The Knife of Never Letting Go (Page 5)

“Home, Todd?” Manchee barks a bit louder down by my leg cuz that’s how you gotta talk in the Noise.

“Yeah, we’re going,” I say. We live on the other side, to the north-east, and we’re going to have to go thru the town to get there so here it comes, as fast as I can get thru it.

First up is Mr Phelps’s store. It’s dying, the store is, like the rest of the town and Mr Phelps spends all his time despairing. Even when yer buying stuff from him and he’s polite as can be, the despair of him seeps at you like pus from a cut. Ending, says his Noise, Ending, it’s all ending and Rags and rags and rags and My Julie, my dear, dear Julie who was his wife and who don’t wear no clothes at all in Mr Phelps’s Noise.

“Hiya, Todd,” he calls as Manchee and I hurry by.

“Hiya, Mr Phelps.”

“Beautiful day, ain’t she?”

“She sure is that, Mr Phelps.”

“Beaut!” barks Manchee and Mr Phelps laughs but his Noise just keeps saying Ending and Julie and rags and pictures of what he misses about his wife and what she used to do as if it’s sposed to be unique or something.

I don’t think anything particular in my Noise for Mr Phelps, just my usual stuff you can’t help. Tho I must admit I find myself thinking it all a little bit louder to cover up thoughts about the hole I found in the swamp, to block it out behind louder Noise.

Don’t know why I should do this, don’t know why I should hide it.

But I’m hiding it.

Manchee and me carry on walking pretty fast cuz next is the petrol stayshun and Mr Hammar. The petrol stayshun don’t work no more cuz the fission generator that made the petrol went kerflooey last year and just sits there beside the petrol stayshun like a hulking ugly hurt toe and no one’d live next to it except Mr Hammar and Mr Hammar’s much worse than Mr Phelps cuz he’ll aim his Noise right at you.

And it’s ugly Noise, angry Noise, pictures of yerself in ways that you don’t want pictures of yerself, violent pictures and bloody pictures and all you can do is make yer own Noise as loud as you can and try to sweep up Mr Phelps’s Noise in it, too, and send it right back to Mr Hammar. Apples and Ending and fist over hand and Ben and Julie and Beaut, Todd? and the generator is flickering and rags and shut up, just shut up and Look at me, boy.

And I turn my head anyway even tho I don’t want to but sometimes you get caught off guard and so I turn my head and there’s Mr Hammar in his window, looking right at me and One month, he thinks, and there’s a picture from his Noise and it involves me standing on my own but somehow even more alone than that and I don’t know what it means or if it’s real or if it’s a purposeful lie and so I think about a hammer going into Mr Hammar’s head over and over and he just smiles from his window.

The road curves round the petrol stayshun past the clinic, which is Dr Baldwin and all the crying and moaning men do to doctors when nothing’s really wrong with ’em. Today it’s Mr Fox complaining about how he can’t breathe which would be a pitiable thing if he didn’t smoke so much. And then, as you pass the clinic, God Almighty, you get the bloody bloody pub which even at this hour of the day is just a howl of Noise because what they do there is turn the music up so loud it’s meant to drown out Noise but that only works partway and so you get loud music and loud Noise and worse, drunk Noise, which comes at you like a mallet. Shouts and howls and weeping from men whose faces never change and just horrorpilashuns of the past and all the women that used to be. A whole lot about the women that used to be but nothing that makes any sense, cuz drunk Noise is like a drunk man: blurry and boring and dangerous.

It gets hard to walk around the centre of town, hard to think about the next step cuz so much Noise is weighing on yer shoulders. I honestly don’t know how men do it, I don’t know how I’m going to do it when I become a man ’less something changes on the day that I don’t know about.

The road bears up past the pub and to the right, going by the police stayshun and the jail, all one place and in use more than you might think for a town so small. The sheriff is Mr Prentiss Jr who’s barely two years older than me and only been a man for a short while but who took to his job right well and quick and in his cell is whoever Mayor Prentiss has told Mr Prentiss Jr to make an example of this week. Right now it’s Mr Turner who didn’t hand over enough of his corn yield to “the good use of the whole town”, which just means he didn’t give no free corn to Mr Prentiss and his men.

So you’ve gone thru the town with yer dog and you got all this Noise behind you, Mr Phelps and Mr Hammar and Dr Baldwin and Mr Fox and the extra extra Noise from the pub and Mr Prentiss Jr’s Noise and Mr Turner’s moaning Noise and yer still not done with the Noise of the town cuz here comes the Church.

The Church is why we’re all here on New World in the first place, of course, and pretty much every Sunday you can hear Aaron preaching about why we left behind the corrupshun and sin of Old World and about how we’d aimed to start a new life of purity and brotherhood in a whole new Eden.

That worked out well, huh?

People still go to church tho, mainly cuz they have to, even tho the Mayor hisself hardly ever bothers, leaving the rest of us to listen to Aaron preach about how we’re the only thing each of us have out here, us men together, and how all of us have gotta bind ourselves in a single community.

How if one of us falls, we all fall.

He says that one a lot.

Manchee and me are quiet as possible going past the front door of the Church. Praying Noise comes from inside, it’s got a special feel to it, a special purply sick feel like men are bleeding it out, even tho it’s always the same stuff but the purply blood just keeps on coming. Help us, save us, forgive us, help us, save us, forgive us, get us outta here, please, God, please, God, please, God, tho as far as I know no one’s never heard no Noise back from this God fella.

Aaron’s in there, too, back from his walk and preaching over the prayers. I can hear his voice, not just his Noise, and it’s all sacrifice this and scripture that and blessings here and sainthood there and he’s going on at such a rattle his Noise is like grey fire behind him and you can’t pick out anything in it and he might be up to something, mightn’t he? The sermon might be covering for something and I’m beginning to wonder if I know what that something is.

And then I hear Young Todd? in his Noise and I say, “Hurry up, Manchee,” and we scoot our way along right quick.