Jack got to his feet, towering over where I sat on the ground next to the half dug hole. He’d probably finish digging it and slide me in next to the dead.
“It keeps me calm. Helps me sleep.” Training the gun on me, he turned up first one shirt sleeve, then the other. “I plan to sleep well tonight.”
“You sho is, Mister Jack.” The voice came from behind him and as he spun around, the crack of a rifle followed.
His head flung back like he was about to offer up a prayer, but I knew that couldn’t be as I could see the sky through his skull. He swayed, crashed to the ground. Slow-like, his body fell back, meeting up with the trunk of the poplar.
I swung my head to see Francis Station lowering her husband’s rifle and my breath eased out of me. Her young boy, the one who had come to me earlier, stood behind her. They were both barefoot, feet covered in shiny brown pluff mud from the marsh up to the ankles.
“My boy told me you was coming tonight. I just… wanted to see.”
I didn’t ask why she thought she had to bring a gun, but I was grateful and I told her so. “Glad you came, honey. I ’preciate you.”
We both dug, me with the shovel and her with the hoe that the boy had brought along. Soon, we uncovered what was left of a reed-thin young man, once handsome from the way his bones and what was left of his dark skin came together. I tried to cover most of the rot with my cape, but she stopped me.
“No, I wanna see him. His pa… ain’t gone want to.”
“Alrighty.” No need to pull away the lips; they were mostly gone. I poured the tea through the exposed teeth, where it ran across and down into the space just before the jawbone hinged to the rest of the skull.
While we waited, she asked, “Can you make him whole? Just for a little while? It’s been…”—she cleared her throat—“a long time.”
“No, I can’t,” I said, grateful that tea can’t fix everything. I didn’t want that magic. “Spend this little time you have with him, then let him rest. That’s always my advice.”
She pressed her lips together, but nodded and I was sure she’d heed me. I turned to the rustling now coming from the makeshift grave. “Come on now. Time for you to get on home.”
I parted with the Station family at the top of their road, promising to show up at the services if I was able. I guzzled the rest of the Life Everlasting I’d made on my way home, hoping it would ease my aches and bruises. As I shuffled along, I was starting to wonder if I was up to whatever the job for the blacksmith was. How was I supposed to remove any more fragile items when I felt like one myself?
I chafed my fingers, the brief warmth fighting off the creeping chill of the hushed night. And how many was a “large number,” anyways? Ten? Twenty? Sure, I could brew up enough tea, but what about the cost to myself? Seeing my people broken up and beat down, tore and tattered made me weary. Forever after, I’d be wondering how many of ’em Jack killed, after giving in to that mad fever in his head. A few more empty streets brought me shuffling up to my doorstep. Never have I been so happy to see my little house, but it made my mind run on how many others was out there waiting to be found so they could catch they final little piece a home.
Once inside, I made myself a cup of Forty Winks tea to help me sleep. Something to calm my mind, help me stop thinking about this last job, what it meant to my peace and my future in this town. I breathed in the scent of magnolia bark and mulungu, and took a small sip. I shook myself at the taste—like perfume on dry roots—and said a silent prayer for God to guide my mind. All the while knowing I was gonna take that job, no matter how dangerous it was. I stayed up all night drinking that brew and staring out into the dark, because tea don’t fix everything.
Sunflower Junction
Simon Avery
That winter I started buying old vinyl records from the junkie who lived downstairs from me. He was selling all of his possessions in order to keep the lights burning, some food in his belly and his habit alive. His name was Colin. I couldn’t tell you how old he was but he must have been pushing sixty at least. He looked like he’d been drawn by Robert Crumb. Slow moving, heavy limbed, lugubrious. Long hair the color of cigarette ash, Brylcreemed into an unlikely, gravity-defying wave that washed away from his forehead. It put me in mind of a painting that I had to Google to place: The Great Wave off Kanagawa. Seriously. Every time I set eyes on him—that painting. His eyes were quick but utterly unfocused, as if he were charting the movement of an invisible cartoon mouse around the room. But they were a strange piercing blue, those eyes. Paul Newman blue.
We never talked about the smack. I didn’t partake in the hard stuff. But that November his vinyl collection was my gateway drug of choice. It took me away from myself. I bought a high-end turntable, an amplifier and speakers that sat on an IKEA table in a room that was otherwise empty. I traveled light. But we didn’t talk about that either.
It started with a mint Mono copy of Pink Floyd’s Saucerful of Secrets. Colin offered it me while we sat outside on the garden wall one morning, watching the sea crash over the promenade across the street.
“How much?” I asked, inspecting the sleeve and then the vinyl itself, cigarette gripped between my teeth. It seemed like a question hardly worth asking.
“Forty,” he said after some hemming and hawing.
“Quid?”
“Forty quid and it’s yours. Take it or leave it.”
I studied him for a moment, looking for treachery in his eyes, but he was in many ways, utterly guileless. For a junkie. I opened my wallet and then counted the cash into his hand. He gave me the record and said, “Don’t play it too loud, I’m planning on an afternoon nap.” Then he stood, saluted me and went back inside, leaving me with a record worth ten times what I’d paid.
After that I wasted my days in his front room, talking and playing records. I raided the remnants of my savings instead of looking for work, instead of starting again. I suppose I’d intended this to be a new life in a new town. But it was the same old life. We lived in a Victorian townhouse on the seafront in Hastings, a seaside town in Sussex on the south coast. The building had probably been quite grand in its heyday, but now it was just an assortment of elegantly high-ceilinged, yet shabby rooms with temperamental plumbing and electrics, its facade weathered and beaten by the sea air and the harsh winters. I hadn’t intended to stay long, but I’d already been here for eight months by that November. It was cheap and I didn’t need much. I knew how to survive at this pragmatic level. I’d stopped considering tomorrow. Or the next week, or month. It wasn’t living. I realize that now. It was just existing. But it was fine.
One day Colin showed me a strip of four black and white photos that had been taken in one of those old passport photo booths. In the pictures was a young man with a beautiful girl, who was sat on his lap. They were laughing, happy, kissing. I was so dazzled by the girl that it took me a moment to clock that the young man was Colin. It was the impossible hair and those eyes.
“We were only together for four weeks,” Colin said. He took the strip of photos back and stared at them. “I was sixteen. Just left school and I got job bricklaying. Good hard work but it was a bastard during the winter. She walked past me one day on the street, and I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She was all rolling hips and heels. Then I saw her again that night in a pub, about a mile away from here. She must have clocked me staring. She came over and told me she liked my quiff. I could barely look her in the eye. I was so fucking terrified. No experience. But then we went back to her place and sat up and played records and talked all night. We didn’t sleep together until the third date.” Colin sighed, looked away out of the window, his eyes glassy. I didn’t know what to say, so I waited.