“Albert Eugene Babendreier. Maryland. Can’t be many of those.”
“What a name. Why? D’you know him?”
My partner didn’t bother to look at the international news story which had caused me to stop scrolling. I read further in silence. We were sitting in the kitchen, as we had a habit of doing on darkened evenings when the farm was lapped in unending drizzle.
“We were penpals.” I replied eventually.
If you’d asked me to recall Al Babendreier’s address after all these years, I’d have said something generic like ‘Lakeview’, with a high house number. ‘1144 Lakeview’. Somesuch. ‘MD’. The road mentioned in the news feed, where the Babendreier home is pictured, and where his crimes took place over many years, was unrecognisable to me.
“It’s got to be him. Same age as me.”
“What’s he doing?” My partner assumed I’d been passing through social media.
“Time. A lot of it.” I put the tablet on the table and stood to refill the kettle once more. I was unable to see our fields through the domestic reflection. Even at 7pm the tones were heavier than last week. A world was dipping further into ink. The winters high on Arran can be unforgiving.
-
“Just the next time you’re up there.” I was due to call Glasgow anyway and I made a short call the following morning. “Any papers and schoolbooks are in the same box. They’re tucked down the side, I think. Elastic band. One’s got Snoopy or Charlie Brown on the front. Aye. American stamps. Just the next time you’re up.”
Knowing my father, he’d want to get this chore completed. Sourcing the Babendreier papers would become a small sense of purpose in his retirement and he’d be climbing up the retractable stairs and into the attic that afternoon. I asked him to post the letters to Arran.
-
With the help of three dogs and a quad bike, I successfully moved the blackheaded ewes from the lower hillside and back to Paddock A. That took the best part of the afternoon, but I was in a good position to begin sorting for Stirling market. Who to keep for next year’s breeding. Who seemed weak or fallow. Who would enter the food chain.
‘Trust you to take a step backwards.’ My dad was unwilling to follow in granda’s footsteps. A committed townie, he never understood my decision to return to the Arran farm I had only seen on summer trips. After years of unbridled tedium in Paisley, as an admin officer in the Civil Service, I dreamt of dramatic plains reaching up to the standing stones and to Goatfell, frosting along its ridge. Heather swallowed by mist, appearing suddenly and as if from nowhere. Giant, muscular rolls. Nights filled with tied gates rattling. Cold, silenced machinery. Heading out with dawn buckets, slopping like answered prayers after an Ice Age.
-
“Says here he..” I was lying in bed, starting to speak but stopping. Further reports on the Babendreier case. Inside headphones, engrossed by some guided meditation, my partner could not hear me anyway. Affirmation, astral plane.
It’s just the two of us here, and an annual bill for contract shearers, rookie Poles in wrong boots, mainland scanners who dose the girls, and a rosy accountant dancing up the drive with a recommendation for some American app or other. Get your stillborns down. Stop abortions. Vet your vet. How to give feedback to your feed guys. How and when to close your flock. Watered down? Knock 10% off fecundity. Make Every Lamb Pay For His Mom. Two is Profit. The late season brought us a dozen twins, some triplets and our first quad. Rams go straight to market. At the end of the day, nobody’s a millionaire.
I tapped a few times, to enlarge the latest images of Albert Eugene Babendreier which have been surfacing. They showed me a meaty, shaven man with a trimmed goatee. Then, suddenly, a small, square face and bobbed, blond hair appeared in a childhood photograph. I stared at that face. Something I never envisaged all those years ago.
-
Morning auction, and the tail stretched back about twenty vehicles. A dozen store lambs rotated behind me. We had decided to let someone else finish these ones in a shed. Fluke them and shear them. Too many ready at once proves a problem, as it did in January. Hoppers risk overfeeding, we discovered.
I was alone at the wheel with the engine cut, reading a longer piece. Embedded news footage, intercut by police. I became so engrossed that I didn’t hear the queue when it began to chug and push forward. The morning had been bright. I was wearing sunglasses.
“Babendreier’s every breath was a lie. Men, women, children. He saw no difference. Attempted rape, strangulation. He’d take your identity, and send a wife some flowers under her dead husband’s name. I saw a man stabbed so many times he bled through the mattress. Damn floor was soaked. At one point, Babendreier was eight people, but he was impotent. The younger guests in the Babendreier cellar, however, filed in one by one. Between 1999 and 2002 the makeshift, self-contained unit became the final home for Jojoe Bosquez, an eight-year old last seen leaving Sunday school in Silver Spring, Washington DC.”
-
“Alan, man. I cannae take this. Lying here knowing you’re no sleepin’. You’re on that bike like a zombie. You’re. A fucken zombie in a ditch. An I’m a fucken bear. We have to be up in four hour, man.”
I was lying in the quiet darkness unable to respond to my partner. The problem is tiredness, but tiredness rises internally and eventually makes one sleepy. This felt different. It was coming in through time and space, and suddenly there is nothing to say. I opened my mouth to tell him that. But the need fell away, and I did not.
I passed through the door, pulling a spare, undressed duvet behind me and I rolled up inside it upon the office couch. That is all I can do.
“Babendreier was responsible for five or seven homicides during the Jojoe Bosquez period. Out of his suspected forty-two. Eight including the child, who was swiftly replaced with another eight-year old, Maryam Luna.”
“What can you tell us about the cellar on Burnt Store Road?”
“By all accounts it was shrine to Babendreier’s own childhood. His toys and games were kept there. It had a bathroom with flooding problems. I’m told by those who knew him that he decorated it like the upstairs bedrooms. Even going so far as using end-of-stock wallpaper.”
-
Dear Pen Pal, My name is Albert. I am nine years old. I am in third grade at Dunkirk Elementary. I live near Hughesville, MD. My favourite sport is dodge ball. I miss swimming. My cursive is improving all the time. Please excuse the Snoopy stationery. It was my sister’s. I look forward to knowing you. Your pen pal, Albert
Burnt Store Road. Identity confirmed. I blew hard.
I blew hard again, while the kettle boiled, and while I carried a pot of coffee to the office, an old and cracking elastic band around my wrist.
I carefully squared those letters into a short, neat pile at the top of my desk.
-
Dear Alan, I used to go swimming but I hurt myself. My dad was an engineer but not the kind that drives trains. My mom is no longer living here. I am partly Scottish. Mostly Dutch and German. I have one of each. Both with mom. I looked you up in the atlas. You must eat a lot of fish there. Have you seen Transformers the Movie? It is great but the language is tough. You have been warned. I bought my own stationery. I hope you like it. Write me soon. Your (p)Al. P.S. you are also (p)Al. I wish I was Wildblood.
Dear (p)Al, Wildblood is just a name. It could be Firedriver or Dragonholder. I never so called you an eskimo. Have you had Space Dust? I will put a pack inside for your igloo. This weekend I went to Washington to see. We saw the Lincoln Memorial and the White House on a golf cart. I lost my way in the Natural History Museum and Steven told mom I was a runaway. Where I live is close by a lake. Some days Dad and me go fishing with his buddies. No kids here around. I like the chickadees. You ask a lot of questions. There are no scarecrows but I can see a sprayer machine. What’s outside your window? Your (p)Al
Dear (p)Al, Today on Kids Incorporated a boy wanted to be a detective in Scotland Yard. Martika sang we can’t always get what we want. Nobody eats chickadees. Now I call one Alan. He used to be Crystalranger. Steven has a Sega but I never used it. The best Dunkirk day is any day they don’t ask me questions. Also the substitute picks on me unduly. I fall asleep. Worst day was my tooth coming loose and blood running on my books. Peter Umberhocker reported me and said I do this sort of thing on purpose. The teacher (worst substitute) believed him. My brother is called Steven. I don’t remember what I told you. Here are yours, Sherlock. When is a boat a ship? What do Scottish detectives eat? You been in a war boy? You been a tunnel rat? Two questions from dad’s buddy Cyrus. Your (p)Al
Dear (p)Al, Dad’s Buddy Cyrus here. I’m writing this time and I don’t believe ya. Ya got it wrong. There an’t no grenades in a water cage boy. Tramp get me a beer. I seen underground. This flies a straight line. Now this is Albert. I thought your war story was great. Alan Chickadee is always busy. He’s a blackcap and likes to do his own thing. This is a story of Alan Chickadee. At nights he sat on the old water tower looking at the moon. And at nights he heard the wolfs. Alan thought he was a wolf or some ways had a spirit animal inside called Wolf Cody. He tried to howl but ithat never happened. Come closer or go away, he thought to the moon. It’s the distance I don’t care for. And that is why wolfs howl. End of tale. So next week is my birthday. Last year we went into Hughesville for wings. The biggest cheeseburger they had. The choice was mine. The waitress had to drive us home. Ships can carry a boat. Cyrus said you should join the Feds. Your (p)Al
Hey it’s me Al, Maybe you’re away. I heard there was a hurricane maybe it brought down a plane Maybe it brought down a knocked over postal train. I’m back in the city soon. I missed a question. Maybe a kind of a entertainer. A child actor. I had a great birthday. Your (p)Al
Hey (p)Al, That was fine shortbeard. Thank your mom. We packed them on a fishing trip. We have oatmeal too. They have scotch in it. I am at the lake looking for trout rightnow. Summer on your island sounds like a HardyBoys adventure. I was busy too. Busy living like folks say. (p)Al
