The Walk Home Part 7

Jozef handed him the spanners, and the boy raised his eyebrows: "Just now?"

Jozef nodded: "When you've changed out of those."

He pointed at his shoes.

"Then you can spend the afternoon plastering, on the first floor, if you want. I can pay you. Time and a half, yes? So you can buy your own work boots."

Stevie gave a small smile, and then he asked: "You'll be payin me fae what I've saved you, aye?"

He flicked his head at the towel rail, so then Jozef had to smile himself, because the boy was right. He'd already done the calculations in the van last night: two towel rails were three hundred pounds, give or take. It was a good chunk of what was owed him from Mount Florida, and there was some satisfaction in that.

11.

Stevie's cousins lived in the high flats; Uncle Brian's boys and Malky Jnr.'s. They were bigger than Stevie, all in secondary, but he still got to go to their houses after school, some afternoons. If his Mum had work on, then Stevie's Dad would arrange it, so they'd be there at the school gates with their pushbikes, and Stevie got to sit on their handlebars, gripping tight, while they rode him home fast to make him laugh.

There were always kids out around the high blocks, even on days it was cold. Way more kids than lived round Stevie's, playing football on the gra.s.s where it said no ball games. There were plenty games he could join in with, even if there were some kids who wouldn't have ita"get tae f.u.c.ka"Stevie's cousins being big, it meant he was safe, and he could always go and be with the older boys anyhow.

Tall as men to him, Stevie stood amid them while they traded words, smoking f.a.gs, after the kickabout was done with. The days got longer, turning into summer, and all the wee kids were called inside, but Stevie could sit out on the low wall with the big boys till his Mum arrived.

His Dad liked him playing with his cousins, and after school broke up he dropped him there some mornings, if he had a late start at work. Uncle Brian and Auntie Cathy would be out already, and then Stevie's Dad would have to lean on the buzzer to get the big boys out of bed.

"Did your Maw say I was droppin Stevie?"

"Aye, aye. Nae bother. We just forgot."

They'd come down the stairwell in their boxers and bare feet to fetch him, and Stevie's Mum rolled her eyes about that later when she heard.

"Bunch a layabouts, so they are."

"Ach naw. Just growin boys, enjoyin their holidays."

Stevie's Dad thought it was funny, and Stevie didn't mind it either, because after his Dad was gone, he got to sit and watch Uncle Brian's big telly while his cousins slept on a bit.

Only then Stevie's Mum got him up early one morning, first thing, and she didn't take him to his cousins'; she took him with her on the bus instead, and she dropped him off at Uncle Eric's.

"Sure this is all right? It won't be every morning, just the days I'm working."

"Aye, on you go." Eric smiled while Stevie came inside.

But then after his Mum left, the flat was quiet, and Stevie stood and looked about himself. The old man didn't have a telly, or toys, or kids out playing in his back court. Just his desk and all those files.

They made Stevie think about that picture he stole.

It was months ago now, but he knew his Mum had kept it: at home in a s...o...b..x in her bedside drawer, alongside the coaster with the two of them on it. And then Stevie worried: if his Gran had told Eric. If that's why he was here and not with his cousins. He looked at his uncle, who pointed to the sofa: "Sit down, son, an I'll read tae you. I've some stories you should know, aye?"

Uncle Eric read to him every morning he was there over the holidays.

It was always the Bible, so Stevie thought this was maybe his punishment. Except the old man didn't plod through from start to finish like Papa Robert. He told Stevie: "I'll only read you they bits that matter. Promise."

Some days he'd have the big book open and ready on the sofa. Other mornings, Eric would thumb for ages through the gold-rimmed pages, scanning the lines, whistling through his big teeth. He'd break off in the middle of a line, impatient. Or he'd mutter: "No no no, b.l.o.o.d.yh.e.l.lno."

And start afresh, somewhere entirely different.

Eric told Stevie: "Not aw the Bible is poetry. They bits that are, but. They'd stand alongside any book. Ecclesiastes now, or mebbe Lamentations. For love is as strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals ae fire, which hath a most vehement flame."

The old man sucked in his breath, eyebrows up, like that was amazing.

"Aw that heart, aye? Cannae beat it. That's Song ae Solomon."

Eric always said what part he was reading before he started; the book and the chapter it was from, and what the people in it were called. Stevie could read a bit by now, so he'd sit close, and follow his uncle's finger along the words. But there were so many of them, and they were dead small too, it made Stevie tired, so he'd shut his eyes, and then he could feel Eric speaking more than hear him. It was like a hum in his chest, low and steady, and that was nice, so Stevie mostly just followed the old man's voice; the sounds it made if not the sense.

After the story was finished, Eric would get Stevie to say what he remembered.

"Just tell me they bits that stuck."

He'd tap Stevie's forehead, gently, with a fingertip, and then he'd smile when Stevie couldn't come up with anything much.

But there were days he made sure of Stevie's attention: "Can you mind who Isaac is, son?"

Eric stopped one morning, in the middle of a reading, and when Stevie shook his head, the old man said: "He's Abraham's boy. Right?"

Sitting back, eyes sharp.

"You listenin?"

Stevie nodded: he was now.

Eric told him this story was important; he was reading it for something he was drawing. And then he went over the parts he'd read so far.

"Abraham's takin Isaac up tae Moriah. They're climbing up the mountain. An it's because G.o.d tellt him, see? Abraham's tae make a burnt offerin ae his boy."

Stevie nodded again, even if he didn't know what that meant. Only Eric wasn't fooled: "Abraham's takin Isaac up the hill tae kill him."

Stevie blinked.

It hadn't sounded like that was happening. Just a lot of words; just the same as Eric always read. Stevie leaned forward and stared at the page, but he could only find the big black pu, and wu and le that started the columns. Nothing about dads who kill their sons. He'd never heard a story like that before. His own Dad shouted sometimes, if Stevie dawdled, or whined too much about having cold fingers, but that's as far as he went.

Eric shut the book, and then he got up and went to his bureau. He chose one of his good pencils, and a thick sheet of paper, and then he beckoned Stevie over.

"Come an see."

He drew all the Patriarchs instead of reading more; Eric laid them out in a family tree, and he said it would help Stevie understand it all better, in time anyhow, the way the stories and the people all connected.

"They're aw relat.i.t."

Stevie stood at his uncle's shoulder, watching the figures appearing, with their beards and robes and sandals. Old Abraham and Sarah were first, at the top of the sheet, and Eric told him they were childless for a hundred years, before the Lord intervened. He drew their boy underneath them.

"Thine oanly son Isaac, whom thou lovest."

He looked like a fine young man, broad and strong, and a bit like Stevie's cousins, except the drawn boy's hair was long, and the curls went down beyond his shoulders. Stevie leaned forward, to read what he was called again, so he could say if Eric asked. He sounded the letters out, that double-a, under his breath, and Eric smiled: "It was just the same for me, son. Aw they names. Aw they stories Papa Robert tellt me. I couldnae mind them, no for years."

The old man nodded, but then he lifted his pencil, like a warning.

"They caught me up, but. In the end."

Eric said the stories came down on him, fast. Still did.

"They've a force tae them can crush your ribs."

When Eric had finished Isaac's feet, he read Genesis 22 again, and this time Stevie heard how G.o.d told Abraham to take his son, go into Moriah, and that he packed an a.s.s with enough wood for the pyre. When they were climbing the mountain, Isaac said: "Faither?"

And Abraham answered: "Here am I, my son."

So Isaac asked him: "Behold the fire an the wood, Faither. But wheer's the lamb?"

Eric stopped there a moment, and Stevie kept his eyes on the page, waiting to know what happened next.

"The Lord will provide."

His uncle said it low, like he was angry, and Stevie thought he'd maybe stop again, but Eric's finger moved on, along the lines, and he read how Abraham and Isaac kept on walking, no more questions or other talking. Until they got to the top of the mountain.

"Then Abraham bound his son."

Eric said he tied him up with ropes and laid him down.

"Upon the altar, upon the wood. An Abraham stretched forth his hand."

Only then Eric sat back, and lifted his finger off the page. Just when Stevie needed to hear how the story turned out.

Stevie wasn't even certain if he'd heard it right: did Abraham have a knife? He couldn't be lifting that, surely. Not against his son. He leaned forwards, searching the page now, except he didn't know where they'd got to, and Eric was still saying nothing, just sitting there silent, both hands in his lap.

Stevie had to nudge his arm twice, three times, before his uncle turned back to the book: quiet now, like he didn't much want to. Eric read how an angel called, and then Abraham saw a ram, caught by the horns in a thorn bush, not far from where he was standing. Stevie listened hard, while his uncle kept going, his voice all flat. He read what felt like pages, long conversations, all between Abraham and G.o.d, about how Abraham would be blessed. But there was nothing in them about Isaac, not a word, and Stevie needed to know, so he b.u.t.ted in: "Did he untie his boy?"

Eric looked at him with damp eyes.

"He did."

"Did he hurt him?"

"Naw. Naw, son. He did not."

"He killt the sheep?"

"Aye. He killt the sheep instead."

Stevie was satisfied, sort of. Isaac was okay, but Eric wasn't. His cheeks were wet, and his eyes, and the big man didn't finish the reading, he just blew his nose and cleared his throat, and made tea for them both. Eric brought the mugs through from the kitchen, and he drank his sitting on the sofa, his eyes unfocused, and he did no more drawing that afternoon.

But Eric was better the day after, and he drew a wife for Isaac called Rebekah, and two sons with two more wives underneath them. Esau, with hair on his arms, and Jacob without; Rachel's face smiling, and Leah's solemn; Rachel with two children and Leah with seven. At the end of the morning, the sheet had Abraham's twelve great-grandsons s.p.a.ced neatly along the bottom: the strong boys G.o.d had promised him up on the mountain, the men who went on to father all the tribes of Israel. Eric wrote the names under each, in neat capitals, all the same size, and when he'd finished, he pa.s.sed a palm over his handiwork and sighed.

"No life without pain, son. Not a soul without failins. But at least this man's soul enjoys good in his labour, aye."

He smiled, and then he pointed at all the rolls in front of him in the bureau. He told Stevie: "Aw my trial an error pieces, see?"

Eric said he kept them, in case they were needed. For the special picture, or just for the others he drew until he got there. He pulled one out, and he held it up.

"Prototypes an sketches. Just like the wans I look over wae your Maw."

Eric said to bear in mind they still needed work, but he rolled off the rubber band and uncurled the papers.

"See them now? They're lines ae perspective. They'll no be there when it's done, you get me?"

Stevie nodded, and then Eric gave him the pictures.

"On you go, son. See what you can make ae them."

The roll was city scenes, mostly. Scattered with scribbly figures, walking away into blankness at the edges. The pictures weren't finished, but the place they showed was clear, and Stevie spread them out across the floor, to get up close to the details. Glasgow, seen through Eric's eyes. The city had all the same tenements and schemes and Victorian splendour, and pedestrianised shopping streets in the centre, except the place was full of clues that Stevie knew now from the Bible. So when he really looked, he could see beyond the concrete and sandstone, to the timbered high-rises that stood along the skyline. They were just like the high flats where his cousins lived, except these were built from hand-hewn blocks and cedars of Lebanon. Some were finished, some still under construction, but there were no piledrivers or cranes here: the towers in Eric's pictures were made by armies of hard-hatted, T-s.h.i.+rted labourers. There were no robes and sandals either, just jeans and trainers and work clothes, and most of the folk Eric drew were just going about their ordinary, everyday business. But somewhere in each picture, there'd be a small pocket of rapture or of pa.s.sion, you just had to know where to look, and Stevie soon got practised. Spotting a bush in flames on a winter-bare Possil allotment, or Ruth making her promise to Naomi at a Garscube Road bus stop. Stevie found Nebuchadnezzar too, dressed up like an Orangeman for the Walk: a big man, laid face-down on the ca.n.a.l bank. Hardened in pride, his dark suit wet with the dew of heaven, his collarette torn and the dawn sun on his bowler hat, thrown off a short way back along the towpath. Stevie knew it was the old king, because of the donkeys, you never saw them in real Maryhill, but there they were, grazing the verges.

There was plenty he missed, always figures he couldn't guess at yet; arms stretched out in ecstasy, or it could just as easily be lamentation. But anyhow, somewhere above them, in behind the tenement windows, Stevie knew there were fathers who loved G.o.d and would sacrifice their children.

12.

Graham was none too sure about Stevie spending his days at Eric's. Lindsey had told him it would just be a stop gap, just for the holidays, but she even had the old guy picking Stevie up from school now. Graham's Mum said: "It's only now an again. Tae help you out, son, while you're savin."

She knew Graham wanted a new baby, and that Lindsey wanted to move to a new place, and she reckoned it was good for Eric to feel useful to them in the meantime.

"You know how he can brood, son. Better he feels part ae the faimly again."

Lindsey said the same, and she told Graham it was a shame, dead wrong, how Papa Robert had cut Eric out, all those long years.

Graham couldn't argue with that, even if he wanted, he was never any good at holding his own in arguments. But he thought it wasn't about whose fault it was anyhow: it was the old guy's health that had him worried.

When he was a boy, Graham used to go to Eric's with his Mum. The times he remembered most were just after Auntie Franny died, and he knew his uncle wasn't well, even before anyone told him. The old guy made Graham nervy; he'd most often be teary or angry when they arrived, all unshaven, and raw about the eyes. He did no drawings then, he'd just sit up at the bedroom window while Brenda wiped and tidied, and Graham watched him through the half-open doorway. His face was always wet, his eyes always leaking, and it was like they weren't there for him. Eric was clever, everyone said so, but Graham knew there were times his uncle couldn't even see who was in front of his nose. He never even said cheerio when they went up the road.