Andrew Ervin - Burning Down George Orwell's House

He stood with some dizzy difficulty and went into the lounge, where he could look over the papers from Helen in private. Mr. Fuller busied himself in the kitchen clanking pots and pans together. Ray’s signature was all that was missing. He went behind the bar, where he poured another dram and left a tick mark on Pitcairn’s tab. Then he used the stubby pencil to add one final and specific clause to the divorce settlement and initialed the margin next to it. He had one modest demand of Helen, then she would be rid of him. He signed the document repeatedly, as required; his scribbled name would stand in for him in his absence.

He sealed the return envelope and carried it back out to the lobby along with three more drams duly charged to Pitcairn. He placed the glasses on the table where the two of them were bickering about a sport he had never heard of, then dropped the envelope on the reception desk, along with more than enough money to cover the postage to America. “I’m a free man,” he said. “I just signed my divorce papers.”

“Are congratulations in order at such a time?” Farkas asked.

“Hard to believe someone would let a catch like you get away,” Pitcairn said. “Anyway, we better get going. Right after this dram.”

“Mr. Welter,” Fuller yelled from the kitchen. He poked his head through the door. “Seeing as you two are getting along so nicely, perhaps you might like to come back down for our next hunt in a few weeks?” he asked.

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Pitcairn said. “I don’t imagine Chappie here would have any interest in our old superstitions.”

“Why is everybody out to get me?” Farkas asked.

“Actually, I’d love to come along!” Ray said.

“Excellent,” Fuller said. “It will be good to have you on board. Maybe you’ll hit something. We sure as shite haven’t had any luck, have we? We can use all the help we can get. It will be on the evening of the summer solstice. Supper’s here at sundown.”

Pitcairn groaned.

“I can’t wait! What will we be hunting for anyway?”

“A wolf!” Farkas laughed. “Though for the record it’s a scientific fact that there hasn’t been a wild wolf seen in all of Scotland since the year 1743!”

“It’s not funny,” Pitcairn snapped. “Something’s been killing off our sheep.”

“There’s still plenty to go around,” Farkas said. He wiped the tears from his hairy face.

“That’s not the fucking point now, is it? Now finish your drink. I can’t wait to see what kind of redecorating you’ve done at Barnhill.”

The remains of Molly’s bicycle sat in a heap on the porch. The front wheel had folded in half and the back one was missing altogether. The frame was totaled, but Ray threw it on the back of Pitcairn’s truck anyway in case she could salvage the derailleur or other parts for the replacement bike he would soon be purchasing. “I have the very same panniers on my bicycle,” Pitcairn said. “Not that I use it much. These roads will do a number on the old nut sack — not that you have that problem, I suppose!” Pitcairn laughed until he choked, then stopped to rest his hands on his knees while some kind of goo rattled around in his chest and freed itself with a loud cough. “Now would you kindly hurry the fuck up?” he asked.

“I need to stop at The Stores,” Ray reminded him, hoping to delay the inevitable scene. Pitcairn was going to find his daughter — his underage daughter — running around naked at Barnhill. She would know to run inside and hide when she heard the truck approaching, right? A cell phone, a cell phone! His kingdom for a cell phone!

“For fuck’s sake, Chappie. I don’t have time to take your sorry, concussed self shopping for your tampons.”

“That’s fine. You can drop me off and I’ll get myself home.”

“And how do you propose to do that, then? You going to sprout wings and fly up there? Make it fast now and get me a packet of fags.”

Once again Mrs. Bennett charged him an insane sum for the canned goods, fresh bread, and toiletries he required. He put the two boxes on the back of Pitcairn’s truck next to the mangled bike. The truck handled the paved part of the road about as well as the bike had. All the bouncing around in the cab made Ray’s headache even worse.

Pitcairn didn’t say much on the way up the island, which was for the best, and he didn’t hit the brakes when he approached Barnhill. He drove right past the house.

“Where are we going?” Ray asked.

“I’m not dropping you back just yet. I have something special planned for you. An outing, you might call it. What do you say we do a little fishing, Chappie? Just me and you.”

That was when Ray began to fear for his life. He contemplated opening the door and jumping from the moving truck, but that would have been stupid even in the best of conditions. He already had a concussion — there was no reason to exacerbate it. “I don’t really like boats all that much,” he said.

“Don’t you worry, Chappie. There’s nothing to it.”

Even at the lowest points of his depressive states, when he had tried with great conviction to do permanent harm to himself, Ray had never felt afraid the way he did now. His lungs were so constricted that he couldn’t breathe and he started hyperventilating with a series of sharp inhalations.

Pitcairn drove past Kinuachdrach and to the northernmost tip of Jura and parked next to the wooden dock Ray and Molly had once sat on in the rain. A small boat bobbed in the water. Pitcairn untied it, though it clearly belonged to someone else.

Ray stepped on board and Pitcairn hit the throttle before he could sit. The motor was stronger than it appeared, and he was nearly thrown overboard. He managed to catch his balance and take a seat in the front. There was no life jacket, no seat cushion that in the increasingly likely event of an emergency could be used as a floatation device.

“What you have there,” Pitcairn said, “is the Isle of Scarba. That makes this—”

“The Gulf of Corryvreckan.”

The Cauldron of the Sparkling Seas. Home of the famous whirlpool — Charybdis herself. The lovechild of Poseidon and Gaia.

“Right you are, Chappie,” Pitcairn said. “Right you are!” He killed the engine and gestured toward a patch of water darker than that surrounding it.

Ray looked over Pitcairn’s shoulder to see just how far they were from shore. The Paps bounced up and down, up and down behind him.

“This whirlpool has swallowed up bigger fish than you, Chappie, and I can promise that they were never heard from again. Now, I’m going to ask you one simple question.”

“There’s no—”

“Your ability to tell me the truth will decide if you will be flying back to America in cattle class or in the cargo hold. Is my Molly at Barnhill?” The boat rocked. The whirlpool gurgled at Ray with icy loathing. She longed to suck him down into the murky depths and swallow him whole. She wanted to fill his lungs with her own briny breath, to anoint his sunken body with a thousand barnacles. “One simple question, Chappie. Yes or no?”

Ray’s nausea rose and fell with the motion of the water. His headache surged between shades of purple and red behind his eyes. The bandages around his cranium were the only things keeping his head from exploding and sending chunks of his skull and brain matter sailing into the wind. The surface of the sound danced in the evening sun.

He looked Pitcairn in the eye. “No,” he said.

“That was foolish, Chappie. You shouldn’t lie to me.” He sounded calm.

“I didn’t — I’m not!”

“Listen to yourself. You’re still lying.”

Pitcairn knew. Ray didn’t know how he knew, but he did and now he would be thrown overboard and into a whirlpool. “Okay,” he said. “She showed up a few weeks ago. I would’ve told her to go home, but she had a black eye. I thought she was in danger. You would have done the same thing.”