The Light That Gets Lost (Shakespeare Today)

by Natasha Carthew

He splashed his face over and dried it on his sleeve and went outside to sit in the first shade and waited for the siren to call him to breakfast. His head still spun heavy with hurt and a billion thoughts jammed within.

  Some kids came and sat in the yard but most went on towards the tent and when he saw Kay appear through the early heat haze he waved her over.

  ‘Anyone bother bout your shiner yet?’ she asked.

  ‘Int seen anyone worth askin.’

  ‘Wilder bother you?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘You bothered him?’

  ‘Nope.’

  She stood with the sun in a halo above her head and he squinted to look up at her and it was then he noticed the teal clouds on the horizon. Their formation meant a storm was coming.

  ‘You heard anythin bout Lamby?’ he asked.

  ‘Course not.’ She sat next to him on the ground and they both had wondering and worry squashed tight between them.

  ‘Spose he’s OK. We’d hear somethin otherwise.’

  ‘I wouldn’t bet on it. Int nothin honest in this place.’ Kay stood and smacked the dirt from her jeans and said she was going to breakfast.

  In the meal tent everything was just about normal. They sat opposite to the twins and said their prayers and they ate and drank what was given.

  ‘Tastes worse than ever,’ said Trey.

  Kay nodded. ‘Maybe cus your mouth’s mashed up.’

  ‘Int that bad, I just looked.’

  ‘Tis. Swole like a bee got you.’

  Trey hung his head and kept his eyes buried in his bowl, shame was at him and it split him and exposed him fully.

  He spooned what was left on his plate into his mouth and because he knew it was swollen he felt the sting and when he saw Wilder and Anders stomp a trail through the tent something in him bit between his teeth, an agitation that itched almost out of control.

  McKenzie entered the tent and all eyes fell to the floor except Wilder and Trey wondered about his bullet balls and when the master looked at him he wondered about his own. He scraped at his bowl and listened to the closeness of sudden circling footsteps and he knew they were coming for him and he sat back and waited.

  ‘What’s this?’ McKenzie asked, the chain snaking against his hip.

  ‘Nothin, sir,’ said Trey.

  ‘Funny-lookin nothin, Rudeboy.’ He held Trey’s chin in one hand and turned him left and right. ‘Spose you fell.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ The touch of the man’s hand against his face made him stiffen with fury.

  ‘Spose you fell in a tumble.’

  Trey nodded.

  ‘You on farmin, Rudeboy?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Like it, do you?’

  ‘It’s OK, all right, I spose.’ There was no point in lying. McKenzie reckoned he had been fighting. He was going to get it either way.

  ‘Shame you had an accident, init?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Farm life int for Rudeboy after all.’ He brushed Trey’s hair from his face and Trey’s skin crawled cold with creepies.

  ‘Shame,’ the man smiled and snapped back his hand. ‘Spose I got space in the chop-shop butchery, a little corner to work for a clumsy clot like you. Can I trust you with a blade?’

  Trey nodded. ‘Yes, sir.’ He tried to smile to keep the bother at bay but his skin had gone from creepy cold to peeling hives of heat.

  ‘Good boy, get you down to butchery when the siren goes.’

  Trey kept smiling and he felt his swollen lip split and drip red and from the corner of his eye he could see Wilder laughing and he wondered why he was not the one being punished for fighting.

  ‘You’re bleedin,’ said Kay when he sat back to face her.

  ‘Can’t believe this, all I wanted was to keep my head down and my mouth shut.’

  Trey wished Kay would say patch-up words to make him feel better but knew she wasn’t that kind of girl and he looked at John and then David and they both shrugged sympathy and that was something. He got up and made his way to the butchery and he sat on the step below the hot tin building with the damp air of storm crawling close and he fantasised about the reality of having a knife in his hand. He got in line when he saw the others queue at the door and nobody spoke.

  ‘What’s your name?’ asked an older boy standing at the entrance.

  ‘Trey.’ He looked down at the boy’s supervisor badge, his name was Jack.

  ‘You ever worked in a butcher’s before?’

  ‘Course not.’

  Jack looked at him and marked him as trouble and Trey asked if he could go in.

  ‘Best you stand a while and watch the others at work.’

  Trey nodded and pushed past.

  ‘Not too long though,’ he shouted after him.

  ‘No,’ said Trey.

  ‘No what?’ The boy was behind him.

  Trey shrugged and somebody whispered ‘sir’ in his ear.

  ‘No, sir, course not, sir.’ Trey shrugged and got elbowed for his troubles.

  Inside the large, low-ceiling room Trey took a moment to cough the retch from his throat and he held his nose to pinch the smell of putrid flesh from his lungs.

  ‘It stinks in here,’ he said to Jack.

  ‘You get used to it.’

  ‘Don’t think I will.’

  ‘Course you will, it’s just meat. Now sign your name for the knife.’

  Trey did what he was told and he followed the boy to the line of woodblocks in the centre of the room to watch the other kids work the meat.

  ‘When you’re ready get on and do the same, it int hard.’

  ‘How I know?’

  The boy passed Trey the knife that was meant for paring flesh from bone and he told him it was in his interest to learn fast.

  ‘Firstly slaughter do the kill and gut,’ shouted the girl beside him, ‘then we do a basic crack in half and then you break each half into parts.’

  Trey passed the knife from hand to hand and he thumbed the blade for the ping.

  ‘Watch,’ she shouted and she slammed the cleaver she had in hand clean through the centre of the animal and she was a good ten minutes hammering the rounded blade into flesh and bone until the animal became two. ‘Easy.’ She smiled, panting.

  Trey watched her claw her fingers into the cows ribs and wrench it apart and for the second time his hand went to his mouth.

  ‘Slaughter don’t always cut out all the bits and bobs,’ the girl continued. ‘So make sure to scrape and hollow before you start cuttin em and then someone will come and hook what you done away.’

  Trey removed himself mentally from the nothing work and he put his back to the thing for the sake of obedience and several hours were lost that way despite the nausea rising, replacing anger.

  The sight of blood was in every corner of looking, every kid with their fingers caked in gore and the smear of a once was life in their hair and on their skin. Trey wondered about their casual chatter and the ease of their hands and he wanted to shout for the wrongness of it all.

  All the while his head pounded with pain from the fall and his fingers grappled and cut where the flesh allowed and it was as if the parts had lives of their own. He wondered where the meat might go and imagined the tables set pretty and the greedy gobbling mouths waiting to take life for the sake of life.

  ‘Spose this is child labour,’ he shouted to the girl. ‘Kind of anyway.’

  ‘Keeps us busy, don’t it?’ she puffed.

  ‘I can think of better things to do.’

  The girl stopped to catch her breath. ‘I used to work logistics, bloody loved workin logistics.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Got moved cus of my size. You can say it, I’m a big girl.’

  ‘What’s size got to do with it?’

  ‘All that crate liftin and runnin round, I spose.’

  ‘But you’re strong, that int fair, you should get some say in it.’

  The girl laughed. ‘Don’t let anyo
ne know you enjoy whatever work it is you’re enjoyin.’

  ‘Don’t plan on hangin round long enough to settle on enjoyin somethin.’

  Trey wondered what trade it was they were supposed to be learning apart from abetting murder and he was about to say as much when he saw McKenzie enter the building. He watched him walk the aisle with his chain coiling in his hand and he slapped the benches where the workers had slowed and Trey was quick to keep his head down. The air was thick with surplus oxygen as everyone held their breath and they waited for the master to leave but instead he stood at the door and he shouted lunch and he shouted the name of the kid who would not be going to lunch. The slowest worker of the day would be spending it in isolation with him.

  Trey breathed a sigh of relief and he returned the knife and followed the others out of the building and into the fiddling mizzle-rain and they headed towards the food tent. His feet hurt from standing longer than what he was used to and still he stood and he took the limp sandwich offered and a bottle of tepid tap water and he went back out into the drear to look for Kay and the twins. He missed them and he didn’t mind admitting that he also missed Lamby; he hoped he was doing OK.

  He stuffed the sandwich and took the quickest route that led to the farm and he went to the stables and then to the cows and stood on higher ground and cupped his hand over his eyes to keep the wet from blinding until he saw Kay at work in a distant field.

  ‘Hey,’ he shouted when he got close enough to be heard.

  ‘You come to help?’ She put down the pickaxe that swung from her arms and pushed it towards him with her foot.

  ‘Nope.’ He shrugged.

  ‘So what’s up?’

  ‘Say hello, I dunno.’ He shifted his feet in the muddy suck and waited for her to speak and when she didn’t he said something about butchery being boring.

  ‘I know,’ she nodded. ‘Same old over and over, init?’

  ‘Just bout, I’m good at cuttin,’ he lied. He watched Kay for signs of interest but instead she picked up the pickaxe and continued to churn the ground over and Trey stood dangling.

  ‘You hear bout Lamby yet?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Anythin?’

  ‘If I did I’d say.’

  ‘Wish the masters would tell us somethin.’

  ‘Maybe there int nothin to tell.’

  ‘Still they should say, maybe I should go ask the chaplain.’

  Kay stopped what she was doing and Trey’s eyes traced the arch of muscle as she cradled the heavy tool in her arms and he noticed the weave of scars across her back and shoulders.

  She rolled the pick on to the ground and folded her arms. ‘If there’s things not right it int good to go meddlin.’

  Trey folded his arms the same. ‘I know that much.’

  They stood like mirrors reflecting similarities and the spark of theories bounced between them until the siren went up and lunch was over and Kay turned back to her work.

  Trey returned to the centre of camp and when the red-stained slaughter kids came into view he joined them in heading towards the butchery.

  ‘Where did you go?’ asked Jack.

  Trey shrugged and asked why it mattered.

  ‘Security is what matters.’

  ‘I got me lunch, did what I was sposed.’ He signed for the knife and looked at the boy and asked what else was wrong.

  ‘You weren’t told to go walkabout.’

  ‘I went down farm.’

  ‘You don’t work down farm no more. You’re sposed to stay with your work detail and you’re drippin mud and water all over.’

  Trey didn’t know what to say so he said nothing and he went over to the butcher’s block and when a carcass slammed his way he was ready for the slash and scoop.

  He wiped his face dry and listened to the conversation between the girl beside him and another boy.

  ‘It’s happened before,’ the girl shouted above the chopping. ‘Few times, I reckon. Remember the time that crazy lad tried to escape? Climbed the fence when the leccy went bust and then they got it back working without checkin the perimeter.’

  ‘What happened?’ asked the boy.

  ‘What you think? Poor bugger got fried, whole camp smelt of pork and you know we don’t work pig. Anyway, camp went on mental shut-down after that, stricter than strict and now here we go again.’

  ‘What you reckon’s goin on?’ asked Trey.

  The girl put down her meat cleaver, she was enjoying the attention. ‘The usual, I spose, someone done somethin they int sposed, that sort of thing.’

  Trey thought about Lamby and he wondered about the secret he was forever alluding to.

  ‘Where kids go if they need a doctor?’ he asked suddenly. ‘I mean emergency doctor, like hospital?’

  ‘Military down west, rough hole with high security by all accounts, I should know, had me baby down there last year.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘What you mean?’

  ‘The baby, what happened to it?’

  ‘How should I know? Worse fourteenth birthday I ever had, no booze no fags nothin.’

  When Jack came around with the ‘shut-up’ on his lips everyone went back to working the meat and Trey kept his thoughts to himself because of the confusion scattered there.

  When the work day was done and they were told to go to the bunkhouses Trey was glad of it. His back ached with the lifting of meat and his hands throbbed with the intricacy of working a blade.

  He stood outside the building and watched the others kick idle towards the shower block and he went some way with them until alone and he headed towards the farm to wait for Kay. He leant against the stable wall and watched the gathering storm clouds crash and clamber for attention and he knew it wouldn’t be long before the rain returned proper to split the rocks and run rivers where the dry-snap tracks once lay.

  He folded his arms in defiance and when Kay came striding over the hill he shouted for her to hurry because covert knowledge was a heavy weight to carry alone.

  ‘Can’t believe this,’ she shouted. ‘Bastards took my truck.’

  She stood beside him and lit herself a cigarette and this time it wasn’t for sharing.

  ‘What you mean?’ asked Trey.

  ‘When they took Lamby to hospital they never returned it. How am I sposed to work without a truck, I mean really.’

  Trey waited for her to smoke some for the calm and when a minute passed he told her what he’d heard in the way of rumour that somebody had said or done something they shouldn’t have.

  ‘You think Lamby’s behind it?’ She went to unlock the stable door.

  They went into the gloom and Kay pulled up a bale of hay for sitting and Trey did the same and when she finished her cigarette he asked for the butt and she gave it to him for the final pull.

  ‘The masters seem different,’ said Trey.

  ‘How?’

  ‘Stricter. This is a strange kind of camp. Strangest, I reckon.’

  Kay shrugged and said it was the only place she knew other than street living.

  ‘You reckon somethin’s goin on we int allowed to know?’

  ‘Int that always the case?’

  ‘Spose, but what if Lamby’s in trouble?’

  ‘You think he is?’

  Trey shrugged and nodded in a mix and then he said ‘yes’ he thought he was.

  ‘Maybe that’s why he got beat. Int much we can do if he’s in hospital,’ she said.

  ‘No ambulance came for him.’

  ‘That’s cus they took my damn truck.’

  Trey took out his lighter to help him think and when he flicked the flint Kay told him to put it away. Through the dim he could see she was looking at him and he was glad of the muted light because he could feel the familiar burn of embarrassment rise up in his cheeks.

  ‘So how’s you?’ she asked.

  ‘Fine,’ he lied and he shrugged and said something stupid about working.

  ‘Bout yesterday.�
�

  ‘Bout Lamby?’

  ‘Bout you stupid.’

  Trey glanced around the stables and he wondered if he could play down the thing that was too crazy to explain.

  ‘Nothin,’ he said at last. ‘Just this place, takes some gettin used to.’

  ‘Don’t lie.’

  ‘I int lyin.’

  ‘Sounds like you is, thought you liked rules and regs and all that.’

  Trey looked across at the girl with the honesty everywhere about her and he smiled because this was one person and the only person who bothered to listen.

  ‘Stuff is all,’ he said. ‘Stuff inside gets me angry, so angry it escapes whether I want it to or not.’

  He sat forward and there was a part of him that was close to speaking and spilling guts.

  ‘We all got that,’ said Kay. ‘I used to have that but it don’t do no good and does nothin but harm.’ She looked at Trey and shrugged.

  ‘I’m all right,’ he said and when the demon laughed he said it again. He finished with the finger bite and chew and looked over at Kay and he realised she had got up and was standing with the horses and the similarities between them were apparent, the need for freedom when both had feral blood. He watched her silhouette pass by the stalls and heard her whisper into their ears and he wondered what secrets she told and wished there was more telling to her than asking. If there was something about a girl worth learning then it was this girl; the girl with the mystery circling and the anger taken and put right.

  He got to his feet and went to the door when the meal siren blasted and they walked slow for thinking time despite the rain because there was no point hurrying in any case.

  They stood in the line of dripping kids and waited for the food that was rice and beans and took what was obvious as rations to the benches and sat down for prayers.

  ‘This int even warm,’ said Trey when they were given the nod to eat, ‘barely anyway.’ He looked up for the usual placing of people and he noticed Wilder had engaged the chaplain in some kind of quiet dispute.

  ‘Look,’ he said to Kay and he nodded towards them. ‘What you reckon?’

  Kay looked up and then she settled back to eating. ‘Them two don’t get on.’ She looked up at Trey. ‘When I say don’t get on, I mean Wilder don’t like the chaplain.’

  ‘Why not? He’s about the only decent one in here.’