Flesh Wounds

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘That’s what you’re looking at?’

  ‘First the cornea. To figure out your situation. Then through its iris to the darkness of the retina to understand your future. You must keep still, though.’ Sasha’s own eyesight didn’t seem so hot. One pupil was an odd colour and turned in. She produced a small magnifier and held it to his cheek, studying carefully. ‘You’re married, but there are no children. Some confusion here.’

  Cartland figured fortune-tellers built on the information supplied by their clients and resolved to give as little away as possible. ‘What sort of confusion?’

  ‘Well, you’ve had an argument. Didn’t hit her, did you?’

  He recoiled slightly. ‘No, why would you think that?’

  ‘It was a very big fight. More than a fight, a break. You won’t go back, I don’t think.’

  ‘I don’t know, I haven’t decided yet …’

  ‘It’s not really for you to decide. What was this argument about?’ Staring into the light was beginning to hurt. She switched the magnifier to his other eye.

  ‘You tell me,’ he said. ‘You’re the fortune-teller.’

  ‘I can’t be expected to do everything. Come here.’ She yanked at his eye and stared hard into it. ‘Jeez, more confusion. Sex, I think. Yeah, definitely sex.’

  Cartland coloured. ‘What about it?’ he asked defensively.

  ‘There’s something I think she knows that you don’t.’ The old woman sat back, considering the matter. ‘She tells you that she knows it, but you deny it anyway.’

  ‘No …’

  ‘Don’t lie to me, mister. There’s denial in your eyes. You were angry. You left, maybe to change your life.’ She paused. ‘Why did you stop making love to your wife?’

  The suddenness of the question made him falter in surprise. ‘I don’t … know.’

  ‘H’m. Perhaps you don’t. Now, the future. This is different. I’ll show you.’ She gestured. ‘Come here.’

  Cartland sat forward once more, unsettled. He’d give her five more minutes of his time then head for the motel.

  ‘The heart of your eye holds a mirror to your future. The clearer the picture, the nearer the event.’

  ‘Did they really hound you out of Russia?’

  ‘Really. Portents and omens, I could read ’em all. People don’t like to know what will happen. Hold very still.’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘Strange. I think I understand your past, but not your future. Perhaps you can help. The picture itself is very clear, the meaning not so much.’

  ‘What do you see?’

  ‘First, a tall tree and a bright light. The most dazzling of colours, brilliant yellow. Blue eyes, the bluest of blue. Now red. Now stars. And there are words. The words are … love. Friend. So very clear.’

  She sat back and studied his face, comprehension filling her old eyes. ‘It’s to be a new path for you,’ she said finally. ‘I need to double-check, see the same picture from a slightly different angle. Show me your other eye.’ She raised the magnifying glass again. ‘Yes, it’s love alright … wait a minute, this isn’t right …’ She sat upright suddenly. ‘Odd …’ Her tanned forehead crumpled in a frown.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Cartland, alarmed.

  ‘I don’t s’pose you’d believe me if I told you,’ she said, half to herself. ‘Rational types never do. It’s all there in the eyes if you just care to look.’ Her voice had a faraway tone. ‘There are those in the old country who think that the last thing a man sees before he dies stays on in his eyes. Leastways, in them that die violently …’ After a moment of silence she reached across and seized his hand. ‘But you, why you’re alive. Alive! So maybe it ain’t just a superstition after all, maybe it’s a warning. And you must go very quickly.’ She jumped down from the chair. ‘Get as far away from here as possible. It’s tough for me to interpret all the signs. I ain’t always right. For your own safety, you understand. Go right now.’

  Virtually pulling him from the seat, she led him back to the door. ‘Don’t stop, don’t talk to anyone. Run, run!’

  The door was opened and slammed in his face. Cartland was left standing alone on the porch with the flickering night bugs. The old woman was obviously crazed. How could she earn a living out here if she gave such half-assed advice to her customers? Shaking his head in amazement, he returned to the car. The desert air had chilled the interior. His breath condensed on the windshield as he keyed into the ignition and revved the engine to an angry roar.

  Back on the freeway there were fewer cars than before. The dashboard clock read 11.50 pm. Eight miles to the motel. What had the old woman seen inside his eyes? Love, friendship, colours and a tree. Real specific stuff. Dead men’s eyes. She’d been right about Amy, though. How the hell did she do that? Had he really looked that guilty to her? A new path, she said. Maybe he was about to find Jesus. That was all he’d been able to get on the local radio stations. He thumbed a cigarette into his mouth and depressed the dash lighter. Looking up, he found a familiar truck drawing alongside, the one driven by the young cowboy from the diner. He remembered the logo, Glover Truck Company, Arizona. The cowboy looked down from his cab as he passed, recognised his fellow traveller and slowly smiled. There was no one else on the road now, no lights in the hills beyond, just an illuminated ribbon of freeway cutting through the landscape toward the San Andreas faultline. Cartland felt an exhilarated sense of freedom, a bond with the young driver who raced beside him through the night. For several minutes they drove like this, truck and car edging ahead in turn, engines thrumming smoothly across the plains, then the cowboy accelerated and the rig sped ahead into the night, crimson taillights vanishing around a curve.

  The sign said Exit 15 and sure enough, there was the motel, a low spotlit building with a tar-paper roof and a wooden boardwalk. He was almost reluctant to leave the deserted freeway, but as he followed the ramp around he saw the truck parked at the rear of the motel and felt a tightening in his chest.

  It took less than five minutes to check in. The gloomy reception area was filled with faded photographs of the desert taken during freak weather conditions, flood, hail, brush fires.

  ‘I’ll give you a discount on the room ’cause you may find the bed a mite damp,’ said the old man behind the desk. ‘We don’t air the cabins every day at this time of the year, there’s not enough custom. I said the same to the other fella.’ He removed a key from the hook and passed it across the counter. ‘Number 27, at the end of the terrace. If you check out before I’m awake, leave your key in the door.’

  Cartland returned to the car and collected his travel bag. A single tall date palm stood in the centre of the car park, two spotlights shining through a cloud of bugs at its base. The sound of crickets filled the night air. The riding lights on the cowboy’s parked truck still glowed in the dark. Cartland swung the bag to his shoulder and headed for room 27.

  The door was already unlocked. He crossed the room and turned on the bedside lamp, waiting for the roaches to scuttle from view. The ubiquitous desert views graced the walls, and a pair of hard, dry towels lay folded on top of the comforter. He unzipped the bag, removing a toothbrush and face cloth. Past the boardwalk, the truck’s sidelights winked through the window like friendly red eyes. Cartland wondered if the cowboy had forgotten to switch them off. He turned back to the half-opened front door, unable to prevent his pulse from picking up.

  Outside, something dark flew across the porch, batted against the glass and vanished, some kind of flying insect. He turned back to the business of unpacking. Toothpaste. Soap. Shaving foam. No razor. He’d packed in a fury, anxious to be gone. Amy hadn’t cried. She’d stayed to watch, calm and resigned, as if his moment of departure had long been anticipated. As he had pulled out of the drive she had stared from the window, an expressionless face behind sunlit glass.

  Slow boot steps on the boardwalk. The cowboy passed before his doorway, paused and moved on in the direction of his truck. Cartland remained at the bedside, waiting for the sound of the
door slamming and the engine turning over, but no other sound disturbed the night. He moved to the window and peered out, but all was darkness beyond the porch light. Flicking on the radiator beside the bed and setting the thermostat, he sat down, listening. Nothing.

  Just then the cabinet lamp flickered and buzzed in time with the porch light, pulsing with fluctuating voltage before they both popped out. He rose in total darkness, swearing beneath his breath. He’d forgotten that this kind of thing happened regularly in the desert. Reaching his arms wide before him, Cartland walked slowly ahead until he came to the doorway. Gradually his eyes adjusted to the moonlight, and he could discern the shapes of his car and the truck, parallel parked in the sandy lot beyond the bedrooms, their engines ticking in the cool air.

  The cowboy was leaning against the side of the rig with his hands in his pockets, his angelic face half lost in shadow. It was almost as if he’d been waiting there for Cartland’s arrival. He removed one hand from his jeans and scratched a match across a wheel arch, lighting the Camel which slanted from his lips. Cartland stepped down from the boardwalk, his heart pounding in his chest. He could barely catch his breath. A cloud cleared, the moonlight slowly detailing the man and the truck.

  ‘Lights’re always goin’ out in this joint.’ The glow of the cigarette end cast a red tattoo across Cowboy’s cheek. ‘Jacob never remembers to check the generators.’

  Cartland found his voice. ‘You’ve stayed here before?’

  ‘I’m here all the time. But this is a whole new territory for you, ain’t it? Stand closer, I can’t see you clear enough. Where you from?’

  ‘I just came out of Phoenix,’ replied Cartland, taking a step closer.

  ‘Rose up from the ashes, huh?’ Cowboy slowly smiled. ‘Guess I knew you was gonna stop here.’

  ‘How did you know that?’

  ‘I heard Myra tellin’ you directions in the diner. So.’ He pulled on his cigarette, firing up the tip. ‘What did you think you’d find here?’

  Sweat beaded Cartland’s forehead. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It’s way past bedtime. Night’s real cold. What was you looking for?’

  ‘I wasn’t looking for anything …’

  ‘You know damn well what I mean.’ He stretched out his hand and brushed the front of Cartland’s shirt with his fingertips. ‘You gotta know when to make choices, pal. I knew what you wanted the moment I saw you. Way you looked at me in the diner, like I was a hot meal and you was starvin’.’

  He enclosed Cartland’s wrist in a fist and slowly drew it toward him, forcing open his fingers, sliding them beneath his trucker’s coat, inside his shirt, across his hairless chest. It was as if an electric shock passed through Cartland, but he was unable to move.

  ‘If you don’t like it,’ Cowboy said, ‘you can always take your hand away.’

  In the grip of personal revelation, Cartland remained immobile. He saw now that every recent event in his life had been building to this moment. He understood the Russian woman’s reference to his fight with Amy. Both women had seen his own blindness. But now that the scales had fallen from his eyes, he was terrified, unable to budge a single inch. This was the moment that Sasha had predicted – the tall spotlit tree, the love, the changing of his path. Once more he experienced the feeling of elation that had swept over him on the freeway. He felt like a child again, about to discover the world beyond the walls.

  The look on Cowboy’s face cooled as he released Cartland’s sweating hand and brushed the ash from his yellow jacket. ‘I’ve seen this so many times before,’ he said. ‘Regular married guy on the outside, but underneath you’re just another desperate guy who don’t know which direction he’s s’posed to be headed.’

  Cartland was starting to shake. ‘Now wait a minute,’ he began defensively, ‘you grabbed me, what does that make you?’

  ‘Well, I’ll tell you.’ Cowboy ground the Camel stub into the sand and looked him in the eye. ‘It makes me the Way and the Truth and the Light. I help to keep this area clean. The old lady – Sasha – she raised me. She says I ain’t entirely right in the head, but she looks after me, keeps me from harm. She protects me from guys like you.’ He stepped forward, filling Cartland’s vision. ‘And she protects guys like you from me.’

  Cowboy drew the pearl-handled cutthroat razor from his back pocket and carefully unfolded it. The desert night closed in around the two motionless men, separated from each other by a strip of shining steel.

  Cartland looked at the scene before him and suddenly understood what the old woman had seen in his eyes. When she had spoken of the picture within, she had meant it literally. Here it was, as if a camera had frozen the moment forever.

  The tall illuminated palm, thrusting into the night sky.

  Cowboy standing in front of the rig, obscuring the first letter of the ‘Glover Trucking’ symbol. Desert dust staining the rest so that only four letters were visible.

  The folds of Cowboy’s jacket reducing ‘Friendlier Freighters’ to ‘Friend’.

  The yellow of his jacket.

  The blue of his eyes.

  But where was the red?

  Finally he saw it, reflected in the razor’s mirrored blade as it completed the path across his throat and soared into a sparkling sky.

  The darkest of angels filled his vision, framed in a universe of stars, a final sight that seared its way into his eyes to stay forever in each ganglion and receptor, imprinted across each thickening lens, engraved upon each retinal wall in a daguerreotype of his death.

  What the eye doesn’t see, remembered Cartland, the heart doesn’t grieve about.

  The thought failed to comfort him as he fell.

  Brian Foot’s Blaze Of Glory

  * * *

  Poor old Brian. Most of us know somebody like him, a magnet to misfortune, a hopeless loser upon whom we cannot wish better fortune for the simple reason that he doesn’t really deserve any better. I was thinking about hitting the ceiling of one’s station in life; Salieri recognised his inability to create the music of the spheres, but what if you fail to realise the miserable truth; that what you get is the most you deserve?

  HE HATED HIS name. Brian sounded like something from the fifties, which he was, and Foot was, well, feet, as in other people’s feet.

  He hated his age, which was forty-two. He had stopped enjoying life at thirty, not that he’d enjoyed it much up until then, and now he really didn’t enjoy it. He could count the things he still enjoyed on one hand; he enjoyed ‘Brookside’ and something else, he forgot what.

  He hated his appearance, which was short and thin and half bald with a large pink head and rimless glasses and hairy hands with spatulate fingers that women seemed to find unpleasant.

  He hated just about everything else with the exception of Häagen-Dazs Double Chocolate Chip ice cream, which he couldn’t afford anyway. In recent months he’d come to think of himself as an exhausted old bus that had finished its route and was gently coasting back into the shadows of the terminal. The worst part was, he hadn’t even realised that it was happening until now.

  As a child, he was mercilessly teased at the grubby South London state school he attended; about his name, about his looks, about his inability to catch a ball and about his way of walking like a duck. His mother fretted, his father threatened. ‘Be a man and learn to fight your own battles,’ he’d say, towering over the frightened boy like a thundercloud. ‘Don’t let those bullies get away with it.’

  ‘I don’t know what you expect him to do,’ his mother would counter, ‘he’s only small.’ An argument would start, and pretty soon the cause of it would be forgotten as his parents moved on to problems of their own.

  There was a kid the exact same age as Brian at school, but age was all that the two boys had in common. Maximillian had a cool name, a cool dad who drove a silver Mercedes 350SL, a cool mum who wore sexy shorts to Parents’ Day and lots of cool friends. Brian always wanted to be like Maximillian, but of course, it was impossib
le. The whole set of parameters was wrong. Maximillian didn’t have to try; he was good at everything. Making new friends, hitting the ball, scoring good test marks. Brian was always the last to be picked for the lunch-time football game. He would overhear a clever remark and hopefully repeat it, only to get beaten up. Kids didn’t like him because he was so damned nice that there had to be something wrong, something not normal. Maximillian had the attitude of a midnight iceberg and was surrounded by people who wanted to play Titanic.

  Brian couldn’t understand it. He tried to stay out of the way and to do what he was told, but the more he behaved himself, the more he was beaten up. He longed to befriend Maximillian, but the social apparatus of the times didn’t allow for such a situation; kids like Maximillian came and talked to you, not vice versa. Brian stayed home and read Spiderman comics, watched ‘Thunderbirds’, made elaborate models from plasticine, wrote himself stories, talked to the cat.

  He left school with terrible grades because he always got nervous in exams and when that happened his mind went blank. His mother cried for days, and his father stopped addressing him directly.

  The awful thing was, school days turned out to be the best days of Brian’s life. At least he’d enjoyed reading the Spiderman comics. Now he was expected to be an adult, while having no prospects and no idea of what he might be able to offer an employer in the way of job skills.

  Two days before his nineteenth birthday Brian was hit in the small of the back by a passing car, and the accident seriously injured his spine. The car didn’t stop, and nobody managed to get the licence plate number. He could never stand quite upright or walk in a straight line after that.