Always the Sun (18 page)

Jamie was close enough to kick it. He aimed for its swollen testicles and instead punted it in the taut, pink stomach. The dog yelped, in pain this time. It took a moment to reorientate itself. In his haste, Jamie was unable to mount the bike. He swung one leg over the saddle and lost his footing. The bike slipped from under him. The dog bit into his thigh and worried the flesh like a rubber bone.

Jamie fell. The bike was beneath him. One leg was twisted beneath it. The dog was on top of him. He grabbed its collar to keep its jaws from his face. Its breath stank. Its snout flashed like a camera.

Finally, Craig Hooper’s hand closed on the dog’s collar. He lifted it, kicking and writhing, into the air. Craig Hooper was screaming at them to ‘fuck off, fuck
off
while the dog bent and curled and snapped its jaws and barked and snarled, three feet above the ground.

Jamie righted the bike and mounted it, successfully this time. He saw that Stuart was waiting on the nearest corner.

Jamie would never have believed it was possible to cycle so quickly. He seemed without weight and of infinite velocity, the bike skimming the surface of the earth like something devoid of friction.

They discarded the bikes in the Ballards’ driveway. Stuart raced to the front door. Tears came with its familiar scent. He cried out:
‘Mummy!’

(Jamie had promised never to tell anyone, but he told Sam. They exchanged a look, and giggled.)

Mrs Ballard pressed a clean towel to Jamie’s thigh, giving him a glimpse down her blouse and a head of her perfume. He thought she might detonate with repressed panic before the ambulance arrived.

The sound of its sirens brought some relief. Mrs Ballard and Stuart rode in the ambulance with Jamie. Stuart was given a dressing to press to his own wound, which seemed almost desultory compared to the great level of care and attention the paramedics paid to Jamie.

‘There’s like a big vein in the thigh?’ Jamie told Sam. ‘Apparently, if the dog had bitten the vein I might have bled to death.’

He marked a tiny measure between thumb and forefinger.

‘It was this close,’ he said.

Sam exhaled, whistling through his teeth.

‘How many stitches?’

Jamie looked up at the female nurse who’d come in to change his drip.

‘About sixty,’ she said. ‘In the thigh. After the wound was cleaned.’

‘Sixty?’

‘And twenty more in Jamie’s arm and wrist. And a couple on his forehead, where he banged it.’

She tugged Jamie’s earlobe and said, ‘He’s been in the wars.’

Jamie smiled up at her, subservient and proud.

Sam asked if he might have a word with her in private. He followed her from the cubicle. She told him that, yes, there would be some scarring. The bites were quite serious, and it was in the nature of such injuries that the flesh was ragged and torn at the edges, and difficult to stitch cleanly. But there’d been no real muscle damage and the scarring might not be as bad as Sam was expecting—modern colloid treatments had reduced the kind of permanent disfigurements that once had been common. Jamie was lucky to have suffered no concussion, despite giving himself a fair old whack on the head. She’d seen boys of his age killed by less serious tumbles. The worst of it was, he’d lost a lot of blood. He’d been fortunate to get to the Ballards’ house without passing out, and more fortunate that Mrs Ballard had known how to fashion a tourniquet. It was she who’d done most to ensure that Jamie’s injuries didn’t have more serious consequences.

While she spoke, Sam cupped a hand over his mouth and nodded.

She asked if he’d like to speak to a doctor. He said no, and thanked her, then he put his head through the gap in the curtains round Jamie’s cubicle and told him he was going to make a phone call. He went back through reception and into the car park, lit a cigarette, turned on his mobile and called Mel.

When he spoke the words ‘
savaged by a pit-bull fucking terrier
,’ the other smokers gave him impressed glances.

He put the phone in his pocket, ground the cigarette beneath his shoe and wandered back through to the ward. He already felt at home. Hospitals did that. They became too familiar, too quickly. He stopped off at the Coke machine and got a can for him and a can for Jamie.

He took them to the cubicle. Jamie couldn’t move easily.

Sam popped the can for him, and sat back and watched his boy drinking.

They didn’t really speak until Mel arrived. They heard her before they saw her, a rushing through the swinging doors, a low, theatrical whisper, asking where her nephew was. Jamie smiled at Sam’s fond irritation, and called out to her. She must have been close because they could hear the catch in her throat and the accelerated clicking of her heels. She battered her way through the curtains and threw herself at Jamie. She smelt of wine and perfume.

Jamie was kept in overnight. Sam and Mel waited at his bedside long after he fell asleep. Finally, a nurse ushered them out.

Sam called a minicab from a vandalized free phone on the reception desk. The A & E department was beginning to fill with closing-time casualties.

The minicab, when it arrived, smelt of a hundred years of cigarettes. Sam and Mel were cold and grubby with tiredness. The streetlights slowly pulsed and strobed over their heads. The driver didn’t attempt to engage them in conversation, perhaps judging them recently bereaved.

In the morning, Sam called at the Ballards’. Their front garden was orderly and groomed, with gardenias in concrete pots either side of the front door.

Martin Ballard was at work. His wife, Jane, came to the door. She was tall and as pink as a sugar mouse. She was very showered and perfumed and coiffed, as if permanently expecting company.

The house made Sam feel adolescent and scruffy, and when he explained who he was, he stumbled over his words. But Jane Ballard smiled and stepped aside to let him in.

She called Stuart downstairs. Barefoot in a Liverpool FC strip, he limped down. Sam thrust out his hand. After a nervous, confirming glance towards his mother, Stuart extended his hand and shook manfully.

‘I wanted to thank you,’ Sam told him. He was monitoring the tone of his voice, wary of the patronizing manner that crept in when people addressed the old or the young.

‘It took some bottle,’ he said. ‘Doing what you did.’

Stuart looked proud. Sam guessed he had never been so praised in his mother’s presence. He clapped him on the shoulder and broke the moment.

He said, ‘Make sure you come and see him.’

‘Is he home?’

‘Later today. They kept him in overnight, just to keep an eye on him.’

‘Is he off school?’

‘For a bit, yeah.’

‘He’s all right, though?’

‘Thanks to you, he is.’

That was perhaps a compliment too far. Stuart said, ‘Nah,’ in a strange tone and looked at his bare feet. Then he said he had to go (he didn’t bother trying to explain where), and went back upstairs, greatly exaggerating his limp.

Sam watched him.

‘Brave boy,’ he said.

Jane Ballard was looking at the stairs where Stuart had been, as if noticing for the first time the space he had occupied.

‘Yes,’ she said.

There was a mystery behind that look which Sam had no desire to investigate.

He said, ‘I wanted to thank you, too.’

She turned to face him. The odd look had gone and she had again adopted the self-conscious languor she’d worn to the door like a nightdress.

Sam was surprised to find himself responding to it. He shifted his weight.

He said, ‘They told me at the hospital …’

He broke her bright, unblinking gaze.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘You really helped.’

She smiled.

‘It’s very nice of you to say so.’

‘Not at all. And please thank—’

‘Martin?’

‘Please thank Martin for me, too. I hope I wasn’t rude.’

‘Not at all.’

‘It was a bit of a shock, that’s all. I wasn’t thinking straight. But I can’t believe I didn’t thank him.’

‘Really,’ she said, ‘don’t give it a thought.’

Sam looked down and smiled.

‘I didn’t know if I was coming or going.’

‘Of course not. Your child was in pain.’

He couldn’t predict from what angle this conversation would approach him next.

‘Yes,’ he said.

She touched his shoulder.

‘They don’t stop being precious,’ she said, ‘just because they’re growing away from you.’

He brushed at his eyes.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

She squeezed his upper arm.

‘Don’t be silly.’

He smiled.

She said, ‘Jamie’s a lovely boy.’

‘Yes,’ said Sam.

‘And he’s always welcome here.’

Sam could feel the sun on his neck. He enjoyed standing there in the hallway being outmanoeuvred by Jane Ballard. But it was time to go. He jingled his car keys round his index finger, in unconscious and perhaps guilty mimicry of her husband.

On the way home, he stopped off to buy some things for Jamie: a pile of magazines, a couple of books, a new driving game for the PlayStation. He stopped off again at the local chemist to pick up some prescription painkillers and antibiotics, and while he was there he bought some Lucozade, a warm bottle of which had become such an integral component of British illness that it seemed to evoke another time, like a faded postcard of the Silver Jubilee.

He took the carrier bags to the boot of the car, and dumped them in. Then he went to the camping shop, to find something he could kill the dog with.

15

He’d known the camping shop by the railway station since he was a child. He was disappointed to discover that it was no longer the fusty, underlit store of his recall; its dustiness would have suited his furtive intent. But the camping shop had been rebranded as an Outdoor Adventure Centre, and it was vivid and halogen-lit. Somehow, extra floorspace had been acquired; there was now room near the back of the ground floor to erect a four-man tent on a square of Astroturf, around which browsed a number of young people in primary-coloured, sleeveless fleeces.

Sam wandered up and down before locked glass cabinets that contained racks of knives, multi-tools, binoculars, torches and compasses. He felt smug and wise. When the first rush of wisdom had passed, he became worried that a particular sales assistant was watching him too closely, so he went and examined with an expert eye the display of rucksacks and hiking socks.

When Sam was very young, he and his father had sometimes gone camping. He remembered little more than the pride he’d felt, the weight of the rucksack on his shoulders, the straps grating his skin and the sunburn on the back of his unprotected neck. Like Jamie, Sam had been scared of cows—except his fear had a precipitating event. His father had hurried them across a particular field, towards a stile that never seemed to get any closer. Too late, Sam’s father realized that in the northeast corner of the field there stood a bull; solid and lumpy as an ingot of lead. The bull appeared to be uninterested in them. But it was built like a train, and it could charge like one if it chose. Sam recalled the repressed and fearful quiver in his father’s voice.

This had been an acute, early moment of self-consciousness and separation. Although some years were to pass before he learnt the full extent of his father’s weaknesses, and many more years yet before he began to understand them, Sam never again regarded him with uncritical awe.

He sometimes wondered if he’d passed that experience on to his own son. Perhaps at the sight of cows, Sam let off some pheromonal fear-signal, alerting Jamie at a pre-conscious level that his father, the divine protector, was himself frightened by these doe-eyed, slow-moving ruminants.

Approvingly, Sam fingered the nylon weave of an orange rucksack. He tested the padding of the shoulder strap. Then he wandered over to inspect the walking boots. His own pair had been brown leather, piously dubbined, and they had chewed his feet bloody for six months. His father had assured him it was worth it; the boots would last a lifetime. But Sam didn’t want them to last a lifetime. He wanted rid of them. They ruined the camping weekends, and they ruined getting home, too—because his father insisted that newspaper be spread on the kitchen table and the boots be dubbined before Sam was permitted to slip into a cold, blissful bed.

He felt vindicated by history. During the intervening thirty years, the design and construction of hiking boots had been revolutionized. He felt old, and wiser still. The new boots were ranked on Pyrex shelves, mounted on the rear wall of the shop. His kind of boot still existed, but they were tucked away on the top left-hand shelf, where only the most determined customer could reach them. The new boots were constructed of strong, lightweight, waterproof, foot-friendly and colourful materials that required little or no maintenance.

Sam passed through wisdom to melancholy. It was sometimes disturbing, how quickly his memories of childhood had come to belong essentially as well as factually to another century. The colour was fading from his memory. He and his father slogged up rainy hills in their vicious boots and scratchy woollen socks, like characters in a Hovis advert.

He bought two Leatherman multi-tools, one for him and a miniature version as a gift for Jamie. He also bought two eight-inch fishing knives with serrated blades, a smaller version with a six-inch blade, a landing net, such as might be used for salmon, and a small spear-gun designed for deep sea fishing, the kind included in most boats’ emergency ditch-kits. He bought a couple of compasses too, for no reason other than that he liked their weight and design. Finally, he bought a pair of gloves and some thick grey socks with a black heel and toe-piece.

He wanted to look like he was maintaining a permanent kit, but he needn’t have bothered. The shopkeeper, a stringy man with grey, cropped hair, was as uninterested in Sam as his colleague was suspicious. He was poring through a colour catalogue, marking off items on a checklist with a chewed ballpoint pen.

Sam put the kit in his shoulder bag and hoped he wouldn’t be mugged. It would be embarrassing to be rolled by two bored teenagers when he was carrying such a selection of weaponry.

It was a short drive to the builder’s merchants, where he bought two broom handles and some duct tape. As an afterthought, he selected a couple of pick-axe handles, just to make sure.

Mel had gone to pick Jamie up from the hospital. There was no way to be sure they wouldn’t be home early, but Sam couldn’t wait. Without bothering to remove his coat, he made the first spear on the kitchen worktop, taping a fishing knife to the end of a broom handle. With it, he jabbed at the leg of lamb he’d left there to defrost. The blade penetrated the flesh, but the impact wrenched the handle from his grip, hurting his wrist, and the knife was torn free of its makeshift housing.

Next, he used an epoxy glue to bind the knife to the pick-axe handle and doubly secured it with duct tape. With this, he was able to hack and slash at the leg of lamb with some abandon. It was a happily remedial interval. When he was done, he stared at the ragged clod of flesh on the kitchen floor.

He cleaned off the knife blade and used a dustpan and brush to sweep up the tatters of lamb from the floor tiles. Then he made a second spear to the same design. He carried the weapons to the car, wrapped in a blanket, and put them in the boot.

Mel and Jamie got home at teatime, three hours late. Sam ran to the door to welcome his son. He kissed Jamie’s forehead and gripped him fiercely until Jamie said, ‘All right, Dad,’ and hobbled through to the front room and turned on the TV.

In the morning, Sam was brittle and withdrawn. When he refused breakfast, Mel assumed he was hungover.

Before leaving, he went upstairs and found his old beanie cap. He pulled the hat over his shaggy hair so it stuck out like the petals of an inverted flower. He removed his new watch and the old chain round his neck, and finally his wedding ring. He put them in a Ziploc plastic freezer bag, and the bag in his jacket pocket.

He looked for a long time at the pale blue band where the wedding ring had been. He flexed his fist. It looked unfamiliar, like a transplant.

He called goodbye from the hallway and hurried out before they saw him. He checked the stuff was still in the boot: salmon net, spear-gun, home-made spears.

It took some time to find the right garages. For a while he thought the written-off Capri had been moved and he would never find it. But it was there, still propped on piles of breeze-blocks.

Sam parked across the street and waited.

Craig Hooper appeared shortly after midday, his dog trotting primly alongside him. Craig Hooper wore his hair gelled in a Caesar crop, and a puffer jacket over stained blue overalls. His Nike trainers were split along the insoles.

The dog swaggered, its head held high and alert.

Sam’s saliva evaporated. He sat there while Craig Hooper lightly hooked the dog’s lead on the edge of a dented, loose chromium bumper and lifted the green garage door. The door was counterweighted by two concrete blocks. Craig Hooper emerged from the garage carrying a toolbox and a long torch. He wore a dressing above the ridge of his eyebrow.

Hate drew a swirling Mandelbrot set in Sam’s gut. He grabbed the steering wheel and watched. He imagined he knew what a wolf felt, defending its cubs on some snowy tundra.

Something inside him that was not him decided when the time had come. Sam put the bag containing his jewellery into the glove compartment. He leant across the seats and opened the passenger door, leaving it slightly ajar. Then, having left the keys in the ignition, he stepped out on to the pavement. He walked round the car and opened the boot.

He paused. Craig Hooper was paying him no attention, but the dog had lifted its boxy muzzle and was tasting the air. Perhaps it could smell the cloud-burst of hatred blasting from Sam’s skin. If so, Sam was glad. He wanted it to know what was about to be done to it.

The dog shuffled its feet. He thought it might be retreating, but it was simply repositioning itself. The muscles in its shoulders were bunched. The velvety skin was soft over massive mandibles, like a soldier ant’s. Sam could see the black, fleshy ruffles inside its lips and its hot, red mouth. The yellow teeth and the stupid, hungry eyes.

Sam looked at the array of survival equipment. The spear-gun and the salmon net looked puny. He was embarrassed by them. He grabbed the two spears and slammed the boot. The dog yelped. It adjusted its footing again, to monitor Sam’s progress.

As Sam approached, it gave out a short, warning bark. Craig Hooper reached out from under the car to tickle its belly, to comfort it.

Soon Sam had come within two or three metres of the animal. It didn’t strain at the leash. It simply faced him, silently, and made cool eye-contact.

Sam looked into limitless malice. Beneath the car, Craig Hooper remained unaware of his presence.

Sam took the spear in both hands.

The dog exploded into gnashing rage. In a moment it had bucked and flexed free of its tether. Sam was startled by the speed of it. He took an automatic step backwards. The dog ran at him. Sam lost his footing and stumbled.

He lunged the spear at an acute, unmeasured angle. It entered the dog’s pink belly, an inch or two above its swollen testicles. The sudden, unexpected weight wrenched the spear from his hands. He scrambled backwards like a crab.

The dog yelped and curled and thrashed.

While Craig Hooper freed himself from beneath the car, Sam stooped to retrieve the spear. He watched the dog find its feet. For a moment it tottered drunkenly. He saw a blue loop of intestine protruding from the gash in its belly. Alternately, it was snorting with pain and yelping with fury.

By now, Craig Hooper was standing beside the Capri. He had an oily yellow rag in his blackened left hand. Without comprehension, he watched his skittering, yelping dog.

Abruptly, the dog seemed to remember itself. It stopped yelping and lowered its head. Once again it ran at Sam.

Sam had been captivated by what he thought were its death throes. He had yet to get to his feet. He was still down on one knee.

The dog came thundering towards him on stumpy legs. This time Sam jabbed the spear deliberately, two-handed, and with force. The blade slipped into the dog just below the white diamond on its throat. This time it didn’t squeal. It snarled and gnashed and kept coming, like a landed shark.

Sam fought to retain his grip. The dog’s struggles worried him this way and that.

Craig Hooper approached. He was yelling something, but Sam didn’t know what it was. The jaws of the enraged, impaled dog snapped at the air close to his testicles. He tried to push it away. But it was too heavy and too determined.

Sam levered himself to a half-standing crouch.

The dog continued to thrash. It had a surfeit of life. It was trying to free itself from the serrated blade. Sam wondered if he should let it. Perhaps it would simply retreat to a corner to lick its mortal wounds, but he doubted it. The dog was a knot of hate.

Sam gave the spear an exploratory prod. The dog screamed. It sounded like a baby. With greater urgency, it tried to scrabble backwards. He heard its claws skittering on the concrete.

The tip of the blade scraped bone. The dog was panicking now, kicking its legs uselessly in all directions. Another furious prod tipped it on to its back, like a beetle. It gave up. It grew calm. It rolled over, showing Sam its pink and wet, ruby-red belly.

Sam leant forward and put all his weight into a final downward thrust. The knife found a space between two vertebrae and sliced through the dog’s spinal column. Its tip snapped on the concrete, causing Sam to stumble a few steps forward.

Sam stood straight.

He waited for Craig Hooper to turn on him. But no attack came.

Craig Hooper stood with collapsed shoulders, staring down at the dog. Sam saw that he was little more than a boy. He regretted the necessity of hurting him.

Craig Hooper got down on his knees. He took the dead animal, slippy and loose, into his arms. Its velvety fur was smeared black and spiked, as if with oil. The boy tugged at the spear. The dog’s body bent to follow it, as if reluctant now to be parted. Then the dog flopped back on to the concrete. Its front paws twitched slightly, as if it dreamt.

Craig Hooper rocked the dog on his lap. He stroked its head with sweeps of his palm, as he had probably done when it was a puppy.

Sam picked up the spear. He supposed, vaguely, that he would have to get rid of it somewhere.

He said, ‘Your dog hurt my son.’

Craig Hooper didn’t look up.

He said, ‘You didn’t have to hurt him. You didn’t have to fucking
hurt
him.’

He buried his face in the dog’s neck.

It was an awkward moment.

‘Get the next one trained,’ said Sam, with a contempt he no longer quite felt.

As he walked back to the car, he half-expected Craig Hooper, feral with anguish, to come running after him. But Craig Hooper just stayed there, cuddling the corpse of his dog.

Sam took off the hat and gloves and jacket and threw them in the boot with the spear. He hadn’t expected so much blood. His face and eyebrows were thick with it. His clothes smelt coppery, like a butcher’s. He sat at the wheel, trying to clean his face and neck with a scrap of old tissue.

It took him three attempts to get the engine started. As he pulled away from the kerb, the passenger door, which he’d left ajar in case he needed to get in quickly, swung open. He stopped in the middle of the road to pull it closed. Somewhere past the Dolphin Centre, he drew in to the kerb. He was very hot and the black-pudding smell inside the car had nauseated him. He opened the door and puked into the road.