Never Quite Free// Charity

Daisy. Strange how the smallest thing can take him back to the garden, to the garlands of daisies tipped pink that grew at the borders clumped with other wildflowers. To the chains that the Tansy kids used to tie, Scutcher fumbling over knots in delicate stalks. Out here, he hasn’t seen many flowers; a few straggling dandelions springing up around the long grass where fence posts sat stuck in the ground. The wind would break their stems, the earth has been churned up and chewed on, nothing but dried jaundiced grass and thick prickly scrub clinging desperately to the ground. It’s nice to know that some flowers still grow out here, “Daisy,” he repeats, a slow nod of his head, saying it will help him remember. And really he should- he’s been coming in here often enough. Back home, he knew the shopkeepers- though of course they knew him better. By reputation, watching him and Tallow closely when they were children and they were starving, I see you kid, think about stuffin’ anything in yer pockets and the peacekeepers will come for yer tongues, asking if his daddy’s farm had been sunk yet for almost all of his life, speaking slowly and loudly because so many people seemed to think deaf and dumb went hand in hand. He couldn’t pretend that the anonymity of the east wasn’t refreshing. One of its better qualities really. “That’s a real pretty name.”

Drifting , it takes him a little while to realise that when she said ‘I don’t know yours’ it wasn’t meant as a statement of fact, more that she wanted his name too. So why not say ‘what’s your name’? But people rarely just come out and say what they want; it will always be a constant source of confusion for Scutcher, but people aren’t about to change just for him. Another thing for him to just get on and deal with. He counts out his money. Three dollars and twelve cents was sort of dear, but he shouldn’t complain; people out east have to make a living where they can, the market is cornered out here so they can push the prices if needs be and from what he’s seen there are a lot of Rookwoods…or at least he assumes they are all Rookwoods, each carrying that same pale complexion that doesn’t really seem to fit in with the tough leathery skins of district ten. It makes Daisy, pale eyes, pale skin and pale yellow hair seem very fragile indeed; as delicate as her namesake.

“Scutcher…Tansy,” he says solemnly. For one minute he thinks he might have given her a new name; been someone else entirely. He could quite easily have been some wandering cowboy with a mysterious past back west, who hadn’t left everything so messy and bloody and ruined back home. But since when has Scutcher ever been good at thinking on his feet? His name drips easily out of his mouth as though coated in rich, warm, melting butter. And besides, it wouldn’t have done any good anyway. She probably knew Lizard- a lot of people seemed to know Lizard, most of them not quite favourably and since Lizard called him ‘cuz’ and ‘Scutch’ all the time that little ruse wouldn’t have lasted very long. Being someone else though, however briefly, for one glorious second might have been nice. He wraps his fingers around the packet of smokes, before tucking them into the pocket of his shirt.

Some part of him thinks it might be nice to start up a conversation; he’s had no one to talk to who wasn’t barking orders at him but Lizard for weeks now. Back home, he always thought of himself as a solitary person and wouldn’t have minded it much- but that was safe in the knowledge that he always could talk to someone if he wanted to, Tallow, Noreen- even if being around her had always made his words getting even more tangled up than usual, face flushing the deepest shade of crimson or his pigs. They weren’t here anymore; Tallow at home now, probably getting along just fine without him he liked to hope, Noreen in heaven or some other thought that was supposed to be a comfort to the bereaved and while there are pigs in the east, they are desperately sad creatures who have never been spoken to kindly before and just don’t respond to his voice the way that the pigs did back home. “Uh,” he starts…opening his mouth before he realises that he just has no follow through. Nothing to say, nothing that people normally open conversations with. His brain is a barren wasteland just like the vast plains in the east, no questions, no statements, no jokes, nothing. Honestly, he doesn’t even know why he tries at all. The result is always the same. “Thank you,”he mumbles instead, nodding his head at her. “Thanks Daisy,” a quick correction to show that he still remembers her name, shuffling away, not noticing that he hasn’t got his change from the five dollar bill that he gave her. The bell rings the way it always does.

Outside, buzzards are circling like they know something that the people of the town don’t. He pulls out the rolling papers and tobacco, making himself a cigarette and slotting it into his mouth- the first one of the day, because even if the whole world shifts violently out of his control, Noreen, Tallow…the baby … the farm, there will always be the first rush of the first cigarette of the day. He leans against the wooden wall of Rookwood’s store, shutting his eyes and feeling the crisp wind against the thin skin of his eyelids. He slides the match, lights the tip, sucking in the fumes and he could be just about anywhere, the worst place in the world, the best. It wouldn’t matter. His shoulders slump, he crosses his legs as he stands, opening his eyes to watch the tumble weed. A little girl stands in front of one of the ramshackle wooden houses, her little hand clenched around a piece of chalk.

She’s playing hopscotch, tongue stuck out as she jumps and hops in all the right places, her dirty blonde curls tied up in two bouncing pig tails. Stopping, she stares at Scutcher for a minute, sticking one dirty finger into her crusty little nose. She finds a booger, eats the booger and then grins at Scutcher, waving her arm. Grinning a little, he raises a hand and waves back but a voice from inside the house calls to her and she runs inside, and it’s like she takes all of the momentary rush of life in this place back with her.

There’s an old man sitting against a building with a Stetson over his face and there are piled up bones. Scutcher inhales, exhales, twisting smoke rising around his face.

Stupid. Scutcher could kick himself for forgetting his change; especially since it ain’t even his money, not really. It needs to go back home, every penny, for the debt, for the farm as well. Lying, looking up at the mould and the damp in the ceiling at night, Scutcher is terrified to think of what’s happening to the farm without him. Can he count on his father to do his best to keep it going, or will it all fall to Tallow? She’ll be fine, he keeps having to remind himself. He’s the one who needs her- the weight around her neck; she’ll be better than fine without him. Scutcher takes the money and nods in thanks to Daisy; she didn’t need to give it back, the Rookwoods probably wouldn’t say no to an extra dollar.

So of course he won’t begrudge her the cigarette, happily slides one out of the box and hands it to her. Cupping his hand around the match to protect it from the brittle wind, he held it to the tip of Daisy’s cigarette, watching her choke and sputter around it, spitting it out onto the floor. “Are you…okay?” he pips quietly, not putting the smoke and the coughing together, so he doesn’t know it’s her first time. As far as Scutcher’s concerned, it’s the air in the east, ripping shreds into their lungs, the rising damp at the heart of them. The sadness, the hardness, it pools up in the air around them with sharpened claw and fanged tooth, getting up inside of their throats. But Daisy is pale and delicate, a little serious looking but still gentle, still whole- perhaps people can be happy here.Perhaps ,in time, he will be one of them. Scutcher doesn’t quite believe that though; they told him that grief would wane with time and one year on he still feels Noreen’s absence like a deep, bleeding welt reaching right down into the centre of him, so he highly doubts that the rest of it will be quick about fading. Scutcher’s never quick about anything anyway, not when it comes to talking, to moving, to figuring things out so he can’t see himself being quick to forget all that has come to pass.

Stooping, he picks up the cigarette for her, from its place in the dirt. It seems fine to Scutcher, there’s no harm in it getting a little dusty, though the fall to the ground extinguished the tip a little. Taking out his own cigarette and slotting Daisy’s in his mouth, he sucks hard on it so that the tip glows orange in the sun once more, handing it back off to Daisy. “That aint sickness you got there is it?” Scutcher asks her quietly, voice tipped with concern. There were plenty of ways that a cough could go bad; going straight to the chest when there was a thick frost in the air, or the throat cancer he remembered take the rancher who had first shown him to Noreen’s garden. Scutcher never did find out what happened to him. Perhaps he came out here, to where all the lost souls go.

The purgatory of the east; not exactly heaven, but if you’ve been before you know that it isn’t hell either. The sentiment feels incredibly apt, considering how heavy the air is with waiting. Waiting for the cowboys to drift in when the season picks up, waiting for them to leave again, the silence rising between Daisy and Scutcher once again, waiting to be filled. He almost wishes that she’d never come out to give him his dollar, but he can’t leave now she’s given it back- it would just be rude. But honestly, that sickness question is pretty much all he has.

What did he first say to make Noreen become his friend? How did conversations with Tallow normally go? It’s not like Scutcher has forgotten either; it’s just that they aren’t exactly easy to replicate. With Noreen their meeting had been dramatic, he remembers that, so all awkwardness had to be pushed aside to deal with the wolf and Noreen passing out and everything else about that moonlight night with the silvery luminescence shining on the first green shoots to rise from the ground that he only has to close his eyes to recall. And as for Tallow…well…when had he not been talking to his sister? No awkwardness there at all.

And honestly and truly, that’s as far as his experience with girls goes. As far as his experience with people goes for the most part too. It took Lizard all of two days and a belly full of liquor in a bar where old cowboys sing sad songs into their bottles to ask Scutcherthe question. You ever even been with a girl Scutcher? Only when Lizard said it, it hadn’t been as polite as all that. Scutcher got cagey, looked down at the watermarks in the table, sticky rings like those encircling a planet. He didn’t want to talk about it. But if he said no then he felt sure that Lizard would have taken him somewhere to try and fix it and that was, quite frankly, the very last thing he was after. So he says “Yes,” takes a sip of his beer, stoney faced as he mumbles, “I aint gonna talk about it though” and one look says quite clearly that he isn’t bullshitting on this one. Lizard ignores him though, asks questions, says things that makes Scutcher want to snap like he’d done with his father on the night that hell came to the Tansy farm and punch him in the face, but he steels himself and refuses to do that. If it one good can come out of moving out east, it’s a chance to escape the violence and he won’t take a whiff of it around him. Let Lizard have his bar brawls and his fighting and his feuds. Scutcher is going to wake up without aching for once.

If only in the physical sense of the word.

“Been here long?” he finally manages to ask though of course the answer will be ‘her whole life’, her family’s sign is above the door. “I just…I moved here last month…” she knows this too, or will have at least worked it out since last month was when he started coming in the store. “Staying with my cousin Lizard,” a nod of his head. “I dunno if you…know him,” everyone seems to know Lizard though. Because, for better or for worse, he can talk to people. He knows how they tick. Not like Scutcher who’s stuck here alone and flailing pathetically in the dark.

His past experience is useless with Daisy and anyway she isn’t like either Noreen or Tallow. She feels like something too pale and too fragile. She’s quiet like Noreen was, but with her there was always this sense of underlying strength, the slight dry humour in the twitch of her mouth because his Noreen had been real smart. And Tallow is a thousand miles from shy, delicate Daisy. Before it had been like Noreen and Tallow were polar opposites of one another, but put them next to the quiet girl from the shop who he’s smiled at for almost a month now and who’s only just talking to him and they seem to fit together more closely than he first thought. Mostly though, it’s because they are both gone in a sense, while he is still here. He’s never felt quite as lonely standing next to a person as he does right now.

Scutcher shakes his head when she asks him if he’s been round the rest of his cousins much, really he hardly knows them at all- didn’t know much about Lizard either a month ago (though arguably now he knows a bit too much) but at least the last name was familiar. He’d run out East to get away, but some part of Scutcher still wanted to hold on tight to the memories. That old adage, ‘The Tansy kids against the world’ might still ring true, since Lizard is a Tansy kid and what else can Scutcher do really but hope that blood was thicker than water out here in the East too? Clinging on to faces he can just about remember from a funeral service some years ago, to a shared last name and the bones of his blood is the same as Noreen’s ring on a chain hanging around his neck. “He’s been real nice,” Scutcher feels the need to add, because despite his reputation and penchant for fist fights(Scutcher can believe that he’s had run ins with the brothers from the store, which explains his reluctance to go buy cigarettes) honestly he has. Nicer than Scutcher deserves really.

You gonna do the cowboy thing? You seem brave enough, Brave? Scutcher’s pretty sure he’s never seemed brave to anyone before. “Gonna try and get on a roundup next season, sure,” says Scutcher with a nod, since working was the whole reason he was here- was all that he could do now to try and atone for his many many seasons and send money home. “I aint got much experience though….we’s pig folk back home so I aint so good on horses….but I gotta work, so I’ll do whatever anybody puts me to.” Less experience on horses was an understatement and put the Tansy kids apart from the people in the district who had been born in the correct saddle position. They’d never even owned horses to get around, though his Momma used to be in horses- so she said- Lizard though, assured Scutcher that there wasn’t an animal he couldn’t handle and certainly no filly that could throw him so he’d teach Scutcher. That hasn’t materialised though, hard to come across horses living in a squalid hovel really. Noreen would have taught him- if she was still alive- he cant remember that the horse from that night had been called, the one that had thrown her. But then again, if she’d still been alive then Scutcher more than likely wouldn’t have come here in the first place.

Aside from the horses, Scutcher feels like the cowboy lifestyle would suit him. Out there in the quiet of the open fields, rolling hills, plains and rocky terrain; the settlements in ten were small- but the land spread wide across the horizon, varied wildly and took on a character all of its own, plunged now into a melancholy, lonely sort of autumn. “I’m…at the pig lot right now, s’my day off today,” he continues, running a hand through his curls. “Don’t wanna be there no longer than I have to, it aint a good place.” Scutcher shudders just thinking about it. “But work’s work I guess…I aint smart enough for much else. Not like running a store or nothin’….dealin’ with all them people all day. Just as well…bet most folks would prefer havin a pretty girl serve them over me any day.” Flushing red he realised that his words had slipped out and he’d called Daisy pretty. Factually it was true; she was blonde and delicate, wispy and insubstantial as cigarette smoke so maybe she didn’t mind. Bet lots of folk came in here and told her she was pretty, but Scutcher didn’t want her to flinch away and think she was a creep for doing it.

“Not that I…” he added quickly, not sure what to say now he’d started. “Not that I was lookin or nothing.” Which was also true, in a sense. He’d seenDaisy and seen that she was pretty, but seeing and looking were two different beasts entirely- looking suggesting something purposeful, like a mission or something, while seeing was just casual. Scutcher had been in the store and happened to see that Daisy was pretty. He wouldn’t look though, not after Tallow and Noreen- two women too bright in their own ways that they had burned out each of his eyes and ruined his vision entirely.