Heroes Don't Travel

by Roo I MacLeod

  ‘It’s not open,’ Loubie said.

  They stepped through the shallow end of the puddle and approached the front door. It swung open and crashed against the inside wall and a large man stumbled, tripped, and fell into the oily puddle. Water splashed against Loubie and she shrieked her distaste.

  Ben helped the man to stand. Water dripped from his red beard, checked shirt and jeans. He picked the soggy fedora from the puddle and offered it to the man.

  ‘Thank you, Duck,’ he said. ‘Where be my chariot?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Loubie said. ‘I don’t care at the moment.’ She brushed at her clothing and kicked mud from her boot. ‘What’s a chariot look like?’

  ‘You’re wet,’ the man said. ‘Has it been raining?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Is he taking the piss?’

  ‘Where be the car park, young lady?’

  Ben pointed to the side of the pub and the man whistled a loud piercing note. Ben and Loubie looked to the back of the carpark. Long grass and crooked tables dotted the beer garden. Another whistle and the head of a horse appeared with a mouth full of grass. It showed no haste, but answered the call, dragging a flatbed tray at its rear.

  ‘His chariot,’ Loubie said. ‘I imagined gold and plush, like the King rides.’

  The man eased his large arse onto the tray as the horse clopped toward the road. He lay down, his stomach jiggling as the horse turned in a wide arc. It followed the dirt path leading to the copse of trees at the back of the pub garden, still chewing at the grass.

  Ben pushed Loubie forward and they entered the pub. A large fire dominated the open planned, Spartan interior. Massive hunks of trees burnt in a wide, low hearth, crackling and spitting, as sap dripped and sizzled. Unoccupied wooden tables and chairs sat to their left and comfy chairs circled the fire. The bar stretched into the dark and voices sounded from a back room. Loubie wiped her feet on the threadbare mat and clung to Ben’s arm.

  ‘’Ello, Duck,’ a voice said. ‘You comin’ in?’

  Ben crossed the uneven floor, his sight struggling with the dim lighting. Large, thick candles sat on the dark wooden bar top. The flames flickered against the bright bottles. At the top of the bar, faces of stern men watched with interest.

  ‘You lost?’ the man behind the bar said. He sat hunched on a stool, his left hand cupping the round bowl of his hooker pipe. He had wild wiry red hair, deep large freckles and a scraggly beard.

  ‘A little,’ Ben said.

  ‘Thought as much. We don’t be gettin’ no more strangers ’round here these days. Used to. All sorts of tourists would be drivin’ by here, but not anymore. Folk can’t afford the petrol, I guess.’ A sheep bleated. ‘Be quiet with you, Nellie.’

  ‘She’s close, Trev,’ a voice called from behind the chimneybreast. ‘She can’t help with the bleating.’

  Loubie staggered as she peered beyond the old brick chimney. ‘Look at this, Ben,’ she said. ‘They got a sheep in their pub.’

  Ben caught Loubie’s wet arm and steered her towards the bar. He kept clear of the prostrate sheep nestled on a bed of hay, its head resting in the lap of a young man.

  ‘Hello, I’m Griff,’ he said. He wore checked shirt, jeans, and big scuffed tan boots. A thick beard, reddish in color, dominated his face. He wore a battered fedora pushed off his forehead. He lifted the hat and waved at Loubie.

  Loubie waved back. She turned to the landlord. ‘You got Scrumpy?’

  ‘We got Scrumpy,’ the landlord said. He nodded at two small wooden kegs sitting on the back bar. An image of a Goblin crouching in a pool of apples adorned its front. ‘Goblin’s Grog we got. S’got a bit of a kick to it. And Knackered Gnat for yer Perry.’

  ‘Two and a half pints, please.’

  ‘Good girl,’ Ben said. ‘You’ve been caning that vodka. A half, and maybe a coffee, eh?’

  ‘Piss off. The half is for Tommy,’ she said. ‘He’s no good driving sober, so let’s not get him pissed.’

  Loubie kicked Ben in the calf as the landlord poured the drinks. ‘You got cash?’

  Ben dug Max’s crumpled note from his pocket and straightened it on the worn bar top. The stern men at the far end of the bar stepped forward to ogle the foreign note. Checked shirts and fat braces covered their abdomens. Jeans and tanned boots complimented the ensemble. A variety of battered fedoras tamed their hair, and they all wore their beards long and bushy. A low, disgruntled murmur was offered to the note sitting on Ben’s table. He dipped into his pockets again and dropped a handful of shekels on the bar.

  ‘Big old note you got there,’ Trev said as he collected Ben’s coins. ‘We don’t be seeing them round here much. You always know the city citizens, don’t you, with their fine old flashy notes.’

  Ben took his note and folded it tight and small before placing it deep in his front pocket. ‘Fellow gave it to me for a job. No one seems to want it.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be like that, young’un,’ Trev said. ‘I want it. I just don’t want to change it.’

  A man stooped beneath a low beam and stepped to the table. He smoked a straight pipe and stroked a red beard with white strands.

  ‘Me name’s Shepherd,’ he said holding his hand out to Ben. ‘Can I be looking at yer note again?’

  Ben dug deep and placed the folded note into a large, creased and grubby mitt. ‘Oh, it be the Man before the Man,’ he said. ‘What was his name?’

  ‘He be dead.’ The voice sounded from another tall, bent man. His head stretched away from a hunched body, and his hat had a long, lean plume of purple and orange. ‘Who cares which Man?’

  ‘No, he not be dead. Just retired, like.’

  No one could remember the name of the Man before the current Man. Ben reached for his money, but the note passed to an old boy with a domed top to his black hat. He adjusted the crooked wire-rimmed glasses, and held the note to the candle light.

  ‘It be a fine image of the King.’ He spat on the floor and rubbed at his white whiskers. ‘He soon be dead, that King. Then we’ll have the Prince.’

  The men nodded and puffed on their pipes. ‘He be proper that Prince.’

  ‘Traditionalist.’

  ‘Not like the King, he don’t talk to trees and listen to whiners.’

  ‘To the Prince.’

  And the men raised their mugs of ale and clunked them together. Cider and beer slopped to the floor with a splat.

  ‘When was the last time you held a note like that?’

  ‘Seems like an age,’ Ben said. He took the note, thanking the men, and joined Loubie by the fire. Steam rose from her wet clothing. She smiled at Tommy as he appeared at the edge of the chimneybreast.

  ‘How’s the car?’ Ben asked. He shoved the note deep inside his pocket.

  ‘It’s overheated. I’ve filled the radiator, but I’m not sure it’s going to get us to Henwell.’ Tommy pointed at the sheep. ‘There’s a sheep in the pub. What’s a sheep doing in a pub?’

  Trev nudged the old boy with the wire-rimmed glasses. He wore dark, greasy overalls, a grubby rag hanging from his jeans. The hand gripping the mug of beer bore ingrained stains of grease. ‘Joe’s a mechanic,’ Trev said. ‘Leave your car here and he’ll get it fixed for you.’

  Joe nodded, finished his drink and slammed the pewter mug on the bar. ‘It be costing you.’

  ‘Of course it will. You’re looking to get your hands back on my note, eh?’ Ben took a drink from his mug and began to manufacture a cigarette.

  The old boy shrugged and sat back on his stool. ‘Busted cars be expensive. You can be walking, so yeah, I could be looking to take that note off yer hands.’

  Ben nodded and smiled at the man. ‘Don’t be breaking your balls getting under the hood, eh? We don’t own the car.’

  Tommy grabbed at Ben’s coat, pulling until Ben turned to face him. ‘How are we going to get to Henwell? And Pete was wondering if, as we was close, we might visit.’

  ‘Why? Is he still lonely?’

  ‘No,
he’s got someone who needs a lift bad.’

  ‘In prison? He wants us to break someone out of prison?’

  ‘He didn’t say that.’

  ‘Well, no, I guess he wouldn’t. He probably doesn’t think it’s breaking out.’

  The men listened as Tommy and Ben spoke. The man nursing the sheep looked up and asked.

  ‘Is that Prison Pete?’

  Loubie stopped picking out the bits floating in her cider. ‘How does everyone know this Pete but me? I want to meet Pete.’

  ‘He looks after sheep,’ Griff said. He stopped stroking the sheep and pushed his straw hat back from his forehead. ‘I talk to him about Nellie. He doesn’t know why she can’t lamb either.’

  ‘Where you guys headed?’ Trev asked.

  ‘Henwell,’ Ben said.

  ‘What you be doing in Henwell?’

  ‘We’ve come to fetch a girl back for her father,’ Ben said. He felt the questions becoming intrusive and the interest too keen. ‘He’s old, terminal old, eh, and he wants to say goodbye to his girl before he parks his arse in the never ever land.’

  The sheep bleated and kicked out on its bed of straw. Its hoof spilt a large, battered tin of water over the slate flooring.

  ‘She’s going to lamb, Griff,’ he said. ‘Tonight. No problem.’

  Griff, patting the creature’s head, looked up and smiled at the landlord. ‘She don’t like it, does she, Trev. She frets bad, this one does. I was talking to Prison Pete and he says he’s got one like Nellie here. He has to sit up all night with her.

  ‘You know he found those children killed in that truck.’ Griff looked at Ben and Tommy, nodding his head. ‘It was him that called the police. Pete says he wanted to save the children, but he didn’t know they be in the truck ‘til the coppers told him. Pete’s got a first aid badge, he has, and he reckons I could get one if I joined the Scouts, he does. If I want, he says. Only if I want.’ Griff rubbed at his ginger hair through his speech. A piece of dribble trickled at his mouth, reaching down to his chin.

  Trev struck a match along the bar and lit his hooker pipe. He puffed and sucked, creating a storm of black cherry scented smoke to cover the ceiling. He rubbed at his chin and the stiff ginger whiskers rasped under his touch. ‘Don’t be minding Griff,’ he said. He motioned to Griff to wipe his chin. ‘He tussled with a couple of Gypsies a while back coz he be falling for one of their girls, did Griff. We tried to warn him, but the kid was in love, bless him, and she did seem like a good catch, she did?’

  ‘Rule One: Don’t look at a Gypsy girl,’ Griff said. ‘But she was ever so pretty, wasn’t she, Trev?’

  ‘Aye, lad, she was that.’

  ‘Rule Two: Don’t talk to a Gypsy girl,’ Griff continued. ‘I got that wrong to, didn’t I, Trev?’

  ‘Aye, you buggered up there big time, Griff.’

  The men grumbled and nodded to Trev’s observation.

  ‘And Rule Three: Don’t ever touch a Gypsy girl. Ever. Bloody Gypsies.’

  Griff patted at the sheep’s face with a cloth. ‘She was a good girl. She and me were going to get married, we was. We were going to have the wedding here, wasn’t we, Trev?’

  Trev nodded and smiled in sympathy. ‘Gypsies didn’t like it,’ he said. ‘But look at Griff. He’s a big old boy is our Griff. They had a couple of goes at warning him off, but old Griff likes to fight and he kept battering them. They can fight, those Gypsies, but Griff, he takes a bit of putting down. On Friday nights he used to bet me punters for a beer they couldn’t knock him out. Never lost, did you, Griff. Rock solid he is and he took some hits. One punter, and we didn’t see this coming, took the coal shovel to his face and Griff hardly blinked. Rock bloody solid is Griff.

  ‘Rock bloody solid,’ the boys at the end of the bar chorused.

  ‘But Griff likes his beer.’

  The old boys at the end of the bar nodded to this statement.

  ‘One night they spiked his beer,’ Trev said. ‘With something evil and took him out once the poison kicked in. Beat him senseless, they did.’

  ‘Senseless,’ the man calling himself Shepherd repeated.

  ‘Put him in hospital for a couple of months, didn’t they, Griff? You not so clever anymore are you, Griff?’

  ‘Bit slow,’ Griff agreed.

  ‘Bit slow.’ They all laughed at Griff’s comment.

  ‘They caught me on an off night, didn’t they, Trev?’

  The landlord nodded and the farmers followed suit. Even the sheep offered a quiet bleat and a flick of its head.

  Ben grabbed Loubie’s mug and dropped it on the bar with his own tumbler. Trev filled the mugs and the scent of sour apples splashed into the air. Ben snuck another crumpled note from the depths of his pocket, ensuring the big notes kept shy of prying eyes.

  ‘We reckoned them Gypsies had something to do with those kids found the other night,’ Griff said. ‘Don’t we, Trev? It was just up the road they was and all squashed up in a truck. Pete’d know. He was there. He was on the news, he was.’

  ‘We passed the crash site earlier,’ Tommy said. ‘It’s still got a couple of coppers standing about, you know, not like their doing a lot. I’m surprised they haven’t paid you a visit to find out if you saw anything.’

  Behind them a heated discussion rumbled within the huddle of farmers at the end of the bar. Trev stepped up to the pack with his hands held out asking for calm. More words clashed before Trev and the men turned to Ben, Tommy, and Loubie.

  ‘The Shepherd brothers want to know what sort of job gets paid in that sort of money,’ Trev said. ‘I’ve told them it’s none of our business, but they just be curious.’

  Ben regretted producing the note. Tough times, the Man preached on the screen in Ostere Town Square. Ben knew the Man had no idea how tough or hard the times really were. People became feral at the sight of shekels. The farmers standing at the bar wanted the wealth they thought existed in Ben’s pockets. They saw the future, the bucket of shekels, and wanted them.

  ‘I told you,’ Ben said. ‘A wealthy man from Ostere wants his little girl to come home. He just wants to say good-bye, eh?’

  The landlord left the bar and sat down at the table by the fire. ‘You folk probably be needing to leave. If you turn left out of here you’ll be arriving at a T-junction. There’s a dead pub on the left corner, The Spitting Pig, and a good boozer in its time. You need to be taking the right option and that should lead you back to your main road.’

  He dropped a set of keys on the table. ‘Come back for your car tomorrow. Mac will have it fixed or condemned by then.’

  ‘You be careful,’ Griff said. ‘The Gypsies are everywhere. Look what those Gypsies did to me.’

  ‘Yeah, you just be concentrating on the sheep, Griff, lad. They be going to Henwell, so long as they keep out of the Diggers.’ He threw his hands up in the air and chuckled. ‘They’ll be fine.’

  Loubie drank at her mug, spilling a quantity down her chin. She burped and laughed as she wiped at her lips. She took Tommy’s well-chewed cigar, lit it and puffed with good heart. The men watched her, staring as she puffed a large smoke ring. She was elfin, was Loubie, and an oddity to country folk. Smoking, dreadlocks, tattoos, and her skin a darker shade than they were used to: What will the city folk be doing next?

  ‘We need to go, Ben,’ she said.

  Ben handed the keys to Tommy. ‘I didn’t see a car out there.’

  ‘It’s parked out by the back door,’ the landlord said. ‘It’ll get you there and back.’

  The door opened, slammed against the wall and two men, suited with small pork pie hats, entered and took stools at the front bar. Trev grabbed Ben by the arm and hustled him past the Shepherd lads and out the back door.

  ‘Turn at the Pig and you can’t go wrong.’

  The door was shut firmly behind them. The day had closed in, the low dark grey clouds offering little light.

  ‘That was weird,’ Tommy said.

  ‘Really weird and rude,’ Be
n said. ‘But none of our business, so let’s get out of this place, eh? We got a car that works now.’

  As Tommy wrestled with the jeep’s gears, Ben observed Trev with the men in the dark suits. They headed along the narrow track running along the side fence. As Tommy found a gear, the three men disappeared beyond a thick copse of trees at the back of the beer garden.

  ‘They talk about us city folk,’ Ben said, ‘and then a suit turns up. Curious, eh?’

  Chapter Eleven

  Bob the Burrower

  Tommy stalled the battered black 4X4 in a weed-ridden car park next to an old topless army jeep. The bonnet rested flush to a crumbling brick wall. A cobbled road led uphill toward the town center with small signs advertising B&B and zero star hotels. A maze of manky canvas tents spread out in a long strip of land. Small camp fires flickered in the dull day with pots warming on red glowing coals. Squat figures huddled close to the embers, shawls and coats covering their humped bodies. Long slender pipes puffed smoke into the polluted day.

  Darkness shrouded the town of Henwell. An angry red glared off the low black clouds spewing from the Pot banks. The air hung heavy, turgid with a sour tang.

  Loubie fell from the van singing a song of nonsense rhymes. The Scrumpy had ignited the intake of vodka and dope, and the girl wanted to party. She offered a self-collapsing cartwheel for the bemused campers. With a robust ditty she took to dancing a jig.

  A shout for quiet preceded the arrival of a short stocky man. The dark features matched the gloom.

  ‘What you think you doing, Duck,’ he shouted. Black covered his face and hands. He wore a small set of overalls with the cuffs turned up at ankles and wrists. On his head he wore a battered mining helmet with the light shining in the heavy gloom.

  ‘Sorry,’ Ben said. ‘She’s pissed. I don’t suppose you know a bloke called Bob.’

  Ben figured dropping a name might broker some sway with the angry pixie standing with his hands on his hips.

  ‘Who’s asking?’

  ‘I have a message from Jackie John. He-’

  ‘Yes, we know Jackie. I’ll go and find Bob.’