Nine Open Arms

by Benny Lindelauf

  Then he wasn’t sure . . . he held his breath . . . had he seen something glittering?

  Dogs’ eyes?

  The darkness there shifted.

  Something moved!

  How many hellhounds were there, anyway? What if they had picked up his scent? What if they suddenly dashed out? He began to panic. He pressed himself against the tree, not daring to go any further. The smallest movement would give him away. How could he get out the sausage, let alone throw it?

  It was Lame Krit’s words that made him move again: ‘Trees will learn to walk before then, Bottletop.’

  He took a deep breath, once, twice, once more, deeper this time, and then he did it: one step, two steps, knees bent so low his legs trembled. He took aim and threw. The sausage whizzed through the air, a beautiful throw, bouncing through the grass, rolling under the caravan and disappearing from sight. It happened so smoothly that it looked like a conjuror’s trick He glowed with pride. Lame Krit would come down a peg or two now. He was in for a surprise, would be lost for words. ‘My dear boy,’ he would say . . .

  Then the sky fell on him.

  At least, that’s what it felt like.

  So suddenly did it happen, he didn’t have time to brace himself. He toppled over, facedown. His breath was knocked out of him. He wanted to scrabble up, but a hand was pressing down on his head. He wanted to scream, but all he could do was gobble grass and mud.

  ask who was given a

  townies’ welcome

  There lay Charley Bottletop, hopeless dog killer, facedown in the mud. He couldn’t catch his breath. Just as he was about to faint, the hands let go of him. Gasping for air, he rolled sideways. Someone twisted his arm behind his back. He opened his eyes. The mud stung, but he had to have a look.

  A boy’s grinning face hovered just above him. The boy was not alone: opposite him, a girl crouched on bare knees in the grass. It was hard to tell how old she was. She was wearing a coat that was too big for her. She had a doll’s face, but there was nothing doll-like about the eyes that were glaring at him. They were so dark that the blackness under the caravan seemed pale by comparison.

  ‘So you almost didn’t throw it,’ said the girl. ‘You almost went back home.’ As if they had been having a conversation that had been briefly interrupted. She nestled into her coat, pulled her skirts tighter around her and tucked in her feet. ‘We were sitting in the linden tree. We fell on top of you. Accidently.’

  ‘Lexidently,’ the boy echoed. He laughed softly.

  Charley felt his arm being twisted further at every chuckle. ‘You have no right to be camping here,’ he said sharply.

  The girl didn’t reply. She was staring at a spot in the grass. It took him a while to realise she wanted him to look there, too. And then he saw it.

  There lay the sausage.The sausage with the rat poison. None of it had been eaten.

  ‘Our dogs won’t accept anything from strangers. Not even when they’re very hungry. My father trains them. He won’t let me see how. He says it’s not suitable for girls.’ She looked him in the face. He heard the boy sniffle.

  ‘You should have given me the sausage,’ said the girl. ‘They would take it from me. I could have fed them.’ She moved her head closer. ‘Is that mud or blood? My brother is always falling out of trees, you know. He dragged me along. We fell on top of you.’

  The boy laughed again. His hands let go of Charley, but immediately the chair leg came down gently on his shoulder. So he dared not try to escape.

  ‘Where is your dog?’ she asked.

  ‘What dog?’

  But she had already stood up. The coat was so wide that the shoulders and sleeves hung way down. She whistled softly. That was all Dimdog needed. Dimdog, everyone’s friend. She whimpered and rustled among the shrubs. Quick! Come, quick!

  ‘What a lonely-sounding whimper,’ said the girl. ‘Dogs can’t take being alone. Cats can, but they eat birds. I don’t like cats. Only when they’re asleep. Are you all on your own, doggie? Is that why you’re crying? I’m coming, doggie, I’m coming.’

  Charley wasn’t taken in for a moment. But Dimdog . . . The noise from the shrubs sounded like at least three dogs.

  The boy had a strange elongated head, as if it had been squashed by something. There were no teeth left in his upper jaw. He peered anxiously in the direction the girl had disappeared.

  She reappeared. With Dimdog.

  The dog worked out right away that something was not right, but pretended it wasn’t so. She yawned in an exaggerated way, stretched her forelegs and took a little leap in an everything-is-lovely sort of way. Dimdog isn’t so dim after all, Charley thought.

  There was a sound from under the caravan. Charley saw two pale little dog snouts. A leg. He heard squealing, or was it growling? Were they the dogs? Those scrawny little things? Were they the ‘hellhounds’ Lame Krit had been on about? Those with the ‘jaws like bear traps’?

  The girl clicked her tongue. The dogs disappeared.

  ‘They want to join in,’ she said. ‘But that would mean puppies.’

  The boy snickered.

  ‘Quiet,’ said the girl, looking at the caravan.

  Quiet? thought Charley. Who for?

  ‘My father beat someone to death once,’ she said before he could even open his mouth to call for help.

  ‘Lexidently,’ said the boy.

  Maybe that talk about beating was a lie, but Charley had no intention of finding out.

  ‘Accidently,’ said the girl, with a sinister smile. She stroked Dimdog, who meanwhile was lying down, staring stupidly from Charley to the girl. From the girl to Charley. From Charley to the sausage.

  ‘Guests first,’ she said.

  Before Charley could do anything at all, she slackened the belt, his trouser belt. For one-tenth, no, one-hundredth of a second he dared hope that Dimdog wouldn’t be that stupid after all. But then it was all over. The dog hurled herself forward and gobbled up the sausage, the poisonous sausage, the sausage chock-full of rat poison. Drool dripped onto the grass. Guzzle, guzzle, one half, guzzle, guzzle, the other half. She smacked her lips, peered greedily at the grass, then looked at the girl, at Charley.

  ‘Rat poison?’ said the girl.

  He nodded, in a daze.

  ‘Lexidently,’ said the boy. ‘Now dead?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘First cramps and fits, then blood, then dead.’

  He was forever going to remain Bottletop, and that was bad. But the poison in Dimdog was much worse.

  ‘Townies’ welcome,’ said the girl.

  ‘What?’

  She explained. Slowly, as if he was a slow student. ‘Townies’ welcome’ was what the travellers called it – harassment by townspeople. Nearly every town or village did it. There were many different kinds of townies’ welcomes. Townspeople were very inventive. They would, for example, refuse a camping permit. Or threaten that your children would be put into an orphanage if you stayed any longer. Oh, and poison, of course. Not for the travellers, but very good for their horses. And dogs. Against many kinds of townies’ welcomes there was nothing you could do, but you could do something against poison. Sometimes.

  She was silent.

  ‘Is there anything you can do against this poison?’ he asked.

  ‘If you’re quick. Sometimes.’ She turned her eyes to the chair leg. ‘Make it yourself?’

  Charley nodded.

  She ran her fingers over the polished timber. ‘Can you make a whole chair, too?’

  Was she pulling his leg?

  ‘I do have money,’ he said. ‘At home.’

  She shook her head and tapped the chair leg.

  He couldn’t understand the meaning behind what was going on. But there was no need to understand why. She was saying she could help.

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Give.’

  ‘Give?’

  ‘The antidote for the poison.’

  ‘And never see you again!’

  ‘I swear I’ll be back.’<
br />
  ‘Dog-murderer’s honour, I suppose?’ Again she shook her head. ‘She’s staying here. With me.’

  ‘No,’ said Charley.

  Dimdog whimpered.

  ‘First cramps and fits,’ she said. ‘Then blood, then dead.’

  He broke into a cold sweat.

  The girl stood up, picked up the belt, and walked off to the caravan with Dimdog.

  Without looking back, she said, ‘Come back in a week. With the chair. Wait by the split oak tree. In the afternoon. If you don’t come . . . ’

  As he walked back up the road after that, Charley cried so hard that the rabbits by the side of the road ran away. When he came to Putse Gate, the guards had already locked up the town, and no matter how hard he banged on it, there was no way he could get back inside.

  The next day, the news was all over the town: the travellers’ dogs were sick! Farmer Kalle had seen them that morning, puking and shivering, standing in a small group among the corn, retching horribly.

  ‘Sick as in deadly ill?’ Lame Krit asked greedily. ‘Dying?’

  With a sour expression on his face, Farmer Kalle pointed at the tear in his trousers. ‘Don’t count on it,’ he said. ‘There was plenty of life left in the bastards.’

  In the workshop, Charley said, ‘Perhaps the poison was too old.’

  Lame Krit swore like a maniac. Out of sheer fury, he set Charley to sanding offcuts, a terrible job, because the wood was full of nasty splinters, which constantly got under his fingernails and broke off when he tried to pull them out. But that was all Lame Krit did.

  Later, when Charley came past the coal shed, there was no short snout pushing through the hole in the middle of the door as if the door had a nose.

  ‘Dimdog!’ Charley cursed.

  That evening, he started work on the chair.

  Meanwhile, Lame Krit got a dressing-down from the parish priest, who had ‘by chance heard stories’ about ‘peculiar practices’ used against the travellers in the field. ‘Just think about it, Lame,’ said the priest, who had no wish for a quarrel with God. After all, the travellers were all staunch believers.

  Afterwards, the man of God had a long talk with the travellers, who then broke camp and let themselves be shown to a new site – far from the road, half in the forest, on an even more soggy, dark piece of land.

  The townspeople were content.

  ask who should

  know her place

  A week later, Charley walked out of Putse Gate with the chair, down Sjlammbams Sahara.

  She was waiting with Lexidently. In the daylight, she looked even stranger than at night. She had a pale face covered in freckles, and her hair was the colour of polished copper.

  The burnt oak tree stood out black against the blue sky.

  ‘My dog?’ asked Charley.

  ‘My chair?’ asked the girl.

  Did she think he was a halfwit? ‘Hidden,’ he said. ‘How do I know she isn’t dead?’

  ‘How do I know you’ve actually made the chair?’

  They glared at each other. Lexidently was getting restless. He climbed up the embankment, scratched at the charred bark of the oak, and swung from a branch, which promptly broke off so that he tumbled down the embankment like a bag of bones. He came to rest at their feet.

  ‘Come along,’ said the girl.

  She started climbing up the embankment. Lexidently immediately jumped up and followed her.

  At the top was a field, in which an unfamiliar crop was growing. It was there by order of Van Wessum, the brick manufacturer. He had brought it with him from America, after he had tried in vain to build a new life for himself there on the other side of the ocean.

  The landscape sloped gently, down and up. Everywhere – stretching as far as the edge of the distant Kollenberg hill – stood tall golden corncobs covered in pale leaves.

  They cleared themselves a path, the girl in the lead. She pulled the much taller Lexidently along by the tail of his shirt.

  When the ground started to rise again, Charley suddenly stepped into an empty space – a small, flat clearing of brown, crumbly earth among the tall maize. In the centre, tied to a thick wooden post, lay Dimdog. She was restrained by a rope, the trouser belt tied around her snout. Dimdog blinked, wagged her tail, lifted her head and lowered it again slowly. But she was alive.

  She was alive!

  ‘The chair,’ said the girl.

  When he returned, the belt had gone from around Dimdog’s snout. Lexidently stroked the dog and carefully wiped something from the corner of her eye with the tail of his shirt. The girl didn’t notice. The girl didn’t notice anything. Charley had never seen anyone so pleased with a chair (made from offcuts, imagine!) and who at the same time tried so hard to hide it.

  ‘Is that all?’ she asked, but she was already holding out her hands.

  She took the chair from him, felt its weight. That must have been satisfactory, as her dark eyes lit up for a moment. Then she walked through the empty area, holding the chair in front of her, carefully, as if it was a child she wanted to put down in a safe spot. She tried here, then there. Eventually she settled on a spot and put it down.

  For the rest of his life, Charley would carry that image with him.

  Another image that stayed with him was of the chair slowly sinking the moment she sat down on it. The thin rear legs sank into the soft earth.The chair slipped back, and she slipped with it. Before she could regain her balance, she was on her back. Charley burst out laughing, he couldn’t help it. For a moment she looked at him furiously, but then Lexidently, with those endless arms and legs, let himself fall down, too. ‘Lexidently!’ he cried.

  She started giggling, then laughing, and in the end the three of them laughed so hard that Dimdog stood up in a fright and started barking.

  They picked corncobs and ate.

  ‘How did you cure Dimdog?’

  ‘Travellers’ secret.’

  ‘How come your dogs were sick?’

  ‘Travellers’ secret.’

  ‘Is everything you do travellers’ secret?’

  ‘It is for a townie.’

  ‘What’s a townie?’

  ‘You’re a townie.’ She peeled another corncob, teasingly throwing the leaves at his head. ‘Townies’ welcome!’

  ‘I had to do it,’ he said. ‘My father . . . ’ He had to get it out. It had been worrying him.

  She nodded. ‘Fathers are bastards,’ she said.

  With a stick, she drew in the bare soil: Here, and here, and here, a window. There, a door with a stone doorstep. That doorstep was important; she drew it four times over. Small, bigger, biggest. In the centre, where just before Dimdog had lain, she drew a rectangle.That was going to be the table. No, wait, a round one, it had to be a round table. A chair here, and here, and here, each of them a scratch in the soil. The last chair was real, but sitting on it wasn’t.

  She half-squatted over Charley’s chair, her too-large skirt half-covering it. She said that if you squinted, it looked just as if she was really sitting down. She said Charley should screw up his eyes, and that Lexidently couldn’t do that – couldn’t imagine.

  ‘My brother,’ she said.

  Charley had never seen two people so unlike each other.

  ‘Later, I’m going to live in a house with a stone doorstep,’ she said.

  ‘Later, I’m going to grow big,’ he said.

  For a whole week, whenever he had a chance, he ran down Sjlammbams Sahara to the house of maize and earth.Then they played their game – her game, really. All he did was watch. Watch her sweep the porch in front of her house, bring in the imaginary washing. And if the coal had run out (lumps of brown soil), she called out, ‘Quick, quick, the fire is going out.’ But she never gave him a chance to find fresh lumps; she would push him aside and walk among the rustling cornstalks. At times he could see her face, flushed red, too intense for what was just a game. She would cover up Lexidently, who’d stretch himself out on a bed of corncobs, his hand r
esting on Dimdog’s head.

  ‘I am the lady, you are the man,’ she said to Charley. ‘He is the child and this is our house.’

  They were lying on their backs on the bed of maize without touching each other.

  ‘Where are you going after the summer?’ he asked.

  ‘Shush,’ she said.

  ‘Back again?’

  ‘Travellers’ secret.’

  ‘Belgium?’

  ‘Shush.’

  ‘Belgium?’

  ‘Travellers’ secret.’

  ‘Further than Belgium?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘France, I suppose?’

  ‘Further.’

  ‘Further?’

  ‘Much further away. Now let’s go to sleep.’

  He folded his arms under his head and thought. Imagine being able to just go away. Imagine leaving the town and being able to just go somewhere else!

  ‘Much further away’ were the loveliest words he could think of.

  One afternoon she came without Lexi. He had climbed a tree again, she said, and let himself fall out of it, and now there was blood coming from his ear.

  ‘Shouldn’t he see a doctor?’ he asked her.

  She shrugged. ‘Now you are the child,’ she said.

  He felt himself become tense. ‘No.’

  ‘You have to,’ she said.

  ‘You could be the child, couldn’t you?’

  ‘You’re the smallest, and if you don’t then you can piss off,’ she said.

  He whistled for Dimdog.

  ‘Stay here,’ she shouted, furious. ‘Stay here!’ And when he didn’t: ‘I know what they call you. Bottletop. Charley the Bottletop.’

  ‘Nienevee!’ he shouted back. It was the first offensive name that came into his head, even though it made no sense at all.

  Nienevee was what you called a sulky or listless child. There was nothing listless or sulky about Nienevee, and a child she certainly wasn’t either, but what had been said had been said. ‘Nienevee from Outside the Walls!’