Cross Country Murder Song (11 page)

He'd been attacked while sleeping in the park before and so when the man had approached him on the secluded bench he was instantly wary, but he'd proffered beer and money almost instantly and so then he thought that he was simply cruising the park to hit on him. Some guys came out here, on a temporary lam from their real lives, and offered to suck his cock for cash. He knew guys who did it, and even though he'd lost himself somewhere, he hoped he still retained his dignity. He couldn't square those actions away no matter how hungry or thirsty he got. The man had just laughed when he'd told him this.

I'm not that guy, he'd said to the man, attempting to hand the crumpled dollars back to him. He'd held onto the beer, though. It was cold and felt right in his fist.

I'm just out here helping my fellow man, said the man and he smiled as he said it. It was dusk and only getting darker.

What happens, asked the man, to put a man like you out here amongst all this? He indicated the neat verges and lush flowering islands of the surrounding park landscape. He patted the bench they were seated on.

Aren't there places you can go at night, shelters, hostels?

He was chugging the beer and only half-listening. The dollar bills sat between them and he was thinking of the places he'd slept in the last few months, the basements, the benches, the hallways of boarding houses, next to a heating duct out by the airport, the foyers of banks where they kept their teller machines, underneath bridges, in store doorways. He'd spent the occasional night in shelters, but there was always fighting and noise there and noise was the one thing he couldn't stand. The man was staring at him and when he turned to look at him he saw his mouth twitching as if he couldn't control his emotions, as if he couldn't, as his dad used to say, keep a lid on things.

I'm sorry, he began. He knew that he'd missed something, something that this stranger seated next to him thought important and now he was angry that he'd missed it. He could always sense fury and misery on people as if they were telegraphing their thoughts, their actions as obvious as those of feral dogs. The twitch of the lips, he knew, was one step away from a widely swung fist, a lunging head. He'd been in enough bars, in enough bar-fights, to become alive to the ions of energy in the smoky air as they crackled with the looming threat of impending violence. Now out here in the early autumn night he felt the irresistible twist and a turning of things, of an animal readying itself for attack. He hunched in on himself ready to take the blow and judged the weight of the can in his hand to see if it had enough heft to it that he might use it as a weapon. He tried to stem the charged current rising in the air around him, the bloody sparks of the inevitable blow, but the man was staring at him silently now, his reddened eyes unblinking in his thin, pale face. Then there was a sound behind him and two other men moved quickly forward from beneath the bushes and trees, clamping a gloved hand (he could smell the leather invading his nostrils) over his mouth and pinning him against the bench. One embraced his while the other held his head in place from behind as the man drew a hypodermic syringe from his coat pocket and placed the point gently into his neck and pushed the plunger home. From a distance they made a strange tableau: the four men in an embrace, three of them looking almost tenderly on at their fallen friend. The men carried the unconscious figure into the shadows and then one picked up the crumpled bills from the bench and took a drink from the beer can, wiped his mouth and threw it on to the grass where its contents oozed into the earth leaving a fleeting golden trail that bubbled into nothing. Moments later it was quiet and the next person that came along merely picked up the can and placed it in the bin.

Hey! He shouted, Hey!

He pummelled at the lid of the box, he kicked against the wood until he felt a sudden tugging in his crotch. He calmed suddenly and brought his hands into his lap, his knuckles brushing against the wood pressing down on him. There was a catheter running down the inside of his thigh, taped to his leg, disappearing out of the bottom of the box. The sense of intrusion made him moan loudly and his voice was echoed somewhere off to his right. Someone was nearby, their desperation intermingling with his. He stopped, terrified by the sounds. When he was younger his mother had taken him to her Pentecostal church where almost every service ended with the congregation speaking in tongues, a swaying mass praising The Lord, hands raised high before passing out with their mouths open, unquestioning like salmon stranded on a rock. It scared him and he'd stand very close to his mother, his hands clenched tightly as he clung to her skirt, hiding his face as people gesticulated and fell all around him. He bit his lip and waited for the moaning to stop and was surprised when it slowly became a soft tuneless humming, like the sound of a distracted child amusing itself. He called out, but was ignored as the noise became softer and more enchanted. The lights overhead buzzed into life and the steps approached quickly and he felt someone hovering over his box. A tube appeared through the slit and he instinctively nuzzled at it like a lamb, but he couldn't remember how he knew to do this, had he done this before? He licked indulgently at the nozzle and felt instantly calmer, almost dreamlike. A hand came through the slit and stroked his cheek and he welcomed the touch.

You're settling in, good, someone said and then he felt himself fading into a dreamless sleep.

Whenever he woke he imagined that he was undergoing a CT scan and that the humming he heard was the gently revolving drum dissecting the inner workings of his brain and feeding the information in hazy blue sheets to the rows of doctors seated behind the glass just out of sight. Then he'd smell the wood and the oil of the box, the musty, still air. Once, he'd been blinded by the light overhead – the difference between his enforced night and day was becoming more extreme as he grew more weary and his muscles became more atrophied – and listened fascinated as the box nearest his was opened and the person lying listlessly there was removed.

Is he the one who sings? he asked in a voice that he didn't recognise as his own. A shadow moved across his box and he saw a silhouette briefly take shape and then shatter in the light.

Sang, said the figure, correcting him. He hefted the small, lifeless form over his shoulder and carried it away.

He played that scenario over and over in his head; it was the new hook he hung his thoughts and fear on. He became aware of his own inertia, of the liquid going into and out of his body, that he was just a vessel transporting fluid from one point to the next. I'm an aqueduct, he thought, and smiled in spite of himself. He could barely feel his face any more; he was becoming as lifeless as a mannequin, adrift in the void. He'd try to talk to the man when he came to see him. He could sense his presence, feel him sitting there on an upturned crate sometimes with the lights on, sometimes in the darkness. The man reached out and touched the boxes with the flat of his hand and would talk in a low voice. He sounded distracted and sad and would never engage in conversation directly. As he lay in the box he'd call out to him with words that sounded as soft as tissue paper, but the man would just shush him and again the slow blackness would descend and when he came to again the cellar would be empty and still.

As he drifted between consciousness and unconsciousness he discovered a place where his mother and her friends gathered to pray and worship; a tall building, brightly lit, so much so that the windows' golden glare made him want to shield his weakening eyes. There was always something in the far corner of the room though; a wooden box set on legs that the light never seemed to reach. His mother was talking to him, holding on to his hand, but he couldn't resist the coffin-shaped box at the end of the room. One night he found himself standing there listening to the whimpering, and he leant forward trying to make out the features of those inside, but the thin slit on the lid made it impossible to see and every time he leant forward his shadow rushed in and filled the space like sand. He tried the lid, but the heavy chains wrapped around it and the hefty padlock meant it couldn't be prised open. He hadn't seen the man before then, he hadn't noticed him among the congregation, never seen him as one of his mother's friends, but he was the first person that offered to help him. He was tall and broad, his shirtsleeves rolled up, he noticed the ink on his fingers as if he'd recently been poring over a ledger. He wore a pair of rimless oval spectacles that he kept perched on his head and he kept rubbing at the space between his eyebrows as if his sinuses or stress were a constant source of trouble.

We could get him out of there, if you wanted to, was the first thing he said to him, a giant hand placed on his shoulder. The wailing of his mother and her friends rose in a thick rope of voices that stretched to the ceiling.

But the chains, he said indicating the thick swathe of black links held tightly around the box, wrapped like a python squeezing the life out of its prey. The tall man leant forward and placed his hand on the steel links and they fell apart and dropped to the floor. The tall man stepped back and invited him to open the lid and look inside and as he did so the light burst through the room and burnt itself into every corner, silencing the voices and leaving only the glowing sun outside to make shapes through the tall windows, the promise of another day to come.

He was back inside the box, but he could feel the tall man standing over him.

I can get you out of there, the tall man said. But it will cost you everything you have.

I don't have anything, he said.

Then, said the tall man, we have a deal.

There were voices then, a clamour at the top of the stairs, a woman's voice louder than the rest; he could hear keys, heavy footsteps coming quickly towards him. The lights were on and someone was calling, his box was being jostled, he heard a padlock snap open and the sound of chains falling to the floor. There was a woman standing over him, she placed her hand in his and then she was gone again and when she returned there were men with her, one of them tried to help him sit up and as he did so he felt nauseous and light-headed. He felt himself being carried up the stairs and into a brilliantly lit hallway, but he was too weak to raise an arm and shield his eyes.

He made the papers and the TV news, the grisly details of the story fascinated the public and he found himself as something of a minor celebrity. His dazed, inquisitive face looked back at him in a glare of flashbulbs from front pages. The nurses would bring them in and sit with him as he read his own story. He'd catch them staring at him sometimes trying to gauge what he couldn't guess. When he finally managed to regain the use of his legs and left hospital a small crowd of well-wishers had gathered outside to cheer him as he left. He'd been in the box for almost a month. He'd told the police and doctors that it had felt like days. The man had fled, they said, taken his car and vanished, left a note for the maid telling her where to find the boxes, the FBI were looking for him now.

What about the tall man, he asked the police officer, didn't he call you? The policeman looked perplexed, he scanned his notes, he didn't know anything about a tall man he said.

His brief notoriety brought him money and even job offers and for a while he found himself living in one of the large houses set in their own grounds that overlooked the city. His benefactor had offered him free room and board for as long as he needed. Even though he was left alone most of the time he felt beholden to him and consequently he felt trapped. Sometimes at night, the benefactor would come to his room and try to engage him in conversation, ask him what had happened to him, talk to him about his time in the box. Afterwards he would dream he was back there in the cellar with the soft voice sounding in the darkness next to him. He'd wake with a start and short of breath and then walk through to the kitchen and out of the back door and stand in the landscaped gardens looking down at the distant city. One night he kept on walking and let himself out through a wooden gate set in the high stone wall and disappeared down the hill without once looking back.

Within weeks he was back sleeping on a park bench. Even though strangers made him skittish, he felt more comfortable out in the world. He was sleeping on a bench when he woke to feel someone going through his pockets; he came to with a start and grabbed at the thief's wrist. With his free hand the thief lunged at him with the kitchen knife he was holding. He saw the wooden handle and the dull blade as the knife snagged at his neck and cut into his throat. He slumped back and gasped as the thief panicked and ran. They found him the next morning, his blood black and pooled beneath the bench, his head listing at a strange angle. He made the papers again, his sad, strange story giving commuters pause, the benefactor paid for his funeral and they buried him on the hill near the house where he walked from that day to go meet his fate.

He was standing in an office, the sound of typing coming through the door. As he stood there a lightbulb slowly lit up above his head. In the distance, beyond the boxes and boxes of files, someone was seated at a desk. He motioned to him and as he approached him he recognised the tall man, his glasses perched low on his nose. He peered up at him over the lenses and indicated he sit in the seat in front of him. There was a folder open on his desk and he was staring intently at a white oblong card. He turned it over so that it was face up, the infinitesimally small script was hard to read in the hazy light. He reached forward and took the card, but could only make out the ticked box and an acronym: IOU. The tall man reached forward and held his wrist and he found himself thinking about his mother and her friends and realised how very far away they were. Then for an instant it got darker and he looked up at the endless blanket of flickering lightbulbs but he knew he'd find no comfort there.