Fallow

by Daniel Shand

  My body shoogled as I stumbled downhill towards him, as Brett struggled to fight against the heavy mud. I shouted to try and get his attention. He was too far gone, in the marsh and the mushrooms. By treading lightly and being quick I was able to get by the worst of the mud, to pull Brett out by the oxters. I heaved him onto dryish grass and he lay gasping, eyes rolling, hands grasping. He was looking through me and past me and suddenly I felt silly for revealing myself. The mud wasn’t so bad. He would have trudged his way out of it once his head had cleared. Nevertheless, I dragged him onto the dry land and he stumbled to his feet.

  ‘This is it,’ he slurred, dark-pupilled and sweaty. ‘Through the outside and out into the inside. I’m here.’

  ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Let’s get you back.’

  ‘Everything’s moving and I’m on the inside. What are you?’

  I tried to pull him along but he stumbled over a clump of heather. He fell into me and I caught him on my chest. He gripped me on the arms. ‘I need to go back,’ he said with sudden urgency, pointing over my shoulder. ‘It’s pulling me back.’

  I looked down at him and held him near to me and then I tried something on him I’d never tried before. You see, he was so close to me and his hair was so dark and I didn’t feel I had any other option. I put my mouth on his mouth, to see what it was like. I could smell the tang of the earth that clung to him and his sour skin. I tried that out on him and he jerked his head away, as if I’d pressed a hot iron to his lips.

  ‘No,’ he managed to say, from the midst of his stupor.

  ‘No?’ I asked.

  ‘Don’t do that to me,’ he slurred.

  ‘All right,’ I said, turning away from him. ‘I’m sorry.’

  I blinked once and felt my blood roaring in my chest, kicking in worse than ever before, humming like the ocean in a shell.

  We came full circle, Mikey and I. After running and roaring in the woods we found we’d come back to the tree we’d hurled the bricks at earlier. We weren’t lost exactly, but not trying to get anywhere. I remember that as Mikey had been throwing the brick parts he’d been calling the tree Mr MacPherson and telling it to do all kinds of terrible stuff. I just joined in, to try and make him feel better.

  When we found ourselves back by the bricks… things are hazier there. One of us was up by the tree, the other by the bricks. One of us told the other to stand as still as they could and the other stood with their back connected to the tree with sheer terror. I was both of those boys. I was the one by the bricks, the one by the tree. I weighed the brick up in my hand, I felt the bark on the nape of my neck.

  One of us threw and the other one braced. One of us winced and the other one swung. Neither was hurt. The brick glanced off a branch, as it was intended to. Both our hearts were racing and we did it again and again.

  Eventually we got bored of even that.

  Which one was which though?

  I sauntered down to the hostel from the hills, kicking the mud from my boots on any boulders I passed. The night was full by then but I didn’t care. I liked it. I was whistling a tune as I walked. Pop goes the weasel.

  ‘Half a pound of tuppenny rice,’ I murmured. ‘Half a pound of…’

  I stopped mumbling and I stopped walking. Lou had fallen into my path. She looked wild, hair all over the shop and her face dotted in scratches and daubs of filth. It had only been an hour, maybe two, since we’d parted ways. She had certainly had an experience.

  I laughed. ‘Woah!’

  She looked at me like I was the first thing she’d seen in her entire life. ‘Where’s Brett?’ she whispered.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘You heard me.’

  ‘How should I know?’ I asked, pushing past her. ‘He wandered off like the rest of us.’

  ‘No,’ she said, coming after me and holding the back of my jacket. ‘I waited at the spot. He didn’t come back.’

  I twisted myself out of her grip and walked backwards away from her. ‘I think you’re still tripping.’

  She growled in frustration. She actually stamped her foot.

  I laughed at her. Right in her stupid face. ‘You’d better go and make sure he’s all right,’ I said. ‘People have accidents out here all the time.’

  It was true. People did have accidents all of the time. People fell and hurt themselves. People didn’t make the proper provisions, they didn’t check the weather forecast before they set out, they didn’t bring the proper footwear. These hills were a death-trap, I thought and slapped the biggest grin on my pus as I waved goodbye to Lou and made my way to the hostel. I would find Mikey waiting for me in our room, no doubt. We’d have a solid night’s sleep and be off in the morning. If there was any justice in the world that Yank cow would be long gone herself.

  I emerged from the trees into the hostel car park. ‘Huh,’ I said.

  There was something wrong, but what was it? All the lights were off but that was normal. I took a second look at the car park and my brain fumbled. Where was the van? I ran through the evening in my mind. I’d cleared out the tat, I’d met the Americans and we’d gone up the hills. That was all. So where was the fucken van?

  And then.

  Mikey! That wee fucken snake.

  I hurried around the building to check. The van had gone. I fumed and raged and burst into the hostel, hammering up the stairs to our room. Throwing everything on my bunk to the ground, I realised the keys were gone.

  That wee fucken snake.

  There was no one down on reception so I hopped the desk, landing cat-like and silent. I began to rifle through the drawers beneath, searching for a key, any key. I rifled through sheet after sheet of paper, of receipt, of map. The lights came on. The woman was stood in the doorway. My blood was kicking in so hard I nearly rushed her there and then.

  ‘Do you mind explaining what you’re doing?’ she demanded, hands on nightie and hips.

  ‘Oh,’ I said, dragging myself along the desk towards her. ‘Thank God. Thank God you’re here. There’s been an accident, up in the hills. One of my pals wandered off. He’s gone.’

  She pushed her two fat palms to her chops. ‘You’re joking.’

  ‘I’m not. I’m really not.’

  ‘Did you try calling mountain rescue?’

  ‘No answer,’ I moaned.

  ‘No answer?’

  ‘It was engaged.’

  Her hands faltered. Her forehead creased. ‘Engaged?’

  I hurried forward, distracting her with my movement. ‘There’s no time. You need to lend me your car so I can raise the alarm. It’s a matter of life and death.’

  ‘Aye,’ she said. ‘Aye, of course.’

  She opened the wardrobe at the back of reception, entering a combination into the safe inside. She fished out a clutch of keys and handed them to me with quivering fingers.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, hopping back over the reception desk. ‘I won’t be long.’

  I flew around the bends and swerves of the narrow road that ringed the island. I crunched gears coming out of turns and my wheels whined as I floored it on the straights. The headlamps blasted out across the sea and the land, into the air as I flew over humps. Powered by pure indignation I drove relentlessly, scanning the car parks and the streets for any sign, any whisper of the van. The van he’d stolen from me.

  That little fucken snake.

  My mouth was full of saliva. My eyes were full of bile. I was shouting and growling and slamming my fist into the ceiling as I drove. I was rattling the steering wheel and lowing and grunting.

  After everything I’d given him! After all the sacrifices I’d made! This was how he was going to repay me? By sneaking off and stealing from me? By taking what was mine. I did not know how I would react when I saw him. I was acting on instinct, like a shark. I had to keep driving, keep moving, or else the anger would consume me as sure as water consumes the shark.

  In my mind I was running over the ferry timetable, trying to remember the final crossing. It was se
ven. I was so sure it was seven. But it might have been later. Could have been eight, nine, and if it was eight or nine and he had managed to get the van down to catch the final ferry then I was fucked. Absolutely royally fucked.

  What would he do? Where would he go? Probably go crying back to our mother with his tail between his legs, telling her everything was his big, bad brother’s fault. As per usual. He’d tried that before though, hadn’t he? Tried to convince everyone that I was the bad guy, the sicko.

  Look where that got him.

  I hammered the car onwards, into and through the darkness. The water was on my left. No difference between the dark of the water, the dark of the land over the water, the dark of the sky. As I rounded an outcrop I saw the main town ahead, streetlights seeping an orangey haze. I was counting on Mikey’s lack of imagination. I was counting on him not considering hiding someplace clever.

  I sped past the wooden lodges that marked the beginning of the main town, under the shadow of the hunting lodge. I was so close. I could see the white lights decorating the harbour. He would be there. I could feel it. He would be sitting there in the car park or something, maybe even asleep, maybe with his feet up on the dashboard. Laughing at me. Laughing at his big brother, his older brother, the one who gave him everything he had.

  The car was moving then. No longer onwards. Sideways. Twisting. I tried to correct the skid. Was it into the movement or away?

  I was calm again. I was at peace. The anger was missing. I’d stopped swimming and found I didn’t need the water to breathe. All I needed was myself. Self-sufficient as an egg, I wandered through a golden dell. Lush mosses and broad leaves heavy with moisture drooped before me. The sun fell like honey from between high-up gaps in the canopy.

  It was bliss.

  I wandered here and there and for the first time… the first time in longer than I could think, I was happy. There was no tension in my jaw or in my arse. I wasn’t holding energy anywhere. My heart was no longer fit to burst with hidden, red anxiety. All of my memories were ghosts. They couldn’t touch me.

  There was a disturbance somewhere behind me. I paused and turned to listen. It was the sound of a struggle, coming from a den covered by ferns and overhanging vines. Heavy breathing, skin frictioning on skin.

  Just go, I told myself. This doesn’t concern you. Keep on going. Keep on going.

  I took a step towards where the ferns shook. I swallowed. The air was sweet. It was heavy. Wild garlic, rainwater, pine. The ferns shook and I swallowed and stepped forward.

  Just go, I told myself. Don’t look. It doesn’t matter.

  No, I said. It does.

  The tensions were coming back to me. An ache was entering me by chest, a dull throbbing emptiness. I tried to move my arm to pull back the grassy veil but it was too heavy to raise. I tried my right arm instead and it worked. I moved the leaves away and saw what was beneath. My chest rung with pain.

  Under the leaves was a mass. A mass of arms and hair moving against itself, dark and foul. Its hands were gripping itself, throwing itself around, wearing the grass away beneath it to bare earth. It had a face. The face was Mikey’s face and it was my face. It looked at me as it twisted and writhed and seemed to be trying to destroy itself or a part of the mass. A smaller, weaker part of the mass.

  I put the ferns back and ran. My left arm swung heavy at my side, the movement creating a needle to drive its way into my breastbone. A fluttering sound followed me. As I lurched forward I looked back. The mass was rolling through the undergrowth toward me, the ferns and low bushes shivering as it passed.

  I picked up the pace, the dread spreading and bleeding into me, the land drying up, leaves turning tan. The rolling mass sped up too until it was thumping and crying with each thud, thud, thud it made against the earth.

  I fell and the pain in my shoulder became very sharp and the mass was close to me.

  Then, before it could catch me, I woke.

  The motor was on its side in the ditch beside the road. I hung against my seat belt, my head suspended above the passenger seat, which was below me.

  I hissed.

  I managed to walk my legs out of the foot well, across the stereo and down onto the passenger door, unclipping myself so that I fell down onto it. I was upright then and saw the angle my left arm was at. It must have been dislocated or fractured in the crash. My palm faced outwards.

  I turned it around and hissed again.

  The passenger door was beneath my feet. The only way out was through the driver’s, above my head. Somehow I managed it, climbing the seats, pulling myself up by the door handle and unrolling the window with my good arm. I hauled myself through the window and slithered down the windscreen to the wet grass below. Lying on my back, looking around, I got my breath back. The car was intact. I’d been expecting it to be like the ones on telly, all shattered glass and crumpled metal, but it wasn’t. It was just resting in the ditch, on its side.

  I sighed.

  And then I realised it was morning. That it was a bright fresh morning and the grass was wet with dew. I crawled up the embankment to the road. Out on the water the ferry was plunging through sky reflections, toward the harbour.

  I hobbled down the road to town clutching my bad arm against my chest. There was something up with my ankle too. I couldn’t put much weight on it. It dragged behind me as I went along the central painted line of the road, hoping that no cars would come. My eyes were on the ferry as it pulled closer to the shore.

  I would get him. My arm and my leg wouldn’t stop me from getting him. I kept telling myself that as I entered the town proper and dragged myself along the promenade. Tourists were out already, milling around in their body warmers and bum bags. I walked straighter around them, leaving the arm by my side. The last thing I needed now was to draw attention to myself. As I neared the harbour I could just make out the tall, pale roof of the camper van, like a sail. It was in the queue waiting to board.

  That snake.

  I hobbled as quick as I could, a faltering jog, getting nearer and nearer. The ferry groaned. Black smoke was streaming from its chimney. I laughed, actually laughed aloud. ‘Ha!’ I said. He thought he was going to beat me. He really thought he was going to beat me. A couple of old wifeys turned their heads at my bark, but I ignored them, kept going.

  I rounded the terminal and saw the first of the vehicles were beginning to board, trundling up towards the ferry’s hull. I moved down the nearest line of traffic, tasting the engine’s fumes, smelling the water, full of shells and gull bones. I was honked at as I stepped in front of car after car joining the queue. There was the van, only a few cars away. The engine was idling. All the curtains in the back were closed.

  ‘What’re you playing at?’ someone shouted. ‘Get off the road.’

  I reached out and grabbed the handle. It was unlocked. I slid it towards me and slumped onto the floor of the van, pushing it closed again with my foot. I saw the roof of the van’s sleeping zone – painted like a night sky. Deep blue background with all these little pinprickish dots of cream and yellow for stars and galaxies.

  His eyes were wide. He was shaking his head, unable to believe it.

  I kicked against the floor to push myself up against the sofa bed, coughing and laughing. ‘Aye,’ I wheezed.

  We stared each other down for a good while.

  Mikey licked his lips. He braced himself. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Car crash. Crashed the car.’

  ‘What car?’

  ‘Borrowed the hostel wifey’s motor when I seen the van was gone,’ I said, holding a hand against my ribs.

  Out of the fresh air I realised how much I hurt. With the drive to catch the van gone, all that was left to fill me up was the ache. The cars behind us started to honk.

  ‘You’d better get a move on,’ I said.

  There was this little pause, as if he was going to protest, as if he was going to do something, but then he shivered. ‘Christ,’ he said, turning back to the wheel.<
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  I went down on my side and through my eyelashes watched him pull away.

  I didn’t even know he could drive.

  A wet sob forced its way out of me. Not because of the pain but because I had missed him. When I’d been speeding down I thought I was angry. Maybe I had been, but I was scared too. Scared I’d have to be without him. Even when he was inside I had known there was a taut rope that trailed across the country, connecting us by the sternum. It told me when he was scared, when he was embarrassed.

  I wiped my eye. You silly cunt, I told myself.

  He drove us up the ramp and into the ferry’s hull and parked us deep in the dark belly. All around us car doors were opening and closing. There was chatter and jackets being pulled on. The ship’s thunderous rumblings. Mikey faced the front until everything but the mechanics died down. Then he moved around to watch me out the corner of his eye.

  ‘I’m not going to do anything,’ I wheezed.

  His mouth thinned. ‘Your arm looks bad.’

  ‘I think it’s come out the socket.’

  ‘Right. Do you want me to get a doctor?’

  ‘Nah. Can’t risk it. We’ll do something on the mainland.’

  ‘Right.’

  I laughed but not with any joy. ‘You’re scared of me.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘Aye you are,’ I said. ‘Come here. Over beside me.’

  He opened his mouth but didn’t answer. I ushered him over with my good arm. Eventually he gave in and scuttled into the back, perching on the far end of the sofa bed.

  ‘How come you went?’ I asked him.

  He took a while to come up with the answer, playing with it in his mind. ‘It was the parole thingmy,’ he said. ‘Mind how when I was back at home they were always saying how the meetings with the social worker and the police and that were like ultra-important? How I’d end up going back inside and doing the full term if I missed them? I got scared of that. I thought maybe if I went back and explained it to them in person, they would understand.’