Eric Gole’s parents were dead. This is what happened.
Eric’s father, Daniel, looked upon life as perfect in every way except for one thing – he suffered from headaches, unordinary and severe. They came without warning and with no recognisable trigger. In a year he’d have seven such headaches, no more and no less and each headache would last for exactly seven days. No medication alleviated the pain or the accompanying nausea, and all Daniel could do was put life on hold. He would move into a spare bedroom, pull down the blinds, draw the curtains and take to his bed; for their duration he lived in a cocoon of darkness, unable to work and unable to eat. This he did with a matter-of-fact stoicism that impressed all who knew him.
Daniel’s stoicism, however, didn’t run to not worrying about the headaches or searching for a cure. It frustrated him that while other people enjoyed fifty-two-week years, he enjoyed only forty-five of them. He felt he forever had to run to make up for lost time, especially where work was concerned, and therefore felt guilty taking any but the shortest of holidays.
It was the pain, however, rather than his shorter working year that spurred Daniel to seek a cure. At first, he likened the pain to having a small man with a pneumatic drill tunnelling inside his head, but as he became more and more convinced that there was a natural disaster of mammoth proportion taking place there, his descriptions became more dramatic. Dependent on the news of the day, he’d variously describe his symptoms to doctors as a tsunami of pain or as a volcanic eruption of pain; other times it would be the searing pain of a wildfire or a seismic quake splitting his skull in two.
Despite the vividness of these descriptions, and the barrage of tests he underwent over a two-year period, the doctors were left mystified. They could find no discernible cause, and certainly no sign of the brain tumour Daniel had feared. Invariably, he was turned loose to his own devices with either a firm handshake or a consoling arm around the shoulder. It was at this point that Daniel turned to the church for help.
From birth, Daniel had been a believer; he believed in God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, and, given half a chance, would have also believed in any uncles, aunts, cousins or other members of an extended family God chose to reveal. From an early age he’d believed that if more people in the world were like him, then the world itself would be a better place, and while privately of the opinion that he was one of those rare individuals already born again at the time of his actual physical birth, Daniel had the political acumen to recognise the necessity of renewing his commitment to Jesus as his personal saviour in a more public forum. This he chose to do after mastering calculus in his first year of college; something he felt could never have been achieved without divine intervention.
The church Daniel attended was a happy church full of animation, noise and drama; and a church where people were regularly slain in the Spirit by divine bolts of lightning emanating from the hands of The Reverend Pete, God’s special emissary in Santa Cruz. In this church of pogoing Christians, Daniel stood out as a champion of religious expression. As hymns were played and prayers were said, he would either jump up and down or sway from side to side, his arms high in the air, the palms of his hands facing upward, and an inane smile on his face. If God’s was a small voice of calm, as some people said, one could only wonder if it stood any real chance of being heard in this particular church. Even Eric was embarrassed by the behaviour of his father, associating his unembarrassed movements more with the antics of a circus than the House of God.
The church, however, was no more successful than the doctors in curing Daniel’s headaches. The prayers of Daniel and the prayers of an entire congregation on his behalf went unanswered. A laying-on of hands similarly came to nothing, and the lightning bolts from the hands of The Reverend Pete proved an abject failure. Daniel was again turned loose to his own devices with either a firm handshake or a consoling arm around his shoulder. Reverend Pete suggested the headaches might have been sent by God as a test of his loyalty, much the same way He’d tested Abraham. ‘As long as I’m not expected to sacrifice Eric in the Mojave Desert,’ Daniel had said, slightly disconcerted by The Reverend Pete’s remark.
At last, Daniel was thrown a life and, ultimately, death line, by a chance meeting he made at a symposium on carbon dating. Ironically, Daniel – who held the position of Associate Professor of Egyptology at Santa Cruz University – was there only reluctantly, having been delegated by his colleagues in the Archaeology Department during an absence.
On the afternoon of the symposium’s first day, a man wearing green tweeds and a polka dot bow-tie climbed the short flight of stairs to the podium. Professor Mitchell Bennett was an unembarrassed creationist, and the paper he delivered to the assembled delegates contended that Carbon 14 not only challenged the widely held assumption that the earth was of an ancient age, but proved beyond doubt that the earth was little more than 6,000 years old. As Carbon 14 could only survive for 5,730 years, he argued, how could it possibly be found in rocks and fossils previously judged to be hundreds of millions years old? Moreover, laboratory tests he’d recently conducted on samples of coal and diamonds corroborated this thesis. On completion of the paper’s delivery, Professor Bennett stood down from the podium to the sound of a throat clearing, and what he would later describe to sympathetic friends as a scientific silence of rapturous proportion.
During a coffee break on the second day of the conference, Daniel approached Bennett to congratulate him on his paper. He confided in Mitchell that he too was a creationist, but for reasons of self-preservation had not yet divulged this to his own colleagues at Santa Cruz University, and had therefore felt unable to applaud publicly. It was, however, his cough that Mitchell would have heard.
For no particular reason, other than the fact that all professional conversation between the two men had dried up, Daniel mentioned to Mitchell the problem of his recurring and unresolved headaches. Although Bennett had no comparable personal experience, he did know of an herbalist who had successfully treated a friend of his for rheumatoid arthritis; again, this after mainstream medical practice had drawn a blank. As luck would have it, the herbalist, whose name was Arthur Annandale, lived in Santa Cruz.
Arthur Annandale was a man in his early sixties. He had a slim frame, a bald head, kindly eyes that swam happily behind thick spectacle lenses, and hammer toes. He listened intently as Daniel described his headaches and the various tests doctors had run. It was the time sequence of the headaches that captured Annandale’s attention: seven headaches a year, each lasting precisely seven days. He questioned Daniel carefully on this particular point and, when confident that no other time sequences were involved, excused himself and went through a door to his laboratory. The clomping noise Annandale made when he walked drew Daniel’s attention to his feet. He was surprised to see Arthur wearing what appeared to be either a pair of large hoofs or two small boxes.
Arthur returned to the consultation room after an elapse of some fifteen minutes and holding two brown bottles. He told Daniel he was confident he could help him. The medicines, he explained, wouldn’t work immediately, but over a period of time would shorten the length of the headaches and eventually eradicate them altogether. One bottle (marked Bottle 1) contained a liquid mixture of herbs that Daniel was instructed to take orally at the onset of each headache: an initial dosage of ten millilitres followed by subsequent doses of five millilitres every six hours until the headache was gone. The liquid in the second bottle (marked Bottle 2) was to be used for preparing a poultice that Daniel should place over his forehead; Annandale emphasised that no more than two poultices in any one twenty-four-hour period should be applied. Both bottles should be stored in a refrigerator and the contents thrown away three months after opening; the bottles, however, should be returned to the herbalist’s office for reuse. Daniel was then instructed to make another appointment after the end of his next headache which, Annandale assured him, would surely come.
The expected headache arrived within two weeks of the consultation, its onset announced by the familiar optical zigzagging and blurring of vision. Daniel drank his medicine, prepared a poultice and climbed into bed; blinds down and curtains drawn. His wife, Sarah, ministered the dosages over the following days and was about to pour another five millilitres draught at the start of the seventh and final day of the headache, when Daniel walked carefully into the kitchen and announced that the headache had gone! The duration of each subsequent headache shortened, sometimes by as much as a full day, as on this first occasion, but more often by a half day. Within eighteen months, and after ten consultations, the headaches had disappeared altogether, and Daniel was placed on a defensive regimen of one five millilitres dosage of Bottle 1 every two months.
Daniel and Arthur Annandale struck up a friendship. It wasn’t purely feelings of gratitude that drew Daniel to Arthur’s company – he genuinely liked the man. Similarly, it wasn’t just a genuine liking for Daniel that drew Arthur to him, or encouraged him to share with Daniel his long-held personal conviction that the leprosy germ was located in the pieces of black found at both ends of a banana. More importantly, Arthur recognised in Daniel a person who had been sent to him by God for a reason, and that reason was to further the cause of British Israelism.
Arthur deemed the time right to share the ideas of British Israelism with Daniel and intimate the role he believed God intended for him to play, shortly after he noticed Daniel biting off the end of a banana and depositing it in a waste receptacle. He started by lending Daniel a handful of carefully chosen books, well-thumbed hardbacks published early in the previous century with titles such as A People No One Knew, Our Descent from Israel, Israel and Orthodoxy, Empire in Solution, and The United States and British Commonwealth in Prophecy.
In a variety of formats and with varying degrees of emphasis, the books told the same story: that the peoples of Great Britain and the United States were the lineal descendants of the House of Israel.
The Kingdom of Israel had originally comprised twelve tribes, and in its entire history had only three kings: Saul, David and Solomon. When Solomon died, the ten northern tribes rebelled and established a kingdom of their own: the House of Israel, or the Ten Tribes. These tribes were taken into captivity by King Sargon II of Assyria, and on release moved to the Black Sea area of Scythia and intermarried with people already living there. Subsequently, they lost their Hebrew identity and passed into obscurity: the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel.
It had always been God’s intention that these tribes would one day live in their own safe haven – a group of islands located north-west of Jerusalem – and from there dominate the world. Over the centuries and millennia that followed, God led the Ten Tribes from Scythia, through Europe to the British Isles. They arrived variously as Cymry, Angles, Danes, Saxons, Normans, Walloons, Scots, Irish, Celts, and Gaels. All that remained was for the Davidic kingship (retained by the House of Judah or the Two Tribes) to be transplanted to these same islands.
After the Two Tribes were themselves captured and taken to Babylon, the surviving member of the Davidic line, a young girl called Tea Tephni, escaped to Northern Ireland. She was accompanied there by Jeremiah, who brought with him the oblong stone used by Jacob as a pillow. The Stone of Destiny came to symbolise the direct descension of the royal house of Great Britain from the royal house of King David, and all British monarchs were crowned on it.
Great Britain grew in prosperity and power, and its reach spread out across the Old World and into the New. Britons founded and settled colonies in North America, and these colonies grew and matured into the United States of America. As God had foreordained, this one-time daughter of Great Britain and lineal descendant of the House of Israel became the greatest and wealthiest single nation in earth’s history – and also home to Arthur Annandale.
Daniel read the first book with little more than cursory interest, as much curious as to why the history of the House of Israel was littered with the names of so many champagne bottles as to its actual migration to the British Isles. (He couldn’t help but remember that a Jeroboam was four times the size of a regular bottle of the sparkling wine, a Rehoboam six times the size and a Nebuchadnezzar, a whopping twenty times the size.) Daniel also noted that the books Arthur had loaned him were all seventy to eighty years old; if the message they contained was as important as Arthur indicated, why weren’t the publications more recent? But here he caught himself and remembered that the Bible itself was more than two thousand years old! And there was also the fact that it had been Arthur who’d given them him to read: the man who’d cured his headaches when medical science had failed. If Arthur had been right about his headaches, then he was as likely right about this.
In this new frame of mind Daniel read on, and increasingly found himself drawn to the message of the books. He finished the last page of the final book and felt the Spirit move him. He placed the book carefully on the table, fell to his knees and proclaimed himself a British Israelite.
The conversion happened in the early hours of a Thursday morning, barely a week after Daniel had first taken receipt of the books. He retired to the family bed, careful not to wake Sarah, but too excited to sleep more than fitfully. He looked forward to the day breaking and the opportunity to phone Arthur. At breakfast the next morning he said nothing of his new-found beliefs to Sarah, and called Arthur only after he’d reached his campus office.
Rather than the restaurant-cum-coffee house where the two men usually met, Arthur invited Daniel to meet him at his home that evening: a large two-storey house in one of the town’s wealthier suburbs. The first thing to strike any first-time visitor to the Annandale household was the number of books that lined the lounge and hallway walls: history books on Assyria, Babylonia, Britain, Egypt, Israel and the United States; books on astronomy, ethnology, gematria, genealogy, hieroglyphics, linguistics, numerology and philology; books on Christianity, Judaism and Islam; books on archaeology, particularly relating to the Pyramids and Stonehenge; books on the Greek, Hebraic and Latin languages; and, naturally enough, books on herbalism, herbs, medicine and pharmacy.
The second thing to strike a first-time visitor to the house was the neat row of handmade hooves-cum-boxes that were Arthur’s shoes. Arthur was sockless this particular evening and wearing open-toed sandals. Daniel could see his hammer toes clearly, and noted there were only four toes on Arthur’s left foot. Daniel tried hard not to stare at the deformity, but it proved difficult, especially after Arthur’s dog started to lick the feet of his master. He did, however, make a mental note not to mention them. No one was more surprised than Daniel, therefore, when, once comfortably seated in an armchair, the first words out of his mouth were: ‘You have an impressive collection of toes, Arthur.’
A look of abject horror crossed Daniel’s face as he stammered his apologies. He explained to Arthur he’d meant to say books, and had no idea why his words had become so mangled; instantly regretting his use of the word mangle.
Arthur came to his rescue and even apologised for wearing sandals rather than his usual shoes. He explained that the muscle imbalance was the result of flat feet, aggravated by wearing shoes as a child that hadn’t fit properly. Unfortunately, by the time his parents had noticed and taken him to a chiropodist, the toes had become fixed in their hammer settings.
‘And would you believe it, Daniel; it’s one thing herbs can’t cure!
‘But you’re right about the books,’ he continued. ‘They are a good collection. Fortunately, my wife is understanding. She doesn’t like having to dust them, but she does appreciate their importance.’
They settled into two facing armchairs separated by a glass-topped table on which sat a pot of coffee and a plate of cookies. Daniel started to speak enthusiastically about the books Arthur had loaned him; how at first he’d started to read them with a detached interest, but then recognised their truths. He wanted to know more, much more. How, for instance, had Arthur come to British Israelism, and why had he never heard of it before? Also, why had Arthur decided to share the ideas of British Israelism with him?
The smile on Arthur’s face said it all. This was the reaction from Daniel he’d been praying for.
‘My father believed in it, Daniel,’ he said. ‘In fact, most of the books in this room belonged to him. For me it was a natural progression. A person can read the Bible and be forgiven for thinking that God turned his back on the world two thousand years ago, but this is just nonsense. God didn’t stop being God and lose interest in the people He’d chosen to bring about His rule on earth. The Ten Tribes didn’t disappear, and I also think it’s apparently clear that they’re not living in Israel today. The House of Judah lives in Israel. It was the House of Judah that crucified Jesus and chose not to believe – not the Ten Tribes.
‘It’s no secret that the Ten Tribes have had their shortcomings. They turned away from God, but also came back to Him and, more importantly, accepted that Jesus was His son and the living Christ. And it’s also important to remember that the Ten Tribes aren’t Jews. They never were. They’re us now: you, me, the United States and Great Britain. We are the chosen people, Daniel, and consequently we have great responsibility placed upon our shoulders.
‘When we first met, I knew it was no coincidence. It was the time frequency of your headaches that alerted me. Seven in a year, each one lasting no more than seven days.
‘What I’ve come to learn over the years is that no number in the Bible is ever used without good reason. Each number means something different. The number three, for example, is associated with completeness or resurrection: Jonah spent three days and nights inside the belly of a whale; Peter denied Christ three times after His arrest; Christ was buried in a tomb for three days before He was resurrected; and Paul, after his conversion on the road to Damascus, was blinded for three days.
‘It’s the same for other numbers. Forty is always used to denote testing or temptation: Jesus spent forty days and nights in the wilderness after he was baptised by John, and after His resurrection spent another forty days on earth before ascending to Heaven. And don’t forget that when the Israelis escaped from their captivity in Egypt, they wandered in the wilderness for forty years.’
On a numerical roll, Arthur continued to explain the meaning of other numbers. Twelve was the number of governmental perfection; thirty related to blood; and thirteen denoted apostasy and disintegration. At long last, Arthur got to the number he’d first mentioned – the number seven.
‘Even today, Daniel, the number seven is considered a lucky number. It’s used in the Bible to signify spiritual perfection and completeness. God created the seven-day week, remember, the perfect unit of time. And did you know that Jesus cast seven demons out of Mary Magdalene when he first met her?
‘So when you came to me with all those number sevens in your life, I couldn’t help but be curious, especially when you were born in July, the seventh month of the year. I knew then that you’d been sent to me for a purpose, and if I’d been left with any doubts then your name was the clincher – Daniel, Daniel Gole.’
Arthur explained that the name Gole originated in the north-west of France, where the tribe of Reuben had settled. It was not so much his last name, however, as his first: Daniel. In the migration of the Ten Tribes across Europe, the tribe of Dan had played an elemental role and left its mark on many of the names in use today: Danmark (Denmark), Swedan (Sweden), Londan (London), Danzig and the Danube. More importantly, it was the early Danite settlers in Northern Ireland who had prepared the ground for the transplantation of the House of David to the British Isles and been there to welcome Tea Tephni.
Daniel chipped in here, and said that he’d been struck by other names: the similarities for example between Jute and Jew, and Saxons and Saac’s sons. The latter, he presumed, related to Isaac.
‘You’re right, Daniel,’ Arthur said. ‘But don’t think that any of this is coincidence. It’s not! Did you know, for instance, that Gael, as in Gaelic, means the Nation of God in Hebrew, and that there’s a great similarity between ancient Cornish and the Hebrew language? And the word British is derived from two Hebrew words: Bryth meaning covenant, and ish meaning man. Covenant Man!’ he exclaimed: ‘The inheritors of the covenant God first made with Abraham!
‘And it just doesn’t stop there: it goes on and on, never ending. When St Paul went to Britain, he met with Druids and found similarities between their beliefs and Christianity; he also considered that the rites and ceremonies they practised were descended from the Jews. And Joseph of Arimathea, he went to Britain too. Soon after the crucifixion he went there with Jesus’ mother and took with him some sacred relics, the most famous of which was the Holy Grail.’
Daniel sat in his chair mesmerised by the facts that rolled effortlessly from Arthur’s tongue, and felt flattered that Arthur had chosen to impart this information to him. But he had one question that interested him more than any other: ‘Why me Arthur? Why do you think God sent me to you?’
Arthur smiled at Daniel as a father would to a son. ‘You came to me because you had headaches; if you hadn’t had these headaches, it’s doubtful we’d have met. But God gave you those headaches just so that we would meet. He planned it this way. He wanted me to talk to you because He has a role for you. But before I tell you what that role is, I’d like you to read one more book.’
He then handed Daniel a slim brown hardback entitled The Great Pyramid – Its Construction, Symbolism and Chronology.
Daniel was familiar with the Great Pyramid at Giza. It was a characteristic example of Old Kingdom architecture, built as a tomb for the Pharaoh Khufu and completed in 2560 BC. More than 480 feet high and containing more than two million limestone blocks, each block weighing two and a half tons, it was thought to have taken 100,000 men twenty years to complete, and was now the only surviving Wonder of the Ancient World.
What Daniel read in the book Arthur had given him consequently came as a surprise. The opening sentence stated categorically that the Great Pyramid was not built as a tomb for royal burial. Rather than being a sarcophagus, the coffer in the King’s Chamber was merely a lidless stone box intended to be no more than a measure of capacity – four British quarters of wheat, to be exact.
Furthermore, although the Great Pyramid had been erected in Egypt, it was not of Egyptian origin: the involvement of Pharaoh Khufu and his subjects had been purely logistical – to supply the necessary labour force. The pyramid had, in fact, been built by members of another civilisation altogether, a nation of builders called Barats or Brits, whose symbol was the year circle. This circle had a circumference of 3,652.42 inches and was unknown to Egyptians; in later years, however, it would reappear as the mathematical basis for the construction of Stonehenge. Neither were the other units of measurement employed in the construction of the pyramid native to Egypt: the polar inch (almost identical to the Anglo-Saxon inch), and the Hebrew or sacred cubit (twenty-five Anglo-Saxon inches).
If the pyramid hadn’t been built as a tomb to house a dead Pharaoh and hadn’t been built by Egyptians, then why had it been built? To the author of the book the answer was obvious: it had been built under divine inspiration for the purposes of prophetic chronology. He had no doubts that this pyramid was the very same sign and witness unto the Lord in the land of Egypt described in the Book of Isaiah. That the pyramid was of a divine nature also explained the suppression of paganism in Egypt during the time of its building, and why the pyramid itself was totally free of hieroglyphics and pictures.
The key to deciphering this prophetic chronology, the author continued, was in understanding its geometrical design and measurements. The internal construction of the Great Pyramid was unique. No other pyramid contained similar passages and chambers, and it could therefore be assumed that the chronologic record was enclosed within them, and that major events in mankind’s history were defined by structural changes.
On completion of the book, Daniel summarised its key arguments in a journal: (1) The Great Pyramid was built more than 4,500 years ago; (2) It enshrined the message that Christ was the Saviour and Deliverer of mankind, and detailed the circumstances of His return; and (3) The pyramid provided a record of mankind from Adam through Biblical times to present day Great Britain and the United States – the countries where God’s chosen people now resided.
Three days after finishing the book, Daniel returned to Arthur’s house. Arthur had invited two other people: Donald Baker, a Baptist minister, and Ted Snellgrove, a property developer. All were interested in hearing Daniel’s thoughts on the book, and any questions he might have.
‘I was quite overwhelmed,’ Daniel told them, ‘and I fully appreciate the author’s arguments. I do, however, have a couple of questions. The first has to do with the scales of measurement used: I don’t understand why the scale suddenly jumps from one pyramid inch representing a solar year to the same inch representing just one month.’
‘That’s from the Gallery onward, and after the crucifixion of Jesus, right?’ Snellgrove said. Daniel nodded. ‘The design of the pyramid,’ Snellgrove continued, ‘was intended to give greater detail to modern times, because the pyramid’s message is specifically addressed to modern times – to the British peoples in particular. No one before then was supposed to decipher the pyramid.’
‘That answers my first question then,’ Daniel said, ‘but why does the chronology stop in 1953? I think I found this the most perplexing.’
‘August 20, 1953, to be precise,’ Arthur said. ‘The same day, coincidentally, that the USSR announced it had successfully tested a hydrogen bomb.’
‘We presumed that this was the date responsibility would be taken from the hands of mankind and vested solely in God’s,’ Snellgrove said. ‘The actual terminal point of the pyramid’s chronology, however, is 2001, and like many people we believed that this year would be the start of Christ’s millennial reign on earth. I don’t have to tell you that it wasn’t, and so the fact that the Great Pyramid is silent from that year onward is an oddity.’
Baker now stepped up to the plate. ‘There’s consensus building, Daniel, that we’re missing something because there is something missing. We now think that the Great Pyramid was never intended to tell the full story, and that there’s a missing piece of the jigsaw somewhere else, possibly another structure.
‘We’ve every reason to believe it will be found in Egypt, but we’re not, in all honesty, sure just what it is we’re looking for. We’ve had money to finance a search for some time, but until tonight, never the person to lead it. We now believe that we have that person in you Daniel: you’re an archaeologist, an Egyptologist, a Christian man in all senses of the word, and now a British Israelite. We could never have found anyone more suited to the task.’
What Baker said was true: Daniel did have the necessary credentials. What he hadn’t said but intimated, however, was that the Egyptian authorities would never give permission to an organisation like the British Israelites to mount an expedition. It was understandable that they would be unsympathetic to claims that their greatest tourist attraction had been built by Israelis under the guidance of God for the benefit of the USA and Great Britain, and had in fact nothing to do with Egypt whatsoever.
By evening’s end, it had been agreed that Daniel would lead an expedition to look for the missing sections of chronology and prophecy. They ended with a prayer and asked God to bless their venture, and Daniel, in particular.
Five years passed before the expedition was under way. Daniel’s researches led him to believe that the missing messages might be located in a recently discovered pyramid eight kilometres north of Giza at Abu Rawash. This area of Egypt had previously been kept out of bounds by the military authorities and had never become a part of the tourist trail. Egyptologists generally considered it to be the tomb of the lost fourth dynasty Pharaoh Djedefre, a son of Khufu. In its day it would have been an impressive structure, and as it stood on a mountain overlooking the plain of Giza would have also been fractionally higher than the Great Pyramid. There was now very little of the pyramid left, its pre-cut stone slabs having been plundered and reused by the Romans, but there was a surviving shaft that ran deep into the mountain, and Daniel surmised they would find other passages leading from it. The expedition, he decided, would start here.
Throughout this time, Daniel was enthusiastically supported by his wife. If Sarah’s character had a flaw, it was that she lacked all critical faculty when it came to her husband. Any she might have once had now slept with the fishes and her loyalty to Daniel was consequently unquestioning. Therefore, when Daniel became interested in British Israelism, so did she; when he became interested in the Great Pyramid, she did too; and when Daniel decided to take Arthur’s offer of leading an expedition to Egypt, she agreed to go with him. This kind of love is dangerous. It led to both their deaths.
It was decided that Eric would stay with the Annandales during the month his mother would be travelling with Daniel. On hearing the news, Eric swallowed hard. Although Arthur and Alice Annandale had become close friends with his parents, he himself had never warmed to them and found both slightly strange. If they themselves didn’t smell like old people, then their house with its old and depressing furniture did. He also found conversation with Arthur difficult and suspected Arthur had similar difficulty talking to him. Concerning these new arrangements, the words sensible and best had come to his parents’ minds. To Eric’s, came the words Gosh dang!
Daniel and Sarah flew to Egypt and were met at Cairo’s international airport by an administrative assistant from the Egyptology Department of the American University. Rather than driving them to the small bungalow they were expecting, he took them to the Mena House Oberoi Hotel: Arthur had gifted them two weeks here, in the belief that a period of comfortable acclimation would be essential for them both. In the note they were handed at the registration desk, Arthur had written: ‘It’s a beautiful hotel but don’t trust the ice cubes!’ The hotel was palatial and its gardens beautiful. Even so, Sarah couldn’t help feeling slightly disappointed that the view from their room was blocked by a pyramid – the Great Pyramid, in fact.
For the first few days, Daniel and Sarah became tourists. They stood in line with nationalities from around the world and entered the Great Pyramid; they walked around the Sphinx, took trips into the desert, rode camels and spent a whole day inside the archaeological museum in Cairo. On the fifth day, Daniel left Sarah by the pool and went to meet the foreman of the crew he’d hired. Together they drove to Abu Rawash and decided the areas to be cleared of rubble. The foreman’s name was Walid El Baradei and he told Daniel to call him Wally. Wally estimated it would take his crew six days to prepare the site for the first exploratory dig.
The last barrow-load of rubble was removed from the site late Friday morning – Daniel’s tenth day in Egypt. It was arranged that everyone would take the rest of the day off and return the following Monday.
That afternoon, Daniel returned to the site with Sarah. He wanted her to experience the intense spiritual quiet of the site before the dig started, and to pray with him for the success of their undertaking. He also wanted a photograph of them standing there together, and so positioned his camera on a tripod facing out toward the Giza plain. He then delayed the timer by a minute.
What overcame Daniel next is difficult to say. Perhaps it was the heat of the day or the emotion of being surrounded by so much sand; possibly it was the spiritual tranquillity of the location or the enormity of the discovery he was on the verge of making; or maybe it was simply plain and old-fashioned love for Sarah. Whatever the prime motivating force might have been, all now combined to send Daniel into a pogo frenzy of veneration, which Sarah quickly joined in.
Chanting the name of Jesus in unison, their arms outstretched and their palms facing upward, they jumped up and down together. ‘Jee-sus, Jee-sus,’ they chanted. Up and down, up and down they jumped. The seconds ticked away as the camera readied itself. ‘Jee-sus, Jee-sus,’ they chanted. Up and down, up and down they jumped.
And then, a split second before the camera clicked, there was an almost indiscernible cracking noise caused by the splintering of centuries old timber hidden beneath the surface of the flattened rubble on which Daniel and Sarah danced. Moments later the ground gave way, the camera’s shutter clicked, and the Goles plunged down a deep, pitch-black shaft. Their bodies ricocheted against its walls and against each other before coming to an abrupt halt on the shaft’s floor. And there they stayed. There had been one long po but no corresponding go, and no more mention of Jesus.
As a sepulchral resting place, the old pyramid once more came into its own.
News of Daniel and Sarah’s deaths reached Arthur several days after the event. It came as a double blow: on a personal level he’d lost dear friends, and on a professional level any chance of discovering the missing chronology of God’s voice in the near future – and possibly even in his lifetime. He felt remorse but surprisingly no guilt. ‘Mysterious Ways’ came readily to his mind, and clung to its walls like an analgesic.
Eric was given the news of his parents’ death early that evening. After school, Eric had developed the habit of either staying behind for extra activities or spending time at the house of a friend; anything that would delay his return to the Annandale house, its museum-like character and its curator-like keepers. He looked forward to the day his mother would return from Egypt and he could once more regain his old life. He missed his house and his bedroom; having his own television and playing his own music; but above all he missed his mother’s cooking. Mrs Annandale’s was plain bad.
When Eric returned to the Annandales’ house, Arthur asked him to step into his office. There was something about Mr Annandale’s manner that led Eric to believe that something was wrong, and he braced himself. Eric sat down in an armchair while Arthur remained standing, his back to Eric and looking out of the window on to the garden. Arthur Annandale was a man used to confronting situations behind a person’s back, and was uncomfortable imparting bad news face to face.
‘It looks like the roses are going to excel this year, Eric,’ Arthur started by saying. ‘I’m just sorry your mother and father won’t be here to see them. I know your mother was particularly fond of roses, her favourite flower in fact.’
‘What do you mean?’ Eric asked. ‘Why won’t they be here to see them?’
‘Because they’re dead, Eric: as dead and dried up as the herbs on those shelves there. I wish it were different, son, I really do. I wish I could tell you everything’s going to be okay, but it isn’t. You’re an orphan now, and once the funeral’s over we need to start making plans about what to do with you. But there’s time for that: we don’t need to think of that now. What we need to keep in mind at this moment is that your Mom and Dad died in God’s service doing God’s work. They died martyrs, Eric, and if you have to go, there’s no better way. I honestly wish it could have been me.’
He turned to Eric and continued: ‘You, I and Mrs Annandale have to get on with our lives now, and I think we should make a start by eating the liver and onions Mrs Annandale has cooked especially for us this evening. What do you say we do that, Eric? Shall we do that?’
Eric looked at him in stony disbelief. All he could say was: ‘I don’t like liver, Mr Annandale.’
As Eric lay in bed that night, he replayed in his mind everything Arthur had eventually told him: how his parents had discovered a shaft by accident, had then fallen down that shaft to their deaths, and that he was now an orphan – but not to worry as things would work out fine and he’d be well looked after. His parents had joined other martyrs who’d died in the Bible and would now be sitting with them at God’s feet, swapping stories and telling jokes. If the Bible were still being written today, his parents would have a chapter all to themselves.
It was at this point that Eric became curious about the people who’d died in the Bible and were now his parents’ friends. He already knew a lot of the stories in the Bible from attending church and going to Sunday school, but had never read the Bible and didn’t know who Arthur was specifically referring to. It became strangely important to him that he find out more about these dead people and, furthermore, write down their names. He determined there and then to read the Bible from cover to cover.
He would count the dead.
The intervening period between news of a death and ceremonies for the dead is a strange time, very similar to living in the eye of a storm. Unfortunately for Eric, there was nothing for him to do during this hiatus, and he stayed in his room in a state of suspended animation, insensible and disbelieving.
It was Arthur who took control. He appointed a funeral director and took care of all arrangements, from the repatriation of Daniel and Sarah’s bodies to the choice of funeral plots. He talked with The Reverend Pete, who announced the deaths to his congregation, and then contacted the head of the archaeology department, who in turn announced the news to faculty. He himself contacted Snellgrove, Baker and other members of the British Israelite fraternity who had met and known Daniel and Sarah.
As far as Eric knew, his parents had no living close relatives. His grandparents were dead, neither of his parents had siblings, and the only relatives he’d ever met had been introduced to him as second cousins twice removed. To Arthur, the relationship Eric described seemed more akin to the mathematical puzzles he’d been set as a child than to any blood relationship he could readily understand, but he contacted them nonetheless. The address he found for the Lawrences in Daniel’s address book had them living in New York City. Eight days later, and one day before the funeral, Eric received a letter from Jeff Lawrence with a return address of the Lyon Mt Correctional Facility.
My Dear Eric,
The news of your parents’ death came as a shock. I can only imagine how difficult it must be for you to make sense of such a totally unanticipated and unnecessary departure, and how wrenching it must be for you. I don’t know what happens when you die – I never had the certainties of your Dad – but I do know that your parents will always be a part of you. As difficult as it is for you now, you must learn to be grateful that you knew and loved each other, and I hope that as time goes by your sadness will be relieved by your own fond memories of them. When I’ve had friends or family die, there’s always been a regret that I didn’t keep in touch with them more. Stupidly and wrongly, I just assumed they’d always be there. It seems to be human nature that only absence reveals the importance of a person.
If the letter had ended there, it would have been a good letter, but Jeff had continued. Abandoning the cogency of his first paragraph, he started to ramble and left the reader with the distinct impression that if two people hadn’t written this letter to Eric, then Jeff Lawrence was probably psychologically unhinged. He talked about slippers and suede shoes, the Book of Leviticus, hunchbacks and men with crushed testicles, and then described the events leading to his incarceration.
You might notice from the notepaper that I’m in prison at the moment, Eric, so won’t be able to come to the funeral. A couple of years back, life for us Lawrences started to fall apart. Susan left home to follow her dreams, which evidently didn’t include finishing college, and then Mrs Lawrence and I started to drift apart, especially after she told me she never wanted to see me again. I don’t think it was anything in particular I’d done, but she made it clear that I irritated the hell out of her and generally got on her nerves, and The Magic Boy litigation was the last straw. ‘Well, what about me?’ I asked. ‘Do you think it’s been easy living with you?’ But she never did answer because she was already walking out of the door with her suitcase packed and, as it turned out, my car keys. And that’s pretty much why I’m locked up here now.
One night, I got stinking drunk, Eric. It was late. I couldn’t get a ride from anyone in the bar because I was the last guy there, and I couldn’t find a taxi for love nor money. And then, as I was passing this car, I noticed its keys were in the trunk and, hey presto, the train to Lyon Mt Correctional Facility started to chug. I got charged with DWI, Grand Theft Auto and resisting arrest, though the resisting arrest bit was bullshit! All I said to the cop who stopped me was fuck off, and that was just out of frustration rather than anything personal. If you’d have been followed by a car with its headlights on full beam for three miles while you were trying to drive a stick shift, you’d have probably reacted the same way yourself. And the car was only a Toyota Camry for God’s sake, not as if it was anything special!
Anyway, I got one year behind bars, though this place is mainly fencing because we’re all considered low risk. I don’t get many visitors, so if you ever find yourself in the neighbourhood…
Good luck with the funeral, kid, and I hope that someday we’ll meet again. Stay strong, little man!
Your father used to end his letters with ‘Yours in Christ’. I wish I could do the same. In the meantime,
Yours in Prison, Jeff
Eric remembered the Lawrences’ visit to his parents’ house as a short but exciting period in his life, and vividly recalled the circumstances of their departure.
It was the Lawrences’ annual vacation. They’d flown from New York to San Francisco and hired a car at the airport and driven down to Santa Cruz. The last time Daniel and Sarah had seen them was at their own wedding, and that was fifteen years ago. They’d occasionally talked on the phone and exchanged Christmas cards, but that was about all. Being a Christian, and therefore theoretically oblivious to the cost of any kind action on his part or perceived slights of others toward him, Daniel still couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d sent a lot more cards their way than he’d got back. He also remembered Jeff getting drunk and a bit rowdy at their wedding. Nevertheless, the Lawrences were the nearest thing to family they had. It would only be for a week, and they’d promised to bring along an extra concert ticket for Eric.
The concert the Lawrences planned to attend was scheduled to take place in San Francisco, and the artist none other than the world famous Paul McCartney. During non-Christian moments of doubting others, it crossed Daniel’s mind that Jeff and his family were probably using his home as a convenient and cheap hotel, but as quickly as the thought came he tried as quickly to dismiss it. After the concert, Jeff and his family would drive to Los Angeles, where Jeff had some business matters to attend to.
For the first three days of the visit all went well. Eric liked Jeff. He was unlike his father’s other friends, and wasn’t serious like his father. He joked a lot, particularly at his father’s expense. He liked it that Jeff addressed his father as Chuckles and kept telling him to lighten up. On one occasion, he’d burst out laughing – much to his father’s annoyance – when, after his father had explained his interest in the Great Pyramid, Jeff had responded by saying he doubted a revelation from God could be arrived at by stretching a ‘goddamn measuring tape along a pyramid corridor.’
Daniel had changed the topic of conversation at that point: ‘So what are you up to these days, Jeff?’ he asked.
‘Still pitching, Daniel, still pitching.’
‘Like in baseball?’ Eric asked.
‘No, kid, I pitch ideas to television studios and publishing companies. I’m hoping to get some interest from one of the studios in Los Angeles next week. I can’t write worth a damn but I do get these ideas. You ever heard of The Dwarf Detective?’
‘No,’ Eric replied. ‘Who is he?’
‘Well, he’s this detective who’s a dwarf and specialises in high-altitude cases,’ Jeff said, now unusually serious.
‘I don’t understand,’ Eric said.
‘It’s simple really. He’s a dwarf with the head the size of a watermelon, but he’s bright as a button. He’s got this kind of computer-type mind that can make connections most other detectives can’t. He’s good at ground level – on the mean streets so to speak – but he really comes into his own at high altitudes, like the Himalayas or the Andes, because he’s small and compact and never gets altitude sickness like most of the other detectives, who are all taller. So he gets to travel to some great locations and this is what the studios like. One of the cable networks in New York picked it up and it’s already achieved cult status, especially among the little people.’
‘And tell Daniel just what you got paid for it,’ Jeff’s wife, Anna said. Her manner was disparaging, and his Aunt Anna didn’t strike Eric as being the supportive wife his own mother was.
‘Okay, it was only $5,000, but if other networks take it up, the money will start pouring in,’ Jeff said.
‘What are you going to pitch in Los Angeles?’ Sarah asked.
‘Thanks for asking, Sarah. If I’m honest, I think this is my best idea yet. Provisionally, I’m calling it The Magic Boy series. I’m setting this one in England. It’s about an orphaned boy called Barry Cotter who lives out in the country with a brutish foster family. He discovers he’s got these magic powers after he discovers an old trigonometric point on the moor close to where he lives. If he walks around it three times, he gets transported to this other world full of wizards and witches, and it’s a real good versus evil story. I’m thinking this one is for the film studios rather than TV.’
‘But Dad,’ Susan laughed, ‘you’ve just described the Harry Potter books!’
‘Who’s Harry Potter?’ Jeff asked.
‘Oh come on, Dad, everyone’s heard of Harry Potter!’
(This was the birth point of the Magic Boy litigation that Jeff had alluded to in his letter to Eric. He became convinced that a publishing company or TV studio he’d mentioned his idea to, had stolen it and developed it with some woman called JK Rowling, though he couldn’t be certain that he hadn’t also mentioned the idea to some random person he’d met in a bar and struck up a conversation with. The resulting litigation cost him his savings and his marriage, which at this time already appeared to be on shaky ground.)
What Eric remembered most about the visit was Susan. At the time of the visit, Eric had been eight and Susan seventeen. As far as Eric was concerned, Susan was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen; she smelled of patchouli oil and wore clothes which adhered to the minimalist principle of covering as little of her body as possible while still remaining legal. What Eric also liked about her was that she talked to him as an equal and not some small kid; he had no doubts that when he was old enough, they would get married.
They went everywhere together: to the beach, to the amusement park and to the movies; they sat in diners and talked endlessly, Eric oblivious to the furtive looks that came Susan’s way from older boys and men. In fact they did everything together except the drugs, which sensibly, Susan decided to do by herself.
It was the drug taking that caused the Lawrence family’s expulsion from the Gole house. The drug in question was plain and simple marijuana. Maybe Daniel might have excused this as a teenage aberration, had Susan not substituted two pages of the Gole family Bible after running out of rolling papers. To Daniel, this act was sacrilegious and there was no room for compromise. Jeff’s mitigating argument that the pages had only been torn from the Book of Leviticus was to Daniel completely irrelevant.
When the Lawrences left the next morning and checked into a hotel, Eric was heartbroken. It was only after Sarah pleaded with his father that Daniel relented, and allowed Eric to accompany the Lawrences to the Paul McCartney concert.
The only time Susan’s name was ever mentioned in the house again was two years later. Eric had walked into the living room and overheard his parents mentioning her name and holding a letter from Jeff.
‘How is she?’ Eric asked.
‘Difficult to tell.’ replied his father. ‘According to Jeff, she’s dropped out of college and become a Polish dancer.’ This wasn’t what Jeff had actually written, but Daniel had presumed he’d made a grammatical mistake and unilaterally corrected ‘pole’ to Polish, though he did wonder why Susan had become attracted to Eastern European folk dancing. He’d also thought, however, that other than steroids, these Eastern Europeans wouldn’t tolerate any drug use on her part, so maybe it was good news after all.
On the day of the funeral, Eric woke early and pulled back the curtains. Fog had rolled in from the sea during the night and still lingered. By the end of the day, all physical evidence of his parents’ existence would have disappeared into another hole, the second hole in a matter of weeks; there his mother and father would lie next to each other for eternity. Eric would remain on the surface.
It still hadn’t been decided what would happen to Eric. Arthur Annandale and his wife, although happy to take care of Eric for a couple of weeks, were in no position to either adopt or foster him if it meant that Eric would actually have to live with them. Arthur knew he had trouble connecting with children, but explained the impossibility of such a situation by intimating Mrs Annandale’s nervous disposition and weak heart as the real reasons.
The Lawrence family, the only identifiable relatives, had apparently imploded. Jeff and his wife were divorced and Jeff was now in prison. Arthur had read the letter Jeff had written and come to the quick conclusion that, mentally, Jeff’s train had left its tracks.
Money, however, would never be an issue for Eric: his parents had both taken out hefty life insurance policies; Daniel’s pension from the university would pay out another lump sum; and the house was now mortgage free. As both Daniel and Sarah had been only children, they had also inherited their parents’ assets, and consequently their savings and share portfolios were substantial. Eric was told these monies would be placed in trust until his twenty-fifth birthday; meanwhile a monthly allowance would be forthcoming and all costs of schooling and college paid for.
It was arranged that his father’s attorney would become his legal guardian, and that Eric would go to boarding school in San Francisco. On holidays, he would be welcome to visit with the Annandales or stay with The Reverend Pete and his family. What Eric really wanted to do, however, was find Susan and live with her. He determined that as soon after the funeral as possible, he would head to the correctional facility where Jeff was incarcerated and find out from him where she was.
Considering that Daniel and Sarah had few close friends, the turnout at the funeral was big. The bizarre nature of their deaths had captured the interest and imagination of the local media, and Eric, the orphaned son, was the icing on the ultimate human interest cake story. The closed caskets lay side by side at the front of the church, and Eric sat in the front pew between Arthur and the mother of one of his friends. The arms placed around him brought warmth to his shoulders in the air-conditioned church, but little comfort. The music was sad, The Reverend Pete’s eulogy even sadder, and poor Eric just cried and cried, desperately alone; the leftover of what had once been a family.
Standing at the graveside, and aware of his father’s penchant for sand, Eric threw two handfuls on to the coffins. As The Reverend Pete intoned the final prayers, the last of Eric’s tears spilled from his eyes and rolled down his young crumpled face.
Returning to his room at the Annandale house, Eric found an envelope containing photographs on his bed. The photographs had been developed from film found inside Daniel’s camera at the Abu Rawash site, and forwarded to Eric by Wally. There were photographs of the hotel his parents had stayed in; photographs of Cairo; photographs of the Great Pyramid, the Sphinx and other pyramids; photographs of the desert and his parents riding camels; photographs of the Abu Rawash site and…
Eric shuddered. At the very bottom of the six-by-four print he held in his hand, were the two heads of his parents, looks of surprised wonder on their faces. Above their heads – and the unintended subject of the photograph – a vast ocean of blue, blue sky.
Talbot Academy was a small traditional school committed to Christ-centred education. Its teachings were based on the principles and values of the Bible, and its pupils were expected to live lives of character and faith. It also promoted the love of freedom and loyalty to the United States by enforcing a strict dress code and discouraging slovenliness. What had escaped the notice of those now responsible for Eric’s education, however, was that Talbot Academy was a school for the deaf and operated in a signing environment.
Talbot Academy had been one of three Christian boarding schools shortlisted by Arthur Annandale in conjunction with The Reverend Pete; while both men had known the school by its Christian reputation, neither had been aware of its special-needs association. They handed the list to William Strey, Eric’s legal guardian, and allowed him to make the final decision.
Strey conducted no research of his own into the three schools, and chose Talbot simply because Talbot was the maiden name of his wife. He handed the paperwork for Eric’s fall enrolment to Elizabeth Mills, a newly-appointed legal secretary. She was conscious that Talbot Academy was a school for the deaf, but never having met Eric had no reason to believe that the Gole boy wasn’t deaf.
It had been originally agreed that Arthur Annandale and his wife would drive Eric to the academy, but all plans were cancelled after Alice was rushed to hospital with stomach pains. The Reverend Pete was out of town and Strey tied up in court. It therefore fell to Elizabeth to take Eric to San Francisco.
At the Academy, he was greeted by Mrs Isabelle Armitage, a portly woman in her mid-fifties who wore flat-heeled shoes and no make-up. She spoke to Eric in a strange and unusually loud voice, simultaneously gesturing with her hands.
‘HELLO, ERIC. WELCOME TO TALBOT ACADEMY. I HOPE YOUR STAY WITH US WILL BE A HAPPY ONE.’
Eric thanked her and said he felt sure that it would be.
‘YOUR LIP-READING IS EXCELLENT, ERIC, AND SO TOO IS YOUR DICTION. BUT YOU’LL HAVE TO USE SIGN LANGUAGE WITH MOST OF THE STUDENTS HERE.’
Eric had no idea what she meant by this, but gave her a thumbs up to show willing. In return, Mrs Armitage gave him a thumbs up and smiled broadly. After ten minutes of stilted conversation, there was a knock on the door and a boy about Eric’s age came into the room.
‘ERIC, I’D LIKE YOU TO MEET CRAIG. CRAIG WILL HELP YOU SETTLE IN.’
Craig piloted Eric to a hall of residence two buildings distant from the administrative block, and came to a halt outside a door on its first floor. Eric understood from Craig that this would be his room during his stay at Talbot College but, in truth, that was all he did understand: the sounds emanating from Craig’s mouth were generally unintelligible, and he presumed that his guide’s presence on campus was to fulfil a required quota for government funding. He smiled kindly at Craig, who responded with more of the same curious hand signs Mrs Armitage had made. Eric gave him a thumbs up identical to the one he’d given the Principal and Craig then left, a look of puzzlement on his face.
Classes at Talbot Academy didn’t start for a further two days, and Eric spent most of that time either in his room or in the school’s cafeteria. Craig had seemingly decided his duty of care to Eric had been fulfilled, and signed to his friends that the new boy was quiet and said very little.
‘ALL I GOT OUT OF HIM WAS A THUMBS UP!’ he shrugged. ‘IT WAS LIKE GETTING BLOOD OUT OF A STONE. I THINK HE MIGHT BE HERE ON ONE OF THOSE QUOTA DEALS.’
The first day of classes arrived, and Eric took a seat towards the back of the classroom. As his new teacher started to speak, Eric found himself straining to catch the words. He raised his hand and asked if he might relocate to a desk nearer the front.
‘WHY?’ Mr Dexter asked.
‘I can’t hear you, sir. I’m not deaf or anything, but I’m having problems with your accent.’
‘NONE OF US HERE IS DEAF…’ Mr Dexter looked down at the register, ‘ERIC. WE DON’T USE THAT WORD ANYMORE. THESE DAYS WE REFER TO OURSELVES AS HEARING IMPAIRED. CAN’T YOU SEE MY SIGNING FROM THERE? YOU’RE NOT BLIND AS WELL ARE YOU – SORRY, I MEAN VISUALLY IMPAIRED?’
‘No, sir. I’m not blind or hearing impaired. I’m normal.’
There was a small gasp in the room when the teacher signed Eric’s words to the rest of the class. The school prided itself on engendering a positive deaf identity among its students, and the word normal was at all costs avoided.
Mr Dexter temporarily halted proceedings and took Eric to Mrs Armitage’s office.
‘HE SAYS HE’S NOT HEARING IMPAIRED, MRS ARMITAGE.’
‘OF COURSE YOU’RE HEARING IMPAIRED, ERIC. WHY ELSE WOULD YOUR PARENTS HAVE SENT YOU TO A DEAF SCHOOL?’
‘My parents are dead, Mrs Armitage. I think my guardian’s made a mistake.’
Mrs Armitage looked puzzled. She opened Eric’s file and found a contact number. William Strey answered the phone and confirmed that a dreadful mistake had indeed been made. Eric was a little slow, he admitted, but he certainly wasn’t deaf.
‘WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY THAT, MR STREY? ARE YOU SAYING THAT BEING SLOW AND HEARING IMPAIRED ARE THE SAME THINGS, OR MAYBE YOU’RE SAYING THAT BEING DEAF IS WORSE THAN BEING SLOW?’
Strey apologised for his careless choice of words and asked if he might call her back in the afternoon.
Eric was as unhappy with his guardian’s use of words as Mrs Armitage had been. Who was William Strey to call him a little slow? How could anyone with a solid C average ever be considered slow?
Eric and Mr Dexter returned to the classroom and, after explaining Eric’s plight to the rest of the class, Dexter suggested they spend a moment in silent prayer. The students looked pityingly at Eric and then bowed their heads. In that moment, no one prayed harder than normal Eric.
After Mrs Armitage’s phone call, Strey made phone calls of his own, but was unable to find an opening for Eric at any other boarding school; all places had long since been filled and there would be no vacancies until spring. As Eric currently had board and lodging at Talbot Academy, Strey arranged with Mrs Armitage for him to spend the remainder of the fall semester there. Mrs Armitage, however, made a stipulation: Eric was to take a crash course in American Sign Language. Strey had readily agreed – the boy was once more out of his hair.
The arrangement, however, mattered little to Eric. He’d never intended remaining in school for more than a few weeks, whichever school had been chosen for him. His aim had always been to abscond and go looking for Susan, and with this objective in mind, he had already written a letter to Jeff. While he waited for a reply, he learned what he could from the classes he attended, and struggled with the sign language that threatened his exemplary C average. In his spare time he continued to read the Bible and compile a list of its dead.
By the time Eric had enrolled at Talbot College, he’d already read the Books of Genesis, Exodus and Leviticus. They hadn’t been the easiest of reads, and it had proved more difficult than expected to make an accurate tabulation of those who died. He drew up lists of dead that were named, dead that were specified in number but unnamed, and dead who were both unnamed and unspecified in number.
Of the 3,614 specified dead, only nine had names: Abel, murdered by his brother Cain in a fit of jealousy; Mrs Lot, turned by God into a pillar of salt for disobedience; Shecham and his father Hamor, killed by Jacob for the former’s defilement of his daughter Dinah; Er, one of Jacob’s sons, killed by God for wickedness; Onan, Er’s brother, killed by God for spilling his seed on the ground; King Amalek, killed by Joshua; and Nadab and Abihu, the sons of the chief priest Aaron, burnt to a crisp by God for getting an offering ceremony wrong.
In the category of Almost Named But Not Quite were two men killed by Lamech, a descendant of Cain, for either wounding or striking him; the Pharaoh of Egypt’s chief baker hanged by order of the Pharaoh; several people who fell into bitumen pits; an Egyptian killed by Moses for beating a Hebrew slave; a man of mixed Israeli and Egyptian parentage killed by the Israelis for blasphemy; six hundred Egyptian charioteers drowned in the Red Sea while pursuing the fleeing Israelis; and three thousand Israelis killed by the sons of Levi for building and worshipping a golden calf while Moses was up a mountain talking to God.
And then came the non-specified numbers: the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah; the male inhabitants of the city ruled by King Hamor; the people ruled by King Amalek; the world at the time of Noah destroyed by a flood; amorphous battle casualties; Egyptians killed by hailstones sent by God; Egyptian first-borns killed by a plague sent by God; and more of Pharaoh’s army of horsemen and charioteers, drowned in the Red Sea while trying to recapture their old slaves.
And then Jeff’s letter arrived, short but to the point. He said he’d very much welcome a visit from Eric and that he was now back in contact with Susan. He warned him, however, not to contact the prison authorities for an official visiting permit as, being a minor, he would be refused unless accompanied by an adult. Rather, he should just turn up at the gate and ask for Big Guy, a prison guard who was now his friend. He ended by saying he would shelve his plans for escape until after Eric visited, and looked forward to seeing him again. He signed off as he’d signed off his previous letter: Yours in Prison, Jeff.
The problem Eric now faced was how to actually get to Lyon Mt Correctional Facility. It was a distance of some three and a half thousand miles from San Francisco, and a bus journey of at least three and a half days. Affording the $250 for the journey wasn’t an issue for Eric, but being under the age of fifteen was: bus company regulations barred him from travelling unaccompanied on any journey lasting more than five daylight hours. He was also a young-looking thirteen-year-old, and would have easier passed for eleven than fifteen. The only thing for him to do was the one thing his parents had always warned him not to do: accept rides from strangers.
Eric was aware his absence from school would be noticed, and calculated he’d require at least two days start before the alarm was raised. He therefore gave the school three weeks’ notice that he would be returning home one weekend to attend a church memorial service for his parents, and asked for, and received, permission to leave school at the end of that Friday’s morning classes. He told this lie only reluctantly, and hoped that both God and his parents would forgive him its telling.
On the day of his planned departure, Eric was collected from school by taxi and dropped off near Union Square; from there he walked to the Greyhound bus station on Mission Street and bought a one-way ticket to Sacramento. In the Sacramento bus station he bought a ticket to Roseville, a community located at the outskirts of the Sacramento metropolitan area and close to Interstate 80 and, from there, walked the remaining distance to where Route 65 joined the interstate. He then took up position on the hard shoulder.
Eric slipped the rucksack from his back, placed it on the ground and then unstrapped the white bicycle helmet he’d taken to wearing, and tied it to one of the bag’s straps. He knelt on the asphalt, closed his eyes and placed his hands together. He prayed that God would watch over him and keep him safe, lead him to Susan and back to a life of happiness. It seemed to Eric that God had answered his prayer when a two-hundred-and-eighty-pound angel with a belly the size of a pregnancy in its ninth month called out to him. The angel’s name was Red Dunbar and he drove a truck.
Eric’s eyes were still shut tight when the long-nosed eighteen-wheeler hissed to a halt. He opened them the same moment the passenger door swung open, and a large crew-cut head peered out.
‘Where you goin’ to, kid?’
‘Plattsburgh, New York, sir,’ Eric replied.
‘Okay, climb in. Quick as you can, I’m not supposed to stop here!’
Eric took hold of his rucksack and threw it into the cab.
The driver took his first good look at Eric and was surprised by the boy’s youth.
‘How old are you, kid?’ he asked. ‘Eleven?’
‘No sir, I’m thirteen. I just look young for my age. My name’s Eric Gole.’
‘My name’s Red – Red Dunbar. Tell me, kid, how come someone young as you is out here on his own? Do your parents know where you are – and why are you heading to New York?’
Eric told Red Dunbar the truth. All of it: the death of his parents, his placement in a school for the deaf and his search for the only family he had left – Jeff in prison and Susan somewhere not in prison.
‘Crappen dap!’ Red exclaimed. (It was one of only three expressions of surprise he ever used: crappen dappen and, if time permitted, crappen dappen doo-dah being the other two.)
Red Dunbar was fifty-four. He’d been born in 1956 and lived in Yuba City with the woman he’d married thirty-three years previously, and who’d borne him two children: a son who also drove trucks, and a daughter who drove him to distraction. Red had driven trucks the whole of his working life, first for others and now for himself. He’d bought his first truck in 1999 and ever since had been self-employed and a paid-up member of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association.
Eric’s story touched Red, and he could at least identify with one part of it: he too had lost his parents at a young age. He remembered clearly the day he’d returned home from a friend’s house to find a police car waiting outside his house and neighbours milling around in the yard. A young policewoman had broken the news that his parents and younger sister had been killed in a car accident; she told him their deaths had been immediate, that they hadn’t suffered.
Red had been fifteen at the time, and the suffering his parents had escaped now fell on him like a ton of bricks. He was placed in foster care for three years with a family that fed and clothed him, but showed little affection. He turned eighteen and left their house for good, never to return; he still believed them to be people who fostered for money rather than reasons of altruism. If, at the time, there had been the remotest possibility of him finding the loving relations Eric now searched for, then Red was sure he’d have made the same journey and, if necessary, walked the three and half thousand miles to find them.
‘You eaten yet, kid?’
‘I ate breakfast and some toffees on the bus. Are you hungry?’
‘I will be soon. What do you say we stop at the next pickle park and get us some dinner?’
‘I like the idea, Mr Dunbar, but I’ve never really liked pickles. If there’s nothing there I like, can I just buy some chocolate?’
‘Pickle Park’s a rest area, kid,’ Red laughed. ‘It serves all kinds of food. By the time we get you to Chicago, you’ll have meat on your bones. I can promise you that much.’
Twenty minutes later, Red and Eric were sitting at a table in the truckers’ section of a diner, their plates piled high with food. Red had ordered an all-day breakfast with a side order of pancakes for himself and a chicken platter for Eric.
‘You going to finish that, kid?’ he asked Eric, when he saw the boy starting to struggle.
‘I don’t think I can, sir. I’m about as full as I’ve ever been.’
‘Mind if I take over?’
Eric handed his plate to Red, and Red handed his empty plate to Eric. It was as clean as a whistle and showed no evidence that food had ever been placed on it. (Red wasn’t two hundred and eighty pounds for nothing, and neither had his belly appeared overnight.)
A couple of truckers came to the table and greeted Red. ‘This kid teaching you how to drive, Red?’ one of the men joked.
‘I’m getting old, Pete,’ Red replied, ‘I need all the help I can get these days. Who better than my own grandson? Eric, this is Pete, and the guy next to him, by the looks of things, is an escaped convict.’
The man next to Pete laughed and held out his hand to Eric. ‘I’m Dave,’ he said. ‘Don’t take no notice of your Granddaddy, son, he’s getting forgetful in his old age. It was me who taught him all he knows!’ He turned to Red and asked him what he was hauling.
‘More prunes, Dave. The people of Chicago have gotten themselves blocked up again. Sometimes I think I may as well be driving for the Red Cross as the California Sunshine Corporation.’
At last, the men went their different ways: Pete and Dave to the food counter, and Red and Eric back to the truck. As they walked, Red told Eric it was safer all round if people thought he was his grandson.
Eric agreed. ‘Do you want me to call you granddad, Mr Dunbar?’
‘Only if people are around. Otherwise call me Red – that’s my given name.’
‘Okay, Red. How much money do I owe you for my meal?’
‘Not a cent, kid! While you’re travelling with me you’re my guest. But thanks for asking. Not many people do that nowadays.’
It took more than three days for them to reach Chicago. The number of hours Red could drive in a day was limited by law to no more than eleven in any fourteen hour period, and had to be followed by ten consecutive hours of rest. Nights he would sleep in the purpose-built compartment attached to the cab, while Eric slept on the seat, covered by a blanket. They washed and showered in facilities provided by the rest areas, and ate their breakfasts and dinners there too; for lunch they ate sandwiches and chips bought from the rest areas and drank Dr Pepper.
They traversed the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California and the Continental Divide in Wyoming. They journeyed through the barren deserts of northern Nevada and the salt flats of Utah, the Great Plains of Nebraska and the rolling hills of Iowa. They crossed the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers, and passed from Pacific Time to Mountain Time, from Mountain Time to Central Time. All the while they chatted.
‘I love this country,’ Red told Eric. ‘I don’t always agree with its politics, and there’s been more than one President I wouldn’t have opened my door to if he’d been stood there knocking, but I love the country. It’s beautiful, kid, and I never get tired of driving through it – hearing it, smelling it. And I think most of the people who live in it are good people and kind-hearted. I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else. I’ve never once left its borders and I don’t ever intend to.’
‘I like sport but I’m not much good at it,’ Eric told Red. ‘I can’t catch all the balls thrown to me, especially if they’re thrown hard, but I do try. I’m usually the last to be chosen when it comes to picking teams, but I don’t mind as long as I get to play. What I don’t like though is the way people shout at me when I miss a catch or mis-hit the ball. I don’t understand why winning’s so important and losing’s so bad.’
‘It’s people with tattoos and pieces of metal stuck in their faces I despair of most,’ Red told Eric. ‘I don’t know why they do it or why they think it makes them look more attractive, either. And it’s not just young kids who don’t know any better, it’s old people who do. I see men in their sixties with diamond studs in their ears and women of the same age with lumps of metal in their noses, tattoos of dolphins on their shoulders and barbed wire round the tops of their arms. It turns me right off.’
‘My hands sweat a lot,’ Eric told Red. ‘They never used to, but they’re wet all the time now, especially when I’m around girls. I never used to feel uncomfortable around girls but I do now. I never know what to say to them. My Dad said it was natural and a stage all boys go through. Do you think he was right, Red? Why would I have this problem when none of my friends has?’
‘It’s truckers who are the backbone of this country,’ Red told Eric. ‘And it burns me up when I hear the FBI telling everyone we’re a bunch of serial killers. If you listen to them, we’re responsible for hundreds of unsolved deaths: fallen women, stranded motorists, hitchhikers; you name them and we’re supposed to have killed them. They say we drive mobile crime scenes! That’s what they call our trucks these days. Can you believe that? I tell you, if I ever got into a jam, it’s a trucker I’d want in my corner and not some suited-up college kid who thinks he knows all there is to know about the world. Burns me up big time!’
‘Do you miss your parents?’ Eric asked Red.
‘Sure I do. Not like I did when they first died. It hurt even to think about them then, but it got easier.’ Red turned to look at Eric. ‘Time does heal, kid. You’ve probably heard it a thousand times from a thousand different people, and the chances are you didn’t believe one of them, did you? But it’s true. Take it from me, one who’s been there and one who knows.
‘You’ll have your own family one day, kid, and believe me you’ll appreciate it all the more for having lost your own. Mark my words: you’ll make a better husband and a better father than most other men your age.’
The moisture from Eric’s hands magically disappeared and found its way to his eyes. He bit his lip and in a voice that trembled said: ‘I, I hope so.’
‘Let it out, kid, let it out,’ Red said gently. ‘There’s no shame in crying, no shame at all.’
As Chicago approached and their time together neared its end, Red got busy on the CB: who was heading towards New York or into Canada, who knew of someone who was? Each time they pulled into a rest area, he left Eric at a table and went to speak to truckers he knew and truckers he didn’t, asking them the same questions. He eventually struck gold and came back to the table with a triumphant look on his face.
‘Got you a ride with a gal, kid,’ he beamed. ‘We’re meeting her at the South Holland Service Plaza and she’ll get you to Albany. She’ll also make sure you pick up a ride from there to Plattsburg. You’re almost there, kid. Another two days and you’ll be talking to your Uncle Jeff.’
Sure enough, the woman, called Lily Gomez, was waiting for them when they arrived at the South Holland Plaza. She was standing by the entrance to the restaurant drinking coffee from a cardboard cup. She gave Red a hug and shook Eric by the hand.
‘I don’t mean to hurry you, Red, but I need to start rolling. Larry Hicks is going to meet us in Albany and I don’t want to keep him waiting. He’ll take Eric the rest of the way.’
‘Crappen dappen!’ Red said. ‘I thought old Larry was dead! I haven’t seen hide nor hair of him for ten years at least. Tell him I owe him one, will you?’
He then turned to Eric and handed him a piece of paper. ‘It’s got my home address and telephone number on it, and also my mobile number. I want to hear from you once you’ve found Susan, and anytime you’re in Yuba City, you call in. Got it? Now come and give old Red a big hug, kid.’
Eric did, and as Red had suspected, the boy burst into tears. What did surprise him, however, were the tears he felt running down his own cheeks. ‘God speed, Eric,’ he spoke softly in the boy’s ear. ‘He’ll look after you. And if you get yourself in a jam you can’t get out of, don’t go to the FBI! Come to me!’
Red waited in the parking area while Eric settled himself in Lily’s truck, and stood there waving as the truck pulled away and headed for the exit and Interstate 90. He then took a handkerchief from his jeans pocket and gave his nose a mighty blow.
Lily was in her early thirties. She had an olive-coloured complexion lightly pitted with acne scars, and hair and eyebrows the colour of coal. When she rolled up her shirt sleeves, a tattoo of a truck came into view on her left forearm, encased in a heart with an arrow running through it. Eric wondered if Red knew about this.
Lily occasionally turned to Eric and smiled, but was otherwise taciturn. She didn’t like small talk at the best of times, and even though she had two children of her own, disliked small talk with small people in particular.
The truck passed silently into Eastern Time and through the states of Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Lily and Eric ate dinner at a rest area near Cleveland and Lily paid with money given to her by Red. They spent the night close to Buffalo, Lily in her sleeping compartment and Eric again on the seat. The following morning they rose early.
They arrived in Albany mid-morning and Larry Hicks was there to meet them. He looked like a man who didn’t have much waiting time left in him, and Eric guessed his age to be about one hundred and five. Lily must have also appreciated the limited amount of time Larry now had left on earth as she simply shook his hand, introduced Eric and left. ‘Call Red once you’ve dropped the boy off,’ she called over her shoulder to Larry.
Larry was in fact only in his early sixties, but had lived a life full enough to have satisfied three people. His thin face was webbed with broken veins and crevassed by deep lines. Most of his teeth were also missing, and the stubble above his lip was the colour of nicotine. He had a voice that rasped and spoke with the speed of an express train. Most of the time Eric had no idea what Larry was talking about, and the chances were good that neither did Larry.
The journey to Plattsburgh took them two and a half hours and Larry then insisted on driving Eric the extra fifteen miles to the town of Dannemora, where Lyon Mt Correctional Facility was located. They arrived outside its gates at two in the afternoon.
Eric thanked Larry for all his help and reminded him to call Red. ‘Sure thing,’ Larry replied, and a mile down the road promptly forgot.
Eric went into a reception room to the side of the gate and asked the man standing behind the counter for Big Guy. The man folded his newspaper and peered down at him over half-moon glasses.
‘And who should I say is asking for him, young man? His big brother?’
‘No, sir. Tell him Eric Gole has arrived. I think he’ll know who I am.’
The man left through a door to the rear of the counter and told Eric to wait. Almost five minutes passed before the door opened again but, unusually, no one appeared to pass through it. Eric became curious and had just started to peer over the counter when a small man jumped on to the stool and scared him half to death.
‘I’m Big Guy,’ the man said. ‘Follow me.’
Big Guy was a three-foot-six-inch dwarf. He had a large angular head and a bulging brow; his arms were short, his fingers even smaller and his little legs were bowed at the knees. He walked with difficulty and in pain. Everything about Big Guy was disproportionate, including his heart, which, according to Jeff – who they’d found sitting at a picnic table – was the size of the moon.
‘I don’t think I’d have made it in here without Big Guy,’ he told Eric.
Big Guy laughed when he heard Jeff say this. ‘Man alive, Lawrence, if you can’t make it in a holiday camp like this, God help you if they ever send you to a real prison. You have it made here. Look at yourself: you’ve got a coffee in one hand and a fat cigar in the other. What kind of torture is that? The most you ever have to do is pick up litter from roadsides or repair little league fields. Anyone can make it here. All I’ve done is given you paper and pencils.’
‘You’ve given me more than that and you know it, Big Guy. You’ve given me inspiration!’
He turned to Eric. ‘Big Guy was a huge fan of The Dwarf Detective, and once he knew it was me who’d created it, suggested we try writing something together. So that’s what we’ve been doing, and I think we’ve come up with something big, something that could well prove to be a defining moment in the history of cinema. Do you want to hear about it?’ Eric nodded that he did.
‘We’ve come up with this great idea for a film. It’s about a man who’s been wrongly imprisoned for killing his wife, and he’s been sentenced to life without parole. He’s a loner and stands up for himself, won’t take shit from anybody. He gets beaten up but he never snitches. He spends time in the prison hospital and time in solitary, but he never gives in; he’s indomitable.
‘And then he makes friends with this other prisoner, a black guy who gets things smuggled in from the outside for other prisoners. He asks him to get him a small rock hammer, supposedly for carving pieces of stone, but really he’s planning to use it to tunnel out of the prison, even though it’s going to take him years.
‘In the meantime, he’s also started working for the prison governor, doing his accounts and shit like that, and the governor’s crooked as they come. When he escapes, he takes all these bogus bank account numbers with him – accounts the governor’s been using to squirrel money away in – and cleans them all out and then sends all the evidence he has against the governor to a newspaper, and the governor’s arrested and everyone in the prison cheers. And he’s a rich man now, so he goes down to Mexico and lives a life of ease – it is Mexico we’re thinking of, isn’t it? Yeah, thought it was. He’ll probably build boats down there.
‘But he never forgets his old friend, and tells him that if he ever gets paroled he’s got to go to this place where he’ll find a tin full of money buried under a stone, and he’s got to use it to follow him down to Mexico and become partners with him in the boat business. And the last shot of the film will be the two of them walking towards each other on the beach, and I swear to God, Eric, there won’t be a dry eye in the house when the lights come on.
‘And we’re not just pitching the idea, either. We’re going to insist we’re in it. We’re figuring I’ll play the part of the guy who escapes, and Big Guy the part of the fixer. So what do you think, Eric, brilliant or what?’
Eric replied falteringly. ‘I think it is brilliant, Uncle Jeff, but doesn’t it remind you a bit of The Shawshank Redemption?’
‘What’s that?’ his uncle asked.
‘It was a film with Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman in it. They were prisoners too.’
‘You ever heard of this film, Big Guy?’
‘It’s a waste of money me even going to the movies, Lawrence. Someone sits in front of me and the damn screen disappears. So no, I’ve never seen this film, or any other film for that matter.’
‘Me neither,’ Jeff said. ‘I can’t see there being another film quite like this one, Eric.’
Eric told Jeff of his journey to Dannemora, and the help given to him by Red, Lily and Larry. He told him of his guardians in Santa Cruz and the school in San Francisco, his reasons for running away and his search for Susan.
‘If it wasn’t for being locked up in here, Eric, I’d be glad to take care of you myself. We’re family, and there’s nothing more important. We’re here to look after each other, and I know if anything had happened to me your daddy would have taken care of Susan…’ He paused for a moment, as if remembering something.
‘That time we came to visit you in Santa Cruz. You remember it? I’ve always felt bad about it: the hurt and the scarring it might have caused…’
Eric interrupted him. ‘That was all sorted, Uncle Jeff. My dad was annoyed at Susan for tearing up his Bible, but he forgave her.’
Jeff looked at Eric mystified. ‘I’m not talking about your dad’s Bible, Eric. I’m talking about taking you to the Paul McCartney concert!’
‘It was never my idea to go to that concert. It was Mrs Lawrence, your Aunt Anna, who wanted to go. We were having problems at the time and I thought if I just agreed with her, it might help smooth things over. I should’ve saved my money. We got home and she started comparing me to the fucker – and you don’t need to be an Einstein to figure out who came off worse.
‘I told her she’d do better comparing Paul McCartney to my old man: he was nearer his age than I was, and she shouldn’t get fooled into thinking he wasn’t by some stupid dye job. You want Paul McCartney I said to her, you go get him. Best of luck to you too, sweetheart. Go break a fucking leg, lose one if you have to, makes no difference to me.
‘Anyway, we arranged to buy tickets and Mrs Lawrence insisted I get one for you. She thought you’d be company for Susan and told me I was being neurotic when I said a concert like that might damage you. Susan’s one thing, I said to her, Eric’s another.
‘Susan was old enough to make up her own mind. She’d always been a Beatles fan, and the way she saw it, Paul McCartney in concert was the closest she’d ever get to seeing the Beatles in concert. I tried talking sense into her, but she wouldn’t listen. I couldn’t get her to appreciate that there’s a chasmic difference between the next best thing and plain residue.
‘You know when you wash your hair, Eric, and some of it always gets stuck in the plughole? Well that’s how it was for me at that concert. I sure as hell didn’t imagine I was listening to the Beatles that night, and I’m not sure I even saw Paul McCartney. All I remember is that every time I looked at the stage, I saw a plughole full of dyed hennaed hair!’
McCartney, he explained to Eric, had written some of his favourite Beatles songs and Hey Jude still remained his all-time pick. The last great song McCartney had written was Maybe I’m Amazed and after that, he’d started a slalom run to hell, a descent presaged by The Long and Winding Road and confirmed by Ebony and Ivory and the Frog Chorus. The restraining influence of the Beatles had gone, and so too had any semblance of quality control. His music now was fit only for elevators and supermarkets.
‘It’s a damn tragedy, Eric, and if I ever met the guy I’d give him a good shake. I’d get hold of those fat cheeks of his, give them a good squeeze, and then slap him. And it’s not just what the music’s become; it’s what he’s become – a smug little bastard who tries too hard to be cool and pretends he’s just a normal guy. Well, God help the person who ever treats him like he’s just another normal guy: he’d be out of the door sitting with his ass in a puddle before he even knew what had happened.
‘And he talks such grandiose shit these days, too. I saw him interviewed on television soon after 9/11, and he was saying how he was going to do something for the people of New York and the rest of the country; raise their spirits and make them feel good about life again. So what does he do? He records a song called Freedom. You ever heard the lyrics? They must have taken him all of three minutes to write – and the music? Maybe two!
‘Well, I’ll tell you this for free, Eric: the song didn’t make me feel any less crap about life! I didn’t think: “Okay, we’ve lost a couple of towers, but at least we’ve got a new Paul McCartney song out of the tragedy.” And you know where the song did best? Fucking Rumania!
‘I tell you, I laughed silly when one of his tour buses got stolen. You hear him afterwards? Talking about how there was a lot of love in that bus and how he hoped the love would rub off on to the people who’d taken it. Well tell me, how the fuck would he know how much love there was in that bus? You ever think he ever stepped foot in it? No chance: it’s limousines and private jets for Saint Paul.’
‘But why were you worried the concert might damage me, Uncle Jeff?’ Eric asked. ‘I enjoyed the concert.’
‘Because it was family entertainment!’ Jeff said. ‘We may as well have taken you to a recording of the Sonny & Cher Show. Music’s meant to divide families not bring them together. Kids and parents shouldn’t be listening to the same music: they should hate each other’s music, and not even think about rubbing shoulders with each other in the same audience. And there was no audience worse than the one we became a part of that night! Middle-aged parents and grandparents behaving like eighteen-year-olds; old women moving suggestively and old men pulling strange faces and playing air guitars. I tell you, Eric, there’s nothing more embarrassing than a bunch of old fuckers pretending to be young again.
‘And tell me this, what kind of a brainless twat takes a six-foot sign to a concert with them? How the hell are the people sitting behind supposed to see? There was one in front of us until I tore it from them. And do you know what it said? God Bless John, George and Linda. I ask you, can you imagine either John or George turning up to that concert? More likely they were turning in their graves!
‘Big Guy’s got an interesting theory about their deaths. Tell Eric what you think, Big Guy.’
He looked around to make sure they were still alone, and then spoke conspiratorially. ‘I think McCartney had them killed,’ he said. ‘He was the first to leave the Beatles and I think he resented that, felt he’d been pushed out of his own creation. I think he was right in thinking this too, and I think along the same lines as your uncle in thinking that it was The Long and Winding Road that prompted the others to throw him out. I think …’
‘That’s the seventh time you’ve used the word think, Big Man. I’ve told you before: if you want to be a successful writer, you have to start broadening your vocabulary.’
‘I’m not writing to Eric, Lawrence, I’m talking to him. This is how I talk. This is how other people talk. Now butt out!’ He turned his attention back to Eric. ‘McCartney wanted people to think of him when they thought of the Beatles. He wanted to tour the world and play Beatles music without being inconvenienced by two other people doing the same thing. Imagine what it would have been like if John and George had rolled into the same city and played concerts on the same night he was playing. It would have been commercial suicide and a popularity contest he might well have lost. He couldn’t afford to take the chance.
‘So what does he do? He recruits two crazies, one in the US and one in the UK, and probably promises them free tickets to his concerts for life. You’ve got to bear in mind that there are people crazy enough to accept such offers. One crazy succeeded and the other failed, but even the failed attempt resulted in Harrison becoming a recluse; it probably contributed to his early death too. So when we think of the Beatles now, who do we think of? That’s right, Paul McCartney! I’m working on getting proof but it’s proving difficult and, in the meantime, I’d prefer it if you didn’t mention this to anybody. I can’t afford law suits on my salary.’
‘What about Ringo? Why hasn’t anyone killed him?’ Eric asked.
Both Jeff and Big Guy burst out laughing.
‘Why would anyone want to kill Ringo?’ Big Guy answered. ‘He’s no threat to anyone! Besides, if all the Beatles but McCartney were killed, there’d be too many questions to answer, too many coincidences to square.’
‘I can buy into that, Big Man,’ Jeff said.
Jeff’s ready and enthusiastic support for such a preposterous notion would have set alarm bells ringing in the minds of most rational people, but in Big Guy’s case, a man in the process of writing the Shawshank Redemption, they never made a sound.
‘I don’t mean to rush you guys,’ Big Guy said, ‘but you’ve got thirty minutes before I go off duty and The Blimp comes on. He’ll blow a gasket if he finds Eric here, and that means trouble for all of us.’
‘How come time slips by quickly when you’re enjoying yourself, and the rest of the time, when you want it to pass quickly, it just strolls around like a three-legged tortoise on Quaaludes?’ Jeff asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Eric said. ‘Do you think we should talk about Susan now, where I’ll find her?’
‘Hershey, Pennsylvania,’ Jeff replied.
The last Eric had heard of Susan was when news reached the Gole family that she’d dropped out of college and started dancing with a Polish folk troupe. Jeff smiled at Daniel’s misunderstanding of the situation, and clarified it for Eric. He told him that Susan had left college to pursue a more alternative career; rather than climb the conventional greasy pole to success, his daughter had decided to slide down one for a living!
‘If I’m honest, Eric, I’d have to say I disagreed with her decision. I don’t mind going to those clubs once in a while, but like any father, I sure as hell don’t want to turn up and find my own daughter dancing there. It’s hypocritical I know, but that’s how life is and that’s the way I am.
‘Susan knew I was on shaky ground and she didn’t hold back from telling me. She said there was nothing wrong with such entertainment, that the body was a thing of beauty and shouldn’t be hidden from view. She argued that if people were more open about their bodies, there’d be less crime of a sexual nature in the world, and that what she was doing was neither sordid nor pornographic.
‘I knew she was right, but I wasn’t about to tell her so. I know I can be headstrong and obdurate at times, but so too can Susan. She went her own way after that argument and we lost touch. And then out of nowhere, she turns up here at the correctional facility!’
A rapprochement had taken place between them in the grounds of the prison, close to the picnic table where they now sat. During the time of their separation, the father’s indignation had mellowed and the daughter’s naive idealism quietened.
Susan had been a popular dancer in the clubs where she entertained and had made good money. Unsavoury elements, however, had now started to encroach upon her innocent world, and many of the once well-managed venues had become lax and undisciplined. Many of the newer dancers openly used drugs, and managements now subordinated the artistry of the pole to the fatuity of the lap. Susan had always refused to perform such dances, and consequently employment opportunities for her had become scarcer. She did, however, have new ideas of her own, and these ideas incorporated chocolate.
The three loves of Susan’s life were her body, dancing and chocolate, and it had always been her dream to blend all three into one artistic performance. The brainwave rolled to shore in Galveston while Susan was walking along its beach. It was the height of the city’s hot summer and temperatures were in the high nineties. She was with a friend, who was extolling the virtues of blue M&Ms and their power to help paralyzed rats walk again. She placed two on Susan’s hand and told her to eat them. ‘Better than fish oils,’ she’d said.
It wasn’t so much the colour of the M&M’s that intrigued Susan, as the fact that they didn’t melt. ‘It’s a pity they don’t make milk chocolate that doesn’t melt in your hand,’ Susan had said to her.
‘Oh, but they do,’ her friend had said. ‘They’ve been making it since the forties. Tastes like shit, too.’
‘You ever heard of the Desert Bar?’
Eric shook his head.
‘It was a chocolate bar developed by Hershey that could withstand temperatures of 140 degrees. It was made for the soldiers fighting in the Gulf, but the company made too much and there were stocks left over after the war ended. They packaged the excess bars in desert-camouflage wrappers and marketed them as chocolate novelties. I bought one, and it tasted like wax – the only damn chocolate bar I’ve ever had to chew!
‘Anyway, there’s supposed to be stock of this chocolate in Hershey somewhere, and Susan’s gone looking for it. She arranged to meet a guy called Finkel. I tried calling him one time to find out how Susan was doing, but he’s not listed in the phone book. I’ve got his address though, or leastways, the address Susan gave me. She passed this way about three months back and I can’t say for sure she’ll still be in Hershey, but you could start by talking to this guy Finkel.’
Jeff pulled some crumpled pieces of paper from his pocket, smoothed them on the picnic table and examined each one. ‘Here it is!’ he said, ‘Fred Finkel, Gravel Road, Hershey.’
‘Time to make a move,’ Big Guy said. ‘We need to get Eric out of here. I can take him into Dannemora and he can get a bus from there.’
The two distant relatives said their goodbyes. Jeff thanked Eric for dropping by and told him to give Susan his love. ‘You find her, she’ll take care of you,’ he said. ‘She’s a good girl.’
Eric kissed him on the cheek and followed Big Guy to a parked car. Big Guy unlocked it and told Eric to climb in. ‘I’ll be back in ten minutes, Eric,’ he said, and true to his word he was. He returned dressed in civilian clothes, and fired the engine of the specially adapted car. A child’s booster seat enabled him to see through the windscreen, and large blocks of wood attached to the pedals allowed him to accelerate and brake. He drove slowly and with great care, checking the mirrors every five seconds. They were overtaken by every car and truck heading in the same direction, and though they arrived at the bus station in one piece, they also arrived there too late for Eric to catch his intended bus.
‘Still, better to arrive ten minutes late in one life than ten years early in the next,’ Big Guy said cheerfully.
Eric would have gladly settled for the happier medium of arriving on time, but was in no position to say so. He was, however, both grateful and relieved when Big Guy offered to take him to a rest area on the interstate. ‘You seem to have luck hitch-hiking, Eric. Maybe your luck’s still in.’
It was dusk and a cold rain had started to fall. Big Guy gave Eric his umbrella, told him to take care of himself and then drove off.
Eric looked around the rest area. There were few cars there and only one vehicle with a light on. The bus looked vaguely familiar, and Eric decided to approach it.
Bob sat at the wheel reading a manual, something he should have done in Montreal. He was unsure of the vehicle’s controls and even less sure of its legal pedigree. The accompanying registration papers, however, had been professionally forged and he didn’t doubt they would pass inspection; crossing the border from Canada had been a breeze.
He played with the controls, turned every switch and pressed every button until he was happy he understood them. He then turned the ignition key and was about to pull away, when there was a sudden knock on the window.
‘Goddamn!’ Bob yelled.
If the knock hadn’t scared him sufficiently, the sight of what he took to be an alien peering through the window certainly did, and as the side door slowly opened, his body tensed. Bob breathed a sigh of relief when the shape of a small white boy came into view wearing a strangely shaped bicycle helmet.
‘Excuse me bothering you, sir,’ the boy said, ‘but is there any chance you could give me a ride?’
‘Jesus, kid, you almos’ give me a heart attack! I thought you was one o’ them aliens. What you doin’ out here?’
‘Visiting my uncle, sir. There’s no bus till morning and I need to get to Hershey.’
‘Couldn’ yo’ uncle give you a ride?’
‘He’s in prison, sir. The one back there off the road.’ He pointed with his free hand, the one not holding what Bob took to be a girl’s umbrella.
‘Okay, kid, climb in.’
Eric climbed in and fastened his safety belt. He then held out his hand to Bob and introduced himself: ‘My name’s Eric Gole, sir. What’s yours?’
‘Otis Sistrunk,’ Bob said, ‘Call me Otis.’ He then put the vehicle into drive and steered toward the exit.
‘She was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen,’ Finkel said. ‘No one would have turned her down. I was lucky to be blessed with brains when I was born, but I didn’t do too well in the looks department. It never used to bother me until I met Susan, but then I started to wonder how life might have been if I had been handsome and met someone like her thirty years ago. I don’t mind telling you, it unsettled me. Don’t go getting me wrong, there was no funny business between the two of us, but when she left it was like my heart had been broken in two. Strange thing that, isn’t it?’
Bob and Eric were sitting side by side on a small couch in Fred Finkel’s living room, drinking cups of tea. It was Sunday afternoon and their second visit to Finkel’s house. Although they’d arrived in Hershey on the Saturday, Finkel had been out of town visiting his sister.
The man who’d opened the door to them had the appearance of a wire coat hanger on edge. He was in his late sixties, about five foot six and thin as a rake. His head was particularly narrow – more like a side profile than a full face – and gave the impression of a man who’d been delivered from his mother’s womb by a doctor who’d pressed on the forceps too hard.
‘Sorry to disturb you like this, Mr Finkel, but our understandin’ o’ the matter is that you an acquaintance o’ Susan Lawrence. Susan’s a cousin o’ this young man here, an’ he tryin’ to locate her. We was wonderin’ if you can help us.’
At the mention of Susan’s name an immediate change came over Fred Finkel: his guard dropped and a tremulous smile jerked uneasily across his face. He held out a surprisingly firm hand and invited them into the house.
‘I was just making a cup of tea,’ he said. ‘Would you care to join me?’ Finkel disappeared into the kitchen and left Bob and Eric alone in what passed for a living room.
‘What’s tea like, Otis?’ Eric whispered. ‘I’ve never drunk it before.’
‘Tastes good,’ Bob said. ‘Jus’ diff’rent is all.’
The curtains in the living room were old and made from a heavy velvet material. They were drawn shut to prevent any natural light from seeping into the parlour’s cheerless interior, which was illuminated by a sole standing light. There was no television, no radio and no CD player, and the walls – apart from a small round mirror – were completely bare. There were only three ornaments in the room and these sat on the mantel over the fireplace: an old glass candy jar filled with buttons, a black wooden elephant sat on its haunches with a clothes brush sticking out of its hollowed head, and a small rosewood tea chest.
Finkel came back into the room holding a tray. He placed it carefully on one of the tables.
‘I’ve brought milk just in case,’ he said, ‘but I think you’ll find the tea tastes better if you just squeeze lemon into it. One more piece of advice: it’s wisest to sweeten the tea only after you’ve tasted it.’ He then poured three cups. ‘I don’t know whether you’ve drunk Lapsang souchong before, but it’s special.’
Bob squeezed the lemon into his cup and took a taste. ‘Mmmm, this good, Mr Finkel. It’s got a kinda smoky taste to it, don’t it?’
‘Exactly so!’ Finkel replied.
‘I notice you got an ol’ tea chest on the shelf, there. You keep tea in that, too?’
‘No, Mr Sistrunk, I keep my caul in there.’
‘Coal? How you fit coal in there, Mr Finkel? Looks too small.’
‘Not coal, Mr Sistrunk. Caul! It’s a veil of skin that covers the face of some children when they’re born – rather like a mask. It’s rare that it happens, but not that rare – Napoleon Bonaparte had one, for example.
‘In Eastern Europe, they believed that a child born with a caul over its face would grow up to be a werewolf, but in our culture it’s always been interpreted as an omen of good luck. Legend has it that the bearer of a caul never drowns, and sailors in particular are still prepared to pay large sums of money for them. It’s nonsense, I know, but harmless nonsense.
‘Having said that, my mother made me promise never to throw it away. She believed that if the caul wasn’t buried – or burnt – with me when I died, then my soul would never rest in peace, and like all mothers she wanted the best for me. So that’s what will happen when I die, and in the meantime it stays locked away in the tea chest there.’
Bob was fascinated by Finkel’s story, Eric rather less so.
‘I hope I’m not interrupting, Mr Finkel – and that story of yours about coal was very interesting – but can you tell me about my cousin Susan?’
‘Of course I can, young man,’ Finkel said. He put down his cup, closed his eyes and then appeared to fall asleep.
Eric looked at Bob uneasily, and was about to prod the man when Finkel suddenly burst into life.
‘I was up at the plant and got a call from the post room to say they’d taken receipt of a letter addressed to The Person who invented The Desert Bar, and wanted to know if they should forward it to me. I wasn’t the inventor as such, but I was probably the last member of the original project team still working at the factory, and so I said yes. It was an unusual letter, handwritten in purple ink with big hearts over the ‘i’s and ‘j’s, and flamboyant loops on all the upper and lower sticks. To tell you the truth, I thought it had been written by a child, and because I was in the middle of something else I didn’t read it immediately. I stuck it in my pocket and only remembered about it after I got home.
‘The writer of the letter introduced herself as Susan Lawrence and described herself as an artist who was interested in doing something with chocolate that didn’t melt in the hand. She wanted to know if she could come to Hershey, perhaps buy me dinner and pick my brains. I was intrigued and wrote back to her the next day saying I’d be happy to help. I think if she’d said at the time that she was an exotic dancer, I probably wouldn’t have done so; but I didn’t know that then and, when I did know, it no longer mattered to me.
‘I didn’t hear anything back, and then, about two weeks later, there was a knock on my door and a young lady standing there telling me she’d come to take me to dinner. My twitches started up and I couldn’t think of anything to say, and that’s when she leaned across and kissed me on the cheek – right here,’ he said, pointing to his left cheek. “Come on, pull yourself together, Mr Finkel,” she said. “I’m Susan: the person who wrote to you about the Desert Bars.”’
‘I’d just opened a can of sardines when she’d arrived and washed some tomatoes, but I just forgot all about them and followed her to the car meek as a lost lamb. It wasn’t until I got home again that I realised I’d never even shut the door behind me: it was still wide open, believe it or not.
‘She took me to the Fire Alley Restaurant down on Cocoa Avenue, looked at me and said: “Mr Finkel, what you need is a steak! You look like you’re about to waste away,” and so that’s what I ordered. People in the restaurant kept looking over at us, probably wondering what a good-looking girl like her was doing with a decrepit old man like me, and I tell you, it felt great. She was a tactile person and when she talked she kept touching me, and every time she did, it was like a jolt of electricity shooting through my body.
‘She told me right off that she was a dancer rather than a fine artist, but a fine dancer. She smiled when she said that. I’d never seen a smile as beautiful as hers and I just smiled right back. She said she wanted to incorporate chocolate into her act in a tasteful way – and she smiled again when she said it, and I smiled right back at her. I think that’s when I fell in love.
‘Anyway, she explained how she wanted to cover her body with chocolate that didn’t melt when it was applied, and would then only melt slowly. She told me it was for “human installation art purposes” and wanted to know if the Desert Bar would be appropriate. I told her I didn’t know a thing about human installation art, but that I did know a thing or two about chocolate, and that yes, it would be possible – but the chocolate they used for the Desert Bar would first have to be modified. It was simply too solid to spread over a human body, too intractable, and the window between melting and re-solidification was too short a time for the chocolate to be applied to a person’s body without burning the skin.
‘“So, what can we do?” she asked me, and I told her we’d have to add more cocoa butter to the mix. I explained to her that I couldn’t be sure how much cocoa butter would have to be added without doing a few experiments, but that I’d be able to do these tests in my own kitchen. I said if she came back in a couple of weeks, I’d probably have something ready for her. But she’d have none of that. She said she wanted to stay in Hershey and help me – in fact, she was insistent on it – and the next day, we got down to work.’
There had been no problem locating the chocolate that formed the basis of the Desert Bar, but it had taken a few days for the necessary paperwork to clear and for the blocks to be released into the hands of its maker. Finkel had been right in thinking the whole process would take no more than two weeks. Working nights and at weekends, using conventional cooking pans and a microwave oven, Finkel and Susan made chocolate mixes with varying amounts of cocoa butter until the right consistency was finally achieved and the chocolate spread easily and evenly over Susan’s arm, hardening without cracking. Although pleased with the final outcome, Finkel was also crestfallen by its success: he knew Susan would soon leave and no longer be a part of his life.
‘Two days after we’d finished making enough batches to keep her going for a while, we loaded up her car and she headed off to Nashville. That’s where she thought she’d try out her new act first. I got a postcard from her soon after she arrived, but I haven’t heard anything since. The day she left she gave me a hug – the first hug I’ve ever had from a woman, except for my mother and sister. There are times when I close my eyes that I can still smell her perfume. Odd that, isn’t it?’
He pulled the card from his jacket pocket and showed it to them. The card ended with Lots of love, Susan and, underneath her name, a line of kisses. Bob knew it would be in Finkel’s possession until the day he died, and would be either buried or burnt with him along with his caul. There was, however, an address on the card: 2010 Honey Pot Estate, Nashville, and Bob copied it down.
‘We ’preciate the time you given us, Mr Finkel, an’ we ’preciate the help you given Susan, too. I’m sure she holds you close to her heart.’
‘You think so?’ Finkel asked, excitedly. ‘Really think so?’
‘I do,’ Bob said. ‘Ain’t that the truth, Eric?’ Bob prompted his companion to agree by nudging him in the ribs.
‘Yes sir, Mr Finkel. The truth!’
‘Some kinda heartbreaker, this cousin o’ yo’s, ain’t she,’ Bob said, after they’d returned to the bus.
‘I don’t think she means to be,’ Eric said.
‘I’m sure she don’t, but she sure left po’ ol’ Fred in the doldrums.’
‘Did you like him?’ Eric asked.
‘I didn’t dislike him,’ Bob replied. ‘The ol’ guy’s lonely, an’ until yo’ cousin came ‘long he prob’ly never even knowed it. Prob’ly never been in love b’fore, neither. Lived his whole life in the dark an’ then yo’ Susan comes along an’ turns the light on. He’ll get reacquainted with his self eventu’ly but, ‘til he does, he ain’t gonna be enjoyin’ life too much. Hard to dislike someone you feel sorry for.’
‘He made me nervous,’ Eric said.
‘Ever’thing makes you nervous, son. That’s why you wander roun’ with a damn-fool cycle helmet on yo’ head when you don’t even have yo’self a bike to ride.’
Eric fell silent for a moment. ‘Is it okay if I stay with you another night and then leave in the morning?’
Bob could never have lived with himself if he’d let the boy go off by himself. Eric had been lucky so far, but no man’s luck ran forever. Something bad could happen to the boy, and he didn’t want that on his conscience – there were too many deaths sitting there already. Gene, he knew, would grumble because it was in his nature to do so, but he’d mellow; Bob knew – if most others didn’t – that the man had a soft centre.
There was, however, another and more calculated reason for taking Eric along: the boy knew the tour bus’s provenance! Bob knew in his heart that Eric would never knowingly compromise him, but in his head worried that the boy might well let slip that he’d been given a ride in a tour bus that had once belonged to Paul McCartney. The last thing Bob wanted was the attention of the law.
The first inkling Bob had that the tour bus he was driving was the same tour bus stolen from Paul McCartney five years previously, was when Eric showed him how to disconnect the endless music droning from the speakers. Ever since he’d picked up the bus in Montreal, all he’d been able to listen to was Paul McCartney, and he was now more than tired of it. Eric told him that the music was coming from an iPod connected to the sound system from inside his armrest. Bob had no idea that the armrest even opened but, when he raised its lid, sure enough he found an iPod there. He immediately unplugged it, opened the passenger side window and hurled the annoying device on to the roadside.
The second inkling came when Eric asked to use the toilet. He was about to give the boy directions when Eric told him he knew where it was.
‘How you know all this? You been on this bus b’fore or somethin’?’
‘I think I have,’ Eric replied. ‘If it wasn’t this bus, then it was one just like it. Me and Susan got invited onboard when we went to a concert in San Francisco. I’ll know for sure once it stops.’
Once the bus stopped, Eric led him to the bunks in the sleeping area. He told Bob that if this was the same bus, then under the top mattress of the three-tiered bunks on the right would be a small heart drawn in purple ink. Inside the heart would be Susan’s initials. Bob climbed up and, sure enough, once he pulled back the mattress he saw a small faded heart with letters inside it: SL = PM.
‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ Bob said. ‘So there is. I’m fig’rin’ the new owners who bought this bus never even see’d it.’ (He emphasised the word new to give Eric the impression that the tour bus had been bought legally.)
‘The new owners won’t mind me being on the bus, will they?’ Eric asked.
‘I doubt it, but I wouldn’ go mentionin’ it to nobody. Bes’ keep this a secret – yo’s an’ mine. No point causin’ any trouble for Susan.’
Eric had readily agreed.