by Liam Brown
Everyone nodded at this.
‘So you see,’ Rusty continued, ‘when I say you don’t have to feel bad about this, I really do mean that. Sneed killed the boss and we killed Sneed. That’s all there is to it.’
We stood quietly for a moment, staring down at the pale, disembodied hand. It was still raining and the hole had begun to fill with water, a black puddle that lapped at Marshall’s fingers.
‘Right then,’ Rusty said at last. ‘I suppose we’d better fill the poor bastard in.’
Without a word, Ox began shovelling again, and within a minute all that was left of Marshall was a small mountain of earth. Once Ox had stamped it down a bit, Rusty hoisted up the rifle and let off a single shot salute – ‘I’d do twenty-one but I’ve gotta think about the ammo’ – before we once again fell silent.
A few minutes passed and I began to grow aware of just how cold I was. Last night’s fire was now a distant memory as I felt the familiar squelch of water between my toes, the prickle of rain on my neck. After a while I realised that Rusty and a few of the others were staring at me again. It was a look I’d seen before, in casinos and bookies around the world. They were weighing me up, mentally shaking me down as they tried to decide what I was hiding, what I was worth – how dangerous I was.
In my old life I did everything I could to blend in, to hide any defining features. My suits were well cut but not flashy. I opted for muted tones; beige, navy, black. My hair was average length, average colour. I had no tattoos, piercings or visible scars. I’d once been told that the best gamblers are invisible. They do not chomp on cigars or go around with a harem of hookers. They do not wear Cuban heels or ace of spades cufflinks. They melt into the background. They are impossible to read. Here though, I felt exposed, my blood-free fingers and face marking me out as different. As an outsider. Again I thought about making a bolt for the trees, before Fingers suddenly interrupted my thoughts.
‘What about the gaffer’s place?’ he asked.
We turned to him blankly.
‘The tree house.’
‘What about it?’ Rusty asked.
‘Well, shouldn’t we go and sort it out? Now that he’s… You know. Gone.’
A rippled of excitement stirred through the circle. Now there was no Marshall, there was nothing to stop us trampling over this prohibited space, the only no-go zone in the entire park. There was no reason not to go and discover for ourselves the forbidden treasures he’d undoubtedly been keeping from us all this time. The food he’d been keeping from us.
We all seemed to arrive at this final possibility simultaneously, for Rusty was quick to try and quell our excitement. ‘Well, I don’t know about that. I’m sure there’s nothin’ up there that can’t wait a few days for the dust to settle. Poor bugger’s only been in the ground five minutes.’ He paused, scratching his beard with exaggerated indifference. ‘Still, now that you mention it, maybe I should go up and check everything’s in order. Just in case, y’know?’
‘I don’t think so,’ Butcher answered.
Rusty’s smile evaporated. ‘What do you mean?’
‘If anyone goes up, it should be me,’ said Fingers.
‘How’d you work that one out?’ asked Al Pacino.
‘Yeah,’ said Hopper. ‘How’s that fair?’
‘If anyone goes,’ said Ox, his booming voice instantly drowning the others out, ‘we all go.’
Everyone agreed with that, and so, with an increasing sense of panic we turned our back on the grave and began to walk, then jog, then run in the direction of the camp.
As we drew nearer, the jostling intensified, the men clawing at each other as they raced to be the first to the rope ladder. For a brief moment I thought I might be able to slip away unnoticed. Before I had a chance, however, I felt a tight pinch around my upper arm. It was Rusty.
‘Thought I’d lost you for a second there, sonny!’ he grinned.
I laughed and showed my teeth, my stomach a hollow pit.
We surged through the camp as one, a cheer going up as the tree house came into sight. The men swarmed around it, Al Pacino getting there first, though as he attempted to haul himself up, the others began clambering over him. They tugged at his legs and tried to dislodge him. I stood back for a moment and watched the writhing human chain ascend the rope ladder, before I felt the butt of the rifle pressing into my back.
‘After you, sonny.’
I dutifully took hold of the ladder and pulled myself onto the first rung, ducking to avoid Hopper’s false leg, which thrashed behind him as he attempted to drag himself up. Below me I could hear Bruno snarling. I kept going, putting one hand in front of another, the wind whipping my face, the rope cutting into my fingers, up, up, up.
By the time I reached the top there was hardly any room to get inside the small, nest-like structure Marshall had constructed up in the tree. Glancing back over the side I saw Rusty was still only halfway up. It was even higher than it looked from the ground, the platform creaking unnervingly under the weight of so many people. I turned away and squeezed past Hopper, stooping to enter the dimly lit room.
It took a second for my eyes to adjust. The floor was uneven, an amateurish patchwork of random wooden planks and rickety-looking fence panels. Large gaps ran along the length of the structure, wide enough that if you were to drop something, it would likely slip through and plunge to the ground below. The walls and ceiling were even more primitive, a few flimsy supporting beams holding up a canopy of woven twigs and branches through which the morning sun streamed in. A few squares of tarpaulin had been strung up at strategic angles, while in one corner it looked like an attempt at wattle and daub had been abandoned. Architectural quirks aside, there was very little else to see. There was certainly no sign of a secret food mountain, or booze, or weapons, or anything else that might conceivably be of use to us. The men stood huddled together around a single khaki sleeping bag and pillow, which, apart from a small pile of underwear, appeared to be his only possessions. The place was empty.
Behind us, Rusty finally appeared at the door. ‘Well?’ he asked, doubling over to catch his breath.
Butcher shook his head. ‘Nothing. Not even a lousy porno mag. The guy lived like a fucking monk!’
It was true. Outside the wind rattled through the bone-bare branches of the tree, while underneath us the old planks of wood creaked their discontent.
‘So,’ said Fingers eventually. ‘What do we do now?’
TWENTY-FOUR
Now that Sneed was gone, the days quickly lost their shape, stretching out into long, aimless weeks. Without the need to constantly patrol the park, I found I spent longer and longer curled up under a blanket, trying my best to fend off the bitter wind that swept through the camp and shook loose the final few leaves that had clung stubbornly to the hunched black trees. For hours at a time I would lie there listening to the whip and rustle of the faded canvas above my head, trying to block out the endless griping of my stomach.
The first thing I’d done when I got back to my tent after the ‘funeral’ was to take out the card, the deodorant and the small box of Quality Street that Olivia had brought me. Without thinking I unwrapped six and swallowed them whole. I probably would have devoured the entire box if it wasn’t for my body’s intervention. It had been so long since I’d eaten anything at this point that the sudden introduction of so much sugar triggered an instant reaction in my gut. I was struck by a debilitating cramp, as if I’d swallowed six shards of glass. When I finally recovered enough to sit up, I emptied the remainder of the box onto my bed. There were twenty-eight chocolates left in all, the various shades of metallic foil glistening like treasure. I stashed the contraband inside my pillow, having decided to ration myself to two a day, enough for two weeks. After that I figured I had two choices: starve or escape.
The latter, however, was to prove more difficult than I could have possibly imagined. While Rusty had claimed the tree house as his own and now spent much of his time there, I quickly dis
covered I was still never left alone for a second. On the first night after Marshall and Sneed’s murder, I lay awake once it got dark. When I was certain that no one was around, I got up and slipped on my boots, before stuffing my sleeping bag with my sheets, hoping to buy myself a couple of hours should anyone happen to glance in on me. Then, with a final deep breath, I stepped out into the night, ready to sprint as fast as I could.
‘Alright there, mate?’
I looked up to find Butcher leaning against a tree opposite my tent. In his hand he held a wooden spear, his scar exaggerating the leer on his face. ‘Going somewhere?’
‘Just… struggling to sleep.’
He nodded, not believing me.
‘What about you?’ I asked quickly. ‘I thought the night watch had finished now?’
Butcher shrugged. ‘Rust said he thought we might as well keep it going. Just to make sure everyone was safe.’
‘Oh. Well. That makes sense I suppose.’
We stood in silence for another moment, each of us despising the other. ‘Well, that should do it,’ I said as I eventually turned back to my tent. ‘I think I’ll try and get my head down again.’
‘Sleep tight,’ Butcher sang.
The next night I tried the same thing, only to find Ox guarding me. The night after, Rusty himself was sat on a stool, Bruno at his feet. After that I gave up, resolving instead to try and break away during the day. That too though, quickly proved impossible. Everywhere I went, somebody shadowed me. By the time I was down to fourteen chocolates, I’d more or less given up on the idea of escape altogether. Instead I lay shivering in my sheets while a deluge of old memories washed over me, my life not so much flashing as crawling before my eyes.
It was strange. During those dreary, purgatorial days, I found myself remembering things I’d forgotten about, or hadn’t thought about in years. I recalled conversations with my parents, school friends, colleagues, old girlfriends, rerunning seemingly inconsequential moments in my mind. Often I thought of the children. I’d remember a day out bowling with Flynn, or one of the rare Sunday mornings I woke without a hangover to find a barely toddling Olivia bouncing on the bed. There’d been a pillow fight that had collapsed into a riot of tickles. The scratch of my stubble on her bare feet, raspberries blown on her belly. I could still remember her scent, the talcum powder tinge of her hair, the hot chocolate fingers, the faint milky smell of her breath. She smelt clean, good, untarnished by the world.
Big events came back to me too, somehow more vivid than they were the first time round. I remembered the day Flynn was born in spectacular detail: the midwife’s face, her shoes, even her name – Anne-Marie. I remembered there were lilies in the room, the flickering blue curtains that wouldn’t quite shut, the irregular speckled pattern on the grey vinyl floor, the squeak of the hospital trolley. The promises I’d whispered to my little boy as he slithered out into the world. It all came back to me, those details I thought I’d missed in the rush of the never-ending present. Yet it turned out nothing was lost. Nothing.
More than anything, I thought about Lydia. I turned our private history over and over like a puzzle, looking for the joins, trying to spot the dead ends, the wrong turns, the places I got lost. There was our first kiss, played out in a gooey haze of rosé wine and first-date nerves. There was our first house, our wedding day. The day we brought home Olivia. More powerful than those milestones though, were the everyday moments of affection that I’d somehow allowed to pass me by. An unprompted cup of coffee left by my side the morning after a heavy night. Her understanding and concern every time I’d call last minute to cancel our plans because a client had unexpectedly arrived in town or, later, because Tamara insisted. I remember the total lack of resentment she showed every time I failed to show at a parents’ evening or school play or her mother’s birthday. The way she had just accepted everything with a sad smile and a shrug. How could she stand to put up with me? And more to the point, how could I not have recognised how good I had it? How could I have been so careless?
*
One morning I awoke to the clatter of pans. I sat upright, convinced for a moment that it had all been a dream, that Marshall had returned from the dead to lead us to salvation. Then I heard a familiar laugh.
‘Right then, you lazy wotsits. Holidays are over!’
I dressed slowly, hardly able to bring myself to leave the tent. When I finally poked my head outside I found Ox there. He nodded, and we made our way to the clearing, arriving to find everyone apart from Zebee was already there. They stood facing Rusty, their hands plunged into their pockets, their heads hung low, their expressions despondent. I was glad I wasn’t the only one sceptical that Rusty had anything of value to share with us.
‘Right then,’ Rusty began as we took our place. ‘I thought we could begin with a nice spot of yoga, followed by a lovely run. What do you say?’
The men snapped their heads up in disbelief, only to find Rusty grinning back at them.
‘Nah, I’m just pullin’ your legs. As much I loved the gaffer, I have to say I’m glad we don’t have to mess around with all that nonsense no more. Squattin’ Llama? Pain in the arse more like!’
Though nobody laughed at his joke, he ploughed on undeterred. ‘I do miss the sense of order we used to have in the old days though. Not to mention the food. I don’t know about you, but my belly ain’t shut up for weeks now. ’Course, if the gaffer hadn’t got so bogged down with us catchin’ Sneed, we’d be tuckin’ into a nice root vegetable stew round about now, but that’s another story…’
There was a long pause.
‘What’s your point, Rust?’ Fingers asked.
‘My point,’ Rusty snapped, ‘is that we need to get back to the farm. I was up there yesterday. It’s a bloody disgrace, the state it’s in. Now, I reckon if we all pile in, we’ll have it shipshape by the end of the week. Sooner if we roll our sleeves up.’
No one said anything.
‘Well?’ Rusty said, his smile now faded. ‘What are we waitin’ for?’
Still nobody moved.
‘Ah, lay off it, Rusty,’ Hopper said eventually. ‘It’s over. Even if we did manage to sort the farm out, what’s going to grow now? It’ll take months, and we’re hungry. Starving. I’m telling you, we’ve missed the boat. Now, I say we cut our losses and head down to the soup kitchen. There’s one I used to go to just down the—’
Before Hopper had a chance to finish his sentence, Rusty was on him. He moved surprisingly quickly, and in two bounding steps his hand was coiled tight around Hopper’s throat while Bruno reared up around them, barking. We watched as Hopper choked, his face turning first mottled pink, then purple. Rubbery, wet snorts escaped from his lips as he tried hopelessly to draw breath. His eyes widened then rolled, his arms carving out useless circles in the air until finally his legs gave way and he began to fit. Only then did Rusty release him, stepping back as Hopper dropped to the floor and flopped around like a hooked fish, his prosthetic foot clacking noisily each time it slapped against the dirt. Ignoring him, Rusty turned back to us and grinned broadly. ‘Now, does anyone else think we should go and join the queue for hand-outs with all the other bums?’
We looked at our feet.
‘Good!’ Rusty said. ‘Cos we’re not bums. Or tramps. Or hobos. Or any of the other names you used to get called on the streets. Or perhaps you’ve forgotten? Maybe you don’t remember what it’s like to be looked down on with pity or contempt. To be constantly moved along or spat at. To live with your hand constantly out, or else shakin’ a cup, relyin’ on the charity of strangers just so you can get a bit of grub down you. Hopin’ some bloke in a fancy suit’ll put a hand in his pocket just so you can carry on existin’. Charity. Now there’s a blinkin’ dirty word if there were one. Sticks in my throat like a bleedin’ chicken bone. Bruno here learnt early on what I think of those who beg’ – and here Rusty brought down his boot on the dog’s paw, provoking a startled yelp – ‘he understands that if he acts like a dog, the
n I’ll treat him like a dog.’
On the floor, Hopper sat up and massaged his throat. Already two thick black bruises were visible below his ears.
‘Ah, nice of you to join us, Private Schwarz. I was just checkin’ with the fellers here that we’re all readin’ from the same page of the users’ manual.’ He turned to us and winked. ‘Right then. Let’s get a wiggle on, shall we? Them spuds ain’t gonna plant themselves!’
*
At first it seemed impossible. We worked for hours in the frozen soil, hardly able to scratch the surface. Although only a few months had passed since we’d last worked on the farm, nature had moved quickly to reclaim the land. The bamboo stakes and trellises we’d replaced after the chicken massacre now lay snapped and strewn across the site. The beds were choked with brown trails of stinging nettles, bramble and bindweed. The place looked like a wasteland.
As ever, we split into teams, some digging, others weeding, or else gathering and bagging dead leaves to make mulch. It was backbreaking work. My fingers quickly grew numb as I sought out the thin brown roots of the invading species, while behind me the others grunted over picks and shovels. As the morning nudged towards the afternoon, however, I began to lose myself in the familiar rhythm of labour. Despite the cold, I found I began to work up a sweat, my muscles burning pleasantly after so many months of inactivity. Pausing to remove my fleece, I saw we were gradually beginning to make progress. The beds were turned and raked, making space for neat rows of onions, garlic and broad beans. A trench was dug for runner beans, while the trellises were fixed with twine. It was taking shape.
The hours rolled by, but still we didn’t stop. There was something at stake now, something that went far beyond obeying Rusty’s demands. I sensed the old spark of competition, as silently we speeded up, seeking to out-dig and out-weed each other. It had been so long since we’d worked like this, side by side, that I’d forgotten how satisfying it could be. With each root I pulled I felt our recent troubles recede further into the distance. After a while I was almost able to ignore the fact that Rusty was standing unnecessarily close to me, the rifle in his hand. I could pretend that he wasn’t watching my every move, ready to shoot me down if I so much as thought of making a run for it.
