Poachers Road

by John Brady

  The light from the sky had changed, to a glary, milky luminescence.That was the house over there in the corner of his vision, and that policeman was there, the one that Speckbauer had sent here.

  He was standing a few metres back, toward the house, looking at the ground, away from him.

  “Get this fat idiot off me,” Felix said.

  The man turned to him. His chest was heaving, and he was saying something between breaths, quietly. A frown, something like incredulity or fear twisted his whole face. He began to take slow steps toward Felix, lifting his arm as he drew closer. The man stopped and said something louder, but then made a small staggering lurch off sideways. A sharp crack sounded, and echoed across the yard. He made one swerving step, and seemed about to shout as he fell.There was a dull scraping thud. Felix realized that the policeman hadn’t made any effort to check his fall.

  He drew in a breath to yell out. He had to get up, to move away.

  He got one knee working and levered more of Fuchs’ weight. He pushed again, and got his forearm into it. He had no strength.

  Fuchs flopped more as he pushed, and even seemed to roll back each time. His palms felt slimy grit on the cement under him as he tried to get his other shoulder free. Fuchs had knocked himself out, that was it.

  With both hands free, Felix took two tries to get a roll going.

  Fuchs’ weight began to budge.

  Up on his elbows now, Felix saw red on his clothes, and sprays of red like freckles on Fuch’s arms. Gebhart was lying down closer to the shed. He was not moving. Something else was: a knee waving slowly side to side. Speckbauer’s man? And now he was turning on his side, groaning louder, and pushing himself up on one elbow.

  A man called Felix’s name now, and before he could turn around toward the house to see where the voice was coming from, the man’s face flushed red and he seemed to bounce, and the noise of a gunshot echoed across the yard and into the hills.

  It was still echoing faintly in the distance when Felix heard footsteps crossing the yard now, slowly, and talking. There was a metallic scrape and a loud click, as metal was pushed against metal.

  Part of Felix’s mind understood what the sound meant.

  Someone called his name again, in between his own shouts and Felix kicking free of Fuchs at last. The man with the rifle was breathing heavily and slowly, and in between breaths his voice was barely above a murmur in a slow, considered, disdainful tone that Felix recognized.

  He began to hear words he could understand. He wondered if the man was dressed in his grandfather’s clothes, and had a mask so exact as the slight stoop and the voice, even the dialect.

  “Opa?”

  “Bleib ruhig, kid. Quiet. I took care of him. Have you been shot?”

  “I don’t think so. I’m going to be sick, I think, or something.”

  There was a movement from where Gebhart lay. Felix saw a leg move, and watched Gebhart curl up slightly. He did not want to look down at Fuchs. He let his eyes move around the yard. There was a vague ripple to everything he looked at now. How small it seemed now, where it had seemed so huge when he had been a kid.

  Someone was asking if he could get up. His grandfather’s voice.

  “I don’t know,” Felix said, or thought he said.

  “The other one,” his grandfather said. “The other tschuschen?”

  “No, Opa. He came with me, he’s a Gendarme”

  Something made the air quiver. Felix had a moment before his throat filled, and then he was doubled up with the spasms. The vomit burned and scraped as it burst from his throat.

  Through swimming eyes he saw his grandfather lean down, stooped, over Gebhart.The spasms came slower, and he was able to call out Gebhart’s name. He saw his grandfather’s head turn his way before another spasm tore at him, and left him exhausted. He ignored the grit grinding into his elbow and got on all fours. He was wet, but he refused to look down as he began to scuttle slowly toward Gebhart.

  “Opa,” he said. “Is he okay?”

  “He’s saying something.”

  His grandfather had to pause to get his breath now. “I think he’s been shot.”

  “Gebi?” Felix called out. “I’m here, I’m coming.”

  He pushed off with his hands. Rising, his leg flashed a pain that almost blinded him, and he stopped, wavering. He worked out of his jacket and threw it in front of him. Everything was rippling and folding around him now. He saw his grandfather shuffling across the yard.

  “An ambulance, Opa. The police.”

  He let himself slowly down onto one knee. He saw that the red stain had spread and was finding its own way along the cement toward him.

  “Can you hear me, Gebi?”

  The reply in a calm voice that ended in a sharp intake of breath.

  “Too well.”

  Gebhart’s jean jacket was wet too.

  “You’re hurt. We’re going to have an ambulance in here so fast . . .”

  A short breath ended in a hiss. Then Gebhart’s clenched eyes opened.

  “What a mess,” he said in voice so normal that it took Felix aback. “What a stupid, dumb mess we’re in, gell?”

  “They’ll be here any minute,” said Felix.

  Gebhart’s eyes strained now.

  “Are there more of those guys? Are they gone?”

  “They’re gone. I’m okay, I think. That guy was coming over.

  My opa got him.”

  Gebhart’s eyes seemed to lose their focus.

  “He’s phoning, Gebi, right now. They’ll pull out all the stops.”

  He pulled up Gebhart’s shirt tail and saw a darker spot amongst the wash of blood above his trouser belt. He pushed the sleeve of his jacket onto the wound.

  “Gebi I have to get you over. I have to get a towel on it.”

  “What,” said Gebhart.

  Felix’s hand was wet immediately as he reached around. He pushed the sleeve hard into the wettest part. Gebhart grunted, and sighed. Then he spoke in that same clear voice.

  “My wife is going to be pissed.”

  “She can take it out on me, Gebi. I swear. We’re going to get you to hospital. You can watch her beat me up there, okay?”

  Gebhart frowned. His eyes regained their focus.

  “That Speckbauer, one of his people?”

  “No.”

  Gebhart winced and squeezed out a word that Felix didn’t understand.

  “That bastard,” Gebhart whispered then. “Look what he’s done. He screwed you around, and now”

  He clenched his eyes tight. When he opened them again they stayed wide, and fastened on Felix’s.

  “Who is that?”

  “That’s my opa. He’s yelling at the police, I think.”

  Gebhart started to say something but he made a soft groan, and held his breath and closed his eyes.

  Felix held the jacket tighter under Gebhart’s back. He watched his chest expand and contract. His own head felt tight now, and the sourness in his mouth seemed to leak out and take over all about him. The light pulsed above the farmhouse, and he closed his eyes a second to stop it. There were footsteps in the yard again.

  “They’re coming,” said his grandfather. “They thought I was joking.”

  Felix wanted to tell his grandfather to watch how he carried the hunting rifle. He saw the agitation in the face, something he couldn’t remember seeing before.

  He felt, more than heard, Gebi murmur under him. He looked down, and saw that the eyes were half open.

  “Gebi? I’m here. Help’s going to be here any minute.You hear me?”

  Gebhart made a small, slow nod. Felix laid his other hand on Gebhart’s ribcage and waited for each gentle rise and fall.

  His grandfather held out a towel. Felix looked into his face, and saw something beyond the agitation and confusion. His grandfather shook his head once, then again, and looked away.

  “I don’t know,” he heard him mutter, but he didn’t look away from the jacket he was drawing out.
Gebhart made a sigh, and said something under his breath. Felix grabbed the towel and quickly swapped it for his jacket under Gebhart.

  “Talk, Gebi,” he said. “I want to hear your stories. More stories, now. Okay?”

  Gebhart opened one eye but didn’t look at Felix.

  “Oh Christ,” he whispered, and grimaced, and closed his eye again.

  Panic seized Felix, and the yawning space around him pulsed and quivered again.

  “You listen then,” he said, louder than he had intended. It was his own voice, his mind said, but it sounded like someone else’s.

  The bile at the back of his throat hurt, and the breeze pressed his wet shirt against his skin, chilling him.

  “I’m going to talk. Are you listening? I’m going to tell you what we’re going to do when this is fixed. You know that stübe out near the Woods, the heurigen place . . . ?”

  He paused to hear any word from Gebhart, but he was beginning to shiver.

  “I’m paying, Gebi,” he went on. “There’s going to be everything. On me.”

  His grandfather was on one knee know, and his face had fallen.

  He looked ancient, and his eyes rested on the reddening towel in Felix’s hand. He was mumbling, and for a moment Felix thought he was praying.

  “Opa, phone them back, the Gendarmerie. Tell them the helicopter, a mountain rescue one. The road is blocked.”

  His grandfather had difficulty getting up. He hesitated before heading for the farmhouse. He looked down at Felix.

  “You,” he whispered and shook his head. “You and that father of yours.”

  FORTY-ONE

  THE JULY NIGHT BEFORE FELIX WAS TO ATTEND THE Sonderkommission at Strassgangerstrasse, he slept deeply: until 2 a.m. That was when he sat up, half in sleep and half awake, with a groan. Giuliana was off the pillow almost immediately.

  “What’s wrong?”

  He was sure she wasn’t awake when she had spoken.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “Go back to sleep. It’s fine.”

  He had already pivoted over to the side of the bed, and had his feet on the floor. He had woken up in the middle of the running dream. Like all the other times, he was instantly awake and ready to keep running. He looked at the rectangle of yellowed light cast up from the streetlights outside. Though the windows were open to cool the apartment after the heat of the day, the room still felt stuffy.

  He couldn’t hear any traffic. He concentrated on his breathing, and felt around his ribs to the left side. Then he tried one deep breath.

  There was pressure on the ribs, but it didn’t hurt. Slowly he raised both arms. There had not been any real jabs of pain for weeks now, but the stiffness was staying longer than he’d expected.

  The glow from the window had turned her skin to bronze. He gazed at her breasts resting in shadows, and then at her navel. The planet, they called it, for no good reason. Maybe it had something to do with rings of Saturn, or something she’d said when they had started out together and she had been self-conscious about her full figure.

  “Have you got pain?”

  Her eyes were closed.

  “No. Really. Back to sleep.”

  He lay still and listened to her breathing. He had stopped being paranoid about every ache or feeling of tiredness, or even a wormy stomach. Concussion had different ways to show its effects, they kept telling him at the follow-up scans he had each Wednesday. So yet again they had detected no abnormalities, he reported to Giuliana. Except for what they had done those afternoons and nights of the week he had at home.

  It seemed an age ago. Often he thought of the strange sex they’d had that night he’d gotten home from the hospital, with tensor bandages across his chest. Giuliana hadn’t figured it out either, she admitted, and refused to talk about it. Pagan love, they’d agreed to call it. She was the goddess astride him, demanding. It was as if she were trying to cure him of something, to draw out poison, to exorcise something. The week was almost compensation enough for their missed holiday.

  He counted back the weeks and days. He still found himself doing that even when he was at work, even when Schroek was saying something to him, or when he and Gebi’s temp, a good-natured veteran named Fischbach, were on a patrol. Maybe it was the brain trying to fill in gaps by itself. But still he got that woolly feeling when he tried to remember details from the farmyard. He put it down to the concussion.There was no need for fancy theories of the unconscious, yet anyway. Even Schroek had understood that Felix wasn’t holding out on him. He had stopped asking him even casual questions about it.

  Try as he might, the simple fact was that he could not remember everything. There was no point in feeling guilty, or frustrated about it, that neurologist told him. He had only to do his best with the investigation, to try to answer the million questions they’d thrown at him. But understand that this is what the brain did to protect itself. And be glad you have one that still works.

  She murmured something and shifted her head on the pillow.

  He raised his head, looked over at her. Then he reached across and put his arm around her waist, and drew her to him. Her scent began to soak into his head. He let his hand along her thigh. Her skin seemed suddenly hot.

  “This is you getting well,” she muttered, and drew in a breath.

  “Is it?”

  “Medicine,” he said. “Yes.”

  “What woke you?”

  He stopped stroking. It wasn’t impatience he’d heard, he told himself; it was concern.

  “The usual,” he said.

  “The running one?”

  He nodded. His hands seemed to have their own ideas. He felt them work over her hips.

  “But nothing gets any clearer.There’s always talk, or words, but I don’t understand them.”

  He heard her yawn. He focused on his hands now, and traced her hip bone.

  “How long do you think before . . . you know . . . ”

  It was what he’d hoped she wouldn’t say.

  Did she mean “the talk” she had postponed? The evenings at Gebhart’s?

  He thought about Gebhart reading the travel brochures he had his daughter gather for him. Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt. Soon then this would stop, as it had to, this sitting in Gebhart’s garden reading magazines together, and interrupting their long silences with a word from Gebhart about some foolishness in a furniture plan he was studying, or the quality of Opels these days, or something the doctor had said recently about one kidney being plenty.

  Gebhart’s take on things had not changed: It could have been a hell of a lot worse. Right after he’d gone to see him, Gebhart had been able to make some dry crack about things. Twenty-four years of normal, too normal, and now he got his 10 minutes of excitement and fame. Gebhart had not even known about it at the time, he admitted.

  He pretended to feel a little cheated not to have witnessed all the fuss with the helicopter and the swarm of paramedics and police.

  “How long?” he said. “As long as it takes, I suppose.”

  Her rested his hand, and waited for sleep, hers or his.

  After several minutes, she raised her head from the pillow.

  “Is that your heart?”

  “Yes,” he said. He felt her hand move up his leg.

  “I see,” she said, in a sleepy voice, and her hand moved over him now. “You have ideas, don’t you.”

  Later he listened as her breathing became whistley. She put her hand on the pillow under her cheek, and after clearing a strand of her hair away from her mouth, her breathing became almost inaudible. He no longer expected to sleep. It was useless trying.

  Thoughts continued to roll through his mind, like those slow rollers he’d seen on that beach in Spain. Gebhart’s wife had glasses just like the daughter’s. She sat forward without apparent effort in the chair next to her husband’s bed at the hospital. On first meeting her, her eyes had seemed huge, even walleyed. It must have been the glasses.

  She had known him right away the first time his vi
sit coincided with hers. She had been there ahead of him, and sat waiting in the corridor outside for a nurse to do some procedure. It had been awkward. He had begun to believe that her steady gaze was proof of some special powers those big eyes of hers held. He felt he had to explain, to say how sorry he was. She had nodded slowly. She’d kept her gaze on the goings-on down at a nursing station.

  “So wie so,” was all she said that first time.

  He didn’t know whether it was sarcasm, or that she did not know what to say, where to begin. A doctor came along then and she began to question him about a shunt. A thing with trains, Felix thought, and realized that he should not be there, then. He heard her return his quiet goodbye, but felt her eyes on him as walked down the hallway.

  But Gebhart must have gotten wind of it, and a couple of days later Felix’s evening visit coincided with hers.

  “It looks good for me,” Gebhart said. “They put fish blood in me too so I’ll never feel the cold again. And I can pee like a drunkard. What can’t they do these days?”

  After a pause that gave Felix a moment to see that this effort at light-heartedness had only raised a sardonic expression on Frau Gebhart’s face, Gebhart eyed him.

  “But you, you look worse. How is that possible?”

  Felix tried to make light of it. The cracked rib and the concussion were nothing really, he tried to persuade Gebhart, but yes, he did feel achy. Gebhart did not make any jokes about how Fuchs’ huge size had kept Felix alive, as well as flattened him. Nor did he ask about Dravnic, the man who had found his way to the farm that day. Felix supposed that Schroek told Gebhart all the news and the gossip, as it was the same newly energized C.O. Schroek who had daily tidbits for Felix also.

  Speckbauer was apparently pushing paper in Graz, his field ‘excursions’ curtailed until the inquiry came up with its findings.

  Schroek had also heard that Speckbauer had offered to resign.

  Dravnic had even turned up on warrants from the European Court in The Hague. He had lived in Germany for nearly a decade before the civil war. It was not clear yet how Fuchs had first made contact with Dravnic’s people. Peter Kimmel had indeed known a Dario Dravnic in years gone by, but that was as far as he went with that.