Winter Damage (21 page)

Butch laughed through a cough.

‘How’s you?’

‘OK.’

‘Your chest?’

‘You don’t have to keep askin, I’m fine.’

They walked shoulder close and Ennor could imagine them holding hands. They walked slow and steady on the hard frozen snow and were careful not to slip. Broken bones were not an option in the middle of the frozen wilderness.

Sonny and Trip kept stopping and waiting for them to catch up, their heads shaking and toes tapping in impatience.

‘You two slow on purpose?’ shouted Sonny.

‘Yep,’ said Butch. ‘We love slippin and slidin roundabout in the freezin cold.’

‘Looks like it,’ she smiled. ‘Only if you put some speed into the thing you might find you warm up. Just a suggestion, no offence like.’

‘None taken,’ he smiled back. ‘Only mind you don’t go fallin and breakin your back with all your runnin around. We’d have to leave you and you’d soon freeze to death, no offence.’

Sonny laughed. ‘None taken, hell.’

‘Sister, my eyes are burnin out my head,’ said Trip.

‘What you mean?’

‘It’s too bright.’

They all agreed it was a bright white day. Despite the cloud the sun was up there somewhere, making hollow promises.

‘I’ll make you some sunnies,’ said Sonny. ‘Got some pine bark I bin savin.’

‘Savin for what?’

‘You’ll see later.’

They stopped for a break while Sonny made sunglasses out of a strip of bark and twine and Butch rolled them a cigarette for sharing.

‘How will I see?’ asked Trip.

‘Through a slit.’ Sonny unclipped her knife from her belt and cut a centimetre strip in the middle of the bark and tied it around the back of his head.

‘It feels weird,’ he said.

‘You’ll get used to it.’ She nodded. ‘Suits you.’

They continued on their journey, occasionally skidding across the sheet of thick ice and using each other as buffers. Ennor’s legs hurt from sliding one foot in front of the other and her feet throbbed where new blisters formed on the old.

‘How much longer of this?’ she moaned. ‘It int worse than the snow but still it’s bad enough. Mum won’t believe this when she hears it.’

Butch passed her the cigarette and she sucked the warm air deep down into her lungs.

‘Hope you find her,’ he said.

‘Course I will. Why? What you know?’

‘Nothin, but neither do you.’

Ennor dug her heels into the ice and sighed. ‘I got my ideas and leads and stuff.’

‘What that old bird told you is probably a pile of bull, you know that, right?’

‘Well thanks Butch, thanks for the downer.’

‘I int puttin a downer on you, but you got to be realistic, prepared just in case.’

They watched Sonny and Trip run about up ahead and Ennor wished Butch were more positive sometimes, even if just a little. She knew he had stinking crap in both hands with his dad’s violence and his mum’s ignorance but didn’t they all have their hands full of something they’d rather they didn’t?

‘You in a mood with me now?’ he asked.

‘Nope.’ She didn’t look at him because if she did he’d do the eyes that made her forgive him. Ennor didn’t want to forgive him. He was forever dumping on her dreams while she had to bolster him up when he talked about studying and university dreams.

Since meeting Sonny she’d realised there was nothing wrong with a little optimism no matter how crazy. Life was going to go one of two ways anyway so why not make the best of it? This was what she wanted to say to Butch, but it would have come out at all angles, like always when she tried to be serious.

Up ahead Sonny shouted that they needed to make progress while there was no northerly wind to push them backwards.

They continued their journey into the vast blue-white plains of the moor. From a distance they must have looked like a family of hardened travellers as they walked with determination across the changing landscape, but up close they wore the faces of bewildered children, lost between two worlds. They were kids just walking.

The weather was still at odds with itself with thick bundles of drifting cloud that could answer neither snow nor rain.

Ennor mentioned the early hour fog that came from the north that morning and they all agreed that if it had come in once it would come in again.

The north moor lay flat and tired in areas sprawled between solemn tors and Ennor tried to remember what it was she wanted to say to Mum because she had to get it right.

They stood a moment and looked across at the bubble of granite that burst from across the valley and Sonny said she was sure they were at the highest point of the moor.

‘We close to the village?’ asked Butch.‘Cus if you said we were lost I’d believe you.’

‘We int lost,’ said Sonny.

‘Sure? Cus you know between us all we bin walkin past a week.’

Ennor put her arm around Trip’s shoulder and they continued to head towards the valley.

‘Well done, big mouth,’ shouted Sonny and she stopped him in his tracks. ‘Why you come out here at all is beyond my reckonin.’

She pushed him to make herself feel better and he fell on to his back. ‘What’s wrong with a little hope or what else is there?’

She left him sitting in the snow with shock gritting his teeth and ran after the others.

‘Sonny, what you done to him?’ asked Ennor when she looked behind and saw him sitting in the snow with his arms crossed over his knees.

‘Gave him a little push is all. Don’t worry, I dint hit him.’

‘His dad hits him,’ said Trip. ‘Hits him black and blue some days.’

‘Well that’s not my fault. Not my problem neither, come to that.’

They waited for him to appear at the crown of the hill and watched him follow them down into the valley and Sonny shouted to hurry up before the fog had them pinned.

They followed each other with loose space between them. The dog leading the way, his head barely lifted from off his chest.

They were heading to the village they’d marked on the map, the village where the old woman had told Ennor her mother lived, Treburdon. The closer they got, the more Ennor’s stomach filled with scree and stones and she prayed and wished and tried to scrape her mood from off the ground. If she’d been on her own, she would have been bursting with excitement and she’d have gone through her mother questions with bouncing anticipation instead of dampened doubt.

They got to the lane that would lead them to the village and Sonny said from thereon in they should keep their wits about them.

‘What are the chances that this village Treburdon has a shop?’ she asked. ‘I mean a shop that’s open. It’s not Christmas yet, is it?’ Ennor counted the days out from the day she left home and there were nights that she couldn’t remember and others that she counted twice. She looked at Sonny.

‘Might be.’

Sonny shrugged.

‘It’s not, is it?’ Trip looked up at his sister and she was reminded of all the things she’d promised him and the weight in her stomach lunged to the ground.

‘We got no food or presents or nothin.’ He looked shocked as if the reality of walking blind cross-country had suddenly dawned on him and his cheeks and forehead bunched in confusion around the mask.

‘Don’t worry, buddy.’ She smiled. ‘We’re really close to Mum now, I promise.’

‘You promised things before and nothin.’

‘That’s cus your sister don’t know everythin cus she can’t. It’s just the way of things.’ Sonny smiled and clipped him under the chin and when he said he wanted to go home she told him to grow up and be strong and Ennor was surprised to see her harsh words worked.

The lane they walked was narrow and meandering with thick high hedges closed to the speeding wind. For the first time that day and for many days they could speak without having to shout above the din and Sonny sang her happy song and marched up ahead with the gun swinging crossways.

Occasionally they came to signposts forked in the road and through the graffiti they read the miles and Ennor counted them down into single digits.

‘There’s no cars or nothin,’ she said to Butch. ‘It’s as if everyone went to bed and forgot to get up again.’

Butch agreed. ‘You wouldn’t get too far drivin on this ice rink, unless you had chains strapped to the wheels.’ He ran a little to test the road and skidded into the hedge. ‘What I wouldn’t give for a comfy four-wheel drive with chains.’

‘A full tank of fuel,’ agreed Ennor. ‘We could get to where we’re goin and back with no worries or anythin, imagine that.’

‘We could have beddin in the back and a fridge full of beer,’ added Sonny, who had stopped to add two pennies to the conversation, ‘and a trailer full of firewood so we don’t have to go haulin everythin we find.’

They walked side by side and Trip and the dog skipped ahead and they smiled because the mood had lifted briefly.

‘Can buddy dog and buddy horse go in the trailer?’ he asked.

‘Course,’ laughed Sonny. ‘And maybe we’ll get us some real horses as well, like in the good old days, real gypsies on the road. All of us teens with good solid plans while the world’s broken with adults lost and limpin everywhere you turn. I wanna keep movin, keep movin and never stop, ever.’ She ran up the lane and the dog barked after her with Trip skidding behind and Ennor laughed and looked at Butch and she imagined there was something close to love between them again.

‘I see it!’ shouted Sonny from way up the lane. ‘Down below, I see the village, come on.’

They grouped on the brow of the hill and Sonny hatched a plan that would have them looking and acting in a way that she hoped was near enough normal.

‘One of us needs to hide out with the bags and it can’t be Ennor cus she’s got to ask after her mum and it can’t be me cus my light fingers need an outin.’

‘You can’t go stealin from strangers,’ said Ennor.

‘What as opposed to friends and family? Get with it, greenhorn.’

Butch said he didn’t mind hiding out. In any case, his cough was getting worse with the current drop in temperature and he said he’d hide somewhere away from the road in a field with Trip and the dog. They found him a spot of dead hedge and Sonny pulled it clear so they could sit inside.

‘Now don’t go wanderin, not even for a wee.’ Ennor pointed at Trip and made the face that grown-ups made when they needed to be taken serious.

‘How will I know that you’re OK?’ asked Butch.

‘When you see us,’ said Sonny and she gave Ennor the gun.

‘I hate this gun. I won’t shoot unless I have to.’

‘Obviously, it’s a precaution. If someone draws on you, what you goin to do?’

‘Run away.’

‘Hell you are. You’re gonna fight cus flight gets you dead.’

They left Butch and Trip putting rocks out for seats and a table for playing cards and they walked through the gate and back on to the lane.

‘How long you think we’ll be?’

‘Depends, don’t it. You nervous?’

‘A bit. Don’t feel right now we’re here.’

‘What don’t?’

‘What the old maid said. You think she was bullin me some kind?’

‘Dunno, won’t know till we find that yellow door of yours.’

‘I hope we won’t be long in any case. Trip don’t seem right, he’s got a mood comin, I know it.’

‘Don’t worry bout him. Concentrate on findin your mum or askin bout your mum. What you gonna say?’

‘A hundred things and I don’t know.’

‘Just remember, we gotta seem just like two friends out and about who don’t know how bad things have got in a week, so keep your wits.’

‘So how’d I say I’m lookin for my mum if she int around?’

‘Let’s just knock on some door.’ Sonny shrugged and thought for a minute. ‘Say she’s gone missin and put the sad and innocent thing on thick, that’ll help.’

‘Maybe I should say we int eaten in a while.’

‘That’s good, now you’re thinkin like a pro.’

Ennor smiled and Sonny said it was a rare thing to see but a nice thing all the same.

‘What I had to smile bout recently?’

‘I dunno, we finally reached the north moor, everyone’s still alive, just. If there’s somethin you’re not tellin, just spit it out. Have it said just to say it or stop your maudlin.’

Ennor didn’t know how to say the words and she tried and shook her head. She wanted to keep from talking about Dad to Sonny. She was all things that were good and positive about the world.

‘Tell me,’ Sonny said.

Ennor took a deep breath. ‘It’s my dad, he’s dead.’

Sonny stopped to look at her. ‘How d’you know?’

‘Butch, that was half his reason to come lookin for me.’

‘That’s nice of him, hell.’

‘He knew I’d want to know.’

‘And now you know?’

Ennor nodded her head and they picked up walking again and soon they were entering the village. Her dad was dead and here she was looking for her mum. Life was a flipped coin that just happened to spin this way and then that.