IT WAS JUST like Stewart to pick the runt of the litter. In those days, he had a gift for it; everything he owned was defective in some way: the watch that kept stopping, the incomplete jigsaws and board games he’d buy at church feˆtes and jumble sales. The puppy he’d picked out was a male, but he insisted on calling it Lassie, like the dog in the films. As soon as it was grown, it started wandering off, though it always came home when it was hungry. It would turn up at the back door and wait there till Stewart came out, then it would jump all over him, licking his face and barking, wild with gratitude, as if relieved to have escaped some unexpected abandonment. Stewart loved that dog – the uglier it got, the more unpredictably it behaved, the more he loved it, and I was obliged to love it too, or he made me feel I was guilty of some deliberate betrayal.
So that summer, when Lassie ran off and didn’t return – not that day, or the next, or the day after that – the whole family had to be worried. We let it go for as long as we could, then Dad went through the pantomime of telephoning the police, providing a detailed description of the missing animal to the speaking clock, or some mystified operator at the other end of the line. Mum said she was sure Lassie would turn up, but after a few days we all began to think the worst. The following Saturday, at about six in the morning, I found Stewart in the kitchen, waiting for me.
‘You’re up early,’ I said.
‘I’ve had breakfast,’ he replied, as he started towards the door. ‘Can I go out?’
‘Where?’ I asked.
‘To look for Lassie.’
My heart sank, because I knew I would have to go with him. That was why he’d waited, of course. He’d set me up. I usually went fishing on Saturdays. Sometimes I took Stewart, but mostly I went on my own. I liked having that time to myself, to sit by the water, watching the river flow. I think I knew I was in the process of losing something – the map in my head was changing, significant landmarks were beginning to fade – and I was trying to hold on for a while to a boy’s life. Maybe I wasn’t fully conscious of the fact, but at some level I was aware of what was happening. Those summer days on the riverbank were precious to me – but if Stewart went looking for Lassie, I’d have to go with him. If the dog had been hit by a car, it was probably lying in a ditch somewhere; if it had fallen into a borehole, Old Mr Bremner might have found it, and I wasn’t sure what he would do with a dead dog. He’d probably bury it, but you couldn’t be sure: Old Mr Bremner was a strange man. At one time, I used to go out to the derelict kilns on the other side of his farm, to be on my own for a while. The place was a ruin, even then: it was tucked away at the edge of his land, half-hidden by shelterbelt. When I climbed the fence and passed from the sunlit field into the cool shade of the trees, I felt I was crossing a border into limbo, country that was at once mysterious and familiar, immersed in an almost tangible silence, the outer limits of a secret world. Occasionally I’d find rats or crows tied upside-down in the hedge with baling twine; it seemed to me they were intended as markers, to show the boundaries I shouldn’t cross – the beginning of Old Bremner’s domain. I felt like a trespasser, but I’d still go out there and sit in the shade, listening to the birds, or the silence. Sometimes I’d take a cigarette I’d stolen from my father’s pack of Capstan Navy Strength, and I’d climb up into a gap in the wall and sit there, hidden, watching the smoke drift in the shadows. One afternoon I clambered on to the broken rooftop and, with my arms spread out like a tightrope artist, I started walking across. I almost made it, but a few feet from the end, I got complacent and crashed into a patch of nettles fifteen feet below. It was Old Mr Bremner who found me: he came by, carrying a gun, about ten minutes later. At first I thought he’d come to shoot me for trespassing on his land, but he just took one look at the way I was lying, nodded, and walked off back to his farm to fetch help. He didn’t say a word. I’d broken my leg and he’d been able to tell just by looking. It was a couple of months before I got to walk again, but as soon as I could, Mum insisted I go out there to thank him for his help – and I did: I knocked at his door for a long time, but even though I knew he was there, he didn’t answer. When I got home, Mum said not to worry, Mr Bremner just wanted to be left alone, and it was best not to bother him again.
It was a warm morning. A heavy dew had fallen overnight, now steam was rising from the walls and fences on Station Road and the lawns in front of the neat low houses sparkled in the sunlight. There had been an accident at the corner of King Street – the road was strewn with tiny chunks of windscreen glass, spotted here and there with fragments of orange and crimson from the indicators. I looked at Stewart: he seemed not to have made any connection between Lassie and the debris on the road and I realised he wasn’t looking for that kind of evidence. To keep him distracted, I led him out along Fulford Road, skirting the edge of the Bremner farm, heading for the old kilns. I didn’t want him to go looking in places where there was any chance of finding Lassie dead. After the kilns, I’d suggest we split up for a while, so I could check the boreholes while he was occupied with something else.
I hadn’t been to the kilns since I broke my leg. It was more ramshackle than I remembered: most of the staircase had fallen away, and some of the walls had collapsed inwards. The inside was littered with old newspapers and broken glass; in one corner, someone had abandoned a half-eaten take-away and it was crawling with maggots now, small and white and moist, as if the rice grains had come to life. We found a dead bird floating in the water at the bottom of one of the pits, but there was no sign of Lassie. Stewart looked disheartened.
‘You thought he would be here,’ he said. ‘Didn’t you?’
‘I thought he might,’ I answered. ‘But never mind. He could be lost in the woods. There’s lots of places he could be. Maybe he’s at home, waiting for you to come and feed him.’
He knew I didn’t believe that, and I felt ashamed. It was wrong of me to raise his hopes. When we’d set out, I hadn’t really expected to find the dog – I’d just wanted to give him something to do. Now I started on a systematic search, sending him off along side paths to check out ruined buildings and ditches; cutting away into the woods and leaving him to wander on his own; checking the boreholes at Bremner’s, while he waited for me on the farm road. The boreholes were empty, dark and still in the mid-morning sunlight. I stopped for a moment. I liked it here: even in the clear light of day, there was something eerie about the place. Whenever I’d come out here as a child, I’d been aware of something: a flicker in the light, a ripple in the flow of time – the kind of thing children read about and believe without question, because the world has to be mysterious. I missed that, suddenly, and I wanted to be credulous again, to believe those folk stories and true-life accounts of local spirits and visitations they used to print in the Sunday papers.
When I got back to the farm road, Stewart was sitting under a tree with his head between his knees.
‘Hey,’ I called out. ‘Are you asleep?’
He looked up.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Did you find him?’
It looked like he’d been crying, and I felt awkward and guilty for having left him on his own. He was starting to give up – he’d probably known all along that Lassie was gone, but he hadn’t been ready to accept the fact till now.
We crossed the next field and clambered over a barbed-wire fence that divided Bremner’s farm from the scrubby heath beyond. It was a wild stretch of land, covered with low, twisted pines and patches of heather, and there were wide strips of burnt earth and vegetation where local kids had set fires, to watch them burn. We walked in silence. The sun was higher now and it was slow-going on the sandy tracks. I was glad when we came to the wide path that would take us back through the blueberry woods to the edge of town. All I wanted was to get Stewart home, and rescue the rest of the day.
I saw the shoes first. It seemed odd: a pair of brand-new tennis shoes set neatly on the path, as if someone had taken them off to go wading. Fifty yards further on, I saw a white T-shirt and a pair of navy-blue shorts. I looked around; there was nobody in sight. Stewart was walking behind me, with his head down – I don’t think he even saw the clothes.
The body was some distance from the path, half-concealed under a willow tree. I didn’t know what it was at first, but I knew something was wrong. I got pretty close before I made him out: he was naked; his arms and legs were covered with bruises and when I got close I saw that his lips were swollen, as if he’d been punched in the mouth. He was about Stewart’s age, maybe a little younger. His eyes looked remote, as if he was daydreaming, but I knew right away that he was dead. The odd thing was, I didn’t feel shocked, or sick, or anything else people are supposed to feel when they find a body. I just felt sad and a little guilty, as if I were to blame, somehow, for what had happened to him.
I walked back to where Stewart was waiting for me. I didn’t want him to see the dead boy.
‘Listen,’ I said, as briskly as I could, ‘run down to Mr Bremner’s and ask him to telephone the police. Ask him to get an ambulance too.’
Stewart didn’t move.
‘What is it?’ He looked suspicious, as if he thought I was trying to divert him.
‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘It’s not Lassie. It’s a kid. He’s been hurt.’
He watched me. He was trying to decide if I was telling the truth. Then I saw the doubt in his eyes turn to fear – or not fear, but a kind of dismay.
‘Is he dead?’ he asked.
‘No,’ I answered, ‘he’s just hurt. Go on now. Run.’
He looked around. At first I thought he was scared to go on his own, then I realised he wasn’t sure of the way. I pointed towards the farm road, and he turned and ran, as if his life depended on it.
I went back and stood by the body. I wanted to keep him company for a while, so he wouldn’t be alone out there. Until that moment, I’d had an idea of an afterlife, a vague suspicion that people were better for being dead, emptied of fear and desire, observing from a distance the world they had just left, detached now, bound to the weather, to sunlight and mist and summer dewfalls, in the wet glitter of infinity. I hadn’t really believed in a heaven, but I’d imagined some subtle and mutable state, a gradual evaporation of the spirit: transmigration, rebirth, some form of alchemy. Now I wasn’t so sure. The dead boy looked very small: his body had dwindled somehow, like the dead rabbits and pheasants I’d seen on the road – already there was nothing left but the faint outline of a physical blueprint. The dead were bodies, pure and simple. If a soul had ever existed here, it was nothing personal, and now it was gone.
I found out later that Lassie had wandered further than usual. He had gone into the hills where a farmer had shot him for chasing sheep. I didn’t tell Stewart about it, and after that day, he didn’t mention the dog again.
The boy on the heath wasn’t local. Nobody knew who he was: the police made an appeal for information, but nobody came forward. The story was in all the local papers, and it said two boys had found him, but neither of us was mentioned by name. The police had some questions for me, but they left Stewart out of it. To this day, I don’t know if they ever identified the boy. I don’t even know if he’s buried, or if he’s still in a mortuary somewhere, frozen and nameless.
Mum bought Stewart a pup for his next birthday – a barley-coloured, smiley dog, part retriever, part something else. He called it Sandy. He never talked about what I’d found on the heath – he must have known, but he didn’t let on. It seemed to me that something about him had changed, but when I mentioned it, nobody else appeared to have noticed. Mum said it was natural that he should be a bit subdued, after the shock he’d had. But I thought it was something else. It’s nothing I can put my finger on exactly – however I tell it, even to myself, it sounds fanciful. Nevertheless, I notice it sometimes in things he does and says. That feeling he had for the runt of the litter is gone. He looks out for himself now, and I tell myself that’s a good thing, but I can’t help thinking it’s all too deliberate, as if he were trying to protect himself from something that might be lurking in the sunlight – as if he were afraid that, an arm’s length away from the world he knows, there is a darkness he will never understand.