Two Cows and a Vanful of Smoke

by Peter Benson

  The far end of the hoop house had a roped-up opening. Spike started undoing the rope from the bottom. I stood guard, and when the opening was large enough he ducked inside. I watched his crouching shadow. Then he stood up. He stood up slowly, like weights were attached to his neck. A moment later I heard the sound of a low, quiet whistle. Silence. Another whistle. “Fuck…” he whispered. His head shook. Silence. “Oh fuck.”

  “Spike?” I said, and as I said his name he suddenly dropped to his knees and said nothing, and the distant dog stopped its barking. I listened once and I listened twice. I listened for another bark, but none came. I listened for anything, another curse, another whistle, the call of a raven. But nothing. Everything was quiet. I could have been standing in a place where sound was swallowed by giants and the world spun slowly like a head on a pole.

  ‌3

  I once had a dream in which the world was a head on a pole and all the other planets were heads on poles, and the sun was a head of fire. Its flares and gases were hair, and its spots were eyes and mouth. It spoke to me in a language I didn’t understand, and when I woke up I was hot and sweating, and felt a burning behind my eyes. I suppose someone could tell me what such a dream meant and try to persuade me that I’d read too many National Geographic magazines. Not that I’ve ever read anything in a National Geographic magazine about the idea that the solar system is made up of heads on poles, but I’m sure there’s a tribe somewhere who believe this is so. Or maybe not. I’m not sure. I don’t know. There are many tribes in the world, and some of them believe the strangest things. Anyway, at that time in the woods I felt the pole slow and the head open its mouth, and the silence thickened, turned in on itself and curdled into the ground. I could smell it there, turning the earth red in its palm, creeping against the roots of the trees and bushes and scrub. I thought about the time I sowed cress on a flannel and put it on a window sill when I was a kid, and I came home from school wanting to know if it had appeared. I needed to see, I wanted to know, and Mum said, “Be patient, Pet. It’ll grow soon.” Now I whispered “Spike? Spike? What’s going on?” He didn’t say anything and I heard a rustle from inside, beetles on a cold stone floor, claws against slate, wings against glass. “OK… I’m coming in…” and I pushed the opening to one side, ducked down and stepped into the hoop house.

  It’s difficult to know what was more powerful, the sight or the smell. Wait. It’s easy to describe the sight, not so easy to describe the smell. The sight. Dope. Cannabis. Weed. Smoke. Twelve long rows of perfect plants, their flower heads about to burst and their leaves heavy with resin. The smell. It was heady and sickly, enough to send your head into a screw. I took a shallow breath, held it and rolled my eyes.

  Spike was still on his knees, looking up at the roof of the hoop house. His lips were moving slightly, and his eyes were half closed. He could have been praying. I think he was praying. I think he’d seen his god. His fingers were touching the plant closest to him, gently stroking the leaves. He leant towards the leaves. They touched him.

  “Spike?”

  He murmured something.

  “Hello? Spike?”

  He opened his eyes and said, “Can you see what I can see?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you ever… have you ever seen anything like it?”

  “No.”

  “I’m stoned just smelling them.”

  “I’m stoned just looking at them.”

  “I’m stoned.”

  “Stoned…”

  “I’m stoned…”

  He reached up and stroked one of the flower heads, licked his fingers and sucked his teeth. “Oh God…”

  “Good?”

  “This is fucking amazing,” he said, “unbelievable.” He sucked his teeth. “Have you ever seen anything like it?” He looked at me, and I saw something in his eyes I’d never seen before, a split and the look of a man who’s felt the touch of a ghost in the back corridor of a tumbled house. A house with broken tiles and smashed windows, and drafts blowing down. And as the words dropped from his mouth, I heard the sound of footsteps, broken sticks and kicked leaves. I put a finger to my lips and he said, “What?” and I hushed him and he said, “What?” again.

  “Someone’s coming,” I whispered.

  He cocked his head. “Shit.”

  “Sshhh…”

  “Na…”

  “Quiet…”

  “Where?”

  “Spike!”

  “What?”

  “Quiet!”

  And the footsteps got closer, the leaves flew and dropped and I heard voices. We ducked down and I scrabbled to the opening at the back of the hoop house. I pushed through the plastic and looked back towards Spike, but he wasn’t moving. He was still staring at the plants, transfixed by their size and their leaves and their buds and their smell, and it was only when I picked up a stone and threw it at him that he snapped out of wherever he was and turned to leave. And the footsteps got closer and now the voices were louder.

  Spike appeared with a stupid, knowing smile on his face. A smile? Now, looking back and knowing what I know and seeing what I’ve seen, the smile was beyond pleasure, and had moved into something wilder. I should have said something then, should have spotted the signs, but I started to fasten the opening rope and he sat on the ground and chuckled to himself. I put a finger to my lips. I shook my head. The footsteps stopped, and a low, deep voice said, “Almost ready…”

  We backed into the undergrowth, ducked down and waited. Spike nudged me, smiled, opened his hand and showed me a fistful of sticky buds. He opened his mouth to say something. I put my hand up and covered his mouth and watched as the outlines of two men appeared in the hoop house. They stood together, and the deep voice said, “I reckon we’ll give them another week.”

  The other man grunted.

  “You want to take some away?”

  “No.”

  “I’ve got some ready at the house. Best pick of the crop for now.”

  “Leave it there. I’ll collect the lot next week.”

  The men moved slowly, stopping here and there to look at the plants and make a comment. When they reached the end, the one with the deep voice said, “What the fuck?” and stooped to look at the rope that tied the opening.

  “What?”

  “It wasn’t like this.”

  “Wasn’t like what?”

  “I ribbon-tied it.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The fucking rope,” said the deep voice, and he started to untie it.

  “Back…” I hissed at Spike, and I scrabbled backwards, further into the undergrowth, the spikes of a blackthorn ripping at my face, me tugging at Spike’s shirt until he moved, and we were as far in deep shadow as we could be. “Get down…” and I lay flat, pulling him down beside me. Here, with my face pushed into the earth I could feel the curdling earth again, smell its worry and hear the sounds of ants rushing for cover and dark. A moment later the gap in the hoop house opened and a beast of a man stepped out, flexed and stood twenty-five yards from my nose.

  He was six foot one or two, with thick black hair and hands the size of bricks. He was dirty, with streaks of earth on his face and arms, and his boots were scuffed and old. Jeans, check shirt, a wide leather belt, and his breathing was heavy and slow. His eyes were pushed back in his head and were the smallest thing about him. Little black slits they were, but I got the feeling that they wouldn’t miss a thing. A moment later he was joined by the other man, who was as close to the opposite of the beast as could be. Dressed in a black suit, completely bald, a silver watch on his wrist, he had pale-blue eyes and thin lips. If the dirty man was a beast, then the bald man was a lizard, and he could have licked the insides of his own ears. He looked uncomfortable in the woods. He didn’t look at the beast and he didn’t look left or right, but straight ahead. Maybe he was blind. I don’t think he was blind. He had a baby face, smooth and bright, bright but closed, closed like the moon on a bad night of leaves an
d marshes and bitterns beaking their way through marshes. Baby face. White. Bright. Bright and closed and talced. A twitch seemed to snap at his mouth. He cocked his head to one side and, as he did, his face concentrated and took on a crazed look. The look of someone who could smell blood at two hundred paces and kill with a touch. “Listen…” he said, but the beast man put a finger to his lips and cocked his own head. He took a step towards us, placing his boot slowly and carefully, not breaking a twig or crackling a leaf at all, and whispered “Someone’s been here.”

  He crouched down and looked towards me. I was caught between flight and stone. My heart thrashed. Spike was still. “Fucking yokels…” I felt Spike bristle. The baby-faced man shook his head and said, “Don’t worry about them. You’re out of here by the end of the week.”

  “Not a day too soon.” The beast stood up and walked back. He stopped and turned and looked back towards us, and for a moment I thought he was going to point and shout, but then he followed the other man through the opening and roped it up. I looked at Spike and he looked at me. I put my fingers to my lips and we waited. We waited until they’d gone, and then we waited another half an hour. It was dark when we stood up and crept back up the path, through the trees, over the bridge and away. “Fancy a drink?” he said, and I nodded. He freewheeled the van down the lane, and I freewheeled behind him, and our wheels slicked the road, and it was only when we reached Ashbrittle that we started our engines and flew down the hill towards Appley and the pub.

  ‌4

  The next day, after I’d finished the milking, I went to have tea with Mum and Dad and Grace, and as I leant against the kitchen sink and watched Dad wrestle with a cabbage in the garden, Mum said, “Listen to me, Elliot.”

  When she calls me Elliot, I know she’s being serious. Usually she calls me “Pet”. I turned from the window, and she forced me to look into her eyes. She didn’t ask me to look into them, but I had no choice. There. Fixed. Her bright blue eyes in her little round face, the thready veins on her cheeks, the nose like a brooch your grandmother gave your sister, the tiny ears, the long grey hair tied back.

  “I’m listening.”

  “I’m smelling fire all the time. It’s strong and it’s getting stronger.”

  “Oh Mum…”

  “Don’t ‘oh Mum’ me. You know how it is.” She tapped the side of her head, and her eyes dimmed like candles in a draft. They came back brighter. “I need you to stop whatever it is you’re doing.”

  “I’m not doing anything.”

  “All right. You might not be doing anything, but someone you know is.”

  “No one’s doing anything.”

  “Is it Spike?”

  “Spike?”

  “It’s Spike. What’s he up to?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You know you can’t lie to me, Pet. You know it makes my palms sing.”

  “And are they?”

  “Yes. Feel.”

  She put her hands out and I touched them. I could feel a light vibration from them, like a choir of ants was singing beneath her skin. “He’s just being his usual self, Mum. Mucking about.”

  “This is more than mucking about. This is stuff he doesn’t want to get involved in. Believe me.”

  “I’ll tell him,” I said, as Grace came downstairs and said, “Tea ready yet?”

  “Half an hour,” Mum said, and she turned and went to the sink and started to peel potatoes.

  Grace and I went outside, walked around the side of the house and into the road. We didn’t plan to walk together, but we ended up walking across the village green towards the churchyard. She is two years younger than me, but when we were kids and old enough to play out she used to be the one with the plans and the courage. She’d tell me we were climbing a tree or building a rope swing over a river or walking down to the ruins of the house where the mad Professor kept his kidnapped woman. And she’d always climb first or swing first or say “What you scared of? There’s nothing there…” and laugh when I said, “But…” Now, as we walked, she said, “Mum talk to you?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did she say?”

  I shrugged. “You know. The usual.”

  “And what was that?” Grace never takes no for an answer, and I knew better than to try and fob her off with nothing. “Tell me.”

  “She said she could smell fire and her palms were singing…”

  “And you believe her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I’d never talked properly with Grace about the things Mum thinks and feels. Whenever it came up, we always changed the subject, but now, for the first time, she said, “I think you want to listen to her. It’s not that crazy.”

  “What’s not that crazy?”

  “Her gifts.”

  “Her gifts…”

  “Yes, Elliot, her gifts. The ones she thinks you’ve inherited.”

  I laughed. “And you haven’t.”

  She shook her head. “You know me. Miss Practical.” We stopped by the yew, and I stared up at its branches. “When we were kids I used to climb up there, but you never would. You used to say it was a special tree, and that’s before you knew why. I never felt anything like that.”

  “You sound like Dad.”

  “Exactly. I’m Dad’s kid. You’re Mum’s.”

  “Sometimes,” I said, “I wish I was you.”

  “And why’s that?”

  “With you, things are…”

  “Things are what?”

  “Simpler. Black and white…” I said, and now, maybe for the first time in our lives, she took my arm and we walked on, past the yew and the church porch and around and through the gate, past Pump Court and the hippies’ houses.

  I looked at her as we walked, her pale face that never tanned, her freckles, her little nose and her hair tied back in a bun. If you found one of those old photographs of Victorian kids sitting outside a school, you’d find her face there, a face that travels down the ages like a story. Dependable and old and untroubled by nonsense. She spoke what she was thinking, and thought carefully, and she had a plan for her life. One day, she’d told me, she was going to open a restaurant – “Nothing posh, but it’ll have people driving for miles to eat my food,” and I believed her. That was the essence of her, you believed the things she said, took her advice, listened. So as we walked back towards the green and home, she said, “Listen to Mum. And listen to yourself. Listen here,” and she patted her chest. “When you find out what you were born for, you have to use it.”

  I stopped for a moment and she stopped beside me, and we looked at each other. We’d never fought, but we’d had arguments, but now I didn’t think I’d ever have another argument with her. It was simple on that hot day, too simple, and I wished, for a moment, that simple could be tattooed on my heart. “OK,” I said and, although I wasn’t exactly sure what she’d meant, I had an idea, and an idea was better than the flight of mad wasps, or the chase of a dog in the night.

  ‌5

  After the evening at the hoop house, I didn’t see Spike for a couple of days. I put my head down at the farm, and when I wasn’t working I sat in the caravan and listened to the radio or read a bird book. If someone asked me what my hobby was, I’d say it was bird-watching. I don’t always attach the old superstitions to their flights and calls, and I’m not a twitcher. I don’t keep a notebook and fill it with names of birds and the places I’ve seen them, and I wouldn’t chase halfway across the country to see a rarity that strayed from America to Cornwall. But I do love to watch the soaring buzzards, I wait for the cuckoos of spring, and when I’m tractoring I talk to the gulls that follow my tyres as they search for the jealous worm.

  Sometimes Mr Evans would bring two bottles of beer to the caravan and we’d sit on the step and drink, and he’d tell me stories about the old days. The farm had been in his family for two generations. His grandfather had rented the place from the Buff-Orpingtons, and his father had bought it when the old family’s fortunes floun
dered and they disposed of half their estate. Mr Evans remembered the day when they became landowners. “Father set up a trestle table over there.” He pointed to the middle of the front yard. “We killed a pig, bought gallons of cider, mother baked bread, and neighbours came from miles around. Father never spoke much, but that day he didn’t stop. He had plans for this place, big plans. I had plans too, but the War did for them…”

  You didn’t ask Mr Evans personal questions. I got that straight away. You just waited for him to come out with it, but if he didn’t you either waited or forgot about it. So I let what he’d said hang in the air, and when he started talking about the time they’d swapped horses for a tractor, I listened and nodded and told him that I sometimes wished I could have been alive in those days, days when things were simpler and slower.

  “And harder,” he said.

  We talked for another half-hour, and then he said he was going to watch the news. I held up my bottle of beer and said, “Thanks for this.”

  “You’re welcome,” he said, “and I just wanted to say…” but then he stopped.

  “What?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing,” he said, and he got up, steadied himself and shuffled across the yard to his front door. As he walked he held his hand up in parting, and left me sitting on the step.

  I was watching a kestrel hovering over the farmyard when Spike turned up. The bird had its eye on a vole or mouse, and as it hung in the air it adjusted itself with little tweaks of its tail, head down and still, a bullet hanging in the place where threat meets wonder. As I’ve said, Spike is a wiry man, but as he loped towards the caravan I thought he was even more wiry, as if the wires had been tightened and tensed against the season. And he was wearing a stupid expression on his face, more stupid than ever. He banged on the door and let himself in, clapped me on the shoulder and said, “What about it?”