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In the evening light, I stop the pickup and get out to run through the field of wings – my arms out beneath the sky streaked with an aftertaste of blood – wet soil picking up and flicking from my boots. Soon, there will be a full moon, and at first it will be blood red as the sun is now, and blunt like the crown of a stillborn. As I run, three feathered shadows stand with shadows on open ground – the buzzards’ heads nodding, twisting in the flight of the ants. Their feast, a strange, portentous dance. And dusk, dusk claims the shapes, draining them into other shapes fused with black – this field, the same field years back where all seven of us walked, having no choice but to trust the dark. The endless depth of that night – a great vault where cloud cover performed illusions through the sky: pulling the whole world in, making the whole world disappear. And in that darkness was our fear, right down to the scent of mud, our feet drudging through the bog, calls of night-birds, wild dogs and jackals piercing our hearts then withdrawing like pins out of velvet cushions. We walked, whichever way we thought the homestead was; my father almost primal. The Land Rover stuck in the distance – a presence, a dead emotion curled up in the corner of a dream. For days it had rained, mud caked our boots and dragged us down. The weight, with each step we took, gathered – drawing on the body with a root of gravity you had to break again and again. I feared stopping and being planted in the mud – white blind roots spreading out from my toes – knees locked, and legs stiffening. The birds lifted to a dead tree. Monstrous wingspans flapping over new stars and planets. What had I done? All around me still the hypnotic fluttering of the ants. And in the last bits of bruised sky – silhouettes of small birds and bats – I raise my hands and fall protecting my head from a large crude shape. The sound of the wet grass slashes through my ears as I roll through the sharpness – the field turning and trembling, I fear his gasping will stop, the loud labour of his breath cease and bring in the ultimate silence while all IX the ward watches as though it were a picture show starring father and son. Sweat from my face dripping into his, fingers caught to the bone between his teeth. Breathe. 70
page 73
A cough in the ward here and there, clearings of throats, a word or two exchanged by neighbours in adjoining beds, spectators rolling over on sheets tanned by sweat. He drowned in his own fluid. Sweat from my face raining into his. All eyes on us. * * The first film my father and I watched together was Steptoe & Son, in an old red-carpeted theatre. The smell of popcorn and pipe tobacco; the great casual upholstered seats that nearly lost me in their depth – the way they flipped up and had my naked knees on my chin; how I stuck my head up struggling to see the screen – and, for the first time heard an audience burst out in the dark, laughing. 71

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A cough in the ward here and there, clearings of throats, a word or two exchanged by neighbours in adjoining beds, spectators rolling over on sheets tanned by sweat.

He drowned in his own fluid. Sweat from my face raining into his.

All eyes on us.

*

*

The first film my father and I watched together was Steptoe & Son, in an old red-carpeted theatre. The smell of popcorn and pipe tobacco; the great casual upholstered seats that nearly lost me in their depth – the way they flipped up and had my naked knees on my chin; how I stuck my head up struggling to see the screen – and, for the first time heard an audience burst out in the dark, laughing.

71

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