The Light That Gets Lost (Shakespeare Today)

by Natasha Carthew

  Mum, Dad, Billy and himself the day before the shooting, a happy family nothing family. For eight years he had waited for this moment to arrive. He was doing this for them.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Outside in the clearing Trey joined the other kids and each one took the miserly offering of thin-skin meat and bread sandwich. He sat cross-legged in the drying dust dirt and tried to keep his distance from the irritating Lamby and he listened in on the other boys’ conversations and smiled at their jokes and he wished he had a pack of cigarettes to share to ease his new-boy pain.

  The boys in Tavy house were all same-as in background to Trey. Poor white trash with stories all in a jumble the same. Some had criminal records and some were just plain criminal. Each one sat bolted with fear and front, trying hard not to reveal the vulnerability inside. Trey noticed this in each boy and he noticed it in himself, every boy that was apart from one, the teasing boy from earlier, the boy they called Wilder.

  Wilder had a mouth like winter, spiteful and spitting and taut with opinion. He had something to say about everything and Trey thought he might just bust with the pressure of words in his head and on his tongue and all in all he was bullish and Trey didn’t like him and neither did his demon.

  ‘So what you got to say for yourself, Rudeboy?’ The boy spat out his words through gums thick with meat. ‘Say somethin funny, somethin rude.’

  Trey took his time to chew on the tasteless twang burger and he kept his eyes peeled all ways to assess his surroundings. No matter what he thought about Wilder, it was obvious he was held in some kind of high regarding light by the others and it wasn’t his stature or opinion that held them captivated, but something else. Something Trey couldn’t work out but needed to understand in order to get the better of the boy.

  ‘You not talkin to your little friend here no more? Cus I think you two make a great double act. Should be in the circus, couple of squirts like you.’

  The other boys rustled up a half-hearted laugh between them and Trey laughed too because a truce was an easier route to settling in. He told himself he wasn’t here for trouble with the other kids and he told the demon in case he’d forgotten to remember the same.

  ‘You’re hilarious,’ he said at last and his voice sounded funny, not used to conversation.

  Wilder nodded and he leant back on his hands and stretched his feet out towards Trey’s face. ‘So he does talk. How bout that, boys. The Rudeboy has a voice.’

  ‘Tremain.’ He cleared his throat. ‘My name’s Tremain.’

  Wilder shook his hand like the man he thought he should be, tough and powerful and the leader of things.

  ‘You just as well get used to your new name cus it int likely we’ll remember the other one.

  Old McKenzie still has it in him for a top nickname, no matter how much of an ass he might be.’

  Trey shrugged. ‘You got one?’ he asked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘A nickname.’

  Wilder shook his head. ‘He wouldn’t dare, knows who I am well enough, knows how things work on the outside.’

  They passed around a non-brand bottle of cola and some boys sucked and sighed with the pretence that it was something stronger.

  ‘My dad’s rich as hell,’ Wilder continued. ‘Owns all sorts of businesses.’

  The boy looked at Trey and smiled and a tiny shard of something other quick-flashed in his eyes and Trey wondered if this father thing was something he might keep tooled away for later, a bit of ammo that might come in handy.

  ‘Anyway, this is Anders,’ continued Wilder. ‘Anders, pass him the bottle.’

  Trey took up the bottle and passed it over to Lamby to avoid the beef and bread backwash and he asked Wilder what work he did in camp.

  ‘Anythin I want.’

  ‘Whatever takes his fancy,’ added Anders.

  ‘But right now, well, I think I’ll go back to slaughterin for the fun. I’ve done butcherin, borin, logistics, borin so it was back to slaughter or stinky farm work.’

  ‘I’m on slaughterin too,’ said Anders. ‘Worst is farmin.’

  Trey looked down Anders’ fat legs splayed flat against the earth and the tumble of belly in his lap and he asked what he’d worked at before slaughter.

  ‘Kitchen.’ The boy grinned. ‘And I was really good at it, but someone had me moved.’

  ‘He ate all the food,’ laughed Wilder.

  Trey wondered what else he might ask to keep the boys from questioning him and he thought about the job of butcher and asked if it was the same as slaughter work.

  ‘Course it is,’ answered Anders.

  ‘No it int,’ said Wilder. ‘Not rightly anyway. Slaughterin is your basic killin and butcherin is the chop-shop. There int much fun in chop-shop.’

  Trey nodded and he thought about the fun that was gleaned from killing and his heart hurt thinking it.

  When the bell rang to indicate silent prayer Trey was glad of the calm and he closed his eyes to keep from looking at the boot heel digging into his side.

  ‘Here we go,’ said Wilder. ‘Chaplain’s on his high horse again; love thy neighbour and all that, weirdo.’

  They sat in a puddle of contemplation and sweat and when the chaplain told them they were allowed to mingle Trey said he needed to stretch his legs so he could be on his own. There was one thing worse than being with people and that was being with people you didn’t know. He liked to get the measure of them, sus them, work out what they wanted to hear and have them hear it to keep from opening up about himself.

  He walked a little way out from the clearing and found the path he’d taken earlier, changing route near the ridge precipice towards a scratch of nothing land which brought him through a circle of stunted trees that stabbed the dead clay earth like a violent afterthought.

  He touched the crippled trunks as he walked and his mind kicked over the day’s events with his thoughts stumbling over the faces of the men he had seen. He wished he’d got the chance to catch sight of all the masters. Beyond the trees he stopped to view the land below and he thought about the bully boys and for the first time he realised what the summer would really be like.

  He scrutinised the huge gorged tracks that cut into the difficult land and they snaked and tailed all ways and stretched as far as the eye could see. Out on the north horizon where earlier the mist had shrouded he could see metal barns the size of airport hangars melt and jiggle in the heat. He looked for shade and found a line of shadow spearing from one of the bigger trees and sat on the damp earth.

  Trey knew there would be no time for idling; this was a get-in get-out type of place. Sniff out his parents’ killer and do the one-trick job the demon had planned for him.

  ‘You int meant to leave the clearin.’

  Trey jumped suddenly when he saw Kay appear through the trees and he tucked the bad thoughts that rattled him neatly back inside.

  ‘I int meant to leave either, difference is I don’t care and you should.’ She lit a cigarette and sat down beside him. ‘Mad, init? The constant prayin and all them rules, even these stupid same-as uniforms.’

  Trey smiled because her T-shirt had the sleeves cut from it and had faded to the colour of silver sand.

  ‘Yours int too bad,’ he noted.

  ‘You get used to washin em most days, soon fade out.’

  Trey nodded. ‘I spose.’

  They sat and watched the drift of occasional cloud bump merry as they scooped the horizon and their shadows were like ghost cars rallying mindless across the divide.

  ‘Spose you think it’s not so bad here,’ she said and she kept her eyes on the horizon. ‘Give it a few days and you won’t think much more’n escapin.’

  Trey rubbed his trainers into the stubborn ground and said at least the view was better than four concrete walls.

  ‘We got plenty of em too, corrugated iron ones if you int noticed.’

  ‘Buildins and bunkers is everywhere. I’ve seen the bunkhouses but what’s in em others?’
r />   ‘That building next to the dorms is the activity hut and em bigger ones behind is the slaughterhouse and furnace and butchery, and the farmhouse at the entrance to camp is where the masters and the chaplain live. Everything else is storage just cus.’ She looked at Trey to check that he was keeping up.

  ‘You see that tiny barn on the horizon?’ she asked.

  Trey squinted to see where she was pointing.

  ‘That’s the farm stables.’ She took a long pull of her cigarette and passed it to him. As she continued to look out on the vista Trey took a moment to memorise her profile. It was akin to watching the serenity of an incoming tide settle to rock and stone.

  ‘So what you in for?’ She turned to catch him watching and disappointment was a brief whip-slap flash across her face.

  Trey shook his head and his hand went to the heat pain at the back of his neck. ‘Seems like forever ago, more even.’

  ‘Was it?’

  ‘Spose not.’ He took a long pull of the cigarette.

  ‘So what then?’

  He didn’t like to go over the list of whats and whens that had got him into camp. It had been a needs-must thing that had to be done. It should have been a secret and with anyone else it might have, but there was something about Kay that was set right and he knew from this one day of meeting that he could trust her.

  ‘It was a stupid thing,’ he said. ‘A mistake type thing, I spose.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘It was a crazy thing. I wish it never happened,’ he lied.

  ‘We all wish that.’

  Trey sighed, he didn’t reckon on this. ‘My foster home,’ he blurted. ‘Burnt it down to dust in the ground. That’s bout the whole of it.’

  Kay shrugged.

  ‘It’s a long story if you was wonderin.’

  ‘I int. It’s your story, yours to keep.’

  Trey wanted to tell her everything because she didn’t want to know anything. He wanted to tell the puzzling girl about his parents and his brother and all the events that led to this new chapter in his life, shuffling and stumbling out on a precipice. The truth was he didn’t know what he was doing in all the ways of knowing something.

  He had thought things through enough to commit to a deed so bad he’d get banged up somewhere way worse than any young offenders; the place where he would get revenge, he’d got that far in his thinking.

  ‘The balance is whether you killed anyone or no.’

  ‘No. Well, did kill two horses but that was cus part of the stables caught fire. I dint mean to do that bit.’

  ‘That’s bad,’ she said and she clicked her boot heels one two on the ground.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I bloody love horses.’

  ‘Sorry.’ He passed back the cigarette.

  They sat in silence and Trey thought up stuff to say that was more than bubble words and he asked her if they ever got to do other things.

  ‘What you mean?’

  ‘Do stuff besides workin.’

  Kay shook her head. ‘Course not, but farmin int so bad.’ She started to talk about the horses that were kept in the stables over at the farm block and Trey leant against the tree to listen.

  He didn’t know much about girls because of his shyness, but there was something about this girl that was different. She was everything other girls weren’t, tough-stitched and confident, and she acted like she didn’t have the time for much. Trey liked that. He didn’t have time for much either.

  ‘I get to spend most evenins with em.’ She shrugged. ‘It’s extra work but it beats all else.’

  Trey watched the last of the cloud shadows disperse and the sun head someplace other than the north sky they were looking at. He imagined Kay riding fast across the plain and her long black hair trailing like tyre smoke and he smiled because that image suited her and sat right with him.

  ‘So you want to do farm work?’ she asked.

  ‘Hope it don’t get changed cus I was talkin. Don’t like the thought of slaughterin and butcherin and whatever else.’

  ‘McKenzie would have swapped you by now if he was gonna do it,’ said Kay. ‘Don’t beat yourself up. Most things in this dump is bout logistics, packin, storin and movin and not much else.’

  ‘What’s logistics?’

  ‘Loadin meat into trucks and drivin A to B, you never get to leave the compound, just up to the boundary fence and back. I got to do it for a while when the camp first opened before they started to make all the rules.’

  ‘How long you bin here?’

  ‘Long enough.’

  ‘How long?’

  When Kay ignored him Trey asked what got moved around.

  ‘Animals, dead ones, I said that already.’

  ‘I knew I’d be workin but dint think that was all.’

  ‘Why? Dint they say you’d learn a trade or somethin?’

  Trey nodded. ‘Spose.’

  ‘And who’s gonna argue the toss if we’re learnin or workin or whatever? Long as we’re locked up, society can pretend we don’t exist, int that how it goes?’

  Trey shrugged and said the regime had got worse on the outside. ‘Don’t get no warnins or nothin now if you do one thing wrong, not since the unrest last winter and all that. You gotta be off the streets by six and if you int you get slammed by the army.’ He wanted to say how it had worked in his favour, but to any normal person this would have sounded crazy. Nobody wanted to be locked up except for him.

  ‘Least we get a day off tomorrow,’ he said.

  Kay got up and brushed the damp dust from her legs. ‘What you mean?’

  ‘Sunday, init?’

  ‘Dint I just say we don’t get no time off?’

  Trey got up and he hated the fact that she was a good foot taller than him. ‘Int Sunday meant for restin?’ he asked.

  Kay shook her head. ‘You remember them free schools backalong, before they started closin?’

  ‘Dunno, weren’t much for school myself.’

  ‘Well anyway, this is like them. Religion or no don’t mean a thing, this place is all bout business.’ The siren sounded and she headed down the incline towards camp and Trey followed.

  ‘Where you bin?’ shouted Lamby when he saw Trey return to the yard. ‘I bin lookin all over.’

  ‘Went for a walk, what’s it to you?’

  ‘You int meant to go off walkin.’

  ‘Who said?’

  ‘It’s rules. You’ll get into more trouble.’

  ‘I int in trouble.’ Trey walked towards the bunkhouse and Lamby followed.

  ‘You are. Got a nicko already, int you? Only troublemakers get given nickos.’

  ‘Whatever, you got a nickname.’

  ‘That’s different.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Cus I came with mine. Mum and Dad give it me.’

  ‘You’re strange, you know that?’

  Lamby grinned suddenly, as though Trey’s words were what he wanted to hear.

  ‘You boys comin in or do you want to finish your chatty mothers’ meetin first?’ DB stood outside Tavy house and when the boys approached he kept to the door frame so they pushed past.

  ‘Comin, sir,’ said Lamby.

  Trey followed him into the room that had not yet tipped heat from its bowels and he stood with the bristle of sweat about him and looked at his bed by the door.

  ‘That’s my bed,’ he said to Anders. ‘Picked it earlier, put my name down and my clothes and everythin.’

  ‘Tough titty,’ said the boy. ‘Bin mine for forever.’

  ‘Where’s your name then?’ asked Trey.

  ‘Don’t need to put my name cus everyone knows.’

  ‘Never mind,’ grinned Wilder from the bunk beside him. ‘We’re all brothers together, int we?’

  Trey looked down at the reclining boy with his smugness shrink-wrapped and snug around him.

  ‘Where’s my clothes?’ he asked.

  Anders shrugged and looked across at Wilder for affirmation. ‘Dunno, look
about.’ He smiled.

  ‘They’re here,’ shouted Lamby. ‘Good-oh, you’re next to me.’

  Trey sighed and he went to his bed with all boys watching, waiting for a fight to break out.

  ‘At home I got a double bed, double bed in my own bedroom,’ said Lamby.

  Trey ignored him.

  ‘Huge bedroom, kitted out with flat-screen TV and everythin, all the game consoles you could think of and all the top games.’

  Trey sat down and told Lamby to shut up. He had a headache building and it beat three ways from heat, exertion and stifling fury.

  DB ushered the last of the boys into the room and he ordered them to stand at the end of their beds and some boys sniggered and some boys took their time to settle but Trey was learning fast and he stood like a fool in a room full of fools the same.

  ‘It’s that time of year again, boys, so if you haven’t already I suggest you fill in your forms, medical and next of kin and blah, not that it matters or anythin’s changed but it’s protocol so do it.’

  Trey looked down at Lamby’s clipboard at the bottom of his bed. Somebody had written ‘Retard’ where it asked for medical details and ‘King Kong’ for his next of kin.

  ‘Is everythin clear?’ said DB and he looked at Trey.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Trey. His voice trembled with anger and sounded like fear.

  ‘Do I make myself clear?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ shouted the other boys.

  ‘Good. Evenin activities are at six tonight cus of the barbecue and all the rest, but usually dinner and prayers is at six and activities seven onwards. You got ten to take a dump or whatever, any questions?’

  ‘When’s dinner?’ asked Lamby and he put up his hand and asked the question again.

  ‘You got worms, boy? You’ve just eaten.’

  ‘No, sir, just today, cus of the new boy. Int we only had two meals?’

  ‘God help us.’ DB laughed and he turned and left the room.

  ‘I do cards club,’ said Lamby and Trey lay on his bed and closed his eyes to ignore him.

  ‘You play?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘I can teach you poker if you want.’

  ‘No thanks.’

  ‘We do chemistry,’ shouted Anders. ‘Chemistry club is the best. We make homebrew but you dint hear it from me.’