by Liam Brown
As the light began to fade, a familiar baritone rumbled through the farm as Ox began to sing. It wasn’t his usual soft rock, but something I’d never heard before. It had no words, just a slow and mournful drone. After a while we began to join in, a call-and-response evolving organically as we traced Ox’s lilting melody. We worked like that then, our heads bent forwards, our tools striking the earth in time to the tune, our sad, sweet music filling the cold evening air.
*
Eventually we were finished. We downed our shovels and trowels and stepped back. Even in the dim light, the transformation was undeniable. The ground turned and raked, the borders clearly defined, the leaves swept and bagged. We had taken back the land as our own. It had submitted to our collective will. There was still nothing to eat, but it didn’t matter. In time there would be a harvest. Until then we would find a way.
I allowed myself to be led back to my tent, nodding and smiling as if I had a choice in the matter. I laughed at Rusty’s terrible jokes and ignored the fact he was walking so close beside me I could practically taste his terrible breath. I wished them all goodnight, kicked off my boots and climbed under my blankets, all the time pretending that Ox or Butcher weren’t standing just outside, a spear in their hand, watching me.
Lying there in the darkness, I cradled my exhausted head in my hands and dreamt of the farm in bloom: ropes of green beans snaking up poles, fat marrows exploding under bushes, rows of juicy carrots being shaken from the earth – a feast fit to feed an army.
*
That night the snow began to fall.
TWENTY-FIVE
Before I’d even opened my eyes, I was able to sense a shift in the light, an eerie brightness that pierced the thin membrane of my eyelids. I sat up, confused for a moment before I spotted the roof above me sagging under the weight of the snow. It had been a heavy fall. I thought of the farm, my heart sinking. All of our work had been for nothing. Quickly eclipsing my disappointment however, was the realisation that I was likely to be unguarded. It was time to leave.
I pulled on my boots and fumbled for the entrance. Then I paused. The snow was even deeper than I’d thought, the world blanketed entirely white. For a second I was transfixed by the beauty of it all. The camp looked pure and new, the snow completely masking the dirt that lay underneath.
I stared around nervously, looking for signs of life. I had no idea what time it was, but there didn’t seem to be anyone around yet, the great white expanse of the field unscarred by footprints. I took a tentative step forwards. The snow compacted under my boot with a satisfying crunch. I filled my lungs with crisp morning air. And then I saw it. Almost directly opposite me, stood at the base of a tree, was a snowman. He stared at me with black-pebble eyes, his dead-stick arms reaching towards the sky, though of course there was no carrot for his nose. At that moment, Al Pacino stepped out from behind the tree, a patch of yellow spreading out behind him.
‘Morning, mate,’ he said as he shook himself off and retrieved his spear from against the tree. He looked cold, his cheeks flushed bright red, his black hair speckled with snow. I wondered whether he’d been out there all night.
‘So what do you think?’ he grinned, gesturing towards the snowman. ‘Have you said hello to my little friend?’
*
That morning there was talk among the men about going back to the farm. By the afternoon though, the snow was falling again, this time heavier than ever. There was nothing for it but to go back to our tents and wait it out. I lay there in the curious, too-bright light, unable to sleep, my teeth chattering, my stomach attempting to digest itself. Outside I heard my guard clearing his throat. I took a chocolate from under my pillow and held it on my tongue, being careful not to bite it, trying to make it last. I closed my eyes. Somewhere in the distance, Bruno began to howl.
*
As the days passed, it became clear that the weather was not going to let up anytime soon. The men had long since stopped chucking snowballs around, the novelty having quickly given way to chapped fingers and wet socks. One morning the news went round the camp that Zebee had been found dead in his tent. My query as to what had killed him was met with a shrug.
‘Froze to death?’ Fingers suggested.
That evening, Rusty called us to dinner. A platter of raw meat sat on the table, the snow and lack of petrol presumably making cooking impossible. There were no complaints though, only the sound of chewing. Again I refused a plate, holding my belly and blaming a non-specific illness. Nobody even looked up.
After they’d eaten, we made our way to the farm and watched as Ox dug a hole in the snow. It was difficult to know exactly where the other graves were, and in the end Rusty had gestured to a random spot. Beneath the snow, the ground was so hard that even Ox struggled to make much of a dent. Still, there was little of Zebee to bury. His belongings – which consisted of a modest handful of clothing – had been redistributed among the men. Fingers in particular was delighted to finally swap his shorts for a pair of trousers. As for Zebee’s body, most of it had been carved up, with some set aside in the snow for later and the bones saved for Bruno. What remained fit easily inside a small carrier bag. This, Rusty tossed indifferently into the shallow ditch. There were no words this time, no gunshot. We stood shivering as yet more snow began to drift down, like ashes blown from a distant chimney, and left the moment Ox had patted down the final shovelful of dirt.
As we trudged our way back to the camp, I sidled up alongside Hopper. ‘Should we tell someone?’ I asked as quietly as I could.
Hopper, who had been struggling with his foot in recent days, looked up in shock. ‘Tell? What do you mean, tell?’
‘I don’t know. His family? We could try and get a message out.’
Hopper relaxed slightly. ‘Oh. No, Zeb didn’t have any family.’
Now it was my turn to look shocked. ‘What do you mean? He was always talking about his wife and daughters. I thought he was going to move to be with them again soon?’
‘Well, I guess he’s done that, the poor sod. See I was already here when Zeb arrived. The gaffer found him and brought him to us. He was in a terrible state. Pissed out of his head he was. Crying too. He told us how his family had died in a house fire years ago. He was the only one who made it out. I guess he’d been on the streets ever since. Of course by the morning, he’d forgotten all about telling us. We played along, naturally. Seemed cruel to let on we knew. Anyway, give us a hand with this bloody leg will you. I swear, it’s killing me…’
*
Eventually the snow did stop falling, though it refused to thaw. Instead, it packed down and froze over, the surface of the park becoming glazed and slippery, as if encased in glass. Twice I slipped, earning myself dark bruises on my arms and legs that took days to disappear. Still, I found the pain served as a useful distraction from the endless hunger that stalked my waking hours. I was down to six chocolates by then, having recently made the decision to cut my rations in half. Apart from these lonely bursts of sugar at the end of each the day, all I had to eat was fistfuls of snow, which I compulsively shovelled into my mouth in a vain attempt to fill myself up. I was acutely aware that every day I stayed there the more difficult it would be to rouse the energy I’d need to escape. So far though, there hadn’t been a single opportunity. At night I lay awake, listening to the heavy breathing outside my tent and fantasising about overpowering my guard, though in truth I knew I was so weak I’d have struggled to overpower Flynn.
Despite the snow and ice making chores impossible, every morning we still woke to the clatter of saucepans, though what were being summoned for was never clear. During daylight hours, we huddled silently together in the clearing where we used to practice yoga, avoiding eye contact. I never failed to be shocked at how frail everyone looked. All of the men were pale and gaunt, the lean winter months having filed their cheekbones down to right angles. It wasn’t just the weight loss though. Al Pacino’s hair appeared to be falling out on one side of his head, a shin
y patch of scalp visible beneath the flap of his bobble hat. Fingers had come out in a mysterious rash, his face and hands covered in angry red welts. As for Butcher, I was pleased to see his scar looked no closer to healing. Only Ox and Rusty seemed to have dodged physical affliction, though both were showing signs of exhaustion. Dark black bags underscored their eyes, while the deep creases in Rusty’s face seemed to run deeper than ever. At his feet lay Bruno, a marimba of ribs beginning to show under his fur.
It was Hopper, however, who was undoubtedly suffering the most. The ice had rendered much of the campsite virtually impassable for him, and several times I’d had to help him up off his back following a fall. In addition to this, the wound around his prosthesis had stubbornly refused to heal and was now infected, a yellow crust formed around the socket. One morning I got a glimpse of it as he rolled up his trouser leg to pack snow around his stump. Ominous red streaks had spread up his shin, the skin around his calf marbled purple and black.
I didn’t know if was my imagination, but during those long, cold days the other men seemed to pay Hopper an uncomfortable amount of attention. Every time he winced they’d nudge each other, exchanging silent looks loaded with meaning. Once or twice I caught them staring longingly at his ruined leg as he pressed a block of ice to it. And in their eyes I thought I saw hunger.
*
The final chocolate was an orange crème. I divided it into four, holding a tiny fragment on my tongue each night, the artificial sweetness the only bright spot in my otherwise grey existence. When the evening of the last quarter finally arrived I was almost too afraid to eat it. I held the sticky glob up to my face and examined it in the dim light. It was hardly as big as my little fingernail.
In my old life, I never ate chocolate. Lydia had spent a fair portion of the last decade waging a war on refined sugar and, with the begrudging exception of Flynn’s breakfast cereals, our kitchen was a junk-free zone. Thinking back, it was hard to believe I’d taken so much for granted. Grapes from Senegal, strawberries from Morocco, tomatoes from Saudi Arabia, all of it flown halfway around the world just so we could get our five-a-day, regardless of the time of year. What I wouldn’t give for a single bite of an Italian apple or a Costa Rican banana. Jesus, half the time we treated our fruit as ornaments, leaving it to go mouldy in the bowl and then chucking it away. It was criminal.
I considered the chocolate again. Up close I could see the tiny hairs it had attracted from where it had lain inside my tent. I closed my eyes and placed it in my mouth, all the time dreaming of home.
*
‘What are you fucking looking at, huh?’
I turned slowly, struggling to focus on who was speaking. This was three or four days after the last chocolate had run out. Hopper had stopped leaving his tent by this point, but the rest of us still responded to Rusty’s call each morning, dragging ourselves out to huddle aimlessly in the clearing. That morning I sat on a frozen tree stump, staring at nothing, thinking nothing. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been sat there. Come to think of it, I wasn’t even sure it was still morning.
‘I said, what the fuck are you looking at, freak?’
This time I realised it was Al Pacino who’d spoken. He was glaring at me, his lips parted, his teeth showing. He wasn’t joking. I opened my mouth to answer, to tell him I wasn’t looking at anything, but the words wouldn’t come. It had been days since I’d said a thing to anyone, and my throat felt cracked and raw. Instinctively I reached for a scoop of snow to ease my dryness. It was at that moment that he launched himself at me. His fist connected with my chin, sending me staggering to the floor. Before I understood what was happening, he was over me, blows landing in my belly, my ribs, my kidneys.
‘You think this is funny, motherfucker?’ he screamed at me. ‘You think my hair’s a fucking joke?’
I couldn’t speak. One of Al’s punches found my mouth, loosening something in my gums. I tasted blood.
The beating continued, until all at once a smeared shadow blotted the sky above me.
‘Come on, you clowns! That’s enough!’
A pair of large hands gripped under my arms and dragged me to my feet. It was Rusty. He’d come to save me.
‘That motherfucker was laughing at my hair. He fucking disrespected me!’ Al Pacino screamed.
‘Sounds like you need to learn when to be quiet, sonny,’ Rusty said as he propped me back on the tree stump. ‘You’ll want to get some ice on that. Fortunately there’s no shortage of that around.’
I stood up uncertainly and began to pick my way back through the snow towards my tent. I could hardly see.
Without a word, Ox stood up and followed me.
*
The next day I woke to a bellow of anger. Hopper had gone. During the night, while Butcher had been stationed outside my tent and the others had slept, he’d somehow managed to pack up the entire contents of his tent and leave the park without anyone noticing. It seemed impossible, especially with the state his leg was in, but there was no denying it. He’d escaped.
The ice made it difficult to track him, but eventually Ox picked up his trail. It was unmistakably Hopper: one heavy indent, accompanied by a lighter mark, leading away from the camp. We followed the trail of footprints, past the farm and through the woods. Halfway across the football field, the prints abruptly stopped. We hunted around, doubling back on ourselves to see if he had branched off earlier, but there was no sign of any extra tracks. It was as if he had simply evaporated, along with everything he owned.
Rusty was beside himself with rage. He was angrier than I’d ever seen him before. He blamed Butcher for not spotting him. He blamed Bruno for not barking. He blamed the rest of us for not waking up. But most of all, he blamed Hopper for having the audacity to leave in the first place. We stood and watched while he attacked Hopper’s empty tent with a stick, thrashing wildly at the canvas, all the while screaming about what he’d do if he ever got his hands on ‘that one-legged cocksucker!’
In the end he flattened the tent altogether.
Afterwards, when Rusty had retreated to brood in the tree house, the others crouched over the crumpled canvas, scavenging pegs and rope to make repairs to their own leaky hovels.
‘Reckon he had the right idea, if you ask me,’ said Fingers.
The others nodded gravely.
‘Probably chewing on a juicy hamburger as we speak,’ said Butcher.
‘Or sitting somewhere warm,’ said Al Pacino. ‘With a pint of beer.’
‘The fucking one-legged cocksucker,’ said Ox.
Everyone agreed.
The fucking one-legged cocksucker.
*
The day after Hopper left, I woke as usual to the sound of saucepans. Fearing Rusty’s dark mood, I dragged my feet getting ready. When I eventually emerged, I found Butcher was waiting outside my tent. He looked disconcertingly smug, as if he had just remembered the punchline to an elaborate dirty joke.
‘Morning!’ he trilled, slapping me hard between the shoulder blades. ‘Sleep well?’
I didn’t answer.
When we joined the others, I found to my surprise that Rusty too was beaming, the frustrations of the day before seemingly forgotten. In fact, everyone seemed mysteriously buoyant, a ripple of barely suppressed excitement coursing through the small band of men. Even Ox was smiling.
Before I’d even taken a seat, Fingers began hopping up and down. ‘Can we tell him? Can we tell him?’ he asked.
Rusty smiled generously. ‘Well, he’s going to find out sooner or later, ain’t he?’
Fingers turned back to me and clapped his hands together. ‘It’s Christmas!’ he yelled. ‘Or at least, it is tomorrow. It’s Christmas Eve today. Rusty’s just told us. Isn’t that right Rust?’
Rusty nodded. ‘Jingle all the bleedin’ way!’
I didn’t say anything.
‘Jeez, don’t look so pleased!’ said Fingers, visibly deflating at my lack of enthusiasm. ‘Don’t you know what that means?’
> ‘Feast!’ Butcher answered for him.
‘Feast!’ said Ox.
‘Feast!’ said Al. ‘Feast, feast, feast!’
Rusty chuckled. ‘That’s right!’ he said. ‘But first we’ve got work to do.’
*
There was wood to gather, a fire to build. I wasn’t sure how Rusty planned to burn it, but the instructions were clear. As before, we were to construct it at the bottom of the marl pit. After that, the table was to be fetched, a canopy erected. Ox had chopped down a small conifer that was to be decorated as a makeshift Christmas tree.
The ice made the work difficult and painfully slow. Despite this, the men remained in high spirits, singing carols and telling jokes as they went about the preparations. As I set to work scavenging the few dry branches I could find, I found myself wondering how Rusty had come to know the date. It didn’t seem long enough had passed since Midsummer’s Day for it to be Christmas already, but when I tried to think back to count the weeks it was hopeless. I found it hard to remember much of anything that had taken place before winter, before the sore fingers, the chattering teeth, the endless, grinding hunger. In the end I decided that even if it wasn’t Christmas, it didn’t really matter. As far as I was concerned, this year couldn’t end soon enough.
*
At last we were done. We sat around the camp in the fading light, hugging ourselves to keep warm. I was just preparing to go to bed, when a loud voice boomed out from the trees.
‘Ho, ho, ho!’
We all looked up as Rusty stepped from the trees. He was dressed in the same red coat he’d been wearing on my very first night here, all those months ago. Although he’d lost a considerable amount of weight since then, he still bore a striking likeness to Saint Nick.