The Wrong Child

by Barry Gornell

  Rebecca was waiting for Shep. She blew him a kiss and waved from the front window as he pulled onto the driveway. He couldn’t help but cheer up.

  ‘Hi,’ she said, opening the door for him.

  ‘Hi to you too.’

  She kissed him, put her arms around him and hugged him on the doorstep.

  ‘Happy to see me?’

  ‘Every time.’

  Shep took a step back and admired his wife.

  ‘You’re a sight for sore ones.’

  ‘I made a special effort for you.’

  ‘There’s no need, but I’m glad you did.’

  ‘My pleasure.’

  Shep handed her the chocolates.

  ‘For me?’

  ‘Who else?’

  She grinned at him. ‘What about my figure?’

  ‘It would take more than a box of chocolates to knock you out of shape.’

  She giggled as she dragged him inside. ‘Come on in, we’re letting all the heat out.’

  Shep hung his coat up in the porch, slipped his boots off and followed her down the hallway into the kitchen in his stockinged feet.

  ‘Becca?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, looking up from the whisky she was pouring for him.

  ‘You want to do something this weekend?’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Go for a meal, watch a film, a play maybe. All of those if you like.’

  She put the bottle down. There was a trace of sadness in her smile as she walked over to Shep and kissed him.

  ‘You’re so sweet, you know that?’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Working all week and still making time to be thinking about me.’

  ‘I never stop thinking about you.’

  He took her face in his hand, his thumb brushing the scar at the corner of her eye.

  ‘Maybe not this weekend,’ she said.

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Shep gathered Rebecca into him. He held her close enough to feel the tremors, but he couldn’t stop them.

  Dog Evans traced the road of the newspaper’s centre-page map to where it stopped at the school on the right-hand edge of the marsh. There was no indication that the road also forked to the left; no mention of him, the sole survivor, or his parents and the house they had shared.

  This exclusion had begun that distant yet immediate day, as the fallout still clogged the air, drying mouths and stinging eyes in the incessant snowfall, filling noses and impregnating the clothes and minds of every witness.

  Dog Evans recalled hearing the growing murmur that had risen to muted cries of joy and a rush of bodies when it was discovered someone had survived. Their child, please God, theirs. But hope imploded as he, the wrong child, was dragged from the bunker of the storeroom that had protected him, in tattered clothing, his hair singed and a flap of skin the length of his lower arm hanging from wrist to knee. As soon as they had him clear of the wreckage, they let go, their moral obligation to life paid. Needy faces stared at his survival, unable to embrace it. It mocked their loss, the loss of good children. They stepped back as he slowly came to, blinking, focusing, balancing, noticing the wound to his arm. Dog Evans examined the dangling flap of skin; poked his exposed flesh, fascinated. Wind gusted grit, dust and snow across those stricken faces still watching him. Others were crouched over or holding the dead, sobbing and moaning, or pulling at rubble in the hope of finding another alive, one worthy of life.

  His cough hacked and rattled through his grime-filled chest, until it cleared into a wheezy laugh of surprise and validation. There was something victorious in the way he smiled at his audience.

  ‘It’s my birthday,’ he said.

  The villagers darkened as a wordless blame congealed around the one who lived.

  A fox crossed the space between them, a grey-brown bird in its mouth, a wing trailing, its head bouncing. Dog pointed at it and looked around for his dad to identify the bird. He wasn’t there. Neither was his mum.

  Dog Evans hadn’t seen his parents for a long time. They were never there when he came down in the morning, always there when he lay upstairs at night, their voices murmuring, their words just out of earshot. He’d sit up in bed to listen, cocking his head, leaning over to put his ear to the floor, desperate to hear, to understand. Occasionally, he would pull back his blankets to go to them. But each time, as he put his weight on his feet to stand, their conversation stopped, as if for adult ears only. He’d creep to the top of the stairs to stand in threadbare pyjamas, waiting for them to call him. He would sometimes stand for hours before returning to bed. Those rare nights that the need to see them was overwhelming, he would fix a welcome on his face and continue down, wide-eyed with hope. The room would always be empty; the coals on the fire dull beneath a layer of fallen soot. His smile would tighten, his teeth retreat behind bulbous lips as he felt the twist of ache in his chest. The hardened soles of his feet sanded the wooden treads as he climbed back to his room. Beneath the sheets, he would hear again their distant voices, once more out of their hiding place.

  Tonight, Dog Evans lit a fire for the parents he had waited long enough for. It caught quickly. The flames raced deep into the bone-dry tinder. Freshly crumpled images of children became spectral within the smoke as the draw of the chimney pulled them skyward.

  Dog Evans rested the rusty spade on the satchel strap in the bowl of his shoulder. Leaving his home, he picked his way from tussock to tussock across the marsh to the school, taking as direct a line as possible. His footsteps left dark imprints as they crushed the ice crystals that had formed a crisp cover over the sphagnum moss.

  He passed through the broken fence, unseen.

  Looking back for the last time, he smiled when he saw the glow of the fire in the window. Ascending ghosts unwound from the chimney stack. The marsh sparkled beneath the waxing gibbous moon.

  To his left, the houses at the rear of the village looked permanently closed. The buildings presented a solid defence of lifeless walls. Doorways were bricked up and shutters screwed tight across windows painted blind. These sightless facades bore no relation to their whitewashed other halves. Dog Evans, on nights when he had limped furtive through the village, had seen the other, desperately optimistic side of these houses. He had gazed through the landscape windows that opened up their fronts, broad in compensation for their shuttered backs. He had observed watchful parents spoiling replacement children behind glazing that reflected the sun’s arc, allowed light in and desires out. To Dog Evans, the village appeared anchored to the site of the schoolhouse while at the same time pulling away, like a tethered hound straining against its leash.

  The soft fronds of the lower boughs brushed him as he moved into the trees. The mass of determined foliage had blocked out the sun, created a crackling carpet of dry leaves, needles and twigs, where scaled creatures slithered and fed. He sensed welcome ahead. He stopped. As he stood with the trees, he could hear the scratch of pencil on jotter paper, smell the polished wood of the classroom floor and feel the reflected sunlight. He entered the small glade, now less than half the size of the single classroom. Smiling children looked up at him before returning to their work, heads down in concentration. In a handful of steps, Dog Evans stood in the middle, among friends.

  The spade split the green skin of the earth. Two straight lines the length of a child’s body bisected each other. Forcing the spade beneath the grass, shallow and flat, he sliced through tender roots, separating the turf from the topsoil. Folding four triangular flaps away from each other, he exposed a dark square of sweet loam and plunged the blade into the centre. He stopped when the hole was deep enough.

  Satchel, shirt and trousers all slipped easily from his frame.

  Dog Evans stood naked at the end of his last day. The four flaps now pointed to his planted form, a spent jack-in-the-box. His discarded
clothing cushioned the soles of his buried feet, his knees invisible within the hand-packed soil. He looked to the stars in the clear night sky. Moonlight flooded the glade, making filigree of the frosted grass and highlighting the stomach scars that ripped across his bright, hairless body. He lifted his hand to his mouth. His Adam’s apple pulsed as he swallowed a plump worm. Save for the rustle of minor life in the inky lunar shadows, all he could hear was the growing of the trees, the sluggish flow of seasonal sap along meshing branches. As the worm writhed in his gullet, a contrary peristalsis, Dog Evans began to take root, to rejoin the class.

  Seven years earlier

  Maggie had caught the look on Calvin’s face. It made her feel sad. Other people’s misfortune made him happy.

  She hid her misgivings as she looked back to the house at the playful chastising of her mum’s voice.

  ‘You’re a bigger kid than they are, you know that,’ said Mairi. ‘You shouldn’t be encouraging them.’

  She was leaning against the door frame, a cup of tea steaming in her hand. Maggie feigned happiness as her dad played the innocent.

  ‘Hey, nothing to do with me. It was built before I came out.’

  ‘Really? And who was it set the bad example by building the big one yesterday?’

  ‘She’s got you there, Dad,’ said Maggie.

  ‘Traitor,’ said John Voar, scooping a broad palm of snow into Maggie’s face. ‘I thought we were on the same side.’

  Robbie and Cameron fell about laughing as Maggie squawked and spat and wiped her face. She gathered herself and gave her dad as stern a look as she could muster.

  ‘We don’t take sides in this family.’

  ‘You tell him, Maggie,’ said her mum, ‘and John, can you lift those two eejits, they’re like wee snowmen themselves.’

  John Voar lifted a twin in each arm and shook them in the air, white clumps falling from their parkas as the three of them bounced up and down, filling the morning with the noise of play.

  ‘John, can you behave, you’ll have them vomiting their breakfasts, honestly.’

  John paid no heed, cheerfully defiant as he continued to shake each boisterous bundle, squirming and flailing, slipping from their winter clothing.

  ‘John.’

  ‘Right,’ he said, putting them down, ‘kiss for Mum, then school, do some learning.’

  The two released boys pulled their trousers up as they ran to their mum. Maggie hugged her dad. When they had been tucked in again, Robbie and Cameron ran down the path and John joined Mairi in the doorway, his arm around her.

  ‘Got everything you need?’ she said as the twins pushed through the gate.

  ‘Yes,’ chimed Robbie and Cameron.

  ‘You sure?’

  They turned to see their mum holding up two lunchboxes.

  Maggie shook her head in cahoots with her parents as the two boys trudged back.

  ‘Thank you,’ they said as they took their boxes.

  ‘You’re welcome. Hurry up now, you don’t want to be late.’

  ‘And Maggie’s in charge,’ said John.

  ‘We know,’ they said as they ran back to their waiting sister, waving to their mum and dad for the last time.

  Outside the classroom, Maggie Voar’s voice carried the authority of her parents. She was adept at moderating Robbie and Cameron’s sibling outbursts, curbing the noise levels and anarchist tendencies of their youth with mention of other people and the respect they were due. Robbie and Cameron idolised her. Only two years older than them, she was nonetheless their natural guide through life in the absence of their parents. So much so that at times the boys gave the impression of having a glide in the eye, such was their continual sideways checking for Maggie’s approval or opprobrium.

  Breathless and red-cheeked from the exertions of the snow fight, the twins were nevertheless subdued by Maggie’s silence as they left the garden to head for school that morning. Usually joined at the hip, the two of them separated and each took one of their sister’s hands as they walked into the village.

  ‘Maggie?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Of course. Why do you ask?’

  ‘You’re not talking.’

  Maggie gave both the boys’ hands a wee press, keeping her counsel about Calvin Struan. They wouldn’t understand.

  ‘I’m listening,’ she said. ‘I like the way the snow steals away all the sound.’

  The boys looked around, suddenly aware of how quiet the village was. They both stole a glance up at Maggie, then at each other, and smiled. The three of them continued on without a word.

  They paused for a second at the Todds’ house. Two sets of footprints led through the gate and on ahead. The Todds were just visible beneath the street lights, like smudges in their black duffle coats, labouring through the heavy snow. Maggie thought one of them looked back as they reached the top of Main Street, but couldn’t be sure. She waved, just in case. Robbie and Cameron followed suit with their free hands, but the Todds turned the corner and were out of sight. The twins pulled at Maggie and they all picked up a little speed, so keen were the boys to catch their friends.

  Robbie and Cameron fell into following the Todds’ footprints exactly, quiet in their absorption for a while. When Robbie spoke, his voice was uncertain.

  ‘Maggie?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you think Dog will be in school today?’

  ‘I imagine so, why?’

  ‘He got sent home.’

  ‘Doesn’t it last forever?’ asked Cameron.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ she said.

  The two boys were thoughtful as they took this in.

  ‘He scares me.’

  ‘And me,’ said Cameron.

  ‘I didn’t like when he screamed.’

  ‘No,’ said Maggie. ‘That wasn’t nice.’

  ‘Calvin weed his pants,’ said Robbie, leaning forward and looking at Cameron to share his pleasure.

  ‘Hey, it’s not nice to laugh at other people, you two.’

  Both boys pulled their heads back.

  ‘Why isn’t Dog at the big school?’ asked Robbie.

  ‘He’s a teenager,’ added Cameron.

  ‘Only just,’ said Maggie. ‘Dad said he got kept back.’

  ‘Kept back?’

  ‘Because he’s not ready for the big school yet.’

  ‘Not ready?’

  ‘Yes, not ready.’

  A few seconds passed.

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It just means he’s not ready,’ said Maggie, her tone closing the conversation. ‘Come on, let’s catch up with Ronah and Jack.’

  She pulled on their hands and started to run, shouting at them to keep in their steps, keep up; keep in their steps, keep up, half dragging them along. Robbie and Cameron snapped out of their fear, laughing and sliding as they high-stepped and quick-stepped to keep up with Maggie and catch the Todds.

  The Voars and the Todds arrived at school together. Calvin was waiting for them at the gate. He wasn’t hogging the shelter of the school doorway as usual. Maggie cried when he told her about the impending rent increase and she had to restrain Robbie and Cameron from hitting him for causing her tears.

  ‘Why?’ she said. ‘You don’t need any more money, you’re already rich.’

  ‘Mummy spends it, so Daddy needs to get more. That’s how it works,’ he said.

  ‘But you like doing this, why?’

  ‘I’m supposed to.’

  Maggie wiped her eyes. ‘You’re going to spend the rest of your life making people unhappy.’

  She glared at Calvin for a moment before leading Robbie and Cameron away.

  The Todds remained, staring at Calvin, unblinking, until he looked less pleased with himself. A sn
owball arrived, thrown fast and true, bursting in a pluff of sharp crystals the moment it skelped the side of Calvin’s face. By the time Calvin spun around, there were other children gathering handfuls of snow and it wasn’t possible to point the finger at any individual. He hardened his face to stop his bottom lip quivering, but he had no control over the fat teardrop that glistened as it fell. Maggie stuck her tongue out at him, as did Robbie and Cameron. Robbie was emboldened.

  ‘Wee pants.’

  Maggie didn’t tell him off. Cameron copied his brother.

  ‘Wee pants.’

  ‘Wee pants, wee pants, wee pants, wee pants …’

  Others in the playground joined in, pointing at Calvin through the falling snow, and he could do nothing but stand alone. Maggie enjoyed his isolation.

  Searching beyond Calvin, across the marsh, she hoped for signs of Mr Corrigan’s car. She wanted to be in school.

  On days of fine weather, the Voars viewed the classroom as a necessary cage. Voracious for education, they reined in their kinetic vitality in order to study, both their parents having impressed upon them the freedom gained through learning. ‘Knowledge is a companion,’ their clear-eyed father insisted. His roaming intellect kept him company on the wards and corridors of the community hospital where he was a porter and their mother was a nurse. The Voars’ relentless questioning, which the teacher frequently found tiring, wasn’t born of belligerence but the need to understand.

  Returning home at the end of the school day, they would usually be quizzed by their parents over the dinner table, to establish the worth of the day’s teaching. The children would joust and compete to present something and a benign form of home schooling would continue as they ate; their parents adding to what they had learned. And whatever was left of the day they would use, until exhausted or gathered in, to be held and carried to bed.