No
matter what effort she brought to bear upon the endeavour, still there occurred
moments in which she was made to concede it was simply not possible for her to
live as she wished, on only the very surface of conscious thought:
Late
to collect him, she hurried through a stream of homebound children that
increasingly overflowed the pavement the closer she came to the school, hurried
hoping he would not be too upset and cursing herself at the sudden thought of
arriving to find him taunted and humiliated on the actual account of her
absence.
Rounding
the corner she was relieved to see him playing upon the grass just inside the
gate, conspicuous amongst the uniform others by the odd balance he struggled to
maintain beneath the random and manic gravity peculiar apparently to him alone;
in plimsolls, his regular school shoes placed neatly together closeby alongside
his satchel and folded coat, and from what she could gather, a cowboy.
Some
of the children flaunted the very toy guns she had forbidden him, but even
absent the actual manufactured plastic product she knew he would conjure them
from twigs or as now, pointed fingers, the rapid detonation of paper caps
overwhelmed even by their voices harmlessly incomparable to the deafening
ejaculate volume of actual gunshot her memory repressed.
Skunk:
Don’t throw those away.
cog
(tearing off the little red strip of exploded caps): I’ll just put them in my
pocket.
Skunk:
But can I have that? Can I have that if you don’t want it?
cog:
But they don’t work again. You can’t use them again once you’ve used them. You
can only use them once.
Skunk:
I know but I would just want them.
taking
a sniff at the burnt tape before consigning it to his pocket.
Content
for him to play on until he acknowledged her presence, she bent forward and
crossed her arms to lean upon the low school wall, uncomfortably conscious of
her inability to socialise with those other parents lingering nearby, all of
whom seemed to her happy to chat together while their children galloped about
the playground.
cog
(trying to force the toy gun inside the waistband of his trousers): You be the
bank man.
Skunk:
No. I’m the sheriff. The sheriff owns the bank too.
cog:
We’re the bad guys. But you have to stay there. No, you have to stay there
until we’re ready.
From
the few shouted words she could actually isolate and comprehend she inferred
some haphazard amalgam of various western genre elements including horsetheft,
bankrobbery, and Indians, a role taken with some glee by the smallest of their
number content to circle the group’s edge sounding a warcry from the damp
finger rattled around the inside of his mouth.
Skunk:
I got you.
cog:
No you didn’t.
Skunk:
I did, I got you. I was just here.
cog:
You don’t have a gun so you can’t. You can’t get me if you don’t have a gun.
She
watched him now quietly and intently concentrate to practise again forming his
tiny hand into a weapon, the gun’s barrel comprised of two fingers, the hammer
an upstuck thumb. Using his other hand to squeeze both lower fingers together
into the curl of trigger and guard, he held them until they remained in place
of their own accord and thus armed resumed his role in the tumult.
As
if afflicted by a sudden chill, she rubbed at her forearms. With no visible
reaction from the gathered adults she could believe herself alone in finding
such behaviour aberrant, and then eventually despite herself, concluding this
innate male aggression as essential to the primal acquisition and defence of
food, territory, mate, this then resurfacing of necessity in every generation
subsequent with its beginnings in just such play; these boys she watched here
as inescapably predestinate as those whose violent games had complemented her
own childhood.
Another
salvo of gunfire brought her back to present tense.
cog:
We’ve got the silver! We’ve got the silver! Let’s go!
cog:
Giddap!
both
riding off across the grass, their shouting punctuated by sporadic gunshots.
Skunk:
Stop that gang. Stop! Robbers!
lurching
off in his lopsided pursuit.
Gratified
as she was to see him playing with the other children, that of them both he at
least was settling in and accepted, still she winced to see him suddenly suffer
an imaginary bullet, and drop; her own little Skunk rolling around on the grass
clutching at his make-believe wounds.
cog:
Your horse is dead.
Skunk
(still prone): No he’s not he’s galloping away.
cog:
No I shot him. I shot your horse and your horse is dead now.
and
to another
cog:
John, Skunk’s horse is dead. He doesn’t have a horse now.
Skunk:
He isn’t dead, he’s galloping away to the sea.
cog:
He’s dead.
She
watched her son now clamber unsteadily to his feet and with his little pistol
fingers begin as if possessed to shoot wildly at the others, screaming
Skunk:
HE ISN’T DEAD! HE ISN’T DEAD! HE ISN’T DEAD!
red-faced
and shaking with the intensity of his efforts.
Mother:
Oh God. Oh God Jesus no.
nauseated
by her immediate thought this could not be universal, was in fact her
husband’s only legacy, an awful, ugly patrimony that would pursue them both
wherever they moved even as she rushed in through the gate to gather him up in
her arms, holding him tight to herself and brushing his hair with the flat of
her hand, whispering the rote reassurances that would momentarily sequester
them both from out the world.
