A jangle, far away, grew nearer.
“Shh . . .” Bobby said. Val and Rosa stopped talking and soon they could hear it too, the familiar sound of the dog collar bell coming up the hill from the village. It got closer this time, moving on the other side of the thick oaks, then without warning the dog burst into the clearing and headed for the chicken carcass.
“Lola!” Her owner was still some distance away, but nearing, and worse, searching. Bert growled. Val wrapped a hand around his muzzle.
Joe baby-stepped toward Lola, hands out by his sides, and tentatively shepherded her back up the track to the trees. At the final moment, defeat in her nose, she swooped beneath his grasp, snatched the chicken and savaged it, showering Joe in splintered bone and flecks of cold meat.
“Lola,” the man said, closer still. Joe kicked out at the dog in panic, missed, and thrown from balance fell over the grassy verge they had been using as a platform from which to piss. Angry and embarrassed, he climbed back up and reached into the pocket where he kept the switchblade. Anger overtook him. With one smooth jab Joe could slit the dog’s throat, let the threat bleed silently onto the mulch. He was ready to kill it—but that would give them all away—and Bobby was the only one thinking clearly enough to realize it.
“Lola,” the man said again, now at the cloak of the trees, close enough to hear. The dog walked toward Joe and passed underneath his legs. Joe reached down and grabbed his tail. Bobby launched himself at Joe with all the force he could muster, causing him to topple over the dog, almost crushing it, and land on his back on the grass. With all his strength, Bobby tried to wrestle the knife from his grip. In Joe’s hands Bobby’s arm was a twig, brittle and small. Joe let go before he broke it. Bobby stood over him, the knife in his hand, the blade exposed. Lola dropped the chicken and its spine shattered on the ground. Bobby lifted the blade above his head. He thought of George and Lennie. He thought of the greater good.
He slashed the knife down through Joe’s bootlaces, yanked them from his feet and quickly removed his socks. With one hand, as swiftly as Joe had ever rolled a cigarette, he balled the socks and dangled them in front of Lola’s eyes. Enraptured, she licked the salty liquorice-blackness of her lips, as, exalted, Bobby launched the socks high into the sky. They sailed to the top of the tree line and disappeared out of sight, with Lola in rapid pursuit.
“There you are,” the man said, jangling the bell as he clipped her lead to its collar. “Where the hell did you find these dirty old things?” The dog sneezed. “Come on, let’s get you home.” The ringing faded until all that was left was their breathing as one.
Bobby ran to where Val and Rosa were standing and they threw their arms around him. Joe flung the tattered remnants of his laces into the woods. As he walked over to join the embrace, his boots slipped free from his feet.
Bobby, finally, felt like a man, or at least, the glue in which others are caught. The two, he decided, were one and the same.
They went into the mobile library together.
“Joe,” Val said, “I think it’s time we told you who we are . . .”
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE HUNTER
The trees were black paper pasted on the sky. Mirror-eyed rabbits bounced back the moonlight. Inside the mobile library, Bobby and Joe lay on the carpet together, the files spread out before them. Bobby had never showed them to anyone before. Neatly arranged like this, they made him tremble with pride.
“And these are parts I cut out of her clothes,” he said, “so that she remembers what dresses she had and can buy the same ones again. If she’s still the same size.” What he could rescue of his mother’s hair from the pine needles he kept pressed inside an atlas, beside the roses, now flat and crisp. In an envelope were the locks of it congealed with blood that he’d salvaged from the flesh wounds on his stomach. Joe didn’t recognize his own blond tresses tangled in the mix. He held the photograph of Bobby’s mother, rubbed his thumb over the pregnant hump of her dress and had an idea of sudden and stunning clarity.
“A family!” he said, to Val, who was reading The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to Rosa, reclining on a bean bag in the corner by Travel.
“What?”
“They’re looking for a woman and two children in a stolen mobile library.”
“And a dog,” Rosa said.
“Right, and a dog. But they’re not looking for a family. So we become one. The disguise we need is each other.” Joe, just like any other soldier, had been schooled in camouflage when he joined the army. He appreciated it not just as a necessity in combat, but as a discipline that could be twisted into everyday life.
“You think we can just walk out of here?” Val said.
“Uh-huh.”
“Then you’re crazy. Or stupid.” Val ran a finger around her collarbone, as if making a wineglass sing.
“There’s only one way to find out. You’re going to have to trust me on this.”
“Trust you?” she said, as though she found the suggestion confounding, but in truth she already trusted him completely.
• • •
Working from a book entitled Teach Yourself Face Painting and using Rosa’s paints, Val turned Bobby into a lion and Rosa into a witch. These had been Rosa’s C. S. Lewis–inspired suggestions and, sensing a tantrum brewing, everyone agreed.
“Okay,” Joe said, “let’s put it to the test.”
They walked to the village, Val, Joe and Rosa arm in arm, Bobby sprinkling the road behind them with a torn-up paper trail. It was a cool night and the chimneys belched blackness into it. The village pub was a squat ugly building made of damp gray stone and the front door was small, as though it had been made for a time when people were much shorter. But when they stepped through it the room opened into a space that was big, golden and magical, with candles on tables nestled in coves, and a smell of damp fur that made Rosa think of Narnia. Three men stood at the bar, and she checked their legs for faun’s hooves.
Val, Rosa and Bobby took the table closest to the fireplace. Bobby worried that his face paint would melt in the heat. Joe approached the barman. Snaking gold chains lurked in his chest hair. He ordered two lemonades and a bottle of red wine, paying with the money Val had given him before they arrived.
“Been to the fair?” the barman asked. Joe shrugged. The barman pointed to Rosa and Bobby. “The fair in the next village. Aslan and, er, the . . .”
“Oh, yeah. The witch,” Joe said.
“Win anything?”
“Just some books.” Val removed two from her bag and placed them open on the table.
Rosa and Bobby invented words to fill the melodies sung by the jukebox. Val and Joe challenged each other to remember the real lyrics. Bobby half expected that particular menace he associated with the smell of the grape. But nothing changed. They almost fitted together.
This was the normalcy Val had craved. She wondered if she had subconsciously willed it into being. She had agreed they try disguises. It was she who allowed for them all to go to the pub, though she knew they might be caught. Why would she take such risks? Had she meant all along to create this, the world’s strangest first date?
Joe had also secretly longed for something of this happy ordinariness. He sloppily rolled a cigarette too plump in the middle. It had been a long time since he’d consumed alcohol, and was surprised how quickly he’d managed to get drunk. Eased into a groggy stupor, he declined another glass.
“Suit yourself,” Val said, draining hers and pouring another, her arms a soft elastic that made Bobby want to tie them in knots around himself.
“I’ve an idea,” Joe said.
“Of course you do, this is our second bottle of wine. You’re a philosopher by now. Let’s get another bottle. You’ll be Aristotle.”
“A bottle of Aristotle,” Rosa said.
“Precisely, Rosa. A whole damn bottle of delicious Aristotle.”
Rosa laughed, leaning back, her stool on two legs so that Joe had to catch her before she fell.
“No, I’m serious,” he said. “You should come to Scotland with me. To the house. It’s big enough for all of us, and no one will find you there.” Bobby sucked up the last of his lemonade with a slurp.
“All the way to Scotland?” Val said.
“Yeah. Why not?”
“You think we’d make it those hundreds of miles without being seen?”
“Right now we’re sitting in a pub with other people. I’m just suggesting that it’s no more improbable than that.”
“Right now we’re not sitting in a mobile library, with the words mobile library painted in huge letters on the side, whilst loads of people are looking for a big old mobile library.”
“Now that,” Joe said, changing his mind about having another glass of wine, “is a point worth making.”
Val couldn’t help but find Joe’s idea thrilling—if unworkable—but Bobby, rolling an ice cube around in his mouth, would not be so easily persuaded. Scotland sounded like an awful long way to leave his paper trail, and in the opposite direction from where Sunny Clay was waiting to protect him.
Uncut nails clacked on the cold stone floor. Joe looked up to find Lola on the lead of the man who must have been her owner. Sniffing up the dust, she followed a scent around the room that ended at Joe’s feet.
“Lola,” said the man, pulling on the lead, but she stayed put, even when Joe nudged her with his shoe. The man came to the table.
“I apologize,” he said. His nose was misshapen and red, over whisky-stained teeth and the bruised chin of a drinker who falls asleep at the table.
“No need,” Joe said.
Again the man tugged on the lead but Lola refused to budge. “She doesn’t normally do this,” he said.
“It’s fine, honestly. She can stay there if she wants.” Lola rubbed her flank against Joe’s ankle and the man stumbled over to the bar, looking back at the dog as if it had been replaced with one that wasn’t his.
They stayed late, dreading the shrill wind outside. Besides them and the barman, who slept in an armchair by the kegs, Lola’s owner was the only person left inside the pub. He twice tried and failed to slot his hand inside a glove, then woke the dog to stop its legs pumping rhythmically to the jazz beat of a dream. They found themselves leaving at the same time, into the cold.
“Again,” he said, “sorry about earlier.”
“Huh?” Joe said, memory sodden with wine.
“About the dog. Seems she’s a little obsessed with you or something.”
“Oh, please, it’s genuinely not a problem. She probably smells a little of my own dog on there. You know how they get.”
“Yeah, I know how they get,” the man said. “New to the village?” Val hooked an arm through Joe’s and tried to pull him along, but he was too big and heavy to so subtly persuade.
“Oh no, just visiting. Getting some good clean country air.” The old man smiled approvingly, and they started up the hill. Val felt relieved that the wind was forcing the illusion of sobriety on her.
“Without a car?”
“Huh?”
“Without a car!?” The old man was shouting over the bluster. “It’s a hell of a walk up the road that way this time of night. If you haven’t got a car, I mean.”
“It’s okay,” Val said.
“The next village is twelve miles. I’m not sure I’d try it, let alone in the dark, what with kids in tow and a storm coming in.” Lola whined, smoothed her ears back against her head and crept toward Joe as if approaching a shrine. Val pushed Rosa and Bobby in the direction of the mobile library, her cackling and him roaring, neither dropping out of character. “I could give you all a lift?”
“It’s fine,” Joe said, “honestly.”
“Okay then. If you’re sure. But if it’s”—the man brought a cupped hand to his mouth and jiggled it around—“you’re worried about then don’t be, all I’ve had is a couple of whiskies and I know these roads like the back of my hand.” He hiccupped.
“Thank you. That’s very kind. But really, it’s absolutely fine. Good night.” Joe gave Lola a firm shove and she slunk away, unrequited love raking her heart.
He had almost caught Val up when he heard the man yell, “Hey, wait a minute, where’d you get that coat?” but he chose not to turn around.
Fifteen minutes’ walk away the mobile library lurked in the raggedy shadows of the branches thrown across the clearing. Val and Joe were too agitated to give Bert the fuss he’d hoped for, so Rosa and Bobby chased him around the bookshelves.
“It’s a matter of time before he comes up here with that dog again, and you’ll be caught for sure,” Joe said, stroking the coarse run of his stubble. “You have to go. Even if you have to leave the library.”
“We can’t leave the library.”
“But you’ll be caught.”
“And you?”
“I guess I’ll go back into the woods. I’ll be fine.”
A melancholy wedged in Val’s chest. “On your own?”
“I’ll be fine.”
She swallowed. “Then let’s all go. To Scotland, together. Like you said, they’re not searching for a family.”
Bobby was sure this was a bad idea, but he recognized the look on Joe’s face, to have been blessed by her affection. The pinch of jealousy followed, and remained, until she held Bobby’s head against her side, where in that infinite mellowness she made, no such thing could exist. He thought of Sunny, and how much he missed him. He wondered whether cyborgs miss people too.
Rosa wrote their names down, the five of them, unsullied by punctuation, one after another. Rosa Reed Val Reed Bobby Nusku Joe Joe Bert. That’s when Bobby had an idea of his own. He grabbed Rosa by the hand and they ran to the back of the library, tumbling over the pillows left piled on the floor. They found it, thumbed enough that the pages were thinning, and scurried back to Val and Joe with it held above their heads, a children’s book they loved to read together, The Big Orange Splot by Daniel Manus Pinkwater.
Rosa opened the book at the end, her favorite page, where Mr. Plumbean has persuaded the neighbors that their houses can look however they want them to look, can be painted however they wish, that a home, like a family, is what’s inside it. They read the words together.
“Our street is us and we are it. Our street is where we like to be, and it looks like all our dreams.”
“We paint our house,” Bobby said.
“With what? Rosa’s face paints?” Joe said.
“No. We’re going to go on an adventure. Let me teach you how to forage.”
• • •
Joe and Bobby crossed the fields. Bobby counted two thousand three hundred and fifty-three steps across flat land, on the one-mile walk to the business park. Night birds circled, hunting mice on the black blanket of ground. He saw the white brush of a badger flit by, fur caught on thorns and fluttered by the breeze. Climbing mud swells and craters burned in their thighs, but they hiked without once complaining of the cold.
On the opposite side of the bypass stood three warehouses surrounded by flickering security lights. They waited for a gap in the traffic, then crossed, to a wire fence that Joe used his bolt cutters to cut open with ease. They ran to the back of the homeware depot, a monolithic building made from a material neither of them could confidently name, then hid behind a stack of pallets while a lone forklift truck drove across the court.
“Stay behind me,” Joe said.
The depot’s loading bay was open awaiting night deliveries. They crawled on hands and knees past the watchman’s office, his snore blunting the finer details of the radio play that had sent him to sleep.
Inside the vast warehouse they heard the wind beating on the corrugated tin façade, sending ghoulish howls around the roof. Strip bulbs crisscrossed the aisles, robbing shelf-stackers of shadows as they slowly replenished the stock. It was neither daylight nor nighttime, but a suspension of the bleary minute when the two bleed into one another.
They edged thirty-nine c
rab-steps along the back wall until it got too dark in the corner.
“I can’t see,” Joe said.
“Then you had better stay behind me,” Bobby said.
In night mode he led Joe to the far end, through another door and into a secluded area of the yard littered with crowns of broken glass and battered boxes. A tall black trash compactor stood redundant in the center. Beyond that, a pile of paint tins three times Bobby’s height, dented and unsellable. They loaded two trolleys with all the shades of white they could find, magnolia, Isabelline, ivory, seashell and Bobby’s favorite, cosmic latte, two terms he enjoyed for the way they pawed at each other on his tongue as the lid came loose and he dropped a tin of it over his feet.
They wheeled the trolleys back through the depot to the exit, stopping to seize an armful of rollers, past the snoozing security detail, through the fence and over the road to the mud, where the ghostly paint trail of Bobby’s footprints finally disappeared into brown.
Dragging such heavy loads through the fields doubled the twenty-minute walk back, but they arrived with time to spare before dawn. When they did, Val woke and heated water over a fire to wash the paint from Bobby’s hands. Smoke rose into the crisp air, the way it does in the aftermath of battle.
Val tussled with the notion that she was now a woman who was complicit in the theft of eighteen liters of paint. What version of her had it been? One drunk and bedeviled, one Joe had awoken. She sat down before she fell over. Excitement always made her light-headed.
Though exhausted, they immediately set about painting the mobile library, haphazardly merging white shades together to chase down the remainder of the green. Bobby sat on Joe’s shoulders, the concert of them making short work of the task. Soon the words Mobile Library, once proudly emblazoned on the vehicle’s side, had vanished completely. Rosa raised her arms aloft, victorious.
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