I

Wide awake but motionless, Emma lay quietly in bed till near nine o’ clock, as she had every day that summer, refusing to rise until her father left the house.  Each morning at about ten-to, he was collected by Rick, a friend and co-worker at the nearby psychiatric hospital, St. Senans.  When Emma rose all that awaited her was work, self-imposed chores, washing up her father’s breakfast, and cleaning and disposing of the remnants of the previous nights drinking with Rick.  Most nights the two drank together there and shouted stories of the cast of characters, the ‘crazies,’ they saw and heard as they did their work at the hospital. 

Emma’s bedroom was situated at the opposite end of the house from the sitting room, but the poor standard of the plywood doors ensured their raucous laughter often kept her awake.  She could not help but sometimes listen to the duo’s tales.  Their humour was mean-spirited and would have been even had drink not been involved. 

The deliberation with which Emma performed her morning chores served a double-purpose:  First, the hours passed quicker and made the near constant solitude somewhat more bearable.  Her mother had died three years before and she had no siblings.  Living in the countryside, neighbours were few and those who did exist were neither of Emma’s age nor of the inclination to interact with the inhabitants of Emma’s lonely house.  With the exception of Rick, the small bungalow rarely received visitors.  Second, coming home to a house absolved of the previous nights indiscretions, yet ripe for renewed revelry, was the one thing that kept Emma’s intermittently aggressive father from interfering with her. 

If the first stages of his nightly binge could be held in pristine conditions, Emma’s father would more often than not fail to recall his little girl even existed.  When the conditions failed to meet with his approval, he could lash out with fist or frying pan, though at walls or tables, not her.  But there were also the times when, in a comfortable stupor but minus the distraction of Rick’s company, her father would become amorous toward his young brown-haired daughter.  Overly amorous!  He would rape her.  This had not happened for some months.

Once her chores had been completed to an extent that ensured her father fell for the joys of Jack Daniels and not her frail body, Emma embarked upon the one activity of the day that brought comfort to her.  Donnie, her slightly reeking Red Setter was led up from his kennel and the two set off for the fields on the other side of the disused train tracks that ran alongside her house.  Emma manoeuvred her feet into undersized wellies.  Donnie stayed on his leash for the first leg of the journey, the 100-metre trek along the railroad that brought them to the gate of the fields.  Holding the leash lightly, Emma tested her balance atop the rail tracks now almost wholly colonised by lines and vines of thick green and purple thorns.  Walking between the rails, she leapt, or tried to, from sleeper to sleeper, skipping every second one. 

The stony fields Emma traversed seldom saw life; they were sequestered for only her.  Their old lady owner had outlived both her husband and sons.  She wouldn’t sell the land but neither could she work it.  The fields lived on wildly, untroubled by man or machine, and became for Emma a private and enchanting kingdom that brought balm to her being.  Emma climbed over the rusted and broken gates.  Donnie leapt over the adjoining crumbling stone wall.  The green grass of her territory was luxurious and abundant.  The blades grew densely and tall, and some parts all but covered Emma.  It was August and they were living to their fullest.  Her daily excursions had created along the edges a pathway of stamped down grass, and it was to this trail she returned.  While Donnie raced off arbitrarily in search of a quarry, be it fox or fowl, Emma bore left from the gate. 

Her journey encompassed three large fields, the first undulating, rectangular, and by far the most overgrown.  She scaled and descended the miniature earthen mounds, avoiding the thick briary bushes and conclaves of nettles and thistles that vied to sting her bare knees, until she reached a narrow stream.  Emma followed the course of this stream into the next field, the most aesthetically pleasing of the trio.  More a meadow than a field, reeds and rushes of near uniform height grew profusely, and when the sun shone from a particular angle the faintest gust of wind would transform their colour from a rich emerald green to a lighter, almost yellow complexion.  The third field bordered some still farmed pastureland, and seemed reluctant to part with the vestiges of usefulness.  As if jealous of its much tended-to neighbour, the ground here struggled against the nascent overgrowth.  It was losing the battle, and displayed signs of the successful encroachment of the wholly untamed first field it led Emma back into.           

The railroad, two streams and a shallow dried-up dyke, were the features that cut off Emma’s untrammelled realm from the world.  The point at the corner of the second field, where the two rivulets converged to create a more substantial body of water, was her seat of power, her citadel.  This spot was to Emma a place of tranquillity, of harmony between herself and the multifarious flora and fauna that cushioned, covered, and crept about her, the worthy denizens of her land.  When she lay upon the bank, with just the gentle murmur of the water flowing slowly by and the bird’s noises that intermittently broke the silence of the sky for company, Emma was transported back to the times when her mother had taken her to this place, replete with blanket and basket.  Then she had dipped a small fishing net into the water to catch tadpoles.  Now, there were sad occasions when it was her head immersed in the water, where she contemplated leaving it.  With eyes open underneath the surface, enraptured by the world only she among all people was then privy to, Emma thought of reincarnation and how she might, by dying at this spot, return more happily amongst the ever-darting tadpoles. 

Every day she walked, Emma rested at that junction of the streams.  Sometimes just being near the water was contentment enough.  More usually she sat on one of the large rocks that protruded through the shallow streams and allowed the cool water to swish around and caress her legs.  Often, when gazing into the body of the river, Emma would lose herself in a kaleidoscope of images, sometimes blithe, sometimes horrific, of her past, present, and future.  The water became her picture screen.  Instead of her image it reflected her sorrows, thoughts, and hopes.  When her mother’s face looked up from beneath the bubbling surface, tears would form, and fall, and drop, and add to the volume of water she sat in. 

As it happened, Emma did not pause for repose at her favoured locale this day.  Arriving there, she was instead confronted with the sight of a curled up and sleeping male body.  The man lay curled up in the natal position with his back to Emma.  She stood a few yards apart from him, calmly comprehending the spectacle and situation.  Emma was not unduly perturbed when Donnie arrived to investigate this strange new addition to his day, and she would have met with equanimity the strangers awakening.  She may even have desired such an occurrence, though she would not purposefully bring it about.  Then she returned to her walk.  Donnie continued his pursuit of largely imaginary foes into all the corners of the fields.  The stranger, she presumed, just slept, but he did not leave her head.

That evening Emma sat up in bed half listening to the sounds of excited conversation that stemmed from the sitting room.  She did not need to concentrate much to know what the two were conversing and shouting about.  Her father had that evening brought back from the hospital a handful of leaflets and dropped them on the kitchen table.  Emma took one to her room and studied it late into night.  The leaflet said the escapee was seventeen but the picture at its centre was of a younger teen, nearer her own age.  In their grainy black and greyish-white setting his eyes appealed to Emma.  She recognised and understood the helpless look.  She had no doubt about the sleeping body in the field and decided to help the boy by the river.  His was a benign presence and her conviction in the goodness of her visitor was steadfast from the first. 

Noon the next day, Emma and Donnie were on the railroad again.  On this occasion a knapsack adorned the young girls back, in it some necessities no person on the run could do without (or so Emma believed): a cheese sandwich, a two-litre bottle filled with water, a banana, and a chocolate bar.  In the fields Donnie returned to his usual chaotic habits of chasing shadows and noises.  Emma, instead of progressing slowly, contemplatively, with every step being subsumed further into the wondrously uncultivated land, marched briskly to the appointed area.  The thought that her sleeping boy may be gone did not occur to her for a moment.  It was certain.

Emma arrived alongside the stream and, not in the least perturbed by the boy’s initial non-appearance, started to call aloud: ‘Hello … hello sir … hello … hello’.

Nothing.  Emma changed tact and informed her invisible company that she had food, and that if he wanted it he would have to show himself.  Donnie nipped down the slope of the bank to sample the cold clear water, and to dirty it.  Emma repeated herself a few times.  Then a voice barely above a whisper came from behind, ‘Hello.’

II

John woke up cold that second morning of freedom, with bits of twigs, grass, and thorns all over his clothes.  But he smiled because he was dreaming again, when he hadn’t for years.  For too long his mind had been too constrained to travel at night.  He had uncertainly mentioned leaving the hospital and promptly been locked up, twenty or more hours out of the day.  He spent his time fortifying his mind to ward off the madness of incessant solitude.  He fought not to lose his reason and had not the energy to dream afterwards.  But he dreamt last night and his new surroundings impacted on the dream, albeit in a magnified form.  He waded through a large, strong river, for what purpose he could not say, it was just an image, a lovely image on the brain.

John sat up and took in the landscape, the glistening confluence of streams - a wispy haze hung above the water.  He vaguely remembered exhaustion, and falling on his face into the muddy bank.  He had pretty much slept since he arrived there the morning before, having run hard and lost through that first night.  Now the lightest of pure translucent dews carpeted the whole environs, so beautiful.  In that shrinking room of the last few years, its gnawing sense of desolation, he had not known space.  He had forgotten a field could exist simply, and he delighted in it now. 

John had not the energy or desire to move.  For so long without intimate interaction with anything pure, John allowed his body to collapse in on itself and glide and slide back down the slope into the shallow water where he lay drenched on his back ecstatic, breathing deep into his lungs, into his essence, the fresh feel of the open place.  When finally he began to feel a chill John groped his way back up the bank, keeping his belly to the earth, each digging of his fingers and nails into the ground releasing joyous tingles all through his body.  He lay on his side squishing his ear into the hard soil, fusing his body with the land, burying his self into its damp magnificence, happily half-distracted by the brave forays of some creatures onto his person, a soporific chorus of bug voices chiming in his head.

He lay blissful on the bank then for many hours, unawares, listless and happy, untroubled about moving on from his newfound congenial and secluded surroundings.  John was all but paralysed by the splendour around him; he made his mind blank so the imprint made upon it would be irrevocable.  Utterly relaxed he reclined down again, pale face and body bathed in warming sunshine.  He dozed off. 

Presently, his repose was disturbed.  Unhappily he contemplated the portentous approach of a slight figure from far off.  He kept low and scurried on his belly to the poor cover of the line of thin trees beside and the falling wall of stones.  There was no easy escape if discovered, a slide down a thorn-filled bank, a run through a stony, shallow stream.  It was a young girl.  He was surprised but still far too wary.  John stopped looking when she got close and stood right near him.  He shut his eyes tight, clenched his body and sweated.  His insides were frantic.  She started calling him, by name.  Still his body remained wrapped up tight. 

III

Emma turned to contemplate the timid, unkempt figure before her.  Haggard and thin, she thought he resembled the tree from behind whence he had come, a stunted, dying Hazel.  Underneath a worried brow, partly obscured by ragged, greasy, near shoulder-length hair, two large eyes loomed lustrously.  His Adam’s apple protruded out from his skinny neck almost as much as his nose did from his face.  His posture was warped and clothes torn and dirty.  However, inexplicably, the overall effect of this litany of negatives was a thoroughly captivating whole.  The two regarded each other silently but not suspiciously.  Emma was the more confident at this early impasse.  Still, it was not until the boy took a tentative half step in her direction that she rapidly covered the ten yards that separated them.  So quickly did she then extend her hand in greeting, he jerked backwards, fearing he was about to be struck.  ‘I’m Emma’ she pronounced more authoritatively than she had ever spoken before.  ‘Ah … John’ came the muted, uncertain reply, delivered with minimal movement of the lips.

The first moments of the encounter were characterised by expectation on Emma’s behalf and some uneasiness on John’s.  Standing close to her new acquaintance Emma found she was somehow observing the scene from above, using her third eye, and registered slight surprise at her own level of composure.  She loved his eyes of that same brown-green complexion she remembered so vividly from her mothers face.  She took a sandwich from the backpack and unwrapped it.  One half she handed to John.  She sat down bow-legged on the grass, allowing its tips to reach and tickle her neck, and motioned for John to follow.  She was in charge.

John slumped heavily to the ground, despite his want of weight.  From the moment he had first spied the body approaching he had been poised to run.  The nervous energy exerted in his attempt to remain unseen had been considerable for one so unfed and drained.  All morning long his body had allowed his eyes to convince it all was fine, but crouched and stationary for those minutes he was sapped of his very last reserves. 

Sitting opposite Emma in the grass, John, although tiring, was alive to the absurdity of the situation.  He felt a bit disappointed at not having adapted to it with the same seeming aplomb as the girl.  He watched as she slowly ate her half of the sandwich, while scanning the fields to locate her dog.  It was like they did this every day, the way she glanced and smiled at him and then strained her neck to look backwards, brushing her long, soft hair out of the way.  After staring down at the ground briefly he lifted his head again and asked Emma if she came to these fields often.  ‘Every day,’ she said, before continuing reassuringly as she knew she must, ‘but I’m the only one who comes here anymore.’  John had not time to think of or ask another question.  From out of nowhere Donnie jumped over his shoulder and into his lap.  Startled, John dropped his sandwich, and could only watch impotently as the dog devoured it.  ‘That’s my dog, Donnie,’ giggled Emma, before berating the canine not very severely.

John hadn’t touched his food.  He hadn’t felt desperately hungry before, but now that it was gone, he was ravenous.  Without meaning to, he glanced inside the opened knapsack and saw the rest of the contents.  Covering his mouth with his left hand he gingerly licked his parched and scarred lips.  He was still some ways from asking for the food when Emma usurped his line of thinking and took it out for him.  Despite his hunger, John ate slowly.  He even offered Emma half the bar of chocolate, though he was glad for her refusal.  It was a simple moment but important for them both.

As Emma opened the bottle of water she suggested to John that he walk with her the remainder of her trek.  He did, he was getting more used to, and comfortable in, the whole scenario.  As they walked through the field of wild flowers he told her how frustrating it had been to discover last night that all the berries around him were no longer ripe and tasted terrible.  After a few minutes they squeezed through a hedge and entered the third field.  They were side by side and Emma asked John why he lived in a hospital.  John didn’t think how or why she knew this, he was asked a simple question, for maybe the first time ever, and he answered easily and freely. 

They did half a circuit of the field and John told how his mother had had him in the hospital and died straight afterwards.  He had plenty surrogate mothers but few genuine carers.  Some of the nurses had haphazardly and half-heartedly educated him.  Others told him of his birth and mother and why she had been brought there.  A priest had made her parents commit her because she was pregnant and unwed.  They were ignorant that it was the priest who had done it to her.  The priest actually accompanied her to St. Senans, took her through the gates by his sweating hand.  John’s mother had screamed her truth in a madness before the birth, but the words came in the midst of a fit and everyone chose to disbelieve and forget.  Emma muttered in a tone that she thought was both grave and understanding.  Next John told her of the cartoons and films he had always been allowed to watch nearly all his life (for so long they were his only life).  However, he did not tell her of the last few years’ solitude and horror.

‘How could they keep you there,’ asked Emma.  ‘They just kinda did.’  John did not surprise himself by the ease with which he related his tale.  He knew it was unusual, he knew he was unusual, but it didn’t seem to matter here.  When told his story originally he had himself not felt much emotion.  Nor did he exhibit any visible sense of loss as he recounted it to Emma.  He had never known his mother.  He had never had someone to lose and was not aware of the depth of feeling supposed to be invoked.  Emma knew loss, though, and she empathised as she started to love and trust John more.  ‘My mothers gone too, she died three years ago.’  John felt the moment required some statement of emotional solidarity, but his brain failed to furnish him with the appropriate words.  Donnie, though, knew what to do.  Running back from the centre of the field he jumped up on her, all dirty paws and wet nose and tongue. 

The trampled pathway soon allowed for single file travel only.  In turn they leapt across the narrow, shallow, dried out dyke, John the most awkwardly and unconfidently, into the next field.  They had only started moving again when from their side a procession of creatures rose up disrupted by Donnie’s dancing.  Several young swallows flew, awkwardly, just above the grass, like they were babies just learning.  A pheasant was summoned skyward at the most perfect moment: long, thin neck stretched out and expanded to its limit, minute head perfectly still and poised, face taut.  He let out a light gurgle-like sound and the heavy flap of his impressive, broad, rust-coloured wings generated a thundering whoosh.  Emma took a quick step backwards.  Donnie bounced excitedly on his hind legs like an out-of-shape gazelle; his neck strained looking after the pheasant, then searching for more.   

Emma turned to John.  His body was still and mouth agape, aspect reverential.  His eyes never left the course of the elegant wild fowls flight, till he swooped down behind tress and was out of sight.  That both their mothers had died and basically left them alone bestowed upon John and Emma an affinity she knew from the first time she saw him that they were destined to share in some form.  But it was that glimpse of how open his heart was to the world, her world here in the fields that gave Emma whatever undefined reassurance she needed.  John was still searching in the sky for the pheasant when she started to divulge all the pertinent, odious, information relevant to her father and herself. 

The death of his wife had mutated a once genial man.  The solitude of the months after her passing warped his mind.  He had never been especially close to Emma, simply provided for her.  However, his adoration for Emma’s mother had rivalled even her own.  Once that adhesive was removed, life imploded.  At first Emma believed her likeness to her mother had repelled her father from her, for he could not bear to suffer even the slightest reminder of his loss.  But it was that very same resemblance that eventually brought him to her.  It was only after he had touched Emma for the first time that he really started drinking.  The drinking, however, then exacerbated both his and her plight.  The last two years had seen him consciously and deliberately descend into oblivion.  Consumed with self-loathing he avoided when sober any contact with his daughter.  Money was left in a jar in the kitchen and with it Emma took care of herself.  In the last year the only contact she had had with him had come about on the occasions he entered her bedroom at night and wordlessly abused her.  John listened, uselessly put his hand on her quivering shoulder.  Emma faced him when they reached the gate onto the tracks.   She did some sort of bow, but the tears she cried removed any false impressions of carelessness that may have formed as a result of the curtsy.   

IV

On the third day, John’s eyes, as usual, followed Emma’s approaching figure from an unseen vantage point.  John was disturbed by the forlorn demeanour she carried.  Her vivaciousness was missing and so was her dog.  Her aspect was grave, not vibrant.  John feared the change in her was a veiled warning that behind lurked his would-be captors.  Emma arrived by the stream on whose opposite bank John knelt behind a bush.  The knapsack she discarded absently, her body she disinterestedly allowed to collapse.  The tall grass in which she lay obscured John’s view of Emma.  Tellingly, she made no effort to announce her arrival, nor seek his company.  Instead, Emma sat silently with her back to the river. 

John traversed the stream stealthily, still wary that his seizure might be imminent.  He readied himself for a frantic chase as he got closer to Emma.  However, the moment he laid his eyes upon the hunched shoulders and head hung so low it nearly grazed the ground, John realised her sadness was not for him but resoundingly for her own self.  He moved around and found framed by two wayward strands of hair a harrowed and harrowing visage, a portrait of despondency.  Without saying a word, John sat down opposite.  She lifted her head by a few degrees, but by way of a hello could manage not a thing.  Her pale face emphasised hurting eyes that appeared to John to incarnate sorrow.  It was from those chess-nut brown purveyors of truth that John was told of what occurred last night.  

After ten minutes she tried to stand up, but in that instant broke, like the fragile little girl she truly was, and not the confident young lady she valiantly attempted to be.  John moved closer and enveloped Emma in his arms.  Now he saw her most exposed self, every fabric of her being stripped of hopefulness.  She sobbed uncontrollably into his chest drenching his worn and torn t-shirt.  She slid down again and cushioned her head in his lap.  There she dozed safely, though her body never relaxed its rigid state.            

Emma slept intermittently for the next hour and John did not budge for fear of further disturbing her already restless sleep.  When she woke she gave John a weak hug and mumbled goodbye.  He watched every step of her departure till the trees, ditches, and thickets took her from his view.  He moved back alongside the water.  Emma’s leaving had seemed somehow otherworldly for by now John’s entire being was hurting from the rage he felt toward the noxious beast that had so harmed her.  There were no black eyes, nor marks from a belt.  The violation Emma had endured was of a far graver sort. 

V

For the hours it took until night fall, John stared into the river entranced.  It no longer exuded calm or soothing, now the water brooded.  The gloomy interplay of the shadows on the moonlight-drenched water’s surface created a picture screen on which were cast the necessities of the night.  A profound darkness descended upon John and all the nature around.  The devils he had kept at bay those years in the hospital he now allowed take advantage.  Even though Emma had spoken with some pity of her father yesterday, in spite of the horrors he inflicted upon her, John’s resolution to act was only briefly tempered by a remembrance of that pity.  His doubts were eradicated by the dark stirrings of the river.  Nature insisted, it urged John forward toward the house.  The midnight air baited him down the railroad with the scent of her hair it had retained all day.  The result of one rape would avenge the victim of another. 

Standing at the driveway entrance, John looked around.  Two other houses were visible but not close by.  He made his way to the back of the bungalow.  The elements carried him menacingly forth; all had gravitated toward killing.  Finding the backdoor locked, John picked up a steel object he did not recognise that lay nearby.  Without effort he thrust the object through the pane of glass above the handle.  He moved into the porch where he remained silently for a second.  Realising his presence had not been detected, John opened another door and entered the kitchen.  A counter ran the length of the wall with the window, and the sink was full of dishes and pots.  Pushed up against the opposite wall was a wooden table covered with a tatty cloth.  There were some presses and shelves in the far off corner where a radio played lowly.  

The countertop was waist high on John and as he rotated left to face the hallway the steel fire-tongs he still carried, trailing behind his body, brushed against some salt and pepper cellars.  They fell against the tiled floor.  The crash was not loud but it elicited responses from all sides of the house.  From separate doorways at the same time, John and Emma’s father entered the hallway.  The father stumbled over the six yards between the two men, clutching a rapidly emptying glass of whiskey.  His drunkenness hampered his charge and gave John the time to see in astonishment the hospital groundskeeper fall towards him.  The father tried to tackle John around the waist.  As the two fell, John whipped the tongs around and brought them down against the left side of his assailant’s skull. 

On hitting the floor, John flinched with pain briefly before remembering the body that lay atop of him motionless.  They had fallen at the junction of the L-shaped hallway.  From the opposite side to her father, Emma came hurtling.  John extricated himself from underneath the dead body just in time to catch Emma who, leaping over that same body had caught its shoulder and tripped.  They embraced frantically.  Over her shoulder John looked down upon the corpse.  The gardener!  Restoring his focus to the sobbing child in his arms John lifted Emma and carried her into the sitting room.

John walked past the couch, littered with empty beer cans, and accidentally kicked over a glass bottle.  He sat down on a soft seat in the corner beside the television.  It was still on, with a grey haired and bespectacled man pontificating to both audience and viewer.  John reached over and turned the television set off.  Emma was curled up with her head pressed against his chest.  John dropped his head so that it nestled lightly in her hair, smothering his senses with its aroma.  He breathed in deeply and tightened his grip of the girl.  It was only then that he realised how fast his heart was pumping.  At that instant John became incredibly self-conscious, he felt Emma must be aware of the palpitations and feared they were disturbing her rest.                   

Eventually, the heartbeats calmed and Emma went to sleep.  Though he closed his eyes, John remained awake for hours.  Not because he had fear or guilt over his actions, in fact he was quite passive.  John’s mind did not dwell on his immediate surroundings or recent actions.  As he dozed John was taken back to the stream by which he had slept the past two nights.  The imaginary water he gathered after dipping his cupped hands into the stream abated the real thirst that came on him in the stuffy sitting room.  Finally, the physically exhausted John succumbed to his myriad of exertions of the past few days and fell into the deepest of sleeps.  

Contact Laurence Fenton