A
delicate pressure visited upon the button beneath his finger and deleted
name watched the car window make its smooth descent down inside the door.
The noise of the rain falling from the low sky direct into the earth joined
with the amplified drumming it made upon the metal roof. He followed Brother
Skunk forcing his way heavily through the thick damp grass grown over the place
ache1’s pornography hut had been standing yet one year gone.
deleted
name (closing one eye and aligning his finger with Skunk through the
remainder of the glass, then tapping his finger upon the figure’s clumsy
movements): One year gone.
It
was Skunk’s fourth day, and even though taken with a heavy cold, they were here
at his suggestion, walking wrapped in deleted name’s proffered long
waxed coat with his own denim jacket buttoned to the neck underneath.
deleted
name took long breaths at the smell of wet soil and grass, remembering, as
the rain continued to batter incessant off everything, and Skunk moved about
beneath it all, testing the ground before his every step with that walking
stick deleted name knew he did not need, not yet anyway, though he
understood his need to have it with him.
Almost
absently, deleted name tapped a combination onto the numbered keypad
glowing faintly green upon the dash.
A
ringing tone from the speakers, front and back.
A
man’s voice, Scottish.
Father:
Hello?
which,
instantly recognising the silence, responds
Father:
Please don’t do this to us. You have no idea... You... Don’t you
think we’ve suffered enou-
The
green light extinguished by another button, the speakers rendered mute, and
just over the hill and down a man wept again by his telephone.
With
his right hand, deleted name now doubled over the bearded flesh of his
left cheek (he had not shaved these four days, and would refrain from so doing
until Skunk had left the country), passing the edge of his tongue back and
forth across the stubble’s sharp texture. He tried to bite at the bristles with
his incisors, and when certain he held a few between his teeth, quickly
released the flesh. The consequent pain made him wince water from out his eyes,
and he pressed the heel of his hand hard to the edge of his mouth, the while
rocking slowly in his seat.
Looking
again for Skunk he could see only the upright walking stick, appearing not out
of place amongst the other dead wood and debris this side of the bridge; all
that remained standing of the little hut was a single corner post, the wood
black and rippled, cracked on one side. The other charred timbers lay together
not far off, choked beneath that year’s growth of grass and weeds, with one of
the corrugated roofing sheets propped along the adjacent fencing.
Skunk
reappeared, pulling himself up the shaft and then trapping it between his arm
and upper body attentive to something amongst his hands, unfolding and peeling
open the damp clump of pages from the current issue of Playboy magazine placed
there by deleted name himself even before Skunk had set his twisted
foot upon Canadian soil.
