Burning Down George Orwell's House (17 page)

The printed emails were from Bud. The papers looked like they had been thumbed through. Had there been a fire burning he would've thrown them in it again. The stack also included a large envelope from the Chicago law firm retained by his wife—and Helen was still his wife in some way and would remain so until he tore asunder the envelope.

The words on the top page wiggled in a dialect of Newspeak legalese and amounted to the official and fully expected news that he was no longer married. Pending his signature, the divorce would be final and its financial conditions unfavorable.

Next he found a small pile of greeting-card envelopes. Six of them, each with his mother's secretarial-school handwriting. He opened the first one. The card had a plastic sheath and the cover featured a beach yellowed by a setting sun reflecting in a blue sea. Inside, she had written, “Dearest Raymond.” The manufacturers of the card had seen fit to include the familiar sentiment:

His mother had written at the bottom, “—Mother.” The other cards were identical, each mailed a week apart from the post office in his hometown.

The last two items in the pile were both postcards. On one, Bud implored Ray to get in touch. The face of the second was completely black apart from the white letters: “Machu Picchu at Night.” On the back, a colorful stamp confirmed that it had originated in Peru. The handwritten note read only:

Remain optimistic
.

—f
.

Ray stared at the postcard in the hope of making some sense of it. Flora had moved to South America as she had planned.

Remain optimistic. He didn't know what that meant or what it was meant to mean.

“Remain optimistic,” Farkas read over his shoulder. Ray hadn't heard him come in, which was astounding considering that the man panted like a dog even while sitting still. He took a seat at the fireplace. “What have you done with your head?” he asked.

“I fell off my bike.”

“I suppose that accounts for the twisted hunk of metal I saw out on the porch. Maybe you should have worn a helmet.”

“I did wear a helmet,” Ray said.

“You're lucky to be among the living or at least among the non–brain damaged.”

“I'm pretty sure the jury's still out on that one. In fact, I don't feel very lucky at all.”

“You wouldn't, now would you? That's some bandage there.”

“I have Nurse Fuller to thank.”

“Aye, he's a talented man, a talented man. If you'll excuse me a moment, I'll go procure us a couple drams.”

“I'm not sure that's such a good idea in my—”

“Well if it isn't the Wolfman and Mummy, together at last,” Pitcairn said. Ray slipped the postcards and the emails into the big envelope from Chicago. “Let me guess: you fell off your fancy bicycle and banged up that big brain of yours.”

“Just a little spill,” he said. “Nothing serious.”

“Pour me one too while you're at it, Farkas—especially if Chappie's buying.”

“I am not buying.”

“It was worth a try. Pour me one anyway, would you?” Pitcairn asked. “You look famished, Chappie. Why don't I go in the kitchen and ask Fuller to prepare you a nice, juicy AIDS sandwich?”

Farkas went to retrieve the whiskies and Pitcairn jumped into the vacant chair. He leaned in close. “I'm going to say this once,” he whispered. His breath smelled like gasoline. “As I'm sure you're well aware, my Molly has gone missing.” He coughed and then spat something chunky into the fireplace. “I have every reason to believe she's visiting that trollop friend of hers over on Islay. However”—more coughing—“if that's not the case and I find out she's at Barnhill, I give you my promise that I will kill you. Any man here will tell you that I mean it.”

Farkas returned carrying a tray on which three large drams sparkled like amber in the sun. Pitcairn slapped Ray on the back, maybe a bit too hard. “Isn't that right, Chappie?”

“I'm glad to see you two have reconciled your differences,” Farkas said.

“That we did, that we did,” Pitcairn said. “Chappie and me, we've come to an understanding. Haven't we, Chappie? I've even promised—free of charge, mind you—to drive him back to Barnhill when he's feeling better. Slàinte, boys.”

“Slàinte,” Farkas said.

Ray grabbed his glass, but couldn't bring the whisky to his lips. He needed to warn Molly that her father was on his way. If Pitcairn pulled up to Barnhill and she was sunbathing in the nude there would be real and unmistakable trouble. Ray needed a drink after all. Whisky was a great idea. “Cheers,” he said and downed his dram in one gulp. “I'm feeling much better. I need to take care of some paperwork and pick up some supplies from The Stores, then I'll be on my way.”

He stood with some dizzy difficulty and went into the lounge, where he could look over the papers from Helen in private. Mr. Fuller busied himself in the kitchen clanking pots and pans together. Ray's signature was all that was missing. He went behind the bar, where he poured another dram and left a tick mark on Pitcairn's tab. Then he used the stubby pencil to add one final and specific clause to the divorce settlement and initialed the margin next to it. He had one modest demand of Helen, then she would be rid of him. He signed the document
repeatedly, as required; his scribbled name would stand in for him in his absence.

He sealed the return envelope and carried it back out to the lobby along with three more drams duly charged to Pitcairn. He placed the glasses on the table where the two of them were bickering about a sport he had never heard of, then dropped the envelope on the reception desk, along with more than enough money to cover the postage to America. “I'm a free man,” he said. “I just signed my divorce papers.”

“Are congratulations in order at such a time?” Farkas asked.

“Hard to believe someone would let a catch like you get away,” Pitcairn said. “Anyway, we better get going. Right after this dram.”

“Mr. Welter,” Fuller yelled from the kitchen. He poked his head through the door. “Seeing as you two are getting along so nicely, perhaps you might like to come back down for our next hunt in a few weeks?” he asked.

“Oh for fuck's sake,” Pitcairn said. “I don't imagine Chappie here would have any interest in our old superstitions.”

“Why is everybody out to get me?” Farkas asked.

“Actually, I'd love to come along!” Ray said.

“Excellent,” Fuller said. “It will be good to have you on board. Maybe you'll hit something. We sure as shite haven't had any luck, have we? We can use all the help we can get. It will be on the evening of the summer solstice. Supper's here at sundown.”

Pitcairn groaned.

“I can't wait! What will we be hunting for anyway?”

“A wolf!” Farkas laughed. “Though for the record it's a scientific fact that there hasn't been a wild wolf seen in all of Scotland since the year 1743!”

“It's not funny,” Pitcairn snapped. “Something's been killing off our sheep.”

“There's still plenty to go around,” Farkas said. He wiped the tears from his hairy face.

“That's not the fucking point now, is it? Now finish your drink. I can't wait to see what kind of redecorating you've done at Barnhill.”

The remains of Molly's bicycle sat in a heap on the porch. The front wheel had folded in half and the back one was missing altogether. The frame was totaled, but Ray threw it on the back of Pitcairn's truck anyway in case she could salvage the derailleur or other parts for the replacement bike he would soon be purchasing. “I have the very same panniers on my bicycle,” Pitcairn said. “Not that I use it much. These roads will do a number on the old nut sack—not that you have that problem, I suppose!” Pitcairn laughed until he choked, then stopped to rest his hands on his knees while some kind of goo rattled around in his chest and freed itself with a loud cough. “Now would you kindly hurry the fuck up?” he asked.

“I need to stop at The Stores,” Ray reminded him, hoping to delay the inevitable scene. Pitcairn was going to find his daughter—his underage daughter—running around naked at Barnhill. She would know to run inside and hide when
she heard the truck approaching, right? A cell phone, a cell phone! His kingdom for a cell phone!

“For fuck's sake, Chappie. I don't have time to take your sorry, concussed self shopping for your tampons.”

“That's fine. You can drop me off and I'll get myself home.”

“And how do you propose to do that, then? You going to sprout wings and fly up there? Make it fast now and get me a packet of fags.”

Once again Mrs. Bennett charged him an insane sum for the canned goods, fresh bread, and toiletries he required. He put the two boxes on the back of Pitcairn's truck next to the mangled bike. The truck handled the paved part of the road about as well as the bike had. All the bouncing around in the cab made Ray's headache even worse.

Pitcairn didn't say much on the way up the island, which was for the best, and he didn't hit the brakes when he approached Barnhill. He drove right past the house.

“Where are we going?” Ray asked.

“I'm not dropping you back just yet. I have something special planned for you. An outing, you might call it. What do you say we do a little fishing, Chappie? Just me and you.”

That was when Ray began to fear for his life. He contemplated opening the door and jumping from the moving truck, but that would have been stupid even in the best of conditions. He already had a concussion—there was no reason to exacerbate it. “I don't really like boats all that much,” he said.

“Don't you worry, Chappie. There's nothing to it.”

Even at the lowest points of his depressive states, when he had tried with great conviction to do permanent harm to himself, Ray had never felt afraid the way he did now. His lungs were so constricted that he couldn't breathe and he started hyperventilating with a series of sharp inhalations.

Pitcairn drove past Kinuachdrach and to the northernmost tip of Jura and parked next to the wooden dock Ray and Molly had once sat on in the rain. A small boat bobbed in the water. Pitcairn untied it, though it clearly belonged to someone else.

Ray stepped on board and Pitcairn hit the throttle before he could sit. The motor was stronger than it appeared, and he was nearly thrown overboard. He managed to catch his balance and take a seat in the front. There was no life jacket, no seat cushion that in the increasingly likely event of an emergency could be used as a floatation device.

“What you have there,” Pitcairn said, “is the Isle of Scarba. That makes this—”

“The Gulf of Corryvreckan.”

The Cauldron of the Sparkling Seas. Home of the famous whirlpool—Charybdis herself. The lovechild of Poseidon and Gaia.

“Right you are, Chappie,” Pitcairn said. “Right you are!” He killed the engine and gestured toward a patch of water darker than that surrounding it.

Ray looked over Pitcairn's shoulder to see just how far they were from shore. The Paps bounced up and down, up and down behind him.

“This whirlpool has swallowed up bigger fish than you, Chappie, and I can promise that they were never heard from again. Now, I'm going to ask you one simple question.”

“There's no—”

“Your ability to tell me the truth will decide if you will be flying back to America in cattle class or in the cargo hold. Is my Molly at Barnhill?” The boat rocked. The whirlpool gurgled at Ray with icy loathing. She longed to suck him down into the murky depths and swallow him whole. She wanted to fill his lungs with her own briny breath, to anoint his sunken body with a thousand barnacles. “One simple question, Chappie. Yes or no?”

Ray's nausea rose and fell with the motion of the water. His headache surged between shades of purple and red behind his eyes. The bandages around his cranium were the only things keeping his head from exploding and sending chunks of his skull and brain matter sailing into the wind. The surface of the sound danced in the evening sun.

He looked Pitcairn in the eye. “No,” he said.

“That was foolish, Chappie. You shouldn't lie to me.” He sounded calm.

“I didn't—I'm not!”

“Listen to yourself. You're still lying.”

Pitcairn knew. Ray didn't know how he knew, but he did and now he would be thrown overboard and into a whirlpool. “Okay,” he said. “She showed up a few weeks ago. I would've told her to go home, but she had a black eye. I
thought she was in danger. You would have done the same thing.”

“So you admit that you lied to me?”

“Don't you understand? I was trying to protect Molly. I would never do anything untoward—”

“Trying to protect your own arse is more like it. You assume that I gave her the black eye?”

“Who's lying now? Who else would've done such a thing?”

“This isn't about me, Chappie, or how I choose to raise my own daughter. It's about some bloody Yank who shows up out of the blue to bless us with his presence and is so fucking smart that he thinks a teenage girl is better off living in his house than at home with her own loving da.”

Ray couldn't think straight. He sorted through the rush of ideas overheating his synapses, looking for a kernel of logic or wisdom that might take the form of something meaningful to say, something that might help him find some clarity and, if possible, save Molly's skin and his own. He managed to take a deep breath. The sea air tasted bitter with salt. “There is no way,” he said, “that I will send her back to you to get physically abused. She doesn't have to stay at Barnhill, but I'll contact the proper authorities and find her someplace safe.”

“She's my daughter for fuck's sake! I will discipline the little bitch in whatever manner I, as her father, see fit to do. If anything, she has a smack coming for all the worry she's caused me. Look around you, Chappie. There's not one fucking thing you can do about it.”