The Low Road (15 page)

So whose money is that? I take it it's not yours.

Lee looked at the battered suitcase. The darkness made it easier to speak. It is now. But I took it from an old guy called Stella. That was a job. Grab this coin from this old guy who owed money, that's all. Gambling debt or something. I was never going to take it back to them. Just fucking take it and get the hell out, but someone shot me. This blonde woman. A blonde woman shot me. I don't know what happened. But now I'm getting out of here. Going home. I know it's not a lot of money but . . . I don't need so much. Those people are, you know,
animals
. He sighed, embarrassed. I'm not cut out for it. I'm lucky to be alive.

Yes, you are.

The carriage jolted forward. Like a cripple, it stopped, lurched, stopped and finally moved again, each movement accompanied by a metallic groan. The train's whistle sounded across the oceanic dark. At last. They were moving at last. They were getting away. Lee saw the flash of Wild's grin and felt one of his own spread across his face.

The train gained speed and settled into its clattering rhythm. Lee had a sense of solitary farmhouses out there in the night, of swaying trees and the tinfoil eyes of small animals observing their passing. A cold wind fluttered through cracks in the floor.

I can see why you like this stuff, Lee said above the racket.

Like what?

This morphine, or whatever it is.

Wild snorted.
Like
is not a word I would use to describe my particular relationship with narcotics.

Love, then.

I wish.

Well. It takes away pain.

It's a trade-off, really—one form of pain for another. At least with this I have the illusion of control. And he corralled the boxes of syringes and drugs to his side, as if they were kittens roaming into danger. From a coat pocket, he produced a packet of jelly babies and proceeded to pop them into his mouth, one by one.

Lee watched him, still unsure why he should trust this man, whether he was a doctor at all. Relaxed but nauseous, he remained where he was on the floor, lulled by the sound and movement, happy to abandon himself to the rhythm. He imagined the blur of tracks and sleepers whizzing below.

Wild cleared his throat. Can I ask you a question?

I guess so.

How do you handle them—him? How do you handle him?

Josef? I don't plan to have to handle him at all—

There was the Gatling-gun rattle of a warning bell as they passed a railway crossing, a glimpse of red flashing light. Wild seemed suddenly shy. No. Not that.

Who then?

How do you handle the . . . dead?

Lee licked his dry and flaking lips. He felt untethered, miles from anywhere. What?

That person you killed, Wild yelled above the noise. They make demands. I was wondering how, you know . . .

Lee stared at Wild, uncomprehending. Was it a trick question? He recalled something Marcel had said to him when they first met six months ago.
You know what?
Marcel had said.
The way people like us survive is that nobody really believes we exist. They go to the movies or read something in the paper, but they don't really think it's the truth. Or maybe they do but only in the—what's the word?—
abstract
way. Not that the man on the bus is, you know, a hoodlum. Like a ghost. You got to be a bit like a ghost. Some people swear they seen one, there's stuff about them, books and what-have-you, but nobody knows for sure, right?

And Lee recalled the low, orange light of the apartment, the way Marcel perched on the edge of his blue sofa in a grey cardigan and scuffed shoes. He remembered Marcel's grandfatherly smell of mothballs and hair tonic and the way Josef stood nearby sucking at his tooth. And Lee also remembered how, afterwards, on stepping into the damp street, he had stood by a redbrick wall and trembled with something utterly mysterious, a feeling he now recognised as a presentiment of regret, as if he knew more at the time than he allowed himself.

He watched Wild hunting through his bag of sweets. The guy was always eating. What would you know? Look at you, stuffing your face like a fucking kid. What would you know about anything? You don't know anything.

Wild looked up with unfocused eyes. He made a sound as if he intended to answer, but instead just muttered into his beard. His face sagged and he returned again to his lollies. Lee wanted to say something more, but failed to locate the words, or even the reason to utter them. He watched as Wild turned away and scrabbled among his boxes, probably preparing another hit. Great, he thought. The old guy is going to OD on me in the middle of nowhere. He sat up and pressed his eye to a crack in the carriage wall. The train rollicked through the vast night, taking them wherever it was taking them. Even in the darkness, he could see the passing countryside was flat, relieved only by shallow topographical bruises and the occasional scarecrow army of power poles striding across fields with their cables. Halfway to the horizon, the blurred lights of buildings clustered like punctuation marks adrift on the landscape. What did Wild say before?
God doesn't have a clue where we're going.

15

W
ild knew not all darknesses were the same. Some were more complete than others, more shapely, larger or denser or more complicated than they first appeared. Some darknesses were familiar and others not so easy to identify.

The train had come to a halt at some point during the night. He had been aware for a while that they were no longer moving and had been trying to ignore the cold that had seeped through his coat and trousers and riffled through his ageing bones. Finally, he could no longer pretend. He opened his eyes. His head felt as if it had been stuffed with things as he slept. The dope, he thought, as he rubbed grit from his cheek and sat up. His back hurt from having slept on the hard floor of the train carriage and he shook out one hand to relieve the blush of pins and needles. His face felt like an unmade bed. The door of the carriage was ajar and a sallow dawn glow spilled in. He could hear birds. It was a thinning darkness, then. Morning. A new day, in fact.

Lee was beginning to stir. At least he was still alive. Perhaps he was tougher than he gave him credit for. He wasn't sure if this was a good thing. Wild nodded. Good morning.

Lee grunted. He looked emptied of colour and bulk and the skin of his face was papery, as if mere wrapping for the real face beneath. A smudge of dried blood below one eye and his scarecrow hair. The suit he'd stolen from the crash gathered in bulky folds around his scrawny frame.

Wild crawled over to the part-open door and peered out, careful to remain hidden should there be anyone outside. He inhaled the crackling morning air and the sharp, watery smell of fog. The milky sky was lightening as the sun rose behind a stand of distant trees bordering the railway tracks.

Are we there? Lee asked. His voice was a croak.

Wild looked around for anything he might recognise. The railway yard was sort of familiar but it was hard to tell. He nodded anyway. How are you?

Lee shrugged and held his stomach. I feel like shit, he said and winced as he sat up.

Wild stuck his head out a little further. No signs of life, just train carriages and half-lit signal boxes. The shine of rainwater and the twitter of birds.

Lee brushed past him and sat on the lip of the carriage before lowering himself to the ground with a soft grunt. Can you watch my suitcase? I got to piss. And he staggered off behind a carriage before Wild could say anything.

Wild scratched his neck and rubbed at his nose. His skin always itchy because of the morphine. He could do with another hit, but he should wait until they got away from here. They might actually make it. Just need to stay alert for a little while longer. Beneath his clothes, his skin felt like cardboard. He crouched in the shadows and patted dust from his coat and trousers and combed his unruly hair with his fingers. His feet were blistered and cramped, still jammed into shoes without socks. There was water in his shoes and he knew that later his toes would resemble bruised sea sponges waggling uselessly at the ends of his feet. I'm like some bloody Dickensian bum, he thought. Gobspittle or Farnwarkle or something. All he needed to complete the picture was a grubby kerchief about his neck.

He wondered how Sherman would receive him after all this time and smiled at the thought of his old friend's unflappable mask almost dissolving in surprise before managing to reassemble itself.
Yes, ah . . . well, hello and what do we have here, if I need ask at all? There is nothing that can't be solved, although you seem bent on proving that one wrong. You know, Wild, I was just saying to Jane the other day . . .
The way he would clasp Wild above the elbow and divert him so blandly that Wild would be under the impression that in fact it was he who was leading; how he would encourage another mouthful of barley soup; his dry and tuneless hum, like leaves across a wooden floor.

It must be three years since he had visited Sherman. A few months before the ‘incident'. As always that momentary certainty that this time it would all be different; the intention to get off drugs was always like a bet with his darker self. They had talked on the verandah late into the evening, batting moths and mosquitoes from their faces. Wild remembered the glint of Sherman's oval glasses and the way the old man sat forward slightly in his chair, never quite looking at you but concentrating nonetheless, hearing everything, waiting for his turn to speak. Grey-haired, patient, forgiving. And Jane's exhausted shrug earlier in the afternoon, how she had turned away at the moment of farewell so that when Wild had leaned in to kiss her, he caught instead the ridge of her ear across his lips. Cartilage, the soft straw of her hair, and she was gone down the dusty driveway.

Wild heard Lee outside crunching over stones and turned to face the glare of a torch. He stepped back, stumbled.

Right, said an unfamiliar voice. What we got here?

Wild shielded his eyes with one arm. What? The torch still bright in his face.

Step out of there, will you, sir?

What?
Who are you?

Are you armed?

What? No. Who are you?

Step out of the carriage, sir. This is private property here. Come on, now. No need for a fuss.

Wild paused, then did as he was told. Once outside he could see that it was a doughy railway guard, squeezed into a grey uniform. At least it wasn't the real police. He blinked in the dawn light and the guard again flashed the torch in his face. Hey. Stop that, will you?

The guard had one hand hovering over his black belt hung with keys and various sinister-looking implements, even a gun. Now sir, the guard asked as he allowed the torch to play over the rest of Wild's body, are you armed?

The whole torch thing seemed a little unnecessary, considering the sun was almost up.

Armed? Don't be ridiculous.

The guard was in his twenties, with a pink and shiny face. Probably the chubby kid always picked last for the cricket team, getting his revenge at last. He told Wild to stand with his hands resting on the railway carriage, legs apart.

You want me to do what?

I told you, sir, just turn around.

Wild wondered if he could make a run for it. He wasn't in great shape but this guard didn't look too quick on his feet. He ran a hand through his hair.

As if gauging his thoughts, the guard reached for his holstered gun. Come on, sir. Don't make me use force here.

Wild threw up his hands and turned around to face the carriage. OK.

The metal carriage floor was cold in his palms. Where was Lee? Presumably he'd reappear any minute. Did he take his gun? Were there other guards? This was bad, really bad. And when he was so close.

The guard frisked him and told him to stay as he was, bent in half with his hands on the lip of the carriage floor. Wild could hear the guard's laboured breathing, as he played his torchlight through the dim carriage. If I were his doctor, Wild thought, I'd be telling him to lay off the doughnuts and fried eggs.

That your suitcase?

Wild stiffened. Um. Yes. But there's only clothes and things in it.

What kinds of things, sir?

Oh, you know, thousands of dollars in cash, diamonds, that sort of thing.

The guard wheezed. What about that other stuff? What is that, medical stuff?

Wild cleared his throat. I don't know. That was here when I got in.

Right. So you admit to travelling on railway property without a ticket? Trespassing?

Wild said nothing, just stared at the stones beneath his feet. He felt sick. Where the hell was Lee?

Right. What else? Potatoes, is it?

What? Yeah, I think so. Potatoes.

The guard peered again into the carriage, probing his torch beam into the corners and across the ceiling. You alone, then?

Yes. Of course.

Why, of course?

Wild shrugged.

Because in my experience, you blokes often travel in pairs. You're not covering for any buddies, are you? Because—

No.