Going Grey

  Ian sometimes dared to think about going into Athel Ridge, getting a job, and making friends. But that wouldn't happen unless he could ignore his hallucinations. All he had to do was keep telling himself they weren't real, but if anyone looked at him too closely, he knew he'd wonder if they could see that he wasn't quite right in the head.

  They'll know I'm crazy. They'll smell it. People are still animals, deep down.

  "You feel like coming into town with me today, Ian?" Gran felt in her pockets. "I need to pick up some gentian spray for the sheep."

  Ian found it easier to venture into town in the winter. If he turned up his collar and pulled his beanie down tight, he didn't feel that people were staring at him. Summer was more of a challenge. He relied on sunglasses and a baseball cap. You could buy stuff without needing to say a word, and if you paid cash and got out of the store fast, nobody would even look at you. But today he felt like he had freak stamped on his forehead. He wanted to hide.

  "I think I'll check the fences," he said, instantly ashamed of chickening out. "Will you explain all the tax stuff to me one day?"

  Gran took the truck keys off the hook. "Sure. But it's all written out in the folder for when you need to do it yourself." The folder was almost a person in its own right, a battered manila thing bound with heavy four-way elastic bands that Gran said had come from a lawyer's office. She put her arms around him for a moment. "You're a good boy, Ian. I just wish I could give you a better life. This isn't much fun for a young guy."

  "I'm fine. Nobody could do more for me than you have." Ian had worked out years ago that his alternative with a feckless mother would have been life in an institution or worse. Gran had done what was best for him, however lonely he felt. "I know what would have happened to me if you hadn't been around."

  Gran swallowed hard. It always upset her, but he needed to talk about it. The older he got, the more it had grown into a vast, silent black cloud that neither of them could really discuss but that was gradually blocking every bit of light from his existence.

  "You're different, Ian," she said. "And humans don't like what's different. Animals are a lot more tolerant."

  "Is there something I don't know about myself? You'd tell me the truth, wouldn't you? It won't hurt me."

  She concentrated on her keys, examining them too carefully and blinking fast. That was her I-have-to-pick-my-words face.

  "I think you know yourself pretty well," she said. "You're very self-aware. Not many people are."

  "I meant would I know if I was crazy enough to be a danger to people. Do mad people know how sick they are?" Ian watched a lot of news. Sometimes he'd follow murder trials and wonder how serial killers saw the world, whether they knew just how weird they actually were or if they simply thought everyone else was abnormal. "Is that what you try not to tell me?"

  Gran shook her head a few times, more like she was trying to stop herself thinking about something than just saying no.

  "You're not a danger to anyone," she said. "They're a danger to you. I don't just mean all the assholes waiting to take advantage of you. I mean the do-gooders and government busy-bodies who'd think they knew what was best for you. But I'm going to get things sorted out for you, I promise. Now — key check."

  Gran treated a trip into Athel Ridge like being inserted into enemy territory, a country full of people with credit cards and all the other recorded, numbered, cross-checked, and monitored things that tethered their lives to the scrutiny of government and corporations. She always wanted to get in and out as fast as she could. There were probably SEAL teams that didn't plan missions as obsessively as she did. Ian went through the checklist with her as he'd done for as long as he could remember.

  Was it really that hostile out there, all surveillance and conspiracies? Sometimes he found it hard to believe, but then he'd switch on the radio or TV again and Gran's diagnosis was confirmed. The world was a rough place that would have no patience with someone like him. The radio was the worst. He could hear the hate spilling out of it. He stuck to NPR these days, where everyone was rational and polite, the way the world probably wished it really was.

  "Bye, Gran." Ian waved her off. He didn't usually do that. "I'll fix dinner."

  He watched her truck kick up dust down the track until it disappeared from view, then collected his tools and drove up to the boundary to check the fences with Oatie.

  The greyhound was a lonely, clingy kind of dog who seemed to need someone to follow. He lay watching while Ian worked, occasionally sitting up and looking around when he heard something beyond the range of human ears. Ian spent an hour or two knocking posts straight with a hammer and fixing wires in place with the staple gun. Eventually Oatie jumped up, ears pricked, and looked towards the house.

  That usually meant he could hear Gran's truck. But he didn't go racing down the hill this time; he just stood staring. Ian stopped to listen. The rattle of tyres on gravel carried a long way in the still summer air, and the greyhound's expert assessment was that it wasn't Gran's pickup. It'd be a delivery, then, something Gran hadn't been expecting, a rare event. Ian jumped in the truck and headed back to the house.

  It was only when he saw black and white paintwork through the trees and a flash of red as the sun caught a light-bar that he realised it wasn't a delivery truck but the sheriff’s cruiser. He'd only ever seen it in town a couple of times over the years. Gran didn’t like cops or any kind of government authority. Ian was instantly on his mettle.

  The sheriff stood on the porch, hammering on the door in bursts and stepping back to peer through the glass panels at the side. He turned around as Ian pulled up. What did he want? They'd paid their taxes and the trucks were licensed. Maybe he had some dogs in the pound that needed a home. Word got around about Gran's open house policy with animals in need.

  Ian climbed out and slammed the truck door. “Can I help you, sir?”

  "Sheriff Gaskin." He was middle-aged, grey-haired, and bespectacled, and his voice was a lot quieter than Ian expected for a man doing all that urgent hammering. He held up a small card. It looked like a driving licence. “Are you related to Mrs Dunlop? I need to talk to a relative.”

  Oh God. “Yeah, I’m Ian. Ian Dunlop. Her grandson. What’s she done?”

  Gran sometimes came back from trips and told him she’d yelled at someone about the way they treated their animals. Maybe she'd gotten herself arrested. But the look on the sheriff’s face said it was something worse than that, and it was starting to dawn on Ian that he was catching on way too slowly.

  Sheriff Gaskin tilted his head a little as if he was trying to look past Ian's sunglasses and the peak of his cap. “Your gran collapsed in town," he said at last. "I’m real sorry, son.”

  It still wasn't sinking in. Ian fell back on what he thought normal people would ask at times like this, just like on TV or in the movies. He stomach rolled. His hair felt like someone was tearing his scalp off.

  “Where is she? What’s happened to her?”

  Gaskin held his arms at his sides as if he didn’t know what to do with his hands. “Looks like she had a heart attack, Ian. I’m sorry. They took her to the hospital, but she didn't make it. She 's dead.”

  The world receded into the distance. Ian could see it and hear it, but he was no longer in it. As to what happened with the next heartbeat, the next breath — he just didn’t know. Dead didn't make sense.

  “Maybe you better leave your truck here,” the sheriff said. “I’ll drive you to the hospital.”

  Ian felt he was suffocating, but another part of him took over and recited the words like a well-learned script, in control and remembering what he had to do. He had the folder, the oracle that contained the answers to everything except what the hell he was going to do without the one person who'd always been there for him.

  "Is there anyone I can call for you?" Gaskin asked. "Any relatives?"

  “It’s just me and Gran.” Ian couldn’t tell the sheriff that he was crazy and that he didn't know how he w
as going to cope without her. Man up. Come on, do what you have to. Guys his age were fighting wars. Gran taught him to be self-reliant and what a man should be, but he'd never had to test it for real. "Are you sure it's her? Are you sure it's not some mistake? Maybe it was someone who stole her purse."

  The sheriff gave him a pitying look, like he heard that kind of desperation all the time. Making it feel real and true was still a million miles away. Gaskin nodded towards the car, then stared back at Ian again, frowning and baffled. He shook his head — to himself, not Ian, like a little private doubt of some kind — and took off his glasses to wipe them.

  "Damn." It was just a breath, muttering to himself. "Got to get a new pair."

  Ian knew what it felt like when you couldn't trust your eyes. Suddenly his craziness seemed like the least important thing in the world.

  Gran was gone. What did he do now? The only oracle he could ask for guidance wasn't even a person.

  It was a manila folder, one he'd never been tempted to look inside because it was so much a part of an unknown, unknowable future disaster. Ian hadn't fully understood what lonely really meant until now.

  FOUR HOURS LATER.

  Death was almost anesthetizing. Ian found Gran's blue pickup parked at the farm supply store and drove it away without a second thought, even though he'd never driven in traffic on a public road before.

  The visit to the hospital morgue felt like a memory from years ago, not hours. Gran hadn't looked terrible like he'd expected, more a waxwork that resembled her. Staff had given him paperwork and forms. But it had all happened to someone else, to the other Ian who was now following the sheriff's cruiser back to the ranch. He knew he should have been distraught, but something else within him had picked up the reins again.

  Was it always going to feel this numb, then, this painless, or was grief going to set in later? He clung to the one focusing thought that silenced all the other clamouring voices in his head. He had to open the folder.

  The sheriff hadn't asked to see his driver's licence, and Ian hadn't thought of volunteering the information that he didn't have one. As he parked the truck out front and got out, the ground felt unreal, somewhere between a mattress and the deck of a ship. He wasn't sure where to place his next step.

  But I've never been on a ship.

  He must have seen it in a movie. Sometimes it was hard to find the line between a dimly-recalled past and something he'd seen, but it didn't make it feel any less real. When he looked back, Sheriff Gaskin had his elbow resting on the open driver's window, one hand on the steering wheel.

  "You going to be okay, son? Are you sure there's nobody I can call for you? A neighbour, maybe?"

  Ian shook his head. "I'm fine. Gran left me a list. A folder."

  "Sure." The sheriff frowned, looking into his face like he didn't understand. But he'd never seen the folder, the big manila survival kit that contained everything that would now shape Ian's life. "You've got all the paperwork you need, yeah? You'll find the funeral home's real helpful."

  "I'm okay," Ian said. "I know what I've got to do. Thank you, sir."

  Gaskin looked at him for a few seconds too long, still frowning as if none of this made sense, then nodded and swung the cruiser around to head back down the track. As soon as the sound of the engine died away, Ian found himself checking the glass panel next to the front door. It wasn't a clear reflection, but it was bad enough.

  Shit. Well, I should have known this would tip me back over the edge.

  There was something different about the face that looked back at him. The buzz-cut hair that showed under his cap was still brown but a little darker, and his nose looked thinner. He forced himself to look away. That was why he wore his cap most of the time. It was mainly to stop him from seeing what wasn't really there.

  But he had real problems now, not imagined ones. He opened the door and a new kind of emptiness rolled out with the smell of stale coffee. There was a big difference between Gran being out and Gran not being there at all. Oatie trotted up to him, looking bewildered. Ian now struggled to think more than a few moments ahead. Nothing fell into place.

  Just do what she told you. Go find the folder.

  "She's gone, Oatie." Ian just needed to say it aloud to believe it, even if the dog was the only one listening. "I had to identify her. She didn't look dead. Just ... something was gone, you know?"

  Oatie looked up at him, unblinking. Ian had never prepared himself for seeing a body. It hadn't been anything like he'd expected from watching TV. But the sheriff had whisked him through it, probably so used to that kind of thing that he knew how to handle people who'd only ever do it once in their lives. Now Ian wanted to feel something beyond numb confusion.

  She's dead. Come on, react. Normal people grieve.

  But he wasn't normal. Maybe that was it.

  This was why Gran had left the folder. She knew how hard it would be to think clearly. She must have lost someone and had to sort it all out by herself.

  The desk was a sycamore roll-top with a hutch on top. When Ian unlocked it and rolled back the tambour, it was like entering a scale model, a cityscape of compartments lined with drawers and slots full of papers, notebooks, and Altoids tins. He could have opened it long ago. The key was always on the hook, and Gran never stopped him from using it, but this was her territory. He respected that just as she'd respected his space.

  And what am I going to do without her?

  There's nobody else. Just me.

  The folder was stuffed with dog-eared paper, envelopes, and a few CDs in grey plastic sleeves. Ian had never known exactly what was in there and dreaded the day he'd need to find out. So this was the vindication of Gran's checklist drill. She'd treated it as a game when he was younger, but as he got older it became deadly serious.

  She'd thought of everything. Each envelope was numbered with a neat pound sign, contents labelled. A flow chart paper-clipped to the first envelope showed what he needed to do and which envelope related to it. It was written in a neat and steady hand more like a draughtsman's than an old woman's.

  But she wasn't that old — early sixties, he thought, not even retirement age. He'd been sure she wouldn't die for a long time yet. So had she.

  'Envelopes 1 through 4 – immediate admin. Do this first. Envelopes 5, 6, and 7 – longer term things, personal instructions that'll be tough going but it's stuff you have to know. Incapacitated by stroke, dementia, or similar: power of attorney pre-signed in envelope 1, with instructions. If dead: proceed to envelope 2 for funeral instructions. Call Joe first and he'll assist. See also pre-filled forms for you to sign to notify agencies of death.'

  Gran wouldn't have done any of this electronically. She didn't use e-mail, she didn't send faxes, and she didn't use messaging. She'd even disabled data and GPS on the cell phone. The up side was that her preference for old fashioned paper had saved Ian from a lot of baffling, painful bureaucracy.

  Immediate admin stuff, envelope number two. Read first. Okay, Gran. I will.

  He checked the forms inside against the list in the leaflet that the hospital had given him. All he had to do was date and sign each one, then mail them. Gran had addressed and stamped the envelopes, and even left a book of extra stamps to cover postage increases. Her will, folded neatly in a cream envelope, was short and straightforward: the ranch and everything else was Ian's, and all he had to do was to get Joe to take him to see the lawyer in Seattle. There were consequences in the outside world resulting from all this, he knew, but he couldn't even begin to think of them. What mattered was that everything was covered, from her prepaid funeral to insurances and taxes. He didn't have to panic about what to do next. A cryptic note about money referred to people to call on the list in envelope 5, but Ian put that to one side for the moment. He had to focus on one task at a time.

  A separate note in red ink was clipped to the admin envelope, an odd mix of precise instructions and vague warnings.

  'You're going to find it hard to manage the ranch
on your own. Joe can take the animals. But make sure you read envelopes 5, 6, and 7 before you make any decisions about selling up or having anyone else come live on the ranch. I'm sorry that there was so much I never told you. Joe can also help you get a driving license.'

  None of that made sense right then, but she had a point about the animals. Damn, there was even a cheque book in here, so she did use banks after all. Ian flicked through it. But the stubs showed it had only been used to pay taxes. Cash was paid in and a cheque written right away.

  Ian sorted through the keys and opened the safe. It was full of bundles of bank notes, each labelled with the total, but it was already too much to take in. His mind jumped between vague, lonely fear and petty worries. Groceries. How was he going to get groceries without driving? Ask Joe. Get a licence. How would he earn a living and keep the ranch going? Money would still arrive, Gran had said.

  He just had to read all the envelopes.

  Ian left the paperwork on the desk and went to find the cell phone. It had none of the fancy features he saw on TV ads. Gran didn't trust smartphones. They gave away too much information about you, she said. They tracked you and spied on you. He stared at the keypad for a long time, trying to work out how to break the news to Joe. How often had he spoken to the guy? Two or three times a year, maybe.

  Gran had taught Ian how to make calls in an emergency. He'd called the feed store once and answered a few calls from Joe over the years, but that was about it.

  "Joe? Joe, it's Ian." It was like listening to a radio play, not a voice that could possibly have come from his own mouth. He blurted it out. "Gran's had a heart attack. She's dead. I'm going through the official stuff."

  For a moment Ian thought he'd lost the signal. Then Joe let out a long breath. It must have shocked him. What was I thinking? Of course it did. Joe was Gran's friend, one of a handful of people she let anywhere near her.

  "Jeez, Ian, I'm so sorry," Joe said at last. "Don't worry, we'll sort everything out. You just sit tight and I'll be over soon as I can."