Show Me the Sky - Nicholas Hogg [51]
But the tractor passed. Jimmy walked away from its chugging engine. He walked against the muddied chevrons the deep tread had left, and picked up a broken branch with withered leaves. He snapped off the smaller branches and hiked culling nettles along the verge.
Dusk thickened, dissolving the profile of a town he was nearing. However close he got, the more it seemed to stay at the same distance.
Amber hovered as the dark sifted neon lights to shimmer and flicker below the fading shapes of houses and chimneys, a church spire taller than them all. The lanes shadowed, grew forms from his fear. This quiet and older world, far from a city of factories and shops, tower blocks and canals, the streets and people Jimmy was defined by, his brother and cousins. His stepfather. The darkness turned him inside out and smaller still. His imagination reeled. Fallen trees became sleeping beasts or giants of men, stumbled at the wayside. Nests in higher boughs were thorny heads chopped and posted to mark his progress.
When he thought he heard his mum call his name from across the fields, he scraped the stick along the ground and sang out loud. Rock songs, dance loops, theme tunes, anything to break the silence. When cars came he hid behind hedges and trees, not sure if he wanted to be found.
Missing Person
THE PLUMTREE STUDIO DAT
Benny Star, the Plumtree Studio manager, has estimated that this recording was made around a month before the disappearance. Billy K had been given a set of keys for the studio, and although unknown to Mr Star at the time, would occasionally escort young women to the upper floors. The identity of Gloria James – this being her name seems unlikely given the context – has not yet been ascertained.
Billy K – You got it … The green one, probably flashing. Now turn the dial till I’m loud and clear. No need to piss about with the faders. The sky is Sunday, rain on the glass, empty bottles I’m a drunken ass. Ow! Fuck! Told you … You step on a fucking cat? Hey! Stop laughing, could’ve blown me fucking eardrums out. Just set it all in the middle and get in here … I’m getting lonely.
Gloria James – Hey Loverman … Hey … don’t go drinking all the whiskey. Shit, it’s weird in here, like on a plane when they fuck about with the pressure.
BK – No reverb. Nothing … Listen.
GJ – Wow.
BK – No soundwaves lapping around the room. They get buried in the foam instead of bouncing back.
GJ – La, la, la, la, la … Fucking strange. No hiding in here. What with that glass booth staring in …
BK – No hiding. Try and be quiet, silent. Tell me what you hear.
GJ – My heart a bass drum. Thumping, thumping … So much sound coming from my body. All that gurgling in my stomach.
BK – If you’re alive you’re making music. Blood marching through your veins, a whole brass band in your stomach, playing and drowning all at once. And the air, rushing around your lungs like a hurricane … The only true quiet I know is before a song, between the fourth tap of a drumstick and the opening note, when the whole crowd takes a gasp of air and the room shrinks … Before the exhale of breath and sound blows it to pieces … Listen … One, two, three, four. I saw you born at the break of dawn, a trick of the light and the sky was torn.
GJ – Why stop? That was new, yeah?
BK – There and then. Birth and death of a song. Buried in the foam.
GJ – You know how fucking sexy you are singing? Even the angry stuff …
BK – You hear the silence?
GJ – Take your shirt off, Billy K.
BK – No Billy K tonight. I came here as Barry. Flesh and blood Barry. Barry Fulton … the original.
GJ – Barry, Billy, who cares … If we’re playing that game then I’m … Gloria … Gloria James.
BK – Glorious Gloria James … Whatever you want, beautiful.
GJ – Want a hit? Something to forget you ever had a label?
BK – No, no. Put your smack away. Not tonight. Barry goes to heaven playing the guitar and singing … having beautiful, rhythmic