I go to stand up and shout this from the cliff top. I go to shout it loud across the clearing and over the tree-tops, scream and bellow it all the bloody way to town.
But summat stops us. Summat pulls us back. A force, like gravity gone mental.
No son. Stay where you are. Stay where you are.
It’s the force of me Dad. The voice of me Dad an all. Mac bloody Wisdom.
I’ll bloody murder them.
No John-John. It’s what they want. You stand up and you’ll have a bullet in you two seconds from now. You watch.
As he says this I realise it’s the first time I can remember him calling us by me proper name. No Little Runt, no Black Sheep. No Little Fucker. Or Inbred. Just John-John.
So what do I do, I whisper.
Well now. That’s for you to decide.
But I need to know what to do.
You’ll do the right thing, son. Because despite what you think, and despite what they tell you, you always have done.
So I do nowt.
Instead I stay down and all the while Banny’s rifle is pointed up here. Trained on us, like. Pointed to where he reckons I might be. I stay down and I listen to him rewind that tape over and over and hear the horrible sound of me little pup being killed by that gang of bloody twats.
Them soft twats.
Them cowardly twats.
Twats who’ll go nowhere and do nowt with their worthless lives.
Me, I’m not going to be a part of that. I’m not killing nee-one else and I’m not going back to prison neither. I’m not going back anywhere. I’m going forward, me. I’m going to do things differently, me. I’m never going on the back foot.
Nor.
Never.
I look down once more and there in the still silence of dawn I can see a movement. A tiny movement. It’s one leaf trembling on a tree. One leaf among thousands. Among millions. An individual, doing his own thing.
Then I know what to do. Then it all becomes clear.
I take the glass eye from me pocket and place it on the grass, on the edge of the cliff so that it’s looking out over the land, right the way across the north-east like a periscope that’s popped up deep from within the soil, then I push mesel backwards in a silent retreat.
I work me way back until I can nee longer see the clearing or any of them lot in it. I button up me coat and pull me beanie down and I turn and run toward the thick tangle of brambles behind us, the back wall of the green cathedral. When I reach it I drop down again onto me belly and scurry forward.
I burrow in and the thorns slice at us, at me bare hands and me face. They grab and scratch but after a while it’s not so bad and after what seems like a long time I can see light. I push through the thicket towards it and then suddenly I’m out the other side and there’s nowt but an open field there. A wide open field, that’s been furrowed and ploughed and planted with corn that’s come up nicely. There’s a whole sea of corn, just swaying gently in the soft early minutes of a beautiful English summer’s day.
I run into it, into that golden shimmering sea, up to me hips, and I keep running and the big orange sun that sits behind it all is going come on lad, come to me.
I’ll show you the way.
Copyright © Benjamin Myers 2012 First published in 2012 by Bluemoose Books Ltd 25 Sackville Street Hebden Bridge West Yorkshire HX7 7DJ www.bluemoosebooks.com All rights reserved Unauthorised duplication contravenes existing laws British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication data A catalogue record for this book is available from the-British-Library Paperback ISBN 978 0 956687678 Hardback ISBN 978 0 956687661 EBOOK ISBN 9780957549760
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