question marks next to circles.

  Them prats yapping on up there, giving it all that, says Noah. Mostly plant hire companies aren’t they? These are old JCB parts, never you mind precision engineered – there’s nowt in any of it. Any of it! Chatting shit, them lying bastards were. Sheep-shagging bastards. You could crap out half what they’re saying they can build. Go on, look.

  I just think we need to get off, says Brian. Get home –

  Look at this one, Noah tells him, ignoring him, pulling Brian back a few pages. Make sense of that, you’ll get a biscuit.

  Brian guesses it’s meant to be a half-track from the sketch. Some sort of truck cab converted to manage bigger loads without a trailer. Bigger loads like field guns, maybe. Saves on diesel that way, or so say the notes.

  Noah breathes through his nose. He fingers the page.

  Half these joints couldn’t bear loads, he says. And this idea’s from a respected engineering firm, apparently. Doesn’t add up.

  No? says Brian.

  No, goes Noah. I mean maybe there is something else going on there. But that doesn’t matter to us: Garland’s going to lay eggs when he finds out half his competition don’t have a bloody clue what they’re on about.

  So why did we bother?

  Same reasons anybody bothers with anything. The cash and the fanny.

  But you didn’t hear him, Brian says. It’s like he’s planning a coup.

  Pulling out with one light. You look left and you look right. Careful though: with one light down when it’s this dark, you’ll look like a motorbike from a distance.

  Half a fag goes out the window. Movement. Brakes –

  Stop. From the right, two speeding cars shear an edge off the nearest corner. They kiss the apex and shift down for the hill in front, the second so close it’s a shadow of the first. Spray goes everywhere. Black cars, their tyres bobbling along the cats’ eyes.

  Behind them, another car, its lights out – erratic on the centre line – follows. This car’s arse-end waggles on the exit and accelerates hard. Doesn’t take much to work out it’s in pursuit.

  Noah looks at Brian. Out through the wet glass.

  Dickheads, he says, shaking his head. Get cracking, shall we?

  One light, Brian thinks.

  And as they climb another incline, rain turns to hail turns to snow. Liquid goes to solid in a hundred metres or less. Not surprising, not this high, not in these hills, but you feel it. You’d say, Rough out.

  Brian watches the wipers at full pelt. Noah’s hard over the wheel, his length making him into a kind of tight curly-cuh.

  Hard hills, these, for an old man of a car. To get anywhere, and especially up the hills, you need the momentum first. It’s momentum they don’t have much of.

  Then at the top, eventually, a left, a right, and the lads – just as they’re yawning – see the red together.

  The red cuts through the sleet, turns it into a cloud. Orange on, orange off. Bright against the slate and the water – actually it’s bright red everywhere you look. The two of them are so tired and wired in this red light and smoke.

  Noah slows. Noah swallows. Nobody’s laughing now. There’s none of that shining wit now. The smell hits then, clutch smoke.

  There’s a smell and the sound of gears still engaged. Of unconscious feet jammed on accelerators.

  Closer, where it’s louder, where the rain seems wetter, they see a hole in the wall just by there. Dry stone walling punched clean through and blasted out. The car down there on its nose, tail lights up, hazards on. Bits all over; tempered glass winking from the gravel.

  Screaming, the vehicle is. Squealing – revving and revving and revving.

  Noah and Brian edge past. They crawl past. Rubberneckers them both – the smoke thick and given shape by the red light.

  Poor bastard, says Noah. Not a place to park is that.

  Shit, says Brian, noticing at last –

  A purple Transit. You can tell in spite of the night.

  So Noah just belts it. Drives on hard.

  No more of your paranoia trips, Brian, he says. No – shh – don’t say a frigging word.

  Brian doesn’t believe it. Brian is stunned.

  We can’t leave it like that, he says. That’s just happened. Them two cars – we can’t be leaving it.

  Noah’s car nudges forty. Forty-five.

  One thing for me, Brian pleads.

  Noah’s very quiet.

  Noah?

  Old buddy, old pal.

  Noah, you prick. I just had to make out like some bugger blew my leg off in Afghanistan. Had Yorkshire pricks poking guns in my face. Humiliated in a room without a view. Lost in all your big man shite, the one-up-man-ship and whatever the hell else. Saw some poor sod get shot, just so you had an easier ride. So you’ll turn round and go look in that wreck. Least you can bloody do. One thing for me.

  So Noah stands on the brake pedal; stops them on a penny. It makes the third time this evening.

  Noah grabs Brian by the cheeks and shakes his face.

  One more thing for you, he says, the spit stringing at the corner of his mouth. You’re a bloody drip you are, son. Stop bleating and remember that if you open cans you eat the worms.

  Brian does know. But that Transit, or a Transit just like it, has been everywhere. Waiting, parked, following him bloody everywhere.

  Please, Brian says.

  One thing for you, Noah says again.

  There, high up in the sleet and under the slate, Noah cranks reverse. He crunches it; bloody mashes the car into gear he’s that wound up. He sends the car backwards till the engine’s good to burst. He lets the car go a few metres more and throws it into a sloppy J-turn. Movie-style; a belly-in-mouth manoeuvre, a clever-clever sort of stunt.

  Round and straight and back towards the red air. The red air and the broken wall. The stalker van on its nose, rear doors tilted slightly towards Manchester.

  One headlight to light the way on the A628. Not a single other way back.

  On account of Brian’s tail, Noah gets out on his tod. On his tod and back into the wasteland. He throws a tatty blue cagoule over his jacket – never one for style, of course, but a big fan of function. He bounces down the embankment to the broken van. Noah all bandy and agile through the slop, the mud, the grass. Around the stones scattered wide by the impact. This strong man so used to climbing buildings. So used to leaping up walls and glass and metal to paint his pictures.

  The van’s dug in hard. Really dented – a write-off, if we’re honest. He bends down by the driver’s door to look. Bends down, looks in, and falls backwards.

  Brian waits in the car – patient, patient Brian. Patient Brian who can’t mount kerbs or staircases. Patient Brian who can’t stand firm. Patient Brian who waits endless
ly for cheques and sex and proper legs.

  Bang the horn if you need owt, Noah has told him. Just keep that bald bloody head of yours down – like a lighthouse, that is.

  The red light turns off, the red sky gone with it. Through the rain, Brian hears metal pull over metal; something like door handles and sliding fixtures. The traffic far away. The rain over glass. This dark and stormy night. Brian’s face streaming with watery shadows in the passenger seat.

  Our Brian with a wet finger in the bag of sniff – a naughty sherbet dip to blunt it all.

  Two, three, four, five minutes tick by on the analogue. He gets to feeling alone.

  Another five notches on the clock, and Noah crests the embankment, his head cowed against the weather. He rounds his wrecked car and opens the boot. Silent even there. It’s odd for him, this man of so many words.

  Noah bundles himself into the car, soaked through – and not just with rain. Noah’s sweating hard, coughing.

  He starts the car and rams the heaters to full whack.

  He stinks of vomit.

  What’s going on? says Brian.

  Nothing. Just let me think.

  The smell gets everywhere.

  What was it?

  Shut up!

  Noah pulls away, over-revving, stuck in first till Brian near as changes up himself.

  Brian gags.

  Tell me, Noah.

  So Noah does. Noah just says it flat –

  Head was off, wasn’t it. Wet bits all over the cab. Picture of some little girl stuck to the windscreen.

  The prickling skin, the goosebumps, the water in your eyes.

  Driving back fast. Hanging corners tight. The Beetham memorial column soon tearing the sky – Manchester on fire with lights in the basin below as they bear down on dead reservoirs and damned villages.

  Who was it?

  Your man. That Colin.

  And none of this will end well.

  8.

  Home again, where no hearts live.

  There were a thousand locks before his chair – before a bath, maybe a tug. Certainly a joint. Anything to get himself off to sleep.

  But first, before any kind of bath, he sits. Sits and sweats; back with the screens and their dead pixels. Back in his castle while the rain comes sideways. Getting on now as well, isn’t it. A long night it’s been, stretching itself longer now. Monday in the early hours. Let’s turn on the telly, see who or what’s been bombed, and where.

  He skins up a last joint. It’s to help him take stock and kill the last hour. Something mindless like that. Food if he can be bothered – dial L for Lamb – though he’s not really hungry owing to the dread. Maybe telly if he can find the remote. Maybe more of these soldiers at war if he can stomach it.

  Maybe nothing. Maybe a noose on the stairlift –

  It all drifts. Time slipping, him with it. Thoughts of the staring man, head in bits, wet bits and chunky bits. That shot – the auditorium as it erupts. The feeling you can’t go back and switch yourself off. The regret he didn’t say no. That he said anything at all.

  Thoughts then of Noah’s last commandment. Noah who smelled like sick in the car, and who warned Brian to stay in for the next morning.

  Be there, he’d said. We sort this then.

  What’s to sort?

  Sort this mess.

  What’s to sort?

  Straighten our stories.

  Noah!

  Brian swears again. Brian back with his monitors, gasping for a smoke. He flicks his monitors on and presses rewind. He kicks back. Traces an imaginary line between the corners of the ceiling. The feed from the day runs backwards on the left screen, the right screen pulling live pictures in but not recording.

  In the corner, on now, the telly blares about its dead soldiers and bad debt.

  Brian concentrates on the monitors as best he can. Divert the gaze and it’s easier to forget. A good time to concern yourself with things you might’ve missed.

  And on that screen the odd cars pass and people stutter along. Nothing untoward, in structure or in form. It’s easy to spot the odd moments, these days. Even with the recording going backwards, he can tell after so much practising; after all these years of staring and waiting. Because at this speed, six times standard playback, and even though it’s running backwards, it’s the lighting that talks. Because in 2018, in this time after postmen, your front gates rarely swing.

  The facts: if you see the lighting change, it’s your gates open. That’s when you pause. When nine times out of ten some smackhead comes up the path to buzz the doors and run their mouth. When you ask him to read the stickers and the warnings. When he turns and goes.

  But no, nothing.

  Just Colin. Colin. Colin. Colin. Like that.

  Colin, Colin – Colin. The dead stranger staring for always.

  Brian’s stomach tightens. He’s panicking and stoned. A real bad crowd, a right bad shower he’s met tonight. And you, Brian, looking at half a reflection in the monitor – you with this meat for legs with no sea in sight. This was you as well. Opportunities like getting off your wide, widening arse. Buttered you up, didn’t they – buttered you up and stuck a sharp one in you.

  Back home, here, panicking at the core of his world, safe behind the cameras and the deadbolts. And then, an idea:

  He has a way to survive this. A way through. The old way. The way he knows better than any other.

  He still has hair while there’s none on his head.

  Brian laughs. Brian gets the scissors out. He grabs a spare elastic band for tradition’s sake. A bit of spit to keep it neat.

  Brian has other hair. Brian undoes his belt.

  Brian has the broken sleep of a troubled man. Never the calm of the just. But the bad night’s sleeping you can get used to. Some dreams, you can’t.

  That same damn dream – the sweat and the sounds. Apples and worms; taut cables and cars. Post-its, post-its, poems. Half a man parked in a car by the lamp post.

  Setting off hard –

  And then a woman. A woman looking down from a watchtower. A watchtower in a nest of sharpline. A spotlight turned across a field.

  White out –

  The sea, then. The shore. The watchtower a lighthouse now, somebody shouting through a megaphone:

  You’re too close to the shore, Brian! Come back!

  Somebody rustling closer. Whispers and peace.

  Sitting on a knee, a knee by the sea, bobbing. Soft hands in curly hair. The same voice:

  You’re useless. Worthless. Wish you’d never bloody happened. A deviation. Aberration.

  Whispering, rocking gently.

  You’ve ruined everything. My little –

  White.

  Fade up to a city across the water. A skyline of old Mancunian towers, some buckled.

  The morning comes and the speakers sing – the tannoy ringing in this carcass of a house.

  Ding dong.

  It’s still Monday.

  A visitor, sir, the tannoy says.

  Three times the tannoy says that, each a little slower than the last. It isn’t a dynamic system, though – nothing so flash. The messages are recorded; speakers are wired to the entry buttons and really you’ll only ever hear that one message.

  A visitor, sir.

  Brian with light through his lashes. A hand over rough stubble on his chin and fod.

  Ding. Dong.

  All.

  Days.

  The.

  Same.

  Brian swears and pulls the fallen blanket around him. Still wearing his smart trousers – still stained and scuffed with that moorland grit.

  He turns the monitors on for a look. The entrance cameras burn white – still set to IR. He switches this, prods at that. Mutters stuff.

  Then into the link microphone: Who’s there?

  Presently the man comes together on his screen. He has floppy hair and smashed-glass teeth – this bloke grinning up at the cameras like a moron. The epaulettes say official business
, council most likely. Bloody pissing down outside. Rain on the tarmac comes across the speakers like hard static.

  Name’s Kenneth, Mr –

  Kenneth?

  From the North West Ambulance Trust.

  Day we on?

  Um, Monday sir. You’ve a skin appointment with Dr Abbas at the CHU. Ten AM.

  Sorry?

  My name’s Kenneth, Brian. I’m with the North West Ambulance Trust.

  I’m not in, says Brian. He clicks to wide-angle outside. Kenneth’s big old pig sitting there, turning over. This one’s a tracked field cart with a red cross and a red crescent up its side. Really heavy weather. Probably the wettest in weeks.

  Sir –

  I told you bastards I don’t speak to any of you ’cept Diane, and she’s the sharpest pain in my arsehole as it is. Take me for a bloody mug?

  Sir –

  Plus I don’t recall any appointments, and if I had any, Diane would’ve showed up first.

  But sir, I –

  Buzz off, will you? Take that bastard uniform and your tractor and hop it.

  Diane Kadam has been deported, Brian.

  You what?

  Seems her husband was funding ideals and nasty ­ideas the council don’t tolerate.

  Brian stares –

  I’m your case officer now.

  –

  Monday, bloody Monday.

  The pig’s ride falls on the wrong side of smooth. Brian sits up front, Kenneth driving. In the back, a tin rolls from top to tail, sticking on old spilt liquids or pinging off the seat fixtures when they hang a sharp corner.

  These tractors do nowt for your piles, Brian says. Nowt in it for any of us. Gets right on my tits. Can’t smoke. Can’t eat. Probably can’t soil yourself in here case the council cries foul. And you’re all calling this a bloody ambulance now, are you?

  Two miles in, and Kenneth’s patient smile is wearing thin.

  Big boys don’t cry, Kenneth says. These half-tracks did their time when we needed them – seems a waste to give up on the old dears now.

  Just saying, goes Brian. Mess they’ve made of our roads.

  Rivers of blood need their mops, Brian.

  You’d know, would you?

  I saw my share.

  Well, like I meant it. Just saying.