Brock

by Anthony McGowan

  So I found lots of cool stuff, but I didn’t find the badger sett. It didn’t matter, I told myself. I had all week.

  Twenty-four

  The next day was Tuesday. I dashed back from school as fast as I could and spent two hours looking for the sett. I searched along the next part of the wood, where it met the field.

  Nothing. Well, nothing except for nettle stings and bramble scratches all over my arms.

  When I got home, Kenny and Samit and a couple of the little kids were in the shed playing with Tina and the badger. It looked like the badger craze had cooled down a bit.

  Tina was looking much better, more her old self. Only the old Tina would have chewed your face off rather than let someone kiss her the way Kenny was doing.

  Wednesday was a copy of Tuesday.

  I was starting to worry. I’d just assumed that the sett would be somewhere near the edge of the wood. But what if it wasn’t? If it was somewhere deep in the wood, then it could take weeks and weeks to find it. Or I might never find it. But I had to. Everything depended on me finding that badger sett and giving Snuffy back to his mum.

  Up till then I hadn’t told Kenny about Brock Wood. I didn’t think there was any point in putting stuff in his head that might fall out again. And if it fell out, who knew who might pick it up again?

  But now I reckoned I needed him.

  So on Thursday I told Kenny to borrow Samit’s bike, and we cycled down the lane together.

  The trip had a bit of a funny side, as Kenny wanted to go on his own bike. So I had to ride on Samit’s, which was even smaller than the one my dad had fixed up. We must have looked like a couple of clowns.

  But it was also … I don’t know … special. We hadn’t done this sort of thing for a long time, and it felt good. It felt free. All of the bad things that were in my mind – the bad memories, the regrets, the pain – they all got blown away by the wind and by Kenny’s laughter.

  Anyway, we got there and started searching. Kenny thrashed away with a stick through the nettles and pretended he was killing demons or orcs or I don’t know what.

  With Kenny doing the hard work, I decided to try to use my brain, to think like a badger. I’d read in the badger book that they needed dry soil, so I didn’t bother looking anywhere where the ground was soggy. That helped, as a muddy stream ran through the wood, and a lot of the ground was quite damp. Then I looked for spoil, which is what they call the earth the badgers chuck out of the sett.

  After an hour we’d found nothing. Kenny had given up by then, and he was climbing trees. He was a good climber. But he was an even better faller, so I thought I’d better get him and go home. We still had one more day to search, and I didn’t really fancy carrying Kenny home with a broken leg.

  He was up in a big old tree with knotted bark and branches that began quite low down, which is why Kenny had gone up it. I looked at the leaves, and even I knew it was an oak tree.

  “Get down, Kenny,” I said. “We’ll try again tomorrow.”

  “I can see for ever up here,” Kenny shouted back. “I can see the church and the chip shop. Can we get some chips?”

  “Yes, Kenny,” I said, “but not if you stay in that bloody tree. Now get down.”

  As Kenny started to climb down I kicked at some loose grass at the base of the tree.

  Loose, dry grass.

  Something else I remembered from the book. Badgers would often clear out the bedding material from their setts. That way they got rid of a few fleas and other vermin at the same time.

  I felt my senses go into hyper-drive. I looked around for what had to be the opening of the sett. And there, in the roots of the tree, I found the hole. I don’t know how I’d missed it up till now, but I had.

  Kenny dropped down next to me, and did a forward roll. He’d seen someone do that on the telly once, a paratrooper or something, and so he always did it when he jumped.

  “I’ve found it, Kenny,” I said.

  “I knew you would,” Kenny replied. “You can do anything.”

  I don’t know what Kenny really meant by that, but it made me feel warm inside.

  “There’ll be more holes,” I said. “Help me find them.”

  We searched around and found two more openings. One was quite close, and the other was further away, under another tree.

  “Job done,” I said to Kenny as we walked back for the bikes. “On Saturday morning we’ll take Snuffy back to his mum.”

  “I bet she’ll be glad to see him,” Kenny said. When I looked at him I expected to see him grinning his grin, but he looked sad.

  Probably just sorry about losing the badger, I thought.

  Twenty-five

  My dad had a talk with me on Friday after tea, while Kenny and Samit and Tina had a last play with the badger. I told them that they shouldn’t because he had to get ready to go back to his own kind. But they didn’t listen to me, and I didn’t have the heart to stop them.

  As usual, my dad had a cup of tea to help him talk to me. In fact, he’d been drinking a lot of tea in the last few days. And not so much of the cheapo supermarket lager. Maybe we were so skint now that he couldn’t even afford that?

  “You know, Nicholas,” Dad said, “that I might have to … go away.”

  “Get sent down, Dad, you mean,” I said. “Yeah, I know.”

  “And if I am, you’ll be put into care, you and Kenny,” he said.

  I nodded.

  “Well,” my dad went on, “I’ve decided that I can’t let that happen.”

  “There’s nothing you can do about it, Dad.”

  “There is. There’s one thing I can do.”

  It only took me a second to realise what he was saying. He meant he was going to grass up Jezbo’s dad, Mick Bowen.

  “You can’t do that, Dad,” I said. “Mick’ll kill you.”

  “He won’t kill me. They’ll put him away.”

  “But what about when he gets out?”

  My dad shrugged. “Me and Mick used to be mates, you know, back when we were nippers. Back then we both thought we’d end up underground, like our dads. But then the pit closed, and there was nothing much for us. He went his way and I went mine. But he was never a … a … an evil man, Mick. Not like that son of his … anyway, all I’m saying is that I’ll do what I can to keep this family together.”

  I didn’t know what to do then. I suppose I should have hugged him or something, but we weren’t really a hugging family.

  “What’s happening with your nurse?” I said after an awkward silence.

  My dad did an embarrassed little laugh.

  “Aye, well, I’m maybe seeing her tonight in the pub. She said she’d be in there. And I said I might be as well.”

  “Have you got a shirt ironed, and some clean kecks?” I asked.

  And then my dad did a proper laugh.

  “When I need you to tell me how to look smart, then that’s the day I’ll give up for good,” he said.

  And then he stopped laughing and looked at me, and what I was wearing. It was a mix of stuff that was too small, because I’d grown out of it, and too big, because it was his old gear that I hadn’t grown into yet.

  “There’s not been a lot of cash around for new clothes, I know,” he said. “But it’s gonna change, son, for all of us.”

  “OK, Dad,” I said. Then I went out to play with Kenny and Samit, so my dad didn’t get even more embarrassed about me seeing him cry.

  Twenty-six

  “Wake up, Nicky, wake up!”

  It wasn’t that early – it was light outside – but it was still cold, and I wanted some more time in bed.

  “Go away, Kenny,” I said. “We can take Snuffy down to the wood later. There’s no mad rush.”

  “There is a mad rush,” said Kenny. He was still shaking me. “He’s not there, Nicky. And nor is
Tina. They’ve taken them. Jezbo …”

  I was up in a second. I pulled on my jeans and T-shirt as I hopped across the bedroom floor.

  Outside, the shed door had been kicked in. That was stupid. It didn’t even have a lock. It just used to get stuck, sometimes. But it was a sure sign that it was Jezbo’s work.

  “Get Dad,” I told Kenny. “Tell him to come to the wood past the Copse. It’s called Brock Wood – he might know that. Tell him to come as fast as he can.”

  “What are you gonna do?”

  But I was already on Kenny’s bike and cycling as fast as I could.

  I don’t know how I knew where they’d be, but I knew it as sure as I’d ever known anything. I threw the bike down on the lane and ran along the railway line until it hit the woods. I could have done it with my eyes closed by now. But I didn’t need to know it like the back of my hand today. I had something else to lead me there. The sound of dogs.

  I didn’t bother trying to crawl through the barbed wire fence. I just jumped it like an Olympic hurdler.

  I hoped they wouldn’t have been able to find the sett, but I suppose it’s easy with dogs. There they were, gathered round the hole at the base of the oak tree.

  There was Jezbo, of course, and Rich and Rob. And Satan, looking more evil than ever as he barked and drooled like a monster from a computer game. Last, I saw Tina. When she saw me she tried to come, but Rich had her on a tight leash, and he pulled her back with a savage jerk.

  Snuffy was on the ground just in front of the hole. There was a piece of string tied to his back leg, so tight I could see it digging in. The other end of the string was tied to a tent peg they’d driven into the earth.

  If Jezbo was surprised to see me, he didn’t show it.

  “Here he is, the poof who steals dogs.”

  “I didn’t steal that dog,” I spat back. “You left her for dead.”

  “Well,” said Rich, “she’s fine now. You looked after her nice for us. Lucky for you, otherwise I’d have to kick the shit out of you.”

  Rob laughed. Jezbo just stared me out.

  I couldn’t resist asking how they knew to come here.

  “What?” Jezbo jeered. “After a spaz and a poof on baby bikes came out here …? Did you think no one would notice?”

  “I want my badger back,” I said. I tried to hold Jezbo’s gaze, but I could feel my guts turning to jelly.

  “You can have it when it’s dead,” said Jezbo. “Him and his mam and his dad and the whole lot of ’em. They killed my Slag, and now they’re all gonna die.”

  “And how do you plan on doing that?” I asked. And then it twigged.

  I made myself laugh. “You lot really are thick, aren’t you?” I said. “You’re trying to lure them out with that badger there.” I pointed at Snuffy. “Do you really think the others are gonna come out, with your stink in the woods and that dog yelping and barking?”

  “Aye, why not?” said Rob. “They’ll come out when they get a sniff of him. We can wait. And when they come out, we’ll do ’em.”

  Even as he spoke you could see the doubt begin to show in his eyes. So Jezbo took over.

  “Dunt matter,” he said with a smirk. “If they don’t come out, then we’ll have some fun with this little ’un here. Then we’ll dig the rest out, if it takes all day.”

  “No you won’t,” I said, and I clenched my fists. That made them all laugh again.

  Jezbo stopped laughing and looked at me. All of a sudden he wasn’t like a kid at all. He was something older and darker and more coldly evil.

  “Look at where you are, poof,” he said. “Go on, look around. There’s no one here. We could do what we want to you. No one would ever know. We could kill you here. Cut you up. Feed you to the dogs.”

  And when he said it, with Rich and his psycho brother watching, I knew that they could.

  So that’s when I ran.

  At first I heard a belch of laughter. One of them yelled out “chicken” and another shouted, “Run, you poof.”

  But then Jezbo said, “Get him, don’t let him go.”

  They thought I was running because I was afraid. And they were right. I was afraid. But I wasn’t running away.

  I reached the place by the fence where I’d stashed the axe-handle. Rob was right behind me. He must have thought that I was stopping to climb through the fence. But I wasn’t. In one movement, I pulled the handle out of the ground, turned and swung it so it hit Rob just below the knees. He was off balance, and the handle was smooth and heavy and hard as iron, and he was down.

  I ran the ten metres back to the oak tree before the other two had grasped what was happening. They looked stupid with surprise when I burst back through the trees. I stood in between them and my badger and the opening of the sett.

  Somehow Tina had slipped out of her collar, and she was by my side now, snarling at the others.

  Rob came limping back, his face red with fury.

  Now the three of them stood facing me. Satan the dog was straining at the lead in Jezbo’s hand.

  “Any of you come any closer and I’ll brain you,” I said, and I waved the axe-handle in front of me. It was a good weapon. I felt a bit like one of the Knights of the Round Table, or something like that. I also felt terrified. I couldn’t fight them all. I couldn’t even have fought one of them. But that wasn’t what I was trying to do. I was playing for time.

  I thought that Rich or Rob or Jezbo would come and have a go at me, and I thought maybe I could get a couple of good hits in with the stick before they got me. But I noticed that none of them looked at me. They were all staring at the thick smooth wood in my hand. I saw that they were cowards, and that gave me a moment of hope.

  Then Jezbo unhooked the lead from Satan’s collar. He was on me in a second. I only just had time to lift up the handle so that the dog’s teeth closed around it rather than my face.

  But the weight of Satan was too much to hold, and I fell back onto the earth. I heard Tina yap and snap at Satan’s flanks, but the big dog just ignored her. His face was in my face, breathing the stink of old meat and blood over me. I made some sort of a noise – a wail or a squeal, I don’t know. It was answered by the hysterical hyena laughing of Jezbo, Rich and Rob.

  I closed my eyes and waited for the horror, for the teeth to tear at my cheeks, my nose, my mouth.

  And then, somehow, the weight of the dog was off me. I opened my eyes and saw my dad. He had hold of Satan’s collar and had lifted the dog into the air with one hand. The dog weighed as much as I did, or more, but my dad lifted him like he was a baby. He went over to Jezbo and took the lead off him. Jezbo just stood there with his mouth open. My dad fastened the lead to Satan’s collar and then tied it to the stump of a tree.

  The dog shivered and whimpered, half afraid of my dad’s strength and half strangled.

  Dad came over to me and helped me up off the ground. Then he turned to face the three lads. His face was iron. His voice was iron grating on iron.

  “You set a dog on my boy,” he said. “You were here to kill badgers. If you were men, I’d make you pay for this myself. But you’re not men, you’re boys, and you’re up to your scrawny necks in it.”

  “Shut up, you dosser,” said Jezbo, getting his voice back at last. “You’re nothing but a loser and a tramp. And you’ll do whatever my dad says, just like when you had them knock-off DVDs in your shed. You’re so thick you believed him when he said they weren’t robbed. And now you’re too chicken to grass him up, cos you know what he’ll do. And—”

  But that was as far as he got, because at that moment a massive fat figure came pushing through the bushes, puffing and panting. He was followed by a much thinner one.

  “That’s interesting,” the fat man said. “Backs up some other stuff we’ve been hearing.”

  “Snuffy! Tina! You’re OK. I’ve come to save you
!”

  The fat man was the village copper. His name was Jim Shepherd, but he was called Shep by everyone. Shep was a drunk, and a lazy sod, and he never solved any crimes that anyone could remember. But he was here now.

  The other person was, of course, Kenny, who came running up to us, not knowing who to hug. Tina jumped up into his arms and solved the dilemma.

  I looked at my dad. “What …?”

  “I went round to the station when Kenny told me what was up. Shep drove us here. Sorry it took so long.”

  “It’s all right, Dad. You got here, thanks to Kenny.” I put my arm around Kenny, and Dad hugged us both.

  Ten minutes later, me and Dad and Kenny and Tina were alone there on the edge of Brock Wood. Shep had led the others away, all now as scared and sulky as Satan.

  My dad undid the string around the badger’s leg. It turned to lick at the sore place where the string had dug in.

  “Snuffy’s looking at us,” said Kenny. “He’s saying goodbye.”

  And that is what it looked like, sort of. Then the little badger trotted towards the opening under the tree. I’m not sure, but I thought I saw a flash of black and white snout welcome him home.

  Twenty-seven

  It was six months later, at the end of summer. The past week had been dead hot, but at five in the morning it was quite chilly, and I wished I’d worn my jumper. We were crouching down a few metres away from the badger sett in Brock Wood. There was me and Kenny, of course, and my dad.

  And my dad’s girlfriend, Jenny.

  Jenny was pretty nice. She was good at calming Kenny down when he got upset. And cos she was a nurse she was brilliant when he fell out of trees and stuff and got bashed up, as he often did. And she’d given me a PS3 she’d got cheap on eBay.

  My dad had pleaded guilty to handling stolen goods, and he got away with fifty hours of community service. He was going to have to give evidence against Mick Bowen, but the police had loads of other stuff on him, so Dad’s evidence wasn’t that important. Bowen sent a message to my dad just saying “fair enough”.