Heartland, page 19
–Kuklok!
–Is that you, Mervyn? Mervyn – is that you? I gasped hoarsely, in trepidation.
As I could have sworn I heard his voice, whispering softly as it came drifting accusingly, through the trees.
–You’ll have to live with this.
Forever.
Before collapsing in a faint and remaining there, in the bracken.
With it only being by the grace of God that I didn’t contract frostbite, being scarcely able to move when I awoke in the dawn, still clutching Jody’s envelope and its shredded, pathetic contents. What was left of all those torn-up letters, with each one ripped as my nerves, and my body howling, beneath the sky, for alcohol.
As I fell, in a daze, along the side of the mountain, my soul a bitter, unspeakable site of ruin.
Chapter 24
The Mountain Throwback
The same as the rest of them, only maybe even more so, I knew what you were dealing with whenever it came to Tony Begley.
Principally because of that day he’d pursued me without my knowledge as far as Dawn’s place out by the lake, an old fishing lodge she’d rented during her time in Glasson.
I had never breathed a word about it to anyone – but, like WW and a number of unnamed others, ever since first setting eyes on her, I had taken a bad heart-burnin’ for Dawn ‘Kit’ King.
And, somehow, Begley had come to know about it.
I don’t know how long he’d been standing there in the doorway – observing me, sombrely, chewing on a matchstick.
I’d taken the liberty of picking the lock.
–Hi, he said, and with the way he looked at me, my blood ran cold.
–I was wondering might you mind if I came in and sat down?
Before I got time to answer, Tony Begley did just that.
He was wearing a great big black puffa-style anorak with a pointed hood, his soft red fleshy face peeping out from it as he said:
–What’s that you been reading there, Ray? Huh?
It was a floral-covered notebook, a kind of diary Dawn King used to like to keep.
A dream journal.
–Give it to me, he said, and I passed it to him.
As he sat there, impassively, turning its pages, smirking as his shoulders tensed.
–There is only one time I ever feel really free, and that is when I take Ophelia the quarterhorse out into the fields. Or when I ride her by the shores of the lake with nothing on me only my old cowboy shirt and wait for the water-pale sun of the dawn to come up, on those mornings of early summer when the air’s so quiet you can almost hear your own soul quiver. When there’s just me and her – that beautiful, gleaming mare Ophelia as we gallop without a care into the valley of the golden morning. July gonna be a burner, my Daddy used to say, and then you and me gonna go down to the coast. And we’ll ride like this, just you and me along the sand, and swear to God it’ll be as if you and me and the rest of our sweet lovely family, it’ll be as if all our lives we have been fortunate enough to be strangers to pain. Because that’s how it was supposed to be when I was your age, my angel, when you’re still young enough to be able to hope and dream. We were gonna build us a whole new society in the woods, me and her – Phaedra, as I used to call your mother. Zachariah was her name for me, with the pair of us cantering, without a care, along the shore, just the very same as this – with our naked bodies painted in blue and red spirals, like we belonged in some electric, golden creation, our own special, private psychedelic western. But then things went wrong – the commune we’d planned to set up in the woods, I don’t know, it all somehow fucking fell apart. It somehow just got all tore up, the way things do.
–Would you think I’m in this? I heard TB insouciantly inquire. You reckon that maybe she’s got one or two sentences regarding me in here?
–I honestly don’t know, Tony, I replied, I really couldn’t say. Because, to tell the truth, I haven’t actually read it.
–You haven’t read it? he replied, incredulously. Then how did you know it was all about dreams?
–I didn’t, I just guessed, Tony.
–I see, he said.
But it was clear he didn’t believe me.
–They got a propensity, the judies, for writing about their dreams, don’t they? he continued. Travelling along the highways of their hearts. Maybe it helps them to think things through – would you say that’s the case?
–I don’t know, I said, I don’t know. I guess.
–You guess?
–Yes, I said.
–Maybe their thoughts and aspirations.
–Aspirations, yes, I said, without really thinking what I was saying.
Then he got up and walked over to the window.
He was wearing a baggy blue pinstriped suit, steadily patting at the glistening accordion pleats of his hair.
His expression seemed pained as his eyes creased up and he gazed out the window, into the distance.
Far beyond, towards the surface of Lake Wynter.
As, through clenched teeth, I heard him tensely, resentfully, observe:
–You think you’re the only one who’s special, don’t you? But that’s where you got it wrong, you see. Because she’s done the same with me too, and others. She knows that we’re dumb and she knows how to work it. Even WW – who would have believed it? She’s written to his wife and it’s all going to end in disaster. But I know how it happened and I’m not going to make a judgement. Because magical beauty the like of what she’s got, it makes its own rules, got its own laws. Whenever I’m with her it’s like the coldness inside of my heart it somehow melts and I don’t want to be anywhere else except with her. And if you don’t believe me, then look in there, among those pages. Because it’s there, in her little book of dreams – we’ve each of us got our own little chapter. You think there’s nothing about me? Well, that’s where you’re wrong. That mare she’s talking about, Ophelia, the one WW gave for her birthday? This particular morning, Wade, you see, the two of us went out together. Yes, just took two horses and galloped off, side by side, into the mist. I can’t tell you how desirable she was. Wearing this sweet little white lace veil that covered her head completely, except that when she turned, I swear to almighty God …
He stared at the floor and said nothing for a very long time.
–But maybe that’s because I haven’t had many women. None, really. I’m very inexperienced in that quarter, Raymond. I know you won’t believe me, but I’m sorry to have to say that it’s true.
A shadow fell across his face as, quite unexpectedly, he turned and swung on his heel.
–Did you hear what I just said? he spat. It’s true!
And then, just as unexpectedly, composing himself in a remarkable fashion.
–There’s a reason for that, though, he continued softly, I used to get these scruples, you see – when I was a younger man, I mean. And, fool that I am, I went and told her all about it. Yes, went and blabbed that secret too. All my shadows, she knows about them now. Maybe she’ll put them in one of her songs – those dark, unknowable tunes she sings. Some velvet morning when I’m straight, I’m gonna open up your gate, Tony, she’ll sometimes say to me. As she looks right into you with them big brown liquid eyes and laughs. Rich or poor, old or young, we’re putty in her hands and she knows it. Especially softies the likes of you and me, Wade – because she knows the truth, that that is what we are, deep down. She told me one night that she’d heal me, did you know that, Wade? Or did she promise to do that for you as well?
He released a sad moan.
–It’s a heck of a thing, it really and truly is, he continued, even though you know it ain’t true there’s some part of you as desperately needs to believe that she genuinely cares for you, and that you’re not being played after all. I remember us that morning standing by the shores of Lake Wynter, the quarterhorse gleaming with sweat and whinnying as the pair of us held hands and looked out over the water – in spite of everything I will always treasure those few brief seconds. When she told me about her Bonnyland dream. That smoky, vegetal Paradise, Tony, that’s ours for the taking, I remember her saying, our glamorous land of long twilights and hot dawns where cloud-stacks tower from the horizon and the earth-heat always seem to go quivering upward.
He produced a cigarette.
But then changed his mind and put it back inside the packet.
–Did you ever hear the story about Lake Wynter? he asked.
–No, I told him, no I didn’t, Tony.
–They say that it’s filled with the bones of the dead – those with no names that were dumped there during the Troubles. You wouldn’t want to end up there, nobody wants to end up forgotten beneath the water.
Then he reached for his anorak and announced that he was going.
–Leave her alone, Ray, everything’s coming to an end around here anyway. Get out now while you still can. There’s a piece of advice for you.
He came over and gave me a playful tap on the cheek.
Then he said goodbye and was gone.
The last thing I should have done was read the passage she had written about me. But, given the opportunity, who could resist?
So I flipped the page and there it was, towards the end of the index, under ‘R’.
I got to say it, I found myself reading, that Raymond, or ‘Ringo’ as they call him, what with that cheeky smile and those handsome boyish features, that you would have to say, to admit that he, at least, has a bit of class.
Although, she continued, in this backcountry wasteland, I got to say that that wouldn’t be hard, with most of them little more than a step up from the herds of cattle and sheep they and their forebears spend their time tending. I guess there’s just something kind of appealing and sweet in his personality. My own sweet handsome little dogie, Ray Wade.
But it was the line on the second last page which hurt me the most – really hit me hard, I got to admit.
With my face still burning as I put the diary back on the shelf where I’d found it.
Although, Dawn King continued, in her elegant feminine hand, in the end poor old Ray is not a lot more than yet another sad mountain throwback – no matter how good the little dogie fucks.
Such a long way from the first night we’d spent there together, after one of her spectacular ballroom performances.
When, I guess you could say, she had given me the treatment.
Little girl lost, I guess you might call it – her modus operandi, I mean.
We’d been drinking a lot, and I think I must have been almost out for the count, in the back bar lying slumped, with my forehead pinned to the counter.
Before I heard that soft whisper as her lips gently touched my ear:
–You’re special, Ray Wade, I just want you to know that.
With the next thing I knew, the pair of us standing there in the car park and she’s looking right at me, with the car keys clutched in her fist. You’ll always be special, I heard her say again, and as long as I live I’ll never forget the effect it had on me.
As she stood there watching me, pushing a long silky strand of hair back from her face, until her boot heels were crunching the gravel of the car park and she was opening the car door and climbing into the driving seat, looking as happy as ever I’d seen her, launching onto another of her compelling American mountain stories and telling me everything about the day the legendary guitarist Duane Allman from the Allman Brothers had come to visit them in the Ozark commune.
–‘Skydog’ they all used to call him – man, how they loved to see that wisecracking sucker coming. You familiar with them, Ray – you like Southern rock at all?
Then, before I got a chance to answer, she launched into a story about this night when she would have been still in her teens, when Skydog had arrived on a Harley Davison, yeah right out of the blue on a Harley rider and their campfire party had turned into an unforgettable weekend.
–They say all kindsa things about that old Duane. But I’ll tell you this – I never found him nothing only a gentleman. And with great respect for the female gender, I can tell you that, unlike some of the phony rebel pussies that you get around here, if you understand my meaning ha ha Ray, you know?
Then she reached over and put on some of their music – a forward-moving, piledriving track of psychobilly rock with slide fuzz guitar-those same snappy handclaps and a stomping, forward-driving chorus.
–Yee-haw! she hollered as she vigorously slapped the arch of the wheel. Yep you go girl! Sure as night follows day. You are gonna be a great goddamn singer one day little lady, Duane that old Skydog told me, can you believe that Ray? And, I mean, it ain’t every day that one of the Allman Brothers has that kinda confidence in a lady – huh?
She swerved dangerously, skimming a tree.
–They think I want a recording contract? Then they are out of their fucking minds, Ray – because I don’t need those assholes, no how. You getting me here? You hearing what I’m saying? Because I’m going to do it without those motherfuckers – finish what my father started. This hillbilly opera he was working on with Duane. An electric western was how they used to describe it, a baroque backwoods comedy. Think Luke the Drifter, Kit, he used to say, think o’ that old Hank and Dante getting it together over a couple of bottles o’ Jack, and then you’ll have an idea of what me and that old Skydog are after.
She brushed what I thought was a tear from her eye and then turned around and said:
–But like so many other of my father’s many other fucking whacked-out dreams, it never came to anything. That’s why I’m going to finish it, Ray. Yep, finish it, ha ha – like he finished me!
No, they had never gotten around to completing their long-nurtured project, up in the mountains – presumably, as I later discovered – because of the fact that the hard-living rock guitarist Duane ‘Skydog’ Allman had died in a motorbike accident in the year 1971, precisely two years before he was supposed to have paid them his visit in the Ozarks.
–He’s part Indian, Ray, you know, she would confidently announce about Robbie Robertson of The Band – again displaying that troubling nervous tic which registered whenever she became excited, and ought to have warned me from the start.
–Yeah, she’d continue, that old Robbie used to take me down to the water when he’d come to visit my father … Lake Wadayaha it was called, not far from the camp. Water of the Morning – it’s Cherokee, you know?
But all her fantasy stories did was add to the mystery. And there we’d be, lying naked once again, sprawled across her scented double bed.
While she moaned ecstatically, pressing her palms hard and flat against my chest, swaying high above me, with her soft skin pearling as that beautiful bronze body shuddered and she flung back her head like someone possessed, biting voraciously into my neck as she released an almost terrifying, wanton cry:
–You’ll always be him – you’ll always be the only one, Ray Wade!
Chapter 25
The Wayward Wind
–I feel sick, I heard the Runt weep. Please can you help me, our boy? Because I really think I’m done.
–Steady, urged his brother, soon it will all be over.
–Why did he have to call me? Why did I have to see him, Cosmo, the boy who came from the moon?
–Hush, urged Shorty, please will you not?
–My hands are covered in sweat, so they are, Mervyn, exclaimed Wee Hughie, cautiously. Do you think I might have another shotta you-know-what?
–Coming up, replied Mervyn, coming right up, Wee Hughie – no problem.
–Where in Christ’s name can TB have got to? lamented Hughie. O where in the name of Jesus Christ can he have gone?
–I think it was probably the rain that delayed him, remarked Big Barney.
–Shut your mouth about up about rain! spat Red. Because it’s got nothing or anything to do with fucking rain. Why the fuck do you have to start on about that for? Fucking rain!
–How about we try and get on with the rest of the game? suggested Hughie, mopping his crown.
–A pair of deuces, requested Sonny Hackett, lighting one cigarette after another.
–I think I need me another shot too, Big Barney shouted.
–Coming right up, answered Mervyn, adding:
–Anyone else?
They all had one.
–Ah laaks that ol’ jungle, laughed Sonny Hackett, doing his best to put on an American accent.
And which turned out, surprisingly, to be pretty good.
Which was why all the others began to imitate him.
–Yup. That ol’ Sonny, he laaks his hooch. Ain’t it?
As Sonny sat there, swaying, shrouded in smoke.
–OK then, where are we? asked Hughie.
–I think, I reckon: give me two, said Red.
–Two? said Hughie.
–Two, Red nodded.
–And how about – tell you what, give me three, said Big Barney.
–This don’t look good. I think I might have to fold, said Sonny, grimacing as he shook his head.
–Toss me another, called Barney across the table, doing his best to sound confident and brassy.
But, in truth and in private, not feeling so good at all.
Feeling dreadful, as a matter of fact.
With the creeping kind of feeling beginning to take a hold of him – slowly, inexorably, getting in there under his skin.
But he had to make sure to try and keep on smiling.
At least till Begley had been and gone.
–O my God, he repeated to himself, I hope that none of them are watching me.
Then he shot forward abruptly in the chair, gripping it fiercely by the arms, as he gazed straight ahead.
He felt sure that someone was definitely going to comment.
So he steeled himself and waited.
But no one did. No, no one spoke.
As a Jack of Diamonds fluttered onto the table, landing plumb between the pair of overstuffed ashtrays.
–Well I’ll be damned, Big Barney cried, with both fists squared on the table in front of him. You would have to go and do that to me. Why, at a time when Begley is nearly here, did you all have to go and do that? It’s rotten, so it is. Back off, you hear? All of you – I’m warning youse.
