Winter Damage

by Natasha Carthew

‘Buddy horse.’

  Sonny laughed. ‘And you’re buddy boy, I spose.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Hell, come on, buddy boy, tell me about your horse. How many hands is he?’

  ‘He don’t have hands, stupid. He’s got hooves.’

  ‘He big or small?’

  ‘Small, smaller than buddy dog.’

  ‘Really? Like one of those micro pigs but a horse.’

  Ennor grabbed her arm and whispered in her ear that the horse was a toy that lived in his pocket and to shut up.

  ‘A toy horse, buddy boy?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Sonny, shut up.’ Ennor dug her fingers into her arm. She would have to tell her about Trip’s autism when they had a proper minute because if she kept on winding he’d lose his temper and she didn’t trust Sonny not to lose hers.

  ‘What you laughin at?’ asked Sonny.

  ‘Nothin.’

  ‘I know you’re thinkin somethin and now you’re laughin.’

  ‘No I int.’

  ‘You’re like a bully but worse cus you don’t say it.’

  ‘What goes on in my head is my own business.’

  ‘Not when it’s bout someone else.’

  ‘It’s my head.’

  It was Butch’s turn to raise his voice and he told them to shut up and look ahead and they huddled together and squinted towards middle ground at a wall and a gate and nothing much else besides.

  ‘What you think?’ he asked.

  ‘Looks like a ram-shack field to me, let’s go in.’ Ennor stepped forward and held the gate open and she told Trip to hold the dog lead tight in case of livestock.

  ‘This is a crappy high place to have a farm,’ she said and everyone agreed and they dragged their heels through the field of thick snow until they found another gate and then another.

  ‘So what’s the plan?’ asked Sonny.

  ‘We’ll go to the house and knock.’

  ‘Just like that? Gonna spin any kind of story? Might help.’

  ‘Nope, I’ll tell the truth or thereabouts. You two can stand back and I’ll go with Trip.’

  ‘And buddy dog?’ asked Trip.

  ‘Fine and the dog.’

  It took time to find the farmhouse because it was hidden in the crack back of yet another valley and shrouded in an icy fog. Sonny and Butch kept out of sight from the front door and listened with their fingers crossed while Ennor and Trip stepped the whitewashed yard and approached the house.

  She stood on the stoop and rang the doorbell and when nobody came to the door she knocked and stood back to look at the closed curtains of the living room. She saw a shadow grow large in the frosted pane of the hallway window and she tidied her hair into her bobble hat and told Trip to do the same.

  ‘Who’s that?’ asked a man’s voice through the letterbox.

  ‘Hello, sir. my name is Ennor and this here is my brother, Trip.’

  ‘What you want?’

  She cleared her throat and counted to three. ‘Some food maybe and a night’s shelter. We’re on a kind of mission.’

  ‘We’ve had your kind recent, cracked religious fanatics sendin in the kids. Where your parents at? I’d like a word.’

  Ennor went to explain her predicament but the chewed two-eye of a sawn double barrel poking out the letterbox was enough to render her speechless and she grabbed Trip’s arm and pulled him running.

  ‘Buddy dog,’ he shouted as the dog pulled the lead from off his arm and they all ran any which way until they buckled panting out of view of the house.

  ‘That was fun,’ laughed Sonny. ‘Guess I was right bout hidin out in the barn.Could be gettin a fire goin by now, if anyone bothered listnin.’

  ‘Shut up, Sonny,’ Ennor and Butch said at once. They sat up against a half-torn fence to catch their breath and watched Sonny tear at the wood with fierce determination.

  ‘What you doin?’ asked Trip.

  ‘Firewood, come and help.’

  The boy got up and helped her rip the thin tooth planks from rusty nails and fence posts and they called for buddy dog between breaths and eventually he returned.

  ‘He likes you,’ she said.

  ‘How’d you know?’ he asked.

  ‘Cus he came back, dint he? Knows his name and everythin.’

  Trip smiled with pride and Sonny could see he was finally coming around to the idea of her.

  ‘You really pullin down somebody’s fence?’ shouted Butch.

  ‘Course she is,’ said Ennor.

  ‘I’m thinkin practical. Must be minus ten out here and it’s gettin dark or dint you realise?’ She told Trip to stand steady with his arms outstretched and she piled the timber lengthways and she bundled whole planks into her own arms and said anyone who was cold and hungry to follow her and she walked back towards the farm.

  ‘We int goin back down there,’ shouted Butch.

  ‘Course not, just near enough to it. Don’t forget we got a gun ourselves, don’t we? We’ll set the kid to stand guard.’ She looked to see if Ennor would bite but she didn’t.

  They followed their coming and going spin footsteps and diverted from the course towards a clutch of outbuildings that sat further along the valley and out of view of the house.

  ‘Don’t look like these get used much at all. Could probably move in and nobody would know.’ Sonny rattled a corroded lock and when it wouldn’t twist free she kicked at the door until the hinges loosened and it fell to the ground.

  ‘She’s like some kind of warrior,’ Butch whispered to Ennor and they both laughed.

  ‘Put the wood over there,’ she shouted as they entered the cramped brick building. ‘This place was used for curing ham; I can smell it, smell the hickory smoke.’

  She pushed wooden crates into a circle with her boot and set about making a fire. ‘It might get a little smoky but we’re beggars here so can’t go choosin.’

  ‘You gonna do everythin or can we help?’ asked Butch.

  ‘Other than gigglin with your girlfriend? Work out a watch rota for the three of us if you want.’

  ‘You serious? I don’t want to shoot anyone. We are tresspassin.’

  ‘It’s no biggy when you’re the hunted, believe me.’ Sonny sat cross-legged on the dirt floor and showed Trip the quickest way to a successful fire and he watched her hands intently and sat the same with half the wood piled in his lap.

  ‘You ever killed someone?’ he asked.

  ‘Only with my dazzlin good looks.’

  ‘You’re funny.’

  ‘I know it.’

  ‘You’re crazy.’

  Sonny laughed. ‘I know that un all.’

  Ennor and Butch went to look for useful things at the end of the small barn and Sonny told Trip they were excusing themselves because they wanted to get up to lovebird stuff and when Ennor protested she told him that was a sure sign.

  ‘Where did you meet her?’ asked Butch when they were out of earshot.

  ‘Gypsy camp west of home. I got into some trouble and came across this camp and Sonny just kind of took me in.’

  ‘What kind of trouble?’

  ‘Nothin, nothin I want to talk bout. Anyway she’s OK really. Grows on you even.’

  ‘I doubt it, so what we lookin for exactly?’

  ‘Anythin useful, won’t know till we see it.’

  They pushed about the dust and the dry and Ennor finally got to ask about Dad.

  ‘I couldn’t find the right time to say, with the others and everythin.’ Butch upturned some kind of rust rack and they sat on its backboard while he rolled them a cigarette and he lit up and took a deep drag and then coughed.

  Silence was a blood drum banging in her ears and was deafening. ‘He’s dead,’ she said.

  Butch looked at her and nodded and he handed her the cigarette. ‘Died in his sleep, kind of.’

  ‘What’s kind of?’

  ‘Overdose. Accidental, they said.’

  ‘Who said?’

  ‘That retired
doctor from the village.’

  Ennor stood bolt upright. ‘That bloke that come visitin last week weren’t no friend at all, I bet.’

  She paced a little and upset was quickly snuffed and replaced by anger. ‘If only I knew.’

  ‘Butch got up and stood as if to hug her but rested a hand on her shoulder instead. ‘Don’t beat yourself over. His days were numbered and you know it.’

  ‘Did he die peaceful, they reckon?’

  Butch nodded and squeezed her shoulder tight. ‘I’m sure he did.’

  Ennor smiled just a little and she pictured her dad gathered and shrinking in the bed. ‘High as a kite, I bet, flyin out over the fields like a bird. He always said he wanted to come back as a bird of prey. Maybe he will.’

  ‘Where they take him?’

  Butch shrugged. ‘Hospital I spose.’ He felt in his pocket and pulled out her dad’s bootlace with the ring on it.

  ‘I guessed he’d want you to have this.’

  ‘Mum’s ring.’ She opened her hand and gripped it tight. ‘The ring he gave to her when they got engaged.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Butch.

  ‘Don’t be sorry.’ She smiled and squeezed her eyes tight to keep the tears from falling. The whole of life and death smelted down to a simple curl of gold in her hand.

  She passed the butt to Butch and looked around. ‘There’s nothin here but junk and more junk. Let’s leave it, I int got the energy in any case.’

  They returned to the fire to find that Sonny and Trip had disapeared and they read the message Sonny had scratched on to the stone floor to say they’d gone for food.

  ‘Damn,’ shouted Ennor. ‘Gone where?’

  ‘Back to the house?’

  ‘Sonny int that stupid, not quite anyway.’ She sat at the fire and rolled the ring around in her hand and she watched as the flames brought it to life. ‘I spose a black mood int goin to cure anythin.’

  ‘You allowed feelin sad. Trip int here to make a show for,’ said Butch.

  ‘Still, it won’t bring him back.’ She put the bootlace over her head and put on her coat and hat and told Butch to tend the fire and she pushed out into the squally snow.

  ‘They won’t have gone far,’ shouted Butch but she had disappeared and he stood and finished the cigarette in the space where the door once stood.

  Ennor followed the four footsteps that ran skidding between the half-cut buildings and she replaced sadness with anger because Sonny was a big dumb kid.

  The wind spun punching around hard corners and at times lifted her off her feet and she cursed and bent to the ground to follow the boot prints until they disappeared behind a low creeping wall.

  ‘Don’t move,’ came a serious voice. ‘Keep still and don’t move a muscle or you’re dead.’

  ‘Sonny?’ she whispered. ‘I int in the mood for this.’

  A hand appeared at the top of the wall and pointed towards an empty pigpen and whipped into a sudden exclamation mark towards Ennor.

  She stood skeletal and shaking in the wind and looked the pen over and she kept her eyes peeled until a chicken poked its head through the bars and winked and Ennor thought maybe it was her dad returned as a chicken and she winked back.

  ‘Why you winkin at the chicken?’ asked Trip from behind the wall.

  ‘The chicken winked at me.’

  ‘You don’t wink at home’s chickens.’

  ‘Well maybe this is a new thing to be doin, winkin.’

  ‘Buddy dog winks.’

  ‘There you go.’

  ‘Can everyone shut up about the winkin? Hell, I’m tryin to catch grub here!’ shouted Sonny.

  ‘You won’t catch anythin with a raised voice. Can I move yet? Before I freeze to the spot.’

  ‘One more minute, just wait.’ Sonny appeared at the far side of the wall and she told Trip to run when she did and on three they fired towards the bird like hot lead with Trip blocking the fence and Sonny jumping the pen wall.

  Ennor petted the dog and watched feathers rise from the enclosure and she shouted for them both not to swear.

  ‘Gothcha,’ shouted Sonny with the chicken dangling from its feet. ‘The incredible winkin chicken.’

  They carried it back to Butch and the fire and Ennor was struck by the absurdity of life and death. Her dad and a boy and a fish and a chicken, all dead because of her.

  ‘I’ll show you how to kill it and pluck it,’ Sonny promised Trip, ‘if your sister don’t go all soppy and bow it up like a dolly.’

  ‘I int soppy, I’m hungry.’

  Inside the barn Ennor sat with Butch at the fire in silence and they drank the tea he had made.

  Hunger was no longer something but everything and their lives were dictated by it.

  They listened to the death choke of the chicken from outside the door and the homely rattle of Sonny’s bad singing as she plucked it to skin; this was as close to normal living as any of them could wish.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Rapture was an unknown something Ennor’s mother used to talk up when she helped peg out the washing or dig the garden over. It was something to be sung and something to smile at suddenly but the girl never knew its reason and was never told the why.

  She thought maybe the four of them circled loosely about the fire had a little rapture to them. Even the dog had a half-dizzy smile wrapped around it and he listened and nodded to the conversation with one ear on the storm and one eye on the roasting chicken. Sonny was talking through the best way to roast a bird and the dog listened with a kind of seriousness as if it were about to be quizzed.

  She turned the body slowly on the makeshift spit and smiled when it made the rotation without falling into the flames.

  ‘Anyone want to know how to make the perfect spit?’ She looked over at Ennor and Butch and they shook their heads.

  ‘Whatever, you two got no sense of spirit to you. I get more interest from the bloody kid and the dog.’

  ‘Don’t swear.’

  ‘Dint.’

  She cobbled a shelf out of a few discarded concrete blocks and a plank of wood not yet picked for the fire and she set what metal plates they had between them into a line and she mumbled a wish for spuds.

  ‘Chicken’s just fine,’ said Butch.

  ‘Fine for a bird boy like you but chicken’s just chicken and won’t go far. How you come by that ridiculous name anyway?’

  ‘My dad.’

  ‘Joke was it?’ She called Trip close to the fire and told him to kneel so he could turn the spit every five minutes and said she wouldn’t be long.

  ‘Where you headin now?’ asked Ennor.

  ‘Out, won’t be long.’

  ‘Then take the gun.’

  ‘Don’t need no gun. Keep it, you’ve got a regular family here to protect.’ She put Ennor’s army coat over her own and stumbled through the door.

  ‘Where she goin?’ asked Trip.

  ‘Round the bend,’ laughed Butch. ‘Let’s eat the chicken before she gets back.’

  Ennor poked him in the ribs. ‘If it weren’t for Sonny, I’d be dead in the ground.’

  ‘I’d be plenty able to supply if it weren’t for her hangin round.’

  Trip told Butch to shut up because Sonny was his friend and Ennor said he was only fooling and she thought about the rapture right there and then because she was flirting with Butch just a little and she wondered if he’d noticed.

  She looked at him occasionally when his eyes sank sleepy to the fire and the heat bundled him silent, his secretive eyes dancing the flames alive with uncharacteristic passion.

  ‘How long’s she bin gone?’ he asked.

  ‘Five, ten minutes maybe.’

  ‘Ten,’ said Trip, turning the chicken.

  ‘You think someone should go lookin for her?’

  ‘Not yet, she’ll only go mental.’

  ‘How long until she’d go mental if we dint go lookin?’

  ‘Few hours?’

  They both started laughing but soon s
topped when Sonny threw a turnip at them through the open door. ‘Peel that and dice it tiny cus its animal feed and chewy. That’s if you got nothin better to do.’ She sat cross-legged with a pan of fresh snow and rested it snugly into the embers of the fire.

  She sang a song about a time before poverty and disaster and half the words she made up and when the chorus came around the third time the others joined in.

  She boiled the chew from the turnip and strained it to plate and carved the chicken four ways equal because Trip was growing and needed sustenance the same as the others.

  They ate noisily but in silence and when the chicken was picked through they broke bones from it and tossed them to the dog and he smiled the evening through.

  That night darkness came as a different kind of dark and was heavy and bright with the non-stop snow.

  It seemed as if a lifetime of winters had arrived at once and settled on that little peak of Cornwall known as Bodmin moor.

  The snow at the door had risen into a step and Sonny carried concrete blocks and stacked them against the doorframe to keep it at bay.

  ‘We won’t get snowed in, will we?’ asked Butch. ‘If it keeps snowin the way it’s snowin?’

  They sat in a line with their backs against crates and the fire and the changing world between them and watched the entrance diminish.

  ‘If it gets to the middle, I’ll climb out and start shovellin,’ said Sonny.

  ‘What with?’

  ‘I dunno. There must be somethin in this tip we can make a spade with if we need to.’

  Ennor settled herself to looking deep into the heart of the fire and every time she thought of Dad she thought of Mum instead. She put her hand to her chest to feel the bootlace ring press against her skin and closed her eyes and prayed Dad into heaven and Mum into her arms.

  Butch made more tea by scraping snow from the ice-wall with a knife and all blankets were piled by the fire for a bed and Trip and the dog lay snuggled to the heat and listened to the comfort of older conversation.

  They all agreed the chicken was the best they’d ever eaten and even the turnip added a certain something to the meal.

  ‘Where’d you find it?’ asked Butch.

  ‘Floor of that barn by the pig sty.’

  ‘Pig feed?’

  ‘Anyone’s feed when you’re hungry, you did eat it, dint you?’