At home he sat at the kitchen table, staring with new wonder at the night sky. He could still hardly believe that he’d been pinned up there among the stars, gazing down onto this planet. He wished that his father would come at night while he slept, that the blaze would reignite in his head and carry him home. The sky flickered at the corner of his eye like a light switch going on and off. The fragmented bolts of lightning coming down in shards towards the earth. He hurried outside instinctively, like a dog sensing a stranger in the yard. A heavy rain was beginning to fall; he felt it on his face, the weight of it in his hair. Another flash and the serrated edge of a distant tree-lined hill was backlit and then quickly shrouded in the darkness. The sky roiled and thundered, the rain became more insistent. He ran to his kitchen, grabbed a bucket and started emptying cutlery and pans into it. Next he went out to his work shed, grabbing sheets of tin, a ball of string. He rattled around picking up squares of sheet metal, oblongs of iron, he pulled the metal panelling off his back door, throwing it all into the back of his truck. He pulled out on to the road, each rut and bump made his pickup jangle.
He stood exposed, forcing pieces of tin into the waist of his trousers, securing it into place with his belt, tightening it around his chest. He placed the colander on his head, cast knives and forks and spoons around his feet, strapped pieces of corrugated iron to his arms. He felt tethered to the earth, moored in place. The energy came up in waves from the ground, the dense corn fanned out, almost flattened by the wind. He counted to three and the flash of light rose up before him, a giant curtain obliterating the night. He heard his father, saw him follow on in the jagged lustre. The sky reared up and the rain drove him back one faltering step, but he thrust his chin forward, an antenna tuning the universe in.
Chorus
The driver of the car was lost, his wipers leaden against the deluge he was navigating his way through. The sky crackled, his radio babbled momentarily and was suddenly mute. He slowed, though didn’t quite stop, the road a morass of gravel and mud beneath his wheels. He leant forward trying to make out the way ahead when the light flooded through the car, and to his left, like a model posing, caught in the flashgun’s glare, he saw the figure reach out, beseeching the sky, then the air embraced the earth, the sky held itself to the ground, he clutched the wheel as the sparks rose in plumes and something exploded. Then it was dark again. His headlights picking out the road ahead, he flicked them to full beam to stave off his creeping fear as he began to imagine figures rushing up at him from the darkness, clambering over his car, blotting out the windows with their bodies.
When he was younger his family had spent an afternoon at a safari park, driving through fenced enclosures filled with dormant tigers and supine buffalo, the animals grazed leisurely, casting an occasionally curious glance at the families ferrying past at a sedate pace. He’d enjoyed it until they’d coasted to a halt and a family of monkeys had thrown themselves at their car, clinging to the roof, springing happily up and down on the hood. They pulled at the door handles, hung cheerfully upside down from the roof and inspected the startled occupants behind the glass. His father had loved it.
Will you look at these fucking things; he beamed, until their mother had glared him into silence.
Ah, sorry kids, his father said, forget I said that, and he turned in his seat and gave them a wink.
He looked back to the window only to let out a startled yell as a monkey loomed in to lick the glass. He sat back sharply, accidentally jolting his sister who pushed hard back, then they were squabbling, the car pulling away filled with the sound of sibling rage and their mother demanding they calm down. The monkeys slid off the slowly moving hood and roof, leaving the windscreen wipers mangled and useless. One pair linking hands, then walking in a strangely high-stepped fashion back to their climbing frame, scratching themselves absent-mindedly as they went.
From the sky the whole country looked like a map; a clean grid of roads running east to west, north to south. Parallel lines, straight, unremitting points from A to B. That’s how the driver saw it when he closed his eyes and thought about the journey stretching out before him. One unrelenting path leading from the Jersey Shore to the edge of the New World and into the Pacific Ocean. The reality though was rutted streets, one car wide, undulating, sandy-coloured stretches that followed the line of the hills he was traversing. Endless highways, dashed with dividing lines of yellow and white, their verges in constant motion, long, willowy grass nodding at the cars as they dashed by. Idiots no matter where you were, the squeal of tyres as someone jumped your lane, long, angry horns. Roads that defied belief as they held to the face of the hill, circling ever upward and then flattening out into a plateau with the world below stilled momentarily. Driving down towards a valley floor at night, pitching towards the distant lights, coming in like a small aircraft, unsure wheels feeling for the tarmac. Roadside barriers were blue in some places, red in others, green, black, orange, burnished steel, buckled and bent. Rushing into one unremitting span as he built up speed. Ominous spaces where a vehicle had crashed against the restraint; popped the metal shield off its posts and sailed into the space beyond. Falling out of sight, sunlight streaming through the front and rear windows, briefly catching the startled shapes of the passengers as shadows as they began their descent to the streets below. He saw the moon, giant and spectral in mountain passes, bleaching the night, the sun fierce and blinding as it rose up, lighting up the earth around him, making everything golden and bright.
The road hit a different pitch when he was travelling over water, everything up a notch as if he was freewheeling or had shifted a gear. He could almost feel the space beneath the car, the timber supports of the bridge, the gentle lapping of the river rolling below him. He enjoyed the dappled light through trees; the sunshine made him think of school holidays and early mornings when his dad had been around more, before he started appearing in the papers and solemn-faced men sat in cars at the end of the drive staring in at the house and the weather felt like it was always about to change. That the forecast was becoming increasingly gloomy.
When he turned fourteen his father got him a job at a high-end resort upstate, just over the Canadian border. Weekend Warriors (as he and his friends called them, barely suppressing their smiles) would fly in to the private airstrip and work on their golf swing or swim in the lake. Some would take off into the woods with a guide to hunt deer. They’d come back at night and he’d see them at the bar as he was collecting glasses and clearing ashtrays, they’d be drunk and fiercely loud as if they’d conquered the wilderness single-handedly. They’d order drinks for everyone and recount how they’d stalked the doe into the undergrowth, while their guide sat behind them rolling his eyes theatrically; he’d seen the same scenario a dozen times.
It’s out there, the hunter would say, with a wave of his flabby arm, his garish bracelet rattling, indicating where the carcass was hanging. I felt alive, you know, he’d tell anyone who was listening. It was odd, he thought, how they always felt so alive amongst death. They’d usually talk themselves into a stupor and would have to be helped to their cabin at the end of the night. Come on, killer, he’d say to them as he pulled their arm over his shoulder and walked them out. He’d see them out on the golf course the next morning, absurdly dressed in checks like a cartoon approximation of a golfer and they’d wave to him as he brought towels and drinks to the teeing green, and mime drinking and the terrible hangover they were dealing with. They’d tell him he was a good guy, one of the best, and then they’d leave a generous tip on his tray and wave him away as they turned to size up their shot that would almost always veer off into the woods either side of the fairway. You’d sometimes see deer there, but not when any of those guys were playing. They knew to stay away then.
He spent three happy summers in this elite backwoods and whenever he returned after the break there would always be stories of late-season hunters lost out in the woods or of the police raiding the dope farmers who dotted the heavily wood
ed hills; everyone knew they were out there, but they were so deep in the firs that the authorities rarely bothered them. Occasionally, some inexperienced campers (the ones who thought the great outdoors was their friend) were attacked by bears, but mostly the bears wanted to be left alone unless they were hungry, though that was only in the winter and it was best to be off the mountain then anyway.
The traffic up ahead was slowing down, the third time it had bottlenecked that day. He turned his radio off with a stab of his finger and lowered his window, the traffic looked like it was backed up for miles. He slowed to a halt and put his head out, craning his neck, but all he could see was taillights and the backs of other heads, dozens of people unified in their stupidity, looking for something when there was nothing to see. He took a can of beer from under the seat next to him and drank heavily from it. His one concession was to keep the label hidden with his gloved hand. The kid in the car in front turned to look at him and he held the kid’s gaze evenly until the boy pretended to notice something crawling on his forearm and quickly turned his attention there. Up ahead someone started leaning on their horn and then more and more motorists joined in until the air was a tangled, cacophonous mess.
Great, he muttered to himself, then leant heavily on his horn too, gulping at his beer as the noise built and built.
Song 2: Deer
Bears, he said, lifting the peak of his cap with his thumb and tipping it back on his head, need your respect.
This time of year, he indicated the banks of muddy snow bordering the road with a wave of the petrol pump he was holding, they’re foraging for food, they get – he paused – quite restless. He placed the fuel pump back into its holster and went inside the little gas station and rang up their bill on an antique register. It pealed into life as rows of coloured tabs with dollars and cents written on them sprang into view.
He had wondered about hunting so late in the season. It was getting colder and before bears went into hibernation they scavenged and hunted for food (he’d read in a magazine) with a sometimes startling ferocity. Lot quicker than you think too, the guy at the store had said, regarding their bright, newly-bought hunting tunics coolly. They left, gunning the engine on their hire car, and headed towards the town on the lake. The endless-looking lake actually spanned a time zone so that the ferry either deposited you on one side at approximately the time you left the other or threw you a little way into the future as you landed. The hunting was across the water in the forest of pine that covered the glacier, a dense blanket of uniform trees that changed from bottle-green to dark brown as it followed the lip of the mountain.
They’d flown north to an area outside of Waterloo that was dotted with private airstrips and exclusive golf resorts and offered weekend hunting packages for customers from the southern cities who wanted a taste of the wilderness. As they came through the clouds to land the airport looked like it was waiting just for them. It was hectic all summer long, though the miniature terminal felt like a ghost town after September. Waterloo was set on the lake, a small, idyllic-looking town that had grown up on the logging industry. These days the local kids were caddies on the weekend and skiing or snowboarding when winter came in. Waterloo had been made briefly famous in Steve Martin’s Roxanne, his cinematic reworking of the Cyrano De Bergerac legend. On the first night there they’d had to get used to cab drivers and locals pointing out plastic awnings dotted on bar and hotel windows and telling them how and where they’d featured in the film.
Steve Martin, what’s he like? He a dick? he’d asked one cab driver.
Uh-uh, he said with a firm shake of his head. Real gent, and he didn’t acknowledge the pair again even as they left his car, pressing a generous tip into his hand.
Daylight hours were short so the next morning they set out early, catching the first ferry across the lake. Cars honked and queued below them as they sat on the deck admiring the view. Ahead of them gently sloping hills rose out of the water and disappeared into the low sky.
Dope farmers all along there, said his companion, gesturing with his arm towards the horizon made jagged by tightly packed fir trees.
Dope farmers? he replied. Who told you that?
A friend of my brother’s used to work for the DEA, he replied. They would take small spotter planes and fly grid lines over the mountains trying to spot crops. They’ve got camouflaged fields up there, huge barns filled with lights, they give off heat, helps them grow.
Nah, he said, warming his hands on the cup of coffee he was holding.
It’s true, said his friend, a passenger plane crashed up there last winter and they sent a team in to search for survivors and stumbled on a farm; they were threatened with guns. This guy, my brother’s friend, his team went in and closed it down. The guy got ten years for growing all that weed.
What happened to the other farmers? he asked. He couldn’t help himself, his interest was piqued; he imagined leaving his job in the city, casting off the shackles of corporate life (he wouldn’t have been able to identify a shackle if someone held one three inches from his face, but his fantasies weren’t there to be hindered by reality) and giving himself over to toiling his illegal acres, his one man crusade against the war on drugs. He imagined the sweet smell filling the air, fresh dope every night, strong coffee every morning. He pictured himself walking the hills carrying some kind of staff, ducking between barns, tending his crops, then the helicopters fanning out overhead, figures crashing through the undergrowth, throwing him to the floor, shutting him down, his face in the papers looking stoic but restless, the DEA agents grinning behind him like anglers measuring their haul.
They’re still out there, said his friend. Those woods go on forever and the forest’s so dense, he nodded at the impenetrable green in the distance, that it’s near impossible to see them from the sky. They pulled my brother’s friend out eventually: they were working in there for weeks and they still got nothing except for that one guy and his crop.
They burn the dope, he said, chuckling. Imagine sitting around that bonfire.
They picked up their truck on the far side of the water and drove a rutted, single-track road up into the mountains.
Feeling every fucking bump, he muttered, his hand drifting towards a radio that wasn’t there. They reached a plateau that afforded them a view to the west of the glimmering surface of the lake being lit up intermittently by a pallid sun. The rest of the valley fell away below them, green, brown and black; there were patches of white, but the night’s snow had barely settled up here. Occasionally there were sprays of birds that broke the spikes of pine and threw the horizon into chaos. They packed their rifles up onto their shoulders and made the descent into the copse, each heavy step a struggle through the slushy earth. It was cold, even through their gloves; their noses were bright and pink in the freezing air.
Hey, Karl, he said, you look like Rudolph. The cold was making his eyes moist and he couldn’t stop blinking. His friend hushed him. Christ, he whispered, don’t go mistaking me for a deer. They crouched in spite of themselves and moved slowly forward, eyes darting left and right, as they imagined professional hunters might. They’d been hunting together since they were in their teens, at first with his dad and then once with Karl’s older brother. His father had impressed upon them the importance of the hunting season and the equilibrium of the land, how nature had to have balance. He’d come to understand that, though he’d still cried when his father had first shot a deer. For his part, Karl’s older brother packed beer as a necessity for their trip and when he finally felled a doe he let out a yowl like he’d won the lottery. Later, his father asked him how the trip had gone and when he told him, his father had become so angry that he’d had to leave the room. His mother stood next to him at the window, her arm around him, as they watched his father crush an empty cigarette packet and then toss it to the ground before stomping around in small circles; his features were dark, his fists bunched.
Karl, he said, your brother still a dick?
Ka
rl nodded. Still owes me money that I lent him at Christmas, he said.
It’s almost Christmas now, he replied.
Last Christmas, said Karl, like the song.
The light through the fir trees was patchy and the going slow. They’d only seen one doe. In his excitement to signal the creature to Karl, first by waving animatedly and then with one final, defeated, hissed Karl!, he had scared it away. The doe’s head had twitched into life and she’d sprung away on her elegant haunches. Karl glared at him as if he’d just fallen and plunged a knife through his boot.
You’re so stupid that you’d make a wax effigy of yourself to poke pins in, he said. Karl had said it before, but not for a long time, not really since school. Their bags and rifles were heavy so they stopped and sat on a fallen tree and drank water and ate their food quickly.
Remember what the guidebook said, said Karl. The smell of food can attract bears. He regarded his tuna and sweetcorn roll and thought to himself that even though bears hunted for salmon, would they know or recognise tuna let alone sweet-corn? They both wolfed their food down and then sat momentarily as their stomachs grumbled at their haste.
Remember when we saw that cub? he said.
He was eleven, Karl a year older; his father owned a Winnebago (he’d told Karl once after his father’s death how much his dad had loved that Winnebago, how he thought he was a frontiersman when he got behind the wheel) and they’d travelled into the mountains for the holiday weekend. They’d parked up, his mother on a lounger applying suncream to her forearms, stretching her fingers out, making the skin taut, his father rooting through the back of the truck for his fishing rod, talking to himself distractedly, the radio playing.
Cross Country Murder Song Page 3