Night Trip

by Peter Ackers

  "…PHILOSOPHY THIS EARLY IN THE MORNING…"

  Tattoo-guy turned off the road at another home-made exit and we rumbled across the land towards a series of lights some couple of hundred metres away. As we closed, I saw a two-storey farmhouse with a number of outbuildings, one big enough to almost rival the main building, but most too tiny and rickety to be anything but storage sheds, perhaps for farming tools. In every window of the farmhouse and even the major outbuilding, lights shone. I wondered who Tattoo-guy lived with, and how many.

  He parked the loader over by an old well. There was a very fine wire mesh strung across the hole. The purpose of this giant sieve became obvious once Tattoo-guy tipped the loader's load onto it. The gooey mess filtered slowly through the mesh until all the water and mud had oozed away - in the silence that followed as we waited, I could hear the water dripping into water far below. What remained caught in the mesh was thicker gobbets of mud, stones, a few tiny river creatures, but certainly no gold. As Tattoo-guy got from his loader into his wheelchair, he got me to rifle through his treasure, but unfortunately I had to report that today, alas, he had not found gold.

  "Shit."

  I stood by, and over, him. We stared at the gooey mess. I was reminded of Surfer-dude and his cohorts and their bath of explosives. I thought of Axe-wielder's head. I thought how much I was annoyed with my girl, for putting me though this very strange night that might yet get weirder. My head was hot, and the lights from the farmhouse were hurting my eyes. I wanted dark.

  "Who else lives here?" I said.

  "No one," Tattoo-guy replied, and turned away from the well. There was a path of dead brown grass, about wide enough for Tattoo-guy's wheelchair, leading from the well to the farmhouse's front door, where a hub divulged similar paths in numerous directions, all leading to buildings. Looked as if Tattoo-guy had created himself a network of wheelchair roads right here on his land, possibly using weedkiller. Or potassium chlorate purchased from The Shepherds.

  Or was Tattoo-guy the supplier?

  That silly thought evaporated even as I was thinking it.

  Tattoo-guy moved slowly along the dead path, and I followed. He talked to me without looking back.

  "I live here alone. Me, myself, and I. Why you asking, you plan to rob me?"

  He sounded genuine enough. I ruffled his hair by way of answer, but that only made him slap my hand away.

  At the door, he produced a key, turned his chair sideways on to the door so he could reach the lock, and let us in.

  We stepped into a strange house, and my first thought was this: this is not a place the eccentric would buy, but rather a place that would over time turn someone eccentric.

  The ground floor seemed to be primarily a spacious kitchen, but right in the centre was a raised square platform, accessible by a set of stairs at each side, that I think was supposed to pass for a living area. There was a pair of armchairs, a TV - in fact it looked like some basic living room that had had its walls removed. Up on the platform as it was, it made me think of a giant art exhibit, something we might have in a hundred years to show schoolkids how people used to live in the olden days. This, children is called a "video recorder", which people back then used to record images in the days before we developed the technology to download into our own brains.

  Doors in the far wall led perhaps to bedrooms, but I didn't care about that. My attention was focused on the ropes.

  Ten or so of them, dangling down from the high ceiling. There was one right beside the living room platform, one over by a staircase that led upstairs, although the upper floor was nothing more than a gallery around the walls. There were also ropes dangling in front of the two places where kitchen cupboards were mounted.

  The floor was linoleum. Tattoo-guy zipped across it, skidded to a halt inside a C-shaped tiled area of sinks and worktops, sort of like a typical kitchen within a bigger kitchen, and ran himself a drink of water. A ramp before the sink allowed him to gain the height needed to reach the taps. He seemed very at home here, very adapted. But I wondered who had kitted this place out for him, and that suddenly made me think he had lied about living here alone. I wanted to turn and run, but whatever Surfer-dude had spiked my drink with wouldn't let me. It had made me fearful yet fearless, and eager to know things I didn't. I felt like a cat in that everything I touched, saw, experienced - I just needed more.

  There was a large clock on the wall. Tattoo-guy looked at it. "Jeez, it's past midnight." He fished in a bunch of shopping bags laid on a table and extracted a banana. He put it in his pocket. So, he got his shopping delivered. A nocturnal, wheelchair-bound kid with the Internet could close-off from the social world almost altogether.

  "You need sleep?" I asked him. Strangely, I didn't want this guy to sleep. I wanted to ask him about my girl. What should I do about her? Kill or forgive? That was my new duty - get the votes counted, make some affirmative action. No way I was going to go to sleep tonight. Tomorrow morning I planned to confront my girl back at home, and I needed to arrive there ready.

  By "ready" I meant knowing my course of action. Would I forgive her with open arms, or open her throat to reap my revenge?

  "Lord nope," Tattoo-guy said. "I sleep in the day. Just seems a bit early, that's all. No bastards out at night. I don't know why people want to live in the day, anyway. UV rays. People, too many people. Crowds me. I even go out for these at night." He indicated some of his tattoos with a sweep of the hand.

  He put away his empty glass, wiped his wet chin, and rolled towards the staircase to the upstairs gallery. I thought I had this guy sussed. To be disabled at such a young age must be hard. He should be out clubbing with pals, not rolling about in a chair. Despite a few ramps and wide doors, this modern world wasn't designed to make life easy for those in wheelchairs. Rolling though a town centre must be an overwhelming experience. Everyone towers above you, and you stand out a mile, especially when trying to move about in shops. No surprise that this guy had chosen a solitary, nocturnal life. A guy like that might like to drive a big tractor to boost his ego somewhat: the machine becomes an implement of power to counter his usually frail state.

  I followed him. He used the rope dangling beside the staircase to haul himself out of the chair, then up and lithely over the balcony, onto the first floor, where another wheelchair awaited him. I was forced to climb the stairs; he waited for me as if I were the infirm one.

  "This is my grandparents' house. They moved away a couple of years ago. Sick of farmland and cows and sheep. Now they live in Dubai, a big futuristic city right in the middle of nowhere. Grandpa's into computers. Strange for an old guy, but hey."

  Sheep and cows. I hadn't seen any. In fact, I hadn't seen anything much, not just cattle, to suggest that Tattoo-guy worked as a farmer. Maybe his family paid for his solitary life here. A cheque each month from his Grandpa would do that.

  "What's the fucking point of trying to plan for something if you can't do it?" he suddenly snapped at me. I didn't know what he meant. He turned and whizzed off, and again I followed.

  We passed a doorless room and I couldn't help but look inside. It was kitted out like any teenager's room, with more posters showing than wallpaper and more clothing on the floor than in drawers. There was a single bed (so he didn't expect much close company) with a rope and pulley system above it - must be awkward to get up in the night for a piss. Nothing untoward here, except for the ceiling. Above the bed - the first thing he'd see in the morning - was a large black and white poster of a crying child. The bad quality and pixellation suggested it was a blow-up. The child looked about five or six, was dressed in rags, and had a dirty face. The photo looked old. The edges of the photo showed parts of other bodies and heads, suggesting the child had been part of a large throng when the photo was taken. I couldn't keep myself from asking. I was a curious one tonight.

  "Nineteen thirty-nine, that," Tattoo-guy answered, pausing outside the door, staring in at the enlarged photo. "Piotrkow, Poland. Hitler's SS rounded up
Jews and put them in ghettos. That was the first ghetto, in Pitrkow. That boy, Arich, was one of them. If he's still alive, he's in his eighties now. But I fear he's dead." Tattoo-guy leaned forward in his chair, reached over his shoulder and pulled down the neckline of his T-shirt. Another tattoo. This was the same picture of the little boy, but because of the size and the fact that it was a copy, the quality was clearer. Despite contorting his face with tears and sorrow, Arich was quite a good-looking boy; his ragged clothing hadn't always been so, suggesting perhaps a well-off family. Before the Germans came, of course. But who was he to Tattoo-guy? A distant relative?

  "Ever seen some photo like this before? Just some old picture showing Jews being forced through the streets? Have you? Have you?"

  I nodded. I had. And Tattoo-guy seemed a bit excited, as if this was something heartfelt. Was he a Jew, perhaps?

  "People. All people, with families and feelings and shit, but do you care?"

  I took a step away from him. Just to be safe. Perhaps sensing this, he visibly relaxed.

  "I believe in a good world, that's all. I think good things should happen to good people and bad shit should happen to the bad. Real bad shit. I'd love to kill all the drug dealers and bag snatchers in the world. Line those fuckers up, I'll roll past with a machine gun and put them all down."

  I looked into the room, at the photo on the ceiling. Tattoo-guy saw this.

  "Arich, that's his name. I saw that photo one day in an old book in the library. The original photo showed hundreds of Jews marching along the street. This was just hours after they'd been turfed out of their homes. Imagine that shit. Imagine the country being invaded and the foreign police coming and taking you out of your house. Sitting there eating dinner, and suddenly the door's kicked in. Out you come, no belongings, no mouthwash, never to come back. You don't see that girl of yours again. Or your mum and dad. Or your dog. What would you do?"

  I didn't know how to answer. My mouth moved like that of a goldfish, or an actor in a cheap seventies foreign ninja film before the tardy dubbing kicks in. Tattoo-guy nodded.

  "That's right. You'd be distraught, eh? Especially if you were nine years old, eh? What would you do if you were nine and that shit happened? Home gone. Friends taken away. Mum beaten and raped by soldiers. Dad put down like a dog because he was too frail to do hard labour in some Latvian camp. What would you do? Maybe you'd cry like that, too.

  "I saw that photo and it made me cry, too. Here was some kid who might have gone on to be a great doctor or something. Except he ended up in a street prison because some bad guys invaded his country. Imagine a whole country being invaded. Just imagine that shit happening here. Imagine it. That boy Arich was reduced in history to nothing but a few dots of black and white on a sheet of paper. I had to use a magnifying glass just to see his face."

  I thought of my grandfather's brother, who died in a swimming pool at an early age. There were no photos of him in existence; I'd never seen him. He was less than a few dots on a piece of paper. Shit happens, and your life grows long and hard if you spend time worrying about everyone that way. I said that to Tattoo-guy now.

  "Great," he said sarcastically. "Good job Churchill didn't think like you. Or you'd have Mein Kampf on your bedside table instead of the King James Bible. People get fucked all the time, and sometimes it's in the name of law yet they're innocent. Who looks after the weak if people become like you and don't give a shit, eh?"

  I was offended. "I didn't say I don't give a shit. Just because I don't blow up photos and stick them on the ceiling to wank over first thing in the morning."

  I couldn't believe I'd just said that. Ha. But Tattoo-guy didn't seem fazed by it.

  "That photo's so I remember him when I wake up. I think of how Arich had it bad, and in turn that makes me not spend the day in a foul mood about my own predicament. Because he died at age nine and I've beaten him already by eight years."

  I was into this now. "That's fair enough. I used to write a to-do list on my bathroom mirror so I'd always see it first thing. But what can you do? He's dead."

  "I don't know that. But even if he is, think of this. He died long before you were born, way away in another country. But you now know his name. You know he had wealthy parents. You know he could sing opera -"

  "How do I know that? I don't know that."

  "I just told you, brainbox. Now you know. You know because of people like me. I checked him out. I felt it was the right thing to do. And I would have firebombed the Germans rounding these guys up if I'd been there. Do you want to die and be forgotten, turned into a few pixels on a sheet of paper hidden in sheets of paper stuck between lots of other bound sheets of paper in a building full of it?"

  "So you're some superhero, helping the needy? Why?"

  "It feels right. I feel good doing it. I plan to find Arich's remaining family and meet them. What will you be doing while I do that? Playing your Playstation? Shoveling chips for a fiver an hour? The world would go to hell in a day if everyone was like you.

  "Yet here you are talking about your girl and punishment and doing what's right, and really you're doing what I'm doing. You're on a mission to hand out justice, it sounds like. I don't think we're that different, if you look closely at what we're doing. We might not be superheroes or murder detectives or bloody Samaritans, but we're good people. And that keeps the good versus bad numbers about even, so that the freaks and lunatics in this world don't multiply out of control and swamp this world."

  Now my head was hurting. I wasn't in the mood for deep thinking. Tattoo-guy saw me rub the throbbing area above my right eye, and he put a hand on my other forearm. "People in this world have to help each other. Some are stronger than others. Unhelped weak people crumble. That's no theory of mine, before you start. That's a fact of our existence here on this planet that we call life. If I drop a coin on the floor, I'd need your help to pick it up. Just like you need help with things, I bet. Reading or something, I don't know. What kind of world would this be if no one helped the weak and all the strong people rose to the top without a care? Hitler would have been kind of the planet, for a start. Or would he? Would he have got where he was without a hand from someone influential way back when he was no one?"

  "This is giving me a headache," I told him. "Philosophy this early in the morning - not good."

  "We'll leave it at this, then. What makes the world go round? Money? Love?"

  "Magnetism."

  "Justice," he snapped. "What goes around, comes around. Justice. And if you want to be cheeky, then yes, if I want justice for little Arich, or to give his life some meaning, then yes, I am a superhero. Sometimes the weak have to look after the weak. And you can piss off."

  We just stared at each other. I shrugged. I didn't want to argue. Physical activity I could do, but not mental exertion, not tonight. I think my brain was rerouting mental power into my muscles, which burned with energy. Surfer-dude's bloody spiked drink, that.

  Tattoo-guy shrugged back, turned his chair and moved onward.