Gerald Seymour - Killing Ground

Hold on, Bill.'

He reached forward. He snapped off the heater switch, quietened the cab.

'What were you saying, Bill? Maybe, maybe she could do it, maybe she couldn't, but she's all that's on offer. I'll see you, Bill.'

He put the telephone back on the rest. He slouched his legs forward and worked his shoulders lower down on the seat back and closed his eyes.

Dwight said, staring ahead and following the road, 'If I'd been her, I'd have thrown you out. You are a cold bastard.'

'She called me a total shit. Your problem, her problem, I don't care too much what people call me.'

'And you hooked her? Trampled in on her life?'

'Where I come from, north-west Wisconsin, there's good muskie fishing. You know the muskie?'

'We didn't fish round Albuquerque. There would have been trout up in the hills, but it wasn't for black kids in Albuquerque.'

'Wear your chip with honour… The muskie is a big fine fish, but it's a killer and ugly as sin, it's hard and vicious on its fellows, it terrorizes a reed bank. Most anglers go out after muskie with lures, spoons and plugs. They get muskie, right, but not the daddies. The way for the big killers, the big uglies, is live bait. You get a little wall-eye, could be a small-mouth bass, latch it to a treble hook and sling it out under a float.

When the little fish goes ape, when the float starts charging, that tells you that the big killer's close, the big ugly's on the scene. Put simply, the little fish gives you access to a specimen muskie.'

Dwight Smythe said hoarsely, 'That's rough on the little fish.'

'If she goes, then we'd try and wind her in when we get the shout, like when the float starts to charge we'd reel in the tackle,' Axel said softly.

'You can live with that?'

'I just do a job.'

There was a heavy lorry coming towards them, big, high lights, and Axel saw the driver's face and saw the gleam of sweat on Dwight Smythe's forehead, as if it were him that was being asked to travel to Palermo, live the lie, have the treble hook in his backbone.

'She'll go?'

'I should reckon so. Didn't seem to be much to keep her here. Yes, I reckon she'll go.

She'll jump when she's pushed. If you don't mind, I'm kind of tired.'

Tracy was fighting Vanessa. Darren was sticking a pencil point into Vaughan's forearm. Lee was drawing with a felt-tip pen over Joshua's writing pad. Dawn was tugging at Nicky's hair. A crash as Ron's chair tipped over backwards, a scream from Ron as Ian dived back to his own chair and table…

And class 2B was regarded by the headmistress as the bestdisciplined and happiest class in the school, and class 2B had been singled out by the Inspectors three weeks before as a model.

Tracy kicked Vanessa. Darren gouged the pencil point hard enough for it to draw Vaughan's blood. Lee had destroyed Joshua's careful work. Dawn had a fistful of Nicky's hair. Ian sat innocent as Ron bawled…

She could have belted each one of them, and lost her job. She could have smacked Tracy's hand, whacked Darren, twisted Lee's ear, thumped Ian, and that would have been the fast route to an Education Authority Sub-Committee (Disciplinary) Hearing.

She imagined in the other classrooms, the other prefabricated blocks that sieved the draughts and leaked the rain, the teachers of classes IA and IB and 2A and 3A and 3B, and the headmistress on her rounds, and their surprise that class 2B was audibly and publicly in chaos. It was her second term at the school, her nineteenth week, and the first time that she had lost control of the thirty-eight children. She clapped her hands, and maybe there was rare anger in her voice, and maybe there was total contempt on her face, but the clapping and the anger and the contempt won her a short respite. It had been a rotten, desperate night for Charley Parsons. No sleep, no rest. The kids knew her mind was far away. Kids always knew and exploited weakness. Five more minutes on her watch before the bell would go, before a quite bloody day was finished.

She had come in from outside the evening before and heard the front door close quietly after him. She had stood in the hall and heard the big engine of the four-wheel-drive pull away. She had gone back into the kitchen. Her mother, accusing: did she know that her tea was ruined? Her father, furtive: would she have time for the work to be done that night on class preparation?

Her mother: what was that about? Her father: who was he? 'I can't tell you, so don't question me.'

Her father: hadn't her own parents the right to know? Her mother: shouldn't her own parents be given an explanation when a total stranger barges into the house? 'He said that if I talked about him, what he said to me, then I might be responsible for hurting people.'

Her mother: didn't she know how offensive she sounded? Her father: had they scrimped and saved and sent her to college merely to learn rudeness? 'He's a sort of policeman, a sort of detective. He works for something called the Drug Enforcement Adminstration.'

Drugs? The shock spreading across her mother's face. What had she to do with drugs? The incredulity at her father's mouth, and she had seen the shake of his hands. 'I have nothing to do with drugs. I just can't talk about it. I have no connection with drugs.

I can't tell you.'

She had run out of the kitchen and across the hall and into her bedroom. She had flung herself down onto the duvet cover. She had held the bear that had been hers for twenty years. She had heard the worry in her mother's voice and the bluster in her father's voice. She hadn't had her ruined tea, nor had she done her preparatory work for the next day's class with 2B. Later, she had heard her mother's footfall outside her door and a light knocking and she had not replied, and much later she had heard them going to bed beyond the thin partition wall. A tossing and restless and hideous night, with two images churning her mind. The twin images that denied her sleep were of the warmth and kindness of Giuseppe and Angela Ruggerio, and of the cold certainty of Axel Moen. They confronted her, the love shown her by Giuseppe and Angela Ruggerio, the matter-of-fact hostility of Axel Moen. She should not have given him the time of day, should have shown him the door. She thought she had betrayed the warmth and kindness, the love, of Giuseppe and Angela Ruggerio…

Her night had been unhappiness and confusion. Her day had been exhaustion and distraction.

It seemed God-given, a moment of mercy, when the bell echoed through the low-set prefabricated walls of the classroom. Perhaps the kids of 2B, the kickers and gougers and scribblers and bullies, felt the crisis and were afraid. They waited for her. Every day, at I he end of classes, she swapped jokes and cheerful banter with the ix-year-olds, not that day. She swept up the books and notes on her desk. She was first out through the door. It was her decision to go home, to apologize to her mother and father and to make believe that the tall American with the blond pony-tail of hair had never walked with her in the garden behind the bungalow, never propositioned her, never talked of necessary 'access'. Her decision… She stopped beside a rubbish bin outside the classroom, reached deliberately into her bag, took out the letter of invitation and ripped it to small pieces. She dropped the torn scraps of paper, and the envelope into the bag. There was a mass of children around her as she walked towards the lean-to shed where her scooter was left for I he day.

'Charlotte! Are you all right, Charlotte?'

The shrill voice bleated at her back. She turned. The headmistress faced her.

All right? Yes, of course I'm all right, Miss Samway.'

I just wondered… Charlotte, there are two men to see you. They're at the gate.'