Winter Damage

by Natasha Carthew

  ‘Can buddy dog and buddy horse go in the trailer?’ he asked.

  ‘Course,’ laughed Sonny. ‘And maybe we’ll get us some real horses as well, like in the good old days, real gypsies on the road. All of us teens with good solid plans while the world’s broken with adults lost and limpin everywhere you turn. I wanna keep movin, keep movin and never stop, ever.’ She ran up the lane and the dog barked after her with Trip skidding behind and Ennor laughed and looked at Butch and she imagined there was something close to love between them again.

  ‘I see it!’ shouted Sonny from way up the lane. ‘Down below, I see the village, come on.’

  They grouped on the brow of the hill and Sonny hatched a plan that would have them looking and acting in a way that she hoped was near enough normal.

  ‘One of us needs to hide out with the bags and it can’t be Ennor cus she’s got to ask after her mum and it can’t be me cus my light fingers need an outin.’

  ‘You can’t go stealin from strangers,’ said Ennor.

  ‘What as opposed to friends and family? Get with it, greenhorn.’

  Butch said he didn’t mind hiding out. In any case, his cough was getting worse with the current drop in temperature and he said he’d hide somewhere away from the road in a field with Trip and the dog. They found him a spot of dead hedge and Sonny pulled it clear so they could sit inside.

  ‘Now don’t go wanderin, not even for a wee.’ Ennor pointed at Trip and made the face that grown-ups made when they needed to be taken serious.

  ‘How will I know that you’re OK?’ asked Butch.

  ‘When you see us,’ said Sonny and she gave Ennor the gun.

  ‘I hate this gun. I won’t shoot unless I have to.’

  ‘Obviously, it’s a precaution. If someone draws on you, what you goin to do?’

  ‘Run away.’

  ‘Hell you are. You’re gonna fight cus flight gets you dead.’

  They left Butch and Trip putting rocks out for seats and a table for playing cards and they walked through the gate and back on to the lane.

  ‘How long you think we’ll be?’

  ‘Depends, don’t it. You nervous?’

  ‘A bit. Don’t feel right now we’re here.’

  ‘What don’t?’

  ‘What the old maid said. You think she was bullin me some kind?’

  ‘Dunno, won’t know till we find that yellow door of yours.’

  ‘I hope we won’t be long in any case. Trip don’t seem right, he’s got a mood comin, I know it.’

  ‘Don’t worry bout him. Concentrate on findin your mum or askin bout your mum. What you gonna say?’

  ‘A hundred things and I don’t know.’

  ‘Just remember, we gotta seem just like two friends out and about who don’t know how bad things have got in a week, so keep your wits.’

  ‘So how’d I say I’m lookin for my mum if she int around?’

  ‘Let’s just knock on some door.’ Sonny shrugged and thought for a minute. ‘Say she’s gone missin and put the sad and innocent thing on thick, that’ll help.’

  ‘Maybe I should say we int eaten in a while.’

  ‘That’s good, now you’re thinkin like a pro.’

  Ennor smiled and Sonny said it was a rare thing to see but a nice thing all the same.

  ‘What I had to smile bout recently?’

  ‘I dunno, we finally reached the north moor, everyone’s still alive, just. If there’s somethin you’re not tellin, just spit it out. Have it said just to say it or stop your maudlin.’

  Ennor didn’t know how to say the words and she tried and shook her head. She wanted to keep from talking about Dad to Sonny. She was all things that were good and positive about the world.

  ‘Tell me,’ Sonny said.

  Ennor took a deep breath. ‘It’s my dad, he’s dead.’

  Sonny stopped to look at her. ‘How d’you know?’

  ‘Butch, that was half his reason to come lookin for me.’

  ‘That’s nice of him, hell.’

  ‘He knew I’d want to know.’

  ‘And now you know?’

  Ennor nodded her head and they picked up walking again and soon they were entering the village. Her dad was dead and here she was looking for her mum. Life was a flipped coin that just happened to spin this way and then that.

  Sonny said she’d taken to praying for some kind of shop to appear as they slowed past a line of untended gardens. They painted their faces to look friendly and smiled at the windows of the terraced cottages in case anyone was looking.

  ‘Some of the downstairs windows are boarded up,’ said Ennor.

  ‘They’ve been smashed, I reckon. Keep your mind on that gun.’

  In one of the windows stood a boy not much older than Trip and Sonny shouted if there was a shop and he nodded and pointed to a whitewashed chapel at the far end of the village.

  ‘I think God answered my prayer,’ she laughed. ‘As good a place as any I spose, hell.’

  ‘Don’t make jokes bout these things. That’s where it’s all gone mad. Emmets buying chapels for holiday homes cus nobody can be bothered to sit down and pray no more.’

  ‘I int seen you prayin all that much.’

  ‘Don’t mean I don’t.’

  They reached the gate leading to the graveyard and a serious man stood across the threshold and he asked them their business.

  ‘I hear you’re some kind of charity,’ lied Sonny.

  ‘Well you heard wrong, there’s no charity here, unless you got somethin to barter.’

  Sonny coughed and cleared her throat. ‘We’re just kids, sir. What we got to barter with?’

  ‘You’d be surprised,’ he grinned.

  ‘Sir.’ Ennor edged forward and the man opened his coat for a peek of his gun.

  ‘I was wonderin if you could help me. It’s my mother, she’s gone missin.’

  ‘Not my problem.’

  ‘Please, I’m worried sick. She’s bin livin in this village.’

  ‘You’re not the first to lose someone or somethin. People bin displaced all over the last two weeks.’

  ‘You don’t understand. She’s bin gone sometime.’

  ‘Girl,’ he shouted. ‘Just leave it, eh?’

  Ennor watched his fat lips rub dry against his teeth and she could sense Sonny was winding herself up into doing or saying something crazy.

  ‘So you got somethin more than a dumb sob story to sell or no?’

  ‘I got gold,’ said Sonny, reaching into her bumbag. ‘Real good gold.’

  ‘Let’s see it,’ he barked.

  ‘Give me a minute, Christ’s sake,’ Sonny barked back.

  She looked at what she had hidden out of sight from both Ennor and the man and produced an ornate gold ring.

  ‘It was my dear departed grandmother’s, God rest her soul.’

  ‘Let’s look at it then.’ The man clubbed a plump hand over the railings and Sonny snatched it back.

  ‘What you got yourself?’

  The man laughed as if he were enjoying an afternoon of pub banter. ‘Dried stuff mostly – rice, pasta, lentils. No more flour but we got tins of veg and beans and some half-rot apples if you’ve a hand for makin cider, but sorry, no lost mothers.’

  Sonny nodded. ‘I like the sound of rice and beans, got any coffee?’

  ‘Decaffeinated.’

  ‘Yuck, that’s no good, no point to that at all. Got any hot choc sachets? The ones that don’t need milk.’

  ‘Depends.’

  ‘On what?’

  ‘Might cost you more. I’d have to show that ring to the wife. She’s jewellery and miscellaneous.’

  They were asked to step through the gate and stand in the porch while he stood behind them and shouted his wife out of hiding.

  Inside the chapel Ennor felt like she was a young girl again. The pristine walls with hardwood trim and simple unadorned altar were like the chapel they used to attend as a family.

  The pew on the right had food
stacked like shelves in a shop blown outwards and felled to the ground and on the left were car parts and household randoms stacked into towers like junk sculptures.

  The man secured the door with sliding bolts and Ennor counted them five and he stood to their left and the wife to the right like guardians to a lost kingdom.

  ‘Let’s see it then,’ said the wife.

  Sonny handed her the ring. ‘It’s antique, real old.’

  ‘I’ll be the judge of that,’ she spat.

  ‘It was my dear departed grandmother’s, God rest her soul.’ Sonny looked around at the colour and sparkle of food and she asked if it was Christmas Day yet.

  ‘Darlin, every day’s Christmas in this business.’

  ‘Well is it?’

  ‘Couldn’t tell you. Couldn’t care less either.’ The woman took the ring to a window to study it up close. ‘What you want for it?’

  ‘Four tins of beans, kidney or red, and a five-hundred gram bag of rice and some hot choc sachets.’

  ‘How many sachets?’

  ‘Ten.’

  ‘Ten? You can have the sachets but nothing else. There’s toffee flavour, mint and all sorts.’

  ‘I don’t want all sorts. They taste like plastic and rubber and worse. I want just chocolate.’

  Ennor looked at Sonny in disbelief as the woman walked towards them and then back to the window. ‘I’ll give you three.’

  ‘Four and we got ourselves a deal.’

  ‘Cocky little scrag, int you?’

  Sonny smiled and nodded. ‘And my friend here’s got a question that needs answerin and we’re not goin till it’s answered.’

  ‘Spit it out then, girl, and make it quick. We got a business to run here.’

  Ennor told the woman about her missing mother and she described her from distant memory.

  ‘She’s got eyes like mine, look.’ She opened her eyes wide.

  ‘Sounds like a million crazies that fall our way. My starvin kid this, my dying kid that.’

  ‘No she int as normal as that,’ added Sonny. ‘She’s like a bit of a religious freak.’ She apologised to Ennor. ‘It’s true,’ and she continued to connect all the dots that made up the woman and when Ennor said something about the yellow door the woman’s ears pricked up.

  ‘What’s it worth if I know somethin?’

  ‘Tin of beans.’

  The woman nodded. ‘She’s close all right, well she was. Got a few followers turns out. Tried to drive us out of here, dint she, Bob? Used to squat in a cottage up the back lane, yellow door and peelin. She’s gone now mind.’

  Ennor moved forward suddenly and the man picked his gun from its holster and smiled.

  ‘You know where they were headin?’

  The woman took Ennor’s face into her two hands. ‘You sure you want to be chasin a woman like that?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Wrap your wares in your coat or you won’t get back to wherever you came from.’ She walked down the isle and when Ennor shouted for her to come back she turned briefly.

  ‘Bude, they were heading to the coast, to Bude and good riddance cus I don’t like the place.’

  Outside the chapel they adjusted themselves and Sonny wore the gun out over her jacket and she said things were totally worse than she had thought.

  ‘At least we know where we’re headin. How far you think?’

  ‘Hell, I don’t know, another ten, twelve miles if the weather holds back. Should get there tomorrow.’

  ‘And we got food.’

  Sonny nodded.

  ‘This is it, we’re nearly there.’ Ennor smiled.

  ‘What about what that woman said. Bit weird the way she said it.’

  Ennor laughed away the doubt she shared with Sonny and waved a dismissive hand in the air. ‘So what, she was crazy herself, weren’t she?’

  ‘I guess.’

  Ennor could see Sonny wasn’t convinced and they walked back through the village and up the lane towards the others with worry and relief and everything else mixed and confused and the thought of hot chocolate almost too much to contain.

  They found the field with the cubby cut into the hedge and the rucksacks and bedrolls bundled neatly but there was no sign of Butch or Trip.

  They stood in the ice-field and shouted and listened for anything that resembled voices catching on the wind.

  ‘You hear anythin?’ asked Sonny.

  They held their breath and turned their ears to every corner of land and Ennor thought she heard something in the fields beyond. They ran the hedge and criss-crossed through the field, stepping high to avoid the razor-sharp peaks of ploughed earth that sprung from the snow like fins.

  ‘It’s Butch!’ shouted Trip as they climbed the gate. ‘Buddy dog ran off and Butch ran after him and he fell.’

  The girls sprinted towards him and fell and sat like props as he lay in the snow and Ennor bundled her coat into a cushion for his head.

  ‘Anythin broke?’ asked Sonny.

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ said Ennor. ‘It’s his chest. He’s got a bad chest.’

  She asked if he could sit up and he nodded and they two-arm pulled him into sitting and the runaway dog came and sat beside him as he fought to control his breathing.

  ‘When did this happen?’ she asked her brother.

  ‘Just. Buddy dog ran and I ran and Butch ran, just runnin and then coughin and then he fell.’

  ‘Any blood?’ she asked Butch.

  He pointed to a splash of speckled red on the trampled snow.

  ‘Is he goin to die?’ Trip asked and Butch tried to laugh.

  ‘He’ll be all right, just needs to catch his breath, int that right?’ shouted Sonny and she turned to Trip and said she had a treat if he wanted it.

  ‘I want it, what is it?’ shouted Trip.

  ‘Hot chocolate, with milk and sugar ready mixed.’ They helped Butch to his feet and he said he was fine to walk but the girls knew from his wheezing that he was anything but.

  ‘We’ll make an early camp,’ decided Sonny. They gathered their things and walked three fields deep from the road for safety and settled in a corner of a good flat field flanked by tall hedges on all sides.

  ‘Come on, Trip, we need to scout for firewood. Butch needs to get warm and by warm I mean roastin.’

  ‘Roasty toasty?’ he asked.

  ‘That’s right.’ They walked the field’s perimeter and pulled branches from trees in the hedgerows by twisting them backwards and forwards until they ripped.

  Ennor sat close to Butch and she petted him with warmth and kindness whether he wanted it or not.

  ‘You got me worried,’ she said at last. ‘Somethin int right with you and you won’t say.’ She looked at him and wished he’d tell her his secrets, she knew he had many.

  ‘What you want from me? How d’you want me to paint it? Cus whatever it is you know it’s not what you want to hear.’

  ‘I int askin for nothin, just for you to admit you’re not well would be somethin.’

  ‘You don’t know the half of it.’ He coughed.

  ‘So tell me some of it so I know somethin. Give me a clue at least.’

  Ennor could see he was turning something over in his head; something was being chewed and she wanted to coax it out of him, get him to spit it out so she could dissect it. She looked out across the field, and land and sky were just the same, dazzling and confusing. Up was down and down was for ever miles, uncharted. She fiddled with her hands and the bitten corners of nail around her fingers.

  ‘It’s me dad,’ he said.

  ‘He OK? I forgot to ask with all my goins-on.’

  Butch shook his head. ‘He’s not OK and not in the way you think.’

  ‘What way then, the depression?’

  ‘More, since I found him in the barn plus everythin. He wants me to be somethin that I int.’

  Ennor shrugged. ‘He’s always gainst you one way or other. What you gettin at?’

  Butch undid the zip on h
is jacket and pulled out the layers of clothing that stuck there and he lifted them over his head. ‘Take a look,’ he said.

  Ennor knelt close and her instinct was to touch the purple bands of bruising in some way of healing but instead her hands hovered dumbly between them.

  ‘Butch, that’s bad,’ she whispered.

  He let his clothes drop and stared blankly ahead.

  Ennor felt her throat tighten and threaten tears and she swallowed with defiance. She had to be strong for him.

  ‘You think anythin’s broken? Your ribs, I mean?’

  Butch shrugged and said maybe, maybe not. ‘All I know is it hurts like a bastard.’

  Ennor shook her head and put her arm around his shoulder and held him close. ‘Should have left him swingin in the barn, should have cut him down days later and fed him to the pigs.’

  Butch laughed. ‘Well there int much left to say or do in regards to him now.’

  ‘What you mean?’

  ‘Means I’ve ran away from home, way he sees it anyway. Ran away with a seven-year-old boy, int that somethin?’

  ‘He dint beat you cus of Trip stayin over, did he?’

  ‘Cus of everythin and nothin, don’t worry bout it. There was always somethin to beat on me bout, always. Just got worse recent.’

  He looked at Ennor and patted her hand that rested on his shoulder. ‘He threatened to tell the social bout Trip, but I’m glad I left. For all this, it’s better than that.’

  Ennor didn’t know what to say and that was something too. She stopped with the hugging and asked about his mother.

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘He can’t stop you seein her.’

  ‘I’ll wish him dead and then let’s see what happens.’

  ‘When the world turns right.’

  ‘When the world turns right and I’m studyin and learnin all there is to know. Clever stuff, not livestock market prices like Dad.’

  They watched Sonny load oddments of wood into Trip’s tiny arms and they both laughed and Ennor told Butch she thought him too clever for her world.

  ‘You’ll come back and see me, won’t you? When you’re a big-shot lawyer or doctor or somethin.’

  Butch nodded. He fancied himself as a big-shot something all right. ‘Course I’ll come back to see you. I’d be an idiot not to.’

  ‘You mean it?’

  ‘We’re joined up somehow, int we? Stitched together someway or other.’