“Rations,” says the pig-kid. “You get one each.”
“Jerry,” says Borys. “Peyt—”
“Pah!” says Jerry. “Venderwhal is out sick. No sense wasting his share.”
“Jerry, Peyt bagged three greys last week. Saw them right up close and everything. One minute the street was empty, he said, and the next he’d laid three of the fuckers low.”
That catches Jerry’s ear.
Borys regrets it as soon as the words are spoken.
Now they’ll think Peyt’s a hero.
“Well, I’ll be!” Jerry claps Borys on the shoulder. “Why didn’t you say something before?”
Borys tries to shrug it off, but there’s no stopping Jer when he gets excited. The big oaf lets out a whoop. Cups his hands round his mouth. Bellows the news to ragged applause. “Well done,” he says, rattling Borys’s teeth with the force of his pride. “Bloody well done, Peytie. Two years and already the kid’s right up there with the best!”
No, Borys thinks. He’s no hero.
The shorter trolley-boy snorts. “All the best men lived before,” he says. “Back when pavement was grass.” There’s no menace in the statement, no ill will. Both his tone and his wordwind are passive, deflated. Even so, it strikes a nerve.
“What fuckin’ right—” Borys sputters, suddenly furious at these pasty-faced fucks, these little blond babies, who’ve never made sacrifices, too stupid or damaged to fight like real men, when his own son, his Peytie, not much older than them, is off becoming a hero— “What fuckin’ right have you got—”
Plenty, says the pig-kid’s wordwind.
The right to sling ’wind …
The right to catch shrapnel …
The right to become hamburger meat …
To be salted and dried and served up for lead-hounds in this fuckin’ shithole …
“Shut up,” yells Borys. ‘That’s my fuckin’ kid you’re thinking about.’
My kid, the hero …
“Whatever,” says the pig. “It’s just thoughts, mister. Doesn’t mean anything. It’s just thoughts.’ As he pushes the trolley away, the kid’s wordwind is guileless. Unembarrassed. Empty.
“Afternoon, Borys,” says the Pigeon, slowing. Hands too busy delving into one satchel, then the other, to doff his invisible cap.
“Afternoon,” Borys manages. Heart pounding, breath caught in a net of hope. Not a message, he thinks. A cemetery token. Peyt’s dog-tags. His funeral mask.
Artie takes a minute to find the parcel he’s after. One of many unmarked packages, uniformly wrapped in brown paper. When he does, it’s no bigger than a watch box. No heavier than an army knife. The Pigeon presses it into Borys’s shaking hand without looking up at his wordwind, now whizzing out of control.
At last… . At last… . At long last …
“Special delivery,” Artie says adopting a formal, singsong tone.
Definitely dog-tags, Borys thinks. Or the cutlery returned. All the boy’s worldly possessions burnt to cinders and packed into a tiny urn.
At last… . At last… . At long last …
We can keep it on the mantel, he thinks. Where that kind of patriotic crap belongs. Next to Jean’s old photographs and great-great-Grampa’s medals. Ann Miller can dust it, if she wants, while spending her lonely fuckin’ days in the living room. Out of sight, out of mind.
“Repeat after me,” the Pigeon says. “From the Offices of His Honour, Prime Minister Armin Nycene. Special delivery for Jean Andrews.”
Borys says nothing.
“Repeat after me,” says the Pigeon. “From the Offices of—”
“I got it, Artie.”
“Repeat after me—”
“I said I fuckin’ got it.”
“Fine,” says Artie, sighing. “To confirm receipt, please leave your mark here.” Borys takes the card offered, presses his ’wind against it until a residual signature appears. “And here.”
Mechanical motions and a smudged imprint.
“Good enough,” the deliveryman says. “See you tomorrow, Borys.”
“You never can tell.”
The parcel seems to pulse in Borys’s grip. Taunting with its presence, with Peytr’s absence. Borys feels prohibition sealing its neat folds. You can’t touch me, it seems to say. You have me, but I am not yours.
“Mail,” Borys calls when he steps inside the front door. “Mail, Jeanie.”
And when she comes running, when she tears the box from him, saying, “Peyt? It’s from Peytie?” he clunk-thunks to his room. Peels off his clothes. Places the cufflinks alone on his pillow. Bundles his pants, shirt, tie. Crams his unders into his hat. Stuffs two black socks into his shoes. Walks stark naked into the living room, carrying the lot with him. Takes Ann Miller’s jar of grog and borrows her lighter. Shoves the clothes, the shoes, the yellowed underpants into the brick fireplace. Douses the pile with booze, strikes a spark. Then stands back to watch it all burn.
At Grogs, Borys sits in a corner booth, nursing a jar of the black stuff, leaning against the plaster wall. When he and Jerry come here in the early hours of morning, they blend in. They’re just a couple of old men in a crowd full of them. Hair and ’winds sweat-slicked. Uniformed and bleary-eyed after a long night’s work. Quietly throwing back a few cups of courage to face another grey day.
But at night, the red wheel on his back feels like a target. The bartender is young, her vibrant pink hair close-cropped from the tops of her ears down, spiked into a cockscomb above. Her nostrils, eyebrows, and lips bristle with metal. A single stud pierces her gullet. Borys can’t, for the life of him, figure out how it stays in there. Unlike Fat Brandt, who serves the nightshifters, she watches him count out his coins. Counts them again herself, as if he’s a cheat. Then looks up at him as though expecting a tip.
He slides her a penny and a scowl.
Maybe it’s time we cut our losses, Borys thinks. Maybe we should just take the kids and get out of here. He props elbows on the pine table, forehead on hands. The scum of foam on his drink looks like the delivery map in Finishing. It looks like the world, the way it used to be drawn in old atlases. So many dark countries caught in the bubbles, and so many white. None of them grey.
He sticks his finger in the black liquid and churns. Above the music’s thumping bass, Borys won’t hear the whistle calling him to his shift. I won’t hear a thing, he tells himself, looking up to catch a blue-wigged waitress’s eye. Catches Artie’s instead. The Pigeon clocked off for the evening, dandling a pretty little nurse on his knee. Smiling. Lacking the grace to look even slightly ashamed.
Yeah, Borys thinks, emptying his glass. I’ll never hear a thing.
The grog tingles through him, warming from gut to stump and toes. Another pint and he’ll go. Home to Jean. Home to talk. Let’s get away, he’ll say to her, to his darling wife. Let’s get away from all this. He’ll take her to the hospital, maybe enlist the Pigeon’s young date for help. Get skin grafts for Jeanie’s palms. Remove the numbers, remove all proof of her foolishness. Bundle the girls into a cab, mule or no mule, and take them somewhere brighter.
Peytr’s not coming back, he’ll say.
He’s gone, he’ll say.
Let’s go.
One more pint and he’ll do it.
The waitress is busy with a lunatic on the other side of the dance floor. Through sinuous, weaving bodies and a thickening fog of drunk wordwinds, Borys sees the girl flapping her hands. Up and down, slowly, as if worshipping the raving man sitting at the communal table before her.
Poor fuck’s got the shock, Borys thinks, recognising the twitch in the guy’s limbs. The restless rubbing, rubbing, rubbing of his palms on the wooden table top, fingers clamping onto the edge, shaking it for solidity, for reality. The flickering, rampaging nonsense of his ’wind. The lanterns clustered on the table, the windowsills, the rafters above. So bright they dispel all shadows within five feet of him. Borys has seen it before, in the ambulance that took him off the field, away from
the front, not away from the war. A couple of young grunts on gurneys in the truck beside him and an old Cap sprawled on the floor, all three of them trembling with the shock of seeing too much. Of doing too much, or not enough. Soldiers who spent more time on the wards than they had on the front.
This guy’s wearing his jacket inside out, but when he grabs the girls sitting beside him, begging them to stay, to keep him company, the tell-tale flash of multicams underneath give him away.
The kid’s gone AWOL, Borys thinks, spitting on the sawdust-covered floor. He’s a turncoat.
Borys spits again as the guy yanks the waitress’s arm, pulls her down for a kiss. He gets up to intervene, but the Pigeon beats him to it. With firm hands, hands that have failed to bring Borys a single word from his son, Artie loosens the wild man’s grip.
The music stops, or seems to, though Borys can still feel the bass throbbing in his chest, he can see the sawdust bouncing on speakers, see young bodies gyrating around his old one. The music stops, the whole world silent, as Artie pats the lunatic’s wrists and says, “Settle down, Peyt. That’s enough.”
“Peyt?” Borys says, louder than the non-music, louder than the whistle not calling him in for his nightshift. “Peytr?”
And this time the Pigeon blushes. Streaks red as his hair run from bright spots in his cheeks to well in shame around his neck.
“C’mon, Ness,” Artie says to the nurse, turning to go when she won’t budge. Passing Borys on his way out, Artie stops.
“I can’t deliver what was never sent,” he says. “I’ve done no wrong here, Borys. There was nothing to give you. Nothing to tell.”
Borys sets his jaw. Clenches and unclenches his fists until the Pigeon leaves. Stares and stares and stares at this creature whose legs are twitching so violently. Whose albino chin is scruffed with a patchy beard. Whose hands swat at any words that float near him. Whose stomach heaves and heaves, burping up letters and air. This is no soldier, he thinks. This is no hero, no man. This is his son.
The kid is haggard and dirty, like he hasn’t seen a bath in years. His eyes are unfocused, but actively searching. For what? Borys wonders. For whom?
Deep breath in.
The boy knows I come here every morning after work, he thinks. Would’ve expected to see his Da here now, wouldn’t he? Wouldn’t he?
“Peyt?” he says. “Peytr, it’s me.”
Exhale.
Was he waiting all this time?
Grubby fingers cling to the girls in the booth. When they snuggle up to him, Peyt pushes them away. Abruptly, he stands. Jacket swinging dangerously close to the lanterns, jingling with a clatter of tin. “Who’re you talking to? Not me. Not me.”
Was he waiting for me?
“Peyt,” Borys says, wanting to shout the boy’s name over and over. Wanting to check him from tip to toe, as they did when he was newborn. Ten fingers, ten toes, a wordwind and a nose. Taking stock to be sure he’s all there. “It’s good to see you, boy.”
Peytr shakes his head, shakes and shakes. “No, no. You haven’t seen anyone, Da. I missed you. You missed me. But now, I’m not even here.”
With that, he gets up. Clambers over the brunette on his left, drains his pint, and pauses no more than a foot from where Borys is standing. Peytr looks up at him. Borys looks down at his son.
He’s grown, Borys thinks. But I am still taller.
“Come home,” he says, arms lifting and dropping at his sides, yearning to hug the boy’s skinny bones, to feel the slightness of him.
“I can’t, Da,” Peytr says, “I’m already gone.”
“You don’t have to be,” Borys says, feeling the lie breeze around them before Peytr swats it out of the air. The pub door swings shut behind him, leaving no trace of his passing. Who knows how long the boy served before taking the coward’s road? Could’ve been a year before he went AWOL. Could’ve been six months. A month. Maybe less.
Yeah, Borys thinks with a smile. Certainly less.
– The ’winded always rot from the head down (North/West; oft refers to Southerners)
– Music has charms to revive the spirits (North)
– Offence is the best form of defence (Variations: all regions)
– A wise man binds thoughts fast in his breast (East)
– Balance is in the mind, not in the legs (Variations: all regions)
– Say what you think, think what you say (South)
– Beyond the clouds, there is sun (West)
– Pigeons always fly a day late (South/West)
– What can’t be cured must be endured (Variations: all regions)
Aphorisms & Proverbs from Many Lands
Fragment; MS endpaper, ’wind-stained, grog-marred. Ink on A4.
Bibliotheca 11.5833° N, 165.3833° E
Running doesn’t help.
There is no real logic to his movements, only the instinct to hare away, a paranoid urge to escape. His wordwind is listless when it’s light out, more frantic as the days shorten. They’ll find me… . They’ll catch me… . They’ll force me back… . Find me… . catch me … force me … Catch force… . back force … force find … Force THEY… . THEY THEY THEY FORCE… . Find they… . FIND me… . The ’wind keeping up with his feet as he runs, unsure where he’s going, which they he’s fleeing. The greys. The army. The girls at Grogs, the girls at home, the boys. His parents. The flavour of fear bristling from his tastebuds. The incessant echo of flesh rasping against flesh.
Hope and shame are expressed in the length of Peytr’s stride, articulated in pace more than distance. He’s been running for—how long? Days? At least. Weeks? Could be. Winter’s long past, he knows that. Might be he’s run through springtime into summer. Hard to tell when the cloud cover sits so low, more smog than rain, and the temperature is always uncomfortable. Humid and too warm. Humid and too cold. He’d have to run to the other side of the world to change that.
He tries.
He tries.
He tries.
And still the city’s spires flank him, some days on the left, other days right. And the river that slops past the cheap markets on the edge of town—not one of the twelve pretty streams that once spoked through swanky districts, the high-end fashion quarter, the stockbrokers’ row, the culture house mile—the deep green river that sludges along banks scummed with fluorescent algae, the river that no one in his right mind would drink from, but Peyt, so thirsty, does, the river that leaves him shitting deep green bile in the gutter beside shelters he refuses to enter, this same river never seems far from sight, no matter how far Peytr runs.
He runs like Angus used to: one eye on the ground, one on the sky. Progress is slow, and the river’s still there, and the fuckin’ grey-stained city. When he finally collapses in sleep, Peytr dreams of sprinting.
He runs holes in his boots.
He runs himself skinny.
He runs, long hair and wordwind whipping his back, beard scraggling over his mouth, his crack-lipped mouth, his rat-eating, roach-eating, word-eating mouth.
He runs as far as he can from the waterway. Focusing, really focusing, on keeping it at his back. Blisters searing his heels and toes. Stones invading his boots, spearing his soles. His body all sinew and leather, head bobbling, too big on this frame. He runs colour into his features. His irises a startling hazel against reddened whites, face wind-scoured a deep brown. Pale white-pink patches have climbed above the beard line and spatter his left temple and brow. Under the filth on his hands and forearms, the pigmentless skin is the bluish hue of skim milk. He runs colour into the world, runs until he sees brown and orange and ochre with hints of purple on the horizon, then keeps running until everything’s bleached. The vista parched and beige as bone. Open, empty highways crackling across concrete flats. Clouds jaundiced, blue-mould clinging to their bellies in ragged strands. Buildings dotting low hills in the distance, little more than white daubs on crumpled newsprint. Peytr’s wordwind pencil-sketches across the landscape as he runs, thoughts spidery,
sepia, scattered.
He runs himself sweatless, breathless.
He’ll run until things are clear. Until they make sense.
He keeps running.
He keeps running.
And there’s the sun. The sun? A yellow-white ball in the blue. The blue. Nonsense. The sky is not blue, not so far away. The river, the city, never so far behind. There are no shadows, no corners, no hiding places here. Just beige and taupe and bright farness. Nonsense. Look over there. The road is shimmering, coming closer, crawling with—what? Rectangular darknesses, all in a row. Long rectangles, short rectangles, some linked together, some snuffling and scouting ahead. They grow with each step he takes. They amble closer and closer, a progression of houses. No, buses. No, cars. No, skyscrapers tipped and rolling on their sides. A caravan of nonsense snaking to a halt, trailing a curtain of dust. And there are horses, he thinks. There are dogs. Nonsense. The dogs are all gone, they’ve eaten their masters’ words and become geniuses. Rottweilers own football teams now. Alsatians lecture at Ivy League schools. Nonsense. But there is barking. Yes, there. Hear that? And paws loping, drumming the earth. Louder the closer they come.
In his mind, Peytr runs. His wordwind runs. Find me … catch me … force me… . He races out of there—FIND me—muscles strong and powerful—FORCE—heart pumping—catch me catch me catch me—lungs gulping in pure, free air. In his mind. But a woman’s voice, unfamiliar, accented, tells him he’s not moving fast enough.
“Get up,” she says.
Peytr opens his eyes. One eye. The left is pressed shut. When did that happen? He blinks at a foreign face peering down into his own, a foreign wordwind invading his space. Dot 16. Recitative: Why sits that sorrow? (Soprano, Tenor)… . Scowling grinds sand deeper into the left side of his face. His legs keep running, left right left, though he’s lying flat in the dirt. Palms and knees stinging. Cheek bruised and grazed. Blood iron in his mouth. Bitten tongue.
He blinks at the face’s concern. At her inquisitive Dot 34. Aria: How art thou fall’n (Bass)… . At the firm black hands wedged under his armpits, lifting. Not hers—no, her hands are lighter, they are clasping her crouching-bent knees. She looks down at him for at least a year, wild black hair backlit by the sun. The sun. Decades later, he is lifted and now looking down at her. His hood flopping into place on his head, concealing, protecting. His body flopping over a broad shoulder. Arms and legs flopping. Peytr floats over the cracked ground, temples throbbing. Spots swim in front of his eyes. Each time he blinks, he summons night.
Lament for the Afterlife Page 6