‘It’s hard to watch anythin when you got the torch and the rain’s in my eyes.’
Trey heard Kay laugh a little as they dug on towards the upward slope that led to the farmhouse.
‘It’s like walkin in marshland.’ Trey stabbed his fingers into the bank of river earth to hoist himself upward and Kay did the same.
When they reached the top they rested against the tin wall of one of the bunkhouses with their faces tilted to the streaming rain and Trey closed his eyes to the torrential timpani beat that was music to his ears.
‘Science,’ he said to himself and suddenly he thought about Mum and Dad. He supposed they weren’t killed because of him. They were killed despite him. Random, indiscriminate, just-because killings. He wasn’t born bad; he was shown it and from that day on he knew the thing. For a while it was outside of him and then it pushed so hard he let it in.
He opened his eyes and saw that Kay had already paced the side of the building and he followed.
The rain fell heavy all around them and shrank clothes to skin, twisting and rinsing good life from their bones. They worked their way around the pitch-black yard and past the food tent that lay flat to ground like a lake and they had nothing much more than memory as guidance and occasionally they stopped and waited for the lightning to strike and spark their way.
They stood facing the porch of the farmhouse and Trey thought back to his first day and it seemed a long way back in the past. Time was like a daggered flash of light that caught the corner of his eye, something fleeting and then gone in a wrist flip.
Through the windows they could see the furniture had been pushed aside and Wilder’s gang dangled from a party in full swing.
‘Wilder’s got no right to be in there,’ said Kay and when a group of lads came on to the porch they ducked into the shadows.
‘We need someplace to hide out,’ said Trey.
‘Over there,’ said Kay and she pointed towards a broken-down truck across the track from the house. ‘Come on.’
They ran with their heads bent to the ground and when they got to the vehicle Kay took her knife from her boot and she levered open the door.
‘Haven’t done that in a while,’ she said as they climbed into the front seats.
‘Spose you could get it started if you wanted.’
‘Not this one. Broken down, init?’
‘Spose.’
‘You wanna try it? In case?’
‘No, we don’t need to draw more attention to us than we already got.’ Trey watched her settle in behind the wheel and he wanted to ask her how she’d got messed up in the world but he kept his words half swallowed until suddenly they leapt out like a burp.
‘Probably what you’re guessin sittin there thinkin it.’
‘I think a lot of things, don’t mean I’m anglin.’
Kay looked at him and she twisted her face into a puzzle. ‘You bin anglin a long time, don’t deny it.’
‘Well maybe a bit, I told you what I done, burnt down a barn and killed some horses.’
‘You int said much bout before.’
‘What you mean?’
‘Bein in fosters and that.’
Trey shrugged and said he had no parents, which was the truth.
‘Never had?’
‘No I did, but they died when I was a boy.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
Kay looked at him and for a brief moment his life spun out of control, adrenalin cocktailed into something more; her up-close beauty cleared the sky of clouds and put stars into every corner of his eyes and it was then that he knew she saw the world thesame.
‘What bout your family?’ he asked. ‘What happened to em?’
Kay shook her head. ‘Int nothin to tell. What bout your parents, you know how they died?’
Trey nodded. He wanted to tell her about the murders but in eight years he still hadn’t found the words to say the thing out loud. Somehow that death evening didn’t belong to him. He hadn’t found a place in his past to have it make sense in the present.
Kay leant forward and wiped the steam from the window so they could keep an eye out for trouble and she told Trey that she had never met her father but she supposed he was out there somewhere and that her mother died of an overdose when she was thirteen.
‘Sorry.’
‘Don’t be, it was three years ago. Anyway, she was a junkie bitch.’
There was a tone to her voice that ringed a big, black full stop.
Trey took out his lighter and flashed it between his knees and he brought it close to sizzle at the seams of his jeans as way of distraction because he wanted to ask about the scars on her back.
‘Spose it int the past that matters so much as the future,’ Trey said and looked across at her to see if there was a space for telling about Billy and the drawn-out revenge thing that at times had his flesh plucked from the inside out but her eyes had returned to the river-run world outside.
‘I int got no future worth botherin,’ she said.
‘Course you have. Everyone got hopes of some kind.’
She looked at Trey and said she didn’t.
‘What’s the point of livin if you int got no hope, no dreams, no nothin?’
‘What’s the point if you have? Nothin turns out how you want it in any case.’
Together they watched the storm grow crazy wild outside and Trey wondered about Kay and he wished he had something comforting to say but he did not.
‘I wonder how long it would take for this truck to take float,’ said Kay suddenly. ‘We gonna wait till it comes through the floor?’
Trey sighed; the moment of honesty had come and gone. ‘Spose it’s now or never.’
He put his lighter back in his pocket and sat forward and he wiped the window clear with his sleeve. ‘If we think this through what’s the worst that can happen?’
‘Wilder pops us with McKenzie’s harpoon?’ Kay opened the truck door and climbed out.
Through the front-room window they could see the party was heating up.
‘Them lads gone back in?’ asked Kay.
Trey nodded. ‘Think so.’
‘Let’s go round the back.’
They sloped from the truck and crept on to the porch and edged around the farmhouse towards the back door.
‘I’ll go in first,’ said Kay when she saw the kitchen light go off.
‘You sure?’ asked Trey.
‘Bin here a couple times.’ She stepped under the eaves and turned the handle. ‘I got a funny feelin but we’ve committed now, int we?’ She told him to stay close to the back door and to come and find her if he heard anything.
Trey stood by the door of the farmhouse and he kept his ear turned so he might hear danger. He dug his hands deep into the pockets of the oversized oilskin coat and wrapped it tight to keep the wet from rolling further than it already had and he tried to put his mind to something other than fear.
He looked up towards the sky and the stifling clouds that prowled there and suddenly he saw a star and then another push-pin point through the stuffing and something of that gap promised hope. A hole in the thick of it meant for breathing-thinking time; widening and kicking back the bullies to leave a sky full of stars, forever fields of fire wishes and promises combined.
Trey smiled and the bit of giddy that was in him had him think of Billy in good mind and he wondered if he saw those stars the same and he wished to heaven that he did; connecting dot to dots from one brother to another, a pattern coming and a pattern complete.
When the rain stopped fully he pulled down his hood and peeked into the kitchen for changing sound and he heard Wilder tell his boys that the celebration was on him.
‘Them authorities int comin,’ he shouted. ‘Shit’s gone down on the outside so them int botherin bout us and, what’s more, look what I found in McKenzie’s office.’
By the clink of metal against metal Trey knew he had found the master’s keys.
They all cheered and Wilder told them it wouldn�
�t be long now, not long until they could resume the work of the Preacher, it was just a matter of time. Trey wondered if Wilder truly believed that the camp was his. Perhaps a life in the Preacher’s shadow really had made him crazy, his father so close and yet a million miles from what that should have meant.
He looked at the sky and the clouds that had returned to dampen his spirit and his heart sank suddenly and when he saw Kay appear through the kitchen dark the look across her face had it sink deeper.
‘Follow me,’ she said and Trey did as he was told.
They entered the house and went slow and they kept the music and grandstanding in mind because that meant Wilder and the others were still distracted and when Kay passed Trey the harpoon she’d found in the hallway he was glad to have it hooked crossways to his back.
He guided his hands both sides of the hall and he felt the soft velvet wallpaper that was comforting to his newly calloused hands and he stayed close to Kay with his heart flipping pinballs in his chest.
‘You found the chaplain?’ he whispered. ‘Locked up in one of em upstairs rooms, is he?’
‘No.’ She went on into the dim hallway with Trey tailing and when she got to the corner door below the stairs she stopped.
She slid back the lock on the door and pulled it open and before they descended the cellar she turned to Trey with her eyes that said everything and nothing and told him to follow and to hold his nerve. There was something in the way she stopped suddenly that had him turn and think about heading back, but it was too late for bottling it now.
Silently they descended the stairs with the dancing kids punching dust-stars above their heads and Trey kept close to Kay for the fear of dark and enclosed space.
‘Found the chaplain,’ she said flatly when they reached the small damp room. When Trey didn’t speak she said it again. She handed him the torch and told him to look because to look was to know what they were up against and Trey shone the light and in its glow he saw blood and beneath the blood he saw torture. A mass of welts and cuts and burns was etched into the chaplain’s body, a horror story written in Braille.
‘Check again,’ he said and he watched Kay go to him and he saw her bend to search for pulse and breath but they both knew there was none.
Trey wrapped his arms around his ribs and he looked away and coughed the retch from him.
‘You all right?’ asked Kay.
Trey nodded.
‘Wilder reckons the authorities int comin.’ He looked at Kay and asked if she believed it.
‘Reckon he’s right, if what them saying bout the outside is true.’
‘And that int all.’
‘What?’
He looked Kay straight in the eye. ‘It won’t be long,’ he continued. ‘Won’t be long till he finds em guns.’
They left the cellar and despite Trey’s barely looking the imagery he saw there was in him good.
They went from the house and once out of sight they ran as fast as they could with the mud splashing them complete and Trey felt the moor that surrounded them snare him and pull him under.
‘Christo!’ screeched Lamby when he opened the door to them. ‘What happened?’
‘Everythin,’ said Trey as he pushed past him. ‘Get the fire goin, heat some water.’
‘Boy, you need more’n a tip of water to clean you.’
‘Just do it,’ said Kay and she pushed him towards the dying fire.
‘What you bin doin while we was gone?’
‘Sleepin,’ he smiled. ‘So what happened? You find the chaplain?’
‘Yes and no. Just get the fire goin, will you? And build it up good, we got things to discuss.’
Lamby knelt to the fire and he added enough wood to get it coming and he went to wake the twins and Trey heard him tell them that the shit had finally hit the fan.
Trey went to the dark corner of the stable to peel the sodden clothes from his back and he dried himself with a horse blanket and dressed in what spare clothes he had and all the time he couldn’t get the image of the dead man out of his head.
He hung the blanket across his shoulders and took his sodden trainers to the fire and set them back from the flames and he sat to make the circle complete and he listened to Kay tell the three boys who were part baby what had happened in the farmhouse and he watched their expressions until realisation set in.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The fire flames curled around the oddments of wood and peeped around corners and into holes like a lost thing.
Never before had Trey looked deep into a fire and not taken sanctuary there. Never had he looked for answers and found only questions in the black and the burn.
He listened to the others wind themselves into impossible knots and he had an inching instinct to go out all guns blazing but this small gang of ragtags had become something to him.
Their faces flashed ruby red in the fire light, reminding him of the kids in storybooks Mum used to read to him and Billy and he smiled remembering those fairy-tale stories that were close enough to the way things were now. Terror was everywhere he looked.
He leant back against the stall wall and looked across at Kay and wished he could read her mind and he asked her what she was thinking.
‘We need to keep one step ahead,’ she shrugged. ‘Think what Wilder might do next.’
‘He’s dangerous,’ said Trey. ‘That much we know.’
They all nodded.
‘We gotta protect ourselves, int we?’ Lamby stood up suddenly. ‘Protect ourselves and defend the stables.’
‘I’d rather escape,’ said Trey and more than ever he wished he’d found a way before now to have done it.
‘Who’s for escapin?’ he asked and he put up his hand and John and David did the same.
‘Runnin away,’ said Lamby.
‘Int runnin, it’s escapin, there’s a difference.’ Trey looked up at Lamby. ‘Wilder’s got McKenzie’s keys and it int gonna take him long to work out which one opens the gun store, and when he does we’ve had it.’
Kay stood up and she shook the damp from her bones and she told him not to think about the fighting.
‘Survival is what we gotta think about, survivin and then escape.’
Trey watched her get the rough stone she used for sharpening things and she spat on it and sliced her knife both sides across it.
‘We’re gonna make holes,’ she shouted from the far end of the stable. ‘Spyholes all sides in the wood so we can see things comin.’
‘What kind of things?’ asked Lamby.
‘Anythin and everythin.’
They used what sharp poke tools they had to put holes where they could see tracks and kids heading their way and they drilled them high and stacked what they could to stand on.
‘You know what we’re doin?’ said Lamby. ‘We’re buildin a castle. Wish we had hot tar and a portcullis.’
‘We got the harpoon,’ said Kay. ‘It’s good for what we need it for.’
‘And I’m gonna sharpen sticks,’ decided Lamby. ‘Never know when you might need a pointy stick.’
‘Spears,’ said Trey.
‘What?’
‘Call em spears; nobody ever went to battle with a pointy stick.’
‘You can call em what you want if you help me.’
Trey took the knife and he went and sat with Lamby and his sticks while the others secured the fortress.
‘You worried?’ asked Lamby.
‘Course.’
‘You reckon Wilder got more killin to do?’
Trey shrugged. ‘Don’t think about it.’
‘Can’t stop.’
Trey couldn’t stop thinking about it either. The image of the chaplain slumped and bloody was the only thing he saw when he closed his eyes.
‘Let’s just do what we got planned.’
They sharpened broom poles and sticks into lethal weapons and the ends of two metal mop handles were hammered all ways into star points.
‘We’re plannin to go into battle
,’ said Lamby.
‘Protection is all.’
‘Spose. But sometimes you get beat enough times in life you start to wonder what it’s like to do the beatin.’ Lamby gathered up his stash of sticks and went to show Kay like a kid with a crap class-made gift.
Through the night and into first light they worked at securing the stables into half a chance of survival and when there was nothing left to do but wait David put five potatoes into the hot embers of the fire for breakfast and in time one potato each was what they had.
At full light Lamby couldn’t keep himself away from standing on the crates at the hole near the door and he rested his face against the wood with one eye closed and a steel spear in his hand.
‘If anyone dares come I got em, don’t you worry.’
‘We int worried,’ said Kay.
‘Good cus don’t be.’
‘Maybe we’ll all go nappin and leave you to it,’ said Trey.
Lamby moved back from the hole. ‘Really?’
‘I’m messin with you.’ Trey made a face at the twins across the dying fire and they all laughed.
‘Not so funny,’ said Lamby as he peeped through the hole. ‘Cus we got trouble brewin.’
Kay jumped up next to him. ‘Wilder’s on his way,’ she shouted.
‘Kay!’ came the shouts when Wilder reached the shade of the stable walls. ‘Rudeboy, where you at?’
‘Who’s askin?’ shouted Lamby through the peep hole and he couldn’t hide his delight in asking it.
‘Stop messin me, blow-boy. Where they at?’
‘I’ll see if they’re in.’
Trey told Lamby to stop winding more than was necessary and he unlocked the top half of the stable door and rested the harpoon on the ledge towards the square of marching boy soldiers.
‘See you found my weapon,’ said Wilder. ‘Spose that means you came snoopin round the farmhouse last night.’
‘Think you’ll find it was the master’s,’ Trey said.
‘Well I’m the master now.’
‘Is that right?’
‘That’s the truth and you know it.’
‘Why you here, Wilder?’
‘You got someplace other to go? Thinkin of escapin perhaps?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Well don’t bother cus we got this place surrounded.’
The Light That Gets Lost (Shakespeare Today) Page 14