Yet, Jake’s one percent of the situation was a big percent. It was the one percent of utter validity, of what was right, what was true, and what should never have been allowed to be. In inviting Toby into the Emsworth house, Jake was revealing himself in all his ninety-nine percent pathetic vulnerability. Yet Jake knew that Toby, even jackboot-Toby, billy club-Toby, the monster that Toby seasonally became, would respond to that gleaming one percent.
Jake was trusting that Toby was not all bad. Jake spoke to him harshly only to snap him out of his delusions, or to get him angry again as he left. Toby knew this, and it cheered him, even as he knew that his life was ending. Or what he called a life. Wild images of panic and excitement flared in his mind.
There would be enquiries, trials. Someone might get life, if a case could be made. ‘Accessories to murder’, the rest of them would be called. Accessories after the fact. What on earth might the punishment be? Ten? Twenty years? Less for good behaviour. A spell in jail seemed a liberation, Toby wanted it so badly. And then the next moment, he thought that that was all nonsense, and it would never come to pass.
Carvel was the key, decided Toby. Jake knew that Toby’s home-ties were strong, but also that the Carvel-half of Toby needed science, culture and modernity. Jake knew that for Toby, fairy tales and small-town intrigues would never be enough – but would this itself be enough for Toby to give up the very authority he represented? Jake was taking a hell of a risk.
Toby trudged through the slush, not seeing a soul. He could have stayed at the Emsworth house even longer, he realised. He could have learnt more. Yet he was glad to be away and to catch his breath. There was still his testimony to give, although no date of when he’d start to give it – Jake would want it before the winter was out, though. He wouldn’t risk Toby’s willingness to assist stretching into the next school term, when Toby could pretend again that he was a Carvel nice guy. Jake wanted Toby while there was violence all around him.
Toby hated Jake suddenly, for he got to wear the white shirt of truth all year around. He was a man not like him, not a man made civilised only to be degraded.
But then a clear happy thought came back to Toby; for the meeting he’d just had was, after all, confirmation that it was all ending. And that was the simplest and best fact. Toby tried to calm himself down – it had been a stressful morning.
They hadn’t made a date for his first night-time visit. But why wait? Toby would get a message to Sarah the first chance he had, to tell her that he’d be there that evening.
But as he walked, Toby knew one more thing. Jake had known it too, had known it from the start: that Toby was floundering, and needed a touchstone of truth in all the secrecy, was crying out for it. And now Jake was presenting himself as that cardinal point, a true star by which Toby could set his compass, his spinning Stove compass.
‘Not quite broken though,’ uttered Toby. ‘Take me off the mountain and I’ll point true north again.’
Chapter 35 – A Little While Later, at the Office
Toby thought aloud,
‘It’s the middle of the day. Those up all night will be sleeping, Deputies catching forty winks. That’s also when the Sheriff has his late breakfast at Maisie’s Cafe. If I’m going to do it, do it now.’
The alleyway that led behind the houses brought him out only two corners away from the Sheriff’s Office.
‘God, that Jake. What a place he’s found to base his operations,’ muttered Toby, half in admiration and half incomprehension.
Indeed, now that Toby was Jake’s Secret Squirrel he felt a surge of confidence, as if the coming scene were his first test.
Remembering that no one else knew anything, and that he had every right to be there, Toby strolled along the increasingly wide and snow-cleared roads. Until he found himself in the town centre and entering the Sheriff’s Office.
The first face Toby saw was the thick-set chops of Crawley. His golden locks were prematurely thinning, though his sideburns were creeping down his cheeks to compensate. Toby hadn’t seen him yet this winter, and he looked a decade over his late-twenties.
‘Tobes.’
‘Crawley.’
‘What’s the matter? Not enough action for you in the mountains?’
‘We’ve got plenty, thanks. I just found myself nearby, and though I’d catch up on things Town-side.’
‘The Sheriff’s out, he’ll be an hour or two.’
‘Well, I’ll kick back awhile if you don’t mind. Avail myself of his hospitality.’
Although this was Sheriff Thornton’s Office, this was Crawley’s patch, and both knew it.
‘Well, don’t go drinking all our coffee.’
Crawley was clearly on his way somewhere. With his jacket, hat and gloves on, he was soon out of the door.
There was no one at the front desk, and Toby walked in to the mess room, again empty. Along the short linking corridor he heard the clattering of an electric typewriter. Margaret, the Sheriff’s secretary, would be writing up something unimportant – for nothing important got written up at that time of year. She would be posting the anonymous reports of a boring winter.
He found the Sheriff’s office empty also. Without a word, Toby pulled a leather chair back from the guest-side of Sheriff Thornton’s desk and sat down. After a moment to get his breath back, he wondered – what now? How to leave the message?
‘I’ll have a drink,’ he said to himself, and rose for the corridor.
‘Fetch me a cup?’ asked someone cat-napping on a sofa against the far wall. His black jacket was pulled over his head.
‘Tort?’
‘Toby. What you doing here?’
‘I found myself in town. Warm or cold?’
‘Cold,’ he answered. It was warm in the office.
Toby himself felt cool as a cucumber. He was learning that years of secret-keeping made him good at it. He had never lied in Stove, he realised, had always borne his soul. ‘No man is a hypocrite in his pleasures,’ he remembered someone saying. Toby was only a hypocrite in Carvel then, only honest when among his bludgeoning kind. Was Deputising his pleasure? Or had his notion of what goodness meant become so twisted and ill-used that he no longer recognised it? Twisted through years of sickness and coercion, parental misinformation and emotional blackmail? He felt that question would take a lifetime with an analyst to unpick.
That was fine though, he concluded with grim humour, for didn’t prisons have analysts? And they might have half a lifetime to work on him.
Toby’s mind was moving quickly, he felt free. He walked to the drinks machine and past the empty desks. Which was Sarah’s then? He would leave a scrap of paper, a note about unemptied bins or a broken window. This would be her cue to track him down.
But before he could decide which desk was hers, the phone on one of them rang. There was only one telephone in Stove at winter, its cable kept up all season by the town’s tireless repairman; the repairman who made sure every other line was dead. It was the direct link between the guest house and the Sheriff’s Office. That way, the two teams could keep in contact.
‘Sheriff’s Office,’ answered Toby. He remembered the role from his earlier days, when answering the phone was about all a young Deputy knew how to do.
‘Well Toby, dumb luck.’ It was his landlady. ‘I was told you were Town-side.’
‘What’s up?’ he asked, though he could have scripted her response himself.
‘There’s an urgent case, and no one free to handle it. Can you come back?’
His heart sank. ‘I’ll be there right away.’ He took down the address, and hung up. So much for playing Secret Squirrel.
‘Who was that?’ asked Tort, entering the room and fully awake now.
‘It was for me – I’ve been recalled.’
‘Look, Toby. I’m glad you’re here. I’ve been hoping to talk to you this winter.’
But Toby had to silence him,
‘Sorry, son,’ for Tort was a good ten years his junior. ‘I’m on
a call.’
‘Of course. Well, next time you’re back Town-side...’
‘One thing you can do for me though.’ Toby thought quickly. ‘When you see Sarah, can you tell her I saw a house of her street with a broken window. It probably just froze and cracked in the night, but if you could ask her to check with her neighbour. They wouldn’t want the cold getting in.’
‘No problem, Tobe,’ said Tort, glad to help.
Toby thanked him, and was gone.
And as for Tort wanting to talk: well, who knew what that was all about. But Toby hadn’t time for any other intrigues just then.
Chapter 36 – Pile-driven
Toby reached the house within the half-hour. It was the same situation as at the Hinklin household, the same as Toby had been in so many times already that winter, and countless times across a lifetime. It was the daily experience of a Deputy at large. The scene, it kept repeating, and repeating, and repeating.
The same clapperboard home, perhaps with a brick-build ground floor. The same ash pathway leading to it. The same tired dirty-frozen look on everything: wood warping with the moisture, paint perishing in the cold, nothing cleaned because the water would only freeze.
Indoors was the same attempt at cheery furnishings, all turned to tinder-wood in a season of violent spasms. The same exhausted parents, bruised but caring only for the one who bruised them. The same troubled teen, clothes ripped, face streaked with tears. Toby knew there was no sense to come from the household that evening, as the early sun went down to throw them into further darkness.
Toby looked at this new boy; he couldn’t even remember his name from the phone call. He was Frank Hinklin but not Frank Hinklin. Toby understood him in their differences. Younger than Frank, smaller than Frank, wirier and leaner, the kind who ran off nerves more than muscle.
School athlete Frank Hinklin would have run this kid into the ground, and Toby had – just – managed to hold Frank. Yet Toby felt no advantage here, for the nervous kids could keep themselves as full-tilt for hours on end, like the local paper’s sub-editor battering out copy on his typewriter till four in the morning (that’s if he’d been allowed to publish in the winter months).
The parents withdrew to leave the expert to his work. The boy was before him on the bare floor, on all fours, and caught mid-spin like a dog who’d heard a whistle whilst chasing his tale. Toby realised then that he had no back up, no corroboration if it went star-shaped. He wished that Fitch or Job or almost any of the others were there. In the room with this pitiful creature, Toby started unbuttoning his jacket.
‘I’m Toby,’ he began, feeling a little like one of those people who talk to coma sufferers. ‘I don’t suppose you understand me. I don’t suppose much of this will get through. But deep inside you somewhere you’ll know who I am, and what I’m here for. You’re scaring your parents, and I’m here to calm you down.’
The lad was still, whimpering, had his tongue sticking out. Yet Toby was wrong, for he was responding: from the eyes so recently tearing, now came an almost-childish look of wanting to play. He was still spiking then, and not about to curl into a slumber. Toby moved deliberately slowly as he tossed his jacket on a chair in the corner, then untethered his billy club from his belt. All the time he spoke quietly, hypnotically,
‘We need to keep you calm. We need to stop you hurting. We need to...’
As the kid had launched, so Toby crouched and swung a blow. It caught the belly. The victim flew past a side-stepped Toby, before landing on his back. There he arched as if with an electrical shock, before slithering back up onto his feet on the blood and saliva-wet wooden floor.
Toby had spun too, quickly enough to get both hands upon the boy’s shoulders. He had stopped his charge from leaping again, but now his head twisted and his mouth snarled and snapped at the Deputy. Toby loosed his grip on one shoulder to avoid being bitten on the wrist, which gave the boy freedom to shake off the other hand, and re-gather for a fresh launch.
‘Springy,’ said Toby, in admiration. This ridiculous impression of a playful pet! Toby was on the back-foot now, putting down leap after leap with flapping, slapping hands. His main concern was his boots losing grip on the wet floor, or him backing into some knocked-over piece of furniture.
Toby had his club – why not use it? But that suddenly felt monstrous – he might as well club a cocker spaniel. Instead, he let his weapon hang around his wrist. Toby though still had his brains, while his opponent had only instinct. So why not use a move to regain the advantage?
Before Toby could form a plan though, he felt a wall behind him. A moving wall... a door ajar, bringing panic as he feared falling backward through it. He stumbled, went into an almost Cossack-dance crouch, and grabbed wildly for the door’s frame, to right himself and get back to full height.
Yet in the moments it took Toby to do all that, the lad had scampered back into the centre of the room... scampered, like he’d forgotten he could walk on just his hind-legs. And then he did something that Toby had simply never seen before: from a crouching start, he accelerated to a frightening speed, before launching himself head-first into Toby’s midriff.
The last thing Toby saw before blacking out, was the boy sprawled unconscious before him.
Chapter 37 – Aftermath
Toby woke, and groaned from his injuries. Then groaned again as the last scene replayed in his mind. It was like one of Jake’s cassettes, cued up in the tape deck for his return to consciousness. Toby felt soft bed sheets, a softer Nurse’s touch. He opened his eyes to see people by him. The Doctor was standing beside his assistant, saying,
‘You’re back with us, Toby?’
‘How..?’
‘Fitch found you, then ran to find me.’
‘How bad is it?’
‘Severe bruising, and the mother of all bad backs. He head-butted you against a doorframe at twenty miles-per-hour.’
‘No, him.’
‘Of course. Andrew Sippitz. You were saying in your sleep, something about, “I don’t know his name”? Anyway, it’s muscle trauma. He’s bruised his spinal cord. His body’s thrown him into a coma as the swelling goes down.’
‘You don’t sound too..?’
‘Worried? More relieved, after the state the pair of you came in here.’
Toby closed his eyes and murmured,
‘They seem worse than ever this year.’
‘Maybe we’re forgetting what they’re always like?’
‘Maybe we’re all wanting an easier life?’
Toby raised his arm to question why it bore an intravenous drip? The Doctor answered,
‘You were physically sick after falling unconscious. You had no food in you.’
‘Lor, this is bad.’
‘Maybe not so,’ said the Doctor brightly. ‘You’ll get a rest, and the lad will be kept semi-sedated, even after waking up. This might be end of the sickness for him this year.’
‘Then why don’t we just sedate all of them?’ asked Toby, falling back to sleep.
‘Don’t think I haven’t thought of it,’ answered the Doctor with a melancholy air.
Toby must have fallen back to sleep, before being woken again by Sheriff Thornton, talking loudly,
‘You got sentimental, Toby! You didn’t have the courage to club him.’ The man roared across the ward of injured children and stricken parents. ‘One blow, one blow was all he needed. The club’s designed to stun, not to hurt.’ He rapped his leather billy club across the frame of Toby’s bed to demonstrate this, the metal clanging loudly through the room.
‘Sheriff,’ said the onrushing Doctor. ‘Please don’t do that again in this ward.’
Toby had never heard the Sheriff speak like this. The patient came around quickly,
‘Boss, what’s biting you? That’s not you talking.’
‘That kid’s in a coma now, because you didn’t save him from himself.’
The Doctor whispered, ‘It’s a protective coma, as his injuries heal.’
> But the Sheriff only had words for his Deputy,
‘You’d better not be losing your nerve, Toby.’
‘What difference does that make in the present state of things?’ Toby gestured to the bed around him. ‘I won’t be fighting for a while.’
The Sheriff’s rage re-bubbled, ‘That’s the problem. You’re going to be out for a fortnight! Two whole weeks. And it’s your own damn stupid fault.’
Toby railed, ‘Why’s that such a big deal? Injuries have happened before. It goes with the territory.’
The Sheriff flashed him a glare, and Toby saw the fear behind it. Pure, purple panic.
‘What’s up, Chief?’ he asked in sympathy and consolation.
‘You...’ The Sheriff turned to the Doctor. ‘You just make sure he gets better.’ And with that the Sheriff was gone.
The Doctor looked to Toby,
‘Maybe you’re right. Maybe this is a bad year.’
Toby fell into another doze. And when he woke the next time he saw things clearer: however maniacal the Sheriff had seemed, he had been right – Toby hadn’t dealt the tender blow. He was no longer cruel enough to be kind. And what kind of a Deputy did that make him?
‘Now, I really need to keep you out cold,’ said the Doctor. The last Toby thing remembered was a needle like a steel wire going into his arm.
Chapter 38 – The Big Sleep
Toby slept a lot those next two days. Sometimes when he woke it was dark, sometimes light. Sometimes he barely registered his surroundings before zoning out again. Sometime Fitch was there, sometimes not. Sometimes Job, or Margaret. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, there was another figure, one with chestnut hair. Sometimes there was commotion, a person being brought in. Sometimes the room was silent but for breathing and etherised whimpers.