Gravity Box and Other Spaces (23 page)

In the morning Alan took the truck into Buxton, leaving Sean with the all the chores. Sean fed the cows and chickens, loaded wood into the racks by all the stoves, and collected eggs. Chores complete, he stole into the barn, pulse racing, and opened the locker.

He stared at the photograph. He had been barely seven when Roy left for service in the army. Their mother had passed away the year before and the pension they had received since Father's death—an Army stipend, partly compensation for wounds he had received in France during the Great War—had stopped coming. With just the three of them, the farm was harder to hang onto. They needed a steady income so Roy had joined.

But before that he had started the
Arrows
. When he died, Alan had tried to run them, but less than a year later, when times became even harder and more people lost farms and businesses and jobs, and it looked as if even the Pettys might lose what they had, he had disbanded them. All that remained was here, in this little room. Sean had been too young to remember details, details he now craved.

As he grew older, Sean began to think there had been more to the
Arrows
than Alan let on. They had disappeared when the troubles began. It did not make sense. Hard times came and a band of men like Robin Hood's own just faded away? More likely, Sean thought, they were still
around—Roy's mission to the Holy Land, news of his death, crisis in the land—too much coincidence, too little fact.

Maybe Alan's calling them back together now, he thought. England has no king. It's necessary.

He locked it all back up and walked towards the house. Up on the road he saw a man standing by the old stone wall. From the distance Sean could not tell who he was, only that he was a thin man wearing a long gray overcoat. The man stared at him for a time, then turned slowly and walked off down the road, head bowed.

It was nearly dark by the time Sean heard Alan drive back into the yard. When Alan came into the house Sean saw a grim look on his face.

“The question is whether the subsidy will continue,” he said, hanging up his coat inside the door. “King George kept us from losing the farm and Edward said he wouldn't change that. But now—”

“You'll be calling the
Arrows
back together, then?”

Alan stared at him. “What?”

“The
Arrows
. There's going to be need for them now. Isn't that where you've been? Getting things started to call them back together?”

“And just what would the
Arrows
have to do with anything?”

“We've got no king, Alan. We have to be ready—”

Alan's face contorted with anger. “Enough. I don't want to hear another word about the
Arrows
. They're gone. They won't be coming back, not for this, not for anything.”

“But—”

“I said enough! I won't hear any more about them! You've got to get them out of your head!”

He paced the living room. “In the morning I'm burning all that stuff. I shouldn't have kept it this long.”

Sean jumped up. “No! You can't!”

“I can and I will. You've got your head full of fairytales and nonsense. This is serious business, not some storybook fancy. When it's gone you can get your head straight about how the world really is.”

“Alan!”

“Enough! No more! Go to bed!”

“You can't—”

Alan reared back and raised his hand. Sean stopped. Slowly, Alan lowered his arm, but he quivered from the effort.

“Go to bed.”

Sean backed away from him all the way to the stairs.

Sean packed salt pork wrapped in waxed paper with some fruit and three loaves of bread into his duffle, along with extra clothes, matches, a small axe, a couple of knives, and a few books. He estimated he had enough food to get him by until he snared his first rabbits. After that he could forage. The woods, even in the cold of winter, supplied enough provender to keep a careful man alive. He also packed Roy's handbook on the forest to fill any gaps in his knowledge.

Alan's snoring filled the house. Sean considered leaving a note, but decided against it. Alan no longer understood. All he talked about these past few years was politics and the economy, just like everyone else. The things that really mattered no longer mattered to Alan. Leaving a note would just make him angrier.

He went to the barn and opened the locker. In the wan light from the lantern he studied everything again. He took the photograph from its nail and tucked it in his duffle. Then he found a bow with a decent string and a quiver of arrows. He rolled them into the banner and tied it with its own cord.

There was no way to take the oak table. If Alan really intended to burn it, Sean could do little to stop him. At least it was in the photograph.

He rummaged through the stack in the corner. Old clothes, a couple of sacks, another banner. Nothing else struck Sean as important as what he already carried. He could not save it all.

He opened a canvas bag and found it stuffed with shirts. He pulled one out. It was grayish and down the back ran a dark, wide arrowhead. He stared at it for a long time. He had never seen or heard about these before.

Sean quickly added one to his supplies, blew out the lantern, and locked the padlock. He pocketed the key and walked out into the cold night air. He entered the forest just as the moon rose, feeling confident and excited. He felt ready, though he could not say what exactly was coming. Roy, he was sure, would be proud of him.

He found the stone shelf late in the afternoon. He dug out enough of the debris that filled the hollow beneath it to build a decent fire and lay out his bedroll by nightfall. The next morning he cleaned out more of the leafy humus to make a livable space and started cutting wood and stacking it around the opening to cover his lair.

He found a stream a short walk away. The water burbled over worn rock, icy cold, beneath a few thin sheets of ice. He set up snares nearby. After laying in a supply of
kindling for the fire, he settled down to go through Roy's book.

The
King's Arrows
had studied woodcraft, and Roy had written chapters on everything. Reading it, Sean wished he had been older then so he could have joined them. Alan had told him once that the Arrows were sort of like the Boy Scouts that General Baden-Powell had started back before the Great War, but Sean always believed there had been more to it. People talked about the Boy Scouts, but they treated the
Arrows
differently.

Some of the
Arrows
still lived around Buxton, but most had moved away. The depression had caused a lot of people to move. Times had improved in the last few years, so there were fewer people losing work, but Sean expected that to change now. Without a king, England would drift, just as it had when Richard was held captive in Austria and his brother sat as regent. There would be need of a band of freemen to keep faith until the king returned.

He woke with a start, coughing. Smoke filled his small dugout under the shelf. His eyes stinging, Sean charged out through the curtain of twigs and branches he had built. He hacked painfully, clearing the smoke from his lungs. The wind had shifted. The breeze no longer ran away from his hideout, but toward it and pushed the smoke back inside.

When he recovered he tore away some of the cover and put the fire out. The smoke slowly dissipated. While he waited, he wondered sullenly where he might find a better place to build a shelter. He leafed through Roy's handbook but found nothing about changing breezes. Still coughing, he made a new fire outside of the hollow.

In the morning he ate some bread and pork, brushed his teeth, then went to the stream to check his snares.

Two of them were empty, but as he came up to the third he saw someone hunched over it. As he watched, the man—who wore a threadbare army overcoat and shoes the color of dirt—removed a rabbit from the snare.

“Hey!” Sean called and ran toward him. “That's mine!”

The man turned and stared, wide-eyed. His hair was matted and his face was covered by a tangle of beard. He clutched the rabbit to him as if it were a purse filled with gold. Suddenly, he bent over and rushed forward catching Sean with his shoulder just above the sternum lifting him off the ground.

Sean's feet snagged against rocks. He fell, arms wide, straight backward into the shock of ice cold water. His arms flailed, trying to find something to hang onto, as he went under. He swallowed water, twisted, and managed to find the bottom. He got his footing and lifted his head out of the stream, gagging and freezing. He heard the man running away.

Sean climbed out of the water, soaked through. Shivering, he checked his other snares—all empty—and reset the one the poacher had emptied. Then he made his way back to his camp.

He undressed, laid the icy-damp clothing out near the fire, and dried himself with the single towel he had brought. Staying close to the fire, he dressed quickly. After a time he ate some fruit and bread then fell asleep.

He woke in darkness, hacking raggedly. His fire was nearly out. With an aching head, he dropped kindling onto the embers and got a blaze going again. His lungs hurt. He could not shake off the chill. Returning to sleep was impossible. He stared into the yellow tongues that licked the wood, coughing from time to time, until dawn.