The Whole Story and Other Stories

by Ali Smith

  No.

  What are you then, a gamekeeper then? she said. She was quite sobery, she thought maybe it was for foxes or birds or rats or whatever wasn’t allowed in there that he had the two guns, one on each arm, and they were broken. The word you call them when theyre like broken open, like at the place you load them they are open, broken, on his arm, hanging over his arms one each, good thing to remember, that, different thing broken can mean.

  No.

  Is it to shoot animals for fun, like?

  No.

  Is it to shoot at seagulls?

  No.

  Is it to shoot the trespassers, like druggies or that? are you a gatekeeper?

  No.

  Well if it’s no to shoot anybody or anytheen that’s liveen and there’s notheen else in the place except dead people who aren’t needeen shot, then what the fuck are you goeen to shoot at? she says. He looked kind of old, doesn’t look like the kind that would be in a gang. He didn’t look like the police or anytheen. He put one of the guns down and his foot on it.

  Don’t swear, he says.

  He clicked the other together and put it up to his eye and shot it and the great noise it made and when it hit the angel the puff of stone off it, she went to look and it had hit it in the hand where the hand was held kind of draped over the heart, and the hand all cracked like its fingers dented by the pellets.

  Fuckeen brilliant! she says, wiping the new-chip dust of the stone on her sweatshirt.

  Come away from there, the man said whispereen, he waved her with his gun over towards him. Then he put down the gun and stood on it and picked up the other gun and clunked it together and looked down it and fired it at the angel. Its whole shoulder was gone. He was waiteen listeneen for the birds to stop makeen a noise and settle in the tree tops and then when they stopped he fired the same gun again and off they went squawkeen again. The top of the head and face blown away. Then he broke his guns open and hung them on his arms and turned and went.

  Can I get a shot? she said.

  Go away home to your bed girl, he says walkeen past her, you shouldna be out this late by yourself. Your parents are heathen to be letteen you.

  She was like amazed. How do you know my parents? she called after his back.

  The man stopped. He kind of like barked. He turned himself and his guns round and came back towards her. He stopped up next to one of the statues.

  If you tell a soul you seen me, he says, God will punish you. So don’t.

  Okay, she says, she was thinkeen he can be a lame-o weirdo Godfreak if he wants. I wont tell if I can get a shot of your gun, she says.

  The man looked at her as if measuring her for clothes. He looked at his watch. Then he looked up at the sky in the trees. He kind of breathed out. Quick, he said, before the light’s back and anyone catches us.

  He clunked the gun straight. Dont touch, he said. He held it to her eye. She looked down it and couldnt see anytheen, then the man put his hand on her head and made it hold still and she saw in a glass circle in the gun’s telescope, swirling dark-light, it must have been the sky, then the trees close up, and the fence at the back by the canal then the gravestones like all wavering about. Then he took the gun back.

  Watch, the man said, and he held it to his head and shot it at the one with its hand fixed by its fingers to its chin. She went and ran and got the bit of stone off the grass. Some fingers were still stickeen out by themselves into the air off the chin, but the place there should be a hand they were attached to was empty. The hand was in bits on the grass. She brought a bit back. The man took it from her and threw it away into the bushes.

  Now, he says, that one, and even though he was a bit old lookeen for it he went round on his heel like a cowboy in a film and shot the one in the head and the other in the Bible.

  He is a minister in a church. The angels are idles. It is his job. He showed her the difference when a gun is ready and when it isn’t.

  Then the light came up properly and the man was off.

  The colour of the stone inside the broken head of the one he shot the head and shoulder off was pure white when she looked. Tonight she looked again, all its wavy hair is down its other shoulder with no head left to grow out of. The man is a pure marksman so he is. He is a crackshot. Loads are damaged or decapitated in the bit of the cemetery where the angels are. There is only one bit of the cemetery that has angels, round by the canal, there aren’t any angels anywhere else in it. It is sometheen to do with one of the religions haveen angels and one with none allowed.

  She is still wondereen how he knows her parents, that man. They are notheen to do with religion. He never answered her about it. Maybe he was haveen her on. She is wondereen, if he does know them, like does he know them both, or her mother or her father by themselves. She wonders would he, like, say to them he saw her and where she was and what time of night it was and her out and not at home or anytheen. But as long as he doesn’t tell Kimberley it will be ok. She wonders if he knows Kimberley. She is sober now. As a, what is it that is supposed to be sober? Anyway she can feel everyfuckeentheen, every thing there is in the whole universe, she can feel it all. Wee scratchy stone under her leg, tickly grass on her wrist, warm-cold off the air all round her, sad off the lights that are on in all the people’s bedrooms in the houses over the canal that she can see through the trees and the wire fence, and her finger is still really stingeen and all. She has wrapped a dock leaf round it and if she keeps holdeen it tight it will not bleed.

  It is as dark as it is goeen to get, so if that man is comeen he will be here any minute. She has the bottle that never broke – it is amazeen that it didn’t – but she isnt drunk any more, not really, and really what she was wanteen was to see if she could still hit it like when she was completely out of it because that would be really impressive. But it will still be good to see what her aim is like when she isnt out of it too. Because first she wants to know like, does she have aim. The gun was heavy-lookeen, the bigger one of them, and second is, will it be too hard for her to unbreak it, will someone need to help, or could she like do it hersel, is what she needs to know.

  The angels are raising their eyes blank and seemly to the heavens.

  The men are still carousing inside their hill of the dead.

  The seagulls are gathering on the riverbank, ready for the morning.

  Someone else is asleep in the locked concrete box, a girl-hitch-hiker with her head on her backpack maybe, or a tink they should chase, the police, never mind give him free room and board.

  The thousands of rags on the trees at the old well weigh down the branches, unmoving.

  The monster is deep in the bed of the loch, its big fin twitching, muddying the water with sediment.

  The tourists are asleep in the hotels, the guest houses and the bed-and-breakfast beds.

  The good people of the town. The bad people of the town.

  In the middle of the night, light.

  erosive

  What do you need to know about me for this story? How old I am? how much I earn a year? what kind of car I drive? Look at me now, here I am at the beginning, the middle and the end all at once, in love with someone I can’t have. The waking thought of her, sunlit and new, then the all-day hopeful lightheadedness, and behind it all, dull as a blown-out lightbulb, the fact of the word never.

  I see someone in the mirror in the hall. I look again. It is me. It is the first time I have seen myself for days and I look as if I have been sleeping in my clothes. I go into the kitchen and I see how the piled-up dishes are coated in rot. I can’t remember eating off any of them. I come through to the living room; the books are all over the floor.

  I go out into the garden and I look at the apple tree. It is a new apple tree, I planted it three years ago. It is the same height as me. In its first year it gave one apple, edible, sharp-tasting and good. In its second it gave three. This year it is covered in small coming apples; there are more than ten. But its new leaves seem to be dying. When I look closer I
see that the shoots on the branches are crowded with green and mauve aphids. The larger new leaves, the fronts of which look clear and clean, have insects packed like bricks on their undersides and the edges of several leaves have been rolled firmly in on themselves, which is killing them. When I uncurl them I find scenes of tiny grime, as if each rolled leaf holds inside it its own abandoned factory yard.

  All around its base, going up and down the trunk of the young tree, balanced at the very ends of the branches, picking at the crammed-in aphids and the sweet tight newest possibilities of leaf: ants.

  middle

  Though I can’t talk for long, my friend says, it’s near London now and the tunnels start soon.

  No, listen, I’m fine, I say. Really I am. Really good. Except that I wanted to ask you, there are these ants all over the apple tree and hundreds of greenfly on the leaves.

  Don’t put poison down, she says. You’ll ruin the apples and the ground and the tree, never mind killing the ants. It’s an ant farm. They’ll be farming the greenfly. You’ll have to ask them to leave. Be polite. Listen, I’m going into a

  Monastery? Coma? Sulk? Whichever, her voice is gone. I hang up the phone and step over the books on the floor in the living room and go back out into the garden. I go straight to the tree and I find a branch with an ant probing its end. I lift the branch to my face until the ant is so close it has gone out of focus. It is unaware of me, of everything but the end of the branch which I hold to my mouth like a tannoy microphone. Please leave, I say. This is my apple tree and you’re killing the leaves. Please tell the other ants to leave with you.

  Doing some gardening? my neighbour asks across the fence.

  What he really means and isn’t saying is: why are you at home again in the middle of the afternoon and not at your work?

  You’re home early, I say.

  Day off, he says. What about you? Not well?

  What he means is: have you been made redundant? have you been fired? am I earning more than you now? will you still be able to afford the mortgage or will you have to sell your house? and how much will it be worth, because probably mine will be worth more since I’ve done more to improve mine than you have.

  No no, I’m fine, I say. I tell him I’m on extended leave. Know anything about ants? I say.

  Ants? he says. Got to kill them. It’s the only way. Otherwise they spread all over.

  What he means is: they’d better not spread into my garden.

  He gets his mower out of his shed, mows his lawn though he only mowed it three days ago, then puts his mower away again.

  What he means is: you don’t mow your lawn enough. Look at your garden. Look at it, for God’s sake.

  He goes indoors; I hear the slam of his back door. I have been waiting by the tree now for about half an hour. The ants don’t seem to be doing anything different. They certainly don’t seem to be leaving. I get the old bike out of the shed and I cycle it to the shopping complex and all the way there I am thinking about the skin on the underside of her arm and what it would feel like, and imagining the curve and weight of her breast as it rises over my mouth, past my eyes, so that when I get to the arcade I go into the supermarket because it’s the shop I usually go into, rather than the DIY shop which is where I meant to go. I stand in the middle of the fruit and vegetable aisle and I have no idea why I’m here.

  A trainee is stacking nectarines. She looks about fifteen. Her name badge says ANGELA HERE TO HELP.

  I tell Angela about the ants. She looks at me as if she has never heard anything stranger in all her life. She looks at my clothes and at my hair. She backs away. After a few minutes a woman of about thirty comes towards me. Her badge says HELEN SELLAR SUPERVISOR.

  Can I help you? she says.

  I tell her about the ants.

  Chilli powder, she says. An ant won’t ever walk over chilli powder. They don’t like getting it on their legs.

  Thank you, I say.

  I go to the spice aisle and I buy four packets of mild chilli powder. I buy mild rather than strong because I am concerned not to hurt the ants too much. Angela and Helen Sellar watch me pay and watch me leave; they are still watching me as I unlock my bike from the window at the front of the shop.

  When I get back to the garden I set up a border round the tree with the contents of two of the packets. The ants continue up and down and under the tree across the orange of the powder as if it isn’t there, as if it’s just so much more earth.

  I go into the house and phone my father.

  I’m watching the football, he says.

  Don’t hang up, I shout.

  I call him straight back again. The phone rings for a long time.

  What? he says when he picks it up. Well, you’ve got to paint your trunk of your tree white. They don’t like white. They never cross white. Not the whole trunk, and not gloss for God’s sake or you’ll damage your tree. Emulsion. Put a ring of white around it, that’ll stop them.

  I go out to the shed again and I find an old tin of paint. I prise the lid off it with a screwdriver. I can’t find a brush so I use the screwdriver to coat three inches of white all the way round near the base of the trunk.

  I sit on the grass and wait for the paint to dry. I watch to see that no ants will get stuck in it while it’s wet.

  end

  I knock an ant off the end of a branch. I pick one off the tree and crush it. I see another running down the trunk and I kill it with my thumb. Several more ants panic on the trunk. I kill as many of them as possible. Then I stop killing them. They can kill the tree if they want. What can I do about it? Nothing.

  I go indoors and start putting books back on the shelves alphabetically.

  Later I go out into the garden again and dig round the tree. I dig right down to its roots. Even though this tree has only been here for three years its roots are very firm. I use the spade to slice through them and then with all my strength I lean backwards until I have pulled the tree out of the ground.

  beginning

  I fall in love.

  More figuratively speaking, I am walking along the road one day when out of nowhere I am struck by lightning. The lightning is a freak accident; it is not raining, or even very cloudy, it is a fine day, though the weather has been very hot in the south and cooler in the north and presumably the lightning is something to do with the two fronts meeting. When they meet it is as if someone has hit me across the back of the head with a baseball bat or plugged me into a socket whose power lights up my whole body. I am dazed but I am glowing. I am so bright beneath my clothes that I have to shield my eyes. Light is streaming out of the ends of my sleeves over my hands. I put my hands under me and sit down blinking on the kerb.

  She stops her car in the middle of the road. She leaves the door of it hanging open and comes over to where I’m sitting. She is lit, she is shining too. She looks like summer. I saw you, I saw it all, she tells me. She describes the sudden light darting out of the sky and tells me how it made direct contact with the back of my head. Sure enough, there is a burnt spot in my hair when I finger my skull and I can still smell the slight high scent of singe.

  I can tell you her hair is yellow.

  I can tell you she is around twenty-five.

  I have no idea what kind of car it is she drives.

  Days later, weeks later, possibly months, and I am in love with the sky, with the ground, with the bees cavorting in the pollen in the flowerheads. I wake up in love. I fall asleep in love. There are ants on my apple tree, killing its leaves. Let them. I love every single one of them, every single invisible DNA footprint they leave on its bark. Good luck to them. I hope their aphids thrive. I am in love with their aphids. I am in love, too, not just with my friend whom I love anyway because she is my friend, but also with my neighbour, and with Angela and Helen Sellar at the supermarket. I am in love with my grouchy father. I come in from the garden and sit in my living room surrounded by books I have heaved off the shelves because otherwise will I ever pick them up an
d open them again? I open my old Chambers Twentieth Century Dictionary randomly. Everything is meaningful. Gordian: as in Gordian knot. Hylic means corporeal. Need means want of something which one cannot do without; a state that requires relief; necessity. Spelter is impure zinc. Gleam is a small stream of light, a beam, a brightness, often used figuratively itself, i.e., a gleam of hope, a gleam of understanding.