Fallow

by Daniel Shand

  I squinted at him through the fire’s heat as he spooned up the lumpy paste. Aye, I’d be watching him all right because of course I cared about him and of course I wanted him safe, but he had another thing coming if he thought he was going to beat me.

  ‘You all right?’ he asked.

  ‘Aye,’ I said. ‘Fine. You?’

  ‘Fine.’

  Did he ever think of all the sacrifices I had made? Did he think of the stares I felt creeping hot on my spine as I walked in public after he went?

  Did he ever think of that?

  Did he fuck.

  Everyone assumed that I was fine. My mother was more concerned about Mikey’s appeals and then her man, Mikey’s dad, running off, to ever give me a second thought. He left with no warning in the months after Mikey went and then it was just me and Mum, alone at home, ignoring each other, sending sharp wee comments under doors and around corners.

  I thought I’d try and find a phone to call our mother, let her know how well I was doing without her help, without her pushing her beak in where it wasn’t needed. Perhaps I would take a stroll down to the village, see what she thought about that.

  When they spoke to me in court, the lawyers, they wanted to know exactly what happened that day in the woods. That was easy for me, I could tell them precisely. I went though it scene by scene for them, as if it was playing on a screen before me. I told them about how he’d come home livid from school after his telling off from Mr MacPherson, about how I, acting as the responsible older brother, had suggested we tick school to blow off some steam.

  Did I think that was a responsible thing to suggest? they asked me.

  No, looking back, I didn’t. But I also didn’t realise what it would mean, in the long run.

  I told them how we’d escaped the school and been chased off of the grounds by the jannie, chased from the swing park by the mums, hurled brick pieces at the tree.

  They asked if all this was relevant.

  Maybe not, I told them, but they had asked me to tell it as I remembered.

  My story seemed too exact, they said.

  Well, they could hardly blame me for having a good memory, could they?

  They pricked up their ears when I mentioned the wee lassie. That got their attention right enough. I told them how she’d shown up and how Mikey had made her follow us, telling her he had something to show her, deeper in the woods.

  Did I remember what she was wearing?

  A dark blue school blazer, gym socks, hair in a smooth pony. This wee pin of a bird perched on her lapel.

  I could remember that in so much detail?

  I could.

  And what had happened next Paul? Young Master Buchanan?

  What had happened next, those years and years ago when my brother’s face was fresh, hairless, round? When we were young together and knew close to nothing? What happened was that we marched through the trees, through the twisted and shaded trees, Mikey ordering, sometimes carrying, the little girl on with us.

  Her name was Gail Shaw. She was nine years old. Her mummy and daddy loved her very much. All this I learned later.

  I had stopped and touched my fingertips on my brow, waiting, in court.

  Is the witness unable to continue?

  Drew the fingers away, pushed my head back, breathed sharply through my nostrils. I’ll struggle on.

  They understood it was difficult for me but enough of the theatricals, if I didn’t mind.

  Aye, course.

  They wanted to know where we went, so I told them, exactly. This place in the woods, it’s a place famous as a place you could go shagging or drinking and there’s this great big treehouse up in the highest, thickest, oldest tree. Famous. Everyone knows that bit. We take her there and Mikey asks her what she thinks, of the treehouse like. The wee lassie says that aye, it’s nice enough but that she’ll have to be getting back to her mum, back to the swing park.

  Do something, Mikey had said.

  Do something? she asked.

  Aye, do something.

  Like what?

  Like anything.

  And then she looked at me, and when I described how she looked at me I laid it on thick for the courtroom. That look, my God. So sweet a child, so gentle a look.

  All right, Mr Buchanan. Just the facts, if you don’t mind.

  Mikey had said it again. Do something.

  Her voice small, damp, soiled. What d’you mean?

  If she didn’t know then Mikey wasn’t going to tell her.

  All right, he’d spat, pacing around her in a slow circle.

  She had looked up, through the cracks in the treetops, to the dreaming freeness of outer sky. She was so far away from all of that.

  And, and, and.

  I didn’t intervene. That’s the guilt I’ll have to carry around for the rest of my living days, I told the courtroom. Maybe my brother is guilty of whatever you accuse him of, but I too am guilty, of the crime of allowing a precious candle to be snuffed out.

  I saw one woman in the back row’s eye bulge from the shining bloat of a tear.

  Perfect.

  All right Master Buchanan. Again, just the basics if you please.

  Sorry sir. It’s just a difficult thing to discuss.

  The court understands. What happened next?

  He spoke to her. He said she would never amount to anything, that she was stupid and useless and weak. He was shouting at her, close to her face and all her face was closed up from the terror of it.

  The tearful woman put her hand against her nostrils, closed her eyes, sniffed. I didn’t know who she was.

  And what happened next?

  What happened next?

  I stood and watched and I didn’t know what to do or say to turn it around and save the little girl, the wee lassie, and then it all gets difficult to remember and I’m by the fire in the camp, eating soup, remembering being stood in the court, my back sweating in my cheap supermarket suit, remembering all the days and nights in between, in bed, alone, remembering remembering remembering.

  In the dream I had pulled back the ferns and found the fleshy mass in undergrowth with its ridges of jutting muscle and odd scratchy tufts of hair, wrestling with itself, grinding into itself in the dew. Hands gripping and squeezing and rinsing life from human sponge.

  And that was what had happened next.

  Except that’s not how I told it, in court. I wasn’t as daft as that, was I? If I was guilty of anything it was the white lie of when I left the scene. You see, your honour, I didn’t realise how far it would go, could not anticipate the depth of my brother’s sickness, and so I fled. Before the deed itself, that is.

  And does Master Buchanan not feel that this version of events is a little convenient for he himself?

  Aye, perhaps, but something being convenient doesn’t stop it being true.

  Come clean, Master Buchanan. Come clean. You were present at the scene and you know it. Your version of events has been curated to extricate yourself as far as possible from what happened. Frankly, the court isn’t buying any of it.

  I fled. I was absent. I was no more present than you were, than any of us were.

  No further questions, no further anything, because once again I had won. I was on top. I remembered sitting in the hard court chair and looking across the room and feeling my blood kick in so hard that I had to fight myself not to laugh or scream.

  I breathed in and the smell was vegetables – stinking lentils and earth. Tang of wood smoke in wet rubber tree scent.

  Mikey was eyeing me across the shimmering hot air the fire released.

  ‘I was miles away there,’ I said.

  I waited until midnight and then set out. I walked into town by myself, in the dark, with the moon and her reflected blades floating out on the loch to guide my path. There was a wee country pub there, much like any other – warm, musty and small. They had a pay phone in the back that I fed silver coins to. I knew our number off by heart.

  She picked up on
the third purr.

  ‘Deirdre Buchanan,’ she said.

  ‘It’s Paul.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, the word escaping from her like gas.

  ‘How’s it going, Mum?’

  ‘Oh, you know,’ she said. ‘I’m getting by.’

  ‘That’s positive.’

  ‘Is Michael there? Any chance I could have a word?’

  ‘He’s not with me. He’s somewhere else.’

  ‘Ah,’ like something small and sharp being twisted into her.

  ‘I’m here though. Aren’t you interested in talking to me? Hear about all the things I’ve done?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Aye?’

  ‘Uh. How’s your health?’

  I sighed. ‘All right then.’ I took the phone away from my ear.

  ‘No,’ said the little metal voice escaping the receiver. ‘Don’t go.’

  I held it to my face and it was still warm. I imagined her panicked breath spilling out the holes, tickling the miniscule hairs of my ear.

  ‘Well,’ I said. ‘What’s the situation back there? Are the press still sniffing around?’

  ‘The press?’ she asked.

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Well, no. I don’t know what…’

  ‘Good,’ I interrupted. ‘That’s great news. How about the police, the social services?’

  ‘They’ve been going crazy ever since you took him. He’s on parole, Paul. He needs to see them once a week at the very least. They’ll take him away again when he comes back home,’ this last part spluttered with fear or maybe anger.

  ‘We’ll see about that,’ I said. ‘Here, have they mentioned the psychiatrist or whatever it was?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Mikey’s insistent,’ I explained. ‘He doesn’t want to see a psychologist or a psychiatrist or anyone like that. He just wants to forget everything that happened and move on.’

  ‘Fine. If that’s what he wants.’

  ‘He doesn’t ever want to talk about that day ever again. It’s too much for him.’

  ‘That sounds reasonable,’ she said. ‘You need to bring him home and then we can explain it to them.’

  I snorted. ‘Hm.’

  ‘Is that a good noise or a bad noise, Paul?’

  ‘It’s a wait and see noise,’ I said, replacing the receiver.

  I used the pub’s bogs and then set out across the carpet for the door. I was nearly away when a shape caught my eye.

  It was a dark loudness, it was sharp briars.

  It was a woman’s hair – curly, familiar. She was at the far end of the bar looking grim, a group of people around her. She was sipping from the head of a Guinness.

  My brain laughed.

  No way, it said. Can’t be!

  ‘It is,’ I said to myself.

  Sam, from the dig, in a pub within walking distance of us. Just sitting there.

  My brain laughed again.

  She was deep in conversation with some hill-walker type – the anorak, the boots, all the usual gear. He was nodding along to her words. I couldn’t take it, so I went outside. Across the water the moon was wobbling over black hills. I didn’t know what that land was. Some kind of munro or beinn or mull. These places, these fucken names.

  15

  Next day I found Mikey sitting on a pile of bean bags in the middle of camp, watching performances by the congregation. Some of them played instruments, others sang. A small acting troupe had formed overnight. They performed a series of short vignettes, including Elisha and the bears, and the drunkenness of Noah. Baldy made a decent job of playing Noah, stumbling and falling, revealing skin-coloured tights beneath his robes.

  After the play, a woman came forward on her knees, hands gripped together. Her hair was grey, wet with grease. She pleaded with Mikey to take her into a yurt and lie with her so that she may carry his light onwards. Mikey looked at me and I put my hand over my mouth.

  One of her brothers led her away. They kept their eyes to the floor, they talked in hushed whispers. I caught them watching Mikey when his back was turned, as if he was the first thing they’d ever laid their eyes on, the world’s first object, moving before them.

  I could see Isaac and Brother Terry were having a conversation, over by the yurts. They were deep into it, heads close together, using their hands and fingers to make their points. I decided that I’d had enough of their secrecy, so I strolled over to Isaac once he was alone and walked him over to a quieter area of the camp. I asked him what was going on and he explained a plan was afoot to cause some damage to the base’s perimeter. His skin looked waxy and he was dark beneath the eyes.

  ‘Is everything all right?’ I asked.

  He nodded. ‘Fine.’

  ‘I don’t need to be worried about you?’

  ‘No,’ he told me, his eyes closing for a moment.

  It was to happen that very night. They would sneak along to the darkened base and they would cut away a section of the fencing that encircled it. This would cause the alarm to be triggered inside the base, wasting a whole day’s work and other associated hassle for the employees.

  I let him go about his business and that evening I watched them leave. There was something wrong with Isaac, I could tell. His head was hanging as he left the camp with the others and the last I saw of him was his rounded shoulders slinking into the woods, a pair of bolt cutters hanging by his side. The fire smouldered and the faintest tinkles came from the breeze moving bells hidden high up in the trees. I went into our tent and undressed. Mikey’s snores were gentle – very far off trucks – and the smell was nothing like our old tent, it was clean canvas and air-dried laundry.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said to the dark.

  Mikey mumbled in his sleep.

  I had done the right thing in taking him, there was no question about that. If we’d stayed then the press would’ve got even worse, the social workers would have driven him crazy. There was no need for him to see that psychologist, just to go over old ground. Let sleeping dogs lie.

  I mean, aye, maybe I had exaggerated the press’s interest.

  Perhaps.

  They had been there though, a wee gang of three or four of them that I saw from the bathroom window. And they took that photo of Mikey and put it in the paper, didn’t they?

  I growled to myself, frustrated by the hardness of thinking about it.

  Next day the rain came. We’d been lucky to go so long without it. They spread a massive tarp across the camp, tying it to the trees all around, but the water still got in. It leaked through tears in the fabric and ran in silly brown trickles from higher land. Everyone stuck to their tents, the odd person wandering through the clearing to check the fire or have a word with someone else. I suppose they were waiting for a sign that the efforts down at the base had paid off.

  We killed the afternoon in the yurt, waiting for the rain to finish. It was quite peaceful. You could hear the irregular drumbeat of raindrops falling on the trees’ canopy, other louder plops from the camp’s tarpaulin.

  I was lying back on my bed when I decided to tell Mikey my idea. ‘I was thinking,’ I said. ‘We should think about heading back.’

  He sat up. ‘Oh aye?’

  ‘Aye. Once we’re finished here, head back down the road. I think we’ve given it long enough.’

  ‘Hm,’ he said, trying to contain his excitement.

  ‘What d’you reckon?’

  ‘I think that sounds all right.’

  ‘Grand.’

  After that we were in fine spirits for the evening meal. One of the hippies had made this huge volume of bean chilli and the clearing was heady with spice and tomato. Everyone sat together under the tarpaulin, blowing on chilli and chattering away.

  I looked across the fire at everyone as they ate. I had some of my food. I looked across the camp and began to feel anxious.

  I thought, where the fuck was Isaac?

  I put my bowl down in the dirt and pushed
myself up by the knees and paced around the camp. There was no sign of him in any of the tents or tepees or wagons or yurts that I peered into. He wasn’t down at the latrines or the field or even out by the building site for the Church’s first official building. As I wandered back to the camp proper I speculated that perhaps he’d done a runner, sick of the oddness of the camp or the Church.

  Brother Terry was lying on his back, ankle of his right leg resting on the knee of his left, the robe falling back to reveal an udderish swinging calf. Some of his hair had fallen onto his forehead and his eyes were giddy. I stepped inside and the rain noises closed us off.

  ‘You again,’ he said, with no contempt.

  ‘Me again.’

  ‘You know,’ he said, working a pin into his teeth, dislodging some trapped morsel, ‘if it wasn’t for your brother, I’d have done something about you already.’

  He laughed, making sure I knew I was not allowed to take this seriously.

  ‘I bet you would’ve,’ I said.

  ‘Be a safe bet.’

  ‘I just wanted to let you know. Isaac never came back from the fence thing last night.’

  He threw his little pin onto the floor of the yurt. ‘You seem like a very angry person, Mr Buchanan,’ he said.

  ‘What does that have to do with Isaac?’

  ‘Something, maybe nothing. Just an observation. Why is that?’

  ‘I just seem to find myself in frustrating circumstances.’

  ‘You know, maybe you remember, you yourself were featured heavily at the time. The murder, I mean.’

  ‘Is that right?’

  ‘Yes it is. Well, maybe heavily is the wrong word to use. But you were certainly a person of interest to those of us following the case closely.’

  ‘Huh,’ I said.

  ‘Very interesting. But as we all know, your brother was the guilty party, wasn’t he?’