Coming back onto the hotel grounds that evening, Brother Skunk
still carries in his one hand the new Jack Daniel’s hipflask albeit empty and
dented, and in his other its little screw top lid, having failed on his every drunken attempt at its re-fastening.
ache1, handing him the picnic basket with
her E.T. doll inside, sits down to kick off one shoe and collect up a tiny
stone from the driveway’s edge which she then places inside her sneaker before
standing none too steadily to walk, weighting herself off the impediment.
ache1 (locating him with a pointed
finger): Now we’re the same, now we’re the same.
making him laugh.
Their ongoing conversation sustains them in through
the reception area, on into the bar for some time, then eventually back out, up
the fire stairs and along the corridor into her room where, forgetting E.T. is
still inside, she throws the basket so hard at the bed it bounces across and
off the other side.
ache1: Bullshit! Bullshit! The
Bible’s like those daily, the horoscope, Skunk, Skunk, no, wait a sec- anyone
can find in it anything they want if they look hard enough, or twist what’s
there to suit their own ends. Here
taking up the bedside Gideon Bible by its front
cover so that it hangs open, and then flipping it in her hand to trap her
fingers between random pages.
She sits down upon the bed, using the toes of each
foot to force the shoe from off the other, unaware of the blood smeared around
her heel,
ache1: Here you go here you go
slapping through pages for those words as might
catch her attention.
ache1 (reading aloud): “Twelve. As she
kept praying to the Lord, Eli observed her mouth. Thirteen. Hannah was praying
in her heart, and her lips were moving, but her voice was not heard. Eli
thought she was drunk fourteen and said to her ‘How long will you keep on
getting drunk? Get rid of your wine.’ Fifteen. ‘Not so, my Lord’ Hannah replied
‘I am a woman who is deeply troubled. I have not been drinking wine or beer; I
was pouring out my soul to the Lord. Sixteen. Do not take your servant for a
wicked woman; I have been praying here out of my great anguish or grief.”
She stops to swallow at something risen in her
throat, and then seems suddenly unaware of what she was doing, or why.
ache1: Here take, you can take this if
you want.
holding out the Bible,
ache1: Seriously, God, that’s, they want you to take them, I think. I think
that’s actually the whole idea.
When he fails to come forward she simply drops it
upon the carpet between her bare feet, before digging from out her pocket a
tissue to pat clumsily at her damaged eye.
Maintaining his balance and breathing as if each
breath was something upon which he had to focus all his attention,
Skunk: She struggled in the summer, but in the
autumn she used to love the sound of all the geese flying away together. If she
heard them she’d call me and we’d stand at the backdoor and watch those big…
gesturing with both his arms
Skunk: ..v
shapes moving across the sky. And then I did some, a project about it at
school, a project sort of thing, and I remember coming home and telling her,
you know ehm, that way kids are, when when, being clever, but I remember
telling her they weren’t flying away at all, they were coming back, and Jesus I
wish I hadn’t.
his voice breaking
Skunk: I wish I hadn’t.
before turning to locate the door, and leaving.
