These Demented Lands Read Free Page B

Brotherhood stepped out of the bridge; mosquitoes like he’d never heard were whining past his ears then the minesweeper mounted the sand and the hull opened up as a whole invasion force of government soldiers poured up the beach to the palms. The soldiers had been hidden down there in their own vomit for a week. Then Brotherhood realised the whizzing past his red ears were bullets and he was viewedas part of the invasion force. “I thought you knew,” the Captain said, crouched on the decking. “Welcome to Africa.”’
    â€˜Caaan I?’ the girl goes.
    â€˜You must ask Mother,’ went the driver.
    I says, ‘Crossing The Interior to The Drome. What way?’
    â€˜Past the mud huts, try not to wake the baboons.’
    â€˜Byeee.’ The little girl took away one hand to wave and the miniature train did a circle till its red light jerked and shaked away down the little track, its redness showing on the rails before it dived into a tunnel that seemed made of papier mâché. I trod on along the track, through the silly wee tunnel and round another bend. When I turned right onto open hillside the king baboons must’ve seen me cause they started such a commotion, and this in turn got all the bloody parrots along at the castle going bonkers.
    Bended double like the clans at Culloden stepping into the end, I traversed bensides ever upwards. I climbed straight through steady blackout – the sodden Levi’s going stiff on both thighs with the perishingness – knowing always, hung up in some place of aboveness like a cyan-coloured censer swinging in the wind, snugged up in the clam of a scree-clagged corrie, was the campfire: the campfire with its angle of floor that had let me see it when I swam out in the Sound but hid from view deep down at the sole bulb of Ferry Slipway below.
    When I came on them it was sudden. The campfire lifted up out of the darknesses as I heave-heaved up a bank. Iducked down though I knew from the fire area, against nightsky, I’d be invisible.
    Two guys – old, kind-of-harmless-looking-slack-jowelled-brotherly-baldiness made you trust them, as if one could never do anything bad in the always-look of his brother. But
it
was beyond them,
it
was lying within the light of the fair-old-bleeze. I squinted, made sure I was seeing what I was but I was so cold I stepped into their light and both men swung and looked at the coffin sitting beside them on the fold-down trestles before they bothered turn and begin to study me.
    â€˜Aye-aye,’ coughs one of the brothers.
    â€˜Come away hence and form a square circle, girl.’
    â€˜Aye, let the dogs see the rabbit,’ says the First Spoken.
    â€˜Where the hell’ve you been? Specting you for hours,’ says the Most Baldy, pretend-annoyedly; he nicked a peek at First Spoken who let out a honky laugh.
    â€˜Busy the night.’ (Gasped, glancing round.)
    â€˜Rush hour . . .’
    â€˜Off our feet . . .’
    â€˜Visitors are such a strain.’
    I lowered myself beside the flames and looked into them, smiling; I announced: ‘I cross the Interior to The Drome.’
    â€˜We go the other way. To open ocean. The three of us,’ First Spoken spat into the fire. ‘Guess what we’ve buried under that hearth? A fat clucky hen snaffled from old Gibbon’s Acres wrapped in silver foil. Ready in . . .’ (his watch clicked down as he flicked a wrist) . . . ‘just a jiffy.’
    â€˜Know how to catch a chicken?’ asked Most Baldy.
    I goes, ‘Nut.’
    â€˜You catch em at night,’ cackled First Spoken.
    â€˜They cannae
see
in the dark!’
    â€˜Cannaesseeeeee!’
    â€˜Would you
like
a wee bite chicken?’
    I goes, ‘Oh
yess
I would. Yum-yummy.’
    â€˜Alexander. I hope you’ve polished the silver.’
    â€˜It was bloody parrot last night and never again.’
    â€˜Can