Nicola Barker - Behindlings

He wobbled. His eyes flew open. He threw out his arms (like a professional unicyclist), regained his balance, then dropped them, briskly, to his sides again.

He peered down to his right, where the sea wall fell deeply — ten feet, fifteen, maybe — onto a concrete pathway (just above what was now marshland — he was headed inland — and a tidal tributary). His eyes suddenly glimmered with a vague sense of recognition.

He continued walking, but now much more purposefully, scanning ahead of him as though hoping for some kind of quick access onto the lower causeway.

He soon found it; a glorified ladder; metal, virtually free-standing; two fireman’s poles with skinny rungs slung between them — bolted into the wall, the bolts all rusting.

He swung himself down, nimbly (the flesh of his palms almost sticking to the metal, it was so icy) reached the bottom, kept on walking — still in the same direction — but slower now, and as he walked he closely scrutinised the dark wall above him. Three minutes — possibly four — passed in this way. Then he stopped, squinted, stepped back, read something:

Katherine Turpin (in a luminous spray — ‘whore’ scribbled over the top of her name in a different colour) aborted her own father’s bastard

He stepped forward and touched his hand to it, smiled, then kept his hand on the wall — its rough concrete — as he continued walking, trailing it behind him like a child running a stick against metal railings.

He stopped for a second time when he felt the quality of the concrete changing. He drew close to the wall and found himself analysing another, shorter line of graffiti (much smaller, this time), hacked into the concrete with a knife or a flint or a broken bottle. He stuck out his lower lip — such was the light and the level of concentration required — and struggled to read it (painstakingly tracing his fingers through each letter for further confirmation)

I

am

the

fucking…

He tried to find a noun at the end of the sentence (he imagined; I am the fucking king; I am the fucking end; I am the fucking champion; I am the fucking best fuck in the whole fucking WORLD so FUCK YOU) but there was nothing.

He frowned.

‘I am the fucking…’ he murmured. Leaving space for expansion — an opening, a question mark, even…

Then, ‘I am the…’

He began chuckling (the path between his nose and his lips so frozen he thought it might be in imminent danger of splitting).

‘I am the fucking, ’ he proclaimed proudly, finally making sense of it, turning back into the wind, throwing his chin into the air (his eyes instantly pummelled by snowflakes, his lashes gently clogged and weighed down by them).

I AM THE FUCKING

Without thinking he shoved his fingertips into his mouth, sucked on them and realised that they were bleeding.

He began walking again. He kept walking –

I am the fucking

— past the putting green –

I amthe…

— left onto the roadway –

Iam…

— just beyond the bridge… the –

Calvin

— No–

Culvin

— No–

Colvin

Hah!

He punched the air, victoriously, then clutched at his stomach –

Sharp pain

The snow was falling faster. He paused for a moment and saw — as if the whole tragic spectacle had been specifically timed for him, or caused by him (his spectral presence standing there on the edge of that tarmac) — a slow-moving jeep hitting a fast-moving fox.

The jeep honked, braked, made a sudden, thudding contact, but did not stop. Wesley walked forward. The fox lay on its side in the heart of the road; panting, eyes blueing up with shock; a vixen.

One of her back legs was hanging loose, broken, and there was an inconceivably huge gash on her stomach. He saw that her teats were red and still swollen from feeding. He put his hand into his pocket for his knife –

Nothing

— he cursed, walked to the side of the road, saw a dilapidated road sign –

Leisure Centre

— appraised it, kicked it over, grabbed the loosest supporting metal pole, yanked it free (it took some while to give entirely — the base was weighed down with concrete) carried it over to the fox –

God bless you

Hit

And hit

— killed her.

Another car drove over the bridge, caught him in its headlights, braked, then sounded its horn. He tossed the pole aside, shuddering, picked her up and slung her warm carcass across his shoulders — her blood sweet on his neck, his back, his fingers — and headed for the long grass on the opposite siding. He crouched low there, laying down the body gently, waiting for a while and then emitting a sharp and ghostly bark into the icy early morning.

It must’ve been half an hour before the first cub appeared. It was shy of the stranger; hesitant. Wesley made a crying sound; a kind of whining. He had inadvertently smeared some of the vixen’s blood onto his cheeks. He had cut off her tail with a piece of broken glass and tied it to his wrist with a bundle of tightly-wound grass.

The small fox drew closer.

‘Your mother’s dead, little man,’ Wesley whispered, ‘come on over here and have a smell of her.’

The cub was thin. His coat was coarse and uneven. His ribs protruded like the individual struts on an old-fashioned, oil-fired hospital radiator. He came close and sniffed tentatively at the corpse of his mother. He licked some of the blood from her. He emitted a tiny squeak. He pushed his nose to her teat — selfishly, almost angrily — and tried to suckle there.

Wesley made a series of gentle cooing sounds until the cub had finished and pulled away, then he picked up the vixen again, lifted her over his shoulders, turned — but very slowly — holding the vixen’s four feet together in his one good hand and trailing her tail onto the ground behind him, still affixed to the other.

He walked on; over the makeshift wooden bridge (slippy with ice — treacherous) and onto the mud embankment which snaked alongside the river. He did not look back to check if the cub was following. He looked forward, and from side to side, struggling — in the darkness — to locate the vixen’s spore.

He paid special attention to any large rocks or tree-stumps (although there were precious few in these snow-peppered, mud-splattered flatlands) where he imagined the vixen might’ve left territorial markings. He found several. But the first was goose — he bent down, sifted through the snow and pressed the frozen faeces loosely between his fingers, sniffed. Clucked. The second was badger. The third –

Ah

He glanced back. Two cubs now, both following anxiously, ten, maybe twenty paces behind him. Ahead lay the dawn — he drew a deep breath — but only the faintest suggestion of it, and the concrete flyover; arching its long back and yawning resignedly into the possibility of morning.

Beyond that?

What a question

Beyond that?

The future:

Pissed-up

Blood-smattered

Blister-raw

The flyover — when he reached it — was still all but deserted and pitch dark underneath. But he remembered from walking here before (and could tell by the smell; deadened by the snow, but still perceptibly there) that the den was very near. He waited for his eyes to adjust, looked around for the give away pile of dirt. Found it.

A truck rumbled over.

He staggered out the other side, straightened up (his back protesting — his fingers numb now, his nose, his lips), peered behind him — the cubs were close together, shoulder rubbing shoulder, entering the den, joggling for first access, for precedence. He shifted the weight of the mother, put one foot onto the stile and stared ahead.