Burning Down George Orwell's House (24 page)

“I don't suppose there's any harm in telling you this,” Singer said.

“Yes?”

“I mean, the man is dead and gone, as they say, so I don't really see the harm.”

“Yes?”

“Enough time has passed and we need to let bygones be bygones.”

“Yes? Yes?”

Singer took another long drink. “You will be surprised to learn, young man, that George Orwell was not his real, God given name.”

That was it? That was Singer's big secret? “You don't say,” he said.

“No, no.” Singer looked around again. “His real name—and you should write this down—his real name was Eric Blair. E-R-I-C.”

“Eric Blair. Got it. Thank you, Mr. Singer.”

“Not at all, not at all.” Singer took another gulp and examined the barrel of his gun as if looking through a peephole, and found it clogged with mud. Ray took the opportunity to slip into the hotel. He had important matters to discuss with Molly, as far from her father's earshot as possible. Mrs. Campbell stood waiting for him behind the desk. Damn. “Good evening, Mrs. Campbell,” he said. “You're looking well.”

“Mr. Welter, some correspondence has arrived for you.”

She handed him a small stack—more cards from his mother and something in a green envelope—and he was surprised that they hadn't been torn open and pored over. He shoved them
into a pants pocket. “Thank you, Mrs. Campbell. Is Molly here, by any chance?”

“What would you want with her, then?”

“Frankly, I'm not sure how that's any of your concern.”

“Being equally frank, Mr. Welter, we can't imagine the sort of sordid business a grown man such as yourself might have with a young girl like Molly.”

“Mrs. Campbell, does it please you to single-handedly destroy the Highlanders' otherwise deserved reputation as the most hospitable and friendly people in the world?”

“You leave that girl alone and get out of this hotel this instant.”

“Leave her alone?” he asked, walking away. “I've done nothing wrong, you old bat. In fact, where were you when her father was beating her up? You weren't so protective then, were you?”

“Mr. Welter!” she called after him. “Mr. Welter!”

Molly sat perched behind the bar in the lounge, a book open on her lap. “That was awesome,” she said. “Mind you, you won't be seeing any more of your mail.”

“Doesn't matter. There's no one I want to hear from anyway,” he said and then realized that it wasn't entirely true.

“I suppose you're here to murder some animals tonight?”

“Yeah—I mean, no. I'm not even sure there's a wolf, much less a werewolf. It's absurd.”

“Of course it's absurd, but if you want to get by on Jura you need to embrace the absurdity, not run from it.”

“If Farkas thinks he's a werewolf, and if I simultaneously think I see him turn into one, then he is a werewolf?”

“Exactly,” Molly said. “All happenings are in the mind. Whatever happens in all minds, truly happens.”

“Clever girl.”

“Why
can't
two plus two equal five?”

“Because they just can't.”

“You're a lost cause, Ray.”

“So how do you explain the dead animals at my door?”

“I can't help you with that one. Some things can't be explained, not with all the logic in the world.”

“Maybe you're right. Either way, I have some good news for you.” He lowered his voice so the old bat wouldn't hear. “My divorce went through and—”

“Hold on, Ray,” Molly said. “Are you asking me to marry you? Because if so, I don't think—”

“No! My wife—my ex-wife—teaches at a very prestigious university in Chicago. It took some finagling, but as part of my divorce settlement I insisted on a full scholarship for you. You will have four years, all expenses paid. Housing, room and board, an allowance for books and living expenses. It's not entir—”

Molly screamed. She held her hands to her face and belted out a scream than would've made Edvard Munch proud. The iron chandelier swayed. The candles flickered. The men outside probably heard her above their gunfire and revelry.

“The offer doesn't include airfare,” he said, “but I can try
to help you with that. The university has an excellent art program and the best art museum in the nation is a couple of stops away on the L.”

Mrs. Campbell rushed in to investigate the noise. In her mind, Ray had probably torn the poor helpless child's skirt off and started raping her behind the bar. She was surprised to see them both clothed and laughing. “You leave that girl alone! What is the meaning of this?”

“I'm going to Chicago!” Molly yelled. She jumped up and down. Her shoes hammered against the floor. The bottles rattled behind her.

“Chicago?” Mrs. Campbell asked. “We'll just see what your father says about this! You are a wicked man, Mr. Welter. Shame on you.”

“All the information you'll need is here,” he said and handed Molly a large envelope stuffed with paperwork. It also included enough cash for a replacement bicycle. “Now I'm going outside to murder a defenseless animal that both is and isn't there.”

“Just one minute, Mr. Welter!”

He didn't stop to discuss it. “Good evening, Mrs. Campbell,” he said and tracked his muddy sneakers back across her floor.

She followed behind. “Mr. Welter!” she said.

Ray ignored her until, outside, she pushed past him and found Pitcairn behind the wheel of his flatbed. Farkas stood on the porch taking in the excitement. The caravan had
already started to pull away and Pitcairn's truck sat idling, last in line at the hotel entrance. The area on the western side where Loch Tarbert emptied into the Sound of Islay was said to be prime wolf territory. Engines roared. The headlights of the pickup trucks carved at the fog. Innumerable dogs barked and howled like a Greek chorus foretelling some poor sucker's fate. Peat smoke and diesel exhaust fought off the fresh sea air. All the men and boys filled the backs of the trucks to form a drunken parade of the deluded and kick up mud behind them.
There's no fucking wolf
, Ray wanted to holler after them. It wouldn't have done any good. Mrs. Campbell leaned in the open window of Pitcairn's truck. Standing with Farkas on the porch, he couldn't hear them, but it was clear that she was telling him about Molly's scholarship. Pitcairn looked at Ray and leaned on his horn. On her way back inside Mrs. Campbell refused to as much as look at him. His comeuppance had been long, long overdue.

Pitcairn stepped out of the truck with a groan. Sponge and Pete sat fidgeting in the cab like bored children. Pitcairn stretched his shoulders and cracked something in his back. He looked calm, which was unnerving. Outright hostility, even violence, might have been preferable. He had already tried once to kill him. That was no joke—the man was capable of murder. “Care to join us, Farkas?” Pitcairn asked.

Farkas was already smashed out of his gourd. Whisky and drool glistened in his immense beard. He held to the railing of the porch for balance. “Not this time, Gavin,” he said.

“How about you, Chappie? You ready?”

“With all due respect,” Ray said, “I think I'll stay here with Farkas.”

“Respect now, is it? Well there's a lovely fucking change of scenery. Oh no—you're coming with us. I'm not supposing you have a gun, now do you, Chappie?”

“No, unfortunately I don't.”

“You're not much of an American, are you? I thought all of you Yanks had guns.”

“Here's where I'll say my goodbyes,” Farkas said on his way back in to the lounge. “Catch me if you can!”

Farkas clearly didn't want to know about whatever it was Pitcairn had in mind for Ray. He wasn't going to stick his neck out for a foreigner. On Jura, as back in the advertising world, remaining noncommittal on all things was the key to self-preservation. It was a shame, but Ray couldn't count on Farkas's help, not even with someone as dangerous as Pitcairn.

The last of the other trucks rumbled off into the fog. The engine noise tapered to oblivion, leaving a pocket of silence. Behind the hotel, the water slapped against the docks and seawall. A slight wind sounded in the palm trees, the tops of which were rendered invisible by the mist. There were no lights to be seen beyond the hotel grounds. The mainland—and all of civilized, gridlocked Europe—was so close that Ray could feel its magnetism, but with no direct route of escape it seemed so distant. Jura was another planet unto itself. “I have an idea,” he said. “I'll stay here at the hotel until you guys are
done. At that point we can discuss anything that's on your mind.”

“You're full of bad ideas tonight, Chappie. I have half a mind to go over to the rescue and rehoming center and adopt a cute little puppy just so I can name it Welter and have the pleasure of kicking it every night.”

“Would you hurry along, eh?” Pete shouted. “They'll have shot that wolf before we've even left the car park.”

“You heard what the man said,” Pitcairn said. He lifted the front of his soiled soccer sweatshirt to show Ray the wooden handle of a small, antique pistol. “Now be a good lad and get in, Chappie. It wouldn't do to make a scene here.”

Pete and Sponge squeezed over to let him in. Sponge, who was pressed against the door, swigged from a bottle of whisky, but Pitcairn let go of the clutch and nearly cost him his front teeth. The bagpipe cassette provoked the same sensation in Ray's skull that a hacksaw might have. They pulled from the relative safety of the parking lot and turned south into the foggy night. The headlights couldn't penetrate more than a few feet in front of the truck, so Pitcairn turned them off. He plunged the truck, at full speed, into total darkness.

“What are you doing, eh?” Pete asked.

“I know this island like the back of my wanking hand.”

Ray closed his eyes and sat sandwiched by sweaty, half-drunken Scotsmen in a truck with no lights on. Pitcairn didn't slow down. The cabin of the truck vibrated like a motel room bed. The road turned and climbed and twisted and every so
often the tires ran off the road. Pitcairn somehow corrected his course in the dark and only turned the headlights on again in time to swing the wheel onto a trail even worse than the path to Barnhill.

Several pairs of eyes appeared in the headlights, froze for a moment, and then disappeared. The afterimage remained glued onto Ray's vision and imposed itself on everything he looked at. “Where are we going anyway?” he asked.

“Why to the Paps of course,” Pitcairn said.

T
HE TRUCK SLID TO
a stop in the cleavage between two of the island's three mountains, a mossy patch of land the locals called the bealach. Three men were playing bagpipes that sounded out of tune even by the lax standards of that instrument's repertoire. A bonfire blazed in the center of the clearing and, yes, several grown men were shimmying around it naked, including Singer, who at his advanced and flaccid age looked like a dancing skeleton celebrating the Day of the Dead. Ray got out of the truck. The whisky had hit him hard, but that didn't deter him from partaking again from every bottle that passed by. The alchemical process that had produced their contents utilized little more than earth and air and water and time. Single-malt scotches, he had come to understand, were as individual as people and, like people, became toxic in large doses.

The rest of the caravan had already arrived and the celebration carried over from the hotel, but the laughter had
taken a turn; the men still made jokes, told stories, but the voices were quieter, if only marginally. A subtle seriousness had overtaken the proceedings, maybe a greater sense of purpose. Wagers were made, liters of whisky consumed. The flames curled to the sky as if to chase off the fog and Fuller toiled around it in preparation for a feast. A goat rotated slowly on a spit. At dawn, at the conclusion of the hunt, two cauldrons full of seawater would be set to boil; they awaited the dozens of lobsters, caught nearby, that tangled and jousted in their ice chests. There was fresh cheese and bread and an entire cask of single malt, all of it local. That the food was organic went without saying. Jura had its own ecosystem, its own cycle of consumption and replenishment. Ray thought about what Farkas had said. Had his own presence contributed to the isle's natural life or disrupted it?

Men unpacked rifles from truck-bed lockers and loaded them with lead shot. The younger participants had the responsibility of lighting torches from the bonfire, which they would soon carry off into the shortest night of the year.

Ray watched as Pete took a long, three-Mississippi swallow from his bottle and handed it to Pitcairn, who with noisy deliberation hacked up a butter pat of green phlegm and drooled it into the remaining whisky. It bobbed in the beam of his flashlight like a bloated worm. “I'm supposing the rest of this belongs to me now,” he said.

“You're an arsehole,” Pete said. He took the bottle from
Pitcairn and, undeterred, drank another long swallow. Sponge looked on in disgust that verged on awed respect and then opened his hunting bag, from which he produced a bottle labeled I
SLAY
. He peeled off the foil, pulled the cork, and enjoyed a long taste.

Pitcairn climbed onto the bed of his truck. The crowd grew quiet, the bagpipes wheezed their last breaths. Even with everyone's attention, he didn't speak right away. He surveyed the assembled party with approval, then took a drooling gulp from a bottle handed up to him. He lit a cigarette while his congregation awaited his gospel. “I thought I might say a few words,” he said, and took another gulp. He swayed on his feet. “The problem we face, gentlemen, is one that is within our power to fix so long as we can come together on a night like this under the moonless sky to fix it.”

A few voices spoke out in assent from the crowd.