Getting it in the Head

by Mike McCormack

  He was just staring out over the hills.

  ‘Keep an open mind, sis, an open mind.’

  Like the legions who have gone before and the legions who will come after, I met him on the lip of his own grave a split second after he came over from the other side. He was standing on the edge of his grave, looking down at where he had lain beneath the trampled earth and the whitewashed emblem of his saviour. He was wringing his hat into a shapeless mass between his hands, a look of anguish and disorientation drawing his features. Not for the first time did I think that if I had a penny for every time I had seen that look I would long ago have indentured an apprentice and handed over my trade at the first opportunity, then taken my chances with those other pilgrims in the wastelands that lie beyond this graveyard. But I am not running a business and no money changes hands in this land without value; such dreams are only torment.

  Their anguish, their torment – so much of it have I seen through the years that I admit now without shame that my soul is totally callused over with indifference. I do not give a damn for their sensibilities any more and because of that I have been freed to develop an attitude of cold efficiency. It is an attitude which spares me and profits them – previously so much time was wasted in grief and this rictus of foreboding. Now I come upon them suddenly, stalking among the crosses and mausoleums and startling them with my abruptness. I tell them straight out that if they value what is left of their lives then they had better follow me; if they choose to stay where they are and curl up and die, as they inevitably will, then that is a matter of no consequence to me. All I ask is that they decide quickly and not waste my time. Their choice is simple: they take their chances with me or they stay there and die. It’s not much of a choice but then this is a world without mercy.

  Thankfully he was not the argumentative sort. He was sharp enough to mark closely the piles of bones that stood at the head of several graves around; he drew the relevant lesson, then remoulded his hat quickly and followed me from the graveyard outside to where the stores were situated. On entering, I informed him quickly that he was here to pick up provisions and instructions for a journey he was to make alone and that the sooner he was kitted out, the sooner he would be on his way, taking steps towards his destination.

  First I relieved him of his suit and replaced it with a pair of jeans that were riveted and double-stitched in heavy fabric, styled more for endurance than comfort. He turned in his shirt and tie for three cotton shirts with long sleeves, one white to ward off the summer heat and two black to hold body warmth when the snows fell. He was given three jerkins woven from new wool and a long poncho of alpaca which could be belted at the waist and which would serve well as a blanket in the innumerable nights to follow. His shoes were replaced with heavy boots of Portuguese leather, laced above the ankles with leather thongs and lined also with kipskin. He was urged to work them continuously with animal fat and to set by a store of thongs from cured skins, cutting them in a spiral fashion from the edge of the hide to the centre to maximize length; thus was the pilgrim clothed.

  Nor did he go without armaments. I took down a shotgun and sawed four inches off the barrel and made up the loss in weight with fifteen extra cartridges. I told him that when he reached open ground he should fire off a few practice rounds to get the feel of the gun and write the loss off against experience. I showed him also how the thongs of his boots would double to string a bow from the hickory ribs beneath the canvas tarpaulin of his wagon, and how bull reeds and willow rods would make serviceable arrows – he would have plenty of time to practise the art of fletching using the feathers of grounded birds he would encounter on his route. And I gave him also a curved blade with three different edges for the various types of cutting and scraping he would do. It was bolted to a wooden handle, and with a piece of sandstone and a measure of linseed to keep it whetted; thus was the pilgrim armed.

  I took down a book then, a compendium of all the beasts and flora he was likely to encounter. I pointed out those creatures that were good to hunt and eat and those that were carriers of contagion – rabies, anthrax and brucellosis. I familiarized him also with the reptiles and snakes that would lie in his path and the various types of corrosion they bore; those types that could be sucked out without difficulty from a crossed incision at the wound and those that were so potent it would be better for him to lie down on the spot and pull a blanket over his head so that he would not forfeit his eyes to the crows before his breath left him. I pointed out also that it is in the balance of the universe that there is not an illness nor an ailment likely to befall him but that there is also a herb to counter it; an infusion of lungwort will ease diarrhoea and chest complaints while a decoction of yarrow will aid blood clotting; powdered mullein is a good sedative and a poultice of burdock will clear most wounds. Against that, hemlock and camus are to be avoided for they are an antidote to no known illness and bring a fever and sickness all their own. I pointed out also that in time of catastrophe he might have to trade a limb to save his soul and that the serrated edge of his blade was plenty sharp enough to saw through any of his bones if he had the nerve for it. It would be a good index of his electedness if he could endure this calamity and continue the length of his journey without a full set of limbs.

  We spent some time also poring over maps that are torn now and barely legible. I marked out for him the general direction he should take, his only choice being whether he should walk east or west. In fact this was no choice at all, since his destination was equal distance in either direction from the exact spot on which he stood. My advice was that, so early in the morning, he should set out on his strongest foot and walk east into the rising sun, putting its furnace behind him as quickly as possible for the greater part of the day. I showed him on the maps also those sands wherein it was possible to sink wells and find oases, and those parts that were lush with water-bearing cacti. I inscribed too those salt flats that were without beasts or vegetation and that were to be avoided at all costs. I marked off the narrow defiles between mountain ranges and the stone revetments that were the probable strongholds of brigands and felons and likely sites for ambushes. I counselled caution in these areas and when I had done so I rolled up the maps and put them aside, heedless to his protest that he needed them for the journey. I informed him that such maps did not come in duplicate and that there would be other pilgrims in his wake.

  On the question of companionship I warned him against falling in with strangers on his journey. Once he had taken the measure of his own stride he would make better time at his own pace rather than breaking or lengthening it to suit others. But if these strangers were unavoidable then he should stand at all times with the sun and wagon to his back when addressing them and on no account was he to enter into games of skill or hazard where there was a possibility of him losing face or his cloak, for, whatever price he put on his dignity, he could ill afford to part with the latter. And I told him also that if the opportunity arose in the darkness, when no moon rose and no stars flecked the sky, it should not conscience him to take out his knife and open that same stranger’s throat, particularly so if that man’s boots were sturdier than his own and his oxen had wintered heavily on crushed oats. When first light came, he should hitch up his wagon and move off with no backward glance save to take an alignment from the carnage for he was unlikely to be called to account for it.

  I told him further that of all the gullies and ravines and valleys on his journey none would have such depths and sheer sides nor be so lacking in footholds as the vortex of his own solitude, that pit wherein there is no progress that is not circular. Against it I taught him a handful of songs that were of no consequence save their melody and one canticle against sleeplessness; all of these to keep his mind supple and his tongue from falling into a rictus of disuse. In the days ahead without partners the gift of speech could readily flee him and it would be a fatal thing indeed for him to arrive at his destination and be unable to speak his name or give an account of his actions. I s
howed him also how a simple reed organ could be fashioned between his two thumbs with a blade of grass. It would give a range of two octaves and a fifth and two reeds blown in tandem would allow him to play simple harmonies and extend the range a further octave. I warned him against laughing upon such toys for he would be well glad of them in the night when wolves and predators moved beyond the light of his campfire. I told him that time spent crafting instruments of dissonance and percussion from hollowed bone and cured hides was time spent girding himself against idiocy: all travellers need time out to catch their breath and play.

  And to give the vortex of solitude a wider berth I furnished him with a series of mind games to keep him thinking, for, like every human enterprise, death is something you have to continually bring your mind to bear upon. Along with a series of puzzles and conundrums I gave him also the ontological argument and the argument from design. I told him their history and significance and made him repeat them before me till I was assured he had their structure and progress committed to memory without flaw. And then I gave him a series of counter arguments and objections with which he could interrogate them, build them up or break them down as he saw fit. But because of the unique misery it afforded I omitted the teleological argument altogether and hoped fervently that he would not chance upon it of his own volition for it has a pitilessness and desolation without recourse.

  Before we moved into the yard I spoke to him of how the terrain and cartography of his own mind would engender many rogue epistemologies and deceptions on his route, how calenture and hallucinations and mirages and tinnitus of the ears would raise up many fraudulent cities and oases in the desert and populate the night with the voices of friends long since departed and not yet conceived. More than on the plains or in the desert, the pit of despair is quarried in the mind and I cautioned him to look to it with the same vigilance he tended to his blade and his boots. I recommended an attitude of doubt and scepticism towards everything that did not glow with self-evident truthfulness except in those extreme circumstances of pain and desolation when wagers of faith were the only way forward.

  All this done I took him around the back of the stores where the joiners were putting away their tools and the painters were finishing the last coat of creosote on the wagon. I told him the wagon was crafted in seasoned maplewood and that with proper maintenance it would take him the entire length of his journey. From this day out he was to look to it as he would to his very soul, keeping it clean and balanced with the weight distributed evenly over the four wheels and keeping also a sharp eye to the desert heat that it would not wring the last sap from the timber and sunder the mortices on rocky ground. Every opportunity should be taken to submerge the wagon in streams and in lakes to let the timber swell to a tightness. As I hitched up the oxen he voiced the inevitable preference for horses but I informed him that the desert floor was well littered with the bones of horses struck down by the brunt of the sun and that these same bones would make good cleaning and scraping instruments; oxen are the draught animals par excellence, creatures of fortitude and huge resilience. I told him how best to fodder them and I showed him the spot of their necks from which, in times of privation, a quart of blood could be syphoned and drunk steaming in the cold night without fatally weakening the animal, provided the incision was cauterized with a hot blade and the ox was allowed to rest at the first opportunity.

  He was about to climb on the wagon and move off before he remembered a last thing – how would he recognize his destination? I told him that of all his worries, and he would have plenty, this would be the least of them. He would recognize it without error in the same way he would recognize his own simulacrum if it came walking towards him out of the desert with the self-same sins of his birth; keep striking a line due east into the rising sun and he would not miss it. I remembered then to take from him his timepiece and cast it in a pile with the others: in the days and months ahead it would be nothing but a torment to him. All he would need to know of time from this moment forth could be read from the elevation of the sun and felt in the slackness of his belly. My final instruction was that if in his life it had been his habit to petition saints or martyrs with prayers or offerings then now was not the time to neglect these rituals; small sacrifices of birds and game should be offered up when he had enough to eat and sufficient stores set by.

  Finally he chucked the reins and moved off out of the courtyard without valediction or further query. I did not offer my hand in goodwill nor did I accompany him any step of the way but I kept watch until the wagon had disappeared below the curve of the horizon. Then I went inside and took out his bundle of clothes and set fire to them for he would not be returning to reclaim them.

  And as they burned no breeze moved and smoke began to fill the yard and I fell to thinking of all the pilgrims I had instructed and equipped for this same journey, more pilgrims through the years than there are stars in the firmament or ants on the ground. I remembered how I had sent them out, one after another into the wastes, armed with those few chattels and instructions against blind chance and those nameless contingencies that lie in ambush at every step of the road, ready to waylay and leave them bloodied and broken on hot sands or in cold snows, their souls lost forever in this oblivion without any reckoning. I thought of the wisdom I had passed on to those travellers I hoped might profit from it and how easily this same wisdom is ridiculed by circumstances which refuse to reveal themselves; circumstances which bide their time and sneer like sentient beings from behind positions of strength, invisibly watching the pilgrims who pass by heedlessly with the backs of their necks clear and exposed. And I thought also of the confidence and certainty with which I speak out my instructions – whence did I get such authority? I am, after all, a man who has never moved beyond these perimeter walls and I have no experience whatever of the things on which I speak with such eloquence. I have never fired a gun or strung a bow, my food is handed to me on a plate and in the evening I play cards with the other craftsmen. Now the terrible truth is that I have no faith any more in my work nor, if I search deeply enough within myself, can I remember a time when I did. I seem to remember it always as a performance, a soothsayer’s carnival act, where I flourished these vague conjectures for the astonishment of some rude audience. All I can hope for now is that somewhere in my charlatan’s eloquence some of these pilgrims will find material enough to make a fight of it; after that they will have to take their chances.

  The fire is dying down now and the yard is filled with smoke. I can see no further than the perimeter wall. Pretty soon now I will walk to the graveyard and bring back another pilgrim. I will go through the same ceremony of outfitting and instruction and with the same air of confidence – I know it well by heart. All I wonder at any more is the difficulty I have with putting in words just how much I have grown to hate this job.

  On the very evening I burned down the left wing of our house my father told me that he hated me. He just stood there in the shadow of the gutted roof thumbing a shell into the rifle, making no bones about it nor putting a tooth on it in any way, just telling me quietly and for the last time that everything about me made him sick, everything: the massive dome of my head with its lank fringe, my useless legs and piping voice – most of all the lack of shame and outrage in my heart. He told me again that all the cruelty and misshapen ugliness of the world was summed up in my body and that he could not suffer it a moment longer. Then he told me that he was going to kill me. Frankly this wasn’t news to either of us. Somehow we seemed to have always known that our relationship would come to this; it had been fated from the beginning to end in some swift settlement of accounts, some bloody reckoning. Putting it another way, neither our house nor our world was big enough for two people such as us.

  Lately however, and for some reason I could not fathom, I had begun to dream of something else. My sleeping hours had been filled of late with shapeless images of truce and acceptance, compromises, it is true, which fell a long way short of love and redemption
but nevertheless something to be getting on with. However, when I saw my father thumbing home that shell I realized that he knew nothing of my dreams.

  ‘I’m going to shoot you stone dead,’ he said evenly. ‘And what’s more, I’m going to shoot you in the back.’

  ‘It’s not going to be a fair fight then. I don’t have any weapons to hand.’

  ‘I’m going to give you a fighting chance,’ he said. ‘You’re going to get a fifty-yard start over open ground and I have only one shot. If you make it don’t come back. Here’s two hundred and fifty pounds to help you make a start in the world just in case. Invest it wisely. I’d recommend government bonds.’

  He handed me a wad of notes and I made some quick calculations. Normally my father was an excellent shot. In clear light I had seen him drop fleeing rabbits at one hundred yards. Now, however, there were other factors to consider. It was late evening and the autumn sun was well in decline. Shadows crawled everywhere and gave shapes and profiles an enormity they did not truly possess. Also I could see that my father’s temper had begun to smoulder; little things gave him away. A tremor had entered into his white-knuckled hand as he gripped the rifle and a bead of sweat had broken out under his nose. Already I was beginning to fancy my chances but I still wanted further adjustments to be on the safe side.

  ‘How about a head shot?’ I said. ‘You’re always telling me that my head is too big for my shoulders.’

  ‘Only at forty yards, beyond that whitethorn.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Plus ninety quid.’

  ‘That’s down to four pound a yard. It started out at five.’

  ‘That’s the law of diminishing returns. Take it or leave it.’

  I thumbed the notes of the wad and handed them over. ‘How do I know you’ll only take the one shot?’