by Edward Hogan
“It never stops, does it?” I said.
“No,” he said, handing me the new postcard. A young boy on the floor of a café. For a moment I was petrified that it might be Joe Davies. But it wasn’t. This boy was much younger.
“Any clues?” I said.
“No,” Peter said. “It seems to be getting harder.”
“And now we’ve only got one day,” I said.
“I suppose we have to assume that’s the case. Look,” he said. “You’re tired. Why don’t you go home, and I’ll work on this? I owe you one, for the girl on her hen night.”
When I got back to Auntie Lizzie’s, Joe Davies had left a message for me on Facebook, a response to the skater videos I’d sent. The message was just one word:
Unbelievable.
The boy was about eight years old and wearing a bright-red T-shirt. He was drinking his apple juice on the table next to us, in a café that backed onto a small park on the outskirts of Helmstown. Peter and I were nervous, casting sly glances at him and his mother. We’d put the postcard on his table and pretended to be handing out flyers. One day wasn’t much time, and we’d cut it fine.
“It’s probably the apple juice that attracts the wasp,” Peter whispered, tightening his rolled-up newspaper. Peter had spent ages zooming in on my postcard and had eventually noticed a swelling on the boy’s neck. Using a medical textbook, he’d identified the swelling as a massive reaction to a wasp sting. Anaphylactic shock. I never would have discovered it.
After saving his first recipient, Peter had started reading books on philosophy. He had one on the table now. Knowledge and Reality: Essays in Honor of Alvin Plantinga. He kept going on about all the possible futures, which was a nice change from before, when he thought there was just one gloomy future.
The boy was sullen and irritable. “What’s this rubbish?” he said, picking up the postcard. He was one of those Helmstown kids who looks like he has a personal stylist. If his trousers were too short, it was because they were meant to be like that.
“Eat your sandwich, Leo,” his mother said.
“I don’t want it,” he said.
“Come on, love. It’s serrano ham, your favorite.”
He tutted.
“Why can’t we just drag him out of here now?” I said. “I mean, theoretically, any little change we make will stop the wasp from stinging him, won’t it? Even if we knock his sandwich over or ask him to move chairs . . .”
“Not necessarily,” Peter said, opening his philosophy book. “If we accept that there are infinite possible futures, we don’t know in how many of those futures the wasp stings the boy. If we call the future that the postcard predicts X —”
“Peter.”
“What?”
“If you see the wasp, hit it.”
There was a song on the café radio with a guitar line full of buzzes, and Peter and I got jittery. Fortunately we saw the wasp fly in through the window and land on the table by Leo’s sandwich.
Peter stepped across to the table and brought the rolled-up newspaper down. Leo’s mother flinched in shock, and Leo cried out. The wasp was only wounded and made its angry way toward the boy. I swooped in and smashed the very heavy hardback of Knowledge and Reality down on the insect. I lifted up the book and swept the crushed body off the table. “Nasty little things,” I said.
“Thank you,” said Leo’s mother eventually. “Leo’s allergic to wasps, aren’t you, love?”
Leo’s face was thunder. “No need to broadcast it!” he said.
Peter smiled at him and then turned to me. “You couldn’t save the wasp?” he said quietly.
Peter binned the insect, and we walked out of the café. When we had got far enough away, we started running and shouting with triumph. “We did it! We did it!” Peter said.
“We’re saving the world!” I said.
Peter stopped suddenly and looked off into the distance, thinking. I stood beside him. We were both breathing hard, and that was the loudest sound, with the shouting of kids in the distance. I put my head on his shoulder. He stiffened, as though I was making him uncomfortable, and I raised my head quickly, looking away.
We walked back through the park. Plenty of little kids were enjoying the hot weather, and Peter and I tried not to see the danger in the girls climbing trees, or the boys trying to fish a tennis ball out of the pond, or the homeless guy drinking too much white cider, or the woman crossing the busy T-junction.
Near the swings, we saw Leo with a group of friends. “It’s an amazing feeling, isn’t it?” I said.
“What?” Peter said.
“That boy. Leo. If it wasn’t for us, he wouldn’t be playing out here in the sun. He’d be on his way to the hospital.”
“Hmm,” Peter said.
“It gives you hope, doesn’t it?” I said as we got nearer to the group of kids. “It gives you the feeling that you could really do something in this world.”
It became clear that Leo and his friends were in a circle around a large boy who wore a baggy T-shirt over his big belly.
“Show us your boobs, fatty,” one of the boys said.
“Yeah, come on, you fat pig,” said Leo.
I looked into the eyes of the large boy. The pain there told me this was not his first time in the middle of a circle. He looked desperate. I was outraged. I’m not a fan of bullying at the best of times, and now I felt betrayed by the boy we’d saved.
“Hey!” I said, grabbing Leo and pulling him aside. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“None of your business,” he said.
“Yes, it bloody is,” I said. “You leave that boy alone.”
“You better leave me alone. If you don’t, I’ll call my mum, who’s a personal assistant for a politician, and you’ll be in a whole world of trouble.”
“Don’t threaten me, you little —”
I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Peter, dragging me away. The large boy had managed to escape and was running for the playground.
“Let’s leave it now, shall we?” said Peter, nodding at a group of parents who had come into view. We walked away, although I cast a look back at Leo. “I’ll be watching you,” I said to him.
“Witch,” he said.
When we got back to the beach hut, Peter was shaking his head. “What?” I said, taking my sketch pad and pencil tin out of my rucksack.
“You see?” he said. “Consequences. You save a boy, and he goes outside and bullies another kid. Are you going to follow Leo around, saving all the poor children whose lives he ruins?”
I sighed. “Look, Leo might be a nasty spoiled brat now, but human beings can change. They can get better.”
“All I’m saying is that when you interfere with the way things are, you set off a chain of new events. Not all of them are good.”
“Well, I reckon there’ll be more good results than bad.”
“I’m not so sure.”
“Peter. I’ve got something to tell you.” I paused. “I met Joseph.”
I was expecting another outburst, but he was so controlled in that moment. I thought I’d got away with it.
But then he took my tin and he started snapping my Berol Venus pencils as he spoke. “You. Do. Not. Think. Do you? You do not listen.”
“I’m trying to help,” I said, trying to hold it together while the pencil pieces fell to the floor.
“You’re trying to ruin my life,” he said. Snap. Snap. Snap.
“Don’t be such a drama queen, Peter.”
“Oh, I’m being dramatic, am I? Worrying about my only son? Point one: I’ve not been working on saving recipients for long enough to be sure I can do it every time. We don’t know the consequences of what we’re doing. Point two: The rules — in case you hadn’t noticed — keep changing. Point three: Your drawing is not good enough yet. Mine is, but yours isn’t. You could draw him and the image might be too rough to work out where he is. Have you considered that?”
He dropped the last of the broken penc
ils to the floor. There was a slight smell of cedar in the air. Smoky and rich. “I think I am good enough,” I said quietly.
“Great!” he said. “That’s just great. I admire your confidence. Let’s test it out on the only person in the world that matters to me.”
I was hurt by that.
“Well, you don’t matter to him,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“He doesn’t even know you.”
Peter stood up, breathing heavily. Particles of dust drifted from his fingers. My heart thumped in the silence.
“He’s a bit like you,” I said.
“I don’t want to know about . . . Peter trailed off, because he did want to know. Of course he did.
“He’s clever. He’s got goodness in him,” I said.
Peter rubbed his face. “Must get that from his mother.”
“No. Not just his mother. He gets it from you, too.”
“Well, like you say, he’s never even met me,” Peter said.
“And if he did, his life would be better,” I said.
“What’s wrong with his life?” Peter said.
“Nothing much. But it would be better with you in it. I know you don’t believe that, but trust me — it’s true.”
“Look, just because you don’t know your dad, Frances, doesn’t mean he’s a good person.”
“I’m not talking about my dad. I’m talking about you. You’d be good for him, not just because you’re his dad but because of who you are.”
“Oh, come on. I’m a —”
“No!” I said. “You’re a good man. You’re someone who wants to do the right thing. And you care about people. You might not bloody show it much, but you do.”
Peter shook his head.
“Anyway, he’s coming to Helmstown on Saturday,” I said.
“Jesus, Frances.”
“He’s coming to watch the skaters. About three p.m.”
“It’s too soon. There’s absolutely no way I’m going to be there. And if you’ve got any sense at all, you’ll stay away, too.”
“I can’t let him down,” I said.
That sentence, and everything it might mean, tumbled around the hut. Peter walked out, leaving a cloud of dust and ten broken pencils behind him.
What was I doing? Why would I go through so much for this man? At the time, I didn’t really have a chance to reflect on what I was feeling for Peter. What did I know about love? Most of the crushes I’d had on boys at school had more to do with fitting in. They were just friendships, really — perfectly nice, but nothing like this. This was physical, real. It was like weather: fierce, changeable, and I couldn’t do a thing about it. I spent most of my time with Peter talking about how we had the power to control what we did and how we felt. But I was completely unable to resist this force of attraction to him. I didn’t know what it was, but I knew I couldn’t turn it off.
And I knew he didn’t feel it about me. There was nothing I could do about that, either.
I roped Max into coming with me to meet Joe, and we waited for him in town on a rare bright day. With the sea looming in the background, Joe looked even younger as he came toward us, holding his skateboard in front of his chest like a shield.
“Hi, Joe,” I said. “This is my cousin, Max.”
“Hey,” Max said.
Joe nodded, but then spoke quietly to me. “I thought it was just going to be you,” he said.
“Max is cool. You don’t have to worry. He’s well known at the skate park.”
“Right,” Joe said. “I’m not bothered or anything. It’s just that I like to know what’s going on.”
I could tell, for all his bravado, that he was nervous, that coming to Helmstown was a big deal for him. As we walked toward the beach, I tried to make small talk and put him at ease.
“Did you get a lift here?”
“No,” he said. “I just jumped on the bus. It was easy.”
“Right,” I said.
“But my mum knows where I am,” he added quickly. I could see that was probably a lie.
“I’m not going to kidnap you,” I said with a smile.
“Well . . . you couldn’t,” he said indignantly. “Anyway, I don’t know if I’ll hang around for long, because I’ve got lots of mates in Helmstown and I should really hook up with them.”
Another lie. Max gave me a little alarmed look, as if to say, “Who is this kid, and what are we doing?”
Joe started to relax as soon as he saw the skate park. The floodlights, loaded with trainers, were the first things that came into view. The kids had chucked their old shoes up there, with the laces tied together. Knackered Vans and Adidas hung off the lights, like catkins from tree branches. I could tell that Joe was already lost to the legend of the place. Pretty soon we could see the stunt bikers looping up above the path, big and unreal against the blue screen of the sea and sky.
“Jesus,” Joe said in a hushed voice as we went down the steps to beach level.
The skate park was set back from the beach and had two quarter-pipes and a ramp in the middle with rails. Groups of kids stood at the top of the quarter-pipes, waiting, watching, laughing. There were two or three kids there who were incredibly good. A guy on a stunt bike who could go head over heels and spin the handlebars in the air. All that stuff.
Joe looked up at them with such awe that I thought he might fall over backward.
“You coming in?” Max said to Joe.
“Nah,” said Joe, trying to act nonchalant. “I think I might watch for a bit.”
Max took his board over and bumped fists with a few of the other boys, did some tricks. He looked like he knew what he was doing.
“Your cousin is amazing,” Joe said.
“Yeah,” I said.
“This whole place . . .” he said, looking out over the beach scene, the girls with knots in their T-shirts, the volleyball players in the sandpit, the day-trip drinkers, the reggae band outside the beach bar, the man making chalk drawings.
“Helmstown? Good, isn’t it?”
Another little suspicious glance broke through, but before he could ask why I was being so nice, I spoke up. “Hey, let’s go around the other side and get a better view.”
We strolled over, the rumble of wheels occasionally broken by the silence of someone leaving the ground. We stood near the man who was chalking a picture on the black tarmac. It was stunning. A blazing, fiery sun in orange and red, with a guy on a skateboard suspended in front of it. The guy on the board was left blank, so the tarmac made him look like a shadow across the sun. It was so good that for a moment I was distracted from the nagging sense that I recognized the style.
Then I looked at the artist, hunched over his work.
He was wearing a baseball cap and dark glasses.
Peter.
I turned to look at Joe, but he wasn’t there. A few not very pleasant thoughts passed through my mind until I realized he was standing behind me. He took a step toward Peter. A step toward his dad. And he stared at the chalk.
“What do you think?” I said.
Peter stopped drawing and waited for the answer.
“Awesome,” Joe whispered.
“Awesome,” I said, loud enough so that Peter could hear.
Peter took a deep breath. I could see his hand shaking, the red dust picking out the pattern of calluses on his skin. “Do you think so?” he said. He didn’t dare look up.
“Yeah,” said Joe. “The way you’ve done the thing with the figure, leaving him blank.”
I watched the rounded ends of Joe’s trainers shuffle toward the giant sun.
“Thank you,” Peter said. His voice was quivering, and it seemed like a strange scene to me: this strong man kneeling on the pavement, unable to make eye contact with a young boy. “You sound like an expert.”
“Not really,” Joe said with a shrug. “You know, I like art, but not the way they teach it at school.”
Peter smiled broadly. I wondered what he could hear in th
e boy’s voice. Whether he could hear Rowenna’s accent. “What’s your name?” Peter said.
“Joseph. My mates call me Joe.”
“Can I call you Joe?” Peter said.
“Sure,” Joe said, sounding quite pleased.
Peter placed the small piece of red chalk on the ground, next to the image. He took a while to make up his mind, to fight off his fears, but eventually he did it.
He looked up.
I could tell Peter was close to tears. His mouth was open and dry. He managed to smile, and Joe, who had no idea of the meaning of the moment, smiled back.
“What’s your name?” Joe said.
“It’s . . . it’s Paul,” Peter said.
“Cool,” Joe said.
Max came over. “All right?” he said to me. He didn’t notice Peter and instead turned to Joe. “So, like, are you going to come in or what?” he said, pointing to the skate park.
“Oh. I mean I’ve not really . . .” Joe said. I’d never seen someone want to do something so much in my life.
“You’re not going to get better standing there,” Max said. “Come on. You can meet some of the others.”
He gestured to the boys at the top of the quarter-pipe, and they raised their heads and nodded.
Joe looked at me and I shrugged.
“I guess,” said Joe. He was trying not to smile, but he was failing miserably. He took a big breath of salty air and followed Max up to the quarter-pipe, where he struggled through a couple of complicated handshakes.
I waited a few moments and then turned to Peter. He was in a heap, the breeze pulling little wisps of colored dust off the chalk. He looked at me, and for a moment I was convinced he would shatter into a thousand pieces. The world is too much for some people.
“You OK, Pete?” I asked.
“I think, for the first time in a long while, the answer to that question might be yes.”
He took his sunglasses off and looked at me. His eyes were red and swollen, but they were full of something like relief. I took a bottle of water out of my bag and gave it to him. He put it to his lips and drank.
“So,” I said, “this could be the start of something.”
“I don’t know,” Peter said.
