Windfall

At two in the morning, something struck the roof. Lulled by storm
winds and the scuttling of rain against the tiles, Lachlan had been
drifting in and out of uneasy dreams. At half past one, the rain had
stopped. He had rolled onto his side, mattress springs twanging back
into position. The gable end window had cast a pale mauve diamond of
moonlight onto the attic floorboards. With the rain gone, the house
felt exposed. He had wrinkled his nose, closed his eyes. He had tried
to sleep. For a time, all was silent, save for a steady tap, tap, tap
in one of the pipes.

At two o'clock, something hit the roof with a tremendous thump and the
clatter of smashed tiles. Lachlan's eyes shot open. He lay on his side,
tensed up like a fist, and waited for the sequel. Tap, tap, tap went
the pipe. He allowed himself to exhale.

The next morning, he went outside in his galoshes and found something
wet and dead the size of a cello in the back garden. It was sprawled
amongst the potato plants, face down in the glistening soil. The wings
were sodden and rumpled. They clung to its flanks and chalk-white hips
like damp grey leaves. Vertebrae described a tortuous column of ridges
beneath taut alabaster skin. At the base of russet legs, black talons
were closed and curled inward over the hind claws.

Lachlan crouched down. The ground was strewn with feathers. Droplets
trembled in the hollows of potato plant leaves. He cradled a leaf in
his palm, gently gripping the stem between middle and ring finger. Its
surface was patterned with grey and brown lines like a mosaic. The leaf
felt brittle. He closed his hand and it crumbled.

He rolled up his sleeve and thrust his fingers into the moist earth.
The potato's roots made a ripping sound as he pulled it out of the
dirt. It had a good weight to it. It was a Pentland Crown. He always
grew Pentland Crown. Its skin was covered with blue-black welts. He
squeezed it. It burst like a gourd filled with
porridge.



* * *

The next day, the phone rang five times. Lachlan stood in the doorway
at the edge of the hall each time and waited until it stopped. After
the fifth instance, he pulled the cable out of the socket.

Outside, the clouds were loose and fibrous, tufts of wool snagged on
barbed wire. He spent half an hour picking shards of glass from the
soil inside the cold frame. It held hybrid chilli plants; Habanero
cross-bred with Scotch Bonnet. Twelve individual pots nestled in the
earth. Twelve chilli plants, black, withered, dead.

The dead thing lay there still, a skein of knotty bladderwrack hair
concealing the head. Lachlan passed it on his way to the dustbin,
gardening gloves cupped under a mound of dirt and broken glass. When he
went indoors, he moved from room to room and closed all the
drapes.

Swaddled in gloom, he sat in a cracked leather armchair with a stack
of cracked leather albums. There was a knock at the door. He ignored
it. He took a craft knife from his pocket and began excising
photographs.



* * *

The lacerations across its back had begun to suppurate. Lachlan stood
by the backdoor with a white handkerchief over his nose and mouth. The
stench of mouldering flesh caught in his sinuses and throat and made
his eyes water. There was scarcely any wind.

The crab apple tree was covered in swollen nodules and blisters. Where
the bark had split, the tree wept sap. A raven pecked at insects
feeding on the brown and rotten remnants of the tree's fallen produce.
It cocked its head at Lachlan, maw half-open. Lachlan turned away and
went inside.

He went into the cellar to get something to eat but the smell was
there too. Fluid pooled on the floor. The freezer door was ajar. With
the handkerchief to his face again, he eased it open. The freezer's
innards were writhing with ants. Like little black follicles they
swarmed over breast, thigh, rump, shank; beef, turkey, pork, chicken,
veal. Vanilla ice cream dribbled from its tub, leaving creamy splotches
across the rims of the lower shelves. A bag had torn, spilling
something clear and gelatinous.

He went upstairs and locked the cellar door behind him, then he
wrapped the key in his handkerchief and stuffed it into the pedal bin
in the kitchen, pushing past tissues and teabags and tampons until it
was right at the bottom. He washed his hands under the tap, poured
himself a glass of water. When he peered through a gap in the drapes,
he could see the raven. It was perched on the dead thing's back,
worrying at the wounds with its beak. Lachlan went upstairs and pulled
down the ladder for the attic.



* * *

Lachlan did not feel very well. He had stomach cramps and, earlier
that morning, he had thrown up in the sink. As he sat on the toilet,
massaging his forehead with the flat of his palm, someone knocked on
the front door. He waited with his eyes closed. The person knocked
again. He opened his eyes. The carpet in the bathroom was mint green.
There was a crescent shaped mat with tassels that fitted around the
base of the toilet. He rubbed the callused soles of his feet back and
forth across it.

The person knocked a third time, much harder. Lachlan used the edge of
the basin to lift himself up onto his feet. He tore six or seven sheets
of paper from the dispenser, screwed them up into a ball and wiped
himself. The squeak of the letterbox being lifted. Gingerly, he pulled
up his pants and trousers.

"Sarah?" A woman's voice calling into the hall. Lachlan did up his
belt. "Sarah?" He lowered the seat of the toilet, but did not flush.
"Sarah? Are you home?" The letterbox clunking shut. Lachlan ran his
fingertips along the snout of the cold tap as he listened. Silence. The
restless, barely audible clicking sound of a key struggling to
impregnate a lock. The scrape of unopened post sighing back across the
mat.

Lachlan teetered then unlocked the toilet door and stepped out onto
the landing. There was a woman in a beige overcoat standing in the
hall. She had auburn hair cut in a bob and carried a black umbrella and
a handbag. "Who are you?" she said.

"I am the gardener," said Lachlan. He started walking down the stairs.
The woman took a step back.

"Where's Sarah?" she said. He stopped.

"She said she had to go away," he said. "She said she would be back in
a few days." The woman frowned. Lachlan continued to walk down the
stairs. She took another step back. Lachlan stopped again.

"She didn't mention that to me," she said. "She hasn't mentioned that
to anybody. I've been trying to phone her, but?" Her words trailed off
as she caught sight of the unplugged phone. She looked up at him and
her mouth looked as if something were tugging at one corner.

"It's broken," he said. He walked to the bottom of the stairs.

"Did she leave a number I can contact her on?" asked the woman.

"No," said Lachlan. "I have some work I have to do." He started to
walk towards the kitchen.

"Are you sure she didn't leave a note for me somewhere?" Lachlan
stopped in the doorway. He turned around.

"Yes," he said.

"You've checked?" she said.

"Yes," he said. He scratched his nose. There was a picture of a
galleon on the wall. It was made out of wire stretched between nails.
The woman's face tightened. She looked down towards her feet, poked at
the floor with the tip of her umbrella.

"How long have you been working for her?" she said.

"Not very long," said Lachlan.

"Oh. It's just Sarah hadn't mentioned to me that she? perhaps you'd
better go home now. I ought to have a look round the house myself. The
note might have fallen down the back of the dresser or
something."

"I have work to do." The woman took a deep breath.

"All the same, I think you ought to?" She hesitated. "I think you
ought to go."

"I have work I have to do."

"Well, you can do it when she gets back. Now, could you leave,
please?" She stared down into the floor. Lachlan watched her for a few
moments.

"I have some things to finish off," he said. The woman looked up. Her
eyes were hard, but she was shaking.

"I'm going to ask you one last time," she said. "Could you please
leave." She stepped over to the door and held it open, keeping her eyes
fixed on him. Lachlan stood and watched her. Seconds went by, and a
dreadful quietude passed through the hallway. Dead leaves swirled and
rustled in the breeze outside. The day was overcast. "If you don't
leave now, I'm going to call the police," she said.

Lachlan stepped forward and hit her. She crumpled and fell back into
the gap between the door and the wall. He pushed the door closed and
knelt down and punched her again and again in the face until it was
soft. His knuckles were wet and red. She let out a long, low moan and
slumped into the unopened envelopes. Lachlan went to get his galoshes
from next to the fireplace.

After putting them on, he parted the drapes with his fingertips and
gazed out into the back garden. A raven's carcass was attracting
bluebottles. Gnats thrummed above the yellowing hedge. In the middle of
what had once been a potato patch, the rents in the dead thing's flesh
had grown wider. Through the smudged glass, they seemed to
pulsate.

Lachlan allowed the drapes to close. There would be a storm before
nightfall. Ignoring the cramps in his pelvis, he slid an iron poker
from a hook next to the grate and trudged out of the room.

When he returned to the hall, there was something not yet dead slumped
amongst the unopened envelopes. It was beige and it lay face down. As
Lachlan watched, the hump of its back rose and fell. He lifted the
poker high above his head. Outside, the rain began to fall.