by Cynan Jones
When eventually the water died it did so suddenly. Lost ferocity; and the roar of it ebbed. From the white hissing force, it turned at the same time rich and brittle, a smooth ribbon dropping from the torn mouth of the pipe.
And as it slowed, they heard the rattle.
A clatter coming closer. Clanging and echoing in the emptied pipe.
Then silence. Relatively.
The tap of spilled water losing urgency. The breath of the men.
A clear metallic ping as whatever travelled their way came to rest at a section junction of the pipe.
What were they to do?
The tap now, of the dripping water, tap tap, like a timer.
There were still men in the water.
The pools that formed were dark with soil and thick with leaves and debris.
They left the shrapnel in the wounds. Where the bones had slipped effortlessly from the muntjac’s meat, the iron had seared itself into the soldiers’ flesh.
Behind closed doors they felt the sharp end of Command’s reprimand for disobeying orders. They’d been ordered to retreat.
Publicly, they were given medals.
Six had died. Two drowned, and four died of their wounds.
Everyone else they saved.
It would have killed them too, the third device, had it not malfunctioned.
She talked about this as she stitched him up, her eyes filled with concentration. And, ‘You’re my first,’ she said. He had to force himself to look away from her. To look at anything but her.
Never the obvious things that caused the shell around the memory to crack. Not the cordite smell of the firing range. The cool metallic echo of the transport vehicles. Nor even the surgical cleanliness of her ward.
Just this time, on a rooftop, the wing of a bird.
For a split second the falcon had sharply gleamed; then was a dark object hurtling for a brief eternity away. And the compressed roar. The discreet detonation somewhere deep within the pipe.
A quiet force he’d felt loudly in the centre of his body.
The shrapnel winging through the sky.
When he heard the couple in the penthouse through their open window, he felt himself drop through the building. All the lives in the storeys below him.
Felt the memory, out there at the pipeline, that he hoped would blur the dream, the thoughts of her, begin to break up, then the doctor’s words blow it once more to fragments.
The deep river of the crowd marching below.
Felt suddenly the building itself would sunder.
That only he held it safe.
And he wanted to jump. To step off its edge.
Did not. Because, as now, he feared there would be no ground to hit.
Could think only of the rush of the air.
~
And the shudder, that comes into the rails, brings all this back to Branner. As they make before thunder, the pheasant call. Before that first detonation. His face, an image pitted in the reflection off the solar sleeper as he puts his hand out to the track.
The drumming of the heavy rain. Hits his hood. Hits hood. Pools beside the track in the shallows in the ground. Runs amongst the rails and clinker, bubbling into welts. Urgent ruptures in the bank.
The water bright as molten metal.
The great machines that worked along the route to cut and smelt the pipe. To re-cast the iron as rails.
To change its purpose from a structure of containment, to instruments of guidance.
How her hand tightened. His grip tensing on the scanner, grown slippery with wet.
The distraught footings; how the light had bounced that day.
‘You need to speed it up, John.’ Sergeant through the comms.
Counts his steps between them. Uses them, to help himself proceed. A mechanism of duty. Help himself go on.
Hit hood. Pit pat. Focus on the dot.
What of the train, and everything it is, if the track is ripped away?
Wet metal smell and stone.
The dryness up on that rooftop, the heat reflected as if it came up off the stones.
Those first weeks, together. Lying on the beach. ‘Join the police,’ she’d asked him. ‘Please don’t be a soldier.’
Smell of earth now. Kicked-up leaves. A plump grub displaced from the leaf litter as Branner skids down from the track. A grotesque. Visitation.
Focus, Branner, focus.
The insects hung in ghosts above the line.
Stop thinking of her face.
As if from space, the sergeant’s voice, ‘Can you make this?’ through the bubble.
Yes. He says he can.
‘Just leave it, Branner. Stay clear. It’ll be another dog.’
~
The rain hits with the rhythm of train wheels. Hits hood. Hit his hood. Pushes Branner into his brain. His scar catching faintly on the soft pile of the coat with every movement of his head.
You asked. You made this happen. By preferring she died first.
The long-downed brash at the edge of the track tangled now in new-come growth. Rain steaming on the warmer soil.
You could let the train pass. Switch off your greenlighter, become unrecognisable, and let the train defences fire.
Would you even feel the guns?
The shudder now comes to the ground, as if it were a sound, shakes Branner’s mind minutely; rattles, his mind inside its hood, clattering, the rain.
‘Take the shot,’ the sergeant orders, bluntly in the comms.
If you die first, then she can die in peace.
A great noise. Then you would be gone.
Reaching now, to try to hear. To ask her what to do.
The red dot on the darkening undergrowth in the mid-scope of his rifle, the rain a veil sheeting off his hood.
How a glow comes through the opaque pod around her bed. As if she is a source of light.
‘Branner.’ Urgent now, the sergeant’s voice.
Just switch off your greenlighter. That’s all it would take.
The air seeming to shatter ahead of the oncoming force.
Dry mouth. Possibility. Brief Armageddon of the guns.
A tensile sing come to the rails.
But. Without you she is gone.
Hit. Hood. The rain. The train. Pools gathered round him where he’s knelt to take the shot. Ten million gallons of water, two hundred miles an hour.
‘. . . seconds,’ lost in thickening noise. The bullet’s path, a dream burst into flame and char. The train some crashing wave.
The rifle calculates for distance, calculates for force.
The old scar tacks against the soft nap of his hood.
Tell me.
Tell me, Anne.
They should not be here. In this place. Deer, dog, or man.
Pull the trigger, John.
Stay living.
Keep my voice alive.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks to David Goddard of the British Dragonfly Society. Scarce Chasers generally first emerge in May, and the story had to be ready before this. There was little chance I’d find an exuvia myself. Mr Goddard went into his attic and found me a specimen.
Thanks, of course, to BBC Radio for inviting me to write these stories, to Granta for their continued belief, and to Catapult in the U.S. Thanks also to Ch and N. The way to know the future is to step towards it.
© Bernadine Jones
Cynan Jones was born in 1975 near Aberaeron, Wales, where he now lives and works. He is the author of five short novels, The Long Dry; Everything I Found on the Beach; Bird, Blood, Snow; The Dig; and Cove. He has won a Society of Authors Betty Trask Award, a Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize, the Wales Book of the Year Fiction Prize, and the BBC National Short Story Award. His short fiction has been widely published in anthologies and publications, including Granta and The New Yorker.
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