My blood flows along the gutter, away from me, thick blood swallowing african dirt. With the eye that still opens I look along the kerb, my head in the road, unable to move. I see my blood but I am watching the boy. The boy is playing with a ball.
The boy throws the ball up, and it hangs in the air. As the ball hesitates between going up and coming down he sweeps the ground, picking things up. The ball is too big for this game, larger than a tennis ball, long ago it would have been red.
I do not blame him. I too, once had a red ball.
It was a good photograph but not a great photograph. When I took it I crouched beside him, and he ignored me. I held the camera level with his cropped head, capturing the distance but tilted slightly also, to reveal the spray of spent cartridges at his feet. He wore a faded green tee-shirt with the logo of a french supermarket on it, misspelt.
I can still see the photograph, see how the curve of his back and the blurred arc of his sweeping arm contrasted with the low hard lines of the road, running off to the horizon. I remember his face silhouetted against the high white hospital wall beside the road, and the waves of bullet holes that rose and fell along the wall. In my picture, the waves crested and climbed around the boy, each almost breaking upon him but all in the end leaving him untouched, haloed. At the horizon, the black triangular shadows of a broken concrete frame breached the hospital walls, all else was light. The ball was up in the bleached sky, caught like the sun, caught by the crows.
I had a red ball when I was little.
We came here because I asked Patrick to find for me the Baseball-RedSox. He was nervous even to speak their name. He would barely tell me openly when he had tracked them down, saying only that they had once been seen near the old hospital. Patrick said that this was a dangerous part of town, Patrick said that we should not go there. Patrick said that these were very bad people, and he told me, although I already knew this, that the hospital was closed.
The hospital was closed because last year some young french doctor had treated the wrong guy, or could not save him. No two people remembered the story the same way. This poor medicin ended up hanging by his feet from a tree, with his stomach sliced open, side to side, guts on display. He was lucky though, he survived, he had himself a good surgeon, but the NGOs pulled out and took all those good surgeons with them. The place died overnight.
I needed to photograph the Redsox for my magazine, if they were near the hospital, then that is where I had to be. My editor wanted pictures of them and that was good enough for me. So, I had Patrick talk to the Bossmen and they said it would be ‘gentile’. D’accord they said, but I guess the word did not get down to the street. Maybe we did not pay enough, or someone simply forgot to pass the message on.
The hospital was easy to get to, the roads are always empty nowadays, and we came across the boy playing on his own. We stopped to ask him if he knew about the Redsox, parking a little way off and walking in so as not to frighten him. He stayed put, playing jacks with the ball that was a little too big.
I played jacks too when I was young, though I called it knuckles, that was the boys’ name for it. Sometimes I would play jacks with the boys and sometimes with the girls. Most of the girls were too skilled for me, some of them could even catch the ball on the back of their hands. Sally-Ann could, but not me.
This kid though was great, a real master, better than any girl. His red ball shot high in the air, with the smallest flick of his wrist, always the same, and with no apparent effort, straight up then straight back down. As it flew he clawed the pavement, gathering, grasping as many as he could, turning his hand only at the very last moment. Just in time he opened his fingers, revealing the newly gathered nest of bullets, and caught the ball. He never missed.
I took a quick photograph when we saw him first, from a distance. He did not look up. We moved nearer and I asked Patrick to ask the boy, ‘would it be all right to take some pictures?’ Patrick did not answer, maybe he had already gone by then. I was turning to look for Patrick when I heard the helicopters. In these parts you do not ignore that noise. I checked them out, but they were not flying towards us. They were just sitting, maybe half a mile away, hovering above a junction in the road. I had been on enough flights with them to know that if they were side on to us, then we were being observed.
I hoped that we were being watched through field-glasses, but more likely was that we were being scoped through a sniper’s sights. I thought I had better demonstrate why we were here, so I hunched down, reeling off a stack of photos of the boy. I had already spotted the spent cartridges on the ground and when I followed the ball up with my camera and caught the helicopters in the same frame, then I knew the shot I had to take.
The boy with the red ball, just like the one I used to have, carried on as if none of this were happening. He played with his ball and his sun-burned bullets just like it was any normal day, as if for him there were no menacing american war-birds in the sky, nor any irritating english photographer buzzing around him like a thirsty fly. I do not blame him.
The yanks must have seen something because they suddenly flew off along one of the side roads and out of sight.
The moment that they had gone the boy looked up for the first time, looked up in their direction, scanned the sky. Then I watched him through my camera as he stood, stood and threw his ball down at the ground. The ball bounced up, hitting a rickety door in the hospital wall, and flew back to him in a high arc. He barely moved enough to catch the ball, and then he waited. Nothing happened. I did not see the point in this game, so I lowered my camera and I too stood up. The boy threw the ball again, and when he had caught it he turned in my direction. I smiled at him but his eyes looked through me.
I can not blame him.
I heard the scratch of the door as it opened and wondered if this might be Patrick reappearing. The planks of the door rattled as they cleared the ground, throwing up a spit of dust that hung in the air. It was not Patrick. Instead a second boy appeared. The cloud of dust obscured his feet, I could not make out the colour of his socks. He looked as though he might have been the first kid’s big brother. He was definitely older, maybe ten or eleven, and had a gun slung across his shoulder.
Timmy Smithson had a toy gun, and so did I. I shot Timmy but I did not like it when he died. He screamed and made such terrible faces at me. Timmy’s pretend dying scared me, and I hit him and hit him until he stopped. Then it got dark. Mum found me hiding in the bushes, she told me that Jimmy was all right.
I do not blame the boy.
The crows are large now. Along the gutter I can see the boy, unmoved by all the noise and he is crouching once again. So loud. The noise of the crows fills the air, fills everything. The grit in my head swells with the noise of the crows. Blood washes the dirt.
The boy throws the sun into the startled sky. Up, up.
Soldiers from the bellies of the crows come to stand beside the boy. Boots and camouflage trousers. Black boots come towards me, shiny black boots, nearer and shinier.
I am shine. I want to see the boy but the shine is all.
Boots creak and crouch. Two fingers on my neck. A gun barrel dips in this motion to my eye. Hard metal circle in the shine. The boy’s brother shone me a circle, pointed it at me when the crows had flown, banged, banged, banged the circle at me. Whisper, why shout?
It was a good photograph but not a great photograph.
I hear the man beside me say, “The woman’s gone Sarge.”
I do not blame the boy, I too, once had a red ball.
“Jesus” despairs the other soldier, standing beside the crouching child.
© Martin Ungless