MORNING SERIAL
WE’RE in the middle of the empty quarry, and all this beautiful deadness. Pigeon has stopped, and is standing, as if he’s listening. Perfectly still. Waiting.
“Why here?” I ask him. I try to smile. But it’s not a certain smile. Nervous.
“Why not.”
“Before you say anything. There’s something I want to say.”
“Don’t Iola. Don’t.” His English words are bare and useless.
“I wanted to say sorry.” My English words are so tiny and vast.
“What for. It wasn’t your fault He died.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Whose fault was it then?” “His.”
“He’s dead.”
“Yep.”
We’re quiet a bit. “D’you mind that He died?” “Why would I mind?” Pigeon gives a dry laugh.
“It was the gun that did it.” I hear myself say it, and I don’t know why I did.
46
Pigeon had never considered it before. Perhaps she was right. Maybe it was the gun. That small gun they’d showed him again, in the white room, asked him if that was the kind of gun he’d used. They’d never found it, the real one.
“Yes,” he’d answered them. “Show us how to shoot it.” “Here?”
“Yes.”
“What d’you want me to shoot?”
“That wall.”
“The wall?”
They nodded.
“OK,” he said.
He’d taken the safety catch off. Click. Held it in his hands, two hands, he knew how it could throw a person to the ground. He could feel them watching him in this small room he couldn’t get out of where what you’d done was all that you were. He pointed the gun at the wall. It was like an animal in his white hands. His hands were shaking. That was the animal, the dog, growling. It snarled in his hands, and all he could do was stand while the dog did it. The dog bit at the wall, the box, this pigeonhole.
> Pigeon is the winner of the Wales Book of the Year and the Rhys Davies Fiction Prize. Published by Parthian
CONTINUES TOMORROW