Andrew Ervin - Burning Down George Orwell's House

Through the window behind Helen’s head, a large metal dumpster was being borne aloft into the heavens by hundreds of inflated plastic bags. Ray rubbed at his eyes. When he looked again it had floated upward and out of view.

He needed to leave. He needed to leave this office and he needed to leave this entire rotting, putrid city and this entire corrupt system that he had contributed to all these years. If he was to stay, Ray would spend the next year working for Big Brother and espousing the benefits of fracking and then hate himself for the remainder of his life. He didn’t want to be part of the problem any longer. He had been so wrong. There was no goddamn way he could fix it by himself, not from the inside and not with a thousand pro bono environmentalist campaigns. He stood and walked out.

“Where are you going?” Helen called after him.

“I don’t know,” Ray said, but in fact he did. For the first time in his life, he knew exactly where he was going. Instead of heading straight home, he went to the front desk at Logos and handed in his company ID card. A week later, he was on the Isle of Jura.

Without Molly at Barnhill the bottles emptied at their previous, brisk pace. Ray woke up most mornings in a sitting-room chair. Days rolled by without direction or purpose. He spent more time in his boxers. He would wake up late, sometimes in Molly’s bed or, once, on the staircase with a puddle of sixteen-year-old slinkied down the steps below him. After a week alone, another swan dive into the Corryvreckan whirlpool began to sound less awful. The irony did not go unnoticed: he had gotten off the grid for the purpose of eliminating all distraction from his life and to find some kind of inner focus. The email and social networking sites, the text messages, microblogs, and forgotten passwords. Yet now that he was alone again he found it impossible to concentrate.

Hours passed him by while he sat in the garden or hiked until his feet bled into the sneakers that weren’t designed for long distances. The sheep grew accustomed to him and no longer regarded him suspiciously or drifted away when he approached — they ignored him and the bells around their necks stayed quiet. He carried books with him and would stop in a shepherd’s abandoned enclosure to try to read and sometimes snooze. He wouldn’t return to Barnhill until it had grown dark, and, because he always neglected to leave the lights on, he arrived home to invisible, shin-bruising furniture and, every few days, another animal carcass on the doorstep.

He was spending another quiet evening at home with the whisky when he heard someone or something approach the house. In the absence of mechanical or digital noise, every footstep could be heard in the bed of mud and stone outside. He roused himself from the easy chair and grabbed the shotgun, which he had taken to keeping handy and as fully loaded as himself. Pitcairn was certain to seek revenge for whatever indignities he imagined Ray had perpetrated upon his daughter. Ray crept upstairs with the shotgun in one hand and a bottle of twelve-year-old in the other. The bedroom window afforded the best view of the front door. He wasn’t going to shoot Pitcairn, obviously, but he wasn’t going to let him in the house either. They had no further business to discuss.

The footsteps outside came slowly. Ray took a long gulp and put the bottle down. Something was approaching the house. He would fire a warning shot into the air if he had to. He went to slide open the window when — blam! — the gun went off. The glass crashed onto the intruder below. “Holy shit!” Ray yelled.

“Holy shite!” Farkas yelled.

It had only been a matter of time: firing the gun was something he could now check off his list of things to do. He knocked away the loose glass and stuck his head through the window frame. “Are you okay?”

“Right as rain, Ray. Only in this instance the raindrops are made of broken glass. I do appear to be bleeding the tiniest bit. Might I come in?”

Ray ran downstairs. Farkas stood panting in the mudroom. A thin line of blood had found a path through the forest of his eyebrows and came to a rest at the tip of his nose. Nestled in his arms he carried a fresh case of scotch, duly delivered as ordered.

“Come in, sit down. I’m so sorry!”

Farkas took a seat next to the fireplace. “I did ask you not to shoot me, but try not to let it worry you. I would, however, appreciate a little sip of something to calm the old nerves.”

Ray poured two healthy drams from the best bottle in the house. The glass shook in his hands. He could’ve easily killed Farkas — or himself. He took a big sip and topped his whisky up, then carried the drinks to the sitting room. Farkas mopped at his face with a handkerchief. His nose twitched. “Now this is a treat.”

“Only the best for my attempted homicide victims. Can I get you a towel or something?”

“I’m fine. Do you suppose this is the first time I’ve been shot at?” Farkas asked. His laugh sounded like a sea lion mating with a dump truck.

“No, I can’t imagine it is.”

“I’ve brought you your case of malt, though the truth is, Ray, that I came to see if you were still alive, if you know what I mean.”

“I’m not sure that I do.”

“Well, our dear friend Gavin, as you’ve discovered, suffers from certain, shall we say, sociopathic tendencies. And I thought he might have paid you a visit with the intention of causing some not insubstantial physical harm.”

“He did throw me into the whirlpool.”

“Aye, he mentioned something about that. I’m pleased to see you on this side of the ground.”

“I thought you were him. That’s why I had the shotgun out.”

“I imagine it does have a safety mechanism. And a wee bit more caution might carry you a long way.”

“Are you saying I don’t have to be worried?”

“About your marksmanship? Most definitely. About our Gavin? It’s hard to say, hard to say.” He took a sip of whisky and groaned with delight. “It’s true that he’s liable to get a bellyful one night and come knocking. He believes that you behaved inappropriately towards Molly and feels honor bound to respond.”

“That’s not true. I only gave her a place to stay after he hit her. Did you see her black eye?”

“Aye, but he’s worried about more than that. A girl of her age.”

Now Ray understood. “I need to make this perfectly clear: I swear to you that my relationship with Molly is … was … totally innocent. I never laid a hand on her. If Pitcairn doesn’t believe me there’s not a thing I can do about it, but that’s the truth.”

Farkas appeared relieved. “I am glad to hear that,” he said. “However, you of all people should appreciate the distinction between perception and reality. I’ll talk to him. Sometimes he listens to me, although most of the time he doesn’t.”

“What should I do?” Ray asked.

“If you decide to reload that shotgun of yours, please do mind the safety. Many thanks for the whisky. I should be getting back.”

“But you just got here. How about a refill?”

“I’d love to, Ray. Next time, next time.”

Something didn’t feel right. Farkas had come a long way just to stop in for a quick drink. He had something up his sleeve beyond lugging a case of whisky through the mud. Maybe it was an espionage mission. That was it. Farkas was serving as a spy for the rest of the island. He had infiltrated the foreign enemy’s compound in order to collect intelligence. The locals were no doubt sitting around at the hotel lounge waiting for him to report back. “Farkas, did you come all the way up here to find out if I fucked Molly?”

“Not precisely, no,” he said, but he looked guilty. “I’ve come to deliver your whisky and your mail. Some of it looked important.” He stood and handed over a large paper bag full of envelopes.