Page 36 of Broken Country

“Why does he do this, Beth?” Nina says beside me. “Why does he get so drunk? Five minutes ago he was happy.”

“He shouldn’t drink whisky. He’s not good with spirits. It’s my fault, I gave him mine.”

“No. It’s my fault,” Gabriel says. “It was wrong of me to come. I didn’t realize—”

Gabriel doesn’t say what it is he has realized and I am left watching him walk away, feeling my husband’s eyes upon me, wondering how much longer the three of us can carry on like this before something catastrophic happens.

The Trial

Andy—or DS Morris as the prosecutor is calling him—is on the witness stand today. Not so long ago, we considered him a friend. All that changed the night of the shooting.

I watch him swearing his oath, hand on the Bible, voice steady. He does not glance, even once, at the man in the dock.

“DS Morris, before we move to the night of the shooting, I’d like to ask you about your relationship with the Johnsons. I believe the brothers were friends of yours? You had known them a long time?”

The policeman hesitates. Thinking of the best way to distance himself from our family. “Only in the way all the villagers are friends. We didn’t know each other intimately. I saw them here and there in the pub, that’s all.”

“My understanding, DS Morris, is that you’d had regular dealings with the family over the years. On account of Jimmy Johnson’s behavior.”

“Yes. That’s correct. Jimmy was a bit of a tearaway when he was young. I broke up a few fights. Caught him drink driving more than once. Nothing too serious. Nothing like this.”

“Let us move to the night of September the twenty-eighth. When did you first learn of the shooting?”

DS Morris looks down at his notebook. “We received a call at nine thirty-seven that night. We’d had report of a shotgun accident at Blakely Farm. The victim was already deceased.”

“Let’s pause there for a moment. You were the officeron duty that night. You drove straight out to the Johnson farm?”

“Yes. The police station is based in the local town, a drive of around eight minutes.”

“Can you recall your thoughts on that journey? A man had died in a shotgun accident. One who was well known to you. Did it strike you as strange or sinister in any way? What I’m asking, DS Morris, is whether you had any inkling this might have been murder?”

“Not at that point, no. Farming accidents are fairly common, unfortunately.”

“But you changed your mind, once you got there?”

“I did, yes. The facts didn’t seem to add up. I’ve been in this job twenty years, and you have an instinct for when you’re being fed a story.”

Now Andy looks at the defendant. “Within twenty-four hours, I knew we had a murder investigation on our hands.”

Before

If I had begun the process of civilizing the Johnson men, it is the arrival of Bobby that has the biggest impact.

Frank is like a caricature of a doting father: He wants to do everything I do, he’d breastfeed Bobby if he could. When he comes in from the farm each night he holds his arms out, impatient for his turn, holding Bobby so tightly against him our baby’s skin is scented with the day’s labor—cow dung, tractor oil, and Imperial Leather, the soap Frank uses so frequently throughout the day I have come to think of it as his particular smell.

“I missed you,” Frank says, kissing his son’s soft cheeks. “And you.” He reaches out to grab whichever part of me is nearest.

I always save Bobby’s bath-time for Frank, no matter what time he comes in from the farm. I fill up a tub with warm water and Frank lowers him in, swooshing him back and forth, while I dab at his face with a soft flannel. Mostly, the two of us gaze down at him in wonder, cooing occasionally. It’s my favorite time of day.

The biggest surprise is the way David falls for Bobby. Frank and Jimmy always mentioned how absent David was in their childhood, out on the farm all hours of the day. Now he is a changed man. In the evenings, he sits with his grandson on his lap, singing to him, songs that come from another age, music hall numbers and lullabies Frank and I have never heard. He reads the newspaper to him, which seems strange at first, but there is something about David’s low, gravelly voice that lulls Bobby to sleep. If Bobby iscrying, I’ll hand him to David and say: “Can you work your magic?” And it is like magic, for the baby settles instantly in his grandfather’s solid embrace.

“Will you look at that?” David says, looking up at me, thrilled.

Bobby has humanized him. This stiff, wordless farmer has become a man who laughs and sings and smiles. In bed, at night, Frank and I whisper to one another that our baby is nothing less than a miracle.

The change is apparent in Jimmy too. He’s still in trouble at school from time to time, but I have noticed a new confidence in him. Jimmy has grown up, or perhaps it is more that ever since he stepped in and calmly delivered our son, averting disaster without once giving in to panic, I have found myself looking up to him. He is someone who can thrive in a crisis.

When Bobby is a few weeks old I start walking around the farm, baby strapped to me in a sling I fashion from an old blanket. The farm seems vast and unending when you traverse it by foot, it’s rare to pass anyone else. Sometimes it feels as if Bobby and I are the last people on earth.

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