The Winter Sickness

  And Toby told of how they tried, so tried to make their little town a community. How they really did feel and obey every human communal impulse. Yet it had always seemed a little like those cutaway illustrations of the Earth’s crust – that thin layer of stability bravely holding itself together over surging primal currents.

  ‘You’ll be cracking that crust like an egg,’ said Jake.

  ‘They’ll never speak to me again.’

  ‘Oh, they will. They’ll be glad of it. One day.’

  For the next few weeks the Earth’s crust held, and Toby was glad of it. No matter the work he was doing and the children he was hurting – he knew it was the last winter, and that their hurt would soon be over.

  Since he knew it would be ending, his return to routine let events feel stable and his mind be calm. It was work he knew how to do, and was a relief after his injury scare, his dressing down by the Sheriff, and the sense of uselessness that had accompanied his lay-off.

  It was his job, and Toby redoubled his efforts to do it well. Furthermore, being a Deputy connected him to the town and its history, albeit tinged with nostalgia for what would soon be gone for good. It felt like working in an old building about to be decommissioned.

  Things were better, then; or at least no worse. The mountains remained imperious, and the snow lay thick over the town nestled between them. Somewhere overhead the high-wire man hovered – as he always had done and always would do – smiling in the photographs.

  Meanwhile the clinic got no fuller, indeed emptied as the girl with Strength and Hope got her appetite back and the Doctor saw no major new admissions. And in the corner of the clinic, in a quiet room, lay Andrew Sippitz in his healing coma.

  This bucolic state lasted maybe twenty more days, before the Devil came to paradise.

  Chapter 46 – The Call from Town-side

  It was near midnight when the phone-call reached the guest house along the town’s only working line. Fitch had been there sleeping, and so took the message. From there he left to find Toby who was out on a call, relaying,

  ‘There’s trouble in the town, Tobe. They need you, sharpish.’

  ‘What trouble? Stay down!’ snapped Toby sharply at the boy he had been wrestling with, and who was at that moment glowering at him from where Toby had thrown him down on his family’s hearth rug. He repeated to Fitch, ‘What trouble?’

  ‘It’s the Sheriff, Tobe,’ explained Fitch from the living room door. ‘He’s injured.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘They didn’t say.’

  ‘Who didn’t?’

  ‘Margaret in the office. She and Sarah are the only ones there. The Deputies are chasing after some guy, and it sounds like Crawley’s taken things upon himself.’

  ‘Oh Lord. Stay down!’

  ‘They need “wise heads”, she says.’

  ‘I suppose I ought to be flattered... argh!’

  At that moment the boy, saliva dripping from bared teeth, had launched again at the distracted Deputy, and caught Toby around his sleeved right arm.

  Passing his club to the left, Toby issued a weaker blow than with his right, but enough to loosen the boy’s grip. He then kicked him to the floor with one jackbooted swipe.

  ‘And what about this young fiend?’

  ‘I’ll take him over, Tobe. It sounds urgent.’

  With the de-facto area manager rubbing his sore arm through its damp sleeve, he left for the centre of Stove.

  As Toby approached his destination, he noted that – apart from his secret visits – he hadn’t been back to Stove proper for weeks. Not to the Sheriff’s Office, or the clinic, or to any of the shops in town. In fact, his only indulgence had been to allow himself to pass near to the School for Girls on his dawn returns Mountain-side. Still too early to have seen any of the staff about, but enough at least to satisfy his need to be near a certain member of that staff... but that was an area he wouldn’t allow himself to think about. At least not for now.

  Instead Toby wondered what the hell was going on in town to require his urgent attention? The Sheriff getting injured at any time was bad, but not enough in itself. Even if Crawley was upset about something, then there were other ‘wise heads’ in the town: the Town Clerk and the Mayor. If the latter weren’t requested – as they evidently hadn’t been – then it was Sheriff’s Office business, and that made Toby cringe. It meant that it involved the sickness, and the violence, and who-knew-what-else that the elected officials wanted left to their black cardinals.

  Chapter 47 – Night Music

  Toby was still pumped up from the interrupted Deputising session, breathing too quickly and striding through the snow. He wasn’t even feeling his bitten arm fully yet. He felt alive, hot in the cold air. His breath and perspiration steamed off him, leaving a vapour trail which caught in the lights of the homes still up at that hour. And then it occurred to him, as he entered the town itself, that there were far too many lights on, and people looking out of doorways. Some even nodded a cautious ‘Good evening’, and Toby returned the greeting.

  It was the small hours – had Toby not been on call then he might have been heading to the Emsworth House around now – and the town should not have been awake. Something had been going on, something that had woken and unsettled people. Every augur boded badly. Toby tried to stay puffed-up – he had a feeling he might need to be. As he neared the glass front of the Sheriff’s Office, Margaret ran out, nearly slipping on the slush in the court shoes she wore in the office.

  ‘Toby, thank God. You need to get to the Orell house, Cable Street.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘We’ve been told that the Sheriff’s hurt, and now the Deputies are outside Old Man Orell’s house.’

  Toby launched off at a right angle to the way he had just come. Along the streets now the occupants of nearly every house were at their windows, but cautiously so, as if already told to stay indoors.

  It was a short walk to the Orell house, and by the time Toby got there he would have known that there was something going on. The beams of flashlights danced around the front of the building, and a group of dark-jacketed men were bobbing around in the tall shadows they cast.

  There were voices, calls, and someone then appeared to lean out of an upstairs window. The shotgun blast was loud and echoed along the street toward Toby. The figures on the ground shuddered, and one screeched out in shock more than pain.

  ‘That’s winged yer!’ shouted the man at the upstairs window. ‘That’s winged yer!’

  ‘You get out of there!’ shouted a different Deputy to the one injured, their voice bent unrecognisable with rage. He came forward to bang a long black stick on the house’s door. The man upstairs retreated inside, and the scene of the Deputies calling for him to come out repeated itself. The only difference was the wailing of the ‘winged’ Deputy, floored in silhouette.

  The shock of the shotgun blast had stopped Toby in his tracks a little way from the scene. Where he stood was cast in darkness, outside a rare unlit house. He was invisible, and none of those ahead of him had turned around to greet him. He took a deep breath, preparing to march onward into the melee.

  But in the air his livid senses caught the scent of something, human heat. He turned to stare at the dark house he was beside, and in the pool of gloom before it were two bodies. Before he could recognise them, one of them moved, saying,

  ‘Toby.’

  ‘Sheriff?’

  ‘Toby, get them out of there. They’ll kill him.’ The Sheriff couldn’t seem to push himself up off his back.

  Toby looked to the other body, the one that wasn’t moving.

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘Billy Meting. Fifteen.’

  Toby could hardly speak, summoning up from somewhere,

  ‘What happened here?’

  ‘The old story – they were holding him, but he broke out. Someone went chasing after him like a dog with a scent of a hare, and well, we’ve seen how that can work out.’

 
‘And Orell?’

  With a groan, the Sheriff continued,

  ‘Orell saw them beating the poor kid in the street and came out to stop it with his shotgun. The daft idiot missed with both barrels though, and they chased him back to his house.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I... got tangled up in it. But forget that, get up to that house and call them off!’

  ‘I can’t. I’ve not...’

  ‘Not got the guts!’

  ‘I’ve not got the authority.’

  ‘Toby, have you never seen a lynch mob before? They’re going to kill Orell. Call ‘em off!’

  Toby watched the figures before him, dancing in the light of the jostling torches. They looked like little black demons sent to torment the man inside the house. A loud crack was heard, though this was no second gunshot. Instead it was one of the long black sticks the demons were wielding, rapped against the white clapperboard walls. More damage to be painted out, thought Toby.

  He stood facing them, though moved no further forward. Hidden in the darkness, he summed the scene up quickly. The men were in the heat of of the chase. One of them, accidentally or otherwise, had just killed. A stand-up challenge to those guys right then would have been outright war. It wasn’t Toby’s part of town, nor was he even technically their superior.

  Toby tried to make out who was there; which was almost impossible. He guessed at one shape being Tort. Despite what Toby had been hearing of his colleague recently, at that moment he looked as jittery and up for the fight as the others – what was it with these Town-side guys? Another figure, as he stared, was evidently Eddy. Though Toby hardly recognised his friend, banging his nightstick against a window-frame so hard that gleaming white splinters of paint came off it.

  Toby needed something other than just telling them to stop because he said so. The Sheriff groaned beside him, and there Toby had his idea. He walked forward, then spoke. His voice cracked and wavered,

  ‘Fellows, the Sheriff’s down. I need some help here.’

  A couple turned from their rabble-rousing, but none answered him.

  Toby spoke again,

  ‘I need three of you to help carry.’

  ‘The Sheriff’s fine,’ one answered.

  ‘We don’t know that,’ reasoned Toby.

  ‘And the kid’s dead.’

  But even Toby could see that. The contempt for his being there was obvious. By now all had turned away from the house, and Crawley was glaring at him. It was the first time that Toby had seen him in action since he didn’t-know-when, and he had forgotten the presence of the man in anger. Hot and pink and steaming and near three-feet wide. Crawley only needed a ring through his nostrils to complete the picture of a bull at an open gate. Toby was only glad he had been too old to have had to play school sports against him.

  And still growing in stature, thought Toby, still only in his Twenties. Crawley’s face was contorted with something like rage or hatred, anger or interrupted violence. Maybe all of these combined. Toby could also have sworn, caught in the lamplight, that there were flecks of blood across his face and neck.

  Crawley didn’t speak though; and Toby knew that against all odds he owned the situation. He said again to the group,

  ‘I need three of you to help me.’

  One by one, three of the dancing devils started walking slowly toward him. Toby looked at Orell’s trampled garden as they exited it. When they were near enough, Toby turned to lead them to the fallen.

  From the upstairs window of the Orell house then came the gleeful call,

  ‘At last, someone with some cahoneys!’

  At this, Crawley turned back to the house and raised his stick. But Eddy took hold of his arm at full-height. Crawley fixed the other Deputy in a crucifying glare, but let his arm fall.

  Full marks to Eddy for that at least, thought Toby as he watched them, Eddy being the only other Deputy of stature in the Town-side Sheriff’s Office. Yet even then Toby couldn’t help noticing something passing between the two men at that moment, something in their eyes.

  Had Toby had the time and mental clarity just then, he might have tried to figure it out. But they had the fallen to carry. With Toby and the others leaning to lift the boy and the Sheriff, and another Deputy stooping to help up his comrade with the shot-up leg, that left only Crawley without a role, who was soon gone from the scene.

  Chapter 48 – The Walking Wounded

  Without stretchers it was an awkward procession. Toby’s three reluctant carriers had shunned the boy’s body, all wanting to go instead for the injured Sheriff. Including Eddy, who shoved another Deputy aside to take their boss’s hurting shoulders – Toby really wasn’t liking his friend’s behaviour that night.

  So it was the body of Billy Meting that Toby, and Tort, the youngest of the Sheriff’s Office present, were somehow carrying between them. Toby took the heavier head and shoulders. Tort walked in front of him with the legs, and so Toby could not see his face. Though Toby was sure he heard him sobbing.

  Toby looked down at the victim. He was young, his face was cut but without time to bleed or bruise. Somebody’s son. And now the men who did it didn’t even want to touch their handiwork, leaving it to Toby and the runt of their litter to carry him. Toby hated them. Hated his own kind. There he was, accessory to murder. He had no right to live now, to continue breathing, when this boy had already breathed his last. They were cowards, he was a coward. He hated himself.

  The Doctor groaned when they arrived, clanking their way through the doors of the overstuffed clinic.

  ‘Is it a damn warzone out there?’ asked an old man in one of the beds.

  ‘This is the lot of it,’ said Toby. ‘It’s all over now...’

  ‘What have we got?’ the Doctor cut him off, professionalism taking over from disgust.

  ‘I think the boy’s dead.’

  A woman in the ward groaned. Whether or not she was making these noises anyway, or was even aware of what was going on around her, her low moan made perfect sense and summed up how all were feeling.

  ‘His name’s Billy Meting,’ added Toby.

  Cue weeping from the woman.

  The doctor looked at Billy briefly, touched his skin to find a pulse and felt only cold.

  ‘Yes, he’s dead. Bring him to the morgue. You men, put the others where the nurses tell you.’

  ‘The Sheriff’s worst off,’ said Toby over his shoulder as he followed the Doctor’s direction. ‘The Deputy’s just got gun shot in his leg.’

  At this the Deputy wailed in pain, as he had been intermittently all journey.

  In the cold room they put the body down. Tort, freed of his responsibility, quickly left the room of death. The two men remaining took in the silence for a while. The Doctor said,

  ‘I work away here, terrified of what fresh horror you people will bring me next.’

  Toby could only bow his head.

  ‘It’s becoming a bad year,’ he continued.

  Toby silently concurred.

  ‘Was it Crawley?’ asked the Doctor.

  ‘He was there.’

  The Doctor nodded, ‘It was Crawley. I can see the strength the killer needed. Here, see how the cheekbone has been depressed beneath the blow?’

  Toby had seen, had tried not to. Had tried not to know who had done it.

  Already placed in the cold store with Billy Meting was an old man dead of cold and natural causes. Toby had a vision then of another boy who could just as easily have been lying there with them; the boy who’d nearly died while he had meant to be containing him.

  ‘How is Andrew Sippitz, Doc?’ asked Toby.

  ‘Still in his coma.’

  ‘How long has it been?’

  ‘Three or four weeks now.’

  ‘But you said it was only going to be short-term.’

  ‘I know what I said, Toby.’

  ‘Is he meant to be in there that long?’

  ‘These things can go on a while. We don’t know what it means y
et.’

  ‘I haven’t been to see him. Even when I’ve been here, I haven’t been in his room.’

  ‘Toby, you don’t have to explain to me.’

  ‘It’s not because I don’t care.’

  ‘Honestly, do you think I’d judge you?’

  ‘It’s only in case his mother or father were there, and I’d be the last thing they’d want to see, striding in in my boots.’

  ‘You hate yourself, don’t you Toby?’

  He didn’t need to answer.

  The Doctor said, ‘I need to get to my patients. Stay here a minute if you need to.’

  And it was in those moments beside the Meting body that Toby resolved. One-hundred percent resolved.

  Chapter 49 – Lloyd Thornton’s Bedside

  When he emerged from the cold room, Toby went over to the Sheriff. From the next bed along came the cry-baby noises of the shotgun-injured Deputy. One orderly held him down while another took out pellets with thick tweezers. Toby hoped the tweezers were blunt. He ignored the sounds as he spoke,

  ‘Sheriff.’

  ‘Toby.’

  Toby asked the nurse settling him, ‘What’s the damage?’

  The nurse had that way of talking as if the patient she was tending was not there, ‘I don’t think his arm is broken, hopefully just badly sprained. This also feels like a cracked rib. And there’s also an ankle sprain from when he fell, maybe a fracture.’

  ‘How does it hurt?’ Toby asked the patient.

  ‘Like hell.’

  Toby stood by the nurse and asked her quietly,

  ‘How long will he be out of action if it’s a fracture?’

  ‘Oh, he’ll have a cast. It could me months.’

  ‘And if it’s not?’

  ‘He won’t put weight on the ankle for a week, might not walk for another after that.’

  ‘Can we have a minute?’ Toby asked the nurse.

  ‘I’ll fetch the dressings.’

  Alone with the Sheriff, Toby said urgently,

  ‘Chief, they had nightsticks out there. When were those cracked out?’

  If it was possible for a man in a hospital bed to look downward, the Sheriff did so,

  ‘It’s been getting tough on the Town-side. It was just for now, an emergency measure.’