by Tanya Moir
Winstone wiped his sleeve across his eyes and sniffed the snot back up his nose. He listened. There were no cars on the road and no voices in the kitchen. He got up. Then he looked about him and took the basket of laundry from the top of the washing machine and put it on the floor and rifled through it and took out a hoodie and socks and tracksuit pants and he put those on and picked up his trainers from under the bench and placed them on top of the washing machine and climbed up beside them and opened the laundry window and sat in it and put on his shoes and let himself down on the other side.
He had no plan or destination in mind but to be outside in the undivided dark below the blue rim of the world where nothing was marked out or stood alone. For a while he sat in the ranch house and smelled the familiar smells of the hedge and listened to the wash of the wind and a hedgehog’s shuffle. But he had a feeling that how the sun found him was how he would stay and he didn’t want to be boy in a hedge so he crawled out and started walking.
He started with the half-moon at his back and by the time it overtook him he was crossing the Glentrool Bridge and could no longer see the lights of the Jacksons’ house behind him.
He expected to get caught on the bridge and he sat in the long grass beside the road and looked at it for a long time. The breeze had died and the stars hung cold and he could hear the stream pushing through the stones and occasionally the rustle of some other outlaw beast abroad in the night as it hid itself from sight. On the other side of the bridge the road dipped off the flood bank and made a sharp right and he thought headlights would maybe show through the trees but he wasn’t sure they would show or if they did whether he’d have enough time to make it back to cover. He thought that if the car came while he was in the middle he might have to jump and he didn’t know if he had the guts for that and besides he’d have to be over a part of the river with water to jump into. He sat and the frogs that had fallen silent at his approach started up again and he sat for a while longer.
He sat and he thought that all the while he sat whoever was coming was getting closer and then he stood up and the frogs fell silent again and he looked at the willow trees on the other side of the bridge and stepped from the roadside onto the wooden footway and started walking.
There was a crust of grey light on the face of the boards and beneath and between and filling the many worn holes in the boards a blackness of water and shadowed stone and as he walked all around him the notes of the river tumbled and rose and through his feet he felt the weight of the current tug at the piles of the bridge inside the pools it had dug around them and he thought that he would not jump.
The headlights came fast and he saw them coming through the willow trees and above the willow trees like a yellow smoke on the night. He was little more than halfway across the bridge and the unbroken beam of the headlights was overtaking the trees and he put a hand to the wooden rail. He looked down and he heard the engine note change as the car mounted the rise and he looked back across the bridge and the smoky light swept up and became two crisp and separate beams and as it did he flung himself down and pressed himself hard to the boards and the bridge rattled and rumbled and shook and the rumble echoed over the water and under the boards and on the other side of the wooden kerb a ruler’s length from his head the wheels of the car roared by spitting grit and dust and the rush of it snatched at his clothes and for half a second he thought he’d died.
When he could no longer hear the car Winstone got up and brushed himself down and by the time the headlights came back crawling slow he was a mile or more off the road looking down on them from between the bales in Jim Rudabaugh’s hay shed. He watched the car creep away towards Glentrool and he wondered if they had tracker dogs or were maybe going back to get tracker dogs and then he thought about Todd’s dogs waiting for him at four o’clock and him not coming ever again and he knew someone else would feed the dogs but the thought of them waiting stuck in his throat and he had a bit more of a cry.
He felt as if he could maybe cry more but he was too tired to do it right then and so he raised his head and the sky had lightened and the valley below was beginning to grey and he climbed down and splashed his face and had a drink from the water race and then in case of tracker dogs he scrubbed the front of his tracksuit pants where he’d peed in them just a little. The first red stain of the rising sun hit the top of the western range picking out old snow and he stood for a moment bare-legged and cold in the shadowed east and watched the redness creep over hanging valleys and screes and bluffs and run down the pock-marked flanks of the range. Then he put his wet pants back on and climbed the rough face of the stacked hay bales and shifted a few and lay down in the small and scratchy space he’d made and in the seconds before he slept he was pleased with his choice of the Rudabaughs’ shed out of all the possible hideouts he’d thought about as he’d watched the country go by through the window of the school bus.
He woke to the clunk of the shed’s tin roof and a thick dry heat in the space below. He crawled out of his sleeping cave and sat on the wider hay and through the slit he’d made between two bales for a rifle sight or an eye to be trained he watched the Rudabaughs’ house on the flat at the base of the hill and the Rudabaughs’ car outside the house and the Rudabaughs’ drive and the road. After a while he saw Mrs Rudabaugh come out and get in the car and head down the long drive and he heard the gravel pop. When she reached the road she turned left for Glentrool and then Winstone climbed down the back of the haystack and followed the dark macrocarpa line of the shelterbelt down the hill and walked in through the Rudabaughs’ unlocked kitchen door. He gave some thought to what wouldn’t be missed and he stole four slices of toaster bread and a ring-pull can of spaghetti with cheese and half a twinpack of chocolate chip biscuits. He carried them slung in his hoodie back up the hill and the haystack and sat with them there and wished that he’d thought to steal a spoon.
He shook spaghetti onto some of the bread and used the rest of the bread and his fingers to wipe out the tin and then he ate six chocolate chip biscuits and wondered if he could maybe go back to sleep and it turned out he could and for a long time that was the end of his thinking.
When he woke up he still didn’t have much of a plan except not to get caught and that meant he had to keep moving. So much as he liked the Rudabaughs’ shed he climbed down as soon as the moon got up and he threw the empty spaghetti tin in the water race and he started walking.
He left the road and skirted Glentrool to the east along the dry willow corridor between the river and the floodbank disturbing nothing but empty bottles and cans in the dark below the trees and once he stumbled over a carton of stubbies and across the paddock a dog started to bark and a woman yelled at it to shut up and otherwise he passed by the town without notice.
The next night he reached the end of the Glentrool Road and stood looking at the highway. It stretched broad and pale east to west with its white lines spanning the poles of the night-shortened world and the sun’s warmth still coming up from the seal and the wind rumbling along it cuffing at Winstone’s ears like a turbulent ghost of the day’s traffic. He had no plan but he looked east down the road and the wind was in his face and he almost thought about Zane but instead he kicked a stone out onto the road and then he kicked another harder. He looked east again and he could think of no reason to turn that way. To the west the moon was picking out the line of the ridge high above the road and the chips in the seal of the road and the loose white shale that ran along either side of the seal and in its light the marker posts were glowing.
He thought of walking that way with the wind at his back and the moon up ahead until he reached the badlands. Outlaw country. He thought of the old road that hugged the western shore of the hydro lake and the iron hills with their arroyos and draws and of Bannockburn and in time walking all the way to the tableland on the far side of the gold rush river canyon and he thought that once he crossed that bridgeless frontier he’d be out of reach of whatever might be coming. He wasn’t sure
how he’d cross the river unseen. He thought of a rope or a raft or maybe a place he could jump. Outlaws did that kind of stuff all the time and it always worked out so he wasn’t too concerned.
He walked for two more nights and in the days between them he hid and stole and he was sick and tired of all three and he thought about maybe turning himself in because what was the worst they could do but then he remembered Jemma’s scream and the look in Todd’s eyes and he kept on walking.
The third night when he came upon the road to the dam the fattened moon was bright enough to see the white painted post of the sign and to read the name on its yellow finger. The name on the sign was a name he knew and behind the sign the stone ramparts of the Rough Ridge Range stood against the night sky like a bandit citadel armoured and glinting steel and he turned up the road for no good reasons beyond having seen the name of the dam on Todd’s map and thinking it would be a place to rest up and that he could reach it before morning.
WEST
From the top of the ridge Winstone watched the western sky. It was black. He’d sat under midnight skies less dark, but the day wasn’t more than a handful of hours past noon and far away above the line of the Old Woman Range a yellowish light still shone. The long slit in the dark was eaten and frayed by the wind and the wind flew through it across the valley and over the ridge and raked the grass and his hair and he could have taken shelter somewhere but he didn’t trust the wind or the sky.
The slanted sun ahead of him was a search beam picking out the feathered heads of the grass and the mottled grain of the tors and behind him the shadows were massing. When he looked down at the dam it seemed no longer a lake but a hole in the world where a lake had once been and similar voids were spreading behind each rock and each clump of grass as if that cold yellow light had the power to dissolve the ground like day-old snow.
The light was cold and the rocks were cold and the wind was colder. Winstone was wearing all of his clothes except for the Danish guy’s socks and he would have been wearing them too if they’d fitted inside his trainers. He’d tucked the kitten under the khaki fleece and he stroked it there and against his stomach the kitten revolved and seized his hand in all four paws and bit his fingers.
The windows of the huts began to flare but Winstone knew there were no lamps in the windows and no one was there and they hadn’t been there for a while. Since before his gas ran out which was weeks at least. With nothing to divide one week from the next he was losing track of them and for all he knew the end of the world had overtaken the plains and neither the hut-owners nor anyone else were ever coming back and under the present sky it didn’t seem unlikely.
It was Friday maybe. He was pretty sure some days had escaped him but he didn’t know how many or which. It could definitely be Friday. He thought he’d wait one more day the last and then come nightfall he’d break into the Red Hut and pull the old lady’s checked curtains and light the stove and lay his sleeping bag beside it. He’d eat warm beans and look at the fish.
He glanced up again at the sky.
The sun didn’t seem to want to stick around to see what the wind and sky had coming. It was going fast and Winstone watched it run out over the hills until the rip in the dark above them turned blue as a cop-car light and he could almost hear the siren coming.
Come on, he said to the kitten. Let’s go.
He tried to take the kitten out but it clung to his fleece with its claws so he held it there with one hand while he climbed down from the rocks and he realised that in spite of the watch he’d been keeping on it the day had got darker than he’d thought.
He could still see the road and he made his way to it and followed its line around the lake past the Sliding Door Hut with the last blue glow of the day in its glass and the Scout Hut and the Green Camo Hut and beyond the black cut of its access track the Red Hut and he paused and looked at it there.
Tomorrow, he told the kitten. If it stays cold.
His hands were past red and tending to blue by the time he got back to the cave and he climbed straight into his sleeping bag without getting undressed and he only just remembered to take off his shoes. He pulled the bag over his head and drew in the cord and hunched up and he could feel the warmth of the kitten under his shirt and while he waited for the rest of his skin to catch up he thought about food and putting on his spare socks but both of those things would involve getting out and his eyes were starting to close and it was a hard decision. Then the cold took hold of him and shook him and would not stop and in that judder of teeth and bone his grip on the range grew loose and he was falling down through the holes in the world towards a dusty floor where all the discarded beginnings and ends and unwanted scenes of his life lay waiting for him and rattled and snaked and began to splice together.
THE CAMPFIRE CRACKED and sparked. Its light moved over the old willow leaves where they lay thick and brown and soundless beneath the Kid’s boots and caught on the shifting yellow flecks of that season’s fall. In the heart of the fire orange flame curled and at its edge a tin of beans sat roasting.
Her hair beneath his hand was a yellow mirror to the flames. It spilled through his dirty fingers and his fingers twitched and strands of it remained caught in the cracked and bitten nails as the Kid kicked his hand away.
The Kid looked down at the girl with the yellow hair and she looked as she always had and the night had not changed and behind him the river still ran. He stood and took off his hat and passed it across his face and in the wake of its passing his face softened just as over his shoulder Cooper stepped out of the dark and his eyes followed the Kid’s and his face grew hard as stone and the light of the flames flickered in his eyes.
Slowly Cooper sank to his heels and he put his hand to the girl’s rosy throat and then he looked back up at the Kid and he said, She’s cold.
Cooper stood up then and he too took off his hat and he and the Kid stood side by side with their hats in their hands looking down at the girl who in the light of the fire was a warm and living girl resting with no care in the world and her gold hair spreading but when the Kid tried to lift her up from the ground he saw that her skin was crazed and under her skin she was cracked like a china doll.
What did he do? Cooper said.
I don’t know, the Kid said. I don’t know.
Winstone Blackhat lay on his back and his arms were spread to the night. His hat had come off and his hair was as pale as the girl’s but without its lustre. His blanket coat was buttoned up to the neck and above his breast pocket the Kid’s .44-40 had opened a way that was black and frayed and from its entrance rose the smoke of the slug that lay deep in his cooling heart. Blackhat’s own gun was still in his belt and the small scuffings beneath his boot heels were the only signs of struggle.
I know one thing, the Kid said. Aint nobody can undo it.
Come on, Cooper said.
The Kid and Cooper each laid hold of a boot and together they dragged Blackhat away from the circle of light and his open and empty hands trailed through the fallen leaves and into darkness.
The light that picked out his boots again was flinty and sharp and in it all objects lay equally cold.
So what do we do with him? said the Kid.
Nothin, Cooper said.
Above Blackhat’s boots their shapes stood flat and dark on the breaking grey and it was hard to see what was in their faces.
Nothin?
It’s moren he deserves.
Yeah, the Kid said. It is. But I don’t like lookin at him.
They laid Blackhat’s own stained blanket over his face and they piled stones from the river upon him one by one and the mound grew with the light. The Kid stood back and wiped his bandana over his face and the cold wind whipped at the cloth in his hand.
You fixin to leave a marker?
Waste of wood, the Kid said. Caint think of a soul would care to read it.
They rode out upriver the way they had come and the grey water and the grey sand rose in the wake of their hor
ses’ hooves and the hooves of the riderless horses they led and the spray caught in the weak and slanting sun and between their departing shadows and the black hat set on the stones it turned and fell like snow.
Winstone’s chest hurt. He couldn’t see or breathe for the cloth pressed over his face and there was something – coyotes or wolverines – clawing his ribs and none of these things alarmed him. He lay still and he thought his eyes were open and he was awake but he wasn’t sure. Then he remembered the kitten and some few seconds later the sleeping bag and he tried to find the top of the bag and open the cord and eventually he did and the kitten scratched him one last time across the face as it departed. It was too dark to see where the kitten went after that but he figured outside and since being inside the cave didn’t feel so good any more he decided he’d go with it. There was something about the particular kind of dark it was and the sounds of the tarp and the wind and the range that made him think the night was a kind of night he hadn’t seen before and it seemed wrong to miss it.
It took him a while to find his way out and when he did he stopped right there on his hands and knees in the mouth of the cave because the Rough Ridge Range was John Wayne Texas Hollywood blue.
The sky was a daylight sky crushed and bleeding to black and the moon shone through it bright as the sun and the sky around the moon was blue and beneath the moon the snow that covered the range shone back at the sky and it was blue and white and white and blue in every degree and shade and it ran thick and unmarked as far as the eye could see.
The snow was still falling and he held out his palm but he was in the lee of the rocks so he climbed them to get closer to the snow and it took a long time to get up there and on the way he noticed he wasn’t wearing his shoes and he thought for a second about going back but it didn’t seem important. On top of the tor he sat and held out his hand again and watched a fat flake settle upon his skin and lie there at ease and the flake did not shrink and another settled upon it. He wasn’t shivering now but steady as stone and the snow fell over him and over the rock and bound them fast.