17. Lucky Bastards

Where luck is a relative term

Friday, after seven

On the way into town both Vardaman and Moses notice how quiet the other is and that they both only connect when the taxi turns to Queen’s Hill which looks down over the rail tracks and they can see down there the strange sight of people milling about on the tracks.

“Don’t know what that’s all about,” says the driver without catalyst. “But someone on the radio said there’s a been a jumper on the tracks.”

Moses grimaces, a little performative, Vardaman thinks. But Moses also notices Vardaman’s lack of performance.

Vardaman pays for the ride, and they stand at the roadside twenty yards up from the Pipistrelle in the bus layby where they’re dropped and say nothing to each other but “Alright?” “Yeah.” “Shall we go?” “After you.”

Through the door of the Pips, into that embalming mahogany warmth, that nicotine amber of the clouded headspace, both the boys lift for a few seconds, as they always do on entry, this temple for worshippers of the grain, this commune for people who take their drinking, their conversation, their fun, with a monastic seriousness. To step through the door and know that that is what The Pipistrelle is, is to feel full-chested, full-minded; it is to feel belonging to some festival of the soul. Nothing can prevent that filling of the arteries, but on this occasion, both the boys feel it dampen as they walk further in and closer to the bar. They stand at the one corner, nearest the door, the bend in the bar like a hotspot. The pub is busy, lots of the usual familiar faces that Vardaman and Moses nod to and shake hands with as they pass to their destination, and they both catch Alden’s eye within a second of each other, beckoning them to the top end of the bar, the quieter end where usually a few of the old fellas sit on tall bar stools and talk about the rugby. As they move that way a few strange things happen. Graves stares at them as they pass; Harry slaps Moses on the shoulder, swigs his pint, and says, “You lucky bastards”; Moses nods, as he often does when he thinks he’s not getting a joke, and he laughs as authentically as he can muster, and keeps walking. Whistler raises his pint to them and shakes his head as if they’ve just won a hunk of meat in a raffle. Moses and Vardaman exchange glances. Raul is about to head them off at the pass, they can see him coming, a mighty tall pirate rattling and jangling with his chains and finger rings. “You fuckers,” he calls across at them with a grin in his beard. “You fuckers will have to tell me the whole fucking story right now.” Moses quickly passes a fiver to Alden who’s poured them two pints and dropped them heavy-handedly – which is his way – onto the bar hopefully before Raul can slide in on the round.

“Lucky bastards,” Alden says.

“What’s going on?” Vardaman says to him.

“Why are people congratulating us?” says Moses.

“You haven’t heard?” says Alden.

“Heard what?” Both boys shake their heads. Moses takes a swig of his pint.

But Raul is next to them now. “Aaron,” he says. “Have you not heard?”

“What about him?” says Vardaman.

“Fucking dead,” says Raul, and he cackles like he’s just stolen the punchline of a joke off someone.