Glister

by John Burnside

  “That Rivers bloke didn't rise again like you said he would,” he says.

  It doesn't take more than this to wake me up. I put my shopping down to keep my hands free, then I slip one hand into my jacket, where my knife is. I've been carrying it ever since the hunting trip. All I can do now is keep my eye on Jimmy. I know, if anything's going to happen, he'll be the one who decides, so I want to see the sign. When I see it, he's the one I'm taking with me. I think he's working this out for himself too. “I didn't say he would,” I said.

  “Well,” he says, “it's in the Bible, Leonard. You're the Bible expert in this gang.” I ignore that. I'm not in this gang, or any other gang. “So, what do you think went wrong, Leonard?” he says. I can see that he's thinking as he says it. He's trying to guess what I will do, if he lets things take their course. I'm not sure, because he still has his gang to back him, but I think he might be scared.

  “Him not being Jesus of bloody Nazareth might be the place to start,” I say.

  Jimmy smiles. He wants me to know that he genuinely thinks this is funny. I don't take my eyes off him. Eye to eye, and forget the rest of the crew. It's just me and Jimmy. Anybody makes a move and I am going to cut him up bad. “Well,” Jimmy says, his voice slow and deliberate, “maybe you should have thought of that when you killed him.”

  “I didn't kill him,” I say. “We all did.”

  Jimmy thinks about this for a minute. I can feel Tone getting restless, off to one side. I look for Eddie. Not that I expect anything from her. I think it scared her when I did what I did to Rivers. She's not sure of me now, and probably Jimmy has had something to say to her in the background. So she isn't doing anything, she's just watching. I think, if it came to the bit, she won't pile in with the others, but she won't try to help, either. This doesn't mean she is betraying me, though. If she isn't sure about me, I can't really blame her. More than any of them, she is one of the wild things—a bit formless, maybe, but beautiful too. All she needs is a bit more definition, a bit of focus. Anyhow, I'm hoping she knows that I'm not blaming her. I know she doesn't really know how she feels right now, but maybe later, when she has time to think, she might see that, in spite of who and where we are, I almost got to love her.

  Finally, Jimmy decides. He is very deliberately not looking at my jacket pocket. “Nobody blames you for what happened,” he says. “It was just one of those things.”

  “That's awfully white of you,” I say.

  He laughs at that. I'd read it in a book somewhere, maybe F. Scott Fitzgerald, and I'd thought it might come in useful. He turns to Eddie and smiles. “Sometimes he goes too far,” he says, doing Dennis Hopper out of Apocalypse Now. “He's always the first to admit it, afterward,” he says. He has his eyes on Eddie. She smiles. It's a touching moment, really. He's pretending to let me off for her sake. As if she really is in love with me, or something. Maybe she is, in her way, but he put her up to it in the first place, one way or another. That's the thing about people who don't know their own mind, you can leave them to the tender mercies of others and it doesn't matter. Give her a week, and she'll forget everything. Jimmy turns back to me with a sad or maybe a compassionate look on his face. “It's all right, Leonard,” he says. “We won't rat you out.”

  “Jimmy!” It's Tone, missing his pound of flesh.

  “Shut up, Tone,” Jimmy says. His anger looks momentarily genuine. “Can't you see Eddie's upset?”

  Tone looks at me, then he looks at Eddie. He thinks for a minute, and finally the penny drops. “Aw, fuck,” he says.

  Jimmy laughs. “You can say that again,” he says. “Come on, boys and girls,” he says. “Let's go kill something.”

  And that is that. Jimmy turns and walks away, a sad look on his face, like I've betrayed him or something, and the others follow. First Mickey, then Tone. Finally Eddie. She looks back at me, which is nice. She gives me this silly, hapless, who-knows-what-might-have-been look, and I want to give her a big hug and say some kind of proper goodbye, but I don't.

  That night I went down to the docks and climbed into one of the old cranes above the loading area. All I wanted was to sit out and look up at the stars. From up there, you could see them all, and when you looked down toward the coast, you could see where the lights twinkled and winked across the water like the lights in old movies, perfect geometric patterns that stopped for a moment, when you first looked, then started shimmering again, white and cherry red and the odd point of gold from farther away. That night, though, the weather decided to turn and, by the time I got to the top of the crane, a massive thunderstorm was breaking above me, lightning, then a crash of thunder, then lightning again—not just flashes, but the whole sky turning a livid gold over the water, everything reflected and instantaneous. It was beautiful and dangerous, and though I caught myself wondering if I was going to be fried to a crisp up there among all that metal, I couldn't have imagined coming down. Better to die like that, than from some petty ambush at the hands of Jimmy's crew, a blade stuck in my gut, maybe Eddie's blade, and me flopping around on the floor like Rivers, bleeding and cursing and weeping for myself, a lost animal, dying in the eyes of others. If you have to die, die alone, at the top of a crane, and let Nature kill you, with grace and beauty and the gorgeous cruelty of chance. Only, I didn't die; I just sat up there and watched the best light show anybody could ever see, the lightning inches away, it seemed, the thunder echoing in my bones and my muscles. It was beyond description. By the time it was over, I didn't give a fuck about anything. If I had to, I'd pick off Jimmy's people one by one, including Eddie, or I'd seek Jimmy out and cut him to ribbons in front of his own crew. I didn't care. I would have killed anybody that night, because of the storm. Because I knew, if I belonged to anything, it was to this. Not to them, but to the lightning and the thunder. To the black rain. To the cold metal. To the sky.

  When I got home, there was a note from Elspeth saying I'd been a naughty boy, and she was coming round at lunchtime to chastise me. I picked it up off the mat in the hallway, and I was still reading it when I walked into the kitchen and found Dad on the floor, next to the table. He was half kneeling, half sitting, with a puzzled look on his face, as if he'd been perched happily on his chair a moment ago and didn't know why he was on the floor now. I thought, at first, that was all it was, that he'd had a fall; then, when he saw me coming in, he opened his mouth and blood came out. I had thought he was going to say something, but it wasn't words, it was blood, a great mass of it, spilling out of his mouth. Then he did the same thing again, like somebody repeating a spectacular trick, and a whole lot more spilled out. He looked even more surprised by this, then he toppled over and fell flat on the floor, on his side. More blood came out. I ran over and knelt down beside him. He had a sad look now, a look that took all the disappointments he'd ever had in a whole lifetime and brought them together in one final foregone conclusion. I put my arms around his shoulders and tried to raise him up, but I couldn't do it, even though he'd got so thin over all the years of being so ill. He was too heavy for me. A dead weight. Now his lips were moving, and he looked like he wanted to speak, but he was afraid to open his mouth again. Finally, he whispered something, but I couldn't make it out.

  “What is it, Dad?” I said. Then I realized that I shouldn't be asking him to speak, I should be telling him to be still, to take it easy. “Don't try to talk, OK?” I said.

  He looked confused at that, but he opened his mouth again, and this time words came out, along with an odd, seal-like cough and a spray of tiny droplets of blood that landed on my face and neck. “Time to come in, son,” he said.

  “Don't talk, Dad,” I said. I didn't know what he was talking about, but he was scaring me with it.

  He struggled, then, straightening his legs and trying to haul himself up, but he just skidded and sprawled on the floor like that cow you always see in the films about CJD. He couldn't get up, but he couldn't stop struggling. “Time to come in,” he said again, and he tried to get up, while I tried t
o keep him down, to get him into the recovery position or something, while I thought what to do. “It's getting late,” he said. Blood was bubbling out of his mouth now, and I could feel that the skin on his hands was cold, but it was the wild look on his face that frightened me more than anything. I had to get a doctor, I knew that, but I couldn't leave him like that alone. Then, after about a minute of this, he was gone, the life ebbing right out of him. Just gone. It was like when you take a bucket of water and carry it over to the sink and pour it away, all the weight just goes and you're left standing there with this sensation of emptiness and lightness. That was how it felt then. He just emptied.

  “Dad,” I shouted. He couldn't be doing this. He couldn't be dying, just like that, after all this time. There had to be more to it than this. “Come on, Dad,” I said. “Come on. You can do it.” For a moment, I even believed he could, then I stopped believing that and sat quiet, cradling his shoulders. I stayed like that for a while, not long I suppose, but it could have been, I don't remember. I was away somewhere, maybe going with him some of the way on his journey, in my mind, or my spirit, or whatever, then I came back to myself and struggled to my feet, letting him slip gently onto the floor. There was nothing to him now. I could have carried him anywhere. I remember, when I came back to myself, I was trying to think how old he was, but I couldn't.

  That was when I saw what he'd been doing in the kitchen, before he started bleeding. There, on the table, an old album lay open at a picture of Dad and her, some time before I was born, the two of them smiling, a bit shy, maybe, of whoever was taking the photograph, the gray of trees behind them, no place I knew, maybe a honeymoon photograph, or a picture taken when they first met, when they were happy and the future was laid out before them like a blueprint for children and money and happiness. I felt sad then, and I started to cry, because it wasn't fucking fair that it had come to this, him sitting in his old clothes, looking at pictures of his lost life. His lost love. Because he'd loved her, that was for certain, and she'd just walked out on him when he needed her most. Bitch. That was my mother there, in the picture, all smiles, posing for the camera, in a pretty summer dress and her hair all nice, just the way she looked when she left us, pretty and young, with her whole life ahead of her, beautiful, even, if you pushed it. A beautiful woman with her whole life ahead of her. I wished, then, that I knew where she was, so I could write and tell her how her husband died, still thinking of her, his lost love. His lost fucking love.

  Give me some time to think, and a few clues, and I can usually work things out. And on my first day of being completely alone, wandering around the headland, not sure what to do about Dad, I get the first real clue. That's what the world does, sometimes: sometimes it gives you a gift, pure and simple; other times, it gives you a clue. Which is like a gift that you have to work for. Though you could say that the world is full of clues, if only you know how to read them. Clues, gifts. These are what we use to make sense of the world. Otherwise there's nothing. You don't got to have faith, like Miss Golding says in Religious Ed. Faith isn't a gift. Gifts have to come from the world, not from inside your own head. Clues too. It all has to come from somewhere. I mean, there are perfectly respectable people, philosophers and such, who think that the world is something we imagine, that it's all just an illusion we make up as we go along. Which means I'm making up the plant, and the murders, and my dad sicking up blood all over the kitchen floor. Of course I am.

  My clue is a complete accident, a one-in-a- thousand chance. I'd spent my last night sleeping in the attic, just shacking out on the floor with a duvet and some pillows—I didn't want to sleep in my own bed, because I'd started thinking I would be the next of the Innertown boys to go, and they would be coming for me soon, just lifting me out of my own bed, like they did Tommy O'Donnell. I didn't want to sleep out on the headland either, though, because I wanted to be near Dad, that first night at least. I don't know why, it was just a sentimental thing. I couldn't do anything for him, and I knew I'd have to leave him soon. I'd wanted to lay him out neatly on his bed, but then I thought that would remind him of that face in the misty light, old Laura, young woman with all her life ahead of her, etc., etc., and I didn't want that. Besides, it would have been too much of an indignity to cart him up those narrow stairs. So I set him in the big armchair, more or less sitting up, as if he was reading, or listening to the radio. I thought about burning that album he'd been looking at, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. I thought about giving it to him to look at while he sat there, waiting for his heavenly reward or whatever, but I couldn't do that either. So I just sat him up in the chair, and turned on the radio. Quietly, but loud enough so he could hear, if there was some wisp of something left in there, some trace of consciousness or memory or spirit burning out silently in his head, like a dying ember. You get people who think that death isn't the end of your life, it's the beginning of the next stage in the journey, and maybe the soul hangs about for a while, taking stock, or whatever. I'm not sure I'd go along with that—probably not—but you have to allow for every eventuality, especially when it's your father you're dealing with. You only get one father, and the one I got wasn't that bad, he just wasn't lucky. On the other hand, maybe he got the luck he wanted. Before that night, I'd always felt sorry for him. Because, his entire life, all he'd wanted to do was love somebody. That was the one gift he had, a strange, quiet talent for loving. The person he loved was Laura, and if she had loved him back, he would have been happy, no matter what else happened. But that night, I wasn't sorry for him at all because, in a way, he'd got what he wanted. He got to love somebody, which meant that he'd been able to use his one good gift. Maybe it didn't matter whether Laura loved him or not. Maybe, for him, that wasn't what it was all about.

  So I slept on the floor of the loft, then I packed a bag with a few bits and bobs, food and coffee and such, so I could make myself little camping meals, like the Moth Man does. I figured, if he could do it, so could I. Maybe I'd get myself a van, nick one from the Outertown sometime and drive off, be a nomad, get away from here. First things first, though. I said goodbye to Dad, and I took all the money I could find around the house; then I headed out. It was a fine summery day, warm already, even at that early hour. I made my way across the back garden and out, through the gate in the fence, then down along the little alley behind, all the wheelie bins there, one at each gate, solemn and secret, full of clues and stories, like black tabernacles. At the end, I looked out to check if anybody was up and about, but the only living thing I saw was Mrs. Hatcher's white cat, the one all the kids referred to as Mrs. Hatcher's Pussy. The Innertown kids had a lot of virtues, but originality wasn't one of them. I suppose Elspeth was a bit of an original, though it would have been better if she hadn't tried so hard.

  Elspeth. When I'd stood her up, she'd left that note saying she would come round later. I'd forgotten about that. What she had said in her note could only mean one thing, which was very tempting. Very. Still, I'd have to be disciplined and stick to the plan for a while. I could get in touch with her later, explain about Dad. Use him as an excuse.

  So I'd got safely out of the Innertown and I'd stowed my bag of stuff in my special secret hiding place, like all kids have, even when they're getting a touch long in the tooth for special secret hiding places, then I started out for the West Side, so I could hole up in the woods for a while and get some time to think. That's when I come across Morrison, the policeman, standing all by himself in a little clearing among the trees, all quiet and thoughtful-looking, all preoccupied. So preoccupied that he doesn't even see me, though he looks up just a moment after I duck into cover, like he's felt me there or something. Sensed my presence. Or, maybe, a presence. Because, as odd as it seems, I think he must have been praying, or something like it, when I came across him. He'd just been standing there, looking at something on the ground, his head bowed down, like somebody who's standing beside a grave, saying goodbye. That's what I should be doing, of course. Standing by my father's grav
e and saying goodbye. Saying a prayer for him, maybe.

  Anyway, I must have disturbed Morrison because, even though he doesn't see me, even if he doesn't think anybody else is there, his concentration is shot, and he just turns round and walks away—quick, like all of a sudden he doesn't want to be there anymore—and I have the place to myself. I wait awhile, a couple of minutes, maybe more, before I come out from where I am hiding. I have the idea that this is something. I even think it might be a clue. I don't want Morrison coming back and finding me, because if he does, the clue might be lost forever. Sometimes a clue is that slender: you catch a glimpse of someone when he thinks he's on his own, and you see another side to him. Something you didn't know about before.

  When I am sure he's gone, I wander out and cross over, all innocent, like some kid just farting about in the woods, to see what it was he had been looking at. It had been low down, on the ground, over by the edge of the clearing. It takes me a moment to find it, or not so much to find it as to figure out what it is. Because at first I think it's just some garden stuff that somebody has dumped out there. It's only when I get close that I can see that it's an actual garden, with carnations and poppy plants and a little rosebush that looks as if it has just recently been planted. All around the plants, around the roots, somebody has set out pebbles, like the ones you get on the beach, all smooth from the sand and the water, bright shiny pebbles and pieces of colored glass and bits of broken china. It's like a magpie's garden, or maybe those nests that bowerbirds make, the ones you read about in nature books and such. I saw a program about them on TV once—probably one of those bird programs David Attenborough used to do. One of the few complete sentences I remember Dad saying—it must have been when I was still pretty small, maybe even a toddler—was during one of those Attenborough programs. Or maybe at the end, when the credits were rolling. That would have been more likely. It would have been a respect thing. Suddenly I remembered it like it was yesterday and I remembered the exact words he said.