The Proof: Chapter 8
By johnshade
- 917 reads
One of the boys set fire to the newspaper with the dog shit folded inside it, while another waited by the doorbell, poised. As the doorbell played its three-note tune they ran out of sight along the pavement. Their friends snickered out of sight. After a while an old man came out in a dressing gown and faded-looking slippers. When he saw the flames he swore and spluttered something about the war. Then he stamped out the fire on his path. A moment later footsteps and laughter filled the quiet street.
The boys stopped running, out of breath, when they came to a play-park. They took up seats on the roundabout, the swings, the bottom of the slide. The swing in the middle was taken by a tall blond boy called Steven; and the others seemed to know exactly where they should be, some on the swings next to him, some further away, revolving on the roundabout through the street-lit night, announcing their indifference to their place in the world. Only one of them was still standing. The one who had phoned up Andrew the night before to 'schedule an appointment.'
"Do have a seat Charles!" said a fake posh accent, triggering off barks of laughter from the other boys.
Charlie grinned nervously and leaned back against the cold metal bars of a climbing frame. He tried to get comfortable, shifting his weight from one leg to the other. A bitter, herblike scent was coming from the swings.
"You won't be having any of this, will you Charlie?" said Jonny, sparking a lighter beneath a block of hash.
It was well known that Charlie didn't drink or take drugs. It was thought that he might be gay, and open to speculation what he was doing here, with a bunch of kids who spent every evening getting drunk and stoned.
Jonny's lighter flicked on and off in the darkness. Each flash of light was like a star to Charlie, a hiding, teasing, yellow star.
Soon they were smoking, red glow stop-starting around the group, voices growing muted and reflective in its wake. The joint came to Charlie and he passed it without pausing. He had already decided to draw attention to his abstinence instead of concealing it, and more importantly not to be caught without a decision. But no-one was watching what he did.
When the joint was finished it was pinged away, still glowing, looping on its own axis as it followed the arc it was given. Afterwards came silence, the kind suburbs specialise in, a blanket that descends on the ears. Then Steven howled. It was a textbook howl, a wolfman from a Hollywood movie, echoed by a chorus from the other boys, at different pitches, some with flourishes at the end, extra barks at the beginning, a whole music of howls. Charlie howled too, but he joined in late, after everyone else had almost finished. When his voice was the only one left the others started laughing.
He thought: they are laughing, not with me but at me. It is not true that I am any worse at their games or noises then they are, or that my voice or appearance are comical. It is only true that I am not in their group, and they would therefore like to demean me.
"What is funny?" he asked, glaring at Steven's reddened eyes.
Steven stopped laughing, or rather started half-laughing, mouth hanging slackly open. Charlie's gaze moved around the group, impersonal and curious. It comforted him that everywhere he looked the laughter died away. But only where he looked. In other places it carried on, or flared up, gathering its forces against him.
"Well I don't know about you boys but I'm going to the graveyard," said someone eventually, in an effeminate voice that was a parody of a boy at school.
This changed the laughter to a different kind, one that Charlie could join in with as well. They headed across town towards the graveyard, moving slowly, exaggerating their stoned gait.
Half an hour later they were in the graveyard, slouching on a bench and the tombstones around it. They were drinking the beers that Jed had managed to buy on the high-street in town. Charlie had a sense of having passed between shadows. He could still taste the headlights, the neon, the explosions of chatter they had heard on the high-street; and now that he was back in the darkness, the patchwork of darkness cast by the monuments and stones, he could taste that as well. In his mind he was making a collage, cutting out sensations and sticking them together, side-by-side or overlapping, playing with moments of his own awareness in a way that he felt almost guilty to enjoy.
"What is funny Charlie?" asked Steven, in a robot's voice.
Charlie realised that he'd been smiling to himself in his reverie. He snapped out of it at once.
"Life is funny Steven."
A burst of laughter escaped the boys; but Charlie was ready for this — he knew they would mock his solemn tone, and it followed that their mockery did not exist.
Jed stood up. He held an empty beer bottle between his legs and started gyrating back and forth. He pretended to force it into Andrew's mouth, but Andrew pushed it away and laughed, looking down. The alcohol was taking effect now: the boys were standing up and mucking around, doing impressions, kicking things.
A few minutes later a siren switched on and a blue light raked between the stones. The boys flew off in search of shadows, frantic and casual at the same time, like pigeons disturbed in a square. Charlie caught up with a pair who were skulking by the wall. They had raised the hoods of their hooded tops and fixed their eyes on the ground. When they heard the police car brake and turn, the siren recede, they looked up allowed themselves to smile. Charlie smiled too, then mimed the word phew and pretended to mop his brow. The boys looked at each other and laughed.
The gang regrouped, cracking jokes about who was shitting himself, who'd been about to turn himself in, why he was so keen on going to prison. Soon their excitement got too much for them and they began to run around and jump over the gravestones, doing kicks and making kung-fu noises. Charlie joined in too. In fact he was still leaping furiously when the rest were calming down, feeling the limits of their young and dirty lungs. Soon they gave up to smoke a joint. Finally Charlie quit his acrobatics and strolled towards them, thinking that humans are just masses who think their own thoughts, but are ruled by gravity all the same.
He found it harder this time to refuse to smoke. Steve caught his indecision and began a chant — Char-lie Char-lie — but Charlie wasn't keen on being pressured by his peers: "no way man," he said, in his monotone voice. He passed the joint but it soon came back to him along with the chant. Though he shook his head, he was wavering, it was obvious. Suddenly he said "alright guys!" and stuck his hand out, as if not playing had only been part of his game. He took the joint between forefinger and thumb, angled his head, narrowed his eyes, puffed hard. He coughed — a little splutter at first, then an outright bark. He kept coughing, going red behind a wisp of wasted smoke. "Try taking deep breaths," said a voice; "drink this," said another, passing him a beer can. Charlie grabbed the can and when he was able to he had a swig. "Finish it," said the second voice, and Charlie did. When his eyes cleared he saw that the faces around him looked nervous, impatient, as if something they cared about had been taken away. The joint was still smoking in his hand. As he returned it to his mouth Andrew said "take a small draw and breathe in afterwards." Charlie followed his advice and this time he managed not to cough.
"I've got some acid," said Gary.
*
The night had got colder. It hadn't managed to get any darker though: there was always that orange tint to the clouds, light pollution, waste from the suburbs that had leaked from the city. Andrew pulled a jumper from the rucksack that dangled permanently down his back. It was a soft white jumper with wispy tufts, like the fleece of a well-groomed sheep. He put it on. He had after images in his eyes, smears left behind by the movement of objects across his view; and he was encouraging these effects by swaying from left to right, rolling his head towards the sky. That was why his nickname was starman. Meanwhile Jed was stumbling between the tombs, singing to himself. Jonny was reclining on a bench that he believed more comfortable than the most luxurious throne in the world. And Charlie was crawling around and screeching: his tongue was lumped behind his lower lip, his arms were bent in unnatural shapes, he was imitating a mental impairment.
When he realised no-one was watching, Charlie got up from his knees and elbows and looked around. He noticed a rectangular hollow on the floor of the graveyard, sunk into the lawn, with four banks sloping down to its base. Intrigued, he started towards it. When he got there he strode from one end to the other, placing his feet carefully. (At least he thought he was placing his feet carefully: in reality he was staggering on almost every step, holding his hands out for balance, moving sideways as often as forwards). When he reached the other side he turned and paced across the breadth.
"I knew it," he shouted out, "it's a golden rectangle!"
For a moment the word golden caught the boys' attention. Jed began to urinate on one of the gravestones, directing his flow against the inscription, left to right, down, left to right again
"That means the length and width are in the ratio of the golden mean! One point six one eight oh three…"
Jonny was frowning. The clouds had thinned above his head and an almost full moon was shining through them.
"Fucking aliens!" he announced, rising from his bench and jabbing a finger towards the ground beneath Charlie's feet, "fucking aliens did that… it's a crop rectangle."
He and the others converged on the lowered area. Their motion was curious, but stealthy, like wild animals nearing a house.
Charlie had forgotten what he'd just said. The boys were coming towards him, above him, towering against the clouds.
"I'm cold," he said, in a timid voice.
This wasn't surprising, he was only wearing a long sleeved t-shirt — a black one, to go with his black trainers and plain black jeans, as if his mother had dressed him for a night of crime. He felt an urge to curl up and he appeased it by crouching down and patting the grass with his hands.
"I'm so cold," he was whimpering, low to the ground.
Andrew's eyes had adapted to the dark. Charlie's face and arms were showing up in grainy patches against his clothing, clouds of white pixels that kept shifting and blurring as he patted the ground. He felt a sudden tenderness he couldn't explain, or even express (he wasn't very eloquent, at the best of times); but he could tell that if he didn't act on this feeling it would turn into something nasty, like nausea or guilt. He took off his jumper.
"Hey Charlie," he called out, then stopped, overwhelmed by the sound of his own voice.
He seemed to have Charlie's attention, along with everyone else's, but had lost the power of speech. To excuse himself, he flapped his jumper above his head, waving for surrender. Gary was the first to laugh, a messed-up high-pitched giggle, well known for its contagious effects. As always, it set off the rest of them, only their laughs were delayed, intermittent, coming in and out synch, and no-one could tell what anyone else was laughing at, or whether anything was even funny.
Charlie watched the fluffy top wave back and forth, thinking how warm and comfortable it would be. Eventually he got to his feet and started towards it. But his progress was slow because he'd forgotten how to walk: his left shoulder moved forwards with his left leg, and his right with his right, instead of the other way round. He was holding his hands out in front of him, saying "thank you," in his uninflected voice, "thank you very much," when Andrew threw the jumper at him.
Charlie caught it and put it on, fumbling with excitement. It almost trapped him at one point, head stuck inside the body, arms up at uncomfortable angles. But then his face popped out and as he restored his glasses a wave of comfort surged through him. He was warm, he had been cold! Simple emotions, it seemed, had been hugely magnified. But in other respects he thought the tiny paper squares they had swallowed two hours ago were overrated. The hallucinations he was experiencing were mild, just a kind of expansion of his field of view, an ability to see more at once, and his thoughts were if anything less intense than usual. He blinked — which for a long time he had forgotten to do.
"Boyoboy!" he exclaimed, "my my my… I'm so warm now! Wouldn't you all like to be as warm as me? I'll make you warm…" he burst into hysterical laughter, "I'm the warm man through and through, warm woolly jumper and a nice pair of slippers, smoke me a kipper…"
The boys were standing around the edge of the rectangle. Although their features and expressions varied greatly, their faces shared something that was stronger than the differences between them, the way people with Down's syndrome look more like each other than they do like their parents.
"I'd like to be even warmer though," admitted Charlie, not meaning to say so out loud.
For a long time nothing happened, only the boys shuffled from side to side, mouths open and brows deeply creased, sometimes touching their faces, sometimes looking at the backs of their hands. Then Steven threw Charlie a lighter.
Jonny was the first to make the connection. "Now you'll be warm!" he shouted, and the boys thought this was the funniest thing they had ever heard. "Smoke yourself a kipper!" they roared, "Smoke mine while you're at it!" "Smoke it good" "I've got a big smoky kipper!"
Their voices stopped, abruptly, when Charlie lit a fire in his open hand. A flame danced in the glass of his spectacles and the same flame danced in the pupils of their swollen eyes. He clapped his hands and the fire disappeared.
"It's perfectly simple," he answered, although no-one had asked a question, "Heat rises instead of falling. It's called convection, like a fan heater, it's not conduction or radiation."
As he talked he squirted his hand with gas from the lighter, cold gas, holding down the lever without sparking the flint.
The boys, who had retreated at the sight of the blue and yellow flame, were now edging forwards again. Fire, it seemed, was something they both desired and feared. "Go Charlie!" someone shouted, and Charlie flicked the flint again. But this time he had overdone the fuel: a scorching cloud billowed around his hand and he waved it and yelped until the excess burned away. When the fire settled down he stretched out his makeshift torch once more.
"Heat rises, looking for lower pressure, nothing is lost, just the energy changes, bonds broken, equilibrium reached, it's easier to be further apart " He finished abruptly as the heat in his hand became unbearable. He doused it on the grass beneath his feet, cool and wet with evening dew. Feeling very scared, he flexed his fingers open and shut and blew across his palm. Then he knelt down again, patting his hand on the grass. "It's going to be okay," he was telling himself, "it's all going to be okay."
"How can you do that without burning yourself?" someone asked.
"It's perfectly simple," he replied, suddenly perked up, "heat dies, joy is further apart, the bonds are never released." He rose to his feet, and again started jetting lighter fuel into his open palm. Having learned from his earlier mistake, he waited for a moment to let some of the gas evaporate. "No equilibrium," he continued, sparking the flint, "chaos rises, the bonds are never released." The fire caught and his voice began to tremble, like he was trying to sound lucid and calm, but it wasn't working, he couldn't pull it off. His hand started shaking and the light from the flame flickered wildly across the banks.
"Charlie," said a second voice, "I think you should put it out now."
Charlie clapped his hand to his stomach and shivered with relief. He felt the soft fibres of Andrew's jumper cushion his palm. Soft wisps of cotton or polyester or some other fabric, teased out long and thin but bunched thickly together, designed to give the greatest possible comfort and warmth.
The fire spread quickly. Balls of red appeared on the tips of the material nearest his hand, growing larger as they travelled inwards, spreading to other strands and merging together until they'd swollen into big cruel flames that leapt up his stomach towards his chest. He was too shocked to think of rolling on the ground, so he staggered back and forth, trying to beat the blaze out with his hands. When the orange glow reached the boys' faces they started jumping up and down, screeching, acting like hunted chimpanzees. It occurred to one of them to run away and before long the rest had followed — still shouting and waving their hands. As they escaped, the fire in the rectangular crater lit their backs and reflected off their trainers.
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