Green
an excerpt

Hi, folks! Welcome to the first 2,500 words of 'Green'. I hope you like it -- but even if you don't, I'll still be happy to get any kind of feedback. Feel free to send me a NaNoMail with your comments.

#

Joke? Crime? Declaration of war?

Well, whatever it was, the historic moment was captured on video. Enjoy.

#

On screen, the kid is sitting on a park bench, a packet of crisps in his hands. He scatters a few crumbs at his feet, food for the pigeons. This park is swarming with them -- all fluttering into this pathetic little patch of green in the grey city. Sometimes you hear a car horn, and the pigeons make only a half-hearted attempt at panic, because really, they're used to it by now: the park is surrounded by roads.

"Watch, hon'." The kid winks at the camera and you know what's coming next when he says, "They'll really get a kick out of this." Oh yes, a fellow comedian.

"Stop it," says the girl, but the camera's jiggling about and you can hear her laughing.

Zoom in on one pigeon, staggering and rolling about with one wing at a weird angle. Its flying days are over.

Zoom back out again for the punchline.

Watch, hon'.

The car comes in from the left of the screen, smashing into the bench. The look of surprise on the kid's face as his legs are lopped off at the kneecaps -- just priceless.

Then the camera's all over the place, and the image on the screen fades and dies.

#

Personally, I thought that it should have been on television as one of 'Your Funniest Home Videos'. I laughed as I told my lawyer that during my trial, but once again he advised me to keep quiet and look remorseful. That was the only advice he'd come up with, but I guess I couldn't expect much from the kind of tired, bored, overworked freebie defence lawyers that they supply at the police station.

"Come on," I said. "It could only have been funnier if a piano had dropped on his head."

No response. Maybe they only laugh at your jokes if you're paying them.

The prosecuting lawyer began rolling out the clichés, gesturing dramatically at the kid, who just sat there in his wheelchair giving me an unfriendly look. 'Prime of life', sure, that was in the lawyer's speech. 'Keen athlete', oh yes, even the keen athlete thing -- although judging from the way the kid had been stuffing his face with crisps on that park bench, I'd rudely interrupted his training for the fat bastard olympics. And then, of course, the lawyer comes out with the classic 'promising career cut tragically short...'.

"Tragically short? That was a bit tactless, wasn't it?" I said to my defence. "You know, if I was the kid, I wouldn't stand for it."

"I advise you to --"

"He should put his foot down."

"I strongly advise you to refrain from --"

It was no good, I was off laughing again -- loud enough for the judge to hear, apparently, and soon I was laughing all the way to prison.

On the way out of the courtroom, I passed the kid's father. "You should have prayed for a longer sentence," he said. "When you get out, you're a dead man. I'll have people waiting for you."

He was rich -- rolling in it, in fact -- but before I could make any wheelchair jokes, a policeman hurried me through the door.

#

"You just lost control of the car?" -- Willie 'Frilly' Wilson, my new cellmate.

"Well, I sure lost control of something."

"And the bastards didn't believe that you had the beer after the accident?"

"Incident," I corrected. He looked confused, so maybe that was a word he hadn't yet come across in 'Readers' Wives'. "And no, they didn't believe me."

I don't think Frilly believed me either. "Bit of a bad move, though. Why would you do that? Steady your nerves, eh?"

"That's what I told them anyway. Well, I couldn't say that it was to celebrate, could I?"

He looked confused again. Finally, he said, "What happened to the pigeon?"

I laughed at that. "And here I thought you were a twisted, bitter shadow of a man. But somewhere inside, there beats the heart of a big softie, am I right?"

"Don't let word get out. I've got my reputation to think of. Mean. Vicious. Evil. Darkly menacing." I was impressed, hazarding a guess that remarkably few of the Readers' Wives had ever been described as 'darkly menacing'. "Anyway," continued Frilly, "what about this pigeon, then?"

"Well, I'm glad to say there's a happy ending for you. It just so happens that a pretty, golden-haired lass was passing by. Touched by the creature's plight, she gathered it up into --"

"That's bollocks, isn't it?"

"Okay, I confess, I don't know what happened to our little feathered friend."

"Did you maybe run it over?"

"Maybe I did. Best thing for it."

"Yeah." Was that a tear in Frilly's eye? "If you ask me, that kid didn't get half what was coming to him. Okay, the bastard'll never walk again, but that bird would never fly. Who lost the most, eh?"

Amazing. Who could believe that this gentle soul was the same man who had been compelled by his mean, vicious, evil, darkly menacing nature to shoplift women's underwear from Marks & Sparks?

"You know what, Frilly?" I said. "You're all right. A big improvement on my last cellmate."

"About that...." Frilly looked nervous. "They never told me just what kind of accident he had with the toothbrush."

"Incident, Frilly," I said. "Incident."

#

Turns out that Frilly loves birds.

He sat for hours looking out our cell window. It opened a little way, and he put out scraps on the ledge for sparrows to feed on. "It makes me sad," he said. "They're flying out there, while us poor bastards are caged up...."

"That's...so...profound. You know, you should take up philosophy. Or poetry." I was trying to listen to the radio. Even as I was tuning in to the news, I was trying to tune out Frilly's predictable ramblings.

Then he started singing. "'Cos I'm free as a bird now... How 'bout you? And this bird you cannot chaaa--aaaaa-aaange."

"Cut it out, will you? I want to hear the news."

"There's a guitar solo coming up. Can I do air guitar?"

"Quietly."

Nothing about the river pollution, acid rain, deforestation -- old f*cking news. But a nuclear power station went haywire somewhere, and a tanker p*ssed oil all over a beach somewhere else. Then we got some freedom fighters denouncing an oppressive regime, and a democratic republic condemning terrorists.

Frilly played air guitar while the world burned.

"Sh*t," he said suddenly. "Scandalous. That Britney Spears is a lovely girl. Why can't they just leave her alone? The bastards."

"Bastards," I agreed.

The business news came on, and I was about to turn the radio off when I heard a familiar voice.

At Troyer Agricultural, we like to think that we're creating a better future.

His voice was warm and reassuring as he talked about our children. He wasn't about to let our children's children go unmentioned either, and as he was obviously on a roll, I cut him off before he got to the next generation.

"What a great guy that Troyer is," I said. "He never even mentioned money once."

"Something tells me you don't mean that," said Frilly nervously, moving from wall to wall picking up the pieces of the radio.

"The last time I heard his voice, he was threatening to have me killed."

"No! Bastard. Hey, you know what would be really cool?" he said. "If his first name was Des. Then he'd sound like a super villain in a comic. Des Troyer. Get it?"

"Quite, quite brilliant. But unfortunately, his first name is Jonathan."

"Jonathan Troyer. Jon Troyer." No, Frilly wasn't impressed. "Hey," he said suddenly, "when are you going to tell me your first name? How long do you expect me to keep on calling you 'Green'?"

"For just as long as I have the privilege of your charming company. I'm not on first name terms with anybody."

#

Chicken for dinner.

"I'm not eating this," Frilly announced. "I like birds too much."

"I'll f*cking have it, then, you little pervert," said Happy Jack, smiling sweetly. At one point in his career as a boxer and occasional nightclub bouncer, Jack had taken one punch too many: his face was now graced by this permanent look of joy, like he'd just had a religious revelation. Still, he'd kept bouncing until one night he got too enthusiastic and bounced someone's head off a brick wall. The punter was buried without a smile on his face, or even, come to think of it, a face to smile it on.

Frilly slid his plate across the table to Jack. "You know," he said, "I hope people don't start calling me 'Birdman' because I like birds so much."

"Nice try," I said. "But Birdman's been taken already. Face it, you're stuck with Frilly. It could be worse."

"Fine birds, ravens," Frilly added, looking around hopefully. "Smart. But I hope nobody calls me 'Raven'. Who'd want to be named after those darkly menacing birds of folk tale? Not me, for sure."

"F*ck, no," agreed Jack. "Got any opinion on tits? Maybe you want us to call you Tit instead of Frilly?"

Frilly laughed nervously. "Good joke."

"You don't see me smiling, do you?"

Nah, too obvious. And since Jack was too dim to understand anything subtler, I just called him a prick.

Things got out of hand.

#

"You need to see the druid," said Frilly, back in our cell.

Interesting viewpoint, but I had to disagree.

"I don't want to see a druid. I don't want to see a shaman, bishop, guru or any other spiritual representative. In fact, right now, I don't even want to see a scantily-dressed priestess of some obscure religion that considers kinky sex to be its holiest sacrament."

"Wow, do they really have religions like that?"

I climbed up to my bunk. "Frilly, old chap, I'm going to sleep now -- to dream of a world where they do have such religions. Do not disturb. Good night."

"But it's still the afternoon. And you really need to see the druid."

"I need to rest up and heal. P*ss off."

Eventually he seemed to take the hint -- from the sound of his footsteps, he was leaving the cell. At last, a break from his babbling. But it doesn't matter how tight you press your head between pillow and mattress, in prison there's always some f*cking sound coming from somewhere. I might as well have tried to use the pillow to dam a river. For a time, I could still hear Frilly's footsteps tapping down the corridor, the sound travelling along the concrete floor, up the metal frame of my bunk. Then, the only reason I couldn't hear Frilly any more was because I began to notice other sounds: the low bass of someone's music; an argument; laughter; a clattering somewhere that drove me nuts trying to guess what was causing it.

All I wanted to hear was the beat of my own heart, and maybe the sound of my flesh knitting itself back together.

#

Frilly shook me awake.

"Did you dream of that priestess?"

I grunted.

"How was she?"

"Totally f*cking divine."

"Yeah. Hey, Green, listen.... Don't get p*ssed off. I brought the druid here to see you."

I opened an eye. "That looks suspiciously like the gardener." He was a stooped old geezer, grey-stubbled chin. I'd seen him digging out in the yard. One of the trusties. He'd probably been here for years. "We'll take two pounds of spuds, grandad, and some carrots too if you've got any."

He looked at me bitterly. "I can supply you with a blade," he said.

"Spuds, and a knife to peel them with?" I said, swinging myself painfully off my bunk, "Now that's what I call service." I could feel my cuts tearing open.

"I do not supply vegetables. Nor, in truth, knives. I fashion weapons of my own design from gardening implements." He produced something from under his sleeve. "This is an example of my work. Though you might find it hard to believe, it once used to be --"

"A trowel. Yes, amazing."

"Examine, if you will, the handiwork. Feel the balance."

I decided against putting my fingerprints on it. "And I'd need that fine piece of steel because...?"

"William tells me that you have made an enemy. Soon, the smiling man will pass from the infirmary to solitary confinement -- and then once more to walk among us. When that time comes, you will need to defend yourself."

It was tempting, but this time reason won the battle over instinct.

"Thanks all the same, grandad, but there's no way I'm getting caught with a deadly trowel in my possession. Apart from the embarrassment factor, I'm not giving them more reason than they've got already to add time to my sentence. One year, and then I'm off somewhere I never have to hear another living soul."

The druid shook his head. "There are no such places left."

"Then I'll make one."

"You know," said Frilly sadly, "sometimes I think that Green isn't a people person."

But the druid was looking at me with more interest. "Would you like to use this?" he asked, extending the trowel to me again.

"On Jack? I already said --"

"Would you like to use this where it was intended -- on good soil, under the sky? Yes, yes, I see that you would. Let me see what can be arranged."

#

It wasn't a bad year, all things considered.

We planted things. We watched them grow.

There was a buzz of excitement when the news spread that Happy Jack had gone over the wall, though only three of us knew the truth of the matter.

The druid had solved our little dispute for us.

Frilly got paranoid, claiming that growth in the flower bed was particularly vigorous right over the corpse -- so that Jack's shape was shown by the brightest, tallest flowers. I couldn't see it myself, and when Frilly tried to point out a row of tulips that represented Jack's smile, I knew that this was just an overactive imagination talking.

"Thanks, grandad," I said to the druid. "If there's anything I can do for you on the outside...."

"There is."

He told us about Masselock.

"And I think you will like it there," he said. "Very quiet, already only a few people. A good place to start."