‘No idea.’
‘I’m hungry.’
‘You’re always hungry.’
Lamby took a moment to stretch and Trey noticed a cluster of black-blue bruises circling his wrists.
‘What’s that?’ he asked.
‘Nothin.’
‘Yes it is. That Wilder do that?’
‘No.’
‘Why he keep at you? What you got over him?’
‘Nothin. Why you lookin anyway?’
‘You makin a big show might have somethin to do with it.’
‘Well it’s nothin so leave off.’
Trey shrugged. It was nothing to do with him.
‘Besides,’ said Lamby suddenly, ‘I won’t be here much longer in any case.’ He rubbed at his wrists and shrugged.
‘How’s that?’ asked Trey.
‘Got plans.’
‘What kind of plans?’
‘Dunno yet, but I think I know somethin and I defo seen somethin so, not long now.’
‘You’re gonna get yourself into trouble.’
‘I won’t. I got smarts just about.’
Trey laughed and said he supposed they all had plans but as soon as he said the words he regretted it.
‘Tell me yours and I might just well tell you mine.’
‘Not a chance.’
‘You can trust me and really you can.’
Trey looked at Lamby and shook his head.
Innocence and high-jinks craziness rattled through the boy, an entertainment of a kind. There was also a softness to him that put Trey at ease.
Out in the fields Trey seized the opportunity to take in his surroundings. Up close the fence was a lot higher than he’d first thought and the yellow warning signs wired to it told him that he would have to scrap it from his initial escape plan.
‘What’s logistics?’ he asked Lamby. He already knew the answer from talking to Kay but needed to pick the thread for conversation.
‘Trucks.’
‘Is that it?’
‘Basically. The crates of meat go in the trucks and then the trucks get taken out of camp.’
‘Who drives em?’
‘We do, and then we leave em outside the gates for drivers to pick up.’
‘How many trucks we got?’
‘Just one, but a load of trailers, we just line em up outside and then every now and then trucks drive up and hook up the trailers and off they go.’
‘How you get on logistics?’ asked Trey.
‘Thought you liked farm?’
‘Just askin.’
‘How old are you?’
‘Fifteen, nearly sixteen.’
‘You have to be eighteen. Only eighteen-year-olds are allowed to do logistics, it’s drivin experience before they get out. Unless they’re destined for prison of course.’
They went back to slamming and digging the ground and the thought of escape was so consuming Trey took a moment to push it from his conscience and he was happy to replace it with a little peace-wind blowing.
When the lunchtime siren rang out and he was near to falling he and Lamby went to the dining tent and Trey wondered where Kay had got to and he wondered out loud.
‘Sometimes she eats in the stables.’
‘And the twins?’
‘Maybe the same.’
‘What they eat?’
‘Food probably.’
They stood amongst the usual complaints and were served and took their food outside and they sat beneath a tree with the plastic plates balanced on their laps and Trey mixed his plateful in together and stuffed the mash and beans until his chest hurt with the pushing stodge.
‘Why int we gettin better food?’ he asked. ‘It’s a basic for most, init?’
‘Cutbacks and all, it’s the govo’s fault.’
‘I bet they’d paint it up as good for the soul or whatever.’
‘Them always lyin in any case. Three months I’ve been here and nothin that’s bin promised has come to anythin.’
‘Like what?’
‘More learnin, like school lessons and that and sports equipment, not that I care bout that one.’
They watched people come and go and when Wilder and Anders and their crew stomped past Trey noticed Lamby sit up to catch his eye.
‘You shouldn’t do that,’ said Trey. ‘Makes em worse.’
‘Who?’
‘Bullies.’
‘What am I doin?’
‘Actin like you int scared, like you want a fight or somethin.’
‘I int. Anyway they’re gone now.’
‘Still it int good.’
‘It’s better to stand up for yourself than not. Don’t know why you’re such a coward.’
‘I got reasons the same,’ said Trey.
He thought about what it was to keep quiet for the sake of planning and scheming and he had to admit that cowardice concealed itself well within him; he was just like everybody else.
‘Anyway, I int scared of nobody,’ he said finally.
‘Is that so?’ Lamby got up to take his plate back to the tent and Trey followed.
The afternoon pushed on with the sun slap bang sitting in the centre of the day and it slouched heavy across Trey’s back.
He balanced the pick crossways on one shoulder and held it loose to let the blisters on his hands open and breath like tiny mouths and he wondered when hard work would become just work. It was difficult to think things over when he couldn’t even breathe for the hot cinder dust that shrank his lungs down to rattling beans.
He pretended to survey the dry brick earth for new angles but knew it was all the same and he kicked at it to return the defiance.
‘You restin?’ grinned Lamby beside him. ‘You takin a rest?’
‘Course not.’
‘Strong lad like you. It’s funny. Not used to hard graft, is you?’
‘Course I am.’
Trey smacked the pick into the ground and it made a not-much mark. He tried not to notice that Lamby already had some give coming into the earth and this made him swear into the wind.
‘Just sayin, bit slow, int you? Nothin meant.’
‘Well you meant that.’
‘No I dint, just sayin.’
‘Meanin and sayin’s the same, if you dint know.’
They continued with the digging and clubbing in silence and Trey put his back to it to prove something to everyone but mostly to himself. He never was much good at anything but he knew mastery came with practice.
The relentless heat nipped at his neck and shoulders but he ignored it and he ignored Lamby when he told him to take a break. If this was the job he had to do then he would do it, pretend to those in charge that he was turning a new page over and over again.
He put some anger into it and he wondered what way the others would swing if they knew what he was capable of, really knew the core that was halfway to rotten with the demon and revenge thing rattling inside. It was there now; it was always there. It bothered him that they might find out and that thought bothered him the same.
‘You like workin?’ shouted Lamby.
‘Course. Don’t you?’
‘I can take it or leave it. I like the chattin and the fun stuff.’
‘What’s fun bout workin?’
‘The chattin, the camaraderie.’
‘What’s that?’
‘This, mates chattin for the sake.’
Trey looked across at the boy to see if he was joking about the mate thing. The word had never been used with the bearing pointed towards him. It didn’t feel right and there was no box in his head right for putting it. But still he kept it with him like an unknown entity that he might learn to like.
‘Twins are funny, int they?’ said Lamby and he came to stand next to Trey. ‘Cus they both look the same and that.’
‘That’s cus they’re twins.’ Trey sat down and Lamby copied him.
‘And they talk the same, dress the same.’
‘We all dress the same. Maybe we s
hould have numbers assigned instead of names.’
‘I’d be number six, lucky number six. What would yours be?’
Trey ignored him and he turned his cap frontways to keep the sun from off his face.
‘You got a lucky number?’
‘Nope.’ He watched Kay work in the distance and it annoyed him that she was at ease in the fields and just a girl and here he was a stocky lad with weak knees and soft hands.
‘Two brothers just the same,’ continued Lamby. ‘I can’t imagine another Lamby in the world. Spose that’s a bullet dodged for everyone.’
‘What’s their story?’ asked Trey. ‘Why don’t they speak?’
‘Don’t know exactly. Camp rumour is they was abused as little uns but I wouldn’t ask straight.’
‘Bin here long?’
‘Three months same as me. Shy lads, they was, you wouldn’t believe how shy, but I got em round with the old Lamby charm.’
Trey looked at him and shook his head.
‘Don’t know what they done to end up in here, spose somethin together. Them only fourteen. You wouldn’t think so considerin their size, anyway, maybe they was gonna get split so they set some plan in motion, who knows?’
‘I couldn’t imagine em doin nothin bad.’
‘Me neither. Them lads are as good as gold, kind of innocent, int they?’
Trey thought about Billy and his mood changed suddenly.
‘You got brothers, sisters?’ Lamby asked.
‘Why you want to know?’
‘Just askin.’
Trey stood up. ‘Let’s keep workin.’
‘What’s the rush? We’re allowed a break.’
Trey went back to the digging with newfound determination.
He would smack and spade the earth until the end of the day and the days that followed and he would use the time to chisel away at his plan to find the killer and plot a way back to Billy.
CHAPTER FIVE
After several days of get up and go routine Trey was ready to greet the morning with optimism and he surprised himself when he took pleasure in the practice of prayer. He knew what was expected of him and with head down obedience he went through the everyday like it had been his for forever and when the work siren boomed out he was ready for it.
Trey stood outside the timber-framed stable with Lamby and the smiling twins by his side and he fought with the sun for idling shade while they waited for Kay to arrive.
‘Gonna be another scorcher,’ said Lamby.
‘You reckon?’ Trey reached out a hand so he could feel the heat on his skin.
‘Funny how when it rains you wish for sun and when it’s sunny you int so bothered.’ He looked at Trey and smiled.
‘What?’
‘Happy anniversary.’
‘What you talkin bout?’
‘Bin a week, init?’
‘Since?’
‘Since you came to camp.’
Trey shrugged and said it felt a lot longer and he sighed with the weight of guilt that came from indolence and when Kay arrived in the truck he told him to shut up.
‘Can you lads do anythin besides chattin?’ she shouted and when she kicked open the door Trey could tell she had already started work someplace other because she was covered in mud and he liked that.
The five misfit farmhands took the truck a little further out on to the sun-baked moor and for the first time in that week Trey gained some understanding as to how big the compound really was. He sat bumped close to the yapping Lamby out on the flatbed as Kay crunched through the gears and he looked through the fence and out across the sand-sifted echoes of a once was seabed.
‘Bone dry and burnt out,’ he said to himself.
Lamby stopped what he was saying to listen. ‘What?’
‘The moor, dried to the bone, init? All that rain vaporised, gone.’
‘Mostly like desert land this time of year, ’cept for the flash floods of course, and half the heather burnt just cus and we get the winters that are either ice-age or floods and then we all gotta pray for our lives all over again.’
Trey agreed and he added that things were never just as.
‘What you mean?’
‘The weather, it int never just middlin.’
‘That’s true and what’s worse is we gotta sit out every little turn here on the moor.’
‘And it’s always warm,’ said Trey. ‘Even when it rains and then the storm breaks its always so damn warm.’
The two boys watched the landscape filter past in a rainbow of dirt-dust colours. There was nothing much out there that sculpted shape except moonscape.
‘It’s science,’ Lamby said suddenly. ‘It’s chaos and it’s science.’
Trey looked at the boy and shook his head and when he saw he was about to explain himself he told him not to bother and he continued to look at the moor in the hope that he might see flames.
When the truck slowed and Kay ran them alongside a ditch he asked Lamby who set the fires.
‘What you mean?’
‘The heather? Who burns it?’
‘Farmers sometimes for managin, or might be a butt flick or kids messin bout. Smoke’s somethin else though, worse than camp smoke. You wanna watch out for the smoke.’
Trey slid from the truck and he stood and looked around him for looking’s sake and the world seemed slanted wrong with the sun way too close. Dad always said he had his mother’s skin, he played out with Trey in summer to have him burn and build up resistance. He told him he’d have no choice if he was a fisherman with all that ocean glare, but it never worked.
He turned his cap backwards and sighed.
‘Wish we had shelter today,’ said Lamby. ‘Just a stick-tree for dippin would do me.’
Kay shook her head. ‘Gotta dig trenches all along this part of the fence, the whole edge of field.’ She looked at Lamby and she looked at the twins and she told them not to bother asking why.
They toed the dry nothing ground and were slow to pull spades and picks from the truck and Trey wondered about the post-mounted cameras caught in the barb of the fence and he wondered about them all morning.
‘Why’s there cameras all round?’ he asked Lamby suddenly.
‘Why’d you think? Security obvio.’
Trey stood and rested his hands on the handle of the spade and he looked at the cameras and asked why some pointed outward.
Lamby stood next to him and sighed. ‘Maybe they don’t want people breakin in.’
‘That don’t make sense.’
‘Breakin in to break someone out?’
Trey looked at him and then back at the fence. ‘But it’s electric, init?’
‘What’s your point?’
‘Who’s gonna bust a leccy fence?’
‘I wouldn’t like to think, maybe the immigrants, I’d say if they could bust out of distribution they’d have a good go at it.’
‘Immigrants?’ he asked.
‘Immigrants,’ said Lamby. ‘You seen that long bunker behind the slaughterhouse?’
Trey shrugged. ‘Maybe,’ he said.
‘That’s where they live, and work, maybe even play if they allowed.’
‘What distribution they do?’
‘The meat of course. Meat goes farm, slaughterhouse, butchery and then distribution which is really the same as logistics.’
Trey narrowed his eyes to see if the boy was lying. ‘Why int I seen em?’ he asked.
‘Cus they int allowed out.’
‘That int right.’
‘Course not, but they int legal so who gives a bugger?’
When one of the cameras angled down towards the two boys they continued to split and pick the desperate rock earth and Trey went at it hard with the shovel in hand and the anger that was in him was good for the dig. He thought about the red eye watching and turning and he thought about the impossibility of escaping this place and a little of his hope snagged up there in the slit-throat wire.
He stood a minute and looked
beyond the fence towards the bundles of tinder gorse that begged to be burnt and he closed his eyes and inhaled the imaginary smoke and it was better than any cigarette. He held his breath to settle things a little and when he was sure he would not scream for fire or go kicking towards the tinder he opened his eyes. The camera was back on him and Trey looked straight down its barrel and he shot what anger the demon had firing inside towards the spying masters.
‘You all right?’ asked Kay and she stopped what she was doing and came to stand next to him.
Trey nodded, a nothing-something type nod. ‘Why?’ he asked.
‘Dunno, you look a bit flushed. You want some water?’ She offered him the bottle and he took it.
‘How you likin farm detail?’ she asked. ‘One week on.’
‘OK,’ he said and he meant it.
‘Takes a while to settle.’
Trey looked down at his battle hands and agreed.
‘Takes time to get used to the fence and the armed guards and all.’
Trey shrugged. ‘I int bothered with all that.’ He knew she was looking at him and he drank down the water as something to do and when he passed the bottle back he apologised because he had supped it dry.
‘I int great with authority.’ Kay threw the bottle on to the flatbed and went to get another from the floor of the truck. ‘Most in this place are the same but I really int great, I’m lucky to have the farm for doin what I want.’
‘Time’s your own,’ said Trey. ‘Kind of anyway.’
‘Apart from the cameras.’ Kay took some of the water and when Lamby started calling out the distraction was welcome.
‘Is it breaktime?’ he shouted.
‘No,’ they both shouted back in unison.
‘Then why you breakin?’ He landed the shovel he’d been using to flick the earth and came to stand with them.
‘We’re just takin a minute,’ said Kay.
‘Takin a break,’ said Lamby and he helped himself to the water and jumped up on to the back of the pickup. ‘John, David, you breakin?’ he called after the boys and they shook their heads.
‘I’m bored,’ he said.
‘Then get back to work.’
‘I’m hungry.’
‘Later,’ said Kay and she moved away from where they were standing to watch a lone black SUV snake and rattle its way towards them.
‘Nice car,’ said Trey and he joined Lamby in sitting and idling at the back of the truck. ‘McKenzie or DB?’
The Light That Gets Lost (Shakespeare Today) Page 7