by David Towsey
She forced thoughts of her husband from her mind, refusing to be sucked down into a grief she had no idea how to climb out of. There was Mary and she was enough. Thomas was gone and as dead as if he were buried up at Courie’s. But, when Mary was asleep and so calm and safe, she couldn’t help thinking of him.
Sarah had to swallow hard and take deep breaths. Breathing was easy to forget and sometimes she would wake her daughter with a fit of coughing. She sat down by the wardrobe, knees tucked beneath her chin. The master bed was too big, too lonely. Here, by her Mary, it was right to sleep.
*
Her mother was asleep by the bed as usual. Mary put on her dress. She reached around and did up as many buttons as she could. The top two were still undone, but she didn’t mind. She carefully stepped into her shoes. Sneaking out would be so much easier if her mother slept in the big bedroom. It would just be better if her father were here – then Sarah could sleep in a bed and Mary wouldn’t have to keep looking for him. Everyone would be happy again.
Easing the window open, she slipped out onto the awning that covered the board-walk. She had to be quiet and not wake Mr and Mrs Gregory next door. She tiptoed to the edge and peered down. The wooden lattice had holes big enough for her hands and feet. She could climb, like any of the children in Barkley. Sometimes she didn’t want to, that was all, whatever Michael Farly said. She tightened her grip on Stripe and then jumped down into the street.
The wind had picked up. It blew the sand across the streets of Barkley, wearing away at its buildings and people. It got inside Mary’s rolled-down socks, scratching her ankles.
Shadows loomed in every alley. The familiar was dark.
Mary wasn’t afraid. She felt pulled towards the river. On the grassy banks, she had played games with her father and listened to him read. Now, her mother never wanted to go. Whenever the river was mentioned her smile would become a flat line and her voice would grow short and hard. That’s where Mary decided to search for her father.
*
The ground was uneven beneath his knees. Thomas dropped his hands from his face and opened his eyes. One footstep away the earth opened up. He had no idea how far he would have fallen, how many feet the canyon stretched down. Rocky outcrops on the canyon walls reminded him of the pyre pit. The fall could have lasted an eternity. It would have been a fitting punishment. Though was the path he’d chosen any different? It too would last for all time.
More questions bubbled into his mind: would there ever be a punishment? Was there anyone, the Good Lord or otherwise, to judge him and mete it out? Had he done anything wrong? He’d wanted an end to these questions, an end to the uncertainty. To spill them out onto the orange soil at the bottom of the canyon.
Mary had stopped him. No matter what he had become, he was still a father.
He yelled. An expulsion of sound and doubt that echoed beyond the canyon. He got up. This was his test, his forty days and forty nights in the desert squashed into a single moment. The devil had tempted him, offered the false way with its twisted promises.
He turned his back on the abyss. The blightbird still stood on the stone, hopping from one foot to the other. The unflinching gaze of its black eye sized him up. Flicking its head, the white eye bid him farewell as the bird took to the air.
The choice was east or west: Barkley or Black Mountain. The living or the Walkin’. He checked the sun as he picked his way across the rugged Redlands. He was heading north. The choice was east or west.
The living or the Walkin’.
He wandered on. Each footfall pounded with the arguments for and against. A family, but as a Walkin’? Others who were Walkin’, but strangers?
*
The sun began to set. The Redlands paled away into a grey landscape. Thomas had been watching his feet, their simple one-after-the-other movement. Now, he noticed the buildings.
It was a town or maybe a village, a mile in the distance. Dusky silhouettes dotting the low hills. No light came from them.
Thomas followed an old road. He stepped between patches of flat, black rock. Grass and weeds sprouted between each piece. The more isolated parts of Pierre County still had neglected tracks like these, but everywhere else they’d been cleared long ago, people finding other uses for the stone.
The sun was leaving trails of purple in its wake. Then it was gone.
He was standing at the beginning of what he guessed was the main street. The broken road ran straight along it and out through the other side of the town. The air was still, but every so often a creak broke the silence. He saw a sign clinging to a post by one hinge.
It said: ‘Miracle’. He gave a dry chuckle.
Leaning into a hole where a ground-floor window would’ve been, he looked around an empty room. The stone underneath his fingers was loose. It became dust in his hands. There were many tiny holes and gaps, like the burrows of woodworm. He had never heard of a stoneworm. Going further down the street, he saw all the houses were made of the same material.
The extent to which they’d suffered at time’s hand varied, but none was untouched. A few were blackened. Others were little more than foundations, spaces that once meant something to someone.
There was a larger ruined building, too big to be just a house. It dwarfed the church or Elder Richards’s office in Barkley. A thousand people could fit in something that size. Stone steps led up to a massive entrance. It must have been a grand sight in its time. Curiosity tugged at him.
He peered in through the gloom. Rubble covered the floor. The ceiling had collapsed, scattering across an entrance hall. Thomas went carefully, trying not to disturb anything.
Another opening stood gaping on the other side of the room. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he stared into a vast chamber. There was line after line of cotton-covered seats, most broken. It was staggering. How could enough people be in one place to require such a room? The rows reminded him of church, which was the only explanation he could think of. Folk must have come here to worship the Good Lord, or perhaps the heathen gods of their time. The thought made him shudder. What evil acts could’ve been performed to such an audience?
He heard something move behind him.
Caw-aw, the blightbird called. It stood on the rubble, performing the same dance of one foot raised after the other.
He hurried past the bird and out of the building. It was good to be outside again. He wanted to be away from this corpse of a town. It was a husk. Once it had been home to many people. Had it abandoned them, or had they forsaken it?
He heard the blightbird cry behind him. At the end of the street, he could see the open horizon of the Redlands. Never had such an endless nothing been so welcome a sight. Maybe there was a worse fate than living for ever: being trapped, or left to rust and ruin like Miracle.
‘Hold right there,’ a gruff voice called. It came from every direction, echoing around the thoroughfare.
Thomas tried to find the source.
‘I said don’t move.’ The heavy clank of a rifle’s action – a sound Thomas knew all too well.
1 : 6
He stood still and raised his hands.
‘You stole that uniform?’
‘Why would anyone steal a uniform?’ Thomas said. Turning slowly he saw a man with greasy black hair leaning over a rubble wall, rifle aimed. ‘Most try and get rid of it, like you.’ He risked a guess, seeing the man wore a threadbare and stained vest – the kind soldiers wore underneath their jackets.
The man spat out of the side of his mouth.
‘Just my luck; found by a bag o’ bones. I ain’t goin’; I’ll shoot you dead before I go back.’
‘I’m not here to take you back. I’m like you,’ Thomas said.
‘That so?’ The rifle didn’t move.
‘The army and me, we left each other behind.’ Thomas was enjoying talking to someone again.
‘Army doesn’t leave nobody behind.’
‘Does when you’re dead.’ He waited for the shot, waited for
the lead ball to fly cleanly through his head. He waited for an end at the hands of someone else.
‘True enough. Don’t think that means I won’t shoot you.’ The man had a week’s worth of stubble on his chin.
‘So, what now?’
‘I should chase you outta town, that’s what. Pissin’ Walkin’, always showing up where you’re not wanted,’ the man said.
Thomas had nothing to say to that. He’d been a Walkin’ for a matter of days and before then he’d never met one.
‘Your kind don’t feel the cold, but I got a fire going,’ the man said eventually, lowering the rifle.
‘I’ve always liked watching a flame,’ Thomas said, wandering over to the ruined house. A waist-high wall was all that remained of the front. He followed the man through crumbling corridors to the back. He saw the glow of fire seeping out of a room. Inside, the man had gathered a stool, a flimsy bed frame and a colourful patch blanket.
‘Name’s Karl. Karl Williams.’ Karl leant the rifle in a corner and put out his hand.
‘Thomas McDermott.’ They shook.
‘Done a real number on you, eh?’ Karl said, nodding at the bare bones and burnt skin on Thomas’s hand.
‘Not enough.’
Karl sat down on the stool in front of the fire. The orange light eased his tired-looking features and Thomas saw a man four or five years younger than himself. Karl’s face was long and drawn, his cheeks pocked and his eyes bloodshot. He probably hadn’t slept in the weeks he’d been running. Thomas sat on the stone floor.
‘So, what regiment?’ Karl said, poking the fire with a stick.
‘Second Pierre.’
‘Pierre? Real country boy, then. At least you ended up on your own back porch.’
‘You’re a long way from home?’ Thomas said.
‘Could say that; I could see the sea from my kitchen window. You got a family?’
‘Used to.’ It was like being back in camp: two men talking around a fire about home and life before.
‘They dead too?’
‘No. But I can’t see them like this.’ He raised his bony hand to the light. ‘I’m dead to them.’
‘Aye, back home they don’t make Walkin’ too welcome,’ Karl said. ‘They’re around, mind. In the streets, some even workin’ in fields and markets. Funny, my ma will buy leather from a Walkin’, but not meat.’ He put more wood – a broken piece of ceiling beam – on the fire. As it caught, black smoke rose into the air. ‘There’s rules for Walkin’ in Bar County: can’t buy a house; not allowed out after dark alone; ’ave to make themselves known to the authorities on arrival; that kind of thing.’
‘I don’t expect much of a welcome anywhere. Though, you didn’t chase me off. A lot of men in the Protectorate would have shot me on sight.’
‘You live in the south, you join the Protectorate. Besides, nine days in this rocky armpit and I haven’t met a soul. Man needs some company every now and again; keeps him sane. I’ve been talking to a lot of rocks.’
‘Me too,’ Thomas said. ‘Do you have a wife? Any children?’
‘Two boys. They’ll run me into an early grave – excuse my meanin’ – if the army doesn’t.’
Karl busied himself with the fire. Thomas stared at the yellow tongues licking over wood and ash.
‘So, what’s it like to die?’ Karl said.
‘I don’t remember. All this feels strange, parts of me bone, parts of me skin. The wind blows and half of me feels it.’
‘There’s Walkin’ in my family, my grandpappy says. He’s lookin’ forward to it, crazy ass. Says it’s the best mistake people ever made, all those years ago. We tried to cure one problem and created another instead; he used to get a real kick out of that. He thinks he’ll get busy with all the things he never found time for. What are you gonna do with the years?’
‘I wish I knew. What does anyone do with forever?’
‘Get bored, if you ask me.’
‘Have you ever heard of Black Mountain?’ Thomas said.
‘Can’t say I have.’
‘Might be the only place for someone like me. Lots of Walkin’; someone told me it’s safe there.’
‘You tried killing yourself?’ Karl said in an off-hand way, as if suggesting a solution to damp in a hay loft or a toothache.
‘Yes. Couldn’t, my daughter …’
‘Want me to do it?’ The question was offered as a favour, one soldier to another.
He felt like a little boy again; not thinking, just doing. He didn’t know why he was here or why he was a Walkin’. He had decided not to jump over the cliff edge. Was it the right choice? He had stayed for Mary, but maybe he would do more harm than good. He would have to face a future where all he loved had died long ago.
‘I’m not ready yet.’
All the teachings of J. S. Barkley were about preventing a man becoming a Walkin’. There was no guidance if his teachings failed.
‘What about you? What are you going to do now?’
Karl shifted on the stool. ‘I’ll stop here for a while, there’s plenty of huntin’: under-mutton and red-winks. I’ll keep my distance from the fellas in uniforms. Then, somehow make my way home.’
A young man, his life ahead of him; he had a plan. He had a home to struggle back to. Thomas envied Karl Williams, the greasy-haired deserter.
*
Stepping quietly, Thomas left the room. The fire had gone out soon after Karl had gone to sleep. Thomas had watched the embers for a while, thinking empty thoughts of never growing old, never having more children, and getting bored. As the first rays of dawn gradually lifted the darkness, he’d decided to go. Goodbyes would have been awkward.
On the edge of the town called ‘Miracle’, Thomas turned his back on the rising sun and headed for Barkley.
1 : 7
Sarah was cold, despite falling asleep in her clothes again. Rubbing her arms she stood up. She glanced at the mirror. When had she become so old? She pulled at her hair. It used to be golden, but now she had to add honey to get any kind of colour. Her eyes were paler. Her skin drawn.
Mary’s bed was empty. Sarah looked out of the open window. The sun was still rising; she hadn’t slept too long. Perhaps Mary had woken early and was already downstairs.
‘Mary?’
She went onto the landing. The master bedroom door was open.
‘Mary?’ she called, leaning in. But she knew no one was there. The air was still and stale. The bed tightly made.
Downstairs, the shop was quiet. Dust hung in front of the windows. Sarah held her breath, trying to hear the scratches and taps and thuds that might be her daughter.
‘Mary?’ she called again.
She went back up the stairs, taking two at a time. Her skirt caught under her foot and she fell with a cry. The cold wood cut her forehead; time slowed, a drop of blood stretched down like candle wax.
‘Mum?’
Sarah froze. She couldn’t take her eyes off the blood on the floor; didn’t want to look up just in case she’d imagined the little voice.
‘Mum? You’ve got blood on you.’
A hand brushed Sarah’s cheek. The fingers were delicate. She pulled her daughter tightly against her, tears falling onto Mary’s hair. Sarah wiped her face and gave a laugh of relief.
‘Where have you been?’
‘I’m here, Mum.’
‘I was looking for you; where have you been?’
‘Nowhere, I was right here,’ Mary said.
‘But I …’
‘I’m hungry, Mum.’
*
In the kitchen, Sarah opened the curtains. Mary pulled out a stool and sat at the table. She sat Stripe on the table top.
‘We have some under-mutton stew and some bread. How does that sound?’ Her knees were shaking, so she leant back against a dresser. Mary nodded.
The heavy smell of meat and broth filled the room.
‘Mum, where did Dad find Stripe?’
Mary had asked this question so man
y times.
‘Well, when you were little, your dad was in the Midcountry with the army. They were marching up and down the land. One day, he and some friends were gathering firewood to keep all the men warm, when they found a woman—’
‘The lady in the forest,’ Mary added.
‘That’s right. Some men from the North were trying to hurt her. Your dad stopped the men and made sure they would never come back to bother her again. She thanked him and saw he had a daughter, because she had special sight that could see into the hearts of people. And there you were, right in your dad’s heart.’
‘Me?’
‘You. What he had done was dangerous, and all he cared about was coming home to you. So the lady gave your dad a doll. A present for you.’ Sarah stirred the pot. Her face still stung, but the bleeding had stopped. She hoped it wouldn’t bruise.
She took a wooden bowl from the cupboard and poured in the stew. Then she cut two slices of bread and gave them to Mary. Sarah didn’t feel hungry.
Mary took to the food as if she hadn’t eaten in a week. Between mouthfuls she said:
‘She was a Walkin’, wasn’t she?’
This question was new. Usually the story ended with the giving of the doll. Sarah sat down at the table.
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Because you said she had magical sight. I wonder if I’ll become magical, when I die.’
‘Mary, you mustn’t say things like that.’
‘Why not?’
It was a juggling act; some answers would only breed more questions. But Sarah didn’t want to lie.
‘Well, it’s like the Pastor said in church. Remember?’
Mary shook her head.
‘He said the Walkin’ don’t go to heaven like good people. And that’s very sad.’
‘Is Dad in heaven?’
It was like being run down by a herd of charging shaggies.
‘Yes, I think he is.’ She tried to hide her doubts. The army didn’t follow the strict rituals of Barkley. No one, anywhere in the civilised world, wanted folk to become Walkin’. But Thomas was lost in battle. Would the army have taken proper care of his body? There were situations nobody could control; she’d run her mind ragged with all the possibilities.