The Light That Gets Lost (Shakespeare Today)

by Natasha Carthew

  He put his knees up to his chest and held them close. The chaplain was storming on in regards to good and evil and Trey wondered what he knew from experience and what he’d trawled up from the Bible. He looked around and saw most of the other kids shuffling and picking at themselves and he looked down at his hands and realised he was doing the same.

  He wondered about time and his watch that had been taken and he dug his thumb into the soft split of sinew and flesh where it should have been and felt his heart beat demon blood.

  He looked at the wrists of other boys and girls that sat close and nothing but scars on scars circled there. Even time had been sanctioned, another thing taken.

  ‘They’ve stolen time,’ he whispered to Lamby.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Time, they’ve taken it.’

  Lamby leant forward and put his hand to Trey’s head. ‘You feelin all right?’

  ‘Course.’

  ‘Int got one of your headaches or such?’

  ‘Shut up, just sayin. Nobody got a watch on.’

  ‘That’s cus they’ve been taken off us.’

  ‘So how we sposed to know the time?’

  ‘We int.’

  Trey waited for the chaplain to reach whatever point he was trying to make and when he climaxed some of the younger kids laughed but most of the older ones looked blankly on. He eyed the two house masters lodged either side of the tent, and he thought about the chaplain and Preacher too, and he imagined a roulette wheel spinning with their collective crimes.

  It was a known thing that the men who worked the juvenile camps had criminal records themselves. Religion had saved those men the same way it would save the kids, this was their mantra, and Trey supposed some believed it; it helped relieve the symptoms of sin. The way things were heading on the outside, sin played a bigger, better game than that of what was known as good. You did right by God and law and all and nothing returned to you except poverty. This was how Trey saw it and those who were just like him saw it; both weathered and dog-dead tired they were sick to their gums of living hand to mouth. The rich got richer in their charge for power and all the while the poor fell to the gutter, left to scratch out some replication of happy living in the subsistent village ghettos.

  This was how it was in the country and Trey supposed this was how it was in the towns and cities the land over.

  When the preaching and the propagandising were complete and all souls supposedly saved they lined up for an unremarkable loose-meat sandwich and they stood outside in the stripping wind and awaited instructions while they ate.

  The sun was a monstrous heartbeat in the sky and it pounded out its rhythm throughout the compound.

  ‘Why we waitin round?’ asked Trey. ‘Can’t we just go do what we’re sposed to do?’ Trey went to look inside his sandwich and then thought better of it.

  ‘They love to boss us just for the sake of bossin. You probs won’t be workin today anyway.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You gotta do tests,’ said Lamby. ‘They gotta test you and stuff.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Stuff.’

  ‘Stuff like what?’

  ‘I dunno. Don’t worry, it’s just profilin, work out if you’re mad, not mad etc.’

  ‘What are you?’

  ‘Me? I’m defo mad, but then they knew that before I got here. I got a record for madness goin way back.’ He started to grin and Trey edged away slightly.

  ‘He’s harmless,’ said Kay from behind. ‘Harmless enough anyway.’

  ‘I int harmless,’ Lamby protested. ‘Could go mental mad if I wanted to.’

  ‘Whatever, come on we gotta go.’ She grabbed Lamby by the arm and Trey watched them disappear into the crowd and he wished he was going with them.

  ‘Rudeboy,’ shouted McKenzie suddenly. ‘Get over here.’

  Trey looked around him and he watched the crowd disperse before kicking forward.

  ‘Looks like it’s just you and me, boy,’ he smiled. ‘Today we’re gonna have a little fun, do some iddy-biddy tests to sort the wheat from the chaff. How bout it?’

  Trey nodded.

  ‘How bout it, Rudeboy?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Yes, sir, indeed.’

  McKenzie went to the office upstairs in Tamar house where he was master and Trey followed and he sat at the table across from him. If he was going to swing the good-boy routine he had to jump through every hoop that reeled his way. Trey knew McKenzie was a tough old bastard. Men like him were always found prowling the dark corners and corridors of care homes and detention centres. They were drawn to juveniles and vulnerables through their love of inflicting fear. McKenzie was a man who was all about intimidation; he wasn’t like DB, who Trey had noticed took bribes from certain soft-centred boys, let them off the hook for his own secret delight.

  Trey wanted to show McKenzie that he wasn’t stupid and he proved this by deducing the shape and shift of the grilling and all morning he wheeled out the answers the man wanted to hear.

  Yes to the regrets and yes to learning from his mistakes and yes, yes, yes to the everything that meant he would be left alone. Those in charge thought they had him folded, a neat square boy ready to slip into the Preacher’s pocket. He signed the contract of promises and he went to the medical office that was situated at the rear of the shower block to be poked and pulled and prodded by some struck-off sunk-drunk doctor and everything about him gave green light. He was fit for physical duty, same as every dumb-ass criminal kid.

  Outside the medical room Trey took his time to return his papers to McKenzie’s office and he made his way towards the yard. An argument had broken out between two girls and he stood in the shadow of the bunkhouses to watch and he settled himself out of the wind and waited for the punches to fly with the other circling kids.

  ‘You took your time,’ said McKenzie when he finally returned to the office.

  Trey passed him the papers. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said.

  ‘Any reason? Cus breaktime don’t mean your breaktime.’

  ‘No, sir.’ Trey shrugged. ‘Sorry, sir.’ He thought to say something about the fight and then thought better of it and instead he stood in front of the master and awaited instructions.

  ‘We need to work out how clever you are, Rudeboy, see if you got a brain rattlin round that skull of yours.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Trey sat down and he rested the papers on the desktop in front of him and McKenzie sat opposite, his back turned and his boots slammed one two against the window frame.

  Trey liked the seriousness of tests and the order that played there was akin to showing off, a bit of spark that fired from him like fireworks. Dad said he was a bright spark, told him this over when he was a knee-high boy, told him to get-up and get-on no matter how hard he cried. Mum said he didn’t mean to be tough, but it was all right; Trey knew it was all for the good. Trey was the first to walk out of all the kids in the village, Dad said, the first to talk too. ‘Billy’ was his first word; that boy was on his mind right from the start. He supposed he could have made something of learning if it hadn’t been for the circumstances that put the demon into his head and the fire into his hands. It was too late now; things that had been lost in his parents’ passing were lost for good.

  Trey answered the questions and ticked the choice boxes in record time and when he had finished he allowed himself a moment of silent sitting and then he said that he was done for the impression it might make.

  Trey waited for McKenzie to turn and he watched his head list slightly and he realised he was napping. He said his name again and he looked about the poky room and at the pen in his hand and he twiddled it through his fingers and wondered how hard it would be to take one man down and he agreed that it would be easy and he said it out loud and the demon agreed.

  ‘What’s that?’ asked McKenzie, waking and turning in his seat.

  ‘Finished, sir.’ Trey got up and put the papers and the pen in front of him.

 
‘What you want, a trophy?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Well then do one, I’m busy.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ He left McKenzie’s office and wondered what was meant next and he watched the door swing closed and lock behind him and he moved into the shade to think.

  With break over the main area of the camp had emptied of all living souls and Trey could not have felt more alone. He put himself into the white-light day when the shade was sucked out of hiding and he circled the yard and passed the slaughter buildings and he kept on walking out on to the arid moor with the buzz in his head that came from a thousand thoughts and not one good.

  Away from the rattling steel dormitory buildings he found a small granite quarry in which to sit and he settled between the shards of rust-rot machinery and what wasn’t set as deathtrap and rested his head. If there was another way to thinking that didn’t involve scarper then he would have done it but there wasn’t. He had an excuse in any case, he hadn’t been given orders and Trey was used to a life of remit.

  He thought about Billy and wished him close for the chat no matter how one-sided and he thought about Mum and Dad and both were in the same place of happy. There was something in the paddling-pool circle of water at the centre of the quarry that stopped all the worry inside and he went down to the tiny make-believe shore and crouched like a giant beside it and he waited. Daydream time moved quickly and it reduced Trey down to a boy sea-sand sitting. He made a boat from some dry-leaf drifting and splinter-wood needled within and he set it sail with a reckoning that Dad would have approved of its design.

  Dad was all about the boats and fishing. Nothing much had mattered more than the rig and a smooth ocean ride. He could catch anything. Trey had been there forever times when all the boats came into the harbour with their catch, Billy too. Billy was a natural when it came to fishing, Dad said he had it in him. Maybe his brother still did, Trey hoped so.

  Trey sailed his boat out into the mucky puddle ocean and he blew it shore to shore with the imaginary chat going off in his head. Once more he was that boy before he had got lost in the shoot of things. Fifteen nearly sixteen and playing in the dust and the dirt and a puddle.

  He wondered what Mum and Dad would think of him now; a good boy, bad boy, strange boy. Getting into trouble like always as a kid, he never meant things to go wrong but just about everything he said or did turned up rotten, always taking the rap for all the stupid sillies.

  He thought about love and the guidance that came tied to it and tried to bury the thoughts that settled towards his brother. If he closed his eyes he could still picture him in the nursing home that one beat-stop time he was allowed to visit, a rootless young man with his short life spent shuffling from one end of a corridor to the other. A subsiding chasm stretched between life and death. He was a dead man walking in old man slippers. Trey didn’t like the image he had of him there, he wanted him in that boat, fishing.

  The daydream could have drifted on into the dark and Trey would have waited for the moon and stars to surround him and he would have built Dad and Billy a bit-stick fire on the shore if it wasn’t for sudden voices. The hook surprise of reality’s pull had his lungs fight for air and his heart leap from his chest and he flattened to the ground and crawled to the scatter of metal junk.

  When the boom of blood left his ears he listened and he waited until what was there then wasn’t. A door scraped open and slammed shut and it took away the voices somewhere below ground until whispers and silence and gone.

  Trey stood and he climbed to the ridge of the quarry and he saw for the first time the door hidden flush in the arid land like a trap. He went to it and put his ear to listen for the men but they were long gone swallowed and he sat beside it in the hope that it might give something of itself. Another thing to think about and, when the end of activities siren went off, the discovery of the trapdoor was another thing to worry about too.

  Back in the bunkhouse he lay on his bed with the stretch of hunger in his gut and he filtered what information he had about the camp into jars of possibility.

  ‘Dint see you at supper,’ said Lamby. ‘Sunday supper’s the best. You do somethin bad to keep you back?’

  Trey sighed and told him to be quiet, he was thinking.

  ‘Thinkin what?’

  ‘Stuff.’

  ‘What stuff?’

  ‘Personal stuff. Shut it, would you?’

  ‘Charmin.’

  ‘Whatever.’

  ‘Why dint you go to supper?’

  ‘I was busy.’

  ‘Busy how?’

  Trey sat up and stared at him and Lamby sat down quickly.

  ‘Don’t hit me, I was just askin. I saved you a couple of roasties.’

  ‘I int gonna hit you.’ Trey took the potatoes and thanked him.

  ‘Good spuds, int they?’

  Trey nodded and thanked him over.

  ‘So how’d the tests go?’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘No skeletons in your mental closet?’

  ‘Only the ones I know bout.’

  ‘What bout the ones you don’t know bout?’

  ‘Them int worth nothin.’

  ‘You sure? Cus I got things I don’t know bout in my mental closet that are off the scale.’

  ‘How you know if you don’t know?’

  ‘Cus I bin told, stupo. You ask some dumbos, don’t you?’

  Trey shook his head. The crazy boy really was crazy after all.

  ‘Is that why you in here?’ he asked. ‘Cus you’re mental?’

  Lamby shrugged. ‘Spose, it’s not good to pick over the bones too closely. Some say you should analyse everythin, but you shouldn’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘In case you don’t like what you find, then …’

  Trey pushed back against the wall and he had to admit the crazy boy talked more sense than most.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Once you picked over your life and all the rights and wrongs, what you got left?’

  ‘Is that a question?’

  ‘Tis.’

  Trey shrugged. ‘I dunno.’

  ‘A big pile of bones and you don’t know what goes where and you don’t know up from down.’ He moved across to sit on Trey’s bed and Trey surprised himself by letting him.

  ‘What I’m sayin is, you gotta remember that you got a whole lot of crap in a pot noosed round your neck, but you don’t wanna look into that pot too closely.’

  ‘Cus you know you int gonna like what you see?’

  ‘There is that and somethin else.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It stinks.’

  They both laughed and Trey wanted to say something friendly to the boy but a lifetime of resistance had him tongue-tied.

  ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘I spose I should say sorry bout last night.’ He fumbled his fingers in a panic to find something to chew.

  ‘What bout last night?’

  ‘Leavin you to the dogs. Wilder and that.’

  ‘Wilder? I int bothered bout him. I got bigger burgers to flip than Wilder.’

  Trey looked at Lamby and he wondered if this was swagger talk. ‘But he smacked you, dint he?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah, spose he did, but he can’t hurt me inside, can he? He can try but it int happenin.’

  The siren rang out the ten-minute warning and Trey told Lamby to get the hell off his bunk before the light went off.

  ‘Don’t worry, I int plannin on snugglin or nothin.’

  ‘Well that’s good to hear.’ Trey pulled the sheet up around him and the two boys settled down to the sound of the other boys’ banter for sanctuary’s sake.

  ‘And, Trey?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Apology accepted.’

  ‘It weren’t an apology, I was just sayin.’

  ‘Well thank you for just sayin.’

  Trey turned into the wall and he sailed himself to sleep with the good and the bad and a million disconcerting questions. No matter what the
boy said about Wilder something was bubbling beneath.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Early Monday morning and Trey stood beneath the tepid splash of water and he closed his eyes to shut out the horror that was the sight of naked boys. He knew McKenzie and DB were standing at the shower-block door and it unnerved him to think of their slow eyes slipping and sliding over them like they were prey.

  He turned his back to the door and was quick with the soap and rinse and he ran to his towel with the demon dying inside.

  In the changing rooms he stood in the corner to towel dry and he ignored Wilder’s torrent of questions until his jeans were firmly in place.

  ‘So you play sports or no?’ the boy asked.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Touchy lad, int you? Just bein friendly.’

  Trey put on his vest and stretched it a little to make it fit. ‘Spose I lifted weights a bit in young offenders.’

  ‘You had a gym?’

  ‘Just in the yard.’ He sat on a bench to put on his socks and trainers and Wilder sat next to him.

  ‘You miss the place?’

  Trey wondered what the boy was aiming at. ‘Not really, I weren’t there for long, the usual two-week assessment to see where to put me, if I should stay there or be sent here.’

  ‘And they decided to send you here, must be a real hard nut. What you do?’

  ‘Arson. I don’t mind. Get more freedom here with the open air and that.’

  Wilder laughed. ‘Is that how they sold it you?’

  ‘What you mean?’

  ‘Bet they told you this place was a half-step to leadin a normal life.’

  Trey ignored him and stood up.

  ‘They did, dint they? That’s the problem with you newbies, so damn gullible.’

  ‘I int no newbie to all of this, I know how the system works.’

  ‘Not this one, mate. I got inside information, you’ll see. They rollin these hard-ass places out all over the country. Camps are cheaper’n young offenders. Government thinks it’s got it all worked out sellin em on to private companies.’

  Trey shrugged. He just wanted to get away.