Lenny Read online

  LENNY

  First published in 2022 by

  New Island Books

  Glenshesk House

  10 Richview Office Park

  Clonskeagh

  Dublin D14 V8C4

  Republic of Ireland

  www.newisland.ie

  Copyright © Laura McVeigh, 2022

  The right of Laura McVeigh to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright and Related Rights Act, 2000.

  Print ISBN: 978-1-84840-824-1

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-84840-825-8

  All rights reserved. The material in this publication is protected by copyright law. Except as may be permitted by law, no part of the material may be reproduced (including by storage in a retrieval system) or transmitted in any form or by any means; adapted; rented or lent without the written permission of the copyright owners.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  New Island received financial assistance from The Arts Council (An Chomhairle Ealaíon), Dublin, Ireland.

  New Island Books is a member of Publishing Ireland.

  Also by Laura McVeigh

  Under the Almond Tree (2017)

  To Howard and Riley

  The stars in my night sky

  With love

  ‘And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.’

  Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince (1943)

  Contents

  Chapter One Ubari Sand Sea, Libya, 2011

  Chapter Two False River, Louisiana, 2012

  Chapter Three Ubari Sand Sea, Libya, 2011

  Chapter Four Roseville, Louisiana, 2012

  Chapter Five Ubari Sand Sea, 2011

  Chapter Six Roseville, 2012

  Chapter Seven Ubari Sand Sea, 2011

  Chapter Eight Roseville, 2012

  Chapter Nine Roseville, 2012

  Chapter Ten Ubari Sand Sea, Libya, 2011

  Chapter Eleven Roseville, 2012

  Chapter Twelve Ubari Sand Sea, 2011

  Chapter Thirteen Roseville, 2012

  Chapter Fourteen Ubari Sand Sea, 2011

  Chapter Fifteen Roseville, 2012

  Chapter Sixteen Ubari Sand Sea, 2011

  Chapter Seventeen Roseville, 2012

  Chapter Eighteen Ubari Sand Sea, 2011

  Chapter Nineteen False River, 2012

  Chapter Twenty Ubari Sand Sea, 2011

  Chapter Twenty-One Roseville, 2012

  Chapter Twenty-Two Roseville, 2012

  Chapter Twenty-Three Ubari Sand Sea, 2011

  Chapter Twenty-Four Roseville, 2012

  Chapter Twenty-Five Ubari Sand Sea, 2011

  Chapter Twenty-Six Roseville, 2012

  Chapter Twenty-Seven Ubari Sand Sea, 2011

  Chapter Twenty-Eight Roseville, 2012

  Chapter Twenty-Nine Ubari Sand Sea, 2011

  Chapter Thirty Roseville, 2012

  Chapter Thirty-One Ubari Sand Sea, 2011

  Chapter Thirty-Two Roseville, 2012

  Chapter Thirty-Three Ubari Sand Sea, 2011

  Chapter Thirty-Four Roseville, 2012

  Chapter Thirty-Five Ubari Sand Sea, 2011

  Chapter Thirty-Six Roseville, 2012

  Chapter Thirty-Seven Ubari Sand Sea, 2011

  Chapter Thirty-Eight Roseville, 2012

  Chapter Thirty-Nine Libya, 2011

  Chapter Forty Roseville, 2012

  Chapter Forty-One Texas, 2011

  Chapter Forty-Two Roseville, 2012

  Chapter Forty-Three False River, 2012

  Chapter Forty-Four Roseville, 2012

  Chapter Forty-Five Bayou, 2012

  Chapter Forty-Six Bayou, 2012

  Chapter Forty-Seven Bayou, 2012

  Chapter Forty-Eight Bayou, 2012

  Chapter Forty-Nine Bayou, 2012

  Chapter Fifty Bayou, 2012

  Chapter Fifty-One The Sinkhole, 2012

  Chapter Fifty-Two Bayou, 2012

  Chapter Fifty-Three Bayou, 2012

  Chapter Fifty-Four The Sinkhole, 2012

  Chapter Fifty-Five Bayou

  Chapter Fifty-Six Roseville

  Chapter Fifty-Seven Bayou

  Chapter Fifty-Eight The Sinkhole

  Chapter Fifty-Nine Roseville

  Chapter Sixty Korea, 1953

  Chapter Sixty-One Roseville

  Chapter Sixty-Two Roseville

  Chapter Sixty-Three Roseville

  Chapter Sixty-Four Ubari Sand Sea

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  Acknowledgements

  Readers’ Guide

  Chapter One

  Ubari Sand Sea, Libya, 2011

  In the middle of the desert, the boy sat on his young camel, al mataya, and looked across the dunes, north to where Ghadamis lay, east across the Ubari Sand Sea, south to the Acacus mountains, but he could see only the haze of the day bubbling on the horizon, heat melting the edges of land and sky.

  At first, Izil heard nothing beyond the snort of the beast and a dry, clicking sound from its throat, and the suck of the sand as the animal stepped along the ridge.

  When it came, the sound carried high – a whine, insistent and far off, then louder, closer. He looked up and saw the fighter jet as it passed overhead, a dark-grey shadow against the haze of the skies. The jet shot out of view, smaller, higher once more, the sound dwindling. The boy waited. He waited for the sound of dropping bombs, in the distance, with an echo that would shake the valley. He waited for more planes in the sky, but they did not come. His camel, tired of waiting, pulled his head to the side and walked on, following an invisible path back toward the tents.

  The boy wondered what it would be like, to pilot such a plane, to fly at speed and altitude, to hold the fortunes of whole villages and valleys under the pressure of your thumb, tensed on a control stick. Out here in the Ubari desert, they had no television, but once when he had travelled with his father to Ghat for a cousin’s wedding, he had sat in a row with all the children, while the adults ate and danced and celebrated, and he had sucked on sweet dates while watching Top Gun on a large screen. He, along with all the boys, apart from one, had fallen in love with Kelly McGillis. The refusenik was his cousin Hassan, who loved Goose, though he told no one of his feelings, only repeating, ‘I feel the need … the need for speed’, over and over, falling about, laughing. His uncle, Ahmed, had beaten Hassan, and offered Izil a job selling mats to tourists in Ghat, if he wanted to stay on in the town, leave behind the desert life as they had chosen to do, but his father would not accept, and they had travelled back to Ubari. He had been sick on reaching his mother, the sugar heavy in his belly, the memory of the movie fresh in his mind.

  The noise began again, the low far-off hum, the growl of approach, and for a moment the boy grew fearful. He was alone. The tents were at least an hour away. He feared for his family, even though the planes were meant to protect – that is what they said on the radio. Sky devils, his father called them, spitting in the sand.

  The boy felt the inescapability of it all – he could not hide, could not run. He would not be able to warn them. So instead he just watched, looking up, his hand over his eyes, the pale cotton of the cloth cheche he wore loosely on his head flapping in the light breeze, as it wrapped around his cheeks and over his nose, leaving only his eyes exposed to the wind and light.

  The plane flew high above
him. For a moment, it paused in the air, then a sound of stuttering and the jet plane began to spiral downward as if it had forgotten how to fly. As it hurtled towards the dunes the boy saw the pilot eject, dangling for a moment in the sky, then dropping, his canopy opening late, the bulk of it dragging him along the dunes.

  Further away, the jet plane burst into flames, sending up smoke signals far into the valley.

  Izil had watched the man fall from the sky. Others would look for him – the boy was sure of that – but he had never seen one of these sky devils up close and he would not be robbed of the opportunity. So Izil, even though closer now to home, turned and set out for the ridge where the parachute billowed.

  The pilot lay twisted in the desert dunes, his body torqued, his breathing faint – lips crusted in sand. Behind him, in the distance, smoked the wreckage of the jet. The man’s arms and shoulder blades were pulled back at a sharp angle, weighted by the billowing of the parachute.

  He had not had enough time to control his landing, and instead had hit the dunes, dragged along by the heavy rig until it had dropped to the sand, air filling the canopy late, and he had become tangled in it as he tumbled to earth.

  The man’s head throbbed with pain. His nostrils filled with the acrid smell of burning oil. The earth was still spinning. He remembered ejecting from the Viper, the spring-back of the cord, then free-falling as the desert grew closer too quickly, yanking at the cord, once, twice until it released and the air caught it and he righted, too late, dragging along the top of the dunes at an angle, a reluctant puppet caught up in his own strings. Not a textbook landing, granted, but a landing nonetheless.

  He moved slowly, wriggling fingers and toes, bending his knees, checking for signs of damage. He would have liked to have sunk down into the sand, to become one with the earth. But the earth did not want him and so he lay there, the sun burning the back of his head, the parachute canopy rising and falling, sighing in the breeze.

  The man waited for death. It did not come. Instead, after a long while, he felt the shadow of what he assumed was the enemy. The sky darkened over his head and looking up through one eye he saw the knobbly knees of the camel, smelt its dung drop to the earth beside him, and sitting on top, a barefoot figure, a small boy dressed in dusty indigo trousers and a faded red long-sleeved California Dreamin’ T-shirt, an amulet, made of yellow desert glass, tied around his neck, his mother had told him to protect him from djinns, a pale cheche worn around his head, only the eyes uncovered, watching the man who found he could not speak, his throat parched and his tongue swollen, full of sand and silt.

  The boy looked down at him as he lay there – this broken sky king.

  Once it became clear that the man posed little immediate threat, Izil decided what must happen next.

  Chapter Two

  False River, Louisiana, 2012

  Lenny slid out of the bald cypress tree, dropping the large cardboard box that swung off the end of his sneakers into the dust below him. Hunkering down beside it, he turned the old Plaquemine orange box over, opening it up, clambering in – ready for flight. His arms were held tense out in front of him as he buried down, his father Jim’s pilot cap slipping down low over his eyes as he rocked from side to side.

  ‘Va-vrooooooom, neaaaaaaaoww …’

  He tipped a little to the left, steering at a sharp angle.

  ‘Du-du-du-du-du-du-du.’

  He machine-gunned right, one hand pulling back the controls as his plane shot up into the blue cloudless sky, evading the enemy.

  ‘Ha! You’ll never catch me.’

  He was the King of the Sky.

  Lenny was free, travelling at the speed of light, gone now from the bayou, looking down on the winding silver ribbons and the smiling oxbow gleam of False River, before veering away towards the woodlands further upriver, earth once thick with trees, now yellow and scorched at the edges, dying. A gift to the land, some said, from the chemical companies.

  Circling back in the other direction, Lenny flew over the twisting branches and early morning mists of the swampland, swiftly and at altitude, eager to be far from where trapped souls lay in wait, mournful and forgotten. He squeezed the agate stone he held in his fist. His mama Mari-Rose had given it to him – a gris-gris to keep him safe (it’ll protect you Lenny – I can’t do no more for you, I just can’t …).

  As the sunshine soaked into the morning, he flew over the oak forests to the north, then the marshlands and wetlands that edged the land, circled over the sinkhole as it bubbled in the bayou below, until finally turning back once more he followed the river home – the water a sludgy silver-grey catching in the sunlight – leading him back to Roseville. He imagined he was flying over sand dunes, cutting through a blue cloudless sky. He saw the shadows below.

  ‘Come in, major.’

  He held his hand to his mouth, radio control aloft.

  ‘Do you read me?’

  Silence crackled down the receiver.

  ‘Looks like it’s just you and me then.’ Lenny scrunched up in the box that carried the faint scent of sunshine and oranges, leant further forward, the cap slipping down a little, his eyes narrowed, scanning below for the enemy combatants he knew were waiting for him.

  He breathed deep and let the air press down on his chest and ribs. It was a late autumn morning, unexpectedly cold and damp, with the trees glowing – russets, golden, reds and greens, and the sky, blue and unbroken. Lenny rubbed his fists on his frayed jeans and his T-shirt worn thin; light summer clothes, which made him shiver in the dappled shade. He tilted Jim’s cap back from his forehead so that he could see out. His fingers were still stiff from the damp night before and he pulled the cuffs of the denim jacket down low over his hands as best he could for warmth.

  ‘You’ll not get away … I see you. I see you down there.’

  His shout carried on the breeze down to the river’s edge and the grass banks below, causing an egret to startle and take flight.

  Lenny locked on to the enemy. He punched the air in joy as he pressed down hard with his thumb on the trigger, releasing the missile that followed through the air, down, down, down, locked on the target, imagining the hangars of the chemical companies below, and then a moment later, smoke and white phosphorus flared up from the earth below. Fire-and-forget. That’s what Jim had called it: fire-and-forget.

  Lenny pulled the fighter jet sharply to the left, veering away from the plumes of smoke, looking back over his shoulder to make sure the job was done.

  ‘Major, sir, can you read me?’

  Lenny made a sssssssssh sound, his tongue clicking as he spoke once more into the radio.

  ‘Coming home, sir. Lockhart is coming home.’

  To anyone else passing by False River, and looking down towards the last row of stilted houses that ran down one edge of Roseville, each with their own rickety wooden jetty stepping out into the water, if they happened to spot him there, hidden under the sweep of the willow, by the bald cypress trees that edged the riverbanks, they would have seen a little olive-skinned boy of maybe nine, possibly ten years old, wearing a US Air Force pilot’s cap set atop of a mess of white-blond curls (¡Qué chica eres! Arturo had told him once, pulling at his hair), peeking out from inside a large cardboard box stamped Product of Plaquemines Parish on the side.

  And if they didn’t see Lenny, they would most likely hear him, for he was full of laughter.

  Some children, they just shine, don’t they? No matter what.

  It didn’t seem to bother Lenny that he was out by the river on his own, though, on account of it being a Tuesday morning he really ought to have been at school. They would be wondering where he’d got to – right about now. Lenny gave it a moment’s thought. He used to like Miss Avery’s class. Now just even thinking about it made the red devil rise in him. Then he thought of his daddy, the sad-eyed look he had given Lenny that morning.

  If you missed the bus, it was a walk of almost an hour, bit less if you went by the riverside and were happy t
o cross at the Point and didn’t mind getting a bit wet, the old swing rope bridge dipping down further each year into the brackish water as it did. He could do that. He considered his options, rubbing the strap of his watch – a frayed strap on a watch that his mother had given him one Christmas.

  ‘So as you can tell what time it is,’ she said, smiling at him, helping him loop it around his skinny wrist, the strap hanging loose, not tight to the skin. He had felt it was a momentous gift. He waited for her to teach him how it worked, but she never did.

  He’d held on to it all the same, and he’d asked Miss Julie who lived next door if she could help him understand how it worked. Julie Betterdine Valéry was as old as the ancient bald cypress trees.

  ‘Miss Julie’s like 150 years old,’ said Arturo (Lenny’s best friend and one-time neighbour three doors along). ‘And she stinks of pee.’

  Arturo wrinkled up his nose and passed on calling with Miss Julie, but Lenny liked her. She would always lean over the fence, calling out in her rattlesnake voice, ‘Bonjour Léonard, and how are you today?’ when he was out playing next to his mama who knelt in the garden, secateurs in hand, cutting back her own blooms – big blowsy pink and red roses, with a scent and colours to compete with the beautiful white magnolias that threatened to overtake Miss Julie’s back yard.

  The old lady suffered with arthritis in her bones – early in the day being her worst time. Then, shuffling, all bent over, it could take her half the morning to get from her porch steps down to the fence, so Lenny would be patient and keep an eye on her progress as she worked her way across, slow and careful not to trip.

  ‘Falling’s easy,’ she’d say, ‘it’s the getting up that’s so damn hard.’

  But she didn’t like charity, not even the good-mannered sort, and so Lenny would just wait it out until she was there, leaning on the fence, and he’d bring her a cold lemonade from the ice-box if Mari-Rose didn’t notice (she was not the sociable type of mother and you wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of her secateurs, just in case). Besides, she didn’t like Miss Julie much, calling her ‘a world-class meddler’ and rolling her eyes from the kitchen window as Lenny would recite chapter and verse to old Julie Valéry on how school was going, what the state of the world was, or discuss the latest advances in space travel, or how his dad might be home by Thanksgiving, or Christmas, or maybe summer, and telling her how his mama would cry at night – but that was a secret. Lenny would keep one eye on Mari-Rose in the kitchen, the other on Miss Julie whose breathing was raspy, and whose hands, with their blue veiny rivers and their splattered sunspots, would rest gently on Lenny’s hand as she’d say, ‘Merci Léonard – most refreshing, indeed.’