Fallow

by Daniel Shand

  ‘It was a long time ago. He was young.’

  ‘No one’s blaming either of you, not here. This is a safe place, Mr Buchanan.’ He was rubbing the odd, smooth skin of his calf as he spoke. From the angle I was at, his face was all melting chins and nostrils. ‘I’ve shown my hand. I consider the actions that were taken, when you were young, to be immensely useful.’

  ‘Some folk would call that sick.’

  ‘A genius is a person who refuses to see things in the prescribed fashion. The world changes for the unreasonable man, and all that.’

  ‘Hm,’ I said.

  ‘Why are you here?’

  ‘I came to tell you about Isaac.’

  Terry ran a small hand over his potbelly. ‘Ah. Isaac. He’s gone I’m afraid. Concern yourself no longer with Brother Isaac.’

  ‘Gone? Gone where?’

  ‘He has moved on, in service of the Lord.’

  I crouched down beside Brother Terry. He smiled. ‘You’ll have to be more specific,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, you lot. You lot and your dreary obsession with the black and whiteness, with the ins and outs, with the technicalities. Isaac has gone on a mission.’

  ‘All right,’ I said, letting the silence hang. Brother Terry sniffed, so I sniffed too. It was the fruity dampness of wet nature.

  I spoke to him, in my head. I said to him, I could do anything I want to you, now, and there is nothing you can do. I told him he didn’t realise, didn’t understand, the power that I had swelling and vibrating in every joint of my body.

  Eventually he broke. He spluttered out a giggle. ‘Aw, I’m no good with secrets,’ he sighed. ‘But what does it matter, I suppose? I may as well say. I’ve sent him off into the base.’

  Brother Terry waited for my reaction but it didn’t come. I just crouched and noticed my power.

  ‘He’s going to blow the fucker up.’

  ‘Wow,’ I said.

  ‘I know,’ he smiled.

  I could do it now. Lunge for him and take him out of this world with just my fingertips.

  Instead I said, ‘Right,’ and I crouched there under the dim canvas, the only light coming from the lamp that hung over Terry. ‘What if I wanted to stop you?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, you know you can’t?’

  ‘What if I called them up? Those plainclothes police that jumped us before.’

  Brother Terry winked at me. ‘Oh, those men are not police. Not by a long shot.’

  ‘So,’ I said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ll just go,’ I said.

  ‘Probably for the best.’

  I paused by the door. I could hear everyone outside moving around, the fleshiness of their bodies flapping and smacking and wobbling.

  ‘What’s it for?’ I asked, looking out into camp.

  ‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘What a lack of imagination. It’s the revelation of your brother. I realised I needed something big to force the Lord’s hand, something monumental to really clear out the cobwebs.’

  He said the whole thing matter-of-factly. There was no fervour in his voice, no zeal in his eyes. It was as if he was describing his plan to repaint the front room in time for Christmas. Then he produced a flannel from somewhere and laid it out over his eyes.

  I stood outside of his yurt. I could see everyone’s skin, soft and fragile, and their eyes and hair. Nothing to protect them. I thought about Isaac and how scared he’d been the day before, dark-eyed and distracted. I imagined him lurking in the base, huddled in silos and lying panting behind walls. Surely they would fill him full of bullets before he could cause any mischief. Surely they would. Surely he would die leaping a fence or barricade, metal flying around him, his hair nimbusing torchlight.

  I had been born too late to ever be really frightened of the bomb. Our mother told stories about being at school and getting a lesson specifically about how to drop their skinny wee arses under their old fashioned school desks if they heard the bomb alarm going off, as if a few layers of mucky wood was enough to protect them against a cloud of pure energy ripping through the school house. That was never a worry for me, certainly not for Mikey. We’d grown up as scared of nuclear blasts as we were of pirates or Jack the Ripper. I tried to think back to anything I knew about atomic explosions. I remembered a documentary I’d seen about Japan in the war, about the shadows of Nagasaki’s population blasted onto walls.

  I went back to Mikey and tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Come with me,’ I said.

  ‘What’s up?’ he asked as we stood together in the dripping woods away from camp.

  ‘I was just having a word with Terry.’

  ‘Oh aye?’

  ‘Aye. He was saying he’s asked Isaac to blow up the base.’

  ‘Right,’ Mikey said. ‘Wow. That’s not good.’

  I shook my head. ‘Nope.’

  ‘What’ll we do then? Would we die if he did?’

  I gave the question a few laps around my mind. ‘I think the whole country would. Maybe the whole world.’

  ‘Fuck.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘What if we did the old… you-know-what, on that Terry chap.’

  He mimed strangling.

  ‘Wouldn’t stop Isaac from doing whatever he’s going to do,’ I said.

  ‘That’s true,’ said Mikey, squatting down and stretching his arms. ‘One of those classic catch 22s.’

  ‘I mean, I wouldn’t call it a catch 22 exactly.’

  Mikey nodded, sagely. ‘Good call,’ he said. ‘So…’

  ‘So,’ I sighed, letting my lungs empty of breath until they pinched. ‘We play it by ear, I suppose.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Give it another day or two.’

  ‘It might all blow over by itself.’

  As night bloomed and ink seeped into the sky, the rain continued to fall. It was a constant thrumming battering on the tarp, in the trees, in the dirt. Some of the hippies laid out sandbags at the east end of the camp to stop runoff spilling from the hills. There was a growing tension coming from the Church, particularly in relation to my brother, a mounting intensity to the way they considered him. A young man had thrown himself across Mikey’s path as we’d returned from our discussion, begging Mikey to trample him. Another started crying over their tea that evening. When someone else asked what the matter was, the upset party sobbed and told us he couldn’t cope with how absolutely beautiful Mikey was.

  Brother Terry commandeered the central area of the clearing after the plates were tidied away. He kicked a few camp chairs away and stood with his arms out at ninety degrees.

  ‘Brothers,’ he said, cocking his head. ‘Sisters.’

  A polite ripple of applause spun around the clearing from the religious constituency.

  ‘How glad it makes me to be here before you as the Lord blesses us with his gift of rain. Let the flowers and bumblebees be happy, and drink.’

  Baldy punched the air in delight.

  ‘What a significant day this has been. Perhaps the most important of the Church’s history, not including my return from the world outside.’ He shuddered theatrically, then extended his hand towards Mikey. ‘Can we all just take a moment to consider that every single thing I told you turned out to be true? That our Lord would return to us, dumb and unaware of his significance. That for his true nature to be revealed a great sacrifice would have to be made?’

  ‘It’s true,’ said a voice from behind me, ‘he did say that.’

  ‘Thank you Brother Slank. Most kind. The sacrifice I spoke of –’ He bent over slightly at the hips, his hands at his sides now. ‘– is in the post. It is imminent. The hour of our reckoning is upon us.’

  A murmuring swooped around the camp like a low flying bird, a soft gust of sound passed through heads like wings.

  ‘Some things are going to happen soon that might seem quite confusing or a little bit unfair. To those of you startled by those soon to be happening occurrences, I say only this – change is often uncomfortable, bu
t it is always necessary.’

  And then he clapped.

  And then the lights came on.

  All around the circumference of the clearing torches shone inwards, together. Confusion and hysteria broke out instantly, Brother Terry moving through the darkness and the light beams, hands behind his back like a friar. I held Mikey by the arm and we did our best to stay out of the way.

  ‘Keep your head down,’ I said, without looking at him. I was concentrating on the figures moving inwards like a tightening knot, casting their torches around, slicing the night.

  ‘Remain at ease brothers and sisters,’ roared Brother Terry. ‘These men are not here for you.’

  It was those strange plainclothes police. A band of them moved into the clearing from all sides, the rain on their suits and raincoats glittering in torch and firelight. They began to round up the protestors, grabbing them by their arms, knees in the smalls of backs. The noise was ghastly. All I could smell was wet clothes. The Church’s members watched on as the police moved among them, passing them over to visit violence on their neighbours.

  Over the top of the yells and roars, Brother Terry’s voice, rising. ‘Stay calm. This is not really happening. Any negative emotions you are feeling are simply discomfort at rapid and unusual change.’

  I spied a gap, over by the back of the yurts. Perhaps we could sneak through, make our way to the van, and fuck off out of it forever. I pulled Mikey and we fell into the dark trees, heads full of the richness of sodden leaves and decaying earth.

  ‘Stay down,’ I whispered. ‘We’ll go around.’

  ‘No,’ said one of the men, hidden in the darkness, ‘you won’t.’

  He brought us back by our scruffs and heaved us onto the ground before the fire.

  ‘What’ll we do with this pair?’ asked the man of Brother Terry.

  The two of them loomed over us, Godlike in the fire’s nightmare glow, sparkling and cracking behind us along with the moans of beaten humans.

  ‘Contain them,’ said brother Terry.

  Our hands were tied behind our backs by the man and we faced the ramshackle row of tents that had once housed the camp’s protestors. One of the police emerged from the largest tent, carrying Terry and Beth’s father in his arms, an ancient infant. He tossed the old man onto the earth like a bag of sugar.

  A woman in crowd screamed. The old man lay on the ground, very still, as all around him the people he had gathered in that place were rounded up and marched away.

  16

  There followed a long night.

  Mikey and I, in the dirt, on our fronts. The faces of the Church ringing us like flames on a burner. Our ribs and collarbones aching and singing.

  ‘He is like us yet, brothers and sisters,’ spoke Brother Terry of Mikey. ‘He knows how to suffer as us.’ He was enjoying himself, striding and smiling and tasting the air with his cracked tongue.

  ‘Pain is an illusion,’ he boomed, later on. ‘The mind creates sensations as ways of coping. If you are scared or are in pain or are angry you are running from God’s word.’

  We had not spoken for the entire night but we’d been thrown down with our heads close. I could see the skin around Mikey’s mouth stained dark where the spittle mixed with dirt, brushing his cheeks when he moved his head. As the parishioners mooned around us, nervous and quiet, we listened to the whining trees and rasping wood sounds, straining for any other far off noise.

  We were anticipating bombs.

  Mikey fish-flopped over to me in a quiet moment. He opened his mouth and I shushed him before he could speak, wriggling sideways on my belly to get closer.

  I mouthed, What?

  ‘They’re going to kill us,’ he hissed.

  I shook my head. No. ‘It’ll be the bomb gets us.’

  ‘Well, anyway!’ he whispered, voice tight with fury.

  ‘What’s your rope like?’

  He stretched himself upwards at the head and feet like a seal. ‘Tight,’ he wheezed.

  ‘Mine too,’ I said.

  I’d been working against my ties the whole night. They had not budged.

  And then I saw this wave of hopelessness crash over my brother’s face. He closed his eyes and his mouth and his nostrils flared from heavy exhalation and he looked so young. He looked like the boy he was, tied up on the ground, scared, friendless, in a different part of the world. For the first time in our journey I felt a worm working its way into my breast and it was guilt. It was churning and writhing itself into my flesh, coming from the outside, and I was looking at Mikey and seeing everything the world had taken from him. His adolescence, his pride, his future, his past. And I had been complicit, because I had tried to protect him. That had been my intention and look how it turned out.

  Everything you touch, I thought to myself, turns to shit.

  I suppose I must have slept because one moment it was dark and the next it was light. My spit had trailed down my top lip and were pooling in my nostrils. I woke up snorting and gasping for breath, my first thought that I was being choked or smothered in my sleep.

  ‘Christ,’ I gagged, spitting and blowing my nose into the dirt before my face. I swivelled round as best I could to get away from the mess. My hair was so long it trailed in the wetness and clung to my jaw.

  All I could see of Mikey was the crown of his head, the little wonky spiral of stubble with a heart of white scalp. I rolled over and bumped him. He didn’t rouse.

  ‘Mikey,’ I hissed.

  No response. I rammed my shoulder down on his stuck out elbow and he sprang up with so much force that he slipped onto his back.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he shouted, his voice ringing out among the birdsong and insect hums of early morning.

  ‘You were asleep,’ I said.

  ‘No way.’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Has anything happened yet? Any explosions or that?’

  ‘Nothing yet.’

  ‘I hate this, this waiting.’

  He was right. The woods ached with potential. All air was welcoming a blast.

  ‘We need to do something,’ I said. ‘I’m not going to sit here and wait to get fried.’

  ‘What then?’

  I rolled myself onto my back and then over to my front, grunting. The ties were still strong, especially around the ankles. ‘Fuck knows.’

  We lay together for a while, struggling to face the sky, the branches and leaves like spilled ink against the pure white morning. A jet flew over, unzipping the clouds, while I thought.

  It wasn’t until late in the day that I started to lose it. I’d been on the ground, my limbs tied, for maybe half a day and I started to lose my mind. I couldn’t stop picturing Isaac, over in the base. What was taking him so long? Was that part of the plan, that he would lie low to let suspicions disappear and then…

  I kept gasping, thinking I’d heard an oncoming explosion but it only being wind rifling leaves or my own breath, moving in my chest.

  It’ll all be over before you know it, I told myself. You won’t even be around to hear the sound. Everything you’ve ever known will be gone, like that, take some comfort from the suddenness of it.

  ‘Mikey,’ I said.

  ‘What?’

  I couldn’t think of what I meant to say, so I said nothing, and then some time passed, which might have been another half day or a solitary heartbeat.

  The camp was melting away, only the steaming fire remaining. I was nowhere. I was within fear. One of the robed figures, smaller than the rest, was coming towards me. I strained my neck to face forward, spine aching. She was getting close, but why was she so blurry? Was it the fire’s smoke or were my eyes giving out from stress?

  ‘What’s going on?’ I asked and no one answered me.

  She squatted in front of me and then I could see her face. She cocked her head at me, her eyes round, wide.

  ‘Tell me what’s happening,’ I said.

  ‘You’re losing it, Paul,’ she said.

  ‘I can’t be
.’

  ‘You are,’ she said, pushing her hair behind her ears as she inspected me. The look she had, it wasn’t pity, it was something else.

  ‘What’s going to happen to me?’

  ‘The fire’s going to rip through you. The atoms are going to pierce a million holes in your skin and everything about you’s going to drip out. You’re going to float away.’

  ‘No,’ I pleaded.

  ‘It’s true.’

  I nodded and let my face drop, into the dirt made damp by my mouth’s leakings. ‘Where have you been all this time?’

  ‘By myself,’ said the wee lassie.

  ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Why did you let it happen to me, Paul? Why didn’t you stop it?’

  ‘I… I couldn’t,’ I choked. I was crying. I hadn’t cried since I was a baby.

  ‘I think you could have. I think you didn’t want to.’

  ‘No,’ I said, shaking my head, burrowing my lips into the rank earth. I couldn’t face her.

  ‘I think you liked watching.’

  I said nothing. Dirt clung to my teeth like rich cake.

  ‘I think you got off on it. Are you crying, Paul?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you remember how I cried? Do you remember how I bawled and pleaded for my mummy?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you want to go home? Do you want to go home, where it’s warm?’ She didn’t wait for me to answer. There was no malice or anger in her voice. ‘Do you know how long I was out in the cold for before a dog sniffed me up?’

  ‘A long time,’ I said, finally bringing my face up again.

  ‘A long time,’ she said. ‘Come with me.’

  There was her face, just like in the papers. Straight, thin hair, a placid look. A school photograph, I think.

  ‘I don’t want to,’ I sobbed. My lungs burned, from the pressure and from the fear. I could feel my cheeks and eyes fill with hot blood. ‘Just tell me what’s going to happen. Please?’

  ‘I already did.’

  ‘But, no,’ I said, jerking myself towards her on my belly. ‘Be honest, tell me the truth. It can’t be the truth. I’m not going to die.’

  ‘You are. You’re going to die and then it’ll just be me and you, together, forever.’