Then school came to an end, people grew up, and what John gave out came back tenfold. Because those kids in the playground pushed too far often grow into adults who just won’t put up with it any more. Not that John cared, because out on the farm he was still the biggest and the meanest, and he had enough targets on which to take out his frustrations. And those who had hid behind him, they’d continued to do so, together keeping their own little underground economy going, never concerning themselves with what folk thought, happy to screw over another if it meant easy money, cheap booze, and a laugh at someone else’s expense.
And now, years later, the fact that it was the weekend meant nothing to John; it was not a thing to celebrate. The heat from the July sun was just something else to swear at, days off were a luxury he’d never known, and the only respite would be the homebrew he drank most evenings while watching television. It wasn’t the best of lives, but it was his life and the only one he knew how to live.
John was up early, like every other day regardless of how hungover he felt. Kicking open the back door to stare at the yard in front of him gave him no sense of worth, just a deadness deep inside which sunk deeper by the day, a lead weight out of view stretching down and down into the darkness of himself.
The yard itself was a mess and a faint mist hung in the air stinking of rot and decay. It was a rich smell, and sweet, and it reached into John’s throat and made him cough. So he spat it out, dark green phlegm spattering in the mud.
Against the wall of one of the outbuildings, a coil of barbed wire had somehow managed to spring itself open and now sat in a pile of shit-covered straw John hadn’t bothered to clean up for months.
A tractor rusted in the corner, a couple of sorry-looking hens roosting on it, staring their tiny, cold black eyes at him with a meanness John had always suspected hens harboured deep down in their souls. They were evil birds, he was sure of it, and he hated them.
Pulling on his worn and tired wellington boots, which were covered in a painful rash of patches usually used on bike inner tubes, John kicked a stone up and out from the muck in front of him, grabbed it, and hurled it at the birds. They had already moved by the time it arrived to clatter against the tractor, and John swore, wishing he’d hit one, but glad that he hadn’t, because buying more hens was something he could be doing without. Unless of course La’ll – little – Nick, had managed to nab a few from down the dale. He was good at that was La’ll Nick, being a sneaky little bastard with the build of a starved pixie. And down dale too many town houses with a couple of chickens in their gardens had lost birds to his deft hands.
John chuckled to himself, the act of it causing him to cough. He’d bumped into Nick the day before during a trip into Hawes. Nick had managed to pass on to Harry a few crates of beer he’d nabbed from a delivery truck he’d seen outside a pub a few weeks ago. He’d waited for the usual noise about it to die down, then called John and said he had some going spare. Good stuff, too, and John had enjoyed far too many of them the previous night. But free booze was there to be enjoyed, wasn’t it? And he couldn’t help but enjoy it more knowing that someone else had paid for it.
The rest of the yard was a confused mess of half empty fertiliser bags, orange bailer twine, farming implements, and broken fencing. But John didn’t see any of it because it had never looked any different and it was all that he had ever known. So he strode out from the house and into the day, wiping his nose on the back of his left hand still grubby from the day before, remembering halfway across the yard that the task he’d set for himself was to take the one working tractor on the farm, hitch a trailer to it, then drive up into the steep fields on the fell behind the house and bring in the hay bales he’d done the week before. There had been rain since, so they were probably ruined, but John didn’t really care. The animals would eat the hay or starve.
Turning back to the house, John quickly grabbed himself a half-eaten pie from the fridge, filled a grubby old lemonade bottle with water, then headed back outside. Which was when an arm hooked itself around his neck, a kick to the back of his knees took his legs out from under him, and John found himself on suspended in the air just enough to start choking. He struggled against the vice-like grip under his chin, his hands clawing uselessly at the arm which had him. Violent swearing and curses, threaded with saliva, caught in his throat, then his vision grew fuzzy, his head started to swim, and a few seconds later his world fell to a thick
