The earth sucked at Felix’s shoes as he took another step back.
The diesel smoke from Gebhart’s car seemed to settle around his face, like gnats. He slapped the roof when he saw the wet ridge of mud begin to form to the side of the tire.
Gebhart took his time making the 50-point turn. Felix watched his hands and arms work the wheel, but he did not make out any words in Gebhart’s steady, philosophical-sounding muttering.
Gebhart stepped out of the car eventually, testing the margins of the road to both sides. Felix was listening to the breeze that was coming over the fields here, suddenly quiet after the Golf’s engine was finally off.
“I’m locking it,” said Gebhart. “This is the end of the road, after your opa’s place, right?”
Felix nodded. He thought he had heard something on the breeze. Maybe a bird, or the faint whistle and sough from the stirring blades of new grass. He looked toward the trees that surrounded three sides of the house again, and caught a glimpse of the roof.
There was no smoke from the chimney.
“Come on,” said Gebhart. “Get it over with. It’s going to be a mud fest anyway.”
After a few steps, he put out his arm to stop Felix.
“He has a dog, right?”
“A Shepherd, yes.”
“Where is it?”
“We’re a bit from the house yet.”
“And does this dog listen to you?”
“Usually. It knows me.”
“‘Usually’? Wait a minute.”
Felix watched him skip back to the car and open the trunk. After a brief rummage, he drew out a rusted rebar, with a curve in it.
“I am not a dog man,” said Gebhart. “But I’m not a masochist either.”
The Kadett was unlocked. There were magazines on the back seat, rolled-up wrappers from McDonald’s, and some pieces of machined metal covered in a fur of oil and dirt. The ashtray was used, a lot. The custom steering wheel had a wood trim.
“A boy racer,” said Gebhart. “In this piece of junk?”
Felix looked at the floor mats in the front. There were moist sections on them.
“Not much of a Schumacher, is he,” Gebhart muttered. “You think he’d know better.”
The side of the house came into view now, its whitewashed wall looking more grey in the shadows of the trees. Felix sought out any movement that could mean the dog was about, and had at least heard them, and was coming to investigate.
“Not much farming done here,” said Gebhart. “Rented out?”
“A few years now,” Felix replied. He stopped and listened.
“You hear something?”
Felix couldn’t be sure. They stepped down off the road by the stone pillars that marked the entrance to the farmyard.
“Cattle, before he retired?” Gebhart asked.
Felix realized that Gebhart was nervous now. The walk up from the car had him breathing loudly too.
“Yes,” he said. “Look, the dog’s name is Tilla. And don’t worry, he’s old now.”
“Tilla? Big?”
“Atilla. He’s a fair size, but lazy, if I remember.”
Felix looked at the kitchen window. He could only make out the reflection of the trees on the surface.
“I’d sure like to know where the beast is,” he heard Gebhart murmur. “I mean, how does it look I come visiting with an iron bar in my hand?”
Felix looked toward the window again. Beyond the mirrored trees and patches of sky, there was someone moving around in there.
He stopped completely when he heard the voice. It was raised, like a question, and angry, but he couldn’t make out the three or four words.
“What the hell was that?”
There was no movement there now.
Then a door slammed inside the house. It was followed by a shout, and thumps that seemed to move through the house toward the side door.
“Is this how?”
The rest of Gebhart’s sentence was cut by the sound of the side door crashing open. It was hard enough and fast enough for Felix to hear the metal grind as it hit its limit, and bounce back.
He was already moving toward the noise when he heard the rasping scrape of a shoe digging into concrete, its owner running.
A red-haired man came around the corner of the house then, his mouth wide open as much as his eyes. Felix saw that Gebhart too was manoeuvering to block Fuchs. Fuchs was breathless already, panicking. He gave a quick glance back at the house even as he came at the two policemen. He wasn’t slowing.
“Fuchs!” Felix yelled, and he went into a crouch. “Stop!”
Fuchs had his arms out already. Gebhart also yelled at Fuchs to stop. Felix heard another shout too, and the sound of the door opening and rebounding again.
Felix began to weave side to side to match Fuchs efforts to sidestep him. The red face and bulging eyes of a madman, he thought, and huge eyeballs rolling around. Was it drugs, he wondered, or a fit? But this flabby bastard wasn’t agile, and probably had never been. He was going to kill himself running like this.
Felix kept calculating where to meet Fuchs, and get a hold on him without risking a head-on. He kept his eyes on Fuchs’ hands.
The figure that now came around the side of the house at a dash drew a quick look from Felix, but Fuchs was within a couple of metres now. He was panting, and trying to say, or shout something. Felix was aware that Gebhart had come around to his left now, and he was shouting again. But Fuchs had given up any effort to twist his overweight, flapping mass into any more dodges.
In the moments before Felix actually reached out to get hold of some passing part of Fuchs, his mind scrambled to put things together, and failed. A dog who usually met you down the road from the farm? This other man who had just run out of the house, with arms raised like wings to slow himself, had to be a policeman one of Speckbauer’s? Who else but a policeman would have a gun in his hand? Even as Fuchs filled up his view, Felix registered that Sepp Gebhart had raised the rebar and had gone into a crouch. Whatever Gebhart shouted was torn away when Fuchs barrelled into him.
Felix felt his feet leave the ground with the impact. He heard a yell on his way up, and was suddenly aware of Fuchs’ smell, even the fabric of his jean jacket. His hand clung to Fuchs’ jacket for a moment, but his fingers slid as he was carried on and out by the force of Fuchs’ rush, and he felt himself falling. He reached out as his knee hit the ground, and grasped Fuchs’ leg. He was dragged for a moment, and he had time to feel the surge of pain coming from his knee and his hip. Then Fuchs’ fat legs were coming down at him, knee first.
All he knew after Fuchs landed on him was that he still had Fuchs’ leg. So it was Fuchs babbling and kicking at him then. Grit ground into his elbows and then his face as Fuchs tried to twist free, his breath ragged and wheezing in between squeals and half-shouts.
Fuchs rolled over on him, and pounded on his arm with his fist.
Felix tucked his head in tighter, curling himself around the leg. A floating feeling came over Felix then. He wondered how you could get such a sound out of a man, like a drum. It was Fuchs’ hammering him in the ribs, while trying to kick him with his free leg. It wasn’t hurting. He wondered why there was no pain yet, especially now that this huge oaf was grinding him into the cement with every twist and blow. And over it all, the absurdity of all this, out of the blue.
Then the hammering stopped, and something heavy slid over him. It was Fuchs, he knew, but a trick. His jacket smelled of petrol and cigarettes and BO. Fuchs was faking it, preparing for a sudden jerk, to get loose finally. Felix knew something was going on around him, but it seemed to be happening at a distance, in some muffled way. He called out Gebhart’s name. He wanted to hear him say that things were fine, or under control, or something. He braced himself for Fuchs’ big move, and he called out again. There were footsteps somewhere, and shouts.
His head felt like it was full of water now. How long had passed since he’d seen Fuchs rushing at him? This was the same as what had happened in that soccer game years ago. He had run into the goalpost for a pass, and it never came. It was that time when all his teammates seemed to go away but they had left their bodies there, and their worried faces looking down at him. But was it really concussion, when you could even think concussion? Ridiculous.