Winter Damage (13 page)

Dining chairs were thrown into the pyre to keep it burning and a wooden rocking horse was added and it sat dumbstruck, riding out the flames.

‘Hope you’re hungry,’ shouted Sonny as she approached with dripping hands. ‘We got pig in a blanket,’ she laughed.

‘What’s the blanket?’

‘Some kind of barley flatbread, who knows. It’s no hotdog but you get used to it.’

Ennor thanked her and said she’d spent the last few days mostly eating potato cakes. The meat had been barbecued to within an inch of its life and tasted of charcoal and rotten flesh and she wondered how long the pig had been dead.

‘Tasty, eh?’ grinned Sonny through fatty lips.

‘The best,’ lied Ennor and she swallowed it down and chased it with flat coke Sonny had found. She rinsed it through her teeth like mouthwash.

‘You want another?’

‘No, I’m good thanks.’ She patted her stomach to indicate fullness and pretended to be engrossed in her surroundings so Sonny wouldn’t push it.

‘Who are they?’ she asked, pointing to a group of men standing across from them at the far side of the fire.

Sonny squatted beside her. ‘Where?’

‘Over there, I int seen um before.’

‘Damn.’

‘What is it?’

‘The uninvited. I knew there was somethin I had to tell Dad.’ She told Ennor to stay put and she ran up the bank to where her dad sat and whispered something in his ear.

Ennor’s heart pounded and her ears rushed with the charge of blood. Maybe they were looking for her. She kept an eye on the strangers as they kicked about the fire and put the empty rucksack on her back so as not to leave it behind. A few men were having words with the strangers and Ennor knew by the cut and swagger of them that peaceful celebrating was not on the newcomers’ minds.

The chanting stopped and raised voices could be heard and they echoed about the standing stones and caught in the branches of trees and snagged in the briar.

A sudden hand on her shoulder made her jump from the crate. ‘Come with me. You need to help take the children into the forest.’ Sonny pulled her to her feet and they ran drunk and stumbling to where the children and woman gathered.

‘Head back to where they were cuttin trees this mornin and stay away from camp in case they try to trash it. They’ll try and head there for sure. They’ll see what they can steal and burn the rest.’

Ennor held on to the collar of Sonny’s leather jacket to steady herself. ‘Who they lookin for?’

‘Nobody in particular.’

‘Where you goin?’

‘Fightin.’ She jumped from the bank and went towards the beginnings of a brawl and Ennor wanted to pray and she wanted to run but instead she followed the others in a convoy of raised voices and some of the children were crying. In the forest clearing the tarpaulin sheets were patterned together like patchwork on the floor and the children sat at odds and angles to the outside world.

Ennor sat on a tree stump and pulled her legs up under her. It was cold after sitting by the fire and the drink was wearing off. She thought about the boy and she smiled and let herself be drawn into the dance once more, her innocence intact no matter what he told his friends.

The women eyed her as if she were perhaps some kind of decoy and after a while she felt pushed enough to stand out at the edge of the forest. She looked to see if the fighting had trailed up to the camp but it hadn’t and she ran.

Inside Sonny’s trailer she took up her things and packed the best she could considering and she was about to take a little food from the kitchen when she saw Sonny standing against the door frame.

‘Goin somewhere?’

‘No, I dunno. I’m scared.’

‘Of what?’

‘Out there, the fightin.’

Sonny laughed and kicked off the biker boots and lay down on the bed. ‘You’re bonkers, know that? You’d rather be out there alone in the dark with the crazies at it than safe in camp.’

Ennor sat at the edge of the bed and listened to the many voices returning and circling the clearing outside. ‘What happened?’

‘Nothin much, really just a let-down in the end, a right anticlimax.’

‘Are they gone?’

‘Slapped and gone with their tails beneath. Hell, I was lookin for a bit more of a put-up if you want to know the truth.’

‘Will they come back?’

‘Not unless they want more of the same.’

‘You got a black eye.’

‘No biggy. Do what you want, guest and all, but you can get off my bed. Have the floor if you want.’ She tossed Ennor a pillow and told her to turn off the light.

Laughter had returned to camp but the comfort of community no longer reassured Ennor.

She unlaced her boots and put them next to the rucksack by the door and knelt to sandwich her blanket against the floor. She got in with the pillow plumped and listened to the shrill voices of tired kids being led to their beds and the murmur of drunken songs bringing the camp back to life. Ennor closed her eyes and tried not to think about the killer inside and she thought about home. She didn’t know which was worse.

‘You awake?’ she asked.

‘No.’

‘Goodnight then.’

‘I’ll try for one, if someone stops natterin.’

Ennor turned left and then right and she settled on her back and watched the flashing flames through the window turn the ceiling into moving marble. She thought about her bedroom and she told herself to be positive because what else was there? She closed her eyes and thought about Butch and in her close-to-dreaming state she had him dressed in a suit and he was spinning her around on an ice-rink. She fantasised that they were together and in love but as sleep came settling she was soon back to dreaming the one foot in front of the other. Ennor Carne walking circles into the snow, nothing but a dying father and fading brother and a dead boy stranger to her name. Dreams had become life and the cold and the snow were everywhere, inside and out. It sucked her blood while she slept and chewed her down to rime bone, a dusting on the land.

CHAPTER SEVEN

‘You awake?’ asked Sonny.

‘I was, thought you wanted to sleep.’

‘I did. It’s mornin, dummy.’

Ennor got up and pulled the curtains from the window. ‘It’s still dark.’

‘Is there a fire goin?’

‘Yep.’

‘Is there a little old lady pushin pots and tendin?’

‘Yep.’

‘Then it’s mornin.’

They got dressed and shuffled out into the fresh slap air and sat at the fire with blankets close across their shoulders and drank sweet tea while Sonny’s grandmother petted a great pan of porridge strung high above the fire.

‘You should be doin this, Sunshine. Show the boys you got more strings than just fightin.’

‘Yes, Nan.’ She made a face at Ennor and shook her head. ‘Always tryin to matchmake, int you, Nan?’

‘It wouldn’t hurt to turn your hand at women’s work now and then, learn the jobs you should be learnin.’

‘When I’m makin heaps of money I won’t hear no old biddy complainin.’

‘She lives in la-la land.’ The woman smiled towards Ennor. ‘So what’s your name, cutie?’

‘Ennor, pleased to meet you.’

‘Pretty name, pretty girl. Got a boyfriend?’

Ennor thought about Butch. ‘Kind of, I don’t know.’

‘Well you either do or you don’t.’ She sat up close and flicked a calloused finger under her chin. ‘If he’s a good un, he’s your boyfriend.’

‘You ever gonna serve up, old lady?’ shouted Sonny.

‘You do it. I gotta see a man bout a horse.’

Sonny sighed. ‘Gotta do everythin yourself round here. Porridge?’ She crouched at the fire and slapped two bowls to the brim and sprinkled sugar straight from the jar.

‘No Coco Pops today. Somebody ate um all.’

‘You’re so funny.’

‘Know that, don’t I.’

They ate in silence and others came to the fire and helped themselves to the pot and conversation settled on the previous night.

Some people didn’t think the celebrations were spoilt much but others thought they were spoilt a lot and a bat-and-ball banter aced across the fire.

Ennor had never known such morning spirit. They made her smile and she nodded in agreement and thought how easy it would be to just chop her heels, one two, into the ground and stay put.

She finished her porridge and took another mug of tea and she watched the stars fade and blue come into the sky in a slow drag from left to right and her life turned with it, upwards and backwards in a timeless drift of changing skies.

Most trailer doors were open to the rising sun and people came to the fire with wood and food and news as urgent as the last.

There was talk of the storm heading out towards the Atlantic and promise that it would not return. Ennor hoped they were right.

‘I gotta get goin after this tea,’ she said.

Sonny ignored her.

‘I’m behind in my schedule and you know I am. What you lookin at?’

‘Look over there,’ said Sonny.

‘What?’ Ennor looked across camp. A police Land Rover pulled up through the trees and she wondered if guilty was detailed somewhere across her face.

‘What do they want?’ she asked.

‘That’s just what I was just thinkin.’

‘Bout last night?’

‘It’s not usual. Don’t care one way or other is usual.’

Ennor sucked her tea to the leaves and she watched Sonny join some of the others as they collected around the car and when she was the only one left sitting at the fire she swung the rucksack on to her back and headed into the canopy of trees.

The forest chewed at her and ate her up with its silence but Ennor could still hear voices and she ran until nothing but her thumping heart filled her ears.

She had no idea where she was or in which direction she should go and she breathed hard against the wall of ice which was early morning fog.

Within twenty-four hours she had become used to big rising fires and company and food turned by the hand of others and she had become used to a little piece of easy life.

She thought of the look that might now be on Sonny’s face when she realised she had gone, and she wished she had said goodbye and thanked her right because she really was grateful for the hotchpotch hospitality.

Truth was she couldn’t take the risk in regards to the police and their wormy questions. There was a dead body out on the moor and it was her hand that had killed him and she would answer to God and nobody else because she didn’t have time for prison.

She stopped to adjust the rucksack because the straps had jiggled loose from the running and she took a minute to decide on her route. She had entered the forest in a different place from where she’d exited and needed to get back on track and she settled on a straight line in the direction she was going because there was no other choice except backwards.

The pine needles underfoot were frozen solid with the wet, cracking occasionally as she walked and the echo snapping between the trees like a stranger’s footsteps.

Things caught her eye as she walked, a quick-dash shadow or something thrown into her path and she tried to ignore her quick-trip mind but sometimes it was all too much and she’d stare, then jump, then run.

Her dad always said she was full to the brim with imagination and his words rang in her ears now when she edged and twisted her way through the forest half-light like a fawn.

‘If he could see me now,’ she whispered, ‘scared of my own shadow.’ The dead boy fear reignited and melted with the police fear and was now red-hot fever fear fused with loneliness as big as heaven and earth.

She imagined faces popping mad from trees and the red and the blue of police cars everyplace she was heading.

She covered her face with her hands and held her breath, counting to ten to steady her nerves, and for good measure she kissed the silver cross that hung around her neck.

Ennor kept her eyes closed and prayed for strength of nerve. She prayed for guidance like she did most days and she told God that she was in his hands in all ways possible.

The boy was dead and she was sorry about that and now the police were after her and she was sorry about that too. Maybe they had bigger things to contend with than a teenage runaway boy-killer. If they knew the facts, they’d understand, but she didn’t have time for explaining and not much for being maudlin either.

She slapped the fretting from her cheeks and settled herself on one direction, her eyes fixed three steps in a line ahead and she counted them over, one two three. She counted in her head and sometimes out loud and paid no regard to the bump of a tree trunk or scratch of a branch, keeping to the line like a dumb heifer. One two three, one two three.

She heard a distant call and then maybe her name and the hunt call of a buzzard indicated she was near open land. Ennor picked up her feet and hurried towards the call and she counted its squawking cries and thanked God because it was nature calling her out of the forest.