WILLOW FARM ....Before
11th February 2004
Later, raking through the coals he found the just recognisable remains of the belt. He thought of it flicking through the air, the memory of its’ shadow like the black crackle of a firework’s dying sparks.
Led by the bright buckle it would seem to dance, teasing him with a bow to the left then a quick cut to the right, leaving blackcurrant coloured arrows on his legs and back, and sometimes his face.
It had been the first thing he’d seen when he’d found the old man hanging from one of the ceiling hooks in the cold room, a snaky mass of electrical wires coiled around his bull neck. Beside him hung the gleaming white carcasses of cows and sheep, beautiful and innocent in their nakedness, while he hung above a reeking puddle, his checked shirt and crumpled jeans speckled with old blood. The belt still held them up and the drooping buckle flashed fire in the light of the torch as the body swayed gently in the draught from the opened door.
He straightened up, balancing the blackened relic on the end of the poker. The ambulance, the police, the Doctor had been and gone, taking the body with them. His mother sat at the table passively, as she always had done, whilst the activity went on around her. She had the bankruptcy papers in front of her, and occasionally made little moans of fear and disbelief.
He picked up his bag and went to the door, where he turned and flicked the belt on to the table in front of his mother before flinging the poker back onto the hearth with a terrible clatter that made her jump and clasp her ears. The belt landed in an awkward coil reminding him of a curled foetus. He opened the door and went out into the night. Beyond the concrete yard he saw the full moon golden through the willow trees and the river moving slowly below. He looked back at the building already merging into the shadows, though it’s one lit window showed a square of hard white light. A tawny owl called softly.
Then he walked away.
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