August 1980
Walker had been here before. This still green field, those far-off trees, black knots against the blue sky of the horizon – he often came back to the same spot where he had done the most harm. I am, he sometimes thought, returning to the scene of the crime. He wondered what Green might have made of that. He wondered what Green thought about a lot of things, he sometimes wondered how it might have been if things had turned out differently, if he and Green could ever have been friends. Too alike, he’d tell himself, we’d have to cancel the other out somehow, just like we have to now.
He walked the hillside where he’d once watched Blue’s world burn and disappeared out of sight over the other side of the grassy slope, down through a furrowed field much like the one he’d walked in the darkness all those years before until he came to the forest he’d once lost himself in racing away from his old school. ‘My long dark night of the soul,’ he sighed and crossed from the light of the day into the tangled shadows of the wood. The trees were closer together than he had first remembered, the pale sky barely penetrating the canopy of green leaves and hulking boughs. The floor was slick and he had to reach out and grab a trunk more than once as his shoes attempted to find purchase in the wet dirt. A cobweb was suddenly caught on the stubble of his cheek and he brushed the fine gossamer away as a surprised spider loomed quickly into view and then disappeared at the periphery of his vision. He laughed in spite of himself and pushed forward until he came to a clearing he recognised, the place where as a boy he’d sat and wept and felt as though the world were falling in on him. He sat and wondered where those ghosts were now, the memories and thoughts that had so petrified him that night; he wondered why he kept coming back here, why he sat alone on these hills while his driver smoked near the car and tried to understand what his boss was doing out here among all this emptiness.
I guess, thought Walker, I must have been happy here once. Before I became the great reckoning and washed all those people away. There were friends here, after a fashion; I think I must have felt safe, even wanted, once. It had been a long time since I’d felt wanted or safe. But my mantle, my way of being, he thought, has been to spread unhappiness since the death of my mother. That great wedge that had been driven between him and his father, as the only woman the two of them had ever truly loved was suddenly gone away from them forever, but leaving them with one final thing to share: their pain. It was a cliché, but it was true, he’d seen something of his mother in Rose. He snorted; maybe it was best that he’d never taken her home to meet his father then. Rose had burnt so briefly and brightly, consumed him and then tossed him away, not that she had ever really taken him in – like Alejandro he was always at the edges of her life, in the bleachers looking on. Not like that little prick Henry – he’d taken real pleasure in forcing the pool ball deep down into his throat and watching him panic and gag. He remembered the despair and horror on his face as they’d slowly beaten him to death. Wrong place, wrong time, wrong girl, said Walker as they’d cut the life out of him as he sat tied to a chair, the brown leather belt holding his wrists in place turning slowly black with blood.
Walker would follow Rose some nights; tail her in his car, instructing his driver when to stop and slow and when to go. He’d hang back at junctions and watch her disappearing in and out of the light. The click of distant heels, her jumble of hair tied up in a high knot, a plastic pin dissecting it, holding it all in place, the nape of her neck a slash of white against all that red, like a wound, he thought. Eventually, he gave up on the car and took to following her on foot; it felt more intimate that way, like it was something that they shared, just the two of them. He’d stand in the shadows across from Bulley’s place and wait for her to leave, his heart quickening as she stepped out onto the street and went left. That’s where he’d first seen her with Alejandro as they’d walked a few blocks together, her arm linked with his; Walker stayed just out of sight, the steely taste of jealousy and anger filling his mouth, his stomach contracting into a tight knot of unhappiness. He felt impotent and ugly as he stood on the corner watching Alejandro and Rose drinking coffee on high stools at the counter of a place called The Friendly Bean (a café he’d once resisted entering when he and Rose were together just on the name alone; she’d laughed when he’d told her that), it was a room they’d once sat in together, as she asked Walker to tell her everything. And now here she was asking the same thing of someone else, her head was tilted a little as if to take in everything that Alejandro was saying, a spiral of hair fell on her shoulder, as Walker’s pulse filled his head and turned everything into a dull roar.
Walker and his men had found Alejandro on the roof of his building, balanced precariously on the edge as if reaching for something. Walker had wanted to ask him what he was doing there, what his story was, what did Rose mean to him, but his men knew that they’d come here for one thing only, to exact revenge, even if they didn’t understand what this stranger might ever have done to Walker (they rarely did); Walker’s final word was always an unflinching order, the final full stop. It had been too easy, they’d literally kicked Alejandro into oblivion, pushed him off the building’s edge and into the air to let him hang briefly like a star and then he was gone into the darkness below. Walker had stood and looked off into the black as if he might find an answer there; that it might reach up to him so he might finally understand what Rose saw in other men that she could never see in him. She’d once told Walker that she couldn’t find the goodness in him, that there was a hole where his heart should have been and he’d guffawed and asked her if she’d heard that in a song. I laughed in her face, he thought, as she was reaching out to me, trying to find a way to let me in. She had seen the blank oblivion that he carried deep inside him and she’d faltered, it had scared her and caused her to take a step back. He sometimes imagined Rose at the top of the stairs at some cellar door, peering into the gloomy recesses below before becoming too afraid of what she might find there and so she decided against entering and closed the door shut.
And so Walker followed her, haunted her every step. Sometimes when he had to travel for work, when business took him out of the city, he would get his men to track her in his stead and note down her movements, where she went and who did she meet and what did they do. Walker would call his driver from a hotel room somewhere and he would stand by the window and stare out at some strange city and imagine them both there together, a drink in his hand, and he would listen as his driver detailed Rose’s day and then feel his stomach churn when it became clear that she was on a date with another man, sitting in a bar or restaurant somewhere as Walker’s gleaming black car idled a block or two away, all eyes trained on her. He hated himself, his obsessiveness; he hated the way his face burned with rage and envy as she moved ever further away from him; he broke legs, he scared people off, he left a bloody trail in her unknowing wake as he became a distant memory to her, another face in the city, another guy, just as she was becoming everything to him.
*
A memory, one moment in time, bloodied fingerprints at the edges of old photos – people kept family albums, Walker kept a catalogue of indiscretions (as he liked to think of them); he’d once collected Polaroid pictures, but was too shrewd to keep a paper trail of casual misdeeds for too long – bent limbs, broken men or naked girls, it made no difference to Walker, it was one more small victory to tick off and keep. He missed rifling through his array of these silver bromide snapshots, but now he only allowed himself to enjoy them for a few weeks before he threw them on the fire and sat to watch the corners curl and the naked and the dead burst and bubble and fade.
And then there was Billy, or Bill? It didn’t matter so much when they were down to the bone and almost unrecognisable. They’d snared one of Rose’s guys – as Walker had started to think of them – and tied him to a chair. Walker remembered the tears and the screaming, but sometimes the names eluded him. It was a familiar scenario – he liked to think that they had it down to a fine art by now, tie them to a chair, beat
them up, beat them down, the pool ball and then the sudden blade, and then the slow shudder towards death. He wasn’t sure what had changed this time, why Walker had snapped so hard, why it had resolved itself without its usual flourish. They held Billy in a workshop they sometimes used to house part of Walker’s extensive collection of cars; it was isolated and just out of town. Walker had an array of properties like this one, old workplaces, disused factories, warehouses, he even owned an old orphanage outside of Poughkeepsie; he would tell people that those places reminded him of a better, more industrious and industrialised America. This one was a large room with high windows, most of them cracked or shattered, the space filled with metal and wooden shelving, every oily worktop covered in wrenches, hammers and pieces of wood and steel. Billy’s eyes moved frantically around; the strip of silver tape over his mouth seemed to glow, amplified by the smears of blood and oil across his face. Walker leaned in so he was eye to eye with Billy.
‘Now, my friend,’ Walker said, picking up a long shard of glass from the floor beneath the man’s seat. ‘I want to talk to you, I want you to help me with something, so we’re going to take this tape off you, but if you so much as even think about screaming or shouting then I’ll take this piece of glass …’ He held the glass up in front of the man’s face just so they were both clear which piece of glass he was talking about and then he placed the broken tip very gently against Billy’s lower eyelid. ‘And I will very slowly insert it into your eye until the eyeball, which can only yield so much, which has only so much give, will finally break and burst over the glass itself just like egg yolk. Imagine, your other eye will be able to see it all happening – is that ironic? Probably not.’ He waved the glass around and stepped back and waited for one of his men to take the tape away.
‘Do you know something, Billy?’ asked Walker, taking off his coat and laying it gently to one side. ‘Most people never scream anyway, they’re too baffled, too terrified, sometimes they’re simply in shock. And I get that – look at where we are; look at where you’ve found yourself.’ He indicated their gloomy surroundings, the empty hall becoming shadows as night fell, the hardened faces of his men in the half-light. ‘It’s pretty shocking. So, tell us about yourself, Billy. What do you like to do, any hobbies? You’re a fit-looking young man, I’m guessing squash, you don’t look upmarket enough to play tennis. So, tell me, what gets you through the day, what gets you off?’
Walker pulled up a chair and sat opposite him.
‘But first, tell me this: where did you meet her, when did you first get to know Rose?’
‘This is about Rose?’ said Billy softly; he kept his head down as if expecting to be struck again at any moment; he looked to each of the men as if an answer might lie there. Their still, hardened stares seemed comparatively sane compared to Walker’s ricocheting personality.
‘Is she your wife, is that what this is about? I’m never going to see her again, I was never going to see her again anyway.’ Billy’s voice was speeding up, as was his heart rate; he sounded panicked.
‘My wife?!’ said Walker. He sounded incredulous, hammy, as if he were playing a part.
‘I’m not sure she was marriage material, or maybe that was just when it came to me? She said she couldn’t see the good in me, Billy, can you imagine that?’
Billy shook his head mutely.
‘It was rhetorical, Billy, rhetorical,’ said Walker. ‘I think my mistake was that I put her on a pedestal, showed her too much respect, I couldn’t get near her; how about you, did you get near her?’
‘Near her?’ asked Billy; he was watching the piece of glass moving around in Walker’s hand.
‘You know,’ said Walker, pulling his chair closer still. ‘Near her. Like Henry, Hank to his friends, probably.’
‘Hank?’ said Billy slowly. ‘I don’t know anyone called Hank.’
‘Rose did,’ said Walker. ‘Before there was a Billy, there was a Henry, sorry, a Hank.’ Walker looked evenly at Billy. ‘There’s no Hank or Henry anymore.’
‘Anymore?’ said Billy; the word felt heavy in his mouth.
‘They found him in a tree, someone had hung him up there,’ said Walker; he’d started pacing around in front of Billy. ‘You ever see a broken crow, dead and caught in the branches of a tree? You ever see that, Billy?’ Billy nodded; he guessed he had. ‘They’re still beautiful, don’t you think? Elegant somehow, even in death, the unseeing eyes, the sheen of their feathers turning slowly matte black, the head at an odd angle, the beak pointing at the sky, it’s like nature placed it there as a gift, something we can all see.’ Walker stopped to look hard into Billy. ‘But Henry wasn’t beautiful in that tree, he’d turned into something that would make you want to look away, to wish you’d never seen it. But not for Rose: maybe not for Rose.
‘He got near to Rose, Billy. Did you?’ Walker was staring at Billy’s bowed head.
‘She kissed me once, Billy,’ said Walker. He had turned now and retreated into the darker reaches of the room; his voice could be heard, but he was hard to see. ‘She held my face in her hands and looked up at me and you know what she told me?’ Though he couldn’t be sure where Walker was standing anymore, Billy still shook his head.
‘She told me she couldn’t love a man like me – I mean, what does that even mean? Am I a monster, Billy? All of this, is this monstrous?’ said Walker quietly and then his tone became mocking, cajoling. ‘I guess it is. Tell me, Billy, what did you two talk about, did you talk about a future together, dreams, Billy, did you share your dreams, your hopes, your desires?’
‘It was nothing,’ said Billy haltingly, unsure of the message to send, what words, if any, could save him from a fate like this. ‘We dated a few times, she meant nothing to me. I don’t know what this is, why are you doing this to me?’ Billy was crying now, heavy tears making small trails through the dirt and blood on his face.
‘Why, Billy? Why do you all ask the same thing, why can’t you accept the experience, accept that this is happening to you?’ said Walker. ‘And tears, Billy? Tears? Do you think she’ll cry any tears for you when you’re gone, when you’re broken at your corners and strung up like a decoration in a Christmas tree?’ Walker’s voice was keening, becoming higher and tight; it sounded like it was accelerating towards a crescendo. ‘Dry your tears, Billy, you’re free now.’
And as Billy looked up, with one fleeting glimmer of hope that his nightmare was finally ending, the last thing he saw was Walker striding steadfastly towards him, the hammer raised high above his head, too late for him to even turn away as Walker, with an elongated and almost delicate motion of his arm, struck him across the cheek and something broke inside Billy’s head and the world slid from its axis and he fell to the ground, raising a cloud of hazy dust as it landed, dust that would dissipate and be gone soon.
*
It was getting darker in the woods now, Walker sat in the clearing on the branch of a tree that looked like it was growing down and not up. He liked the stability of it, he imagined – and he may have been right – that it was the actual tree he had sat on all those years before when he had got lost along this way. He admired the way nature had sustained itself, how this tree had endured through all the years he’d been away from this space, how his life and the lives of those around him had risen and fallen and yet this tree had stayed here among the occasional spokes of light and had chosen to keep on living. He’d seen people crumble and crushed; been disgusted by how some of them gave in so easily. Where was the fight his father had instilled in him, where was their backbone, where was their will to live? He patted the trunk of the tree reassuringly, glad that something was still in place after all this time: that there was something he could still rely on.
Walker had been here twice before. Once, when he’d run away from school – he was always running away from something, according to his father – and then the night of the fire, after he’d persuaded Bulley to talk to Karen, to tell her how he truly felt, he had come here to wait for th
e first domino to fall, for the dismantling of the commune and Blue’s dreams to begin. Little did he know that it would literally end in ashes, but by then he was cloaked in deceit and dismay, a teenage boy caked in the blood of girls he should have been pursuing romantically, not hounding to their death. That night had ended in a shower of sparks and the quiet flames eating away at what Walker had once considered his home. Karen and Jakub were dead, Blue ruined, Bulley changed forever, and what had it brought him? The initial, visceral thrill of power had now been replaced with a feeling that was both empty and tarnished; he felt used, but by what he couldn’t be sure. Could I have betrayed myself, he sometimes thought, did I choose this gruesome path to walk along alone?
Walker’s father came and collected him from the hollowed-out shell that was all that was left of the commune, and stood silently by as the police questioned his son. By then, Bulley was in mute shock – Blue had driven them off the compound only to crash their car and they had both trudged quietly back to the one place they had ever considered a sanctuary. Walker’s father and the family lawyer shared a box room as the police tried to make sense of the carnage wrought in this once empty farmland. They’d clearly decided that Blue was the source of evil here, not this handsome young boy. Did he touch you, they asked him? It’s okay to tell us if he did. But not even Walker would send Blue down that particular road to hell. There were lots of girls, young women, he said, but not us boys, he never touched the boys – he stammered now, as his father rolled his eyes theatrically, watching this game play out. They pulled away from the commune as the fires were finally being extinguished to drive across country and up towards their New York home. They sat mutely in the back of the car, a thin glass partition between them and the driver.
‘How much of that was your fault?’ asked his father.
The Death & Life of Red Henley Page 14