List of the Lost (4 page)

“Have you? Have you seen much action? Come before me and know me, Tommy …”

The punching-bag face is now stiff with dirt, and the oily hands wring with pulpy sweat as his eyes melt into Ezra, who is now standing astride – as if balanced for attack, or ready to be swabbed down by hand. Trouble comes unexpectedly by a lightning-fast pinch between Ezra's legs as the wretch leaps over the psychological and physical line only to be met by a ferocious neat-as-a-pin side-swipe to the right cheek bone, too tear-ass fast for the eye to track, and the anchor-weight school ring of Ezra's third finger left hand clips the temple of the wretch with such a knee-pumping dead-shot that the morgue-bound leper obediently slumped backwards on to a knoll of deadly nightshade, where the hard root of a knotted oak spiked through scalp and skull-bone with deadly thrust, smashing the cerebrum and bursting out blood from the sensory organs. Amongst the dead wood and the dead nettle, the cave-dweller was out of play; a lumpenprole dead weight within less than an instant, seventy-five years to reach such a jell-brained release … but to where, to where? And why must we believe that there is a next stage? Does our sanity depend upon it?

Harri placed the back of his right palm onto the man's exposed chest, kneeling before an outcast now fully cast out.

“I think this is his way of telling us he's dead.” He looks up to the standing three of frozen postures, to whom that final word had no logically given reality. As if blind to the present, all stood together in sour recognition, yielding to their own silence whilst glumly understanding the correct reasoning of Harri's words. It could only be Ezra who spoke first, with his proclamation of “Dead!” as both hands clasped each side of his face in shock at being just barely able to say that one word alone. The diagnosis was by now obvious enough not to need repeating. Little brown babblers darted in and around surrounding bushes, their movements announcing the luck of new life still moving on. Instinctively the three dragged the body inches further into wrap-around heather and warm fawn, and there it would be hidden with very little undergrowth required to snuggle around what barely passed as human form. The sorry hayseed clump had worried its last, and now, oh so very quickly, its ordeal of insanity had ended, the woodhick sucked in by encircling and coddling blackness shaded by weeping willow, weeping ash, weeping beech and weeping life.

“Why did we do that?” asked Nails, struggling for breath and belief.

“Why nothing, let's tear-ass as fast as we can away from this … whatever it is, whatever it was,” came Justy, suddenly the scoutmaster that he had never been. In times of strife, any leading voice will do; off-key though it might be, it belongs to a star of the first magnitude if it speaks the common aim of strong confidence. As if a starting-pistol had fired they scampered like scared rabbits taking off in a cloud, further into the woodland masterminding a birdlike swing to left and then right in unified swerve through the woebegone sticks like migratory geese following ancient winds; large chestnut and horse chestnut looked down laughing … through an old grotto rock garden fenced in by overgrown box hedges – loved by someone in 1920, now a mess of silver birch and cypress. With their natural speed it did not take long before a sharp westerly bend found them out of the woods and home-free into the clear coast of the safe-and-sound edge of a town where suddenly they were no different from those they walked amongst, and they methodically wondered if they had even been there at all, with the wretch, in hollow's hell. Ezra's steely clip had indeed ended a life. How we endure our own feelings having done such an act is beyond our powers to reason, and perhaps all answers are in the particles of brain unused, yet once the hammer has fallen it is not a new reality at all, even if yesterday now feels like a lifetime ago; and even if moral action is not entirely well thought out it is powerfully instinctive nonetheless. The only shock for Ezra was the ease by which the wretch became vegetation, evolved from nothing and now returned – and by such a simple shot. There then came a troubling inner glow, one which sad-sack soldiers in combat must enjoy as they lovingly assist history books with their abysmal confidence game, motivated by their own faith yet beyond the power of their own awareness. The wretch had been unknown to Ezra and had, after all, instigated the provocation and outcome, so therefore any broad view of the situation might consider the solution with a certain moral certainty that would favor Ezra. Every moment in life takes its little place, and Ezra – so full of heart and soft to the eye against the subterranean dogface of our sickly fleshed goner – held a certain unsophistication if ever to be judged as a cold-blooded killer. The wretch, too, was a man, but had positioned himself so far away from obedient society that no one who mattered was close to him, or even knew him. Worm-chow for the crops, he was dead, dead, dead. The internal infrastructure was still closing down even though the unlovable heart had pumped its final tick, or possibly tock. For what earthly reason would anyone care? Why should anyone care now if they hadn't whilst his machinery continued to pump air within? Would there be a solitary fly-bait throughout the entire woodland that could fare any worse? The wretch was now cold meat with the thing he most loved: nothing. Had life continued he might have starved to death or been beaten up by the local rookies – both fair outcomes in the eyes of the yawningly law-bending law. His time had been called in mid-sentence and without one full second allowed for him to understand whatever it was that had befallen him, and time crowds in even if we think we have it under control.

Nails, Ezra, Justy and Harri felt off-center, but nothing more. All assumed joint responsibility, or at least equal understanding, and there would be no instinctive rush to isolate Ezra since all would have acted in precisely the same way had they, and not Ezra, been zeroed in upon, because most people come to the same moral conclusions when faced with awkward moral conundrums. The syphilis-itch of the hobo's grope would be enough to repulse the softest composure, and Ezra had no doubt that his automatic slug had been provoked, and no one who had not been present at the scene of the senicide could have any right to another view. Yes, there is judicial law, and, yes, there is natural law. Equally with the four their impulse was to acknowledge a death and to leave it alone. Something happens to the body and the corpse is whisked out of view, and your dignity urges you to move your thoughts onwards and elsewhere, knowing that the foul-smelling human corrosion had ventured too far. Urine-soaked, he could not possibly have imagined the intoxicated rash of his lips stuck to Ezra's face. We cradle each wish in preparation of it being fulfilled, and our feelings might be so bullishly strong that we cannot imagine the object of our lust being unimpressed by the sheer voltage and force of our needs (since it obviously impresses us). But life tends to be a cold-storage schlep of mediocrity at best, and amongst the snowed-under years our theories of love and lust are almost never practiced with the vim and vigor haven so brutally immovable from our stuck imaginations, even if their demand irrationally urges its force ahead of basic hunger and intelligence. This makes the human being a pitiful creature eternally occupied with longing, longing, longing – yet animals, at least (at most?), leap as large as life when ready to cloy in ecstasy. Humans, on the other hand, require novels, films, food, labor, plays, magazines, pornography and castles in Spain in order to substitute for the urgings of the loins – and, alarmingly, they accept those substitutes. Well, what choice?

By 8 p.m. the four boys were adequately distanced from the ever-stiffening stiff who was now lying in possibly his first ever repose of gentleness. Where he was now could not be worse than where he had been a few hours ago. You can't let go of everything, of course, and his shattered shell remained under bush, the mouth now fallen open as if attempting one last futile call for a mercy that had never previously been on offer. Every imaginable sign of desol­ation slid him away. A ghastly almost-eaten face, he had gone to such excessive lengths to survive, but this did not matter very much after all. He was dead and he simply must stay dead, flitting about in time and space, with perhaps only a few random photographs (of the tortured-family variety) somewhere to guarantee that he once was. No prayer or fireworks could undo his fate, and any lyric poetry in passing on or passing away was not reserved for his exit. Those random photographs, not treasured but stuffed away somewhere, gave conclusive testimony to his existence, when nothing else now could. Tomorrow will happen without him and tonight will not miss him, as storms gathered as they ought to under such circumstances. How he had lived had not been deemed difficult enough, and the God to whom he occasionally pleaded was, even now, no doubt still judging him, as if death could not be thought sufficient final pain and mockery in itself.

Four heavy hearts sat by a roadside bar with their straws like daggers chipping away at the crushed ice in their soft drinks. They had nothing to say yet they all knew. Sore-footed, they decided upon the long walk back to the barracks, all choosing to believe that the death of the wretch had not happened, yet at the same time they were in no rush to hear any bad news of discovery being broadcasted with spectator's high-pitched glee; news hounds so terribly appalled at the discovery of a body about whom no one cared whilst alive (and about whom no one would care should it suddenly rise from silence). Whilst the boys had agreed amongst themselves that the incident had not actually taken place, they would also not mention the night's events even quietly amongst themselves. What's done in the dark remains in the dark.

Nervous vitality would scour each of all emotional involvement or responsibility; that moment had gone, and they would now exercise an innocence with a talent as impressive as anything shown on track and field. The grandstand event ahead offered the promise of an American all-time best, a lifetime's achievement along with a victoriously swinging gold medal, and, for this, cold-blooded routine returned for the following two weeks as mental and physical preparation continued in top-dog Boston training clubs and a new spurt urged them into spirited mid-day sessions and a heavy heat stretched throughout the month of May. “Yes,” Mr Rims drawled a drawn-out sigh, “you've caught the scent now.” Even a compliment wrap­ped itself in a banal tone of failure.

Surrounded by women, some mechanically minded, some badly made-up, and all envious of one another, the boys had heartily gnawed at their iron bars and unwisely allowed alcohol a free dash at their brains because things overall mattered a little less since their track timings were now a bed of roses and their overall fitness boomed good times ahead, and what harm would a little devilment do? The hair-flicks of the gathered women leant in and leaned forwards and then threw their heads back as they laughed louder than necessary at remarks that weren't especially funny in the first place but that gave opportunity to display expensive and expansive teeth. They clinked and they clanked, darting in and across the hunched revelers as swooping swallows of sensual scents begging for the male mystery to press the female mystery, and knowing with cast-iron assurity that it soon would. Such nights as these cannot ever fail.

Although the publicly confessed lust of the man must always be made to seem ridiculous and prepubescent, the lust of the woman is at first childlike and desperate – as if they know there is something about which they know nothing, and this itch takes on the aggressive – which almost never works. In the bar of cluttered sounds and souls all sorts of things become clear, as if life is about to be launched – or at least lived. Nails parts his legs widely as he slouches back – an open invitation to the women whose eyes dart across in wonder at how the flesh beneath arranges itself (there are such moments, after all, when only basic imagination is required). Women are less of a mystery because their methods and bodies have been over-sold, whereas the male body speaks as the voice calls a halt. The candid and phenomenal superstructure of Tracey is a moving photograph of sex already happening, with her long hesitations and her Elizabeth Taylor non-taming of the shrewd; the alka-seltzer voice, the beer-mat limply twisting erotically over and over in her hands – as if everything must be a prelude to the night's concluding act. The suspense is always held in a performance that must never drop below her usual level, and, in the interests of world sexual enlightenment, it does not. The glare could burn a hole in wood, and touch is transmitted optically. The eyes are there for a reason, and the aim is to use whatever it is one has, otherwise why have them? Sexual success is a logically given reality, and it simply becomes a question of weighing a sexual force that races ahead of rationale against the great poetry and drama of thought, whilst checking on the time minute-by-minute as if it were ticking towards death (which it is). A new greeter stares firstly into the eyes and then automatically at the mouth, and we all read the entire expanse of each other's faces as we speak. It is never merely a matter of just listening; the face is a page, and the voice might sing as it speaks. Tracey tests Harri teasingly by using her playful instinct of disagreeing with everything that he says so that an explosively defensive passion might burst as eyes of anger at least and at last show resolute intent. Often this backfires, but it is all that she can do, and it is the only way that she can signal to a man that she actually likes him. When he reacts with attack, she knows she has won, for her softening smile will calm crashing currents. In her search for a life that is whole, Tracey would, she freely admits, like a trophy man, and let history judge her otherwise and for other reasons in its due course, but let it also be known that she did, at the very, very least, have her trophy man at some stage. It must be that one man whose name becomes synonymous with her own, and a man whose name alone sums up everything, and whose vomit in the shower would not disgust her. Proust and Chagall were all very well, but it is quite something to release the sex imposed on the mind, and to release it with someone of equal will. Meaningless is the act of kindness from strangers, and hurtful is the sighing one-sided obligation as one watches the clock whilst the other is lost in panic and rush, unable to enjoy the living world now that it finally lands with evangelists' patience. Suddenly a flesh-and-blood figure lies down with you, he of dusky complexion, she free of her very last growing pains whilst knowing each of his eyelashes by heart. This moment shakes the faith of many souls, yet it mostly introduces you to someone you have never before conclusively encountered, and that is: someone like you who likes someone like you.