Read Online Come Not When I Am Dead by R.A. England - Free Book Online

of plantain and
docks, the stars providing dim light “it’s too big and bulky” I spat out in
whispered fury and threw it in a heap for him to finish.   Oh God, my fury comes from nowhere, put it
back in it’s box.   I need a cigar.
“Shhhhh” he says as I fall over.   It’s funny though all of this, I’m loving it, my tummy is tight with
constrained laughter and my eyes are brighter, far brighter than the stars, and
my body is on fire with delight and love and lust.   The goodness, the badness of it all. The
outsideness and the wildness of it all.   I use my hunting knife to cut down woody stems, I use my hands to pull
out and pull off and my feet to trample.   Our vandalism lasts maybe half an hour, and behind us is desolation,
behind us is revenge and a job well done.
    We are quiet, walking in each others
foot steps clambering back over rough ground towards my car.   There is no noisy flapping of pigeons
wings, heavy flipping, batting.   The
owls are ghostly and gossamer-clad on their nocturnal journeys, with a sideway
glance at our deformed bodies.   We
are trudging now, our feet heavy and our loads cumbersome, but it is still
deliciously funny.   We halt as we
hear a badger kill a ground-nesting bird, there is a long tussle and then it is
over and the bird screams no more.   We hear the badgers footsteps as it shuffles off home with it’s
prey.   I am an animal and I bare my teeth
and straighten my back, I am all powerful, I can take care of myself, I am all
I have to rely on and I find that exhilarating, exciting and beautiful.   “Wasn’t that brilliant?” I said as I
drove off “what do you think?   Are
you glad you did it?”
“I am actually, she is an awful woman and I think it was a job well done” he
brushes the hair from his face with his right hand and is totally unconscious
of how beautiful he is “It would be funny to set about the baddies of the
neighbourhood wouldn’t it?   To go on
a crusade of extinguishing evil”
“shall we do another one soon?”
“I think so.   I think we may yes,
but not yet, let me get over this one first.”   I dropped Charlie off at hang man cross
and was alone in my car that is warm as a glove.   I can hear the gravel on the road beneath
my tyres, I was driving to Jim’s farm, a new energy creeping slowly through
me.  
    The security light was on in the
yard, but that could just be a cat or a badger.   I stopped, yanked the netting out of my
car and went to put it in one of the barns in the courtyard.   I heard the netting dragging on the
ground, I felt myself get stung by a nettle caught in the wire and then, out of
the dark “Who’s that?” and I am stone.   “Is that you Gussie?   what are you doing here?” and the
shuffle became a shadow that became a whisper and they all belonged to Frank. “Frank,
I didn’t expect to see anyone.   You
bloody scared me.   What are you doing here more like.   Where’s Jim?   Go on, go home” we are whispering,
getting nearer each other, I can’t see his eyes, but I know they are narrowed
in thought “we’ve been having a bit of a drink together.   What are you up to?”
“nothing” and I stood in front of the netting
“you are a rubbish liar dear, move away, what you got that netting for?   Are you taking it or bringing it back?”
he wouldn’t talk to anyone else like that.   Or maybe he would, he is a policeman after all “Urrrgh, bringing it
back.   Don’t say anything
Frank.   It is Jim’s, I just found it somewhere, but don’t say anything will
you, I mean, you can to Jim, but not to anyone else,   I’m killing some ewes for him tomorrow
so I’ll tell him then anyway”
“you been out on your own at this time of night?” we were still whispering to
each other in the courtyard, words on a platter handed to each other, we didn’t
want to wake Jim’s wife.   The farm
dogs, knowing us, were quiet on the ends of their rattling chains and wagging
their tails