The priest says that this is so, but that there are also many bangs which do not signal a death.
I revert once more to a discussion of guns, ammunition, ballistics.
The priest asks me how it is that the unicorns have never seen these instruments. I describe, once more, the deep trench that runs across the top of the ridge, and explain, again, that the men can kill from far away. I describe the way in which the unicorn’s head is removed and how it is mounted on the walls of the homes of rich men. I am becoming angry. They continue to whisper among themselves, not wishing to listen. Their accents, at first pleasant, seem to have become more rustic and so more stupid.
They also, it would appear, have become disenchanted with me. My clothes are ripped from behind. They force me, somehow, to a kneeling position and make me run on all fours, coming at me from all angles with their horns. They are calling me a blasphemer. There are tears in my eyes, but not caused by pain. A large unicorn sits suddenly on me, pushing my face into the dirt. My ribs have surely broken.
There is a searing pain in my side and a dull blow to my head. That is all I can remember on that occasion.
2.
The hunters found me on the moor and, unaware of my missionary activities, treated me kindly, taking me to a nearby hospital where I was well looked after.
Upon my release, my right leg in plaster and my ribs securely taped, I returned to the moor, taking with me a rifle I had purchased. I would demonstrate to the unicorns the nature of the gun, and, with luck, arrange for them to make an exodus from the area to some more remote part of the moor where they might never be found.
I bore them no ill-will for the attack. It was the product of ignorance and I could expect no more.
3.
Moorav was surprised to see me. However, neither he nor his followers were unkind to me. They fed me well and the priest came over and ate bread beside me, asking if I had recovered. He referred to my behaviour as “your trouble” and asked me if I was better.
I said I had brought an instrument that would prove me either right or wrong. The priest smiled and said he hoped I wasn’t about to start all over again. I indicated the gun and gave it its name. He looked at it and asked some questions which I answered simply enough. They related more to the materials of manufacture than to the function.
After the meal I persuaded them to come with me to the door of the cave. Moorav was nervous, but I was insistent. With the unicorns standing in a semicircle behind me I raised the gun to my shoulder and fired across the moor.
Strangely, they were not at all impressed. The bang, they said, was in no way like the bang of death, and for proof they pointed out that no one had, in fact, died. And they began, once more, to laugh at me. I, for my part, became angry and desperate that I should prove my point.
Eventually Moorav stepped forward and suggested that we should only settle the matter if I pointed the weapon at him. I said no, for it would kill him. He laughed once more and said I was frightened of failing. (I had noticed, on this second visit, that they treated me as a madman, perhaps having decided that I was ignorant but not dangerous. The charge of blasphemy was not raised again.)
Sadly, I asked Moorav if he was prepared to die for the sake of his people.
He said, it was only the unicorns in pagan times who did not die, I am not frightened of dying.
I engaged in no calculations for I knew that, should I do so, I would never prove my point. I raised the rifle and pointed it at his head. For an instant I hesitated, but then, with the unicorns behind me still laughing, I pulled the trigger. Moorav moaned and staggered. Blood rushed from the wound in his head and he sank slowly to the ground, his eyes rolling.
There was silence behind me. No one spoke.
4.
I myself buried Moorav in a shallow grave. It was a slow process as the unicorns possess no digging tools, and they still expected that a man would come to remove Moorav, a man other than myself.
5.
The cave has been quiet all day. Unicorns lie in groups but do not talk. Finally the priest approaches me and indicates that he wishes a word. He says I have done his people a grave disservice, that I had removed the gift of death from them. He says that his people will now surely move to another part of the moor, as I had wished. There will be a return to the old times and no one will die. The unicorns, without Gods or enemies, will slowly sink into deep despair and spend their hours in search of sleep, where, perhaps, they will dream of dying. They will forget, eventually, that dying was ever possible.
The priest now reveals that he has attempted to persuade the unicorns to remain where they are, but they are frightened and, should he put his authority to the test, they would not obey him. He asks me only one thing, that I should use my instrument on him. He would regard it as a great favour.
I load the rifle, sadly. Inside the cave the unicorns lie quietly, unaware that they will live for ever.
American Dreams
No one can, to this day, remember what it was we did to offend him. Dyer the butcher remembers a day when he gave him the wrong meat and another day when he served someone else first by mistake. Often when Dyer gets drunk he recalls this day and curses himself for his foolishness. But no one seriously believes that it was Dyer who offended him.
But one of us did something. We slighted him terribly in some way, this small meek man with the rimless glasses and neat suit who used to smile so nicely at us all. We thought, I suppose, he was a bit of a fool and sometimes he was so quiet and grey that we ignored him, forgetting he was there at all.
When I was a boy I often stole apples from the trees at his house up in Mason’s Lane. He often saw me. No, that’s not correct. Let me say I often sensed that he saw me. I sensed him peering out from behind the lace curtains of his house. And I was not the only one. Many of us came to take his apples, alone and in groups, and it is possible that he chose to exact payment for all these apples in his own peculiar way.
Yet I am sure it wasn’t the apples.
What has happened is that we all, all eight hundred of us, have come to remember small transgressions against Mr Gleason, who once lived amongst us.
My father, who has never borne malice against a single living creature, still believes that Gleason meant to do us well, that he loved the town more than any of us. My father says we have treated the town badly in our minds. We have used it, this little valley, as nothing more than a stopping place. Somewhere on the way to somewhere else. Even those of us who have been here many years have never taken the town seriously. Oh yes, the place is pretty. The hills are green and the woods thick. The stream is full of fish. But it is not where we would rather be.
For years we have watched the films at the Roxy and dreamed, if not of America, then at least of our capital city. For our own town, my father says, we have nothing but contempt. We have treated it badly, like a whore. We have cut down the giant shady trees in the main street to make doors for the school house and seats for the football pavilion. We have left big holes all over the countryside from which we have taken brown coal and given back nothing.
The commercial travellers who buy fish and chips at George the Greek’s care for us more than we do, because we all have dreams of the big city, of wealth, of modern houses, of big motor cars: American dreams, my father has called them.
Although my father ran a petrol station he was also an inventor. He sat in his office all day drawing strange pieces of equipment on the back of delivery dockets. Every spare piece of paper in the house was covered with these little drawings and my mother would always be very careful about throwing away any piece of paper no matter how small. She would look on both sides of any piece of paper very carefully and always preserved any that had so much as a pencil mark.