Cross Country Murder Song (19 page)

From the playground it sounded as though a race had started on the highway. The boy stepped down from the tyre; it twirled slowly as he walked towards the road kicking a pebble before him. He came up past the restaurant, inside he could just make out the shape of his parents, his father hidden behind his newspaper, his mother's hand on the teaspoon in her cup; she was looking out of the window as if the noise had caught her attention too. He picked at the sesame seed between his teeth and looked out at the two cars, one red, one black, racing side by side down the highway. His mother saw them too and pulled gently at his father's newspaper.

Where's Alex? she asked.

Out the back, swinging on a tyre, said his father, he's playing, he's okay. His eyes hadn't left the page, he was holding on to a sentence, eager not to lose his place.

Back behind the wheel, the driver pulled away and began to breathe deeply like his therapist had shown him. He felt the air expanding in his chest as it came through the open window and his heart began to settle, he brushed the paint from his arms and then was suddenly thrown sideways as the car that had pulled up next to him, clipped his wing, paint cracked, the violent collision tearing his rearview mirror off. It spun into the air, the chrome catching the light and disappearing over his head. The driver of the Chrysler was a few feet away from him, screaming at him. The car came in close again and he steeled himself for the impact, his hands gripping the wheel.

His father was reading the paper, his mother standing in the playground at the rear of the restaurant gently pushing the empty tyre, calling his name. It was hot, she could feel the dust in her throat, she called out again. Then something happened behind her, a sound came from the road, something out of sight but forever in view.

He felt the car sliding out from under him, drifting almost peacefully to one side, the tarmac beneath him turned to sand and loose stones, the driver who had shunted him leant on his horn and sped away. He saw the diner rise up quickly before him and then a small blonde figure appeared and then was snatched away, folding in on itself and then gone.

The boy rolled in time with the wheels, spinning briefly in synchronicity and then bumped beneath the speeding car's body and was finally thrown out wildly like branches from a thresher, his body skipping along the surface of the highway, his T-shirt torn from him, one arm across his face as if shading his eyes from the sun. He slid to a halt in the sandy dirt at the side of the road, his small, broken frame raising a cloud of dust.

The driver felt something rattling beneath his feet and then just the rhythmic roll of the highway again as he regained control of the car and slowed as people rushed from the diner. Commotion, he muttered and pressed down hard on the accelerator, rushing towards the burning sun that waited for him beyond the ribbon of road he was on.

It was dusk by the time they got home; he wiped the crumbs from his shirt as they exited their car. Good lunch, he said, tugging at his ever-tightening waistband. They stood at the top of the stairs and looked in at their son's room, he walked in and sat on the bed and felt the hot flush of tears on his face. He held the pillow up to his face and imagined his son's scent there. He lay there with the pillow pulled up against him and remembered the mornings when he came in here and gently roused his son from his sleep, leaning down to kiss the straw-coloured crown of his head.

The sound of the shower came into life across the hallway. He stood up and crossed the room, placing the pillow back on the bed. He looked back at his son's room and quietly closed the door. He walked into the bathroom, admiring his wife's form wreathed in steam in the shower. The scars ran along her back and at her sides as if she'd been clawed by a wild animal. She sensed him there and turned to smile at him, her hair slick and brushed back from her face. He took off his shirt, the scars along his paunchy torso mirroring hers. He undressed and stood under the hot water next to her, both of them turning red, two mute embers standing side by side.

He sat in the living room in his robe, flicking listlessly between television channels. His wife came in, a towel wrapped around her; on one side, stark against the white cotton, was a small red bloom, she held something gently in her palm.

You should eat, she said, arm extended towards him.

He took the sliver of bloody flesh from her and placed it on his tongue and then quickly swallowed it. He undid his robe and took the knife from the table next to him and grabbed at the loose skin of his stomach.

Stop, she said, and he looked up at her, surprised.

She leant forward with the corner of the towel and dabbed at the blood around his lips. You made a mess, she said and then tightened the towel around her and waited for him to finish.

Song 10: Bride

Her name was Sylvia and she twinkled back at him from her online picture. He read her profile, taking in every detail; she was born in Verkhoturye (when he tried to pronounce it out loud he couldn't help but add three or four extra consonants – it sounded like he was taking a long and complicated sneeze). The Russian Brides site said she was twenty-four, though he guessed she might be closer to thirty given the lines around her eyes and smile. She was a Pisces; he didn't know what that meant, but his dead wife had been a Pisces so he took that as a positive sign, some sort of approving nod from beyond the grave. She liked to travel and she liked herring. He had never eaten any and so bought some the first chance he got, tightly coiled in a jar, rolling around in a yellow mayonnaise sauce. He picked it gingerly out of its glass container and marvelled at its yielding, soft flesh. It was oily and raw-tasting, he briefly imagined it being yanked from the sea and held aloft, its flapping body slowing to meet its fate. He wrinkled his nose at the smell and its salty flesh, but ate it determinedly with his eyes closed as if that might ward off the taste and smell. The next time he wrote to her he made sure that he let her know that he liked herring too. At night, he'd trace her background and history over the internet; her town, the oldest in the South Ural region (when he said it he made it rhyme confidently with plural) had been cut off from the West for years, a shady military complex with huge mineralogical deposits, it had been an area for weaponry development and, he surmised from his research, a tough place to bring up children. Even the nearby monastery was inexplicably and heavily fortified while one of the biggest tourist attractions was a Museum of Nuclear Weapons. There was also a place where you could discover how the Russians developed the machinery for chemical warfare during the Cold War. He imagined Sylvia as a strident fiery bloom growing among the weeds of her empire's past. Before Russian Brides he'd written to women in a prison in Indiana, his friend had suggested it, and once he'd got past the names they'd adopted for their online profiles; Priestess, Black Widow, The Kat – he felt like he were writing to a biker gang – he began to enjoy their correspondence. Sometimes, the letters would be censored by black marker pen and he was dismayed when he found that Priestess, real name Penny (grand larceny, attempted manslaughter, affray), had added five years to her sentence when she'd attacked a prison guard in the laundry room with a sharpened clothes peg. He couldn't believe it, and fretted nervously the first time they'd talked on the phone (she was allowed one call a week as part of her privileges) as she told him that she'd kill for him if he'd wait for her. He sat mutely at home, the shadows lengthening across his living room and marvelled at the clanging of steel gates and the clamour of voices in the background that sometimes threatened to swamp her words. He'd thought of travelling to the heart of Indiana to the penitentiary set in its own acres of dry grassland, surrounded by floodlights and observation towers with their armed guards (he'd seen it online). To walk through the shuddering iron gates, each one closing noisily behind him, and into a room partitioned by a glass wall and small booths, set with their own red phones. He imagined his palm pressed against the glass, mirroring Priestess' actions across from him, both setting their phones forlornly down as the guard called time on the visiting session. Later he realised that all the images he'd imagined were drawn from films and TV dramas he'd seen, he had no idea of what the real interior of a prison might look like. He finally let those letters quietly drop but still panicked when an official-looking letter with the prison service crest came through the door. He imagined looking up and seeing the Black Widow standing in his garden, waving before breaking her way in to exact revenge for all the letters he'd promised but never sent. He was ashamed to admit he felt a thrill at the thought.