Lie of the Land

by Michael F. Russell

  Really?

  He felt himself grimace in the darkness, the unreality of escape making him shiver. Get a grip.

  ‘You all right?’ It was Terry.

  ‘Yeah,’ shouted Carl. ‘Felt a bit woozy in there. I haven’t smoked that much weed in quite a while.’ He said no more, conscious that more was expected.

  ‘Hendrik lays it on a bit thick,’ said Terry. ‘He can be a bit full of himself. If you can’t be arsed walking back to the hotel, feel free to crash in the caravan. The couch folds out.’

  That was a tough call. Creeping about the hotel like an intruder was great fun; getting hassled by George and Simone was a hoot.

  Standing there looking into the night, Carl felt the stirrings of ordinary discontentment.

  17

  In the morning the wind picked up; Carl could feel Terry’s caravan moving, even with a gable-end of brick to protect it. It had rained in the night, drumrolling on the caravan’s flat metal roof.

  His guts were churning. Dry mouth and pounding head. It was daylight, so he figured it would have to be at least 8 a.m. His watch was in the pocket of his jeans, and his jeans were on the opposite couch, and it was cold.

  He pulled the sleeping bag around his ears, groaning, his bladder fit to burst. Well into November and it was freezing. Maybe he’d end up sleeping in his clothes for the duration of the winter. Pity he couldn’t hibernate. If he lived in a caravan he might even not bother to wash. At least in Room 7 he could have a wash in the bath, even if the water was cold. That was important to him. Staying clean. His arse wouldn’t be clean, though; a bad case of the squits during the night had seen to that. No bog roll either. Old newspaper had done the job instead.

  He tried to close his eyes and go back to sleep, but his guts were still rumbling and he badly needed to piss. He shouldn’t have told Terry about a SCOPE prototype that was trialled in Africa, driving villagers to murder each other when it went live. It was just more inexplicable butchery on the Dark Continent, with no suspicion falling on helpful development-minded Western telecomms companies.

  Carl lay on the couch, gazing without focus at Terry’s charcoal sketches of twisted gorse trunks and brooding headlands.

  There were noises-off from the bedroom, which was more like a cupboard just big enough for a bed. Terry was up and about, belt buckle jangling, then a yawn. He came out of the bedroom, rubbing sleep from his eyes, tangle of straw-coloured hair sticking up and out and every way.

  ‘How’s it going?’ he said, his throat dry.

  Carl wasn’t sure. ‘I’ve felt better.’

  ‘You get the squits?’

  ‘Oh yeah . . .’

  Terry smiled, drank some water. ‘I thought Hendrik had ironed that problem out, unless maybe he gave you a bottle of the old stuff by mistake.’ He sat down on the sofa, moved a pile of clothes aside. ‘When you were out of it, when you were ill, there were a few cases of Delhi Belly. Hendrik didn’t clean his fermenting gear properly.’

  Rain came gusting against the caravan. Terry made sure the windows were closed properly. He tested the soil round his plants, gave a few of them a drink from a three-litre plastic bottle. Carl sat up in his sleeping bag, reached over for his fleece. Maybe Hendrik knew fine well he’d handed over the wrong bottle, containing the stuff that was shat out in the same state as it went in: liquid. You get the sense that he would enjoy that, giving someone the shits, laughing about it the next day.

  Terry picked one of the potted cacti off the windowsill. It was squat and sprouted tufts of purple hair. ‘Pal of mine was in Mexico and he brought back two of these for me. Peyote. Over a few years two became four. They’re hard to grow, so I don’t use it very often. Fucking wild though. All that doors-of-perception stuff, surfing the archetypes. You hungry?’

  On balance, Carl figured that eating would do him good. He nodded. ‘Some muesli and semi-skimmed will do nicely.’

  ‘Only unskimmed cows round here, I’m afraid. How about an omelette with an optional slice of mutton?’

  ‘Even better.’

  ‘Coming right up.’

  Terry put his prized peyote plant back on the windowsill and went to a cupboard, took out a camping stove and a Tupperware dish, lit the stove, and scooped some lard out of the dish. ‘Alec John gave me this,’ said Terry. ‘Sheep fat.’ He broke three eggs and mixed them in the pan.

  ‘Another day in paradise,’ muttered Carl.

  From another plastic box, Terry took out four slices of fatty meat.

  ‘What did you do?’ said Carl. ‘Before the redzone, I mean.’

  ‘You’re seeing it,’ said Terry. ‘I was here about a year – before.’ He tore a rubbery cheese slice into pieces, dropped it into the egg, his thin face darkening. ‘I was in a bit of trouble in London, took myself off to Glasgow, but the trouble followed me up here. Then I found out my uncle had died and left me his place.’ He tried to smile.

  ‘What kind of trouble?’

  Terry cleared his throat. ‘The wrong sort of chemical habits with the wrong sort of people. Nothing new in that. Anyway, everybody’s got to end up somewhere, and we can’t all be in the same place, so here I am.’

  Breakfast was served.

  ‘Unless you have a pressing engagement we can head down to my uncle’s house,’ said Terry through a mouthful of meat and egg. ‘There’s something that might interest you.’

  •

  Down the lush seaward slope, a two-minute walk along the headland path, stood a solid-looking stone house. Across the bay Adam and the boys were setting off from the boatyard, back to cut more firewood.

  From the outside the stone house looked in reasonable condition; the date 1934 was carved into the stone lintel. Inside, it was more or less unfurnished, with bare floorboards and bare plasterboard walls, watertight apart from a leak in the loft, said Terry. It had two bedrooms. The front room was full of junk, and stacks of black plastic bin bags, each one tightly wrapped with Sellotape, lined the walls. The committee would have taken the clothes and the shoes, but there were books and magazines, knickknacks, photos, two TVs, a foldaway chess set, and a shitload of other stuff lying around.

  ‘Have a look at these,’ said Terry, tearing open one of the black bin bags. He took out a newspaper, handed it to Carl.

  He held it reverently in his hand. ‘Jesus.’

  An old edition, yellow round the edges, dated almost nine years ago. Big pic on the front and HEATWAVE KILLS HUNDREDS along the top. Carl looked at the plastic bundles. He couldn’t believe what he held in his hands. He lifted a few more, opened another bundle. The same, going back years.

  Turning to page two in one paper he saw his own name under the heading WHITE RUST FUNGUS CONFIRMED IN SPAIN. He read the first paragraph: ‘A total ban on all exports from Spain was in place today as the European Emergency Authority confirmed an outbreak of the white rust fungus in wheat fields outside Malaga . . .’

  ‘Twenty years’ worth of newspapers in here,’ said Terry. ‘Right up till February of last year, three weeks before my uncle died. You could say he was a bit of a hoarder. Thought you might be interested.’

  Terry went upstairs to empty the bucket that had filled with rainwater, leaving Carl to browse the bin-bag archive.

  There were plenty of leaks in the pages of these newspapers. Insiders. Sources. Once, years before, the information flowed freely from numerous contacts. But then the stream dried to a trickle, a few drops still coming out. The insiders had too much to lose.

  Carl checked the date on the front of one paper: four months before Glasgow became the third city under Civil Contingencies Enforcement. He used to go out then, socialise, go to the theatre, plays at the Citizens. He had a life. They tried to ban that play at the time, fuck knows if he could remember the name. It closed after four nights; didn’t tour. Funding was cut. Official threats.

  Eric. Lesley.

  He leafed through some more issues, opened another bundle, stopping as soon as he saw the masthead and the hea
dline’s first word. He knew which issue he was holding; his first big scoop, the flats in the East End built on contaminated land. The same front page was hanging, framed, back in Glasgow on his bedroom wall. It may as well have been on the moon now. He unfolded the old newspaper and spread it out tenderly on the floor.

  The date was five years before the privatised insanity of CivCon, when targets were plentiful and you could be sure of hitting one if you pointed your nose in the right direction.

  For years this front page had hung in his room and he’d barely noticed it. Now he touched the dried-up, yellowing newsprint with his fingertips.

  And then he saw it clearly. His old life was no longer invisible; it was present and alive in his longing for something that he couldn’t return to. This was all he had been, right here, in 500 exclusive words, part of an award-winning series. How many articles had he written altogether? How many deserving targets had he harried over the years? His words, or rather the paper they’d been printed on, had become a resource of a different kind now. The paper was more important than the words. In fact, the words served no purpose. Truth was now measured in calories, and his investigations were all closed – spiked on thousands of SCOPE transmitters. Maybe the village would use the paper for something. It could still have a vital function to perform, like wiping arses or as bedding for animals. The committee would decide. Truth was now a full stomach and a warm room: the same as it had been before SCOPE, for many. No wonder people never wanted to know the truth he’d been trying to serve up, in steaming piles, on a plate. They had other things to worry about, like eating and paying the bills.

  Carl tossed the old newspaper back onto the pile, the layered strata of his fossil life. It hadn’t amounted to much. That was that. End of.

  He went outside.

  And there was the village, houses strewn along the edge of the northern headland; the viewpoint flagpole; guys on the pier; dark clouds brewing over the Atlantic. Out in the distance.

  For the first time in a few weeks, he wished the pneumonia had finished the job.

  He went round the side of the house to the shed. With a heavy nudge from his shoulder, Carl opened the door.

  There was only one small window and the light was poor. The shed smelled of engine oil and creosote. As his eyes got used to the gloom, Carl could see a workbench along one wall and the guts of an outboard motor in pieces on the dirty concrete floor. Rusty saws hung on nails; a grass strimmer; a stack of old paint pots in one corner; oars, rakes and spades standing in another.

  In a dark wooden chest he found literature of a different kind, also yellow with age like the newspapers. Internet printouts: women and girls of all ages and races, with their muscular male jockeys and sex toys. The detail was difficult to make out, so faded were the colours. Carl pushed the pile of loose pages out of the way. At the bottom of the chest was a grubby olive-coloured case of some sort, fastened by brown leather straps. As soon as he grabbed the case, he guessed what might be inside it.

  It was a rifle — but only an air rifle. And he couldn’t find any pellets. He held it in his hands, cold and heavy, took aim through the window at the boatyard across the bay. It felt good to aim at what he’d love to hit.

  Brandishing his ammo-less peashooter he went back outside and back into the house to find Terry.

  ‘You got any pellets for this?’

  •

  His hangover easing, Carl took the track at the head of the bay up towards the stalker’s house. It was set apart from other houses, more in the hills than in the village. The noise of the biofuel generator made his brain hurt.

  He knocked on the porch door. There was no answer. Peering through the dusty glass in the porch window, he could see walking-sticks in the corner, each one with a carved horn on the end, along with walking-boots, wellies and jackets. A barometer hung on the wall, and the framed photo of a woman. He knocked again.

  No response.

  Carl slung the air rifle over his shoulder again and headed back down the path. A dog barked behind him.

  ‘Hello there,’ said a voice from round the side of the house. A scruffy Border collie trotted round the corner. ‘What can I do for you?’ Alec John stopped. ‘Oh, it’s you.’

  Carl unslung the air rifle, walked back up the shell path. The dog came trotting towards him, tail wagging. He took a step back.

  ‘Hi. I found this in Cathal Sullivan’s shed. Terry said you might have pellets for it.’

  As he got closer to Alec John, Carl could see there was blood on his cheek, and on his forearms, and all over the plastic apron he was wearing.

  Alec John took the gun and studied it. ‘You won’t get much with this popgun. Maybe more rats and crows than Cathal did. It’s in good enough condition, though.’ He walked around the outside of the house. ‘I’m sure I’ll have a tin somewhere.’

  The stalker disappeared into a low-roofed concrete outbuilding. In the middle of the straw-covered floor, on a metal bench, the headless, skinless carcass of what Carl assumed to be a deer was splayed. Chains and hooks hung from a shiny metal runner that curved along the underside of ceiling beams and into a steel-lined cooler; saws and cleavers and knives glinted in the dangling strip light.

  Carl tried not to gape at the remains. Pelt and waxy dermis in a pile. Hooves and head, minus the antlers, and a huge rubbery tongue lolling from a blood-crusted mouth. The smell of flesh.

  Jess waddled in and stood, panting, near Carl. Alec John opened a few drawers and cupboards until he found three small round tins. He shook them. ‘Here we are,’ he said, prising the lids off. ‘They’re still pretty full.’ He put the tins down on the trestle table next to the skinless, headless deer. ‘Help yourself.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Carl, eyeing the inside of the animal’s ribcage. ‘Is that an ordinary saw you’re using?’

  Alec John went back to work on the deer’s hind-leg, sawblade rasping through the femur. ‘Aye. A joiner’s.’ He smiled. ‘Once upon a time, if we knew the hygiene inspectors were coming we would get a proper butcher’s saw out for them to see – they were sticklers for that – but once they left we’d get this out.’ He paused, the saw still at work. ‘You look much better than the first time I saw you, up close.’

  Carl couldn’t meet the man’s eye. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Getting there.’ He picked up the tins of air-rifle pellets. ‘Thanks for these.’

  The stalker jagged a hook into the carcass, hoisted it up by a chain pulley, and pushed it along the ceiling runner and into the cooler. He shut the heavy metal door with a thud. ‘You’re welcome.’

  Alec John watched Carl walk back down the track. After wrapping cuts of meat in old newspaper, the stalker put the parcels into big plastic boxes and loaded them into the trailer of his six-wheeled argocat.

  He went back round to the front of his house, dog trotting at his heels, and opened the front door.

  As always, his wife’s smiling face met him in the porch – the framed photo an icon of her enduring presence.

  18

  ‘What the hell’s he doing with that gun?’

  George was standing at the kitchen window, watching Carl fire pellets at old tin cans arranged along the fence posts.

  ‘Terry Sullivan gave it to him,’ said Simone. She was gutting a pollock in the sink, slitting the soft white belly, pulling out the guts. Tail next, then the head, spine grating under the blade.

  ‘Well,’ said George. ‘Trust that guy to have a gun.’

  Father and daughter stood watching.

  In total, Carl had about 300 pellets. After a few pot shots – without hitting a target – Carl did a quick calculation. How many pellets would he have to fire before he became reasonably proficient? How many would fly wide of their mark and be lost in the grass?

  He lowered the gun and studied the line of five tins he’d placed on top of five fence posts. Perhaps he should rethink his target practice. If only there was some way to gather the pellets up once he’d fired them, so that he could re-us
e them. He looked around the garden for a solution and noticed Isaac sitting on the back step.

  ‘Can I have a shot?’ the boy asked.

  ‘Maybe,’ replied Carl. ‘But I’ve got to rig something up first.’

  Isaac wrinkled his nose. ‘When can I have a shot?’

  Carl ignored the boy and sized up two rowan trees at the bottom of the soggy garden. They were just the right distance apart. He went to the shed, Isaac on his heels, and dug out an old bed-sheet covered in crusted splashes of paint. He also found a length of rope and some string.

  He rigged up his target range and pellet catcher. The tin cans were now suspended by string from the rope he’d tied to both rowan trees. Behind the line of dangling cans was the old bed-sheet, staked into the ground so it wouldn’t blow about in the wind. A sheet of plastic, to catch the falling pellets, was staked out on the ground with old tent pegs. His theory was ready to test.

  He raised the rifle and fired. There was no satisfying ping of projectile on metal. But, he saw the pellet hit the sheet and, on inspection, he noticed there was a spent slug, intact, beneath the line of cans.

  Bingo.

  Pleased with himself, Carl loosed off a few pellets, then turned to offer Isaac a shot. But there was no sign of the boy.

  He looked back at the house, saw Simone and George at the kitchen window, probably wondering what the hell he was doing shooting at tin cans in the garden. Should’ve asked about his little pellet-catching set-up before raiding the shed.

  Simone had been playing her flute earlier, something by Debussy, Aeolian analgesic that must be resisted. Life has to be rougher than that.

  He fired another pellet. There’s always some fucking committee, or council or cabinet or conclave, he thought, enforcing and reinforcing their own particular worldview. People in authority were always giving you some spiel or other to justify their own positions. Whether it was shaman communing with ancestors or government ministers rhapsodising about fantasy futures, there was always a message to sell.