Show Me the Sky - Nicholas Hogg [76]
Green weeds grew from the dirt. When Jimmy stood he lurched and retched saliva to the mossy floor. He spat and stood gingerly, holding his stomach.
In the movies, runaways find hot pies cooling on windowsills, steal rosy apples from a laden tree. He had eaten two frozen waffles taken from a fridge freezer outside the farmhouse backdoor. They were rock hard, and he had to warm them under his armpit to thaw them enough to bite.
Is this what being on the run was all about? Sleepless nights in fields of frost? Dreams of home and an open fire?
No path led to the house, and the track was empty of its rails. Jimmy heard a car. The red roof came skimming over the hedgerows, a hay bale bound to the roof rack flickering straw to the wind. He hid behind a broken wall and listened to the car disappear into the day. He was thirsty. The last drink he had was a swig of rotten homebrew from a plastic barrel in the farmhouse garage.
The puddle at his feet was crystal clear. He cupped his hands and pursed his lips. It tasted like metal. He spat it to the ground. He looked in the puddle again and saw his dirty face staring back. Scooping up more water into his palms, he splashed his head again and again.
Then he stopped. This was what he did when he came home drunk, his stepfather, running the tap and dowsing himself in cold water, like it would wash away the alcohol.
Jimmy dried himself with the jacket sleeve, stepped on to the cutting and began walking. The path stayed level with the land and he walked in view of roads and houses, not caring who saw as he passed people in neat gardens clipping hedges and pulling up weeds. A man with green wellingtons and two Labradors passed and said good morning. Jimmy said good morning, too, without raising his head from the ground.
The cutting dipped between banked fields that framed clear blue sky. Bright streams of jets plumed like the tails of comets.
He came to a railway bridge. He climbed a narrow path from the cutting, on to a road where cars shot past flashing with sun. The road curved on to the outskirts of another town. He was the only pedestrian in the busying day and walked through an industrial estate, past warehouses as big as hangars. Food and clothes, spare parts and all imaginable goods were stacked by workers and forklifts in patterns computerised in a constant of change, where lorries came full and emptied, then left full again. In the vast doorways men sat with papers and lunch and cups of tea. They lifted their heads from the back pages to see a boy in man’s clothes.
Past the industrial estate he sat on a churchyard bench and drank a can of coke and ate a Snickers and finger of Fudge. He put his mouth to a tap in a public toilet, then walked into a phone box with his last ten pence. He dialled and waited.
‘Jimmy?’ his brother answered. He sounded as though he was talking from the bottom of a well.
‘All right, Gaz?’
‘Jimmy,’ he said. ‘Where you been? What’s happening? Frank was stabbed at the club. The police have been round and everything. Where are you?’
‘Somewhere.’
‘What sort of fucking answer’s that? I thought you were round Stoney’s, but I seen him down the park last night and he says if I see you to tell you not to do ’owt stupid.’
‘Calm down, Gaz.’
‘Where are you then?’
‘Down south.’
‘Who with?’
‘Listen. What did Frank say?’
‘Says to call the hospital if you come home. What happened, Jimmy?’
The pips sounded.
‘Look, Gary, me money’s about gone. Remember what mum said about being good.’
Gary said something as he put the phone down. Jimmy checked the returned coins for any change but it was empty.
The owner of the blue Orion held the door for Jimmy as he came out of the garage shop. Jimmy walked across the forecourt to his car and got in. The key was in the ignition. He started the engine and a symphony of