The Road to the Dead
By Kevin Brooks

Excerpt:

The traffic around Paddington was all snarled up, and by the time I’d gotten out of the taxi and bought a ticket and scurried around the concourse trying to find the right platform, it was almost eleven thirty-five.  I got on the train just as the guard was shutting all the doors.  It was fairly busy, but not overcrowded.  I waited while all the other passengers were sorting themselves out – looking for seats, stowing their luggage, aimlessly wandering around – and then, as the train pulled away from the platform, I started looking for Cole.

It was a long train, as I made my way slowly through the cars, I found myself thinking about Dad.

He’d told me once that the first thing he could remember was standing by a water trough watching a horse drink.  That was it.  That was his very first memory – standing on his own in a field of long grass, watching a horse take a drink from a trough.  I’ve always liked that.  I’ve always thought it must be a really nice thing to have in your head. 

Dad used to love telling us stories about his childhood.  I think it brought back good memories for him.  He was born and raised in an aluminum caravan – or trailer, as he always called it – that he shared with his parents and two older brothers.  “It was the finest trailer on the site,” he’d tell us proudly.  “Fancy little mudguard, a three-ply stable door, a chrone chimney with a cowl on top…”  He’d start smiling then, remembering more details – the paraffin lamp fixed to the ceiling, the painted queen stove, the solid oak dining table, his mother’s crystal ornaments…

Sometimes he’d remember things that didn’t make him smile, like the night a group of locals had set fire to the trailer while they were sleeping, or how his father would sometimes get drunk and beat him with a thick leather belt studded with rings.  I often wondered if that was why Dad had become a bareknuckle fighter – to somehow get back at his father, or the locals, or anyone else who’d caused him pain when he was a kid.  But I knew I was probably wrong. It was a lot simpler than that.  As Dad always said: Gypsy men are born to fight; it’s in their blood