Poachers Road

by John Brady

  “What was the passport picture like?”

  “He doesn’t have one. But the EU’s a big place to wander now, isn’t it? Anyone can get into a car and drive to, I don’t know, Paris, and no one has to know.”

  “Married, family or anything?”

  “Not married, in his thirties, does what he pleases. Sounds like a pretty good life to me. I’ll bet he has a killer CD collection and a garage full of decent tools.”

  “And who knows,” Gebhart added after a few moments.

  “Maybe he’ll turn out to be a half-decent fellow. So he drives some local geezers about a bit? Sounds like a good thing, one would say.

  Families are busy these days, you know. So busy.”

  Felix checked his watch.

  “Well I phoned my Opa Kimmel. He’s not going out this afternoon, he said.”

  “Is he used to you calling in on him?”

  Felix shook his head.

  “He has all his marbles?” Gebhart asked. “Or enough of them?”

  “We’ll see,” was all Felix could come up with. “He can be a bit . . . remote.”

  “You said the village,” said Gebhart. He pushed against his seat belt to look around at the church and houses receding in his mirror.

  “It’s spread out,” said Felix. “Go up the hill here, and watch for tractors. It’s tight. It gets narrower further up.”

  Gebhart weaved his head about to get a last look at the church tower in the side mirror before the car took the summit. The road began a gradual descent into a small valley that appeared to be the last before the mountains started behind.

  “Is that your family church back there, the graveyard?”

  “It is.”

  Gebhart braked and then he geared down when the road entered a curving cut between banks. The first of the grass in the meadows here had established itself, and to Felix now seemed to almost hover above the fields in an almost luminous filament, more like baby hair than the hardy, thick grasses they’d be before the month was out.

  “Well you won’t often see that,” Gebhart said. “Those masons know their stuff.”

  “The masons?”

  “That wall by the graveyard. The road was made later, or it sank or something?”

  “I suppose.”

  “You mean you don’t know, and you grew up hereabouts?”

  Flattened cakes of mud from tractor wheels began to spread out more across the pavement. The rumbling coming up from the tires became more constant. Winter had chewed up the edges of the road in many places. Without planning to, Felix had been rehearsing how he’d approach his grandfather, how he’d persuade him to talk about his past. He could already imagine the distant gaze and the indifference in his eyes, the slow, steady enunciation of his words, each weighed.

  Gebhart slowed for two potholes.

  “Maybe we should have parachuted in.”

  “Well you’ll have something to talk to my Opa Kimmel about then.”

  “Parachutes? Potholes?”

  “He wanted to be a paratrooper. ‘To land on Crete’ my dad told me once.”

  “And did he ?”

  “He was fourteen when that was going on.”

  Gebhart changed into second for a steep section.

  “All the wind and air up here maybe,” he murmured. “Gets into you, maybe?”

  The Golf chugged through the section of road that ran almost through the Klamminger’s farmyard.

  “What?” said Gebhart. “The one place we pass, and there’s no action here?”

  There was fresh mud in the yard, clothes on the line.

  Something about the turn in the road, or the drumming of the muddy roadway, had awakened something in Felix. He thought of his Grandfather Kimmel, that upright way he sat in the church pew, as though he were in a trance.

  “Talk about out of the way,” Gebhart went on. “Is he a hermit or something?”

  When Felix didn’t answer, Gebhart looked over.

  “Second thoughts?” he asked.

  “No. I’m thinking. Keep going.”

  Felix opened the window. There was a sharp edge to the air up here. Gebhart sighed and reached for his mobile.

  “Christ,” he muttered. “Nothing now. I had one bar back in the village.”

  Felix pointed to a line of electricity poles and the ragged clump of conifers, a windbreak, where it ended.

  “You’ll see the roof in a minute,” he said.

  “Where is everybody?” asked Gebhart. “Doesn’t everyone here depend on their neighbours?”

  He glanced over.

  “Let me guess,” he said to Felix then: “‘That’s another story?’”

  “You said it, Gebi.”

  “Does this place have a name?”

  “It’s called Pfarrenord,” Felix said, looking back down the valley.

  “Is everyone here holy or something, this ‘parish’ thing?”

  “It’s a local name. Not the name on a map. It’s windy here.

  Colder, people say. So someone came up with ‘The North Parish.’”

  Gebhart sighed and rubbed his nose.

  “Watch, there’s a bend here.”

  The road twisted at the spot Felix had fallen off his new bike all those years ago. He remembered having a tantrum, and his mother had soothed him. Later, when he’d brought it up in some argument as to why he had to visit his grandfather at all, she’d told him that anxiety did strange things to a kid. It was something to get over, she’d said; something to build on.

  “So tell me,” said Gebhart. “How are you going to get things going here? This ‘little chat’?”

  “We’ll see how it goes, I suppose.”

  “Which page of the manual is that see-how-it-goes technique on?”

  Felix was suddenly glad of Gebhart’s breezy sarcasm.

  He turned to him.

  “Maybe it’s changed since you last looked at it. Back in nineteen-eighty-nothing.”

  “Listen to you. You spend a couple of days with suits from Strassgangerstrasse, and now you’re a thick-head like them. Well done, Mr. Know-It-All.”

  Felix studied the cloud shadows that now lay over much of the forest cover on the hills about.

  “So now you know what I think about your new friends,” said Gebhart.

  “They didn’t fool me,” he said. “Completely, anyway.”

  “Richtig? But you’re still going to unload that stuff on them, aren’t you? Those maps and documents you were talking about?”

  “Soon.”

  “‘Soon’? Cheeky.”

  “I’ll decide after I hear my opa.”

  Gebhart looked over.

  “Well you know those two are not sitting on their hands,” he said. “I’ll bet they’re knocking on that guy’s door already, Fuchs.”

  “And that’s why I want to be here first.”

  “We, Gendarme, we. Remember that, will you? I’m wearing a big bull’s eye on my arsch here for these couple of hours.”

  “Gebi”

  “Don’t tell me how you appreciate it. That only makes me worry more. The clock is ticking. Ninety minutes, and I’m back in my uniform at work, at the post.”

  “Watch for water on the road up ahead. Sometimes you get a pool here before the warm weather.”

  Gebhart left the Golf in second, pulling up the hill at a steady rate, the poles passing slowly.

  “Scheisse,” said Gebhart with quiet malice, placing his foot over the brake pedal. “You were right.”

  The pool of water seemed to run for 20 or more metres on the road.

  “Deep, do you think well look.”

  Gebhart brought the Golf to a stop slowly. An Opel blocked the road beyond the pool. Its back wheels were still in the water.

  “There’s your answer,” Gebhart said. “That guy tried to plough through.”

  He moved the gearshift from side to side in neutral.

  “Is that your opa’s jalopy?”

  A rally stripe with some kind
of blue sparkly stuff ran across the top of the back window.

  Felix heard Gebhart stroking his bottom lip.

  “The alloy wheels I could forgive,” Gebhart murmured. “But Maria, the Michael Schumacher stuff tacked on there? Your opa’s hardly a Rock 100 FM man, is he?”

  Felix couldn’t be sure of another sticker, but two he recognized.

  “The plate’s local,” said Gebhart.

  “Yamaha,” Felix murmured.

  Gebhart stopped playing with the gearshift. He looked over, his eyebrows raised.

  “Herr Red-head? Our person of interest? Mr. Fuchs up here on a visit?”

  Felix shrugged.

  “How very damned convenient,” said Gebhart. “Ran it through here, stalled it.”

  He put the car in reverse.

  “What are you doing?”

  “You think I’m going to just park it on this cow path? I’m going to turn it around. And you’re going to help me.”

  Felix stood by the entrance to the field.

  “Make damned sure my wheels don’t get stuck when I back it in there,” Gebhart called out. “Or you’ll pull this car out yourself.”

  The earth sucked at Felix’s shoes as he took another step back.

  The diesel smoke from Gebhart’s car seemed to settle around his face, like gnats. He slapped the roof when he saw the wet ridge of mud begin to form to the side of the tire.

  Gebhart took his time making the 50-point turn. Felix watched his hands and arms work the wheel, but he did not make out any words in Gebhart’s steady, philosophical-sounding muttering.

  Gebhart stepped out of the car eventually, testing the margins of the road to both sides. Felix was listening to the breeze that was coming over the fields here, suddenly quiet after the Golf’s engine was finally off.

  “I’m locking it,” said Gebhart. “This is the end of the road, after your opa’s place, right?”

  Felix nodded. He thought he had heard something on the breeze. Maybe a bird, or the faint whistle and sough from the stirring blades of new grass. He looked toward the trees that surrounded three sides of the house again, and caught a glimpse of the roof.

  There was no smoke from the chimney.

  “Come on,” said Gebhart. “Get it over with. It’s going to be a mud fest anyway.”

  After a few steps, he put out his arm to stop Felix.

  “He has a dog, right?”

  “A Shepherd, yes.”

  “Where is it?”

  “We’re a bit from the house yet.”

  “And does this dog listen to you?”

  “Usually. It knows me.”

  “‘Usually’? Wait a minute.”

  Felix watched him skip back to the car and open the trunk. After a brief rummage, he drew out a rusted rebar, with a curve in it.

  “I am not a dog man,” said Gebhart. “But I’m not a masochist either.”

  The Kadett was unlocked. There were magazines on the back seat, rolled-up wrappers from McDonald’s, and some pieces of machined metal covered in a fur of oil and dirt. The ashtray was used, a lot. The custom steering wheel had a wood trim.

  “A boy racer,” said Gebhart. “In this piece of junk?”

  Felix looked at the floor mats in the front. There were moist sections on them.

  “Not much of a Schumacher, is he,” Gebhart muttered. “You think he’d know better.”

  The side of the house came into view now, its whitewashed wall looking more grey in the shadows of the trees. Felix sought out any movement that could mean the dog was about, and had at least heard them, and was coming to investigate.

  “Not much farming done here,” said Gebhart. “Rented out?”

  “A few years now,” Felix replied. He stopped and listened.

  “You hear something?”

  Felix couldn’t be sure. They stepped down off the road by the stone pillars that marked the entrance to the farmyard.

  “Cattle, before he retired?” Gebhart asked.

  Felix realized that Gebhart was nervous now.The walk up from the car had him breathing loudly too.

  “Yes,” he said. “Look, the dog’s name is Tilla. And don’t worry, he’s old now.”

  “Tilla? Big?”

  “Atilla. He’s a fair size, but lazy, if I remember.”

  Felix looked at the kitchen window. He could only make out the reflection of the trees on the surface.

  “I’d sure like to know where the beast is,” he heard Gebhart murmur. “I mean, how does it look I come visiting with an iron bar in my hand?”

  Felix looked toward the window again. Beyond the mirrored trees and patches of sky, there was someone moving around in there.

  He stopped completely when he heard the voice. It was raised, like a question, and angry, but he couldn’t make out the three or four words.

  “What the hell was that?”

  There was no movement there now.

  Then a door slammed inside the house. It was followed by a shout, and thumps that seemed to move through the house toward the side door.

  “Is this how ?”

  The rest of Gebhart’s sentence was cut by the sound of the side door crashing open. It was hard enough and fast enough for Felix to hear the metal grind as it hit its limit, and bounce back.

  He was already moving toward the noise when he heard the rasping scrape of a shoe digging into concrete, its owner running.

  A red-haired man came around the corner of the house then, his mouth wide open as much as his eyes. Felix saw that Gebhart too was manoeuvering to block Fuchs. Fuchs was breathless already, panicking. He gave a quick glance back at the house even as he came at the two policemen. He wasn’t slowing.

  “Fuchs!” Felix yelled, and he went into a crouch. “Stop!”

  Fuchs had his arms out already. Gebhart also yelled at Fuchs to stop. Felix heard another shout too, and the sound of the door opening and rebounding again.

  Felix began to weave side to side to match Fuchs efforts to sidestep him. The red face and bulging eyes of a madman, he thought, and huge eyeballs rolling around. Was it drugs, he wondered, or a fit? But this flabby bastard wasn’t agile, and probably had never been. He was going to kill himself running like this.

  Felix kept calculating where to meet Fuchs, and get a hold on him without risking a head-on. He kept his eyes on Fuchs’ hands.

  The figure that now came around the side of the house at a dash drew a quick look from Felix, but Fuchs was within a couple of metres now. He was panting, and trying to say, or shout something. Felix was aware that Gebhart had come around to his left now, and he was shouting again. But Fuchs had given up any effort to twist his overweight, flapping mass into any more dodges.

  In the moments before Felix actually reached out to get hold of some passing part of Fuchs, his mind scrambled to put things together, and failed. A dog who usually met you down the road from the farm? This other man who had just run out of the house, with arms raised like wings to slow himself, had to be a policeman one of Speckbauer’s? Who else but a policeman would have a gun in his hand? Even as Fuchs filled up his view, Felix registered that Sepp Gebhart had raised the rebar and had gone into a crouch. Whatever Gebhart shouted was torn away when Fuchs barrelled into him.

  Felix felt his feet leave the ground with the impact. He heard a yell on his way up, and was suddenly aware of Fuchs’ smell, even the fabric of his jean jacket. His hand clung to Fuchs’ jacket for a moment, but his fingers slid as he was carried on and out by the force of Fuchs’ rush, and he felt himself falling. He reached out as his knee hit the ground, and grasped Fuchs’ leg. He was dragged for a moment, and he had time to feel the surge of pain coming from his knee and his hip.Then Fuchs’ fat legs were coming down at him, knee first.

  All he knew after Fuchs landed on him was that he still had Fuchs’ leg. So it was Fuchs babbling and kicking at him then. Grit ground into his elbows and then his face as Fuchs tried to twist free, his breath ragged and wheezing in between squeals and half-shouts.<
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  Fuchs rolled over on him, and pounded on his arm with his fist.

  Felix tucked his head in tighter, curling himself around the leg. A floating feeling came over Felix then. He wondered how you could get such a sound out of a man, like a drum. It was Fuchs’ hammering him in the ribs, while trying to kick him with his free leg. It wasn’t hurting. He wondered why there was no pain yet, especially now that this huge oaf was grinding him into the cement with every twist and blow. And over it all, the absurdity of all this, out of the blue.

  Then the hammering stopped, and something heavy slid over him. It was Fuchs, he knew, but a trick. His jacket smelled of petrol and cigarettes and BO. Fuchs was faking it, preparing for a sudden jerk, to get loose finally. Felix knew something was going on around him, but it seemed to be happening at a distance, in some muffled way. He called out Gebhart’s name. He wanted to hear him say that things were fine, or under control, or something. He braced himself for Fuchs’ big move, and he called out again. There were footsteps somewhere, and shouts.

  His head felt like it was full of water now. How long had passed since he’d seen Fuchs rushing at him? This was the same as what had happened in that soccer game years ago. He had run into the goalpost for a pass, and it never came. It was that time when all his teammates seemed to go away but they had left their bodies there, and their worried faces looking down at him. But was it really concussion, when you could even think concussion? Ridiculous.

  Now Fuchs was talking to him. That must be his head then, that big lump lying on his shoulders? The words were low and short and hesitant. Like talk in a dream, they made no sense.

  Someone called out his name. Felix pushed up but Fuchs wasn’t moving. He murmured and gave a soft lisp, like a kid in sleep.

  “Gebi,” Felix said, loudly.

  There was a thumping sound now and Fuchs gave a jolt. Here was his move then, Felix was sure, and he pulled hard on Fuchs’ jacket. Instead of the blow from Fuchs, or a sharp pull away, he only felt the oaf get heavier. Felix’s mind preoccupied itself for a time with how it could be that he seemed both bigger, or at least more spread out, and heavier.Was he trying to crush him? Something had to give.

  He began to push at Fuchs. His hands and knuckles sank into the belly. He heard a wheeze and a sound like Fuchs was about to clear his throat. Felix got one shoulder off the ground, and he craned his neck.