Soot

by Dan Vyleta

  The farm lies abandoned then, the weather rather fine; Loon on top of the barn roof, sunning his hide. The noise alerts him, a double buzzing: one mechanical, the other organic, a wasp’s nest agitated by a prodding stick. Loon stands up, scans the road, watches the horseless coach roll up. It is not going very fast but is otherwise rather grand; the windshield mud-splattered and dusty, gleaming metal underneath. On the driver’s side there sits an apparition clad in leather cap and goggles, so covered in dust it pours off him like Smoke when he stops the car and rises from out his seat. Behind him, stacked one upon the other and strapped down with heavy belts, is a tower of crates. The mechanical chugging has stopped but the organic buzz is loud. Loon has to shout his “Hullo!” to make himself heard.

  He knows what it is, Loon does. A motorcar. The barber in town has a picture of a motorcar in the window of his store and has told Loon (who does not yet shave but makes the odd penny, sweeping up for the man) that his business has doubled since the picture’s installation. “It’s like displaying a picture of a half-naked woman,” he said. “Nobody knows why, but everyone wants to have their whiskers trimmed by the man who holds such promise in his window.”

  Wondrous though the motorcar may be, Loon is even more impressed by the figure that peels itself out of goggles and cap. His skin is the same colour as the road dust. Stranger yet, he is young, just a few years older than Loon.

  Loon walks to the edge of the barn roof, takes hold of the drainpipe, and swings himself down in an acrobatic manoeuvre perfected last summer.

  “Welcome,” he says impressively, “to Master Holland’s dairy and farm. How may we be of service?”

  The dark-skinned stranger smiles and shakes Loon’s hand. His eyes, Loon notices, are calculating, shrewd.

  [ 2 ]

  It takes a minute or two for Loon to comprehend the bargain the man-boy is suggesting. This is not because he is speaking unclearly (though the stranger’s accent is odd), but simply because the terms of exchange are surprising to Loon, even preposterous. Once he does understand, Loon agrees to them at once. After all, it is not his wagon, nor are they his horses. And Loon has always wanted to own a motorcar, even one that is out of fuel. No, not a motorcar. A 1908 Stilson Six-Cylinder Company Special Edition. Both boys can’t stop grinning over the silliness of the phrase.

  Part of the bargain is that Loon will help transfer the packing crates to the wagon and help secure them there. Though not particularly heavy, the size of the crates makes them awkward to handle and the buzzing that emanates from them is disconcerting. For half an hour of concentrated labour Loon holds his tongue. Then the questions spill out of him.

  “Who are you?” he asks. “What’s in the boxes? Where are you going?”

  The stranger answers the last of these questions. “North.”

  “To Minetowns?”

  “Maybe, I’m not sure.” The stranger flashes a smile, toothy and forced. It is unclear to Loon which one of them it is trying to bamboozle. “I received a letter saying that someone’s trying to destroy the world. But the details were a little hazy.”

  They talk some more. Loon wants to know why. Not the destroying the world bit—Loon takes that in his stride—but why the stranger’s rushing towards disaster. In his experience, if someone yells “Danger!” it is best to run the other way.

  The stranger considers this argument. “I’m going there to help someone. Save her, perhaps.”

  Loon gets it at once. “A girl! You’re in love with her.

  “Splendid,” he adds, the way he has heard the farmer say the word when his wife announces the Sunday roast is done. “Now what’s in the crates?”

  [ 3 ]

  The strange youth won’t tell him, not right away; not when Loon asks again while harnessing the horses, nor yet when he helps him climb up onto the box. Then, leather reins already in his hands, the stranger pauses, and considers Loon. Loon holds his gaze and tries to decipher the cause of the sudden hesitation. He finds it hard to read the dark boy’s features. All he knows is that the face is serious; concerned.

  “What’s your name?” the stranger asks.

  “Luke,” says Loon.

  “How old are you?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “Do you have a box or a cage or something like that? Something small?”

  Loon thinks at once of Mistress Holland’s pet finch, Albert.

  “What if I do?”

  “Fetch it, Luke.”

  Loon races inside the farmhouse. Once past the threshold he surprises himself by bursting into Smoke. He had not known just how excited he was and marvels at the fact that he should show now, inside, where his Soot will leave a mark on the freshly polished floorboards. The farmers are funny about Smoke. They live in border country here. The local lord has some sort of arrangement with the Lord Protector. Officially Smoke is a sign of sin, of commonness; there is a vicar who reminds them of this every Sunday. Unofficially, they have all smelt the vicar in a recent Gale; now the womenfolk can’t look at him without either blushing or laughing. At any rate, the farmers don’t approve of smoking indoors. They hold with it as they do with swearing, spitting, and other noxious habits: they are for the yard, the outhouse, the barn. They will query every speck of Soot.

  Without slowing, Loon wafts at himself, almost tripping on the hallway rug. He races up the stairs and whisks cage and Albert off their perch on the mistress’s windowsill. A moment later he is back in the yard, where his Smoke slows then stops as he approaches the wagon.

  “Here you go. It’s the mistress’s pet bird.”

  “Let it fly.”

  Loon opens the cage door. Albert (who in truth seems much too large for the cage, or the cage much too small for him) does not stir. He must be shaken; complains, flutters and hops, then squats down again upon the cage floor the moment the earthquake has subsided. Loon fishes for him with his hand but cannot grab hold of him; cuts his wrist on the wire door. At long last, Albert emerges. He squeezes out, then at once attempts to return into his cage only to miss the small doorway. Next, he celebrates his freedom by flying headfirst into the farmhouse window across the yard.

  “Ouch!” says Loon, uneasy now. “This better be good.”

  The strange boy walks around to the back of the cart, very carefully pulls a few nails from a crate so that the lid can be pulled back an inch or two, then reaches in and produces a fistful of wriggling legs and pincers.

  “The cage, quick.”

  In a trice, three beetles are locked into the wire cage, their bodies just fat enough not to slip through the gaps. Loon raises the cage and studies the beasties. They are fist-big, ugly, made of shiny black horn. A thick shock of yellow fur bursts from the points where legs grow into belly, as though their entire bodies are stuffed with it. Loon yelps in surprise when the bugs split open their backs to reveal thin gossamer wings underneath the peeled-back armour; yelps yet again when they take sudden hops suggestive of aerial ambition.

  “Keep them close at all times,” the strange boy instructs Loon. “If something bad comes—you will know what I mean when you see it—take them out and…lick them. You have to breathe in their spore.”

  Loon wrinkles his nose in disgust, only half understanding what the stranger is saying. His eyes remain on the beetles and their ungainly leaps. “I’ve never seen a bug this big. Or this furry. Do they fly?”

  The strange boy hesitates. “I can’t remember.”

  He climbs back on the wagon, takes the reins, then quickly slips off his cap and goggles and passes them down.

  “I won’t need these now.”

  Then he is gone, taking his buzzing with him, down the long farmhouse driveway and left upon the open road, until he can no longer be heard or seen.

  Loon, for his part, is sitting behind the wheel of his Stilson Six-Cylinder,
wearing his goggles and cap, the beetles taking flea-hops in their cage upon the passenger seat. Loon wishes the barber were here, or maybe Betsy Summers from one farm over. She once told him that he might turn out to be quite handsome if only he consented to wash. They could lick beetles together, Betsy and he, and wait for the end of the world to come, from somewhere, up in the North.

   AT EYE-LEVEL

  (Materialist)

  [ 1 ]

  Now behave yourself, pet, it’s time to get you powdered. It’s carbolic, that’s all it is, it’ll stop you from stinking even worse. Wait, let me draw the curtains, no need for others to gawk. There, now let’s get this cloth off of you. Poor thing, how swollen you are! Soaked like a sponge. Ready for the wringing.

  “There, that’ll do for the powder. Now let me comb your hair, there’s a good boy. Such nice thick hair. A proper ginger, you are. My ma used to say it keeps on growing even after you’ve died, but that’s nonsense, surely, old wives’ tales. Well, now that you’re presentable, here’s the sheet again, let’s wrap you up tight, so the flies can’t get at you. All good and tucked in? Then I’ll open the curtains, let the wind at you, and give my old nose a rest.”

  It’s been two and a half days now. The curtains in question are not actually curtains at all but the canvas flaps of a covered wagon that Livia has commandeered and turned into a hearse. She commandeered the old woman, too, bossed and bullied her like a servant, though no bossing or bullying was necessary. After all, Old Granny Henderson agreed to the task without the slightest hesitation. The dead man needed someone: a watcher and keeper, a washer and witness. She was more than happy to serve.

  Two and a half days: the body waterlogged and heavy, smelling of spoilt meat; a crowd of mourners around the wagon at all times, now silent, now singing vigils; one moment placid and numb, then breaking into sudden fumes of anger, fright, and grief. It was a procession, really, not a crowd, moving west then north, the two horses plodding, walking with the measured, shuffling gait of casket bearers, though no casket has of yet been made.

  They reached the shore last night—a beach, yellow-tipped gorse giving way to coarse dark sand—then followed the coast up to a ghost town, its two curving piers stretched out into the sea like arms open for an embrace. Moored in the harbour basin shaped by this embrace float three ships flying the Company flag.

  Rowboats have been going back and forth between these ships and the coast, transporting turbaned troops who fill the boardwalk and streets in oddly geometric patterns, marching two abreast, or four, or five; setting up tents in tidy lines, occupying houses row by tidy row. Clouds of black birds hover above the scene and roost upon the ship moored at the tip of the pier, where some repair work appears to be in operation. Welding torches and showers of sparks add their glow to the dull day; a black metal crane, bolted into the pier’s stone, inclines its arm towards the scene. The shouts of workers give a semblance of life to the old harbour.

  The town itself—once famous for its import of colonial tobacco, and consequently rich—was painted black ten years ago by the passage of a Storm, then saw half its structures stripped and pilfered for their roof tiles and stone. The few inhabitants who returned to live within this gap-bricked house of death have long joined the crowd of pilgrims on a hill just south of the harbour. With every hour, another handful arrives: from the town below the hill, from Minetowns and Cumbria, from the coastal villages south of here where people spied the passage of the ships. Men, women, children: spreading rumour and Smoke. The soldiers below are aware of this gathering; they have been busy building barricades. Cannons have been landed and brought into position; are manned at all times by teams of gunners. Day and night, gun muzzles and bayonets are pointed the pilgrims’ way. It feels like the prelude to war. Before long there may be more bodies to wash and tend.

  [ 2 ]

  Of course it would be best to bury the dead. Livia won’t hear of it.

  “Not in this soil. We will bring him home.”

  Old Granny Henderson does not know where home is: not for Charlie. For herself, Minetowns would do. She has spent only the last six years of her life there, but it is the only place in the world she’s ever felt free. If she falls here—is shot by one of these dark-skinned soldiers from the other side of the world, or speared by one of their blades—it is unlikely her bones will make it back. It does not much matter. Bones are dust; death is the end of all. “I am a materialist, I am,” she says, proud of the word. Not that it keeps her from talking to a corpse.

  She does it now, less from an innate need to talk than from a sense of loss at Charlie’s death best expressed by scolding him.

  “You made a right bollox of your dying,” she mutters, some of her mother’s Irish coming through in her voice. “Went too quickly and forgot to tell us why. Leave us a note next time, will you, pet? And if you could clear up what’s going on ’round here while you are at it, we will be thanking you kindly.”

  In truth, rumour rules the camp. Everybody has a theory to impart. The soldiers below are Renfrew’s doing, an invasion; these ships will be followed by two hundred more. Or: the government down south has abdicated, too far fallen into debt; the Company now owns the land and has come to milk it dry. Or yet: the Company is changing alliances. It has torn up its contracts with Renfrew and agreed to recognise Minetowns as the seat of the people’s will. Livia was sent to welcome them; only she has grown distracted in her grief.

  The only thing that’s certain is that Charlie is dead.

  But even here confusion has wormed its way into so simple a fact. It is easy to point the finger, of course—there is talk of a quiet stranger, a man who does not smoke—but the truth is that there is not a mark on the young man’s body, neither wound nor bruise. He was found submerged amongst cattails and reeds. Stones were crammed into his pockets; his handkerchief spotted with his cough.

  “Charlie Cooper would not suicide himself.” So say the faithful.

  “Who knows what sickness will do to a man?” So, the sceptics.

  The children—those who lived there, amongst the Lakes, hungry, dirty ragamuffins that they were—simply huddled together in a cloud of Smoke. All but the child they call the Angel.

  “Angel’s flown,” offered some wit. “Spread ’is wings and off ’e went.”

  Another: “He’s been stolen, cooked, and eaten by that smokeless Jew.”

  “Jew, eh, my love? That’s funny, that. Well, better they cry ‘Jew’ than ‘darkie,’ eh? Fewer of them around, just now.”

  And Granny Henderson adds, sitting high upon the wagon and surveying the scene, “It’s funny what some people will come out with, pet, just because they’re scared.”

  [ 3 ]

  Livia comes. Bent and weak-eyed though she is, Granny Henderson sees her coming from afar. Livia walks under a cloud. Granny Henderson has never seen anyone grieve like that, with such concentrated fury, yet so contained and self-consuming. Her Smoke is close-knit, moist, a frightful stink; it creeps into your skin and makes you want to flay yourself. The crowd parts for her, oddly disgusted by the flavour of her grief.

  “How is he?”

  “About the same. What else?”

  “Then make space, so I can climb up to you.”

  Granny Henderson leans back as Livia clambers up, away from her Smoke. Livia must have tried to douse herself recently: her face is smeared with coal dust. Together with her Soot it forms a shiny patina, leaving free only her mouth and eyes. It is as though she painted herself to mock that Negro who follows her around, looking drawn and constipated, grimly fond of the stone-hard weight inside his bowels (unless it’s true what Granny’s heard and he is a woman grown attached to britches, and short-cropped hair).

  “Did you clean him?”

  “Cleaned him, combed him, rubbed him down with disinfectant. For all the good it does.”

 
“Leave me alone with him.”

  Granny Henderson sighs, rises, makes to climb down from the wagon. “He isn’t going to come back, pet.”

  Livia does not respond.

  “Them soldiers going to charge us?”

  “They are unloading something. When they are done, then yes, perhaps.”

  “It might be an idea to get out of the way.”

  “Leave me alone with him,” Livia says again, and this time Granny Henderson does, stepping off the box while Livia disappears inside the wagon.

  “I’ll be back in a quarter hour, pet,” she calls up. “Just going to stretch my legs.”

  [ 4 ]

  Dusk is falling. The camp has spread further since she last clambered down from the wagon. People are burning driftwood and twigs hacked out of coastal shrubs; are warming porridge oats or boiling water. Here and there a hare or squirrel has been caught and is now hissing fat into an open flame. Smoke, unwashed bodies, the nearby latrines: it’s a heady mixture. If a Gale hits them now, who knows what will happen.

  The old woman draws towards the edge of the slight hill, where it drops down to a ribbon of beach. The breeze is livelier here, the smells more subdued. Gulls ride the gusts, displaced from the harbour area by that strange flock of birds. The fleck of red upon their yellow beaks shines vivid like blood. As she stands there, two figures detach themselves from the camp and walk to join her. The fat American and the Negro: an unequal pair with an unequal gait; all the same joined at the hip. She has met them before, but they have hardly spoken; the gap separating their world and Granny Henderson’s seems too large to bridge. Now, too, they exchange nothing more than a greeting and a handful of words about Livia and Charlie (“Yes, she is with him”; “Yes, he should be buried, and soon”). Then they fall silent and watch the strangely static flight of the gulls. It’s like the birds have found perches on the wind. Yellow beaks, red flecks. A cry like a beggar’s, drunk, needy, irate. There is comfort in standing like that, watching. The American woman has a nice feel to her, warm and soft like a down cushion. Her companion is rigid like a post.