Show Me the Sky - Nicholas Hogg [50]
‘Well, would you believe it? Nothing, just like that.’
In the sunless noon sheep stood grazing in dim fields. The road ahead was clear of cars and the teacher drove on, twitching and excited by some private thought.
‘Maybe you can answer me a question?’
Jimmy was looking at the lock. The knife was in his pocket, the blade folded. He slipped his hand inside, and worked it open.
‘Why on earth, in the middle of winter, would men go out on a Friday night wearing only a shirt?’ He asked the question incredulous at the thought.
‘It defeats any common sense. I’ve seen young men in the town when it’s barely above zero in nothing more than cotton short sleeves.’
A car passed and dazzled them, headlights on full beam. Then there was nothing, just an orange Metro on a country road progressing through limbo.
‘They band together like a pack of bloody animals. It’s all so macho, isn’t it? Though I can see you’re not like that at all, are you?’ He looked across, the pained smile. ‘I’ve got a good eye for people, you see.’
The teacher drove faster than he had yet. The car accelerated along the empty lane as though by its own control.
‘Now you’re wrapped up properly, aren’t you? Good jacket, thick trousers. What material’s this?’ He moved his hand over to Jimmy’s knee and took a pinch of material. ‘Aah denim.’ He answered his own question. ‘Nice and warm.’
He opened his palm and began to smooth Jimmy’s thigh. That white and pallid hand on his dark jeans. His own hand on the hilt of the knife in his pocket.
The car drifted into the centre of the road.
Jimmy went for the handbrake. He wrenched it hard. The wheels locked, and the car drifted, coasting on the wet surface until the teacher panicked and turned into the skid. The left wing of the Metro clipped the corner of a banked verge. There was an explosion of mud and glass. Momentum reversed through helpless bodies, flung limbs. The teacher struck his head hard on the dashboard. The windscreen shattered like the birth of a star.
The only sound after the smash and flexing of metal was the hiss from a cracked radiator, a jumbled cacophony of clicking and ticking from the engine.
Jimmy undid his seatbelt, shaking, shouting. ‘What the fuck were you doing?’
The teacher rolled his head, dazed and unaware.
‘What the fuckin ’ell were you playin at?’
The teacher made a low moaning sound. Jimmy swung a blow that caught his mouth with the flat of his clenched fist. Trapped air popped as both his top and bottom lip split. Blood pulsed instantly, dotting the window. The second and third blows left him slumped forward. He looked as though he had fallen asleep reading or watching TV.
Jimmy got out and looked back into the wreck. He took the knife from his pocket and folded away the blade. He turned and ran, springing over a metal gate into a field of black and white cows that jumped and jerked. He ran from corner to corner and climbed a wobbling fence, slower now, running through the waterlogged field, gasping for air, his lungs burning. He leaned on the top rail and listened. Apart from his own breathing and his beating heart, there was a brief silence, before the sound of a car changing down gears. Fuck it, he said to the huge-eyed audience gathered at the gate.
He ran down a narrow access track flanked by high hedges and a small copse of cedar and birch. The lane was stained muddy green with manure and harvest spills. Then he ran across more fields. The hedgerows that seamed the patchwork of fields were lined with trees, and Jimmy looked at the land around, mostly flat, except for the occasional gentle hill that lay like the back of a sleeping man. Or a dead man.
The break in pace came when he heard a diesel engine labouring further down the lane. But where to run? The hedge either side was too high or too thick to clear, so he jumped down into the ditch, squatting in freezing water the colour of cold tea. The tractor juddered past, driven by a farmer who looked neither left nor right. If he had glanced down from his cab he would