Armwrestling the Dead

by Andrew McEwan

defenceless on the arid plains of 19th Century Africa.

  It was a fantasy she enacted. To date there had been neither cannibals or lions. But she was followed. The ghosts of unborn children dogged her heels, clinging to her like the breeze.

  Roman Johnson told herself stories, taking a leading role in these pieces of theatre...

  i

  Water carved the desert, sluicing rain that pummelled at low undulating dunes, eroding the gently sculpted waves of an ocean of sand. The clouds were black, the rain dark. The sky delivered a constant straight-line barrage, fast strings of diamonds. The noise was tremendous, collected by her umbrella which threatened to tear. Her arms ached with the effort of holding it upright, pushing it against the weight of the elements, feet sinking as the ground flowed, water streaming round her ankles as she walked.

  It was early afternoon and the desert stretched to the horizon, awash with fluid. The rain ate down like acid through a corpse, circulating in pools and gouging channels between chimney breasts and flagpoles, roof slates visible as the sand washed away. Falling in torrents, the rain was relentless, swirling about crenellations, battering the weather-vane on the church apse, drumming off dormer windows, beating their fragile panes. Houses appeared amid the tumult, gaunt, sagging dwellings, lopsided walls overhanging as yet invisible streets, the covering of sand packed into vestibule niches, loosened by the rain and carried in suspension along thoroughfares, spuming and dancing between ladies’ hats and gentlemen’s canes. The pricked ears of horses, the painted bodies of carts and carriages were revealed, their compliment of goods and citizens visible as the tide of sand receded. Eye-glasses and beards, features animated and static were uncovered, poised for business as the desert ocean drained from the town that had lain buried.

  And, like Mary Poppins, Johnson descended, moving with the clouds above the rooftops, slowly finding herself, umbrella folded, rain stopped, in the middle of a busy road.

  Life resumed apace. Johnson skipped to the pavement, turned to view the scene, the trader’s cries and the snorting horses evocative. Pungent, too.

  The sun shone warmly. The air was mellow. The gurgle of accelerated liquid echoed from copious drains.

  Cabbage leaves and sawdust.

  A cart rumbled by, laden with ironmongery, drawn by two donkeys, two boys riding in the rear.

  One raised his cap, a thick fringe of blond hair escaping as he poked his companion in the ribs, that boy’s potato nose exaggerated by the narrowness of his skull, his left eye puffy as if recently blackened. His shirt was tugged and the pair leapt to the cobbles, bowing and scraping, full of obvious mischief.

  Soapy Farfriender stuck his fingers under his braces and drummed his chest before declaring, ‘Well, if it ain’t Pilot Johnson, scourge of the airways, bane of the rivers, traveller from afar, pilgrim and privateer!’

  Know Hog laughed into a handkerchief.

  Johnson was speechless.

  Soapy took her arm. ‘It’s good to see you again. Have you missed us? No? Never mind. I’m sure you’re hungry after your trip. Knox, take the lady’s bag - we’re to escort her to the Hotel Boreal on Fork Street.’

  They walked toward evening, gas lamps lit and premises shuttered, a troop of gaudy soldiers passing at a canter, uniforms ablaze with tassels and saddles dripping polish.

  ‘Ah,’ lamented Soapy, ‘the hussars, the proud hussars. If only I was taller.’

  ‘There’s war,’ offered Knox, trailing. ‘Everyone’s in a rush to enlist. Everyone but us.’

  Soapy frowned. ‘Not a war, exactly,’ he amended; ‘more a regional conflict.’

  The hotel was three storeys and unpainted, its brown facade brick to the first level, wattle thereafter, mud and sticks interlaced with proud oak beams. Inside was dim and whitewashed, illuminated by candles. There was the stale odour of beer. Two old men smoked clay pipes. A younger man, dark skinned, sat alone at a table, a handsome gentleman in high boots and tight britches, a velvet cape thrown over the back of an adjacent chair, black hair falling in ringlets.

  Soapy pulled on her arm. He coaxed her ear closer, hooking his finger. ‘That’s captain Marshall Kay,’ he whispered, guiding Johnson toward the stairs. ‘His ship, the Gillyflower, has been seized by the port. They say he may attempt to run the blockade.’

  Captain? Johnson paused on the second step. But the pilot was exhausted. She followed the issue to a squalid room with a bed, undressed to the red-faced chagrin of Knox Hog, and finally, delightfully slept.

  She dreamed of Schilling, his powerful muscles and cue-ball head. In her dream Hubert was freshly shaved, boarding the economy flyer.

  They took their seats.

  ‘Strange,’ Schilling opined. ‘I don’t mean to be rude, but I took you for a man...from a distance.’

  Johnson taxied.

  The air replaced the ground and soon they were over ocean.

  ‘Got any cigarettes?’ queried the pilot, not wishing to smoke her own.

  ‘No - I don’t...’

  ‘Pity.’

  The trooper yawned and fidgeted. ‘I’m not much good at sitting still,’ he said.

  Johnson nodded. ‘Take a walk,’ she suggested. ‘I’ll switch to auto-pilot and join you out on the wing.’

  He shrugged ‘Okay...’ Unstrapped, scratched, wandered aft, heaved open the portside hatch.

  The wind howled warmly. Johnson set the controls, knotted the string, and followed her passenger out onto the dented aerofoil.

  ‘How’s the view?’

  ‘Great, you can see all the way to the mine, even count the spokes in the colliery wheels.’

  Johnson shaded her eyes.

  Suddenly the sky was rent, a shadow passing across her face as she looked up. The roof was fractured. But it wasn’t snow blocking the sun; the shape too large, too singular for that. It was a huge black spaceship, its belly a mass of complex angles, the multiform hull of a yawbus gorged on its own noise, screeching like a bat, harmonics unhumanly high as it crashed through the strangled atmosphere.

  The turbulence crushed them.

  The stub of a candle offered the only light, a creamy ball of insubstance placed centrally on a crude wooden table under which Knox and Soapy were looped like cats. Empty Johnson recalled the knot she’d tied in her auto-pilot string. At the door came a knock. She smelled food, rose clutching a sheet to answer.

  ‘That’ll be Faith,’ murmured Knox.

  A fat woman with red cheeks.

  Johnson stepped aside and Faith trundled into the dank room trailing steam.

  ‘Breakfast,’ Knox specified.

  Faith set a try down and scuttled out.

  Soapy banged his head on the underside of the table. He rubbed his injured pate on crawling forth, stood and examined the candle. ‘About an hour till dawn,’ he said, seating his cap. ‘Better get dressed before the captain arrives.’

  Johnson was still groggy. ‘Huh?’

  ‘Marshall Kay,’ he explained, mouth full, gesturing with a mug. ‘You remember him.’

  ‘I do?’

  ‘Sure. I pointed him out last night.’

  ‘Face like a charred pomegranate,’ said Knox Hog.

  Johnson let fall the sheet and searched for her dress. Gone, in its place knee-length trousers, boots and undershirt, a buttoned jacket. She gazed at these clothes, made sure of the contents of the string-pull, urinated in what appeared to be a gravy boat, accepted a chicken wing, some wine, thought briefly of Schilling and finished dressing just as a second knock, louder, rattled the door in its frame.

  Soapy answered. The captain grinned like a whale. His boots were caked in mud, his velvet cape pinned across his chest with a copper brooch. He walked straight toward the pilot and, noses almost touching, peered in her eyes like a madman.

  ‘This is real,’ he said. ‘I hope you appreciate that.’

  But she wasn’t convinced of this reality’s integrity.

  ‘I mustn�
��t take all the credit, however,’ said Marshall Key. ‘The rule of chaos applies. For detail one must employ anarchy. War is a trusted method, if inexact. Anarchy the result of fallacious power - and we all know power corrupts. So...the reality you perceive,’ hands outstretched, ‘is a consequence of ignorant desire. Creation is a negative thing, it seems, growing more complex - like a lie - the lower one’s mental horizon dips.’

  ‘Bollocks,’ Johnson rejoined.

  Marshall Kay ceased grinning. ‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘Your mind is an icecube, my dear.’

  She sat on the bed. ‘Meaning?’

  He glanced at Knox and Soapy, hurriedly eating. ‘It might be used to promote stability.’

  ‘For whom?’

  ‘You’re not convinced?’ He looked abashed.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she confessed, examining her nails. ‘Perhaps you ought to go out and come back in again.’

  She didn’t want her mind used for anything, thank-you.

  But the captain remained.

  She hefted her bag and opened it, removed the gun and lodged its cold blunt muzzle against her forehead.

  ‘Shoot yourself?’ he remarked. ‘Interesting. What do you suppose that will achieve? Not that you care about anything, eh? The universe you inhabit is entirely your own. There are few entrances and no exits. It must be very lonely...’

  She pulled the trigger.

  What was she thinking?

  Her eyes stung. Snatches of conversation leaked back into her skull. She recalled the town, the salt of ocean air transmuted from desert, one or the other of her manufacture. Maybe both.

  Dead, her physicality discontinued. She