Skellig

Chapter 28

VERY GENTLY, USING A LITTLE HAMMER and long thin nails, he nailed some boards across the door. The garage trembled as he worked. He told us to keep back. We stood in the backyard staring, shaking our heads. He got some black gloss paint and wrote DANGER across the boards. He brought some Coke for us and some beer for himself and we all sat against the house wall and stared at the garage.

“Better get it made safe, eh?” said Dad.

“My uncle’s a builder,” said Coot. “Always doing garages and extensions and things.”

“Aye?” said Dad.

“He’d tell you knock the whole thing down and start again.”

“Aye?”

“Aye. Some folk fight to keep things that should’ve been smashed years back.”

I looked at the garage and imagined it gone, saw the big emptiness that would take its place.

“Aye,” said Coot again. “He says the best jobs start with a massive sledgehammer and a massive Dumpster.”

He swigged his Coke. The blackbird flew onto the edge of the garage roof and perched there. I knew it would be watching the yard, looking for beetles and fat worms for its babies.

“He wants us gone,” I said.

Coot cocked his finger and thumb like a gun. He eyed the bird like he was aiming.

“Gotcha,” he said, and his hand recoiled like he’d fired.

Dad told Leakey and Coot it was good to see them again.

“Michael’s been moping,” he said. “A good session with his pals’ll be just what the doctor ordered.”

“Not against the garage, though,” said Leakey.

“Not against the blinking garage, no.”

We took the ball and went through the house into the front street again. Mina wasn’t there. I played better now, but I couldn’t help turning to the empty tree. I imagined her alone with Skellig in the dark house.

I caught them laughing at me.

“Missing her already?” said Coot.

I raised my eyes and tried to grin. I went to sit on our front garden wall.

“Who is she, anyway?” said Leakey.

I shrugged.

“She’s called Mina.”

“What school’s she at?”

“She doesn’t go to school.”

They looked at me.

“How’s that?” said Leakey.

“Plays hooky?” said Coot.

“Her mother teaches her,” I said.

They looked again.

“Bloody hell,” said Leakey. “I thought you had to go to school.”

“Imagine it,” said Coot.

They imagined it for a while.

“Lucky dog,” said Leakey.

“What’ll she do for pals, though?” said Coot. “And who’d like to be stuck at home all day?”

“They think schools stop you from learning,” I said. “They think schools try to make everybody just the same.”

“That’s bull,” said Coot.

“Aye,” said Leakey. “You’re learning all day long in school.”

I shrugged.

“Maybe.”

“Is that why you’ve not been coming in?” said Leakey. “Is it ’cause you’re never coming back again? You’re going to let that girl’s mother teach you?”

“Course not,” I said. “But they’re going to teach me some things.”

“Like?”

“Like modeling with clay. And about William Blake.”

“Who’s he?” said Coot. “That guy that’s got the butcher’s shop in town?”

“He said school drives all joy away,” I said. “He was a painter and a poet.”

They looked at each other and grinned. Leakey couldn’t look me in the eye. I could feel my face burning and burning.

“Look,” I said. “I can’t tell you anything. But the world’s full of amazing things.”

Coot sighed and shook his head and bounced the ball between his knees.

“I’ve seen them,” I said.

Leakey stared at me.

I imagined taking him through the DANGER door, taking him to Skellig, showing him. For a moment I was dying to tell him what I’d seen and what I’d touched.

“There she is,” said Coot.

We turned together, and there was Mina climbing into the tree again.

“The monkey girl,” said Leakey.

Coot giggled.

“Hey!” he said. “Maybe Rasputin’s right about that evolution stuff. He could come and look at her and see there’s monkeys all around us still.”