by David Almond
She shook her head sadly.
“It's not easy. We need to make a new start somehow, Joe. But how do we do that? How do we change?”
“Dunno, Mum.”
“Some folk say you need a man at home, son. You think that?”
He caught his breath.
“Not… Joff!” he spat.
“No, love. Never Joff.”
She looked out into Helmouth while Joe dreamed of the tiger's jaws closing on Joff again.
“Mebbe we should move away,” she said, and laughed. “There's a thought, eh? Get out of Helmouth. How many manage that?”
She licked her fingers and smoothed his hair.
“You,” she said. “Like you been dragged through a hedge backwards. What you been doing out there, eh?”
“Walking. Looking at the circus. I made a f-friend.”
“A friend?”
“She's Corinna.”
“That's great, Joe. She's from the circus?”
“Yeah. She works on the trap—”
“The trapeze! Joe, that's great.” She laughed. “I can see how the circus'd be your kind of thing. Tigers and—”
“There's no t-tigers.”
“No?”
“No. All gone.”
“But great all the same, eh?”
“Yeah.”
She held him at arm's length.
“You're such a funny'n, Mr. Joseph Maloney. Always were, right from the start. Something different in your blood or something. But you know what I think?”
“No.”
“I think there's something very special about you. I think one day you'll amaze us all.”
She laughed.
“But mebbe that's nowt but a mother's love talking.”
Twelve
He sat in his room and watched the twilight come on. Soon she'd go out again for her evening shift in the awful Booze Bin. He smelt the food she was cooking for him. A funny'n. Always been a funny'n. She'd said that all through his short life. She used to say how beautiful he was when he was born. She used to say that on the night that he was born the sky was filled with shooting stars, as if the universe was celebrating. She said the midwife told her he was the bonniest bairn she'd ever brought into the world. She said that his one green eye and his one brown eye were a sign of great good fortune. She said big brains and muscles didn't matter. It didn't matter that his dad was just some daft lad that ran the Tilt-a-Whirl in a fair. What mattered was Joe's gentleness, his bravery, his great big joyous heart. What mattered was that she loved Joe and Joe loved her. And all through his life there had been hugs, and gentle words and laughter. But it was so hard for her. A young mother, a troubled son, little money, a home in Helmouth on the fringes of the world. He knew she needed him to grow and change and Joe didn't know how to do those things, and he hated hurting her, just hated hurting her. And hated those times the days ended as they sometimes did, when they cried together as evening fell on Helmouth and there seemed no way of getting back the light.
He licked the jam from around his lips and listened. There were people in the streets, walking to the tent. Footsteps, excited voices, the laughter and squeals of little ones. Soon he heard the trumpets and drums dinning the dusk. There were applause, laughter, gasps of excitement and joy. He imagined Corinna spinning so fast she disappeared. He heard a growl, like an animal's growl, but so deep it seemed to come from some dark deep cavern rather than from a creature's mouth. He lay still and listened. Nothing. He looked from the window. Nothing. Just an illusion. And anyway there were no tigers, there were no wild beasts, just dancing dogs and potbellied pigs.
He imagined Joff and Stanny preparing for tomorrow, packing their knives and hatchets. He imagined their excited whispers: how far they would go, what they would take, what they would kill. He imagined them talking about him, talking about what they would do to make him a man. He imagined Joff licking his lips as he talked about the lovely tasty mother. He shuddered.
“Joe!” she called from downstairs. “Joe! Dinner's done.”
He went down to her, sat at the kitchen table. They ate sausages and potatoes and peas and grinned and sighed at how delicious they were.
“A f-feast!” said Joe.
“Truly a blooming feast!”
He poured a shining pool of ketchup onto his plate and dipped bread into it.
“Fit for a… king!” he said.
“And a queen!”
Soon she looked at the clock and hung her head like a stupid thing and groaned the words,
“Booze Bin, Booze Bin, come on, boozers, get your drink. Still, if they didn't need their drink, there'd be no job for me. You'll stay in tonight, Joe?”
He shrugged, chewed the sausage.
“Might go for a w—”
She raised her eyes.
“Not too far, love.”
“No,” he said.
“Good lad.”
She stroked his brow. She used to forbid these walks. But she knew his passion for the night, and as he grew older she began to give way. What was it about darkness? Was it the cover it gave, protecting him from those who mocked by day? Or was it the night's intensity, the way the moon and the stars and the blackened world vivified his dreams?
She kissed him. She knew he wouldn't stray far. He would return to her intact.
“Take care,” she whispered.
He watched her leave the house, pass beneath the streetlights, disappear into Helmouth's gathering night.
Thirteen
He followed, a few minutes later. He went into the wasteland. No Cody's crew. The great tent glowed beneath the stars. Silence outside, applause and laughter inside. Not a soul to be seen. Joe circled the tent, went to the back of it. In the caravans, a few lights burned behind curtains. Low down, headlights traced the motorway. The Black Bone Crags bulged high against the night. Joe dropped to his knees and crawled on all fours beneath the arm-thick guy ropes. He heard the canvas flap and creak and rustle. He burrowed, like an earthbound creature, shoving his head between the tent and the grass, pulling the great weight of blue material across himself, slithering through.
Above him was a bank of benches, bottoms and dangling legs. He peered through the boards and legs. The dogs were dancing in the ring. Their master was a dainty man with a goatee beard who teetered on tiptoe. He conducted the dogs with a pointed white stick. He kept turning, bowing to the scattered spectators. A few of them applauded. There was mocking laughter. There were cries of scorn. The dogs kept tumbling, falling across each other. Sometimes they lost concentration and wandered round the ring alone with their noses to the dust as if they searched for something. In the end, the master gathered them all into his arms and gave a final bow. Sweet wrappers and lollipop sticks were thrown into the ring. The crowd mocked and groaned. The master whispered to his dogs as he carried them out. He stroked and petted them. Joe imagined his whispered words, like the words his mother used to use for him: “It's all right, my sweets. Take no notice of them, my sweets. They're jealous, that's all. You are bright and beautiful and brave.”
Clowns tumbled across the ring. Corinna came. She wore the tightly fastened raincoat. She carried a tray of ice creams at her waist. She took money, gave out ice creams, nodded and smiled as music crackled around her head. Holes in her tights, holes in her shoes. Joe stared, stared hard, willed her to look through the bodies, to look through the crowd and the benches, to see him there, his hungry eyes shining in the dark. But she didn't look, she didn't see him there. Behind her, two men in black entered the ring. They carried chains and nets across their shoulders. They hauled on a rope and Hackenschmidt's cage lurched into the ring.
Rusty iron bars, rusty iron padlock. Hacken-schmidt wore a filthy white undershirt, filthy white leggings covered in dark and bloody stains. He had great arm and leg muscles, a huge round belly, a long black filthy beard, drooling red mouth, matted hair, glaring eyes. He grunted and groaned and glared. He reached out through the bars and clutched the air. Ther
e were gasps, giggles, muttered curses. Mothers and fathers gripped each other's hands and put their arms around their children. Girls screamed in horror and delight. Lads stood and snorted and beat their chests. And then the drumbeat stopped and a man all dressed in shining red came in. He carried a gun in one hand, a megaphone in the other. The crowd grew quiet. He put the megaphone to his lips.
“Here is Hackenschmidt,” he said. “Here is the Lion of Russia, the greatest wrestler the world has ever seen. This is the true Hackenschmidt,” said the man in red, “who was here long before any of us were born, and who will be here long after each of us has died. He has come to challenge you. Do not be frightened. There is tenderness deep inside his heart. He has beaten nobody as far as death. And we will protect you.”
Hackenschmidt stood silent. He held his head to one side, as if listening to something far away. The man in red turned to the guards who had dragged the cage in. He raised the gun toward the cage.
“Bring him out,” he called, and the guards stepped forward, unlocked the padlock and stood back.
Hackenschmidt lumbered out. He thumped his fists against his chest. He circled the ring. In the front rows, the people cringed. They tried to shuffle back to the upper rows. A mother and her children fled through the heavy canvas doors.
“Knock him down and win a thousand pounds!” said the man in red. “Who'll be the first to accept his challenge?”
Hackenschmidt drooled and glared. Arms as thick as legs, legs as thick as trees, head big as a bull's. The great belly, the bloodstains. And even in his secret place, Joe caught the stench of him, the sweaty bloody animal aroma of him.
“AAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHHHHH!” groaned Hackenschmidt. “EEEEUUUUUUURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGG!”
He lurched at the crowd and the guards beat him back with their chains. The crowd yelled in fear and horror and joy. A lad jumped into the ring and quickly jumped back out again.
“Come on,” said the man in red. “Come in pairs, come in threes. Take on Hackenschmidt and win a thousand pounds! You, sir? How about you, sir? Or even you, madam? Or you, young miss?”
A bald-headed man stepped into the ring, Nat Smart, a man from the village, a man Joe had often seen jogging through the streets. He circled Hackenschmidt, then rushed at him with his fists. Hackenschmidt flipped him to the earth; he was dragged away. Two lads from school approached from opposite sides and grabbed an arm each. Hacken-schmidt squeezed them against his belly, then flung them away. Others came, running, prowling. They tried to knock him down with force, or to trick him with trips. They leaped onto his back, they crawled between his legs. Hackenschmidt swatted them like flies or held them tight and squeezed the breath from them before shoving them away. He lurched and groaned and thumped his chest. Soon no one went to him. Then he turned his face to Joe. He stared through the legs, through the benches, to the two eyes that shone out of the dark hiding place. Joe stared back at the filthy face, the red-rimmed glaring eyes. Hackenschmidt was dead still; then he stepped forward, mouth hanging slack, teeth bared, great filthy hands reaching out for Joe. Joe moved backward as the guards caught Hackenschmidt. They shoved a bloody bone into his fist and he chewed it. He staggered backward, chains around his neck, gun barrel at his temple. He entered the cage again. The cage was locked and dragged out again, taken out of the tent again.
Clowns tumbled across the ring. Corinna came. She took money and gave out ice creams. Joe crouched deep in the dark, against the canvas. She didn't look at him. He burrowed out again, into the night again.
Fourteen
He moved through the wasteland, to where he could no longer see the lights of Helmouth, just the orange glow that hung in the air above it. The moon shone over the distant Black Bone Crags. Headlights streaked the motorway. The blue tent glowed. Joe crouched on the earth, allowed the night to enter him. He thought of the snakeskin on Joff, the skylark speckles on Corinna, the animal roars of Hackenschmidt. He knew how the lives of people and the lives of beasts could merge out here in the wasteland. He knew what it was to be Joe Maloney but also more than Joe Maloney. Out here by day he could rise into the blue like a skylark. At night he could flicker through the darkness like a bat. He emptied his mind now of being just Joe Maloney. He felt weasel fur growing on the backs of his hands. He felt claws where his fingers were. He hissed and he was a snake slipping through ancient cellars beneath the Blessed Chapel. He crouched on all fours and his face and teeth sharpened as he took on the shape of a fox. Nobody knew that he knew how to do these things. They were secret, things that grew from his secret heart.
When he was a small child, he saw more than other small children did. He used to point to the air above the Black Bone Crags and try to name the things he saw, but no one else ever saw them. There were moments when his mother seemed about to see, when she raised her eyes and followed his finger to where he pointed and her eyes widened and she whispered, “Yes, Joe. I think… there's something…”And she used to listen when he raised his finger and told her to listen to the weird songs and whispers he heard on the air. And she used to smile and encourage the drawings he made when he was small, of the beasts and fairies he saw and played with in the long weeds and grasses of their garden. She never scoffed, she never scorned, but he knew she never truly heard and never truly saw and never truly understood. He knew that no one ever truly understood.
One day, in the first days of his truanting, days when those who grew with him in Helmouth had begun to turn away from him with their strange mixture of spite and fear, Joe wandered weeping in the waste-land. He found a boy crawling in the Hag's Kitchen, scratching at the earth and whining. He crouched and watched and listened. The boy dug at the earth with his fingers, tearing away little bits of turf, dragging out little heaps of soil. He puckered his mouth and nose and sniffed and snorted like a little beast. Then he turned and saw Joe there and he flinched and held up his hands like paws in protection. The two boys watched each other and the boy in the Hag's Kitchen returned to being just a boy again. Joe said nothing, didn't know how to say anything.
“I was being a mole,” said the boy. “My name's Stanny Mole so I was being a mole.” He tipped his head to one side, daring Joe to challenge him. “OK?”
“O-OK,” said Joe. Then he pointed to the air above the Black Bone Crags. “They f-fly,” he stammered.
And Stanny looked and his eyes widened for a moment and Joe thought that Stanny Mole was on the brink of seeing, but then Stanny lowered his eyes again to the earth and said,
“What fly?”
Stanny Mole was a newcomer to Helmouth, sent from the city to live there with his mother. He was a boy already used to truanting, a boy who was more hardened to loneliness than Joe, a boy who right from the start told Joe that he needed to toughen up. But he became Joe's friend and they spent many days together wandering the wasteland. Then Joff entered Stanny's life and began to take him across the motor-way into the Silver Forest and up toward the Black Bone Crags and he began to teach Stanny how to survive and kill out there. And they wanted Joe to go with them, out into those places of wildness and vision and dream, but Joe held back. He knew if he ever did go there, it must be with someone who saw what he saw and felt what he felt, someone who was a true partner, a true friend. Someone who understood what it meant to move from Helmouth toward the furthest fringes of the world, toward the furthest fringes of the mind.
Joe sniffed and shivered. His ears were alert to the night. He trembled, heart fluttered, muscles twitched. What had he almost heard, what had he almost seen roaming the wasteland further downhill, further away from the light? He crouched and watched. Nothing. Behind him, the crowd in the tent clapped and jeered. He imagined Hackenschmidt lapping blood from meat in his locked cage. He imagined Corinna spinning, spinning, spinning. He imagined Stanny dreaming of the panther. He imagined his mum in the Booze Bin, selling cigarettes and cheap lager to Cody's crew.
“Spirits of the air and earth,” he breathed, “protect us all tonight.”
He twitched again. What roamed the wasteland, further out into the dark? He peered. Nothing.
“Spirits of water and fire, spirits of the moon, spirits of the stars, protect us all. Our men. Our men.”
He crawled on hands and knees away from it, toward Helmouth's lights, into the great pool of blueness cast by the tent. A shadow moved across the wall of the tent, high up. A flying swinging thing. Corinna. He thought of her eyes, her speckled skin. He dreamed another shadow moving there, back and forth across the first, the shadow of another flier, a catcher from another time, another life. The scattered crowd applauded. There came a growl, like the growl of an animal echoing from a deep dark cave. He turned, cast his eyes across the wasteland. Nothing. But he began to move quickly back to Helmouth.
Fifteen
Joe was exhausted by his day. Went straight to bed, lay there drifting in and out of sleep, disturbed by the folk returning from the tent, their feet on the sidewalks, their laughter. He wouldn't sleep properly anyway till he'd heard her key in the lock. Pale orange light filtered through his curtains from the streetlights. Joe gazed at his curtains, at the little mirror on his wall, at his half-open door, at the old pictures still stuck with tape to his wall, at the heap of his clothes on the floor. These things shifted and merged and changed. Nothing was fixed. Nothing was simply itself. The patterns of light and dark brought weird beasts to life, built weird cities, weird landscapes. Joe watched, and tried not to be afraid, and sometimes slept, and then jumped back from weird dreams to this weird form of waking. He sighed. He chewed his lips. If he grew, if he toughened up, would all this shifting stop?
She turned her key in the lock.
She called upstairs.
“Joe! You're in?”
“Yes, Mum!”
She came up to him, sat on his bed, her eyes reflecting the pale orange light.
“How's my boy?”
“F-fine.”
“You had a walk?”