They stood Donald in the back of Tommy’s pick-up truck, then they climbed into the cab. It was a thirty-mile drive. They took the side roads. They didn’t want any cops pulling them over and asking them what they were doing with a man tied to a chair in the back of their truck. Once they had to stop at a red light, and they heard Donald whimpering. ‘They’re all cowards,’ Tommy said. ‘Deep down they’re all fucking cowards.’ Most of the time they couldn’t hear anything because of the engine.
Then it began to rain.
It was after midnight when they reached the place. The gates were open so they just drove right in. They got out of the truck. That smell of rotten meat, and the warm rain running over their heads and hands. Tommy shot the bolts on the tailgate and let it drop. The chair had toppled over with Donald still attached. His cheek pressed against the studded metal. One eye blinked as the rain splashed into it. He must’ve thought they were going to kill him, but that was why they didn’t have to. The fear was the same. Tommy peered upwards, through the darkness. The pyramid loomed above.
‘On top, you said.’
Nathan nodded. ‘I think so.’
‘Right.’
A dead dog lay close by. Three of its legs had been sawn off. Tommy’s friend stood over it. ‘Who’d do that to a dog?’ he said. ‘Who’d do that to a poor, defenceless dog?’
Tommy took him by the arm and led him to the chair. ‘Get the front.’ He turned to Pete. ‘You help him.’
Tommy and Nathan lifted the back and, between the four of them, they half-dragged, half-carried Donald to the top. Once there, they set him upright. Stood back, breathing hard. There was a curious silence, a moment when it seemed that something might be said. But nobody spoke. The wind moved the hair on Donald’s head.
They ran back down, huge crunching strides. Tried not to think what they were treading on. When they reached the bottom they automatically looked back. Donald was an inch high. Nathan nodded to himself. It was right. Donald had wanted to rule. Well, he could rule that pile of trash. He could be Pharaoh of that pyramid, a Pharaoh with a crown of flies.
Tommy’s friend shuffled in the dirt. ‘Think the rats’ll get him?’
Tommy laughed.
‘What about the gag?’ Tommy’s friend said. ‘Think we should’ve taken the gag off?’
‘They’ll find him tomorrow,’ Nathan said. But it was hours till tomorrow. There was plenty of time for Donald to think things over. Smell the smell of his own foul behaviour.
Tommy looked up at the pyramid, then out towards the ocean. ‘Some view he’ll have,’ he said.
Then they drove home.
The next morning India-May wanted to know where Donald had got to.
Nathan looked her in the eye. ‘He left.’
‘He left late last night,’ Pete said. ‘He didn’t want to disturb you.’
India-May looked from one to the other, colour creeping up her neck. ‘Where’s my chair?’
‘What chair?’ Pete said.
‘You know what chair.’
‘I’ll get you another one,’ Nathan said.
‘I didn’t ask you to get me another one, did I? I said, where is it?’ Nathan shrugged.
India-May turned and whirled across the kitchen. Her dress shrieked as it caught on the corner of the table and tore. ‘Whose house is this,’ she said, ‘that’s what I’d like to know,’ and slammed the door behind her.
But they did get her another chair, and put it in the old chair’s place. She didn’t thank them, but she did start using it, and perhaps that was all the thanks they could expect. She was using it a week later when Nathan walked in through the kitchen door. It was close to midnight and India-May was the only one up. She was making necklaces, which was a form of meditation for her, a method of forgetting. Coloured beads mingled with flecks of tobacco and grass on the surface of the table, and the air was draped with smoke that smelt as sweet as creosote. Lumberjack sprawled on the tiles at her feet, whining sofdy in his sleep like a damp log on a fire.
Nathan sat down.
She looked at him, her fingers threading the beads blind. She might’ve been calculating something. The amount of trust she had left, the days till the end of the world.
‘What’s new?’
‘I’ve come to tell you that I’m leaving.’
She nodded. ‘I had a feeling you were going to say that.’
He told her it was like the moment when the tide stops coming in and starts going out again. It seems like nothing, but suddenly everything’s different. And the longer you wait, the clearer it becomes. It was a pretty lie.
But she was nodding. She understood this kind of talk. He’d almost learned it from her.
‘Where will you go?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know. Somewhere further up the coast.’
‘You going to work on the beaches?’
‘I think so.’ He pushed a bead around on the end of his finger. ‘What could be better than saving people’s lives?’
She recognised her own line and smiled.
He knew how their voices would sound from above. The hum of a plucked string. Like warmth, if you could hear such a thing.
‘I wish —’
‘What?’
He wished he could explain about Donald. But he knew she’d cut him off. That’s old history, she’d say. That’s cats for drowning. In any case, at some deeper level, perhaps she already understood. And in the future would remember.
He shook his head. ‘Nothing.’
Lumberjack’s paw tapped the floor. Lumberjack was dreaming. Once, last fall, he’d walked Lumberjack to the pine forest in the next valley. Lumberjack had started barking and then, just as abruptly, stopped again, and in the silence he’d heard a tree come down. Lumberjack had looked up at him, as if for approval, his tongue dangling from his jaws. No wonder there were no trees left standing round the farm. Lumberjack had sawed them all down with his voice. And now he was dreaming, dreaming of some great forest stretching out in front of him …
India-May lit a joint. ‘When I first met you, in that bar, you were all cut out round the edges, like something out of a cereal packet that doesn’t stand up when you’ve made it.’ She touched the tip of her joint to the ashtray and smiled. ‘You seemed, I don’t know, kind of brave, somehow.’
This woman, she was so vague, so blind. But she could surprise you with moments of sharpness. She was like a needle in long grass, a knife in fog.
The next morning he wheeled his bike out of the barn and into the winter sunshine. Lumberjack lay panting in the dirt beside him while he changed the oil, checked the tyre-pressures, adjusted the tension of the chain. In an hour he was ready, his map taped to the gas tank, his few possessions strapped on the seat behind him. India-May came outside to wave goodbye. She seemed to be frowning, but it was probably just a bad hangover and the white sun in her eyes. His rear wheel spun on the loose stones, searching for grip, then he pulled away. Lumberjack came leaping around his front wheel, and he had to go slow. As he topped the rise he let out the throttle. But Lumberjack was running alongside him now, a serious expression on his face, as if he saw this as a real test of stamina.
‘Go back,’ Nathan shouted, ‘go back,’ and he pointed behind him. But Lumberjack just leapt at his outstretched hand. It was part of the game.
After three miles Nathan had to turn round and ride all the way home again. India-May locked Lumberjack inside the house. As Nathan pulled away for the second time he could hear Lumberjack in the kitchen, frantically sawing the legs off tables and chairs. Somehow that was worse than anything.
But he rode hard to the end of the track and when he reached Baby Boy’s white cross he hesitated, then he turned right, into the mountains, something that he’d never done before.