He goes very quiet. His dark eyes look like glass. The fur of his parka hood brushes against my cheek. I stretch my fingers out in his pocket, circling them round and round on his thigh. With my other hand, I shove my fingers beneath his belt until I find the zip. I open his fly. I don’t look at his eyes. I look instead at the fur in close-up. Strands of it go wet with my breath, get stuck on my lip. I stroke him, and it feels softer than I expected, but also drier.

Shane stands there and lets me do what I want in the darkness.

I want my fingers caught in his little hairs. My hand rising up and down. I want his hand over my head. His hand over my whole head.

Every night after that, we meet in the look-out, and I open Shane’s fly and dig until I find what I want.

On Shane’s hands there’s turkey blood from his job at the farm. One night he brings a bird’s foot with him. ‘Listen,’ he says, pulling the tendons back and forth. The claw stretches towards me.

‘I can’t hear anything.’

‘Listen.’

He pulls again and the bones inside the turkey’s skin shift and groan. The sound reminds me of the creak of Rob’s not-real leather jacket.

‘Are they dead?’ I ask, ‘when you pluck them?’

‘’Course.’

‘Are they whole?’

‘Headless,’ he says. Then he adds, ‘And bleeding.’

I imagine rows of them hanging up, their necks sputtering gore, their feet creaking.

‘They’re completely dead, though,’ I say. ‘They’re not twitching, or anything.’

‘They’re still warm,’ he says, leading my hand to his pocket.

Sometimes, he brings me back a handful of the prettiest feathers, speckled with brown and yellow, like tiger fur. Not gaudy, though. Fine. On the way home from the pools, I stick them behind my ears, through my buttonholes, in my hair. And at night, in bed, I run them over my belly, my tits, letting the lightness linger on each nipple, and I think of Shane’s hands.

eleven: Howard, December, 1985

eleven

Howard

December, 1985

I came home from work on Friday night and found Kathryn sitting on Robert’s bed, talking to him and Luke. The two boys were propped up on pillows, leaning against the headboard, and my wife was curled at the end of the bed, one foot dangling over the side.

‘Before I was married, I might have done,’ she said, laughing.

Kathryn was the last to see me standing in the doorway. Robert nudged his mother’s knee with his foot, and she twisted round. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Howard. You’re home.’

I loosened my tie. ‘Yes. I’m home.’