Belinda Bauer - Blacklands

Steven’s mind could only snatch fleetingly at Avery’s crimes. He could think the words, but shortly after thinking them, the concept of what Avery had done kept slipping away from him, too evil and illogical to stick in his head for long. Avery played by different rules—rules that few human beings were even aware of. Rules that seemed to have emanated from another world entirely.

Once—unexpectedly—Steven caught sight of the world Arnold Avery inhabited, and it scared him cold.

One day in geography Mrs. James showed them a photo of the Milky Way. When she pointed out their solar system within it, Steven felt a jolt run through him. How small! How tiny! How completely and utterly insignificant it was! And somewhere inside that speck of light was a dot of a planet and they were merely microbes on its surface.

No wonder Arnold Avery did what he did! Why shouldn’t he? What did it matter in the whole scheme of things? Wasn’t it he, Steven Lamb, who was the fool for caring what had happened to a single one of those microbes on a dot inside a speck of light? What was everyone getting so hot under the microbial collar about? It was Avery who saw the bigger picture; Avery who knew that the true value of human life was precisely nothing. That taking it was the same as not taking it; that conscience was just a self-imposed bar to pleasure; that suffering was so transitory that a million children might be tortured and killed in the merest blink of a cosmic eye.

The feeling passed and Steven’s cheeks and ears prickled with the horror of it. It was as if something quite alien had momentarily invaded his mind and tried to tug him clear of reality and set him adrift on a sea of black nothingness. He looked up to see Mrs. James and the rest of the class looking at him with a mixture of interest and contempt. He never knew what he’d missed, or what he’d done to draw their stares, and he never cared; he was just relieved to be back.

Later, it was remembering this incident that made Steven realize why he was keeping his letter secret. This was much, much worse than writing to a footballer or a pop star. What he was doing was writing to the bogeyman; to Santa Claus; to E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial—to someone who did not even exist on this plane of reality.

Steven was writing to the Devil and asking for mercy.

So, with his reading and his research and his epiphany in geography, by the time he wrote his letter Steven felt he knew plenty about Arnold Avery.

That was why he was convinced that Avery knew only too well what he was talking about. And if he’d lied about that, then wasn’t “Have a nice day” equally suspect? Once he’d thought it, Steven was convinced he was right about that too, and started to work out what Avery might really have meant.

Surely those four words had no place in any flat-out rejection of his request? Steven had not studied semantics or even heard the word, but Arnold Avery’s letter was a good introduction to the subject and Mrs. O’Leary would have been impressed by his deductions.

Steven lived in Somerset, but he was no bumpkin. He had an Eminem CD and had seen any number of loud and bullet-riddled Hollywood gangsta movies. Drawing on the experiences of those strange people in a strange land, he figured that a flat-out rejection would have looked something like this: “Don’t write to me again, shitbag.” Or “Fuck you and your mother.” Steven didn’t know what irony was either, but he could feel something coming off the page at him. He knew the four words did not mean what they claimed to. By day three, “Have a nice day” had become a code in Steven’s mind for “You’re a brave kid.” By day five it seemed to be saying: “I admire your attempt to get this information.”

By day seven he was pretty convinced it meant: “Better luck next time…”

SPRING HAD TAKEN THE DAY OFF AND BARNSTAPLE IN THE RAIN was something even the most enlightened town planner had no solution to.

A blustery wind threw rain into faces, and raised a million ripples on the wide, mud brown surface of the Taw.

Even the high-street chain stores looked besieged by the weather, huddled in the shelter of the battered Victorian buildings above them. Marks & Spencer was temporary home to this year’s strappy fashions and, in its doorway, an angry one-legged drunk shouting, “Fuck the Big Issue.”

Hanging baskets dripped miserably onto wet shoppers—the petals of the primroses and winter pansies plastered against their own leaves, or drooping, heads heavy with water.

Steven knew how they felt. Rain stuck his hair to his forehead and trickled under his collar. Nan didn’t agree with baseball caps and Steven declined to wear the laughable yellow sou’wester type of hat that Davey was too young to refuse. Now and then he tried to edge under Lettie’s umbrella without making it obvious.

Nan wore a see-through plastic headscarf that tied under her chin. It was the kind of thing that most people would have worn a couple of times, then thrown away or lost; Nan had had hers for as long as Steven had been alive—at least. He knew that when they got home she would lay it over a radiator to dry, then fold it like a fan into a ruler-sized strip. Then she’d roll it up and put an elastic band around it to keep it neat in her bag.

When Steven’s last trainers had been put out with the bins after two years of constant hard labor, she had been sour for a week because he hadn’t removed the “perfectly good” laces.

Now Lettie rummaged through her purse and brought out a list which she frowned at as people jostled past them.

“Right,” she said. “I’ve got to go to Butchers Row, the market, and Banburys.”

Tiverton was easier and closer, but Barnstaple had Banburys.

“What do you need in Banburys?” said Nan suspiciously.

“Just some undies.” Steven heard the brittle tone in her voice—stretching it to keep it light.

“What’s wrong with your old ones?”

“I don’t really want to discuss it here, Mum!” She smiled with her mouth but not with her eyes. The lighter her voice got, the thinner it got; more likely to crack.

Nan shrugged to show it was no concern of hers if Lettie wanted to waste money on underwear.

Lettie put her shopping list away and turned to Steven. “You take Davey to spend his birthday money and we’ll all meet at twelve thirty.”

Davey brightened. “In the cake place?”

“Yes, in the cake place.”

Behind Lettie, Nan decided to air her views after all and said quite loudly: “It’s not as if anyone’s going to see your knickers.”

Lettie didn’t turn away from the boys, but Steven saw her lips tighten across her teeth. Davey’s excitement became anxiety in an instant as he looked from his mother to his grandmother, not understanding the words, only their effect.

Lettie gripped Steven’s light jacket by the collar and yanked the zip up as far as it would go, knocking his chin.

“I swear, Steven, you deserve to catch a cold!”

He said nothing.

“Now take Davey to spend his money. And don’t let him waste it, understand?”

Steven knew he’d get stuck with Davey. Bloody Nan! If only she’d kept her mouth shut Mum would have been happy to let her have custody of Davey, and he could have gone to the library. Now he had Davey in tow.

Davey had birthday money. Three pounds. Steven fidgeted impatiently while Davey picked every rubber dinosaur out of a box and looked at it and then didn’t even buy one. He moved on to the next box, which was full of small clear balls with even cheaper toys inside them. After long and careful deliberation he chose one filled with pink plastic jacks; it cost seventy-five pence.