‘Pardon?’
‘I said it’s a funny thing,’ Shoes repeated, ‘but I actually have…’
‘She heard you the first time,’ Hooch growled, then quickened his pace, pre-emptively, to catch up with the boy again.
‘But how,’ Jo was frowning now, ‘how do you even know what my full name is?’
Shoes didn’t respond immediately. Only once Hooch was completely out of earshot did he silently beckon her to move in a little closer to him. Jo drew nearer, but hesitantly, her stomach twingeing.
‘The thing is,’ he whispered (his breath smelled of processed pork and Stimerol), ‘you don’t want to wind him up too much. Hooch is very…’
‘You think I wound him up?’
Jo drew back, instinctively, looking suitably delighted at this possibility.
‘No.
No,
’ Shoes shushed her nervously, ‘I can see I’ve got my work cut out with you, Josephine.
No.
What you need to understand is that Hooch is actually very…’ Shoes quietly pondered what he needed to say, ‘I don’t know. He’s very… very powerful. Important. To everything. And you’d do well to remember that fact if you’re really
serious
about the Following.’
Jo was fazed by Shoes’s jitteriness. It was plainly deeply-felt.
‘Are you intimidated by him, Shoes?’
‘Am I what?’ Shoes was suddenly no longer concentrating. In a flash he’d moved off. He’d
switched
off. He was elsewhere.
‘I said are you…’
Shoes stuck up his hand to silence her. ‘Hold on a minute, hold on…’ he was chuckling now, ‘
look…
the dog. Dennis. The little terrier. Up ahead. See him?’
Jo squinted.
‘Doc’s calling him. Oh yes.
Ha.
Oh yes just… just
look
at…’
That was it. Shoes broke into a quick trot to catch up with the others. Jo resisted doing the same. But she quickened up, marginally, when Hooch finally left the side of the boy, joined Shoes, and jogged on himself.
Shoes was still audible –way ahead –talking to whoever’d listen to him, ‘Next to the
yukka.
Would you believe that? Next to the bloody
yukka.
’
Jo finally drew level with the boy. His pace had remained
constant. She slowed down to his speed, with relief, watching the others pull away, confusedly.
Patty seemed impassive now, had calmed down noticeably since his earlier euphoria in the library. Jo struggled to catch her breath, ‘What the
hell
is all this…’ she inhaled for a second, ‘…
phew.
I said what the hell is all this yukka business about, anyway? Can you fathom it?’
The boy shrugged.
‘Does the yukka have some kind of…?’ She coughed with the exertion.
‘I’ll tell you what I
don’t
know,’ the boy’s tone was sarcastic, ‘I
don’t
know what they’re all getting so worked up about. He only uses it for laces. The stringy bit. And he makes foam –like soap foam –out of the roots. He’s always done it.’
‘Really?’
‘To keep clean.’
‘And he makes laces?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Wow.’
The boy gave her a scathing look then focussed his eyes way beyond the others –who were all now standing with the dog, and the yukka, in a huddle, outside the small hotel –and over towards Wesley. On the horizon.
‘Do you know where he’s going?’ Jo asked softly.
Patty stopped in his tracks. Jo stopped shortly after him.
‘Of
course
I know where he’s going. He’s walking the island. He’s done it every day since he was here. Don’t you know anything?’
‘Course I do,’ she defended herself, staunchly, slightly hurt by his savagery, ‘it’s just that I know different things, that’s all.’
The boy shrugged, ‘If you want my opinion, I think he’s losing it. Doing the same stupid walk every day. He’s taking the piss out of everybody.’
Jo cut to the chase.
‘If I give you a fiver will you let me take a peek at that piece of paper you took earlier?’
The boy sneered. ‘Are you
kidding
me?’ He was grossly self-righteous, ‘I don’t want your fucking money.’
His jaw, she noticed, was sharp as cut tin. His eyes were a
cold grey. The colour of black ice on a fast road. He really was too thin.
‘I already turned down that other bugger, and he offered me a hell of a lot more than five.’ He pointed up ahead of him.
‘Doc, you mean?’
‘Sod
off.
’
He actually seemed to find this funny. ‘Hooch, then?’
The boy grinned then took a step closer to Jo, ‘You see that’s not what I’m in it for. Not short change. That won’t satisfy me.’
‘You’re in it for the competition, then, is that it?’ The boy shrugged. ‘Or for the Following?’
He didn’t even credit Jo’s second guess with a reaction.
‘I’m not
clever
or nothing,’ he told her, fiddling around inside his pockets as he spoke, ‘but I do like puzzles. I’ve always been good with them. Crosswords in the papers and in books, and wordsearch. And I like working out stuff. And I
watch
stuff. And I keep my ears open…’ he smiled at Jo, ‘in actual fact I saw you in the library…’
‘What do you mean?’ Jo stiffened.
‘I saw you read something in that book you had. Your cheeks went all red. I saw that. And then you kicked over the chair just after. On purpose.’
‘To help you,’ Jo interjected.
The boy snorted, derisively, ‘To help
yourself
more like it.’
He withdrew the piece of paper from his pocket. White. Neatly folded. He dangled it in front of her, taunting her with it. Then he screwed it up, smirking, and threw it at her feet, his slate grey eyes mocking her, almost
goading
her to scrabble for it.
The three others, Jo noticed, were now all looking their way.
‘What you need,’ the boy spoke softly, ‘isn’t written on there. What you need is in here,’ he tapped the side of his head, ‘and if you want some of it, then I suggest you leave the others, leave him,’ he tipped his head towards Wesley, in the far distance, rapidly disappearing, ‘and follow me.’
‘Where are you going?’ Jo asked –Wesley was moving left, tight left, out of vision –she felt almost (was it
panic?)
at the thought of
losing sight of him. But this was a challenge from the boy, wasn’t it? It might prove foolish to deny him. And she was thirsty,
dammit,
and her feet were aching.
The others were silently heading back, like three strange birds, like vultures, fully intent upon feasting on the boy’s dropped bounty.
And Jo wanted it. She
wanted
it.
(What had he written to the librarian? Was it rubbish? Was it poetry? Was it a clue? Would it incriminate him? Would it exonerate him? Why did she care?
Why
did she?)
‘I’m going for a Coke, Josephine,’ the boy half-turned and spoke cheekily over his bony shoulder, ‘and for a very quick
wee-wee.
Do you think you might possibly be coming along with me?’
What was it with this walk? It was definitely sneaky. Initially unremarkable –everything muddied-right-up or wrung-right-out, or plain and grey and horizontal –but then it gradually snuck up on you (furtively, stealthily), tapped you softly on the shoulder (made you twist, made you stagger) stared you full in the face (without tact, without graciousness, without the slightest modicum of bloody courtesy) and blew the world’s fattest, wettest and most unrepentant raspberry.
It was aberrant. It was… it was deviant. And worst of all –worst, worst,
worst
of all –it was time-warped.
Seriously.
The hours just melted. That, or they simply elongated. They kicked out their legs, picked their noses and yawned, rudely, like a clutch of hearty schoolboys in double chemistry.
The minutes? Like sneezes. Or tiny kisses on the nape. Or flea bites. Or buzzing black midges. Urgent, sometimes, like the industrial snarl of the greenfinch, or the shamelessly arable, silver-muddied, plough-bladed
tssweee!
of the tiny warbler, hiding-and-seeking it in the blonde reeds of summer.
Ah,
summer.
Wesley shuddered. Three-thirty and the sky was already nagging its way peevishly towards a tight and grey and implacable evening. Icy cold. Danker, now. The fog still gliding in and out –like a suspicious moorhen treading water with its prodigious pale toes on a busy river. Now you see him…
Gone.
The seconds drowned at high tide; grabbing for him; lunging at him,
gasping,
or they shivered disconsolately at low tide, barely
acknowledging him before turning tail and slinking off, sullenly. Or both. Or
either.
They lapped reassuringly. Close upon him –far away. They were full of sense and inclination, but utterly devoid of weight or meaning.
This was surely the best kind of walking. He’d done it several times now –the span of the whole damn island –it was his
job
to keep circling (claws held tight, tucked in, like a vulture, a hawk, a raven; riding the ill-tuned, honk and parp of those choppy church-organ thermals –up, up, up, up…
down
– looking for weakness, stretching his wings, being irrepressibly keen, endlessly curious, revoltingly
beady).
There was still plenty here to preoccupy him. Familiarity breeding (not contempt. No. He was never contemptuous. Contempt was just another kind of weakness)
more
familiarity.
There was the dump –which he loved –the Stonehenge of slag and scrap, the Babylon of debris. The smell, even in winter, was really quite heady. Rich and sweet with both form
and
integrity. In fact if stink were audible (Wesley conceptualised, idly) then it would be a lactating vixen, its foot caught and tearing in a steel-sprung trap. It would be a howl, but keening. A scream, only rounder.
He’d taken too long, but he’d indulged himself a little. Couldn’t help it. Pretended he was hiking in the American Delta (he’d never been to America, but he felt its expanses locked up inside of him –wrapped-up tight with string and paper, bruised by a plethora of airmail stickers –in a thousand different illusory sense-memories.
He’d smelled it. He’d read it. He’d felt the parch and the gust of it. He’d eaten key-lime pie, drunk bourbon and communed with the bison. He’d headed Westward, crossing frontiers, smashing stuff up willy-nilly, scything, apportioning, opening,
appropriating,
but in his belly, in his crop; internally, mentally,
bacterially).
When the sea wall finally toughened up and became concrete, he’d sprung up onto it, like an acrobat alighting –following a sprint, a bounce, a minutely-timed flick-flack –on the back of a cantering pony. He liked to indulge his childish whims. He liked to reel and totter on walls, precariously.
One step, two steps, taking it slow, taking it easy, finding his buzzing brain briefly –and blissfully –sedated by the careful regularity of one foot then the other, one foot then… He paused for a second, looked up, just quickly, to locate his wider bearings, and then –
WOW!
– he started (wobbled) and clutched at the air with his hands… Because suddenly he was wantonly jolted, he was upper-cut, he was hijacked by a huge, brash, bulbous
shimmering
edifice. Lights starting to blink and twinkle as the sun finally ducked and staggered –pissed and bloodshot –behind the sea.
The Oil Refinery.
Ahhh.
Wesley stood straight on the wall, shoulders dragged back by his rucksack, appraising it thoughtfully. He was bewitched by its humming and its clatter –all that convoluted metal glittering back at him, so… so
imperturbably.
All that
industry.
His glance lowered. He admired the muted swathe of seabirds on the remaining patches of mudflat, paddling, contentedly –winter-throated and dozy –between him and this… this kinky, tortile, flexular… this… this big, sexy silver thing. This swirling, Byzantine monstrosity. This
beauty.
Hmmn.
Wesley bent his knees. Then stretched. The joints ached. He was tiring.
But he continued to stare, wondering. I mean would there be anything in it? For
him?
Could there be? He clenched his hands into balls and remained in place a little longer (just like he had yesterday, and the day before the day before). These industrial people
needed
to see him. They had to be cognisant. They had to be heedful. They had to be prudent and careful and wary. Or at least –as a matter of pride, a matter of
principle,
really –they had to
think
that they had to be.
He walked on. The sea wall was thinner now, several feet off the ground on one side, the other a deep drop into the wide tidal outlet between him and the monster. But soon the monster diminished, its headland wore to nothing, it shrank into a grumbling, monochrome muffle behind him. Now there was just sea. Everything had grown flat and quiet again. Wesley watched his feet.
The foxes liked this wall well enough. They shat on it. It was
their boundary. Old, purple faeces, crammed with blackberry and elder and bits of insects. He bounded over these purple markers, conscientiously. He kept his eyes peeled.
Shivering rabbits sat up and appraised him, dwarfed by the harsh, sharp, linear shading of oil-black bridges. Disused. Rusting. Ancient, iron-elbowed rollercoasters, (industrial lemon rind, arcing and looping from nowhere to the sea), black towers, piers, angry dead promontories.
He smiled at them all, gently.
This was the shattered, hacked-up back-bone of a once hard-worked industrial legacy. This was the ancient trash of modernity. These were the scribbles in the margin. This was the graffiti.
But my
God –
Wesley stopped smiling –all that effort, all that toil and stink and shit and
drudgery.
And why? And for
what?
For this? Only the proud, mouldering bones remaining for the wildflowers to strangle, for the thistle to scratch, for the rain to tap upon in hollow melody?