Loiterer

I’ve been watching that girl for months now. And it seems as if there is nothing and everything going on inside her head. All the townsfolk gossip about her and her strange behaviour. How she sometimes turns up at Fr. Twoomey’s sermons, at strange off peak hours. Though she never prays or receives, she just sits there. The crazy fool. And how she hangs outside the local shops by herself. But, never buys a scrap. You see her jet fuel hair, her long, strikingly thin figure leaning against the wall. Chatting away with beggars, Blending in with the bleak sky and the poverty.  
She is a striking girl. Almost beautiful… If it weren’t for that emptiness in her eyes.

At any rate, she is gone now. She just disappeared one day. Her parents’ picture was in the local paper on Sunday. Underneath the picture of their dry faces read: “We are too shocked to cry. We just want her home.” I don’t believe them for a minute.
I want to find the girl, put her in her place. She’s a real nutball, A danger to society, for all we know… I can’t stop thinking about her. Where she is, what she is doing, who she is with.

I’m driving around Ballynabog now. The poxy dog is making a racket in the backseat. I keep calling it ‘Archer’, but it won’t respond to its new name. I must call it Lily to shut it up, Though I hate saying that.  I’m the only car on the road for miles. I think I’ve come to the right place. There’s too few houses and farmland, Too many rocks and the edgings of forests. I’m looking out for a shock of white against the yellow-green landscape. I realise how much I long to spot her. My heart is fluttering, like it did when I was last with Lily. I hope I don’t do anything drastic. But the moment I tell myself I shouldn’t sin, is the moment my mind goes numb. The sky fades away. I’m determined now.

I drive for hours. Looping the town border. I have my eye out for any unusual details. It starts getting dark and I spot something. An electric barb fence, all tangled up. It wasn’t like that before. I find somewhere to park immediately. I climb under the fence and I realise the dog has followed me. It’s too fat to get through. Pawing pathetically at the wire, It Looks at me for sympathy and starts  crying. I give her a kick through, Not a bother.

Sure enough someone has been here. The long, unmanaged grass has a path smoothened out. I’m so spurred. I feel like Dr. Jones from that Crime Show on RTE. My heart is fluttering even quicker. I run. The path leads me to a forest, Where I am still running. The dog is lagging, but will catch up soon. 
I know I am close. On the damp, woody air is the scent of a female.

I see her. She is lying by a tree among the damp pine needles. Wearing a queer white gown and a golden coronet in her hair. Her eyes are closed. I hope she is not dead. When I reach her, She opens her eyes and takes me in. Yet she doesn’t stir. She is still as a daisy in a desert.
 “I love you” I say aloud. 
“Fuck. You tool.” I say in my head. My cheeks go scarlet. 
“I found you, I mean. I found you, you crazy girl. Your parents are so worried. What the hell are you thinking?”  It’s now I am waiting. I am half expecting her to rise up like an angel. Expecting her to be more than the Irish girl she is. Oh, how free she looks. She is more free than I will ever be. 
When I die, what will I face but flames, redemption and… Lily. Anger and tears swell. I feel like boxing something.

Meanwhile the girl does not speak. Her eyes are closed again. 
Its late, Its frosty. She is thin as a rake but she does not feel the cold. Unperturbed by everything, she is. “What are you lying there for? You’ll freeze to death.” I say. 
“I don’t mind.” She says in her deep, knowing voice. 
“Who are you?” I ask
She doesn’t answer for a long time, then finally says;
“People call me Tabitha. Who I am is a nobody. I belong to nobody. When I die, nobody will weep.”
I want to strangle this being, who thinks she is so special and free. As light as air, Who the wind sweeps through without consigning the harm of emotion. I want her to suffer. She reminds me of Lily.

I am pacing now. Wondering to do next. She is still as ever, probably about to die. 
The dog finally catches up. Panting up at me with those dumb, loving eyes.
 “You want to die?” I say to Tabitha.
“It doesn’t matter either way.” She replies.
 I feel a heavy weight drop to the pit of my abdomen. 
“As I said, I do not belong in anybody’s heart. I am not really living. I have strolled around and seen things. But all I have felt is free.” I almost lose it, But I restrain myself.

A plan formulates in my mind. Quick as I can, I run back to the car. I rummage through the boot for the lump of metal that brought Lily her peace. I load it in a whisk, and return to Tabitha, who is petting the dog. “So you’re going to murder me? Seems pointless.” She says.
“No.” I say, cocking my gun. “You are going to kill my dog.” My finger rubs against the trigger, as I prepare. “Then… Then you will shoot me.”
There is no time to indulge in her confused expression. I shoot the dog. It makes a terrible, repulsive squeal of resignation. Flops to the ground, dead. Then I point the gun down at my foot. I know it will hurt like hell. But the pain can’t trump the horrors that I withgo every night after prayers. I pull the trigger. Blood.

I am down on the ground writhing in agony, and she is beside me.
The pain is enormous. There is nothing else happening in the world but pain. I didn’t expect it to hurt so damn much. I am screeching at the top of my lungs. It feels like the opposite of dying, yet death now sounds to me like an ice-cream on a squelching hot day. 
I am on my back, Tabitha is directly above. Her black locks falling around my face like a tunnel. 
“I suppose you want me to call an ambulance. Save your life or something.” She says.
All I manage to utter is “Free… Free…”

A few hours later the guards find me. The landowner called them up when he spotted my car parked outside his field with the fence done in. They take me to hospital and It’s not until they have the drugs pumping into me that my plan comes back. “Did you get that girl?” I ask the nurse. 
“Tabitha? Yes. She was lying with your body when they found you.” 
“It was her. She shot me and my dog. All I was doing was trying to help the mad bitch. They should put her away for life-” I sob
“Shhh calm down, calm down.” The nurse says while examining my dressings. 
“The girl is down at the station now. She has admitted everything. Don’t you worry about that, all you need to do is rest and recover.”

I don’t know what I am feeling. We two fools on the edge of life’s web. And this is how we save each other? Unloved, Fucked up, Free. Now she is going to jail, And I’m in the hospital. 
We have placed ourselves in these cold systems and here will remain.
Entangling ourselves in our own traps, merely keeping occupied till death. 
We were born human, say those men in their bill of fight. “All born equally free and independent.”  
Well I couldn’t let the girl have her absolute freedom. I’m happy to see her locked up. It was well worth it for the foot.