Winter Damage (25 page)

‘True, you seen anythin worth stoppin for?’

‘Nope. Int nothin but snow.’

Sonny turned her horse close to Ennor’s and they rode tight like they were hitching a carriage.

‘We could make an igloo.’

‘Don’t be daft.’

‘I might set my mind to thinkin bout it.’

‘Save your energy.’

‘I can’t, there int nothin else to do.’

Ennor shouted for her to keep her eyes skinned. ‘We can’t ride out this storm much longer.’

The wind was pushing past gale force and it twisted the riders and the horses into a meandering muddle. If they were making progress, it wasn’t a known thing. She leant into the horse and whispered encouragement and she dusted the snow from its mane.

If there was something positive to tell it, she’d say but there was nothing but the hum of white noise. It blocked her ears and burnt her eyes and she felt it crack and snap every bone as the horse soldiered on with tentative steps.

She heard screaming and closed her mouth and she let go of the reins to block her ears with her forearms but the pitch was in her and all around. She looked over at Sonny and saw her head back and mouth ripped wide.

‘Stop it,’ she shouted. ‘You’re scarin Trip.’

She rode close and stretched out a hand to touch her brother and she shouted to Sonny to shut up or she’d hit her.

‘Try it,’ Sonny shouted back.

‘I’ve done it before. Gave you a black un, dint I?’

‘Only cus I let you.’

‘You talk bull, Sonny Pengelly.’

Sonny started to laugh and so did Ennor. They laughed until their jaws hurt and their lips split and bled. Trip laughed too and Butch looked up from his huddle and shook his head.

‘We’ve finally lost it, Butchy boy,’ shouted Sonny. ‘You always said it and now it’s true. Sonny and Ennor are officially fruit loops.’

‘Fruit loop loopy,’ laughed Ennor.

‘And Trip,’ shouted Trip.

‘And buddy dog,’ shouted Sonny. ‘And buddy horse and all the horses and just about every poor mongrel creature out here teeterin on the ridge of civilisation lookin in.’

They shouted anything that came to mind and cheap jokes were laughed into the blizzard.

They had given up caring, Ennor knew this and so did Sonny and Butch. Probably even Trip and the animals knew this. Fate was loping round in circles waiting and they were waiting for luck or death or another day of the same. If they lasted another night, it would be because of partial hope, piecemeal giving.

The only thing good to come from giving in to fate was fear no longer bothered Ennor. It had baited her all her life but now she could not even remember what it felt like.

Nothing scared her because nothing mattered.

Given her mindset Ennor didn’t believe her brother when he screamed he’d seen a car, and she ignored him.

‘I seen it back there.’

‘No you dint,’ shouted Sonny.

‘I did, go back.’

Sonny stopped the horse and looked across at Ennor ‘Did you see a car?’

Ennor shook her head.

‘I dint either. You playin us?’

‘No,’ he shouted. ‘I promise.’

‘There int no cars out here, Trip,’ said Ennor. ‘There’s no cars cus there’s no roads.’

‘I seen it, sister, honest to God and everythin.’

‘Where then, where?’

‘Back there.’ He pointed to the left a little way behind them.‘Just there, promise.’

The two girls looked at each other and shrugged.

‘Spose it won’t hurt,’ said Sonny as she spun her horse round and she told Trip if he was wrong he’d be taking turns on a spit across the fire tonight.

‘You’ll see.’ He nodded. ‘It’s just there.’

A forty-metre turn and Trip was screaming that he was right and the two girls sat the horses dead in the snow and adjusted their eyesight to what it was he was looking at.

‘Is that a car?’ said Sonny. ‘Hell, it
is
a car.’

‘A bad burnt-out one,’ said Ennor.

‘Can we drive it?’ asked Trip as they jumped from their saddles.

‘No, buddy, but we can sit out the storm.’

‘I did good, sister?’

‘You did great, buddy. Come on, let’s unpack.’

Sonny hobbled the horses’ legs together and Ennor helped Butch down and settled him on the back seat of the car.

‘You’re lucky, boy,’ said Sonny. ‘Still got a bit of spring and paddin to it.’

‘Lucky me,’ he whispered.

They covered the north and east sides of the car with the tarp and secured it to the roof with scavenged rocks to mask the blown-out windows and Sonny stacked the rucksacks and panniers into the front window, then sat back in the passenger seat with Trip in her lap ‘Where you takin us?’ she laughed. ‘I wouldn’t mind somewhere warm.’

‘Anywhere but here, wheezed Butch.

Ennor looked around from her place behind the wheel and she laughed at him and the dog snuggled beneath the blanket.

She put her hands on the steering wheel and looked straight ahead and she replaced the dark wall of luggage with a desolate winding road circling a warm blue sky.

Ennor Carne and her mix-match family, riding out through a hot foreign country, cruising and in control.

‘We could do with makin a fire,’ said Sonny. ‘It’ll be dark soon and colder than ever. I just know it.’

‘Could do with somethin to cook on it,’ added Ennor. ‘You make the fire with the stolen wood and I’ll go lookin.’

‘Don’t wander far.’

‘I won’t, I’ll just sit out a little. Might get a crow or a rabbit or somethin.’

Sonny shook her head and laughed. ‘Maybe a squirrel.’

‘What’ll I do?’ asked Trip.

‘You can dig round for more rocks for the fire pit. Jiggin will warm you up a bit.’

Ennor took the gun and a stick and walked a little way out into the curtain of white. She stayed within shouting distance and stood stony with the gun in her arms and her back to the wind. They had found shelter in the seventh circle and this made her smile. Maybe they would find food too. She had given in to fate, but that didn’t mean she’d given up on hope.

Sonny called to check she was there and she shouted for her to shut up. She wished for a skin and bone pony or a Galloway calf to stumble her way. She knew they were out there because she’d seen them all over when she wasn’t looking.

She should have shot at something earlier, anything with a pulse enough to call fresh, to give them one more chance at keeping going. The cold had them emptied, they’d been upended and shook so hard there was nothing but rattling bones between them.

In the space Ennor used to keep for prayers she cleared her mind and let the moment carry her, closing her eyes and settling herself into the void. Several minutes passed and she thought she heard Sonny call her name and she looked up and saw a shadow cross her path.

It was too small for a cow or a horse and too skinny for a sheep and she tightened her grip on the rifle and crept forward.

The shadow turned and made a noise that was alien to her and she questioned whether she’d seen anything at all. Her mind was playing tricks, tripping her. She whispered a stupid, ‘Hello,’ and edged forward, her trigger finger ready, twitching.

The shadow didn’t speak and it didn’t move and Ennor crouched to its level for a clean shot. She would count to three.

She jammed the butt-stock of the rifle against her shoulder and knelt into the sinking snow counting, one and two, as beautiful eyes swung upon her from out of the startling snow and blinked. ‘Three,’ she whispered and her finger twitched the trigger into action.

‘What you got?’ shouted Sonny from out the ether.

Ennor dropped the rifle and waited for the deer to stop kicking and she didn’t speak until she’d stopped crying.

‘Ennor?’

‘Dinner,’ she shouted. ‘That’s what I got, dinner.’

They sat bundled in the car and watched the young flesh crackle and spit above the fire. Its legs bound and its guts in the dog and everyone with their eyes feasted upon it.

‘It would have died out there tonight,’ said Sonny. ‘Probably thought you were its mama.’

Ennor sighed. ‘It don’t make me feel any better knowin that.’ She told Trip to stop calling it Bambi and sat back against the car door to drink her mug of hot water.

‘It needed doin and I did it.’ She sipped at the nothing tea and watched the flames fill the hole where the other car door used to be, a feel-good movie warming her through. They chewed on the bark chips Sonny had fried in the heat of the fire and sang songs for cheering.

Darkness and snow circled them in a noose and nobody cared because they had a roof and good things coming. When the deer was near enough done Sonny ripped and cut it a hundred ways and piled it on to a saddle propped up in the entrance of the missing door. They grabbed what they could hold and it was hard not to yelp and stuff themselves like wild animals. Wild children lost to civilisation, lost in the kill.

The meat kept coming and they ate until everything was chewed and stripped and when the wind threatened to overturn the car they huddled tight and let themselves know what it was like to be content. A full stomach, warmth and then sleep.

Ennor dreamt she was alone in a forest. It was dark but somehow she knew her whereabouts, the smell of fresh river water racing to the sea and the back-throat tang of pine sap rising from memory. She stood idle among the trees and her hands gripped sticky deep in her pockets. She was waiting for something or thinking about something, or both.

The night air was a comfort to her, had warmth greased through it as though the forest had been poured with liquid shine and was full to the canopy with heat. Sparks of colour like Christmas lights flashed in the forest and raced the night wind and Ennor was taken by the busy of heat and colour, another world but her world the same.

She smelt the sharp sting of burning all around. The cooking and scorching of flesh and the stench of foliage blackening and she turned to see the dead boy grinning close by with fire in his eyes. She ran gasping in a chase, the burning night fumes filling her head as she raced the flames, the ash-ember floor swept and moving like a hearth beneath her. Christmas come and Christmas gone. The fire chased itself out towards the treeline and Ennor imagined it staring at the snow, whip-cuffed and dumb, struck down by its own rage, a fire just trying to stay alive same as everything.

Ennor knew if she could just get out of the woods, jump the ring fire fence and run home to wash the blood from her hands, everything would be OK. The snow melted and the fire dampened and green shoots returned to the forest floor. Little green shoots of hope to cover up the fear.

‘It’ll be better then,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘After the snow and the fire.’

‘What you talkin bout? Ennor?’

‘What?’

‘You dreamin?’

Ennor opened her eyes and there was fire and snow but she was not in the forest next to home.

She rubbed her face. ‘I was dreamin.’

‘What about?’ asked Sonny.

Ennor shook her head. ‘Can’t say I know what about.’

‘You were sayin bout things gettin better.’

Ennor laughed. ‘Can’t get any worse now, can they?’

‘Not by my reckonin.’

‘How’d it get so bad?’

Sonny shrugged. ‘You should of gone mother huntin in the summer months.’

They both laughed.

‘Can you imagine?’ said Ennor. ‘It would be easy as, wouldn’t it? Hot days and swimmin and bathin in the sun.’

‘Maybe we’ll do it sometime. Go back to Siblyback where we got that fish and swim with his rellies.’

‘We could get a boat. That would be somethin, wouldn’t it? The two of us bobbin and fishin with no cares in the world.’

They snuggled deep into the front seats and were warmed by the idling fantasy of being kids closer to their age, and Ennor soon fell back to dreaming and in this dream the snow had fully gone and the sun was high and blasting in the sky. She was sitting in the car with her mother sat next to her and she was singing and clapping mad on the steering wheel.

‘Come on, Ennor girl,’ she shouted above the blast of choral music. ‘You remember this one, don’t you?’

Ennor pretended to sing along but the words escaped her and there was a part of her that wondered if she was singing outside the dream.

‘Louder,’ Mum shouted.

‘I can’t remember it.’

‘Yes you do. I used to sing it to you to keep the wind from out your ears.’

She looked across at her daughter. ‘Don’t you remember anythin bout me?’

‘Course.’ Ennor smiled. ‘You’re my mum.’

Her mother turned off the music and they sat in silence. From the passenger seat Ennor watched the A30 slice the moor and she wondered when exactly they had crossed it in her other life, the life without weather except for snow and nothing but friends for family.