The Field (ACHUKAbooks) Read online

  The Field

  by

  Bill Nagelkerke

  ACHUKAbooks

  Published by ACHUKAbooks

  First published 2012

  Digital edition #3

  Text copyright © Bill Nagelkerke

  All rights reserved

  Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,

  your old men shall dream dreams,

  your young men shall see visions.

  The Book of Joel

  My testament

  My name is Jacinta Grogan.

  These are my words.

  They describe what I heard and saw.

  They are my words, and they are true.

  PART ONE

  Three apparitions

  The Field was Jacinta Grogan’s favourite place. From where she was sitting right now, in what Dad called the ‘Crow’s Nest’, she had the best possible view of it. The view was only ever spoilt when she glanced to her right, in an easterly direction. Jacinta deliberately didn’t look that way very often.

  In her imagination the word ‘field’ was spelled with a capital F. Maybe this was due to the way Dad always talked about it. He loved the Field just as much as she did, probably even more. He had looked after it for as long as Jacinta had been alive. But, soon, all these hours of care and years of work were coming to an end. It was too sad a thing to think about.

  Jacinta was sure that Dad tried not to think about the impending changes any more than he had to; just like she didn’t look eastwards unless she had a compelling reason. He certainly didn’t talk to her or Josh about them. He did confide in Mum, though. And that was a good thing, Jacinta thought. She herself could (and did) talk to her best friends about her feelings for the Field, and it helped, a little.

  Jacinta always found it difficult to fall sleep. And when she was asleep, she often woke up again. That meant that she sometimes overheard snatches of her parents’ conversations. Jacinta’s bedroom was close to the sitting room where they spent most evenings. She couldn’t really help taking note of what they were saying. Not long ago she had woken up and heard Dad talking about how he was working harder than ever to keep the Field looking its best.

  ‘I owe it that much, at least,’ she heard him say. ‘It’s kept me in work for over a decade.’

  Her Mum replied, ‘Will all that effort help you get a job as head groundsman at the new stadium?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Dad had answered. ‘Probably not. Rumour has it that I’m going to have to apply for the job anyway, along with goodness knows how many other people.’

  ‘That wouldn’t be fair, surely?’

  'All’s fair in sport and stadiums,’ Dad had said. ‘I’ll apply if I have to, but maybe it won’t matter that much if I’m not successful. After all, the new arena isn’t going to be in the same league as the old Field as a place of work.’

  ‘Won’t it be even better?’ suggested Mum.

  Dad didn’t reply. He wasn’t going to be unfaithful to the Field.

  In the morning Jacinta remembered what she had overheard, and it made her worried.

  Dad often described the Field (otherwise known as Southerham Stadium) as ‘the place of play.’ That’s what the Field was made for. The Field was shut in on three sides by tiers of spectator seating, some of which were umbrella’d by arching roofs. High above these seats and their sheltering canopies were T-shaped sodium floodlights that turned night into day. During a night game the lights swamped the green grass of the Field. A field of greenest green. A field of real grass, too.

  Over in the east, very close and very real, the new TekNat Arena was well under construction. In fact it was nearly complete. It dwarfed the old Southerham Stadium. Its towers of lights were higher, and they would burn brighter as well, but would not be as costly to run and maintain. The tiers of covered seating at the arena were more plentiful. There were no uncovered terraces as at the Field. The turf at the TekNat was a combination of real grass and a synthetic fibre, which had been punched into the soil by an object people compared to a gigantic sewing-machine. The real grass and the artificial grass would eventually bind together. The new surface would be long-lasting, durable.

  One of Jacinta’s father’s tasks (as long as his job lasted) was to mow the grass of the Field. Another was to paint its marker lines. He had to keep the Field looking its best for high days and low days.

  The trouble was, there weren’t going to be any more high days now. Once the arena came into operation, the Field would be used for a little while longer before being closed down. It would eventually be demolished, bulldozed up, and turned into a car park for the arena. A light-rail link from the city was going to run through the carpark, and terminate at the arena. The small transfer-building to be located in the carpark would be called Southerham Station. Other than that there would be no reminder of the Field.

  But until all that happened Jacinta’s father continued to be busy. Right now he was circling the perimeter of the Field on his ride-on mower. Since it was school holidays, Jacinta and Josh had to go with him. Mum worked three mornings a week and they were still too young to be left in the house by themselves. However, neither Jacinta nor Josh could have wished for a better place to spend three holiday mornings a week.

  Josh was at ground level with Dad. He liked it up in the Crow’s Nest, too, but not nearly as much as Jacinta did. When he had the choice, Josh opted to stay with Dad. He was jogging behind the mower now, following it at a safe distance as it circled the Field, each revolution spiralling it closer and closer into the centre.

  Josh loved to fetch and carry the things that Dad needed. But being allowed the freedom of the Field was one of the best things of all. He could pretend as much as he liked that he was a player in one of his favourite teams.

  Jacinta was mad on rugby, too, and on cricket, but she didn’t dream them, not the way Josh did. From the Crow’s Nest, Jacinta felt as if she were a small god, in control of a tiny, but hugely important, part of the world.

  ‘Don’t touch anything when you’re up there and don’t go anywhere else by yourself!’ Dad always warned her at the start of his working day, rather over-dramatically Jacinta thought.

  If she was ever allowed to be in the Crow’s Nest when there was an actual game on (‘No chance,’ Dad said. ‘For the big-wigs only!’) she would definitely pretend to command her favoured team. She would hold out her hand in front of her, positioning it carefully over the Field, moving each player (carefully, so as not too squeeze him too tightly) exactly where she wanted him to go. That way she could be sure that her team would win, every time, and that her players would be the ones to score all the tries, or all the runs.

  Jacinta tried to play god now. Carefully she picked Dad up between her thumb and forefinger, to help hurry him along with his job. Then she put her thumb over Josh, squashing him. But as soon as she moved her fingers away, her father and brother carried on as if nothing had happened to them.

  Small gods had no real power.

  As Dad continued to circle the Field, and as Josh continued to scurry after him, Jacinta read the advertising hoardings circling the boundary fence. Apart from one, they used to be changed fairly regularly. Some of the current, and final, crop were quite clever, she thought.

  Hungry for more? Gobble 'n' Go satisfies your need for a feed, was good. Just like the fast food at Gobble ‘n’ Go itself.

  Reach for the sky, it’s as close as your remote, hit all the right buttons, too.

  But her all time favourite, a banner that for some reason was a permanent fixture, was Heaven and Hell are the same place.

  Jacinta had not always liked this advertisement, simply because she wasn’t totally sure what it meant. She knew very well
, of course, what heaven and hell were. After all, she and Josh went to the little local Catholic School just a few blocks from their house, Saint Sebastian. Unlike the friendly kids next door, who went to a different school, Jacinta and Josh and the other Saint Sebastian students had to say prayers every day (unless, of course, they were in an extra big hurry to do something else), and most Friday afternoons, half-an-hour or so before the end-of-day bell, their teacher Mrs Prentice read them a bible story. Once every few weeks they also had a special class mass in the nearby church, also named after Saint Sebastian. On Sundays Jacinta’s whole family went to church together.

  So Jacinta probably knew more about heaven and hell than she really wanted to.

  ‘Except I always thought they were separate places, not the same,’ she had said to Dad one day, not long after they’d arrived at the Field. Once again she’d read the billboard that insisted, Heaven and Hell are the same place.

  ‘Well,’ Dad explained to her, ‘you know that in any game someone has to win and someone has to lose, don’t you?’

  Jacinta nodded. Of course she knew that. It hardly needed saying. She had been to nearly as many rugby and cricket games as she had been to class masses. Probably more.

  ‘Another way of looking at it,’ Dad went on, ‘is to imagine the winners feeling as if they’re in heaven and the losers feeling like they’re in hell.’

  Jacinta nodded again. That made sense.

  ‘So, it all happens at the same time and in the same place. On this Field of ours,’ Dad finished.

  Then it had finally become clear to Jacinta. And that was why the sign that said Heaven and Hell are the same place was the cleverest advertising hoarding of all. Everything depended on who won and who lost.

  ‘It’s a Field of dreams, see, as well as a Field of play,’ Dad finished. ‘For the team that wins on the night it’s a dream come true, for the team that loses . . . well, it’s still a dream, but more of the nightmare variety. No one enjoys losing, even when the game’s played fair and square.’

  Later on, when she clicked the replay button in her head, Jacinta realised how much she liked the way Dad had said, this Field of ours. Not his Field, nor their Field, but ours. Because, for as long as she had been coming to the Field with Dad and Josh, that was exactly how Jacinta had thought of it, too. And not only like that. The Field belonged to her but, in a funny sort of way, she belonged just as much to the Field. She found it difficult to imagine a time when the Field would no longer be there. And she no longer part of the Field.

  There was a big-wigs’ toilet just across the hall from the Crow’s Nest, and a television inside it (inside the Crow’s Nest, not the toilet.) Jacinta was allowed to use the toilet, if she absolutely had to. ‘Go nowhere else,’ Dad insisted. And naturally the television was strictly off-limits.

  Jacinta had been tempted once or twice to turn it on, if she knew there was something good playing on TV, but she never did. Somehow, somebody (but probably only Dad) would find out, and she’d be in serious trouble. She wondered who did watch the TV, and when. Was it some big-wig when he (or she) became bored with the game she (or he) was watching? Hard to imagine. Or did the television only come on to show the actual game that was being played, in real time, so that the big-wigs (he and she) were able to see the action replays and the close-ups and work out if the refs had made good or bad decisions; and, as a result, who was most likely to end up in heaven, and who in hell?

  Dad was riding the mower back to its shed. Soon he would climb the stairs to the Crow’s Nest, Josh panting along behind him, and it would be time to go home for lunch. Afterwards Dad would return to the Field alone, while Jacinta and Josh and Mum might go out somewhere, a movie maybe, or they’d play a game together at home, or she and Josh would help Mum with some housework. Sometimes the two of them would each just quietly read one of their library books.

  Jacinta sighed, stood up and waved goodbye to the Field. Goodbye for today, anyway. Tomorrow she would be back. She would keep coming back for as long as she could.

  The first apparition

  As I waved I heard a sound. It came from the side of the room where the television hung suspended from the ceiling.

  The sound was a voice.

  Right then, at the start of things, I was much too surprised to feel frightened. It was only later on that I begin to feel scared. Not so much because of what had happened, but because I wasn’t sure what I should do about it.

  I turned round to see who was speaking, knowing perfectly well there was no one else in the room with me. The door to the Crow’s Nest squeaked every time I opened and closed it, so I would have heard if someone had come in.

  So, where was the voice coming from?

  Suddenly I realised. It had to be coming from the television.

  My first thought was, thank goodness for that.

  My second thought was, how could that be?

  I looked up at the TV. Nothing. The screen was black and blank.

  Then the television made a little, blue hiss. A multi-coloured line wavered across it. The screen opened like the blinds on our windows at home.

  A face appeared.

  When the face appeared, I was still focused on my second thought. I knew for absolute sure that I had not turned the set on, but would Dad believe me when he arrived in the Crow’s Nest?

  If I stretched up to switch the set off, then I would be doing what I wasn’t supposed to. Touching the TV.

  So I stood there, tagged, like in a game of statues.

  Then I registered the face.

  It was the face of a lady. A young lady. She seemed kind looking, even if she was a bit fuzzy around the edges. I had seen her face somewhere before.

  As I looked up at her, the lady looked down at me.

  The lady spoke. It was definitely the voice I had heard just before.

  It was soft, but clear and very definite.

  ‘I will come back tomorrow,’ the lady said. ‘I will talk to you again then.’

  ‘But why not now . . .?’ I began to ask her.

  Too late. The television switched itself off and immediately the lady was gone.

  Then the door to the Crow’s Nest squeaked open.

  Dad came inside, followed by a breathless Josh.

  ‘Time to go home,’ Dad said.

  Jacinta had to leave the Crow’s Nest with the others. They drove home. The whole time, Jacinta was thinking and puzzling and worrying about what had happened in the Crow’s Nest.

  How was it that a person on television could make it seem that he or she was talking to you?

  Why did the lady look so familiar?

  And how had the television turned itself on in the first place?

  When she’d been little Jacinta had believed that the people she’d watched on children’s television were speaking only to her, not to the thousands of other children who were watching the same programme at the same time. When she’d finally discovered the truth, that this wasn’t the case at all, she’d felt not only disappointed but betrayed.

  What had happened in the Crow’s Nest was something completely different, however. The lady hadn’t been speaking to millions of people who had happened to turn on their television sets at the same time. No. The television in the Crow’s Nest had turned itself on and the voice had spoken to her alone. Jacinta was positive about that.

  ‘You’re unusually silent,’ Dad said as he drove.

  Jacinta nodded. Then, realising that Dad couldn’t have seen the nod, she answered him. ‘I suppose I am.’

  ‘So everything’s hunky-dory?’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ Jacinta replied.

  ‘Hmm . . .’ Dad wasn’t exactly convinced.

  ‘Don’t encourage her to talk, Dad,’ said Josh. ‘It makes a nice change her not saying anything.’

  Jacinta jabbed Josh in the ribs. Hard, but not too hard.

  ‘I saw that!’ said Dad warningly. He had glanced back at them in the rear-view mirror.

  ‘Keep your
eyes on the road,’ Jacinta told him.

  ‘Not only unusually silent, but now a back-seat driver, too,’ said Dad. He said it jokingly, but Jacinta knew from experience that Dad disliked it intensely when anybody (especially Mum) told him how to drive.

  ‘Don’t worry, anyway,’ Dad said. ‘Mother Mary’s looking after us.’

  ‘She’s got her back to the road,’ Josh pointed out, as he always did when Dad mentioned Mother Mary’s protection.

  “Mother Mary” was a small, inexpensive plastic statue of Mary, the mother of Jesus. She had a lot of different names: “Our Lady”; “Queen of Heaven”; “The Virgin Mary”; “The Mother of God”. On the whole, Jacinta preferred Mother Mary.

  Mum had bought her from the Catholic Shop in town, not long after Dad had accidentally gone through a red light. He’d been looking down at the radio to change channels (‘It was only for a micro-second,’ he’d insisted). They’d almost – almost but not actually – had an accident that, according to Mum, could have been the death of them all. When she suggested that Dad go on a defensive driving course, and he’d flatly refused (‘There’s nothing wrong with my driving,’ he’d snapped, repeating, ‘I only looked down for a micro-second . . .’) she’d bought Mother Mary instead, Blu-tacking her onto the flattish section of dashboard above the air vents, between the driver and front passenger seats, between her and Dad.