The Walk Home (13 page)

“Aw that heart, aye? Cannae beat it. That’s Song ae Solomon.”

Eric always said what part he was reading before he started; the book and the chapter it was from, and what the people in it were called. Stevie could read a bit by now, so he’d sit close, and follow his uncle’s finger along the words. But there were so many of them, and they were dead small too, it made Stevie tired, so he’d shut his eyes, and then he could feel Eric speaking more than hear him. It was like a hum in his chest, low and steady, and that was nice, so Stevie mostly just followed the old man’s voice; the sounds it made if not the sense.

After the story was finished, Eric would get Stevie to say what he remembered.

“Just tell me they bits that stuck.”

He’d tap Stevie’s forehead, gently, with a fingertip, and then he’d smile when Stevie couldn’t come up with anything much.

But there were days he made sure of Stevie’s attention:

“Can you mind who Isaac is, son?”

Eric stopped one morning, in the middle of a reading, and when Stevie shook his head, the old man said:

“He’s Abraham’s boy. Right?”

Sitting back, eyes sharp.

“You listenin?”

Stevie nodded: he was now.

Eric told him this story was important; he was reading it for something he was drawing. And then he went over the parts he’d read so far.

“Abraham’s takin Isaac up tae Moriah. They’re climbing up the mountain. An it’s because God tellt him, see? Abraham’s tae make a burnt offerin ae his boy.”

Stevie nodded again, even if he didn’t know what that meant. Only Eric wasn’t fooled:

“Abraham’s takin Isaac up the hill tae kill him.”

Stevie blinked.

It hadn’t sounded like that was happening. Just a lot of words; just the same as Eric always read. Stevie leaned forward and stared at the page, but he could only find the big black
pu
, and
wu
and
le
that started the columns. Nothing about dads who kill their sons. He’d never heard a story like that before. His own Dad shouted sometimes, if Stevie dawdled, or whined too much about having cold fingers, but that’s as far as he went.

Eric shut the book, and then he got up and went to his bureau. He chose one of his good pencils, and a thick sheet of paper, and then he beckoned Stevie over.

“Come an see.”

He drew all the Patriarchs instead of reading more; Eric laid them out in a family tree, and he said it would help Stevie understand it all better, in time anyhow, the way the stories and the people all connected.

“They’re aw relatit.”

Stevie stood at his uncle’s shoulder, watching the figures appearing, with their beards and robes and sandals. Old Abraham and Sarah were first, at the top of the sheet, and Eric told him they were childless for a hundred years, before the Lord intervened. He drew their boy underneath them.

“Thine oanly son Isaac, whom thou lovest.”

He looked like a fine young man, broad and strong, and a bit like Stevie’s cousins, except the drawn boy’s hair was long, and the curls went down beyond his shoulders. Stevie leaned forward, to read what he was called again, so he could say if Eric asked. He sounded the letters out, that double-a, under his breath, and Eric smiled:

“It was just the same for me, son. Aw they names. Aw they
stories Papa Robert tellt me. I couldnae mind them, no for years.”

The old man nodded, but then he lifted his pencil, like a warning.

“They caught me up, but. In the end.”

Eric said the stories came down on him, fast. Still did.

“They’ve a force tae them can crush your ribs.”

When Eric had finished Isaac’s feet, he read Genesis 22 again, and this time Stevie heard how God told Abraham to take his son, go into Moriah, and that he packed an ass with enough wood for the pyre. When they were climbing the mountain, Isaac said:

“Faither?”

And Abraham answered:

“Here am I, my son.”

So Isaac asked him:

“Behold the fire an the wood, Faither. But wheer’s the lamb?”

Eric stopped there a moment, and Stevie kept his eyes on the page, waiting to know what happened next.

“The Lord will provide.”

His uncle said it low, like he was angry, and Stevie thought he’d maybe stop again, but Eric’s finger moved on, along the lines, and he read how Abraham and Isaac kept on walking, no more questions or other talking. Until they got to the top of the mountain.

“Then Abraham bound his son.”

Eric said he tied him up with ropes and laid him down.

“Upon the altar, upon the wood. An Abraham stretched forth his hand.”

Only then Eric sat back, and lifted his finger off the page. Just when Stevie needed to hear how the story turned out.

Stevie wasn’t even certain if he’d heard it right: did Abraham have a knife? He couldn’t be lifting that, surely. Not against his son. He leaned forwards, searching the page now, except he didn’t know where they’d got to, and Eric was still saying nothing, just sitting there silent, both hands in his lap.

Stevie had to nudge his arm twice, three times, before his uncle turned back to the book: quiet now, like he didn’t much want to. Eric read how an angel called, and then Abraham saw a ram, caught by the horns in a thorn bush, not far from where he was standing. Stevie listened hard, while his uncle kept going, his voice all flat. He read what felt like pages, long conversations, all between Abraham and God, about how Abraham would be blessed. But there was nothing in them about Isaac, not a word, and Stevie needed to know, so he butted in:

“Did he untie his boy?”

Eric looked at him with damp eyes.

“He did.”

“Did he hurt him?”

“Naw. Naw, son. He did not.”

“He killt the sheep?”

“Aye. He killt the sheep instead.”

Stevie was satisfied, sort of. Isaac was okay, but Eric wasn’t. His cheeks were wet, and his eyes, and the big man didn’t finish the reading, he just blew his nose and cleared his throat, and made tea for them both. Eric brought the mugs through from the kitchen, and he drank his sitting on the sofa, his eyes unfocused, and he did no more drawing that afternoon.

But Eric was better the day after, and he drew a wife for Isaac called Rebekah, and two sons with two more wives underneath them. Esau, with hair on his arms, and Jacob without; Rachel’s face smiling, and Leah’s solemn; Rachel with two children and Leah with seven. At the end of the morning, the sheet had Abraham’s twelve great-grandsons spaced neatly along the bottom: the strong boys God had promised him up on the mountain, the men who went on to father all the tribes of Israel. Eric wrote the names under each, in neat capitals, all the same size, and when he’d finished, he passed a palm over his handiwork and sighed.

“No life without pain, son. Not a soul without failins. But at least this man’s soul enjoys good in his labour, aye.”

He smiled, and then he pointed at all the rolls in front of him in the bureau. He told Stevie:

“Aw my trial an error pieces, see?”

Eric said he kept them, in case they were needed. For the special picture, or just for the others he drew until he got there. He pulled one out, and he held it up.

“Prototypes an sketches. Just like the wans I look over wae your Maw.”

Eric said to bear in mind they still needed work, but he rolled off the rubber band and uncurled the papers.

“See them now? They’re lines ae perspective. They’ll no be there when it’s done, you get me?”

Stevie nodded, and then Eric gave him the pictures.

“On you go, son. See what you can make ae them.”

The roll was city scenes, mostly. Scattered with scribbly figures, walking away into blankness at the edges. The pictures weren’t finished, but the place they showed was clear, and Stevie spread them out across the floor, to get up close to the details.
Glasgow, seen through Eric’s eyes. The city had all the same tenements and schemes and Victorian splendour, and pedestrianised shopping streets in the centre, except the place was full of clues that Stevie knew now from the Bible. So when he really looked, he could see beyond the concrete and sandstone, to the timbered high-rises that stood along the skyline. They were just like the high flats where his cousins lived, except these were built from hand-hewn blocks and cedars of Lebanon. Some were finished, some still under construction, but there were no piledrivers or cranes here: the towers in Eric’s pictures were made by armies of hard-hatted, T-shirted labourers. There were no robes and sandals either, just jeans and trainers and work clothes, and most of the folk Eric drew were just going about their ordinary, everyday business. But somewhere in each picture, there’d be a small pocket of rapture or of passion, you just had to know where to look, and Stevie soon got practised. Spotting a bush in flames on a winter-bare Possil allotment, or Ruth making her promise to Naomi at a Garscube Road bus stop. Stevie found Nebuchadnezzar too, dressed up like an Orangeman for the Walk: a big man, laid face-down on the canal bank. Hardened in pride, his dark suit wet with the dew of heaven, his collarette torn and the dawn sun on his bowler hat, thrown off a short way back along the towpath. Stevie knew it was the old king, because of the donkeys, you never saw them in real Maryhill, but there they were, grazing the verges.

There was plenty he missed, always figures he couldn’t guess at yet; arms stretched out in ecstasy, or it could just as easily be lamentation. But anyhow, somewhere above them, in behind the tenement windows, Stevie knew there were fathers who loved God and would sacrifice their children.

Graham was none too sure about Stevie spending his days at Eric’s. Lindsey had told him it would just be a stop gap, just for the holidays, but she even had the old guy picking Stevie up from school now. Graham’s Mum said:

“It’s only now an again. Tae help you out, son, while you’re savin.”

She knew Graham wanted a new baby, and that Lindsey wanted to move to a new place, and she reckoned it was good for Eric to feel useful to them in the meantime.

“You know how he can brood, son. Better he feels part ae the faimly again.”

Lindsey said the same, and she told Graham it was a shame, dead wrong, how Papa Robert had cut Eric out, all those long years.

Graham couldn’t argue with that, even if he wanted, he was never any good at holding his own in arguments. But he
thought it wasn’t about whose fault it was anyhow: it was the old guy’s health that had him worried.

When he was a boy, Graham used to go to Eric’s with his Mum. The times he remembered most were just after Auntie Franny died, and he knew his uncle wasn’t well, even before anyone told him. The old guy made Graham nervy; he’d most often be teary or angry when they arrived, all unshaven, and raw about the eyes. He did no drawings then, he’d just sit up at the bedroom window while Brenda wiped and tidied, and Graham watched him through the half-open doorway. His face was always wet, his eyes always leaking, and it was like they weren’t there for him. Eric was clever, everyone said so, but Graham knew there were times his uncle couldn’t even see who was in front of his nose. He never even said cheerio when they went up the road.

Graham’s brothers were all old enough to stay at home, and they teased him because he had to go to Eric’s. They called their uncle a headcase, for which their Mum slapped their legs, and Graham knew his brothers weren’t being nice, but it wasn’t just them who thought Eric was strange. He saw the way other folk stared if Eric was with them on the bus, and how they shifted over if he sat too close, and he heard how his Mum lied to the neighbours as well, saying Eric was fine, even when he was in hospital for a long stay.

Graham could remember other times too, when his uncle was on the mend. Eric still had a telly then, and he sat with Graham on Saturday mornings watching
Tiswas
. Or sometimes the old guy would take him out while Brenda was busy sorting the flat.
They’d not go far, just a little way along the canal to see one of Franny’s brothers, who worked out at Clydebank and kept racing pigeons.

John Joe bred tipplers with one of his pals: endurance birds that could fly for hours. The two men had a loft full of them near the shipyard, and John Joe went there every day after his shift, to keep up with his share of the feeding and cleaning and what-have-you. He was nice too, and he told Graham loads about his birds. How most Glasgow doo-men kept pouters and croppers, fancy breeds, but they were just weird-lookers to his mind, inferior to his athletes. The trophies they’d won overspilled the cabinet in John Joe’s living room, and when he saw Graham looking, he said that was only a half-share of the honours, the rest were up at his pal’s place, along with the doos.

Eric had seen the birds, he’d been out to Clydebank any number of times, and he could draw them from memory: quick lines on the backs of envelopes, while he and his brother-in-law talked. John Joe kept a hen with him in the house; not in a cage, she walked from room to room like a cat, and hopped up onto his lap. Eric drew the pair of them like that: small biro likenesses that Graham slipped into his pockets while his uncle was busy with the next. Both men saw him take the drawings, but they acted like they hadn’t, just getting on with their conversation; John Joe telling Graham the hen was no prize bird herself, but the mother of many. He’d stand her up on the table, putting his face down level, and then she’d peck at his nose, side to side, fast but dead gentle too. Eskimo kisses, John Joe called them, while the beak clack-clacked against his big spectacles, and Eric laughed.