Spill Simmer Falter Wither

by Sara Baume

  Now I brace my strongest shoulder against the bank and shove my arm as deep as it will shove. Now I feel you. The scraggled stump of your amputated tail. I drag you up, dragging against me. I wipe the mud from your mud-drenched face.

  I know you are mad. I’ve known from the start you are both kinds of mad but this time I see it’s mouth-frothing, eye-popping anger. You might easily bite me, free yourself, crawl back in. And yet you don’t. Why don’t you bite me, One Eye? We are lying on the freshly dug mud and I am holding you to my chest. I check your heartbeat, just to be sure. I can feel it battering; I can feel my own battering too. I hold our battering hearts together and you do not bite me, and I see how your wiped face is only as incomplete as I’ve ever known it to be. And I realise the earthen bank we just dug down was the rampart of our ring fort.

  It’s barely distinguishable. There’s a set of raised, curved ridges, inside which the forest floor is flat and carpeted by old foliage. In the very centre, an oak stands fifty-feet tall, at least. Its thick branches sprawl in every direction like the legspan of a giant octopus. It stands intractable, as though as a reminder to the forest that it was the first tree and will endure to be its last. At the edge of the bank on the farthest side, the forest ends and opens onto fields. A green crop I can’t recognise by just the leaves stretches unimpeded for several miles before the green’s again adulterated by houses and roads and pylons, by people. At first it was a beautiful view, but suddenly it seems like a sad place, don’t you think it’s sad?

  We sit on the field-facing bank of the ring fort. I roll a cigarette. I always carry the tobacco pouch with me while we are walking, along with the car key, the leash, some chocolate buttons. Now the smoke runs through my blood vessels and I unclench. I offer you a button. You are back on the leash now, sniffling the wind, tilting your ears this way and that. Can you smell a trace of badger, can you hear them calling you? I place my palm across your shoulders and stroke your warm back. Your silver tag jangles in the wind. Your chest swells and deflates in neat bursts, a string of drool hangs off your chin from the place where your lip is missing. I see the mud already dried into your fur and the threads of grey worming through your curls in the place where I wiped your face clean. And I wonder are you old? I’d forgotten that you might be old.

  Now I’m beginning to dream again. I’m sinking to the blackmost layer of sleep, remaining there for longer intervals.

  Tonight I dream of your badger, of the badger who took your eye. I dream myself down, down, down an unfathomably small hole. Deep, deep, deep through a bone-crunching tunnel. I dream the air wrung out of my lungs. I dream the smell of an earthworm mausoleum. The spindly ends of tree roots combing the long hairs of my back. The wet of the earth permeating my skin, its cold tongue licking my spine. I dream the muted shouts of men from somewhere up above and far behind. The only clear sound is the grate and slither of my uncertain progress. The only light is shrinking, shrinking, shrinking. Now I dream the flash of the badger’s teeth and a sound like a violent collision of fur and flesh. I can’t see anything any more and now I know; one of my eyes is filled with blood and the other is inside the badger.

  When I wake, I am me again, and you are you.

  You’re outstretched across the back seat of the car, grunting and waggling your paws as though you have picked up my dream and are again running, running, running. Your right eye is closed and on the other side, your eye-hollow is closed too, so that, in sleep, you look almost symmetrical again. You seem almost unscathed.

  Sometimes when I’m descending gears to turn a long corner, the car begins to fail. The engine dips and coughs and I lean my head and shoulders and chest in the direction of the corner’s curve, as though I might impel the car myself. Mostly the putter perks back up in an instant, pushes us on again.

  All I know of maintaining cars is the very little my father taught me for my driving test. I know to check and occasionally replenish the oil. I know my front left tyre is going bald because the impact of a mighty pothole several weeks ago threw the tracking of the wheels into misalignment. And I know my bulbs are blinking out, first the indicators and soon the brake lights, one by one by one. But I don’t understand about the dip and cough, and I am waiting for the day the car fails altogether.

  See the funeral home with crucifix-shaped windows. See the tile warehouses and fireplace showrooms. See the homemade signpost hammered into the mud of a roadside flowerbed. COLIN & MARIE’S WEDDING it says, the words underscored by an arrow. Do you think Colin and Marie are really inviting us to their wedding? I’ve never been to a wedding before. You’re gnawing loudly on your most recent stick. Ten minutes ago it was the shape of a flamingo’s long neck with a bump for the head and a curve for the beak. Now it’s splinters flittered across the rag rug. I say your name again but you are not listening.

  A yellow circle slides into my dream, a face appears pressed against the window. It’s an old woman’s face, her bottom lip’s crusted with cold sores and her nostrils are prickled with echoing pores. Dandruff falls from her scalp onto her shoulders. It shows up like glitter through the dark, as if she is sporting a sequinned mantle.

  Now I try to open my eyes, and they’re already open. The yellow circle is a torch beam and the old woman is real; we are touching noses through the glass. Now she raises a bony knuckle and knocks.

  You wake up too, we wake up together. You’re in my lap and yipping. I push you onto the passenger seat, grope for the leash, twine the handle loop around the headrest and clip the other end to your collar. All the while, the old woman is scouring the car with her yellow circle. It sears my leaden eyes as I roll the window down.

  ‘What are ya at?’ she says. ‘What are ya doing parked up here?’

  There are two bungalows a couple of hundred yards up the road from our gateway. They seem suddenly much closer than they seemed when I parked. You’re stomping all over the gingernuts. Calm down.

  ‘I was just on my way home,’ I say, quietly.

  ‘What’s that? Speak up!’ The old woman says, as though she’s a school teacher and I’m the mumbling boy at the back of the class. I picture her as a school teacher back in the days when they were still allowed to use a cane. I picture the pigment restored to her hair, the dandruff twisted back into a face-stretching bun.

  Now I don’t know why I said that.

  ‘I was just on my way home,’ I say, ever-so-slightly less quietly.

  ‘You’re not broke down or anything?’ Now she’s narrowing her eyes.

  I wonder how long she watched us for and from where she’s mustered the courage for confrontation. Is there a contingent of grandsons crouched in the ditch behind her, clutching broom handles and shoe horns and hurleys? Is this why you’re ballistic?

  ‘No,’ I say. I’m dazzled and blinking. I’m tired and meek.

  ‘Then you can’t sleep here,’ the old woman says, ‘you’re not welcome here.’

  She steps back and signals with a swatting hand for me to pull the car out. I fumble my bedding into the back seat, push my toes down to the caps of my boots, wind the handle which raises the window up. The woman stays as she is and continues to shine her torch into my eyes, watching. Why isn’t she afraid? I’m twice her size and you are fierce, and of course there are no crouching grandsons in the ditch. But she can see you’re fastened I suppose, and perhaps I’m not so big now as I was when we set out. For just a second, I feel intoxicatingly reckless. I want to let you out of the car with your mouth unshackled so you can maim the rude old woman. Maybe I even want to maim her myself. But I don’t, of course I don’t. I’m not the kind of person who is able to do things, remember? I’m not the kind of person who could go to Colin and Marie’s wedding, even if I was really invited. Instead I rev and shunt until the car’s back on the road again. I suppose Colin and Marie are all married and done with now. Instead I drive away.

  After a while you remember the gingernuts beneath your feet and stick your nose into the trampled packet. Why did
I tell her we were on our way home? I wonder if it’s because now I want it to be true.

  On a long corner, at last, the car fails.

  I get out and push it to the ditch. Now we sit and wait. I don’t understand why, but after an elapse of exactly eleven minutes, it simply starts again, miraculous.

  I sleep through the dawn. I never do that. I wake to the sound of inclement grumbling.

  It takes my mind several seconds to catch up with my ears. For several seconds I’m waking up in my father’s house again. I’m watching the slothful light spear through my bedroom window between the leaves and stems and flowers of the rejuvenated toadflax. It idles about the rugs and cushion covers, the coal bucket and kindling basket. It illuminates the dust, speck by speck. Now I remember I’m under a duvet in the driver’s seat and we’re parked in a lay-by which seems much larger this morning than it did last night. There’s a gurgling lullaby rising from somewhere. I pull myself up, look beyond the car over a fence and through the trees to a river. Yes, I remember the river. The river’s why I stopped here, to fill my drums and slosh out my underwear. It’s much fatter and slower than the stream in the ring fort’s wood. Even through the windscreen, I can see fins breaching the ripples like tiny sharks.

  There’s a blanket of deciduous debris trodden into the surface of the lay-by. I can single out ash leaves, horse chestnut and sycamore. I can see keys, conkers and samaras. Over the fence beneath the trees, there’s a conclave of rusted appliances. A chrome microwave, a hairdryer, an electric keyboard and a toaster. They’re huddling together beneath a sign that reads NO DUMPING: CCTV IN OPERATION. On the other side of the lay-by, there’s a picnic bench and a padlocked chip van. Last night, through the dark, the chip van looked like a portable billboard, a long skip, the rear end of a transportation truck. The lay-by is set back just off the main road and there’s already a trickle of rush-hour traffic. Now I see how I’ve been careless. I feel a flush of danger, like acid reflux in my head. I need a cigarette.

  The inclement grumbling is you, of course it’s you. Across the lay-by, a clapped-out Volvo has pulled in and parked alongside the chip van. A man in blue jeans gets out. He pays no attention to the presence of our car. He takes a signboard from the Volvo’s boot and pitches it amongst the trodden leaves. HOT DRINKS MINERALS, it reads, CHIPS CURRY BURGERS BREAKFAST ROLLS. Now he props the van’s awning out, fiddles with the padlock, pulls the door and disappears inside.

  Swiftly, swiftly, swiftly, I untangle myself from the duvet, clip on your leash and we tumble from the car. You tow me to the ditch and obligingly piss, now I loop the leash into the lever of the door’s lock. With my hands my own again, I fiddle my loose tobacco into the shape of a smoke. I tidy our night things away, making ready for the road, for another day’s driving. The leeway of danger’s befuddled my head, and my heart’s in my ears again, beating down the sound of your warning growl. My pillow’s only half squashed beneath the dash when, all of a sudden, you yelp and jolt toward something behind me I can’t see. Now your leash is drawn into a trip wire, and as I spin around, I fall hard onto the concrete.

  I land flat on my front like a domino, like the last domino. I ram the heel of each graceless hand into the ash, the horse chestnut, the sycamore, so hard that the blood rises instantly into my cuticles. I feel more than winded; I feel split in two. From the gash that’s opened in my chin, clean down the centre, like an axed log. I picture the bruise, from forehead to toes, as though my biggest vein has burst blue ink beneath my skin.

  It’s decades since I’ve fallen. As a boy I was forever falling, and every time I picked myself up again without fuss. I wore short trousers all year round and all year round my knees were scabby and the scabs were as ordinary a part of my legs as were my god-given knobbly knee caps. But now I am old. In the reflection of the car door as I lie like a domino on the ground, I am an old man. I’ve completely forgotten what my bare legs look like and my clobbered jaw hurts with every ounce of consciousness, with the united intensity of every fall I never felt in boyhood.

  You’re facing away from me. You’re pulling against the leash. You’re histrionic. Now I look to where you’re looking, now I see what you’re seeing. Advancing toward us across the lay-by, there’s a little girl. She’s snot-nosed and soft-shaped and dressed like a story-book witch. She has a tall hat, cat-patterned petticoats and a pair of patent leather shoes with pointed toes. Now I remember, it’s Halloween, or thereabouts.

  ‘Ouch!’ the little girl says on my behalf, ‘y’okay mister?’

  She is four or five, I can’t tell exactly. She’s extending a hand to my crumpled frame. She’s trying to help me up, even though she is tiny. The weight of a tumbleweed, the strength of a moth. Hasn’t anyone taught her how to recognise when a man is strange? Hasn’t anyone told her to stay away from strange men? Now I heave myself up, wrench myself back.

  ‘You shouldn’t talk to strangers,’ I say, ‘didn’t anybody ever teach you not to talk to strangers?’

  She must have come out of the Volvo with the chip van man. She must be his daughter, yet too young for school and brought along to work instead. Why isn’t he watching her now? Why hasn’t he called her back? Now her eyes skip from me and settle on you.

  ‘We’d one like him before,’ she says, ‘can I pet him?’

  She takes a footstep closer and reaches out again. In a flash, you snap at her hand. I know you don’t mean it. I know you’re only protecting your property, which is the car, and your family, who is me. You miss, but I know you’ll snap again and so I’m on you. I’m hobbling and bundling and chucking and slamming. I’m pulling the car fast, fast, fast to the mouth of the lay-by and indicating into the traffic.

  But I have to stop, I’m forced to stop. As I wait for a gap, I curse rush-hour. I look up and see the little witch girl in the rearview mirror. She’s a solitary splash of colour against the grey sky and mud. She glissades around the lay-by, having forgotten us already. The tip of her hat is drooping slightly and the cats on her tights are splattered by dirt. What posters has she on her bedroom walls, I wonder? Has she stars in her copybooks, stones in her pencil case? Suddenly she stops and raises a palm. Look, the little witch girl hasn’t forgotten, and is waving.

  The car kicks up a cloud of ash keys in its wake. Blood drips from my chin onto my trousers. I thrust the gear-stick into fifth as we speed down the main road, away.

  My hands shudder against the steering wheel. I feel like I swallowed a free bird and it’s lashing its wings against the bars of my bones, trying to find the way back up to my mouth-hole. But this time the free bird isn’t fear. This time the free bird is rage.

  When I used to feel angry in my father’s house, I boxed cushions, flung knick-knacks, kicked kickboards. But I never broke anything and always tidied up afterwards. My anger was a tea-candle, one more useless sensation amongst a snowslide of useless sensations I suffer but never act upon. Now it’s a whole cathedral of tea-candles, an inferno. I’m angry at myself, for being careless, but I’m angry at you too, I’m even more angry at you. Because of the little girl. Why did you have to snap? She wasn’t trying to hurt you. Because the pain in my walloped jaw is blighting my sense of reason. And you are the only animate thing at which to direct my anger. You are the only thing; you are the only.

  I drive. For several miles down previously uncharted back roads. Ballistic, directionless, I drive. Now, on a road between two hedgerows of dead honeysuckle, I skid the car to a halt. I climb out of my seat and flip it forward, violently. I grab you by the scruff and drag you from the shelter of the low chair. I haul you from your safe space. The tasselled blanket is caught on your back paws. I snatch it away. The leash is trailing from your collar like a polyester umbilical chord. I pull it off and drop you to the ground. Now I get back into the car and slam the door. Now I drive away, and leave you.

  When I was very young, too young for riding in the front seat of the car, I remember a journey home from town one murky evening. I remember the to
nsured back of my father’s head as he drove and the radio playing wordless songs, and I remember crying. I bawled and screeched and sobbed and snivelled because I’d dropped Mr Buddy on the floor and couldn’t reach to pick him up again. All of a sudden my father yanked the handbrake and stopped the car. He leaned over and lifted me from the back seat. Then he placed me into a tuft of grass at the side of the road, and drove away. Young as I was, I remember thinking this wasn’t the sort of thing fathers were supposed to do. I remember thinking he would soon come back, he would definitely come back. But he didn’t. And I remember the exact stretch of road and how promptly the daylight died that day, how the crows went off and the cats came out, how the car faces lighted their eyes. I grew very cold, my fingers turning numb, my nose leaking unstoppable runnels of snot. I remember worrying about Mr Buddy and what my father might have done with him. Eventually a neighbour passing in her car saw me and stopped. She picked me up and I remember the rustling sound her jacket made against my legs and I remember how she took my hands in hers and raised them to her lips and I thought that she was going to bite me, but she only blew on my freezing fingers. Then she drove me home and rang our doorbell, and when my father answered, he looked surprised; he pretended to be surprised. He sent me to my bedroom and I never heard what he said to the neighbour, how he explained it away. But after that day, I never cried in the car again. I never cried anywhere. With or without onions, I never cried.

  You stay as you are in the road, at exactly the point where I dropped you. Is the air not thick with new smells? Are you not surrounded by new fields and hedges and ditches untrammelled? Yet you resist, and stay as you are. I watch you in the rearview mirror, your small shoulders black and hunched against the green and vast. I watch until the car rounds a corner and I can’t see you any more.