Hunters: A Trilogy (45 page)

‘Git the fuk outta my sight before I do somthang I’ll regret!’

Those words still haunted the child to this day.

They were his father’s words.

At eleven-years of age, the boy already stood at just less than six feet tall. His broad shoulders were already starting to show their promise, alongside his rapidly-forming pectoral muscles, their bulk straining the buttons of the old khaki shirt, flapping above his torn and faded Wrangler jeans. His upper body would have made many a grown man proud. Bulging biceps, gained from hours of working on the dilapidated farm, writhed down to thick, wirey forearms that ended in callused, work-hardened hands. His long, lanky legs were the only giveaway as to his real age.

He was, in many ways ‘a child in a man’s body, a poor boy who should be in some other place – the poor child!’ That’s what old Mrs Jones down at the store had said. And she was right, because, except for one thing, he was definitely a poor boy, a poor boy in almost every sense of the word.

His one saviour, the one treasured secret he held close to his chest, was the total passion he felt for all the creatures that flourished in every corner of the farm. He found joy in every hidden knot-hole of the barn’s wooden walls, every blade of grass and unturned stone held yet more of nature’s bounty.

These days the boy lived for the quiet moments of grace when his father was either in town or sleeping off the drink, which he’d gone to town for in the first place. The boy possessed an extraordinary empathy with any and all living things – except humans – and the wildlife came easily to him. Not in a spooky, horror movie sort of way, no, it was more as though they recognised the child’s inner self. They knew he meant them no harm and happily crawled, jumped or flew across his hands and arms without a care in the world.

He knew of every nook and cranny where his friends hid, worked and lived, and he spent hours simply lying still and watching them go about their business. Not just the insects or slugs and snails, either. He also spent many a happy time in observing much larger creatures, too. Deer, rabbits, even wolves, all came under his caring eye. Once, whilst lying in the red dust of a seasonally-dry river bed, he had been inches away from a snake. The husky lump on its tail made little rattling noises as it briefly stopped and flicked a forked black tongue in his direction.

The boy didn’t know what most of the things were called, but he had taken to sketching them whenever he could. His brown notebook had long ago become filled with their images, and so the child had learned to find an alternative source of paper. The stack of unpaid bills, which grew in a daily mountain underneath the letter box by the back door, provided him with just what he needed.

Ripping the envelopes open, he carefully used the blank reverse side of the letters to draw upon – even the big portions that were unmarked on the envelopes were put to good use. And now, stacked neatly within the safety of his battered suitcase, the one he had never used, nor probably ever would, there lay a large pile of beautifully-detailed, pencil sketches. Many a professional artist would have been more than happy to have such fine works in their portfolio. The intricate detail of each subject spoke not only of how much time it must have taken, but also of the great talent that lay hidden within the large hands of the long-haired youth.

However, his father didn’t care for such nonsense – he felt that if the boy had time for such things, then he obviously wasn’t being kept busy enough around the farm. Leaning forward, he clasped the child around the throat with a huge paw and drew him towards his lowered face. His son focused on the hairs springing over the chest-line of his father’s dirty blue dungarees as he felt himself being pulled inexorably towards the sweating face. The smell of tobacco and beer cascaded onto him. The man had found one of the child’s sketches – a minutely detailed drawing of a centipede, which the boy had stuffed into one of his baseball boots when his father had unexpectedly come into his sparsely-furnished bedroom. The centipede’s finely-sketched body was now grasped in the man’s hand, its delicate antennae poking out from behind his thick wrist. Screwing it into a ball, he held the crumpled paper in front of the child’s face.

‘What’n the hell do you call this sheeit, boy?’ he taunted. ‘You don’t have the time for scribbling, and ifen you do…well then, I guess we should find sommat else for you to be gettin’ on with!’ That big hand rose high into the air.

‘I ain’t bin lazy, Poppa! I just’ see stuff sometime when I walk the land, I promise I ain’t been lazy, I promise!’ the boy screamed, waiting for the blows to come.

It was afterwards when the child realised that he no longer loved the man who had ruled his life since the day he was born. In fact, he had the idea that, perhaps, he may well hate him. He wasn’t quite sure as his adolescent thoughts never really focused for too long on such things. Still, it was something he would think about later, maybe. As he sat alone in his room, massaging the pain from his thighs, the child wished he was back at school, even though he had fought and beaten almost every boy there, even the teenagers, he still craved the company.

His father had stopped sending him almost a year ago. ‘I cain’t afford the fuel to be goin up there an back two times a day, boy – we need to make sum munny here on the farm before you all go and do your fancy book studies.’ That had been the end to it. The older man was adamant and had even thrown the Headmaster down off the porch when he had come to the farm and asked after the child. The man had scrabbled around on his hands and knees, frantically searching for his cracked spectacles, before running to his car – batting the dust and chicken shit from his suit as he went. His father had laughed hysterically at the man’s plight. ‘Next time it’ll be some buckshot in your ass, muthafuka!’ he’d screamed. The white Chevy had roared off their land in a cloud of dust and was never seen again.

Yes, it was a lonely life and a hard life that the child endured. One day soon it would be too late, because the child would become the man his father was, and then the circle would be repeated. The boy was aware of this and subconsciously his greatest fear was being like the father, whom he had now begun to despise.

But he knew he was trapped, his voice had even started to sound like his father’s, words and phrases the older man used, were starting to become firmly lodged in the boy’s everyday vocabulary. He heard himself do it and didn’t like it, but he couldn’t stop it.

Monkey see, monkey do.

***

As the years passed by, the child became a man. By the time he was fifteen the child had become a man in a man’s body. A very large body it was, too. He continued to work the farm and continued to suffer the abuse of his father. The beatings had become less frequent these days, perhaps because he was starting to get bigger than the older man. However, he still stoically accepted the abuse. ‘That’s the way it’s always been, it’s just the way it is.’ That was the excuse he made, anything to stop the other dark thoughts from entering his mind. He hardly ever saw the old bastard now anyway, and he was glad. Instead, his mind was filled with thoughts of joining the Army and then the CIA, or something.

He had read about them whilst he’d been in the shop. On one of the rare occasions that he accompanied his father into town, the boy had been dispatched to the grocery store with the stark instruction ringing in his ear. ‘If’n you wanna eat, then you best get yourself to the shop, boy!’ his father said, holding out a five dollar bill. ‘If I ain’t here when you’re done, then you best had get back to the farm on your thumb. I maybes going for a little get together with the boys!’

‘Maybes’ always meant definitely, the boy had heard that tale before, many times. Nodding, he turned and strolled back up the street to where the shop lay. His tired baseball boots, now size fourteen, kicked up some of the leaves that the passing of winter had left. He picked up a few of them and flung the dry leaves high into the cool air, smiling in childish amusement at their twirling descent, before stepping up onto the boardwalk and entering the shop with a loud tinkle from the doorbell.

Mrs Jones had made him take a seat whilst she fixed him some lemonade. ‘Oh, my Lord’s…look at the size of you, young man,’ she said, ‘where have you been? It has been months since I saw you last! Are you well, how is the farm? Are you eating, are you…?’ As was usual, the questions simply streamed out of her wrinkled mouth. The boy sat and smiled, he didn’t mind at all as Mrs Jones was very kind to him. Besides which, she made mighty fine lemonade and always had some of her ‘special cookies’ hidden away, too. He guessed it must have been like that all the time for someone lucky enough to have a Momma – one that happened to be alive.

He loved being in the shop with all its neat rows of goods: bright jars of sweets, tins of soups and strange meats. Packets containing all sorts of wonderful things, things he had never even seen or heard of, never mind tasted. And the smell, oh, now that was something else. Fresh ham, smoked bacon, and a German sausage that came in a long, dark roll – the sausage was so spicy that it always made his eyes water. Mrs Jones used the whirring electric blade to cut slices of meat and cheese for her customers. She would put them in paper and then slide them onto her new weighing scales.

‘Digital they are, my dear,’ she would say. ‘There you go; it’s a little bit over, if you don’t mind?’ Her charming smile would always get them to part with the extra cash for that ‘little bit over.’ She winked at the boy when they weren’t watching. Every now and then she would give him an off-cut from the meat and cheeses which she dispensed. They were so tasty and the boy would have been quite happy to sit there all day, every day, for the rest of his life.

It was whilst he sat perched at the counter, sipping on cool lemonade and nibbling on spicy sausage, that he’d laid eyes upon a magazine, one that rested on the counter by the jar of black-and-white Bull’s Eyes. Mrs Jones had no idea the magazine was there, and if she had known, the old woman would never have let him see it. She knew the child, and she also knew the contents of that magazine were exactly what the boy didn’t need in his life. In fact, they were the last thing he needed. This particular magazine had a lot more laying between its covers than just some colourful pictures of wildlife – this magazine had something else altogether, something that she should have seen, seen and hidden immediately. But she missed it, and more importantly, she missed whoever or whatever had placed it there.

The magazine had a colourful picture of a military man on the front cover. Picking it up, the boy leafed through the pages, mainly looking at the pictures. It had been a while since he had had seen any literature, other than the stream of bills that he had converted into sketches, that is. His reading was good, but he loved pictures more than words, and so he browsed for a while, flicking through the pages and making the odd polite comment in answer to Mrs Jones’ buzzing questions.

He must have been in there with her for the best part of two hours before he realised the time. Rising to his feet with a sigh, he passed the old lady the money and asked for some supplies. Five-minutes later he was back on the street with a bag of tinned goods and a loaf of fresh bread – the offending magazine now firmly tucked into the back pocket of his jeans. He waved at the shop window where he saw Mrs Jones looking at him with a worried smile upon her face. Not even bothering to see if his father was ready to go, the young man turned and started the long walk back to the farm. If his luck was in then maybe he would see someone who would be good enough to give him a ride. If not, well, then it wouldn’t be the first time he had made the dreary trudge back home.

His luck was most certainly in on that particular day, and not just in the ride he hitched after only five minutes of walking, either. His luck was about to change for sure, about to change forever.

He had barely extended his large thumb, when, out of nowhere, an old truck appeared on the horizon. Seeing that it was going back into town, and knowing that it wouldn’t be stopping for him, he lowered his hand and continued walking along the hot road. With a slight screeching of tyres, the truck ground to a halt next to him. Its engine sounded mighty fine to the boy, he’d fixed a few in his time and this one purred as sweet as a pussy cat.

‘Yes siree!’ he thought as he looked up at the driver’s side of the truck.

He was greeted by a tough looking man who sat at the steering wheel.

‘Hello mate, do you need a lift or something?’ the man asked.

The boy didn’t recognise the accent, and had no idea as to whatever a ‘mate’ was, either. But if it would get him a lift, then he would happily be one. ‘Yessir, I am, I’m going to the old place about five miles back the way you all have just come, sir,’ he said, trying really hard not to let his father’s voice come out. ‘Are you sure you don’t mind? It’s rightly outta your way, so it is.’

The big guy grinned at him. ‘Nah, that’s no bother,’ he said. ‘Jump on up, you’ll have to use the back, I’m afraid – there are already three of us up front.’

That surprised the boy, he had been sure the man was on his own, but there they were, another big man with jet black hair, and also a woman. She sat in the middle of the men and gave him a friendly wave. The boy guessed that he must have missed them in the reflection from the sun that glinted off the windshield.

With another large grin, he happily vaulted into the rear of the truck. As they drove towards his father’s farm, the boy looked into the front of the cab through the small rear window in the bulkhead. He saw the woman rest her head against the driver’s shoulder. She seemed to be very sleepy and the man kept glancing at her – he looked worried. The other man, the dark-haired one, had some strange television thing. It rested upon his knees and made funny pictures. As he looked, the boy saw blue arrows and green writing zooming across its shiny screen.

With a shrug, he turned away and let the breeze blow through his hair, the smell of the fields came to him and he smiled. ‘I sure am lucky to catch a lift of’n such fine folk,’ he thought. The countryside rushed by and then, without him showing them where to turn, they left the road and drove onto the track leading to the farm, rumbling across the cattle-grid as they did so. The faded wooden sign that said ‘Tolder’s Place’ must have given the game away, he guessed. The man in the passenger seat turned and gave him a reassuring smile and thumbs-up sign. The boy returned the compliment and laughed. ‘The world ain’t such a bad place after all!’ he murmured.