by Daniel Shand
‘I just ignore them when they go on about it but the best I can tell is that they think Jesus has been reincarnated. He’s on earth somewhere. Hence why they’re involved in our thing, in the nukes thing, cause they don’t want governments blowing everything, including the Son of God, up.’
After tea was over and the night was drawing in Isaac reappeared, with Brother Terry in tow. He rushed over to tell us the Church was having a ceremony down on the beach and did we want to come?
‘I dunno,’ I said.
‘I dunno,’ Mikey echoed.
‘Ach, come on. It’ll be a laugh if nothing else,’ said Isaac, giving us the old doe-eyes.
Not wanting to be disrespectful and harm our place in the camp, we agreed. Isaac punched the air then led us over to one of the yurts to be fitted for our robes. We walked in a large pack with the rest of the God-botherers through the camp and down the path through the woods, passing the footbridge and our van on the way to the main road. Beth, the muscular woman, was hanging around by the exit to camp. She caught her brother’s eye as we passed. We crossed the main road away from camp and through the thin barrier of trees to the beach. I remembered the last time Mikey and I were on a beach. I remembered Duncan’s muscles struggling under my grip like snakes. I remembered lowering him into the water. It was a good memory for me. A victory.
Brother Terry led the group to the water’s edge. There were maybe fifteen or twenty robed figures standing there, facing the loch and the setting sun.
Brother Terry beamed. ‘I can’t tell you how happy I am to be here with you all on this fine evening the Lord has blessed us with.’
‘Testify,’ shouted someone from behind me.
Isaac whooped.
‘I enjoy your enthusiasm,’ said Brother Terry. ‘You all know that we have difficult times ahead, yet here you are, dedicated and faithful. United in a common good. And does the good book not say, “Let those who would join in God’s church be forever joined”?’
‘Yes it does,’ someone called.
He continued. ‘It has been a long road and a hard one to boot, but here we are. Approaching our end goal. We all know about Revelation, do we not?’
‘Aye,’ said Baldy, ‘we do.’
Isaac whooped.
‘But think about it,’ said Brother Terry. ‘What else does that word mean. Go on, think about it. Take the time to consider it properly and carefully. Can anyone tell me?’
It was like being back at the school. No one wanted to answer for fear of being made to look stupid. I raised my hand a little. ‘It means to find something out.’
‘Exactly brother,’ said Brother Terry, happy with me. ‘Exactly right. A revelation. The stripping away of transient, corporeal material to reveal the true essence of a thing. He is out there you know. He walks among us, unseen. Jesus Christ. He might be an Inuit fisherman or a toddler, sick with diarrhoea, in an Amahara tribe. We do not know. All we know is that we can feel him out there, waiting for us, patient, waiting for the great revelation of his true identity.’
Brother Terry paused for a moment with a look of great sincerity on his face. The crowd waited, tense. Then he smiled and everyone began to cheer and Isaac was whooping loudest of all.
Brother Terry struggled to speak above the noise. ‘It is a good feeling, isn’t it? To know that salvation is so close at hand, within the lifetime of a man? This is an old story but I feel compelled to share it with the newer members.’ Hands reached out and stroked my back. I could tell it was happening to Mikey as well. ‘I was in an exodus of my own making, was I not brothers and sisters? Cast out of my father’s house, wandering in the desert. Aye, I had the base pleasures of alcohol, of money, of fornication, but was I happy?’
A low rumble went through the group – displeasure at the base pleasures Brother Terry had mentioned. Something told me he had only really been troubled by the first of those three vices.
‘No. No, I was not happy. But then I dreamed. It was a glorious dream, was it not? In my dream He came to me. God, the son, the ghost. He came to me as a little girl, clad in grave clothes. A murdered child. He spoke to me in the little girl’s voice, saying, I am with you. I am within you. I am beside you.’
The group was well-versed in brother Terry’s sermon, clapping each time he said you.
‘But you all know me. I am not a crazy person, am I? Oh no. Am I to think that a dream of a murdered child speaking with the voice of God is enough? No. Goodness no. But what happens next my brothers and sisters? I wake up, in my den of filth, of fornication and booze fumes, and turn on the television. What do I see but that same girl, murdered in this world, in our world.’
Several people hissed, the rest stood in silence, their eyes open and mournful, accepting each of Brother Terry’s words. I looked at Mikey and he looked back. It was just a coincidence. Nothing more.
‘I will be honest with you brother and sisters,’ said Brother Terry, his eyes filling with moisture. ‘It floored me. I packed my things at once and headed north. I severed all ties, just as you have done. I burned all bridges, just as you have done. I let myself become reborn, just as you have done.’
Brother Terry had his hands in the air and he was moving through the crowd, gripping people by their own airborne hands.
‘And now. And now. He is coming, is he not? Have we not felt his presence drawing closer? Have we not read the signs? Have we not studied closely the forecasts? He is coming to save us and all he needs is a signal. A signal that we will provide.’
He roared that last sentence and the crowd went wild, stamping their feet and clapping and screeching. The sun was coming down low above the hills across the water, dying and bleeding and scorching the horizon. The blood was in the water too.
‘Get in there,’ laughed brother Terry, gesturing to the water, ‘you filthy heathens and wash yourselves clean.’
The crowd streamed around us and splashed into the water, wading out to waist height. Only Mikey and me and Brother Terry still stood on the shore. We watched as the robed figures knelt and drew up handfuls of loch water, pouring it over their heads and smiling. Some of them submerged themselves completely, bobbing along beneath the water. I had never seen such concentrated joy in a group of people.
Brother Terry sidled over to us. ‘Can’t I tempt you?’
I shook my head. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘That’s a pity,’ he smiled, ‘and you?’
Mikey grimaced. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said.
‘That sounds like a firm yes. Lads,’ he shouted to the people in the water, ‘another one for the dook.’
They all cheered and two of them, including Baldy, stomped up the beach and proceeded to scoop Mikey up, carrying and throwing him headfirst into the loch.
‘You’re sure?’ asked Brother Terry.
‘Sure,’ I said.
‘That’s a pity,’ he said again. ‘I had thought the two of you showing up out of nowhere, the significance of that, was something of a sign, but never mind. One of you is better than none.’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked. ‘What significance?’
He ignored me, looking instead at the nuclear base across the water. ‘They can smell it,’ he said. ‘Smell something on the wind. Something changing, and they don’t like it one bit.’
And with that he waded out himself, patting his brothers and sisters on the shoulder, helping Mikey to stand and embracing him. I noticed that he didn’t deign to wet his own head. His oiled, sharply parted haircut remained in perfect order.
13
I woke with my nose pressed against the thin fabric of our tent and in that moment of time, barely out of dreaming, I thought we were back in the field again. To my surprise I experienced a surge of pleasure in this idea. I thought, I’m free. But then I turned onto my back and saw shadows moving on the canvas and I remembered. Mikey and I emerged blinking into the morning air to see the whole place alive with moving bodies, making themselves ready. So much excitement in the
camp that you could feel it all up and down your arms. We dressed and followed the crowd as it made its way out of camp. We walked in a sea of dreadlocks and braids and misshapen hats.
Mairead had joined Beth near the front and we walked beside the huge bald guy. I was surprised to see him as I had pinned him down as one of the Godheads. We followed the same route as the night before, down the bridge and past the van. I noticed the builders were out working on the church again. They stopped their work to watch us as we passed. We walked up the road, back towards the roundabout Mikey and I had passed on the way there. Every so often a car would come along behind or in front of us and we would all have to step into the grassy ditch that ran beside the road. The cars would pass and the people inside would ogle us.
‘Michael,’ Mairead shouting down the group. ‘Are you needing a sign?’
I looked to Mikey and then realised she was addressing me – in the confusion of the march she’d mixed us up. I explained and she laughed, saying how similar we looked. We were given a large banner to hold between us that read NUCLEAR BOMBS MEANS NO CLEAR FUTURE. Making our way up to the roundabout and the embankment beside the entrance to the naval base, I saw there was a steady stream of traffic turning in.
‘What happens now?’ I asked Baldy.
He pointed at the embankment. ‘We stand there and give them a load of grief.’
He was right. We crowded on the embankment across the roundabout from the base’s entrance and held our signs up and shouted at the workers as they drove in.
‘It’s a bit daft this,’ I whispered to Mikey.
‘I feel daft. Everyone’s looking at us.’
Mairead was at the front, creating energy. ‘What do we want?’ she would shout and then we would tell her what we wanted. No bombs, or whatever.
There was a pile of rubble down the back of the embankment. When no one was looking I stooped down and picked up a small pebble. I threw it towards the queue of cars, disguising the motion as a lavish handclap above my head. The pebble swan dived through the air and for a moment I lost it in the brightness. Then a sound went ching and one of the motors braked. Out of it climbed a man, his sleeves rolled back to reveal blueish arm tattoos. He looked at his motor for a moment before turning to the protest.
I got a worm of excitement in my belly from his visible anger.
‘Excuse me,’ he shouted, gesturing to the tiny crack that shone on his windscreen.
Mairead turned, confused. ‘Sir,’ she called. ‘Please keep driving. This is a peaceful protest.’
The man shivered. ‘Tell that to my fucken window,’ he said, pointing to his motor.
Mairead peered over the road to the man’s motor and the line of cars piled up behind it. All their windows were rolled down so their drivers could ogle the confrontation.
‘That wasn’t us,’ she told him.
‘It fucken was,’ he said. ‘I seen the rock. It came off of you lot.’
‘Piss off,’ I shouted, from deep within the crowd.
The man marched right over to us, blocking the traffic coming the other way too. ‘One of yous is going to pay up,’ he said. ‘Now.’
‘We’re not paying anything,’ said Mairead. ‘This is a peaceful protest.’
‘If I wasn’t a law abiding soul then I would take a great measure of joy in murdering every one of you lot,’ he told us.
Mairead stared at the man for a while. You could see the cogs turning and inside I urged her to be rash. Instead, she faced us, leaving the man out in the cold.
‘What do we want?’ she asked and we told her, some more reluctantly than others.
The man stood in the road, watching us chant. ‘I want a new windshield,’ he shouted after a few runs through of the ditty. ‘Does nobody care about that?’
‘Piss off,’ I shouted again.
That one made him cock his head. He nodded, smiling, and waddled backwards to his motor. I could see him in his car, urging the waiting vehicles to go around, his hand flapping from the open window. When they were past he drove into the base behind them.
We went back to banner waving and I soon grew bored. I left them to it and sat beyond the embankment at the edge of the woods, rolling myself a fag. I lay back against the grass and watched the sun shining through the leaping flags and boards and banners.
I thought back to those long years when Mikey was inside. What had I done? I’d finished school, I’d had odd jobs, signed on a wee bit. I had kept my head down. There was still a lot of what was called the stigma. Everyone knew I’d been with Mikey on the day he’d done it and I was never trusted again, not really. People would look at me funny or even be hostile, on the bus for example. Not that I’d been close with many folk in the first place. I’d had one good friend in primary school who had stuck by me.
Pungo Henderson was his name, the one good friend. Me and Pungo had fought viciously when we were in the primary school over something now lost to history. He ended up with a chip in his incisor and then after that we were mates. I couldn’t remember me and Pungo ever really talking to each other in the way you saw other lads do. We would do stuff together and go places together and we would comment on the things we saw but it was all very, look at that, and, aye, I know, it’s mental.
That’s not to say there wasn’t a connection between Pungo and me. There was, but it was unspoken. We didn’t need to discuss where we would wander to after school because our feet would take us there. One time we finished ourselves off together, facing over a steep hill, the wind blowing cold against the ends of our cocks.
When I told Pungo about the whole Mikey thing he gawked at me though his thick spectacles. Not out of horror, that was just how Pungo looked. He asked me what would happen to Mikey and I told him he’d probably get the jail. His top lip had curled back and he’d gurgled. That was how Pungo laughed. He wasn’t laughing at me, just at the madness of the situation.
I couldn’t remember what happened to Pungo. For a long time after we’d finished at the school he had worked nights at the supermarket, pushing cages of frozen food in the early hours under fluorescents. There were times when I couldn’t sleep and I would go out for one my night walks, popping in to say hello. His glasses would be completely white from the lights and the cold mist from the freezers. He would ask me if there was any info on Mikey and I’d tell him about the latest parole news, all that kind of stuff.
A little while after that Pungo went away. There was a hassle about him walking into the woman’s toilets when a customer was in there and I never really got the full story because I never spoke to him again. He moved away because of the backlash. I didn’t remember if I ever missed Pungo once he was gone. In fact it was a relief, of sorts, because looking at Pungo made me remember the silly childish stuff we used to get up to, like the finishing ourselves off over the steep hill thing, and other stuff too.
Once, before Mikey did what he did, Pungo and I were messing about at the school in the evening. We must have been fourteen, maybe younger. We were sitting on the stairs leading to the school entrance, in near silence. Pungo was probably doing his deep breathing and I was probably looking at this and that, thinking about things. Maybe complaining about my stepdad. I had a hard time with him.
See, the thing about my stepdad was that he was Mikey’s actual dad, which made us half-brothers or stepbrothers maybe. That distinction was always made clear even though it had all happened when I was wee, back before I could remember. My own dad had been a trucker who had trucked away before I came along. Our stepdad had long hair and he wore the T-shirts of the heavy metal bands he liked. That was where Mikey and I picked up the habit, the long hair thing.
So I was probably complaining to Pungo about my stepdad favouring Mikey in some way. Maybe how Mikey had got a bigger portion at tea the night before or he was getting to go to SeaWorld and I wasn’t. I probably told Pungo about a lot of that stuff while he breathed deeply.
And then this wee kid shows up in the playground. Just a normal we
e kid and me and Pungo spy him and go, Aha, here’s a likely target. We ask the wee boy what he’s up to and he tells us he’s just messing about. Ooh, we go, like he’s in trouble. You’re not allowed up here, Pungo Henderson tells the wee boy and the wee boy gets all defensive. I’m allowed wherever I like, he tells us.
Pungo doesn’t take kindly to wee the boy’s cheek. He tells the wee boy if he’s not careful he’ll end up getting his head kicked in. We go down the stairs and stand up close to the wee boy, not letting him get past when he wants to leave. We box him into a corner, between the school itself and a wall. He’s struggling and trying to get away from us and he seems especially creeped out by Pungo but we won’t let him get away and we’re saying he’s going to be in so much trouble. So much trouble.
Eventually he got away by slipping between Pungo’s clasping hands. He took off like a rocket, dodging across the playground away from us. We shouted after him. I noticed that Pungo’s face was shining and his top lip was curling back and he was gurgling, enjoying himself.
But that was just boys being boys. That wasn’t anything like what Mikey did.
I finished my fag and threw it into the trees behind me. The protest was still ongoing. Mikey looked over his shoulder, giving me a pleading look.
‘Paul,’ he shouted over the din they were making. Again, ‘Paul!’
I heaved myself up. I shrugged.
‘Come and see,’ he said.
I hopped up the back of the embankment and peered over Baldy’s twisting shoulder. There was a line of white cars pulling up in front of the protest. Their doors opened and men in suits clambered out, all of them paunchy and many of them moustached. One of them pulled a notebook from the chest pocket of his mackintosh. He held it in front of him as he approached the front of the group.
‘I was wonderin if I could ask a coupla questions,’ he said.
He watched the front row of the protest with a dry smirk, waiting for someone to talk. Was he police? Was he CID or whatever?