Two Cows and a Vanful of Smoke Read Free

climbed up the bank behind the pub and sat at a table.
    “So,” I said. “There you are. Under Heniton Hill…”
    “Yeah. Went back, didn’t I? Went back this evening. Had a little snoop.”
    “Nothing you like more.”
    He looked at me, and for a moment I thought he was going to hit me. He’s not the sort of bloke who’ll let you take the piss. He’s got a short temper, and although he’d always come back and apologize if he did hit you, the risk isn’t worth taking. He’s got a punch like a whip, and he’d never leave you with just one.
    “Of course…” And he said he’d parked in a lay-by and strolled down to where he’d seen the stranger in the trees. He had a story ready. Spike always has a story ready, and if anyone wanted to know what he was doing he was going to say something about a couple of ewes escaping from his boss’s field and ask, “Have you seen ’em? I saw them heading this way.”
    So he went into the trees, found the path the stranger had followed and walked for half a mile. He crossed a small stone bridge over a stream and came to a fork in the path. One way climbed towards a distant house, the other dropped further into the woods. “It was weird down there,” he said. “I didn’t hear any birds, no wind, no nothing. It was as quiet as the grave, you know. All I could hear was my breathing and my footsteps. The path got narrower and narrower. It looked like it was a secret, but still it was used a lot. I was just starting to think that I should turn around and go back when I heard something.”
    “What?”
    Spike put a finger to his lips and lowered his voice. “I crouched down and looked down the path. It finished in a clearing. The bloke I’d seen the day before was there, standing in front of a hoop house.”
    “A hoop house? Like a plastic greenhouse?”
    “Yes.”
    “What’s he doing with a hoop house?”
    “Fuck knows,” said Spike, “but that’s what we’ve got to find out. He dived inside and I came back. I don’t know. I didn’t want to hang around on my own. He looked like he could be a bit useful.”
    “A bit useful?”
    “Oh yes.”
    “And we’ve got to find out?”
    “Of course.”
    “Why?”
    “Because…”
    “We’ve got to find out what some ape is doing in a hoop house in the middle of the woods…”
    “I never said he was an ape.”
    “But you said he was useful.”
    “I can handle useful…”
    There’s no point in arguing with Spike when he’s in one of these moods. It’s best to let him go with it, so I sat back and listened while he told me that we were going to find out exactly what some bloke was doing in a hoop house in the middle of the woods.
    “We?”
    “You owe me, El.”
    This was true. Earlier in the year we’d been drinking in Wellington, and I’d told someone in the pub that he was talking crap about the beer I was drinking. He said it tasted like piss, and I said the thing about crap. Sometimes I do speak my mind, but Spike lets his fists speak his mind, which is, when it’s not planning some madness, usually idling in neutral. When the someone said, “You want to say that again?” I said, “OK,” and did. Spike was the other side of the bar, but he can sense trouble even if it’s taking a day off in Minehead. “You OK?” he said, suddenly next to me with an empty glass in one hand and the other in his pocket. He looked very relaxed.
    “Yeah,” I said.
    “This your mate?” he said, and the bloke who thought my beer was piss took a step back.
    “We were just talking about beer…” I said.
    “And you can’t fight your own corner?” said the bloke.
    “Did you say fight?” said Spike, and before I could stop him he’d spun the bloke around and was pushing him towards the door. I didn’t see what happened next, but by the time I was outside the bloke was lying on the floor and Spike was rubbing his fist. “Want another?” he said.
    The bloke shook his head.
    “I’m ready.”
    “Forget