A Story a Week Page 13

  ***

  About six in the evening, George lay down the shovel. The dust and soil had covered the blood, pretty much. He'd used the flat back to flatten the barn's dirt floor. Bruin was back on the stoop.

  'Done a good day's work there son,' the grizzled farmer held out the paper sack of provisions and George took it.

  'Guess I did at that,' said George.

  26. The Last Pair of Levi's

  The light glinted in the pooled water on the uneven flags of the pavement. One in three streetlamps threw out any light. More water filled the potholes in the tarmac. At this end of the development quite a few houses were unoccupied. It had stopped developing long since. The man kicked a stone into one of the puddles in the road. Further in, the urbanización became more decrepit and ragged. At the top of the triangle of roads, the last four or five houses were uninhabited. The house at the apex itself had never been lived in at all, save by rats, bats and feral cats. Or so people said in the nearby venta. The man turned his collar up and the side of his head towards the rain. Knut would soon pass the murder house for the second time.

  The venta crowd were surprised anyone had bought it. There had been gruesome tales of blood over the mantelpiece. Lights had switched on and off long after Georg had been sent to the local penitenciaría.Knut had been there when he'd handed himself over to the Guardia Civil in the venta. One last drink for the road, he'd joked. Over 16 years ago. He wouldn't be having another any time soon. Knut wondered what it was like for a German in a Spanish jail. Anyway, the young couple who'd bought the house where Georg’s wife had died could be seen arguing most nights. The living room window was close to the street. They had a working streetlamp too.

  The rain was sluicing off the hem of Knut’s coat and soaking his last pair of Levi’s. The last Timberlands had been replaced by knock-offs from Lidl’s down the road. It had been an uncomfortable walk back in new boots. They didn’t pinch so much now, although they were no longer watertight. Knut was sweeping down the left side of the triangle towards the base, where the retired Brits stretched ever decreasing pensions over ever longer-seeming months. Victor and June had sold last week after four years on the market. Two Belgians had moved in. They were still okay for a euro or two if you rang the bell on a rainy night. You had to time it right. Too early and people hadn’t had a drink to loosen their purse strings, too late and they might be afraid to answer the door. No more than once a fortnight at the same doorway was best. Knut used to sell pegs pilfered from the Chinese shops, now it was just a case of begging door-to-door. The British slammed the door in his face a lot less than they used to. Funny how some people were more generous when they had less.

  Nobody remembered Knut on the urbanisation now. No-one knew that he’d been a partner with the promoter, had sold 10 of the first 30 houses to people in his home town near Øresund. He’d felt set with a house of his own on the development. What a fool. Arne had been the last of those Danes to leave, over 10 years ago, at the height of the boom. Knut had been renting rooms for years by that time, since the 90’s bubble had burst and left him out of a job. 

  One more time round the triangle. One more time to look at his old house. Two Germans, several Spanish couples and some shifty Romanians had lived there over the years. It was empty at the moment. Knut was going to climb in the window on the back patio. Nothing was surer than it hadn’t been replaced in twenty years. It wasn’t the kind of house that people replaced the windows in. The window would still open from the outside if you had the knack.

  The chain on the gates had rusted through. He managed to prevent it creaking or squealing. The rain helped with that. He swung the near empty rucksack off his back, grabbed the only thing in it and dropped the bag to the muddy ground. The window round the back swung open and Knut’s cheap boots slipped only once on the frame as he climbed into the kitchen. In the front room a bare bulb hung from the ceiling and he almost didn’t go upstairs. It was there though. The iron chandelier that ceiling had been reinforced for, back then, when he’d done whatever Birgitta wanted.  Knut looked around their old bedroom. No bed, not even a mattress on the floor. A few crumpled newspapers in a language he couldn’t read lay on the floor. A chair was against the wall by the door. He dragged it over to the middle of the room.

  Knut looked down at the hole in the knee of his jeans. He began tying the knot in the oil-stained rope.

  27. The Golden Days Return

  Guy blew out air between his lips. Who had done that at school? Glasses with thick black rims and very red cheeks. What was his name? Definitely something non-PC, avant-la-lettre as it were. They – no, make that we, he thought – had made what's-his-name's life a misery. Childish jibes about windscreen wipers on the inside of his glasses. Didn't even make sense, when you thought about it. Wonder what he ended up doing? Pharmacist or something, wasn't that what his dad had done? Guy looked out over the water. The Med was grey aside from the off-white of the breakers. He'd been counting them for a while. Just to see. Whether the seventh wave was bigger, that was. He'd given up when he'd realised : you could tell yourself it was, or you could say you couldn't have known which wave was number one. Still, it was never the eighth.

  The waiter brought a creased menu and a saucer of olives. Guy gave half a grin in return. The man, boy really, shrugged at the Guiri out on the terrace in the miserable weather. Guiri – Guy, Guy the Guiri. It was almost worth a smile, Guy thought. The menu wasn't extensive, the names of the dishes looked interesting enough. La Paloma served imported Argentine beef. Guy came because it was a stone's throw from the sea-shore, on Pedregalejo beach's Paseo Maritimo. The boy came back, notepad and cheap biro ready.

  'Lluvia en Mayo, que cosa!' Guy said. Rain in May!

  'Mejor que en… casa,' the waiter replied, better than in…doors. Almost a joke.

  'Just coffee.' Guy tossed the menu onto the table, just missing a pool of rainwater

  The waiter clicked his heels and Guy thought about uniforms, parades and Berlin. He tapped a Ducados out of his crumpled packet. The first deep draw was always the best, that and blowing smoke out of both nostrils, like Smaug on his pile of jewels.

  Benny. That had been it. Nothing too bad at all. Benny, after Benny the Ball in Top Cat. Benny the Ball who was never, never in his life, on it. It was funny where your mind went. Hopscotching the past, picking up the pebble from wherever it fell. Benny to Berlin, wherever next? Guy glanced out to sea again, his eye caught by the lone kite-surfer over the grey water. He jerked in the wind like a marionette in the hands of a child or a drunk. Guy wondered if he was any good, how could you tell, on a day like today? Further out there was a fishing smack. Just one, rising and falling with the waves; waves well beyond the rocky perimeter of the bay.

  Guy took his wallet out, laid it on the table beside his coffee. The leather was cracked and creased, the black faded to a dark grey. It had been a gift. Wallet open, he checked the notes. Forty euros in fives. A drug dealer's float. He laid the mobile on the table beside the coffee and the wallet.

  An old man in a hat shuffled past on the boards of the Paseo Maritimo, weathered stick tap-tapping at the wood. When Guy had first come to the Costa, he couldn't believe how many of the older Spaniards still wore hats. Panamas, Trilbies, Hombergs and Fedoras: all worn by men between sixty and a hundred, smoking on street corners, eyes-slitted, unfashionable trousers flapping in the wind. Guy looked down at the old man's legs as he passed out of view, the trousers doing the wind justice and more.

  His coffee was cold. The price of taking it on the terrace in such weather. Guy drained the cup. He opened the wallet again, took out a photograph. A smiling face; short, short hair and the uniform. He laughed. The one day he'd ever looked smart in Air Force blue. The photo he tucked under the saucer, dropping the wallet beside it. Rainwater from the pool on the table top splashed onto the white border of the picture. Guy stood up. Benny, Berlin, Be Bop Deluxe. Hopscotch: but nothing is chance, not really. Walking towards the Paseo Marit
imo, he started humming: New Precision…. great song… he thought, especially the refrain at the end.

  Footnote:

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OR09AoE-ES8

  the information about this track is wrong: it's from Drastic Plastic in 1978, so I imagine it's a bootlegged live version from the US, somewhere around that time.

  28. Jimmy Blue/Stan

  This is two for the price of one; I've always thought they go together….

  Jimmy Blue

  We were so close, we could hear the squeak of his fingers on the strings. Jimmy Blue was playing jazz-lite. Caiaphas's fingers stroked the high end keys and the piano made a sound like cocktail glasses clinking. The bass-player clung to the shadows and the long neck of his only friend. These places used to be full of smoke, full of women with a cigarette cocked for a light and an eye cocked for a smart-mouth line. Even the music seemed cleaner now, somehow. Jack and I blew out a sigh at the self-same second: his fingers were tracing the rings on the low table's tired-out top. People think we all chew gum: fact is we just fidget in general. A cigarette is as much about how you hold it as how it sits between your lips. Guys trying to look tough use the prison cup: butt end between forefinger and thumb, lit end concealed by the cupped palm. Shouldn't be called that at all, tell the truth: dough-boys learned it from the Britishers in the First War. Least that's what my Grandfather told me. 'Sides, if you've been in the joint, you want your smokes on display. No point hiding them, from the bulls or from the gang-boys.

  'We stayin'?' Jack looked at the tip of his forefinger, sucked I didn't know what off of it.

  'I promised Jimmy, you know that.'

  The coin I'd been knuckle-rolling fell onto the table, the rattle giving some percussion to Jimmy's trio.

  'Guess it'll be another beer, 'at case.'

  Jack waved at the waitress. She would have looked better through the smoke too.

  On the dais, Jimmy played a tricksy suspended 4th and looked at the other two. Jimmy hit a studied rhythm and Caiaphas picked out the melody from 'Stardust'. The bass-player looked out into the half-empty club with a wry smile.

  Jack's mood was no better, 'Who listens a' this shit, anyway?'

  I guess his granddad might have, or my father come to that. Jimmy Blue might have played on some demo-version of it, in the sweet bye-and-bye. Who knew?

  Maybe I shouldn't have told Jack to go out for a smoke. Maybe I should have gone with him, but I'd promised Jimmy Blue. People think a jail-house promise isn't worth spit, but they're wrong.

  The arrangements were nice, just enough to freshen the standards up a bit, not enough to frighten the clientele. All the same, I was glad when the set finished and Jimmy Blue came over to the table. He didn't sit, just gave me the cell-mate's stare he'd given me and later Jack on our first days inside. Jack's had come a year or so after mine. He'd stared Jimmy Blue down and then beat him up. Couldn't punch him, see: a fist-fight is a danged-fool thing for a guitar player to get into. Anyways, Jimmy must have been 60 years old, even back then.

  'Kep' yo' promise, knew ya would.'

  'A promise is a promise, Jimmy Blue.'

  'Jack outside?'

  I nodded. Jimmy smiled:

  'Guess he's out there, findin' out I keep mine.'

  But he'd found out already, for Jimmy was still grinning as the patrolmen came in handguns raised, looking for whoever Jack had run into.

   

  Stan

  'Call me Stan, it's close enough.'

  He threw the line away, and I couldn't catch it, although I noticed his smile. A Cheshire Cat would have been proud of it. If I think back, that smile is all I do remember. He didn't seem unduly tall, or short, come to that. His accent fell firmly between the Pale and the promised land of the United States. I couldn't take my eyes off him, but he was as slippery as a decal; he might have had a hare-lip or a third eye, but he had the art of being unmemorable – at least as far as looks went.

  'What'll you have, Stan?' I asked.

  The smoke curled around us. Cigarette ends glowed in the half-light of the juke joint. Someone played stride piano on a beer-ringed upright. The joint had asphalt out front that was covered in pick-up trucks and the stains from Saturday night fights or fucks. I'd blown in on a eight-wheeler full of string beans out of Gospel across the state-line in Utah. The driver had dropped me like a hot potato on the outskirts of Testament, spooked at the sight of the state troopers smoking by the highway. Stan said he didn't mind if he had whatever I was having and I said I was having another so he laughed. I was still racing from the trucker's benzedrine. We took a beer each that the barkeep slid along the bartop. They stopped half-way to us, slopping suds on the polished wood, and I thought that the West wasn't like they showed in the movies.

  Stan picked up his beer, blew a few more suds off the top and his breath turned to steam, though it wasn't cold in the bar. The rollocking, roundhouse, barrelhouse piano stopped when the beefy negro fell off the piano stool and Stan flicked his eyes over to the tired instrument, then hopped off his barstool saying, 'listen, brother, to all of the best tunes.'

  I saw Blind George later that year in Harlem and it put me in mind of what Stan did with those keys that night. Stan was the Bird of the keyboard, as white as those natural notes and as black inside as the sharps and flats. He was possessed by something, the bop, the blues or the breaking hearts of all of us who were listening on a cold October night just a stone's throw into Colorado from Utah. A swell-hipped woman sat next to me at the bar and told me he was playing her life with all the no-good, never-weres and never-would-bes who'd promised her the moon and given her a dime. I tried to kiss her but it was no dice. She'd have kissed Stan if he'd been uglier than a hog, I knew that.

  When he stopped I felt punch-drunk, shocked that the beautiful chords, dischords and chaos had gone just like that. I tried to grab his jacket as he passed, but he slipped away like smoke and his laugh echoed around the bar – or in my head – long after he'd gone.

  29. The Experiment

  The clock is ticking, tocking, talking in morsels of code. There are two of us in the room listening to the timepiece measuring out the hours remaining until midnight in percussive onomatopaeia. I don't know why we chose the library, it seemed appropriate for an experiment of this nature. We wait, hoping they will come, secretly praying they will not. For proof will complicate matters, as it always does. I cannot sit and neither can she. She is wearing brown again. She says it is expected of her, where she has conducted such experiments in the past. I deferred to her greater experience, since I have only recently begun my investigations from this new and exciting angle.

  I am pleased she has agreed to come to Windlesham, although she assures me it was no imposition to travel from Raynham in Norfolk. There is a pleasing serendipity in the date. If ever an experiment of this kind might succeed it should be tonight. In any event, my circumstances would not have allowed any researches before a few days ago. There are observances to be made, wherever one finds oneself. My fellow researcher looks a little faint, I hope this will not affect our results. The clock strikes 11. If  the instructions I left behind several months ago are followed, we may expect them at the midnight hour.

  I gaze along the rows of books, many of them written by me. The Land of Mist gives me pause and  I smile; I am in territory even the good Professor would find a challenge. I can see that the lady is bored. She is drifting from the door to the french windows between the shelves. I feel restless myself of late. It is our lot, I am sure. When I stand at those same french windows myself, I see my reflection – so translucent I can see the trees of the gardens through it.

  The lady has her head on one side. There may be some music of the spheres inaudible to me, I do not know. She sighs. I make a signal and we retire to the shadows in the corner of the book-lined room. The clock will soon strike midnight.

  The door opens and they come in. Mary, Denis, his wife Nina and Jean. I see that the newspaperman has dec
ided not to come. No matter. They sit at the table, which was moved into the library last July. They look awkward, but join hands as the clock strikes twelve. Their resigned looks show that they have indeed done as I asked. I am so pleased they have continued to come on the last of every month. They ask the question. The Brown Lady and I step out of the shadows, but they do not see us.

  They repeat the question,

  'Is there anybody there?” 30. A Winter's Tale

  The cold got in the bones. Cardboard was the best, if you couldn't get a blanket. Or newspaper – if you couldn't get cardboard. Of course, none of it was any good the moment the frosts came. They came early that year, before October was out. We moved out of doorways and under bridges, or if the Community Support Officers were too enthusiastic, under the over-passes at the edges of town. And that was the pity of it. If the frosts came later, you could still be in the town centre streets when December began. It was nice to be visible: to slowly materialise before the guilty shoppers – as if only the Christmas lights illuminated us sufficiently to be seen. But that year, the year of the cold in the bones, we became like commuters: tramping from the outskirts to the centre, daily. Some believed it was worth staying long after dark, keeping faith that the drunk would be more generous than the sober. The Captain died for that particular dogma. He had been something military: at the heady top of the bipolar swings he used to shave, tell anecdotes about one or other Gulf War and sing songs about others. As the swing came back he'd become mute and, it had to be said, quite filthy. Someone took exception to a ditty from the Peninsular Wars outside Walkabout and the Captain's last battle was in a foetid alley.

  In any case, one afternoon – the sky already dark with threat and misery – I was on the pavement outside W.H. Smith's. A broken-handled saucepan sat beside me. I hadn't emptied it in the two hours I had been there, though no doubt passers-by believed I had. It must have been close to the big day. The men all looked dubious, as if not sure that what they were about to buy – or had bought – would be well-received when the wrapping came off. Women tended to look purposeful, if harassed.

  I was going to give it five more minutes, when he arrived.

  He was swarthy, the beard made him look scruffy. He looked down at me, didn't say a word. The clothes fit, but were old. There was something off about the cut. He might have been thirty or so.

  'Spare change, Mister.' I said, just in case.

  'I have nothing, I am sorry,' he replied.

  'Me neither,' I rattled the pan.

  'Perhaps you know… I need shelter, it is cold. We have come a long way.'

  'We?'

  He looked over at a woman standing under the street lamp, in front of Lloyd's Bank. She wore a head-scarf. The buttons on the man's overcoat she wore were straining mightily. The light shone behind her head, and she smiled over at me.

  'No money?' I asked.

  'No, we have nothing.'

  'There's nothing here. The Sally Bash closed last year. The council turned down Shelter's application for planning permission on the Methodist Hall…'

  'Excuse, what is Sally Bash?'

  'It's… never mind.'

  I looked up and down the street. It must have been about 6 or so. The crowds had thinned out. It was too early for the office parties and people were heading home for dinner and domesticity. I picked up the pan.

  'Come on.'

  I took them to the underpass, out by the sewage plant. They didn't even have a blanket between them. I gave them mine. I introduced them to the others with whom I shared a few square yards around the huge concrete pylon. Cass, whom I had known since she had teeth, looked at the woman and said she hadn't long. And then Mel, who hadn't spoken in the three years we'd been on the road.

  'I'm Belle,' I said. But the man didn't give his name. Just looked at his wife, brow knotted in a frown.

  When the baby came, the father was calm; possibly because Cass knew what to do. Afterwards, we found some water. Cass had some perfumed soap, why I didn't know. She washed the baby.

  'We cannot thank you enough.' The father said.

  Mel had been staring at the baby for five minutes or so. I was beginning to worry, I nudged her.

  Her eyes shone and she spoke, the word dry and crackling:

  'Gift,' she said, and she rooted in a pocket, bringing out an old broken joss-stick that she laid on the blanket beside the baby and his mother.

  The mother smiled. The father sniffed and his voice broke:

  'Thank you so much, my name is Josep.'

  I laughed, and tossed a shiny pound coin on the blanket.

  31. Nothing New Under the Sun

  Kehoe put the shovel down. Nellie hadn't protested at being put in the wheelbarrow. The nurses at the St. Lawrence had nixed the wheelchair, on account of he hadn't paid the hospital for a week or two. She sure wasn't protesting now. The wheels creaked: hadn't seen any grease for a long time. He himself hadn't had his wheels greased since the sickness had come on his wife. The consumption was supposed to be a disease for the poor folks. Well they were damn' poor now.

  He left the wheelbarrow outside the chicken coop. The silverware, Nellie's jewels and the cashbox he jammed around the wheels. He looked inside the coop, the pyrotol was in the canisters and the wires looked intact. His back hurt as he bent to roll out the rest of the wire as far as the box and plunger out front by the car. The detonation shook the Ford Model A as it pulled out of the farm.

   

  'He beat his horses, y'know.'

  That's what the old-timer told me in the Bath Township Waffle House over cold coffee. I said nothing. '

  Darndest man for machines, reckon he could dicker with jes' any thing with movin' parts.'

  I waited while he coughed something into a handkerchief.'

  'Course the dang fool couldn't farm for shit. That didn't help' m, fer sure.' 

  The man's bib and brace and plaid shirt were old, but looked clean. I guessed the prosthetic arm put paid to doing much manual work. He caught me looking.

  'Lost that back then, 7 years old. Helluvathing.' 

   

  Kehoe sat in the car, the engine idling. The town looked busy. He had passed the fire-truck on the way in .  The alarm clock would have gone off in the basement of the north wing by now. Just had to drive in. Just one last look in the trunk and then … back to school.

  The old man had finished his coffee. I made to put my notebook away. He spoke again.

  'Piles a' legs and arms, y'know? I saw Kehoe, jes' laughin' at the wheel a' the car.'

   

  Footnote:

  Bath Consolidated School, Michigan, May 18, 1927

  32. A Name is No Accident

  'Yeah?' Never give a name. Never give a number.

  'Weissman?' A dry, papery voice. Crackly, as though coming through an old, analogue land-line.

  'Weissman's.' Wait: people usually get to the point.

  'Ahh… It's difficult. Do you have an office? I'd rather….'

  'No, I'll meet you.' They'd always rather. Some things are hard to admit, over the phone.

  'Yes, yes, I see.' Perhaps he did. I let him ask the question:

  'Where?'

  'Fengy. The Prom: the Jolly Fisherman.' His answer would tell me something.

  'Um, that's Fuengirola, Paseo Maritimo, isn't it?'

  He'd get there, and he lived on the Costa del Sol.

  'Eleven,' I said. 'You can treat me to breakfast.'

  I pressed my favourite button on the mobile.

  The chalked items on the blackboard outside such places wear apostrophes like jewellery. More for decoration than meaning. They are not, as the law dictates, translated into Spanish. Outside this example the artwork was like a pub-sign. It showed a relative of Skegness's own jolly fellow, tanned instead of wind burned. The owner himself was a miserable guy, then. One of a long line of disappointed dreamers, not quite making ends meet in the Malaga sunshine. Vic it was, at that time. He said he'd been a very successfu
l sales director for an international company. Perhaps he had; he certainly knew nothing about running a bar.

  ''A croissant, Vic.' I took a seat inside. The terrace was for tourists.

  'Drink?' He was pouring himself something. It didn't look like a smoothie.

  'Carajillo.'

  Coffee and brandy was good enough for most of the locals, at that time of day: besides, I enjoyed Vic's sigh as he pondered the prospect of another battle of wills with the coffee machine. It ran almost the length of the shelf behind the bar and the noise it made prevented any conversation.

  I was early. I always find it best to see guys arrive.

  He was late. And old, a little older than the norm. Older people had 'phoned Weissman's in the past, but not often. Usually, they didn't take up the service. No tan. So new, or sensible. I knew which I would prefer it to be. After a few minutes looking round the empty bar, he realised he must be meeting me. I stood: he got close, hesitated, then held out a hand.

  New, then.

  'Will you… you know?' He looked uncomfortable – as if his garish shirt were too tight, although it surely wasn't.

  'I might, it depends.' I sat down

  'On what?' The height his eyebrows had reached suggested either horror or amazement. Or both.

  'The prospect. Your needs. A lot of things.' I lit a cigarette, offered him one. He refused.

  'You've done it before?' It had been horror.

  I shrugged. 'What is it you want?'

  'My wife, you know. She's ….'

  'Probably won't be me, then.'

  'No, no, you don't understand.' The wattles on his neck shook.

  I blew a smoke ring in his face: 'Tell me.'

  'She has… it's…' he gulped. 'There's someone else. Someone younger.'

  I laughed. Uncrossed my legs.

  'Maybe I will do it.'

  He hunted in his pocket, pulled out a sealed envelope. I put it in my bag. Looked at him.

  He was half-way out of his seat;

  'What's your name?'

  I didn't see why I couldn't give the old codger my working name:

  'Honey Trapp,' I said.

  33. Winter

  The windows were dark with rain. The dust had turned to ichorous mud on the cracked glass. Perhaps there was nothing to see in any case. There hadn't been much since the big flash somewhere over the horizon. His bones had shaken, his dentures had come out, the top-plate cracking on the bare floorboards. Still, he had plenty of soup in the cellar. He wondered who'd stored so many cans of Campbell's and against what catastrophe. The snort of laughter produced a stream of mucous. Wiping a forefinger across his upper lip, he flicked it to the wooden floor. 500 cans of cream of chicken: sufficient to survive long enough to make it seem forever. But the unknown hoarder had not been here when Balsam arrived, a day or two before the bright light.

  About two weeks before, Balsam had left the coast: after the fire in the abandoned Hotel. The rats had warned everyone, screeching at the heat of the first flames. Balsam had looked back as the Kempinski Estepona's walls crumbled into the cracked blue of the pool. He'd stuck to the old autopista, through the rusting toll-gates as far as Mijas Costa, travelling at night; sleeping during the day under overpasses or in abandoned villas. You shared with the rats, and the other nomads: Moroccans, Rumanians, Germans, Danes, a few Brits, like Balsam. Most travelled in groups, although it was no safer. The fourth night he'd spent in the company of the dead. The Moroccan family's blood was still tacky on the marble floors. No-one knew what had happened to the Spanish. They'd just gone. Not in one day, of course. It had taken one Summer, May to September. Only two years ago.  The terrorist attack on the reservoirs above Malaga had started the problem. No-one knew where they had got the biological agent. Perhaps from the Americans. The rumours were naturally wild, if not insane. The customers in Balsam's bar in Benahavis used to hint at DNA specific viri created by some mad professor in Massachusetts. That couldn't have been true, could it? Although after the first 1,000 fatalities, the Spaniards began to leave.

  And in October they sealed Andalucia off. The planes had stopped arriving in Malaga the month before; the last flight had been to Madrid. Not a Guiri on board: by that time most had given up trying to leave.

  Balsam had turned inland at Mijas Costa, thinking to head for Mijas Pueblo. Maybe it wasn't as bad away from the coast. It was worse. He'd almost walked slap into a group of teenagers. They wore as many layers as any bag-lady. They were screaming in some lingua franca, magpie picking words from each of their languages. Balsam hid behind a hillock while they finished with the two corpses. They slept beside the remains; lions after the feast. He'd circled wide around them. He was barely a mile from the centre of the pretty mountain town, when he turned back into the hills. The church was burning. People ran naked around the pyre, though it was bitterly cold.

  Eventually, Balsam had stumbled on the Cortijo. It hadn't been a working ranch. 4 stalls in the stable block and the schooling ring was tiny. Some retiree playing at being a horse-breeder. Even so, the house itself was almost intact. The roof was weather tight, although every pane of glass was cracked and crazed as though the owner had thrown stones at every single one before abandoning his property. No-one had been in the house since then, it had seemed to Balsam. There was not a stick of furniture, though Balsam had found a barley-twist chair-leg in the fire place. He'd found some blankets in a cupboard in the kitchen, of all places.

  In the days before the flash, whilst exploring the ranch-house. He'd sat down and done his accounts: reasons to go on, reasons to give up. Live or die. He'd finally decided he liked Chicken Soup, when the flash went off, and his decision didn't matter.

  34. Interview

  Finlay looked across the table at someone who might have been his own age. His skin looked smooth apart from the lines around the eyes. The peaked cap with its braid sat near the man’s left hand which was palm down, fingers spread, on the table. His other hand gripped the pistol tightly, but was resting on the scarred table top. The whiskey bottle stood between the two glasses. Finlay’s was full, but then his arms were tied behind him, and to the back of the chair.

  A fly crawled across the man’s dark cocoa skin, making the trek across the high dome of his head.  Not a blink, much less a twitch. Finlay stretched his neck, thrusting his jaw out. The man opposite him laughed.

  The gunshot was loud. Finlay flinched twice, the second time when the concrete splinter pierced his scalp. Two other soldiers had left the room hours ago. The whiskey bottle was almost empty. A trickle of moisture slid down the wall behind the bald man’s head. Two rags hanging over the window blew in the draft from the cracked panes. A tap protruded from the concrete of one wall at about the height that would have suited a sink-unit, had there been one. Finlay shifted in the wooden chair and his knees must have cracked if the popping sensation was anything to go by. A dull buzz in his ears was the perfect soundtrack to his headache.

  Later the door opened. One of the enlisted men peered into the room, nodded and gave the door a slam for luck.

  The officer smiled, pulled a notebook from a pocket. The pages riffled like cards in a sharp’s hands.  A finger landed under a word on an otherwise empty page.  The smile widened.

  ‘Señor Kafka? That is funny. Everyone reads in Havana, Mr Finlay, didn’t you know?’

  The muzzle of the revolver was pointed at Finlay’s chest.

  35. The Radio

  One. Two. Stop. One, two, three, stop. One, two, too many. Jose-Maria Garcia Alvarez de Lorca -Txema in the village schoolyard – lost count. You couldn't count the raindrops on the chapa roof of his father's workshop for long. The sound of the water on the corrugated tin merged into the badda-badda-badda of drums or the machine guns Txema and his friends pretended to shoot at each other in the fields outside Villafranca. Taller Lorca; even to a boy of eight it sounded a little grand for a two room-shack. One room contained the tools and his father’s workbench; its wood as black as the vill
age priest’s soutane. The other was where Txema spent weekends, fiestas and days when the school might close for some reason. Like torrential rain, for example.

  The boy looked over at his grandmother. Her hands covered her ears and the chair rocked. Txema hoped it would just be rain today. If the thunder came, his grandmother would hide under the table. And Txema would have to sit with her and sing. That wasn't right. His grandmother had used to sing to him, not so very long ago. Besides, a boy could only repeat the story of Don Gato a few times and as for Elefantes, well, after your 8th birthday you were too old for such things. In any case, you ought to know that an elephant could not possibly balance on a spider's web by the time you were that age.

  Txema's father was in the workshop proper. Turning an old boot over in his hands. Just the one. The boy had been there the day Pepe Burgos had dropped it off.

  'Chico, there's nothing wrong with the other one. I'll keep wearing it thank you. You just fix that one before the rain starts.'

  Well the rain had started, and the toe cap of Pepe Burgos' boot, which had separated from the sole, flapped about like the jaws of the village gossip still. Txema supposed his father had thought the boot was not so urgent. There were pans to fix, wooden chairs to mend and, of course, the wireless. The boy's father repaired things. When boys had first asked Txema what his father did, he could not answer. He had punched the nearest boy. Federico had punched him back, but the fight ended as small boys' disagreements often do: in comparisons of bruises and swellings and a declaration of firm friendship. Txema told people now that his father owned Taller Lorca on the edge of the village. Grown-ups generally smiled, the men would ruffle his hair and the women, especially the older ones, would pinch his cheek. Occasionally they would give him a peseta coin, although he wasn't sure why.

  The boy saw his father throw down the old boot.

  'Jesus himself could not repair this filthy thing!'

  His father picked up the wireless. Only yesterday it had been in more pieces than Txema could count easily. Now, it was whole again, rattling only slightly when his father had picked it up. Miguel Alvarez de Lorca placed the radio back on the rough surface of his workbench.

  'Look, Txema! An Invicta, a 6470. A beauty.'

  The boy looked at the hard-looking exterior, the fabric above the tuning display and the two sturdy looking dials. He walked over to stand beside his father, knocked on the top of the radio with his small fist.

  'Is it plastic, Papi?'

  'Plastic? Oh no, my boy, dear me no. It is Bakelite, king among plastics.'

  The boy's father ran his palm along the radio's surface; a smile invaded the deep creases in his cheeks.

  'Can we listen, Papi? Can we turn it on?'

  The smile disappeared. 'No, Txema, not just now. I have a boot to fix.'

  Pepe Burgos came for his boot. He limped in wearing the other boot and an old tennis shoe. By way of payment he scattered some coins on the workbench in front of Txema's father. A few centimos bounced off the radio's Bakelite and onto the floor. The boy picked them up and handed them to his father, who put them in the pocket of his overalls. They were blue, torn at the knee. On the back was some writing that Txema could not make out. When he asked his father what it said, he would not reply.

  It rained for two weeks.  Sometimes there was school, sometimes there was not. There were two electrical storms and Txema sang again about elephants and a lonely cat to his shaking grandmother.

  One sunny Saturday, the woman came about the radio. The boy was fascinated by the woman's shoes. Tacones. Older boys in the village called them whore's shoes, although the woman was dressed in a two-piece suit in a black material. The boy thought it looked nice, although perhaps the woman had grown out of it a little and needed a new one. The car was a Mercedes, Txema knew that. Black to match the lady's suit. She had driven it herself, all the way from the big house where Don Fernando lived, when he wasn't in Madrid advising El Caudillo.

  'Señor, is my radio repaired?'

  'I'm afraid not, Señora…' he did not add the surname. In any case the woman's hand was raised palm forward.

  'They tell me you can fix anything. Is that another villager's boast?'

  'It is a valve, Señora,' he held up the radio and it rattled. 'Without a spare.'

  'Well get one, idiot.'

    She turned on her high heel and made to leave. She turned to look over her shoulder at the boy's father,

  'And it's Señorita Marquez. Don Fernando is not my husband.'

  The boy stared at the woman; she seemed as exotic as a parrot in a chicken coop. Grandmother began a coughing fit, though she might have been laughing at first.

  Later that night, after bread and soup. The boy watched as his father put on his wedding suit. It was no effort to get into it. In fact the waistband bunched under the military belt and there was little point in fastening the jacket's buttons. Txema felt ashamed for his father.

  'Look after, Abuela, boy. I'll be back after midnight.'

  But midnight had long passed according to the Church bells and Txema fell asleep long before his father came home.

  On Monday, his father announced that there would be no school that day. Txema gave a loud cheer until his father glared at him. He held up a pair of boots, worn but polished.

  'Put these on, Son. We have a little walking to do.'

  They lifted his Grandmother from the chair and each took an arm. The boy looked to his father.

  'She'll be alright at Tio Juan's, boy. It's only a few days.'

  They walked through the centre of the village, as far as a neat row of houses behind the Church of the Blessed Virgin. Txema's father lifted the brass knocker and let it fall. Grandmother was humming 'Elefantes'. The door opened. A still slimmer, much younger version of the boy's father scowled and took his mother in.

  'Three days, that's all. Or you know what.'

  The door's slam reverberated behind them along the deserted street.

  Txema took his father’s hand and they walked along the main road out of town until they reached the gates of Don Fernando’s quinta. The great house was not visible between the bars of the great entrance to the estate. The boy peered along the drive which veered off, obscured by a coppice of trees from another country.

  ‘Come on, boy, we haven’t time.’

  His father had already kicked the stand of the moto away and was astride the decrepit looking machine.

  ‘Get on, Jose Maria – and hold tight.’

  They stopped fairly soon after the boy almost fell off before they reached the main Malaga road. He had fallen asleep. They had stopped to allow a goatherd and his flock to cross the track in front of them. The boy’s father called the man over and borrowed a length of rope in exchange for a Ducados cigarette and a light. The rope felt tight around the both of them, but the boy did not complain. He did not want his father to shout again.

  The sun was low in the sky, although it must have been well past midday.  It was a milky light, the kind that fooled you into thinking you could look directly at it. Txema knew better than that. His father pulled the moped into Venta Cortes. It would take them no more than a few hours to reach Malaga now they were on a real road, he said.

  They sat outside, the waiter took the order and his father’s crumpled note at the same time. The dishes arrived accompanied by two sets of spoons and forks, but the boy noticed his father did not pick his own up. He drank his Victoria beer straight from the bottle, holding it to his forehead from time to time, although the day was not warm.

  It was strange. No sooner had the entered the city, than the boy began to feel warm. After several minutes of the boy’s wriggling, his father brought the cycle to a stop.

  ‘We’ll push it from here,’ he said, and they began to walk. Txema kept expecting his father to ask for directions, but he never did. They walked and walked until the boy’s feet swelled in his boots, making them pinch for the first time. They stopped at a building near the port. The writing outsi
de seemed familiar, somehow, to the boy. It named the company which owned the building, but still.

  He was made to wait outside, even a peon’s moped was worth stealing in the city, his father warned.

  He came out wearing a smile, holding a small cardboard carton in his hand. The boy wondered what it was. His father told him it was our future, but he did not understand what he meant.

  They reached the gates of Don Fernando’s quinta late in the evening, long after dusk. They propped the bike against the iron gates. His father whistled all the way home.

  When Txema returned from school the next day, there was music in the workshop. His father was dancing with his grandmother, although she could not quite master the steps.

  ‘It works,’ said the boy.

  ‘Of course it does.’

  But the woman didn’t return. Txema’s father did not switch on the radio again until the day that Franco died.

  36. A Miracle in Villablanco

  It was the talk of the pueblo. From the cramped bars near the fairground to the Plaza in front of the Church of the Sacred Heart, the whispers, chatter and shouts repeated the strange news. The strangest birth since Pepe’s two headed goat just after the Guerra Civil, which the farmer had had stuffed and sold to El Corcho to hang from the ceiling in one of those cramped bars. The retired bullfighter collected oddities. He had a display of antique prosthetics in a case in his bar. They called him El Corcho because he could no more be kept down than a cork in water. At least until he lost his leg to his last bull. One solitary poster from la corrida adorned the walls of his business, the one promoting his last bullfight. The letters were smaller than they had been on other posters. That was life.             

  El Corcho pressed the button on the coffee machine and the volume of chatter increased to that of the bellows customary when the men on the high stools wanted to finish a conversation or a joke, whatever discouragement the ancient machine offered. The bar owner hopped to the kitchen hatch and gave Inmaculada an order for pork chops with patatas pobre. Who ate that at 11 a.m.?  The stranger had pointed at a photograph behind some grimy transparent plastic. Perhaps he was foreign, or from Malaga. El Corcho shook his head, a hard-earned skill for someone who hopped everywhere, still it was good to try to live up to one’s name.  The stranger was staring about him; recording every detail. The tobacco-stained walls, the peanut shells and paper napkins littering the floor; his eye passed rapidly over the case of wooden, tin and plastic legs and arms, El Corcho noticed. Ha, foreign then, definitely not from Malaga. He might have come down from Madrid, he supposed. Those people weren’t really Spanish up there. Too many Mercedes cars – and American fashions on the women – in the capital. Besides, no-one from nearby would wear a suit that fit so well.  Inmaculada shouted from her less than immaculate kitchen and clattered the plate of potatoes and pork chops on the counter of her hatchway. Her husband placed it down in front of the stranger with only slightly more delicacy. El Corcho watched the man raise his eyebrows and then shrugged. He fetched the vinegar and olive oil and placed it gently next to the man’s elbow. 

  The man in the suit ate slowly, like someone trying something for the first time: like someone not sure whether they would try it again.  The men on the stools either side of him had somehow managed to edge away from the stranger and found something extremely interesting to read in the local papers from several days ago. El Corcho poured himself a chupito and knocked the cheap brandy back as though it were some foul medicine. When the man finished his lunch, he dropped too many coins on the bar and El Corcho swept them into the old cash-register under no sale. Caveat Emptor, didn’t they say?  The one-legged bar owner watched the man disappear out of the door. Stools edged closer together and old news was returned to the bar top. The buzz of conversation returned and the ex-bullfighter breathed out. El Corcho and the Martinez brothers agreed that the man probably hadn’t come about the big news. It was just coincidence. Juan Martinez said he’d drink to that and El Corcho stood them their first drinks on the house since De Stefano had stopped by Villablanco when he’d got lost on the way to Seville.

   

  Sister Dolores De La Virgen Madre clicked her rosary. She sat alone on the bench outside the Ermita, not far from the Church of the Sacred Heart. It was warm for December, but there were few people out although it was past noon on a market day. A smartly dressed man was admiring the church’s gothic spire, whilst avoiding the broken flags and holes in the plaza. There was elegance in his movements. This was a man who had never dragged a plough through autumn mud. The country tired a man. What was such a man doing here? She hoped it had nothing to do with the new postulant at the convent.  Sister Dolores suspected that the man might have come from a city. His shoes certainly had. The nun crossed herself; a venial sin only, to look so closely at a man that you noticed his shoes. She looked down at her own feet. Comfortable, black, worn and the polish only slightly dulled by the dust of the pueblo streets; how she missed the click-clack of her tacones. Only yesterday she saw La Viuda Garcia wearing heels as high as those Italian women in the Yanqui films.  A woman with a husband only two years dead ought not to wear such things – and at fifty years old too! Sister Dolores made the sign of the cross once again and pondered the sin of envy. It was more comfortable than contemplating why she watched the man’s back as he disappeared down Calle Ilusión. Sister Dolores waved at the Widow Garcia as she entered the Plaza. A woman should greet her own sister, however she behaved.

   

  Guardia Civil de Primera Jose-Antonio Guerrero La Paz scratched a buttock through the olive-green serge. Warm for December, and the winter uniform itched. He looked down at his boot. Dusty, the left. He rubbed the toe on his trouser leg behind his right calf.  Better. Might take a walk to the Post Office. Chato polished shoes there most days; buzzing around the customers’ feet on his little tray with wheels. He liked to say he didn’t make such a bad living for half-a-man. Guardia Primera La Paz thought that was a bit rich. Chato had legs. At least as far as just above the knee. That made him three-quarters of a man, stood to reason. People were so inexact. How would it be if the Guardia Civil were so slapdash? Why, the wrong people might end up in jail!  The policeman caught sight of a figure coming down Ilusión. A stranger, in his town, in Villablanco. Fede Ramirez had not called from the Hostel Bella Horizonte about any new guests. La Paz eyed the man’s suit, it looked more comfortable than his own uniform. The material shone. A flashy suit meant the wrong kind of people for his town, for sure. A confident looking fellow, mind you, the kind some might call handsome. The Policeman held up a hand palm out, to keep the man at the optimum distance for asking to see his papers. That is, within reach of La Paz’s baton, whilst out of range of the stranger’s fist.   But the man said, ‘Guardia Primera Guerrero La Paz, isn’t it? Congratulations!’ La Paz felt his mouth opening and closing like that of a fish won at the hoop-la. The promotion had only come through yesterday. The thanks the policeman offered sounded graceless even to his own ears, but in any case the man was still talking. Oh yes, they knew about him, La Paz, where knowing things was important. Could La Paz tell him whether anything unusual had happened recently? Only if it weren’t confidential, that was. The torrent of words kept the young policeman from thinking. His outstretched palm slowly dropped, beaten down by the man’s bonhomie. The man was looking at him, waiting. It occurred to La Paz that he was expected to say something. The one thing that the man wanted to hear was not, however, going to come from him. No, not at all. So he gave the man directions to the abandoned farm at the edge of town.  He watched the man walk away, still confident, too good-looking for the town. Enrique Benitez stumbled out of the Widow Garcia’s front door. He looked a little drunk. Guardia Primera La Paz strolled off to do some police work.

   

  The girl looked down at her feet. Chipped nails and both grubby with dust. Her father had gone into town to buy her a new pair of shoes, before… Well, just before.  She sat down
on the bench outside the doorway of the farmhouse. Just a moment, a moment of peace, whilst there were no cries coming from inside.  Far down the track leading to the road to town, María Magdalena could see a tiny figure approaching. Even at that distance she could see it was not her father. He would not come back now, in any case.  The girl put a hand to her hair for a moment and then she remembered her bare feet. She crept inside and put on an old pair of her father’s boots. When she still went to the village school the children had delighted in remarking on the size of her feet.  The boots were still too large so she rummaged in her father’s trunk until she found some old woollen stockings that had belonged to her mother. There, better than a stranger seeing her feet. She looked into the cot. Still quiet, thank goodness.         

  It was a man; he walked, mindful of the ruts, but with steady progress. Straight-backed, he looked as though he’d never shouldered the burden of living in the country. He was passing the entrance to their neighbour’s olive grove. The harvest was long past and the pruned branches lay in piles of ash between the rows of the skeletal trees themselves. He looked tall. Not from the South, then, she thought. Her father had told her that Madrid and the northern cities were built on manure and that was why people from the North were so tall. Maria Magdalena did not know if this were true in any way at all. That northern people were tall was just something that people said.     She hoped there would be no interruptions from indoors. It was bad enough that there was no sleep to be had throughout the nights. The very least she could hope for was an hour of peace during the day. The Northerner had reached the limits of their (her?) property. Two wooden posts joined by a rusted chain across the track marked the entrance, but of course you could just step off the track and walk around one or other of the posts. ‘Who could afford fences?’ her father used to say.  The girl waved and the man raised a hand. She stood up and said the words of welcome. The man stared at her for a few moments.

  ‘There is water, it is all I have,’ she said.

  ‘The earth was formed of water, and by water.’ the man  smiled.

  Maria Magdalena looked down at the man’s shoes. They shone; as though he had floated over the dust between the town and the farm.

   

  The stranger looked at the girl, standing with a ceramic tumbler of water held out toward him. About 15, probably. Large boned, a peasant. Attractive eyes, if you didn't mind being reminded of the dairy cows of Asturias. Her accent was  as thick as mud. He took the water, almost dropping it in his attempt to avoid touching her dirty-fingernailed hands. Really, quite why His Eminence had sent himhere was beyond comprehension. They hadn't bothered with the Galician Fisherman's stigmata of last summer, nor with the crippled Catalan's remarkable recovery on winning El Gordo the Christmas before. Why this? Why now? The answer was the same as it always was. Orders from Rome. He’d never been so far from Madrid. It was all very well for the Nuncio with his feet up. How kind of Monsignor Ildebrando Antoniutti to send him down here where you'd as likely find a taxi as an 18 year old virgin. He straightened his tie. The girl had not moved, her bovine docility irked him. She gave him her name, when he asked for it.

  'Tell me Maria Magdalena, tell me all of it.'

  Father Ignacio Alvares de Santiago de Compostela Ruiz, the Apostolic Nuncio's Special Roving Representative for the Authentication of Miracles listened. He wished he'd worn  the soutane, or at least the clerical collar. It was a scarcely credible tale of shared linen and nocturnal emissions.

  She finished her story saying, 'I have it on paper, a what-you-call-it – an affidavit from Dr. Dominguez. Era virgen.' 

  Well, well, he thought, it had possibilities. It was, after all, a virgin birth of sorts. With the father out of the way, who knew? He asked to see the child.

  The girl did not escort him to the door of the shack. He let the door slam behind him. It had been touch-and-go whether he would vomit in front of the girl. He sincerely hoped the thing in the crib would not live too long, and promised himself the celice when he got back to Madrid. Better to let matters take their course with this Malaga Miracle and never come back. These backward villages were no place for Opus Dei, it was a fact. Father Alvarez de Santiago de Compostela Ruiz looked down at his shoes; dust and dirt. Well, it was time he had a new pair made; a man with insufficient shoes to change them every day was not to be taken seriously, after all.

  37. Strike Like Lightning

   

  'Number withheld.'  I swiped the cell screen.

  ‘Marshall.’

  ‘You here?’

  ‘On base, checked in with OSIHQ.’

  ‘Chili’s, off I-95, a strip mall towards Morningside.’

  The connection was cut. I called Captain Kierkegarde in the Office of Special Investigation, to report leaving the base. They had my number, doubtless they’d follow me on GPS.

  It was a biker place. My haircut stopped conversation, much as I assumed Specialist E-7 Steenburgen’s entrance had, when she arrived. We were both in civvies, so the conversations began again, but in whispers punctuated by glances. She had a beer in front of her, I pointed at it and waved at the owner. No-one would have hired a bartender that ugly.

  She waited until Brad Pitt moved to the other end of the bar.

  ‘ID?’

  I flashed my DD-2 and her eyes widened at the red color.

  ‘Reservist, Jeez.’

  ‘It’s complicated,’ I shrugged. ‘Tell me… Everything.’

  Perhaps she wondered why I hadn’t asked to see her own ID.

  ‘No way, tell me why OSI let you on base. What the hell could you be investigating?’

  I read the words she’d left out in her eyes: Old Fart. Not too old to remember that I’d enjoyed the company of many attractive non-coms, back in the day.

  ‘SH at Tucson Air National Guard. An everyday story of victimised women. It’s a real investigation. They called me.’

  ‘IMSO?’

  ‘Yep, another International Military Student getting felt up by some peckerhead.’

  ‘I pressed buttons for Power Point there as an E-3. Got transferred out for creaming a peckerhead.’

  I smiled, ‘Where would the military be without peckerheads?’

  She smiled too and gave the punchline,

  ‘Without Generals.’

  Another beer came unbidden and I let it stand. The woman chugged the last of her previous and took a swig of the next.

  ‘Spill it then,’ I said.

  ‘The Lightning II, you read it?’

  ‘Nothing classified: just internet, Julian’s joke pages – the usual’.

  ‘It’s not true.’

  ‘Didn’t think it was. No big deal is it?’

  ‘Depends.’

  I finally took a drink of the second beer.

  ‘Why d’you call me?’ I knew the answer, and she gave it.

  ‘You served with Dad.’

  ‘He was a good guy. I miss him.’

  ‘Do you?’

  Steenbergen Senior had died in Baghdad at the tail end of Gulf II. I remembered the round entering his back.

  ‘You were there, at the end.’

  ‘He died well, like you would.’

  ‘You don’t know that.’

  One more swig and she let it out.

  ‘Thing is, it’s sort of half-true. We’ve sold the Israelis a batch with that fault. Ours are clean. No F-35 is going to fall out of American skies.’

  ‘Is that all? They’ll ground their own and find the fault, won’t they.’

  ‘They’re not operational yet. Some expendables are going over to Nevatim to train with them.’

  She looked at me.

  ‘Come on, ours will be found clean and they’ll have a disaster on their hands. With American casualties.’

  I shot her and called OSI for clean up. 38. Little Pete

  It rained somewhat biblical the day they buried Little Pete. Not much of a burial, it’s a fact. An old pine box and a drunk preach
er outside the town limits. Couple of mangy dogs and me were all that mourned, while the preacher stumbled over ashes and dust both times.

  Little Pete got buried in his Mexican boots, though he wasn’t wearing them when he died. I helped the preacher away from the hole in the ground. He seemed about fit to fall in himself. I shovelled half the pile of stony dirt on top of the cheap wood and went into Langtry for a drink with the Reverend Coxcomb. We spent the dollar I’d paid him for the service in the Jersey Lily.

  Roy was hollerin’ drunk – as he normally was before, during and after a trial – two swarthy men wearing trail-dust over their clothes stood at the opposite end of the bar and the Reverend and I doubled the custom in the saloon. 

  ‘Wut’ll it be?’ Roy squinted at me and plain ignored the Reverend

  ‘Whiskey, thanks. My good friend will pay.’

  The Judge put a bottle and two greasy glasses on the bullet scarred bar-top.

  ‘Reckon he might. Even a man of god gotta face his maker come the Day of Judgement.’

  The old judge cackled until he coughed tobacco juice into his long beard.

  Long about half-way down the bottle Reverend Coxcomb decided the floorboards deserved closer acquaintance, so the judge and I sat at a deal table and played a hand or two of pinochle. The two cow-punchers had left in a cloud of dust and bickering not long before. I lifted my glass,

  ‘Little Pete.’ 

  ‘Lil’ Varmint,’ the judge said.

  ‘You let more’n a few horse thieves go afore now.’

  ‘So what if I did? They hadda give ‘em back, didn’t they.’

  ‘So did Little Pete.’

  ‘Kin I help it if the dam’ fool stole an owlhoot’s horse?’

  ‘John Wesley is a respectable man of the law like yourself, Roy.’

  I wondered if Roy would wash the beard before tomorrow’s court proceedings in the Jersey Lily. He finished coughing and said,

  ‘He’s a lawyer alright. Musta learned a lot in Huntsville. Hope he rode his dam’ horse all the way back to El Paso with a burr under the saddle.’

  ‘Think I’ll be movin’ on myself, come to think.’

  They say Roy died in his bed, and that John Wesley died in a saloon. Little Pete died in the gutter in Langtry and that’s about all I know.

  39. The Appliance of Science

  Ms. Baumgartner sure was upset today. The new smart board worked fine. I don’t know why Ms. Baumgartner was worried. It was as easy to use as my Blackberry. Jimmy Gomerill put gum on her chair but I know it weren’t that. He does it most every day. She was ok all through the morning. The boys in back of the classroom got the evil eye while we sang the Star-Spangled Banner and so they used the right words. Home E was just fine too. The janitor came in to clean up the eggs from the floor. Our teacher didn’t come out for recess, but she don’t as a rule. Jimmy Gomerill says she goes for a smoke in back of the Janitor’s office out by the trash.

  After recess we had Religious Education. Ms. Baumgartner don’t teach this class. She prob’ly does something in the staff room, like mark a science test or read a magazine.  Religion class ain’t so hot to tell the truth. Doctor Baramin speaks with a loud voice and he uses the smart board and plays music and all kindsa things, but some teachers are just nat’ral bores, it’s a fact . Tell the truth and shame the Devil, we was all pretty glad when Ms. Baumgartner came back to do citizenship. Only bad thing was she started off again about ‘Freedomaspeech’. I don’t mind so much, but there’s always a smartass at the back who shouts out somethin’ dumb. ‘Course when Ms. Baumgartner mentions how she won’t stand for shouting out and they better put their hand up if they wanna speak, well you can guess what those trailer park boys say.

  Lunchtime the entire William Jennings Bryan Elementary School eats in the big hall. I can never remember the big word Ms. Baumgartner uses but it’s refec-somethin’. Anyways I always sit next to Jimmy Gomerill, cause he makes me laugh and there ain’t many boys in 6th grade who can make me do that. I had hamburger, Jimmy had grits just so he could do gross things while he was eatin’ ‘em.

  First after lunch was Science. When the fight had stopped at the back, Ms Baumgartner pressed the clicker. It was neat how the Smartboard put up the date and the EXACT time the class started. It took a coupla presses on the button to bring up the title of the class on the board.  Maybe Ms. Baumgartner had a bit of high pressure like my Grandma gets. Makes her hand shake too.

  I looked at Jimmy. He smiled, we both love Dinosaurs. They’re so like neat-o.

  Anyhow, Ms Baumgartner put up the first slide for ‘Genesis and the Dinosaurs’ and she just sat down on the floor and started to cry. Principal Butler and Mrs. Baker Eddy took her out and we heard the Ambulance arrive later. Doctor Baramin gave the rest of the science class. That man can even make dinosaurs into a visit to Snoozeville. I sure hope Ms. Baumgartner comes back.

  40. 100 Zlotys

  ‘Goodbye,’ my mother said.

  I thought she had been taking me to school as she did most days. She said goodbye every morning before going to work making uniforms.

  ‘Polish Uniforms, for the army, Mama?’

  She shook her said and said,

  ‘No, Jerzy, not Polish.’ 

  She held my hand as we passed the Judenrat building. My mother spat on the floor. I had never seen her do such a thing. I still remembered the blow to the ear she had given me – and my friend Waclaw – over a year ago, when she caught us trying to reach across to the opposite pavement with our spitting. Waclaw was my very best friend until he left suddenly last May. Many people left suddenly in those days. Mr Staffens from next door left the previous winter. I did not miss him, he smelled of being foreign. He had come from Luxembourg. My mother said it was good riddance, but she never said why. Dziadek Grigor left too, only the previous May. Mother cried for days and so did I.

  That day was like any other, I believe. Perhaps I remember another day’s weather: perhaps I do not wish to remember the details. Late September in Lodz. It would have been cold, windy perhaps, maybe with a milky sun. What I do remember is all the children and older people. My mother and I were swimming against the tide. I did notice that we passed the school immediately we did so, but I said nothing. The tears on my mother’s cheeks were surely caused by the chilly breeze. 

  We eventually came to a narrow street at the very easternmost edge of the ghetto. There were no more streams of the old and young to prevent our progress. I asked the question,

  ‘Where are they going, Mama?’

  ‘Chelmno’ was all she said.

  It was a name I heard whispered at the table on Friday evenings, while my cousins’ parents and my mother spoke of serious things after Seder. We learned, my cousins and I, not to ask, what sort of thing a Chelmno might be. My older cousins would tease me with it, a boy of 9 is easy to terrify with any name, after all. I did ask at school once, but the teacher would not say either.

  ‘It is not to be discussed.’

  There were several things not to be discussed.

  The murdered boy down by the railway station. The one or two boys who disappeared and were never seen again.

  One night after Seder I was sent to bed. My tantrum was most theatrical, but I went to bed all the same. I did not remain. I crept to the head of the stairs to listen to the talk around the dinner table. The voices were hushed, except at points of disagreement.

  ‘Is such a thing better than Chelmno?’

  ‘At least he’d be alive.’

  ‘As what?’

  My father left the house that night and did not return, as far as I know.

  One week later, my mother and I were standing outside a rotting door in a narrow alley near the railway to the eastern edge of the ghetto. She knocked at the door. A man came. I did not like how he smelled. It was perfumed soap over rotten meat, it seemed to me. He grabbed at my hand, seized it at the second attempt. My mother gave him a 100 zloty note. The man smiled,

  �
��You have made the right choice, he will live. I will see to that.’

  It was the smile of the greedy boy who knows his sister is ill and that he will finish her dinner.

  ‘Goodbye.’ My mother said.