Andrew Ervin - Burning Down George Orwell's House

“You’re coming with me, Chappie,” Pitcairn said. He stood at a trailhead that Ray hadn’t noticed and shined a flashlight in his eyes. Ray squinted in time to see Sponge and Pete go on ahead and get swallowed whole by the encroaching fog.

“I think I’ll stay here and help Mr. Fuller,” Ray said.

“Oh so you’re now a gourmet chef, are you? I think Mr. Fuller can manage without the benefit of your expertise.”

“But …”

“You go ahead, Mr. Welter,” Fuller said. “I can take care of this. One word of advice: it’s easy to get lost on the moors at midday, not to mention on a night such as this one. Keep an eye on where you’re going.”

“He’s right, Chappie. We wouldn’t want you wandering off, now would we?”

“I don’t have a flashlight.”

“I don’t have a flashlight.”

There was no point in arguing. Resistance was futile. Anyway, Pitcairn wouldn’t dare hurt him, not with Sponge and Pete as witnesses.

“Not to worry. You just stay close to Mr. Pitcairn,” Fuller said. “Bring us back some fresh meat to add to our feast.”

“You heard the man, Chappie, you stay close.” Pitcairn turned and went off into the night. He took four paces before his flashlight blinked out of view.

Ray followed after him, but the bonfire behind him soon evaporated and the darkness hit his body like a sudden fever. He couldn’t see a goddamn thing. “Pitcairn?” No answer. The soles of his sneakers sucked at the muddy ground, and just like that he was lost. Nothing existed except nothingness itself. The entire universe consisted of the absence of light. Panic swelled in Ray’s windpipe like a chunk of unchewed beef. Sweat tickled him from beneath his beard. The fog seemed to distort the sounds of the wind in the bushes. Somewhere there were waves lapping against the stony shore, but he couldn’t tell which direction they came from. He stumbled over unseen rocks and roots and divots, but walked in what he hoped was a straight line. Then he felt the terrain change and found himself on an incline. A hill, maybe the base of one of the Paps. If the peak jutted above the fog, maybe he could gain his bearings from there. Even if the lights in Craighouse and at the ferry port and over on Islay only illuminated small patches of fog, that would be enough to figure out which direction the hotel was in.

The mountain was too steep to climb straight up, so he circled it in progressively higher rings the way the groove of a record album eventually terminates in the middle. His sneakers were worse than useless and his intense intoxication didn’t help. The flask was empty. His ankles twisted back and forth. His progress — if he was making progress at all — was slow and laborious. His eyes had not adjusted to the light because there was so little light for his eyes to adjust to. The worst part was that Pitcairn had done this to him. Getting him lost out here, that had been totally intentional. It had to be. That asshole purposely led him out here into the black night with the purpose of getting him lost. That had been his agenda all along.

Ray climbed, blind, for twenty minutes, maybe more, and the higher he went the better he came to appreciate the reality of his circumstances. The seas would eventually rise again, as Farkas said, and that was thanks in some part to global warming and the thousands of SUVs he had unleashed. Ray had come to Jura in order to escape the consequences of his actions, but that was impossible. For the time being, however, here he was on one of the Paps of Jura, high above the cares of the mundane and overcrowded world.

He had to be nearing the top and so he hiked faster, his treads skidding on the rock surfaces, until a horrible sound reached his ears. It was a disgusting, retching howl that came from above him and echoed between the Paps then returned to its maker. There was something out here with him. The noise came again, closer, but this time it sounded like someone coughing up the boozy contents of his stomach. A halo of light bobbing in the fog guided Ray to the peak of the mountain, where he was actually glad to see Pitcairn. “I want you to take a deep breath, Chappie,” he said, wiping his mouth on his sleeve.

Ray did so. He stopped and tasted the sea on his tongue. The Scottish night felt so clean, so good and pure; it was unpolluted and sweet in his lungs. “Mr. Pitcairn, I’m so—”

“What you have a hold of there is fresh air. Something you won’t bloody well find in your Chicago.” He pronounced it She-cah-go . “Do you know why I wanted you to come up here with me tonight?”

“To shoot me?”

“That’s a very good guess, but I haven’t decided yet if I’m going to shoot you or not. I wanted you to come with me so that you might understand why it is that I don’t want you filling my Molly’s head with ideas.”

“If you ask me, her head’s already full of ideas,” Ray said. His heartbeat made its presence felt now in his neck. “Nothing you or I do is going to change that.”

“That’s what I’m talking about, Chappie.” Pitcairn spoke quietly. A bird peep-peeped at them from some nearby overgrowth. “I’m not asking you. No one is asking you any such fucking thing. No one has come pleading for your almighty opinion. Understand that. Right now, we are standing on Beinn a’ Chaolais. While you can’t see her at the moment you can believe me when I tell you that to our left is Beinn an Òir and on her other side is Beinn Shiantaidh.”

The three Paps. Translated from the Gaelic, they were called Mountain of the Kyle and Mountain of Gold. The easternmost one — hidden behind Beinn an Òir — was Holy Mountain. On a clear day they could be seen in all their glory from as far away as Northern Ireland.

The buzz Ray had going alleviated most of the pain in his feet and his fear of Pitcairn. He felt at home in the natural splendor of the Inner Hebrides. The wind pockmarked the cloudbank and exposed a pair of stars above. The swatches of night sky were remembered and forgotten like good intentions.

“I guess you heard about Molly’s scholarship?” Ray asked.

“And what scholarship is that, Chappie?”

“I know that Mrs. Campbell told you about it.”

“Told me what, then?”

“That’s how you want to do this? Fine. As part of my divorce settlement I got — at tremendous personal expense, I might add — a full-paid scholarship for Molly to attend a university back in Chicago. I’m talking about a world-class education for her, and it’s absolutely free.”

Pitcairn started walking again, following the crest of the mountain, and this time Ray stayed close to the light. It would be easy — way too easy — to get lost again. “I’ll need you to keep your voice down, Chappie,” he whispered, “if we’re planning to kill this wolf.”

“There’s no goddamn wolf, Gavin. You know that. Why the charade?”

“I said to keep your fucking voice down. If there’s no wolf, what’s slaughtering our sheep? I know what you’re thinking here, Chappie. Maybe in the vast recesses of that sophisticated brain of yours you really do believe that you, above everybody else on God’s green earth, know what’s best for us bampots out here on Jura. Free education? There’s a free education from Beinn a’ Chaolais. Under the stars. Even if you can’t see them, Chappie, they’re still twinkling all the same. I also suppose it’s equally possible that you think you’re helping Molly by getting away from her big, bad da. For all your books and your advertising awards and your prissy clothing you don’t understand the first thing about what this world is really like.”

“Yes, but—”

Pitcairn stopped again and turned to face him. He had in his hand the old-fashioned six-shooter. Maybe it was loaded with silver bullets. “Now just keep your gob shut for once in your entire bloody life. Do you smell that, Chappie? That’s the sea air in your lungs, not smog or fast food grease or petrol exhaust from all your sport utility vehicles. What makes you believe for one instant that I would allow you or any man to deprive Molly of this? I would rather be dead than live in Chicago, because they’re pretty much the same thing. Do you even know how it feels to be alive?”