The Death & Life of Red Henley

by Philip Wilding

  Alejandro too, brimming with goodness and longing, a pure soul ; the light shone out of him. So very far from Henry, but I never wanted to take beautiful Alejandro to my bed. I needed to be pushed, to be made to be free to let go, the insistence, Henry ’s persistence, I might have needed to be kissed too hard, to get past my guilt at giving in and I wanted to give in. I tried to save Alejandro and I failed ; part of me drove him to that roof, I compounded his loneliness, made him want to be back among his friends at home more. Our group unnerved him , we scared him, I think, I know that now, he mistook our ardour for something else. Bulley was so stained with sin that he wanted to cleanse everyone and everything, to drive the evil out, not least the guilt that consumed him, he was bloody like Lady Macbeth ’s hands were bloody, but Walker was the hellhound that brought him down ; Bulley looked haunted because he was. Alejandro was lost before he ever washed up on our shore s , his journey across the country, hidden amon g the network of rail lines, a solitary figure hitching at the side of the road , terrified that every stranger could be death or the thing that would send him spiralling back home. When he was finally throw n into the air and to his doom , arms and legs paddling, trying to find some current to kick against, he though t of his friend Guilhermo and his mother’s house, her standing there in the door, hands out, palms up, beseeching him, calling him back. They took the parts of him back across the border in an aluminium casket so that his family might grieve over him and wonder at the little boy they’d let out of their sight, who had solemnly waved goodbye, told them not to worry, that everything would be okay, and then had returned in pieces, literally shattered, the life impacted out of him.

  And Billy , who was nothing to me and yet everything to Walker; all those imaginary monsters of jealousy he’d created in his own head became Billy’s very real nightmares. I can still he a r his cries, his tears of confusion as he was dragged along that terrifying path to his bleak fate. I knew that Walker and his men had started following me around town, I’d s ee that black car of his or him stepping in and out of the shadows across from our church, a familiar profile glimpsed near a streetlight. Sometimes I’ d think I was imagining things, but then I’d recognise his driver or see him slip past a restaurant window, his collar up. I almost pitied him then, called out his name , invited him in to find out what was going on inside of him , but I’ve l earnt since then that not even he was in control of the things running around inside his head. He subjugated the powerless and those weaker than him and then he grieved over the things he ’d said and done and he had done so many terrible things. He made an art out of torture, of manipulation, all the while feeling bad about it ; he was one bloody parado x after another .

  Walker, who can’t help but keep returning again and again to the Tennessee countryside in order to find his true self, thinking that t he real person within was made there and when he lost himself there he lost everything and forever. What Walker doesn’t know is that he was marked from the day he was born and, no matter how cruel or calculating his actions, in a way he was only ever being true to himself.

  *

  One day, and soon, Green will meet with Bulley and he’ll learn the truth about everything. Dear, damaged Bulley mired in sin and grief, his whole life coloured by the fire t hat took his world away . Now he stands watching everything smoulder and crackle, people combusting before his very eyes, his anguish is endless, he carries his sins around with him, his life always stained by Walker, forever doomed to walk in his shadow . How Walker took the commune , his family and his home away, how Bulley’s life was irrevocably changed that spring night, the glass shattering, everything splintering, now when he closes his eyes, he sees her face beneath him, the spirit running out of her as he does all he can to tether her to this life, to keep her in the light , and every time he thinks about her now all he can see is the darkness surrounding them until it swallows her up and she’s out of sight.

  And there’s Walker, consumed by his own power absolutely. Dear Walker, I saw the boy in him, the young man he was before he waded into the lake of blood and chose to go ever onwards ; I can hear his words now, echoing forever, the final moment when even his own father was in his way and rather than let the old man die a solitary death in the feeble glow of the machines that kep t his heart beating, he used his power to take another life away, to snuff the old man out. Walker couldn’t see the blood on his hands, but it was dense and dark and ruddy, two crimson gloves that were forever a part of the man. The hands he wanted to touch me with – at one point he thought that I might save him, but how can you save something so lost, who’s even abandoned themselves?

  Walker now, consumed by Green and the idea that he and I were somehow linked together, that we’d colluded against him , that we were put here to break his heart, to be his ultimate test when we were only ever star-crossed. Hell, we weren’t even that. I loved Green – let me qualify that, I love d the idea of Green . He was what I was looking for when I moved to New York ; I had my faith, but I believed in the idea of a man like him, flawed yet pure somehow, but it was all too late, by then I’d met Walker, or he me. I sometimes felt that Walker might have sought me out, given how knowing he was later on, but that instant when I first met him in the park, that might have been his last moment of real introspection, of any real peace , and by then Detective Green was on another path entirely, he had staked out his own ground, his own fallow acre. As lonely a patch of earth as Walker had made for himself, two men entwined by fate, my fate, both their heads filled with noise, their eyes long dead. And they both chose to inhabit scrubland, the barren places that made up their hearts ; the ground they stalked was long arid and dead. Nothing grew there because both men chose to let nothing flourish, it was better for them to keep the dirt t amped down because that way there was nothing for them to ever tend to again.

  What Green does not know, but will know one day, and will be changed forever by it, is that Robert Walker is comin g for him because he thinks that Green might be the only one who understands him, maybe even respects him . And even though he won’t admit it to himself, Walker respects Gr een, but like everything that Walker admires it makes him wary and uneasy, it makes him want to destroy it . And as for Green, people will always want his help, f or him to be their salvation, and Green will always give the best of himself, but by helping this time he will have to give everything and how much of that he ever gets back remains to be seen.

  July 1980

  James Bulley carried his sins around in a sack that he kept on his back. Imagine an unwieldy and deep bag filled to the brim with oily, black water seeping through the canvas material but somehow never losing any of its volume; its depths were endless, sloshing around each time you tried to secure it, each time you tried to make it settle across your back, the contents unstable, uncertain; try to tie it together and the weight shifted, the shape became lopsided, the centre would not hold. Each night Bulley laid the bag gently down next to his bed, praying it would not tip because then he’d lose the contents and they’d seep away and then where would he be? He’d have no duties, no penance to pay, there was no way he could ever square things away with his God if he couldn’t even hold on to the sins he’d been given to carry. So each morning he would wake and the sack would be sitting there regarding him, immutable and forever; it seemed to shift around at will, stable yet fluid, malleable, distended, then a slight judder, like a disinterested shrug of the shoulders; when light shone into the sack – and Bulley had taken a flashlight to the contents many times the way a boy might struggle to read the pages of his comic book in the tent made of his bed sheets – it looked like dirty gelatine shot through with dust and detritus; he looked in there sometimes and thought he heard voices, the hollow echo of loss, saw features moving around, eyes staring back. He’d wake and dress and hoist the complaining bundle onto his back and he would walk through the streets of the city to his SoHo basement and he would sigh as he settled his load down and wonder when the final appeasement might come to fr
ee him from the endless weight of the guilt that he was forced to carry around. He wondered if Green could sense the sack sitting there between them, moving unevenly. Bulley didn’t so much dislike Green as he was terrified of him; Green reminded him of Walker in a way, strong, resolute, someone who enjoyed violence for its own visceral charge. Did he enjoy it, thought Bulley, the power he held over people?

  ‘I read the report, your story,’ said Green, ‘about the things that happened to you.’ And then with a genuine softness in his voice, ‘I’m sorry about your old man. My dad preaches too, you know?’ Green thought privately that his father never felt the need to torch his congregation; he lit them up in a different way entirely.

  ‘What can you remember about that day – is there anything that comes back to you?’

  Bulley’s insides constricted, he saw falling timber, he heard the screams; he saw Jakub explode mutely, the white noise filling his head. The bag of sins vibrated against his calf, the black water sloshed around, some of it fell to the floor and covered his shoes. He glanced down at Green’s brogues; they were bone-dry.

  ‘It’s all in the records,’ said Bulley, the cloying taste of brimstone filling his mouth, the poisonous stink of burning hair, the way it clung to him still all these years later. He’d stop on the street sometimes, at an intersection, and he’d see people in flames still going about their day, orange and red at their elbows, their hands glowing like fiery gloves, toothy smiles of welcoming recognition breaking through a mask of fire. His father had always told him that man was doomed, that we were all slowly descending into Hell and as we got closer and closer and the flames got hotter then the body would slowly burn, spark and eventually be consumed by the everlasting fire. We’re all so many candles, his father would say, making it into a mantra, all waiting to ignite. Blue preached that all mankind had committed original sin and so we were all burning from the day we were born, slow-moving embers sliding uncertainly down to our fate. And it was true, thought Bulley, the more a man sinned, the more he saw the flames surrounding him. Some were listing pyres, others hurried on with a faint trace of smoke at the elbows of their jacket, the cuffs of their shirts rimmed with flames as if their cufflinks were immolating. Bulley once saw someone on the subway whose collar and hair were starting to burn and reached out as if to put out the flames, his hand frozen in space as the stranger caught sight of what he was doing and stopped him with a stare.

  He couldn’t imagine anyone touching Green; the detective was staring at him, his flesh was crackling with a fine film of blue flame as if he were being slowly seared; he was consumed, but looked almost comfortable in his furious, flaming skin. Bulley could almost smell the gasoline burn.

  ‘Did you know what your father had planned?’ asked Green. He had his notebook set out on his knee now; he was all work even as his skin burned feverishly, marvelled Bulley.

  ‘Did you know he was going to destroy the commune? Do you know why he destroyed it?’

  Bulley looked worn, he looked like he’d been washed up on a shore somewhere, lungs filled with water, his skin grey like the submerged stones he might have been buffeted up against. His trouser leg was damp from the sins washing up around him, the bag was tipping against his leg now, his shoe filling up with black water, his sock sodden; his laces wet.

  ‘He was only trying to save me,’ said Bulley uncertainly.

  ‘Your father?’ said Green, his voice was almost warm, calm, designed to engage. ‘You could have died in that fire, James.’

  Green tried to imagine the young boy sitting there among the upturned furniture and boxes as his father went to work dousing it all in gasoline, the smell all-consuming, the air riven with fear and trepidation. Then Blue standing back to survey his work, the flaming bundle of rags in his hand suddenly cast into the air, the remnants falling to ignite an unimaginable trail of destruction marked out in torched cars, burnt trucks, everything razed to the ground, lives and a home reduced to a black mark on the earth. Let the fire cleanse, rejoice, Green heard Blue say, his words defiant, triumphant.

  ‘It wasn’t like that,’ said Bulley, his eyes pleading like an admonished dog’s. It was still then; daylight never reached Bulley’s basement office – what light there was came from an overhead neon tube that buzzed intermittently as if a fly were caught inside the fitting. It flickered out and then into life, the shadows only deepening Bulley’s distraught features. To a stranger, Green might have looked like he were made of stone.

  ‘All my father wanted to do,’ said Bulley, ‘was save me. And to do that he gave up everything.’ His voice was stilting, small. He was lost, standing among the burning ruins of his past, the soot and shame caking his clothes, death clung to his hair, Jakub dead at his feet, unrecognisable in the way that dead bodies can be, not just his now molten features, but his limbs looked wrong somehow, one of his shoes was off, he looked unkempt, thought Bulley, the world still ringing inside his skull, his father screaming at the sky, praying that it would fall down around his ears.

  Bulley looked at Green, who was looking back hard at him, trying to see in.

  ‘I’ll tell you what happened,’ said Bulley, and looked beyond the low ceiling as the heavens wailed.

  June 1961

  There are moments by which we are forever defined and this was his. Bulley had spent the last few weeks working up the courage to speak to Karen. Walker sat at his shoulder, assuming the voice of reason while all the while pouring poison into his friend’s ear.

  ‘She’s clearly too young for him, how can she be happy? What’s in this for her?’

  ‘She needs friends now more than ever.’

  ‘I’ve seen the way she looks at you, how could you not have noticed that? There’s a connection there.’

  Drip, drip, drip … the sound of an endless noxious rain that wouldn’t stop falling.

  ‘Your dad casts his net wide, you know? I’ve watched him work a room, he’s always on to the next thing.’

  ‘He’ll be looking out for someone else new soon and where will Karen be then?’

  Drip, drip, drip … Bulley looked wild.

  ‘But he’ll send her away! She’ll be gone forever!’

  Walker sat there, a demon of sadness; his mouth was as close to Bulley’s ear as a lover’s might be. He emptied the last drops of the vial of poison into Bulley’s head.

  ‘That’s right, she’ll be gone forever, buddy, forever; you need her, she needs you, but once she’s gone, what then? That gate will close behind her and it’s over. How many of your dad’s wives have ever come back once they leave, huh?’

  None, thought Bulley, none of them ever came back. With each step they took outside of the gates they became less somehow; they merged and faded into the landscape, disappeared into the air, some were gone before they’d even reached the horizon or the thicket of trees.

  ‘Grasp the nettle!’ said Walker; he’d actually lost his glacial composure for once, he was only goading the young Bulley on, he was his accomplice now, they were readying themselves for battle, or that was how Walker saw it, they were in this together and someone had to lead the charge.

  ‘Seize the day,’ he said quietly, surprised to find his hand holding Bulley’s wrist, raising his hand above his head as if signalling that their war had already begun.

  *

  Love takes many guises, some of them imagined; Bulley’s was made from impossible dreams that were then coerced, buckled, bent and – with the help of his friend – rendered into an unrealistic future. To even call it unrealised was to give it some standing or weight that it had never had or would have.

  In her own way, Karen loved Blue, not that she’d ever wanted to be part of his sprawling family; she was just another runaway that had landed here in his compound. Like Walker, she’d stumbled upon the light of the compound one night and had been shown some rare kindness, had been let in, but unlike Walker she had learnt to love their God and embrace him as her own. She’d spent a lifetime adapting and surviving an
d this was more of the same, that’s how she saw it. She’d been as surprised as anyone the day that Blue had spoken to her after service and had left his hand on hers as they talked, detailing her spiritual awakening, her growth, her place within his church. Soon they were talking long walks together outside of the compound as he spoke of his love of the place, how he wanted to expand and build, ultimately construct a city built on faith and love – imagine a utopia with only God at its heart, he’d say – and he would hold her hand a little tighter, as the passion flared up inside him, he’d rise onto the balls of his feet, some days she thought he might float blissfully away. She knew a pipe dream when she heard one, but to look into his face as he spoke was to know that he truly believed it, that he spoke the truth, or his version of it. Blue saw a sanctuary for him and his followers, somewhere they could all be sheltered from the outside world, safe from the wolves and enemies that haunted his dreams. She liked it that he believed in something, even if it was only himself; she’d been waiting a long time to see or feel that.