The Sight of the Truth by David Caunce

The Sight of the Truth by David Caunce

How did it begin? Father recalls it was a Tuesday when the second moon first rose over the North Sea. A Tuesday because he always had liquorice sweets that day, and he bartered these to access his cousin’s telescope. He remembers seeing the jigsaw pieces of land on the green waters of the moon’s surface and milky whirls of cloud that he later understood to be raging storms. He tells how he could neither move nor breathe, lest the illusion on the curtain of the night sky should disappear at the merest blink.

Mother has no memory of that day; it was the day she was born, in the old calendar, December 15 1925, Salvation Day. She was one of the babies who took the planet to the Optimum Population – two billion – that brought the second moon, and its travelling host, the Growers.

It took my parents a long time to earn the day tally rings for me, and from a young age, I understood they had given up years of life so I could exist. In a world where every second, every breath, has a cost, I must repay them.

& & &

Will we survive? First, that buzzing sound, as the line becomes live. Count to three, and then Lady Decima’s words burst from loudspeakers to crash upon the town of Dunswell in waves.

“Good morning, my lovelies. Tomorrow, forty-five years after Salvation Day, the planet is forecast to have nine hundred and sixty-nine thousand souls over Optimum. Your town’s share of this sacrifice is twenty-four. The Cutting will begin following the rise of the blessed green moon. Thank the Growers for their wisdom.”

Do the date and population mean anything to us? Not really. The only important fact is that the Cutting is here for twenty-four citizens. Early this month, too. My prickling neck betrays that all eyes in the classroom are on me. My family is close to the line.

“Class dismissed,” says Miss Frobisher, even though we have just taken register. It is always the same. We are told it is a mark of respect that we must prepare for the Cutting at home, away from the eyes of the town. I reckon the condemned are easier to find huddled around their hearths. Those that don’t run.

After a chorus of scraping chairs, my classmates file out, their chattering a hushed sound that fades to echoes. I’m well used to it. Always last. To be otherwise risks a bumping and barging exit with a trip to follow for good measure. I have to be patient. I haven’t split my knuckles on anybody’s face in a while, and my schooling, such as it is, will end soon. I am left with the tang of unwashed bodies and hints of barbs unsaid.

A scent of lavender and a shadowy blur tell me Miss Frobisher approaches. People always assume I can see nothing. Not true. What is left of my sight perceives movement – variations in light. The way Miss Frobisher moves gives me a warm glow.

Miss presses the cane’s thin handle into my fist and places her soft, pillowy hands over mine. “Go straight home, Jed. Your parents need you in one piece today.”

I try to show Miss my most reassuring smile, but my effort falters. “I’ll do my best,” is the only promise I can manage.

“That’s all I can ask,” she says. Her voice is kind, which isn’t always the case. She addresses the class with a hard, bruising edge. Not today and not with me. I know I should be grateful.

Miss guides me out of the classroom (four steps, turn right at Charlie’s desk with the rude word scratched into the surface, six steps), and then, alone, I use my cane, feeling the flaking paint of the corridor wall until I reach the double doors.

The tickle of a humid breeze on my face signals the doors are open, and I feel the hard radiance of morning sunlight as I emerge onto the cinder yard. Over the crunch of my footsteps, I hear the calling of pigeons, the flap of their wings against tree branches, and the more distant cawing of crows on high. A gunshot, not too far away, sends the crows into flight. There is always something or someone hunted in Dunswell.

A shimmer of spectral movement encroaches from the right. The breathy, broken-nosed voice of Brucie is loud in my ear as he yanks my hair. “Jed, Jed, he’ll soon be dead. His hair is red, and he’ll soon be dead. His face is spotty, and he’ll soon be dead.” Brucie’s verbals come with a dash of spittle to salt the dish. “His mammy and daddy, dead, dead, dead.”

I wrestle with my anger. I think of the punch, the crunch of cartilage, the hope of a snapping bone.

The other kids join in the rhyme, if you can call it that. I should smash Brucie’s face in. But I did that three years ago when I could see, and it didn’t save Maisie and her family from the Cutting. He and his mates kicked my head good and proper. You might have thought what they have done to me would be enough for them. Obviously not.

& & &

Our house is a quarter of a mile away, down a narrow lane that smells of dung, warm grass, and the mustiness of hemlock’s lacy flowers. Pretty but deadly, Mother says. Beware.

I only fall twice on the way. Not bad for me, sometimes it’s worse. I’d do better if I weren’t listening to the skylarks climbing high above the fields on either side. They seem so free.

The sound of rushing water tells me I should be careful as I reach the sinkhole at the fork in the road between us and our neighbour Gregory’s lands. Summer’s first hot blanket has baked the earth this week. Before that, a sodden spring fed the underground torrent that still runs like a train beneath my feet.

I like to track the coarse stone of the wall aside the lane with my hand, listening to the gorse bushes whisper, imagining the hole’s sheer edge – my cane skirting the tussocked rim, exploring the mouth of the abyss. One slip and I would be riding that watery train to who knows where.

I feel two firm, long-fingered hands on my shoulders. The sound of water has covered Father’s approach. He eases me away from the void. “Please don’t do that. You know how it worries your mother.”

I ignore the scolding tone. “Where’re you going?” I dread the answer, but I have to ask.

“To sign up for the bounty crew in town.”

“To kill anyone who runs from the Cutting?” My question picks up an accusing tone from my throat as it joins insects humming in the thick soup of the air.

Father sighs. “Don’t start on this again. We need the tally rings.”

“It might be us soon.”

“It won’t be.” He squeezes my shoulder.

“Are you so sure we’ll escape the Cutting next time, or will we willingly swallow the poison? Is that it?”

Father pushes me towards the house. Or rather, he tries; I’m already bigger than him. “Do something useful and find your mother. She’s wandered off.”

I shuffle away, shoulders slumped, cane prodding the dirt. Thanks, Father. My favourite job.

& & &

Our smallholding is a nightmare for me, all ramshackle buildings, tumbledown walls, and drainage ditches. In several places, the land is sinking. Mother fears more watery pits will open up. It’s like a personal assault course I battle with daily, one of endless bruises and constant swearing. Father says the best way for me to learn is to get to know it. Well, I do. Face down in the dirt.

For the sake of my elbows and shins, I call Mother from the back doorstep, hands cupped, hollering loud. Nothing.

I work my way through the house, then complete a painstaking circuit of the outside walls – tapping and feeling, holding onto window sills, calling always, my voice fading into distant echoes across the valley. I am left hot from the sun and scraped by bramble bushes.

Parched, I take some chalky-tasting water from the well and sit on an old millstone under an apple tree, remembering the pink blossoms that turn to green apples. Perhaps, if I wait awhile, Mother will return with no help from me. It is a grand idea, but like many of my ideas, it turns out to be wishful thinking.

Before venturing further afield, I decide to change clothes. I must get out of my school clothes, my only decent set, and into my work overalls. The brambles were a warning.

On the way upstairs to my bedroom, I run my hands over surfaces that are like old friends. At first, I had to follow strings along the walls to get anywhere in the house. At least that has improved.

I sit on the bed, in my well-ordered room under the eaves, where I sit for hours next to the open window listening to barn swallows and the occasional stray oyster catcher.

I hear a very different sound from the loft space under the roof. Sobbing. Mother. But why? I tap gently on the small door, a hollow sound; it is only painted hardboard. “Mother, it’s me.”

A series of sniffs, then the door slides open. Her hands move to my face, cup my chin, lingering there long enough so I am beyond worried.

“What’s wrong?”

Her words tumble out. “I’ve made a terrible mistake. I tried to do the right thing. But then the Cutting came early.” She holds up her steel neck chain – the one we all wear – for my hand to feel.

My fingers run past the transmitter and over the metal life tally rings. It cannot be. Her rings are so small and so few. Depleted. She will never make the Cut.

I reach for my own chain, but she grabs my hand. Her grip is fiercer than a Mother’s touch. “You don’t get to do that. You will give me nothing, I’ll not risk that we are both Cut.”

I struggle to speak, as if my throat is held as tight as my fingers. ”You had more, we all had enough. What about Father, he can–”

“No, he can’t. I won’t see either of you in harm’s way. He has few enough for himself.”

I shake free of her hold on me. “What happened? You have to tell me.”

The silence between us stretches taut. I long to see her face, to look into her eyes. But when she is still, there is nothing.

“I’ve sent a message to the High Sheriff at the county seat,“ she says. “About our neighbour, Gregory, what he’s done.”

“What?” I stutter.

“He’s a fraudster. A fugitive from the Growers’ justice. I paid tally rings for a telegram to petition. There’s a price on Gregory’s head in the south. When we collect the reward, we’ll be more than fine. The blessings of the Growers will be ours.”

“But the Cutting… ” I stop, the words trickling away at the creaking of the door hinges downstairs. Father’s return.

“You can’t tell your father you’ve seen me. You understand. Not until we hear back about the reward.”

Father yells, “Jed, get down here, now.”

& & &

Father slams his pistol and his bountyman’s copy of the Cutting names onto the kitchen table. “It’s a mistake, has to be. It’s a recording error… or the transmitter on Ginnie’s tally chain is faulty, I’ve heard of it happening.”

Mother is one of the twenty-four. I hear him scraping his flaky scalp with his nails. His voice is tight with fear. “They issue the writs at nightfall. We don’t have much time. Did you find out where she’s gone?”

I shake my head quickly, so I don’t have to taste the lie. I wonder if my cheeks are flushing as red as they feel, signalling my deceit. I try to swallow. My mouth is calcified.

“Have you tried everywhere?”

I choose my words to avoid the untruth. “Not the fields, they’re so difficult.”

He hesitates. “Well, leave those to me. I have another job for you.”

Sympathy or practicality? Is there guilt on my face that he takes for the same worry in his voice?

“Head over to Gregory’s place and see if she’s there. She’s been taking church bakes to him weekly after his wife died.”

“Gregory,” I stammer.

“Yes, it’s a straight path alongside the fence. Even you can do that.”

He steps on creaking boards to the place where he keeps his straw hat and then onward to raise the latch.

“Boots on, son, hurry.”

The door slams behind him.

The deep shadow of the Cutting is upon us. It took Maisie from me weeks after our first kiss, ripping our future away. I held her hand as she swallowed the poisonous tincture. I swore never again would I lose someone that way.

& & &

Mother refuses to leave the loft space, so I reach inside. She is backed against the wall, hugging her knees.

“He wants me to go to Gregory,” I say quietly, fearing Father’s presence, even though he has gone.

Her voice is shrill and directed upwards. “May the Growers protect us.”

“Should I do as Father says?”

Mother gulps air. “Don’t go near that Gregory.”

“Father said you felt sorry for him.”

“That’s a lie,” she spits out the words. “And lie is what you must do. Tell your father you went to Gregory, but he wasn’t there. It will give us some time.”

& & &

 “We’re running out of time,” Father says on his return. He smells sweaty as he circles my chair, flapping his hat to create a breeze. “Did you knock loudly?”

I swallow. “Yes.”

“How many times?” He stops. I think he is staring at me.

I clear fishhooks from my throat. “Three times.”

“Front and back? And the stables for the boy who tends there?”

I am so deep in lies now, the detail doesn’t seem to matter. “Yes.”

“What’re we going to do?” Father’s voice is a wail. I hear the anguish, and hate my part in it.

The clock on the mantelpiece strikes two. The time to the Cutting writs is whittling down.

A thumping on the door rattles the latch.

Father rises to answer.

The latch is raised, the hinges creak. “Gregory,” Father says. ”We’ve been looking for you.”

No. Is there no end to the chasm between shame and dread? How deep and dark can that place be?

Gregory stomps into the kitchen, looming towards me, a wraith-like shape.

 “Where’s that wife of yours, Matthew?” he asks Father. I remember Gregory’s look from years before: a leather-clad dandy in high-heeled riding boots.

“I beg your pardon, sir,” blurts Father.

“That slandering hussey, Ginnie, where is she?” The clinking of Gregory’s chain, heavy with tally rings, is loud as he comes closer. He reeks of last night’s wine.

I stand, fists clenched.

Father’s hand is on my shoulder, easing me back to the chair. “Have you lost your mind, sir?” he asks of Gregory.

“Your wife has tattled to the Sheriff. She aims to see me fined, bankrupt, and Cut.” I hear the slither of knife steel from leather scabbard. “Well, we’ll see about that.”

I hear the cocking of Father’s bountyman flintlock. “Leave our home, right now.”

Menace thickens the air in the kitchen. Panic rises in my chest, trapped like a caged bird.

“See how your hand shakes, Matthew. You wouldn’t dare shoot. Bring her out.”

Father’s voice quails. “She’s not here. See for yourself.”

“Oh, I will.” Gregory blurs away in a rush, crashing around the ground floor. He thumps up the stairs and over our heads through the bedrooms.

My heart stops. He may find Mother, but he is in a hurry, flying from room to room. He soon returns. “I don’t have time for this. I need to send my rebuttal to the Sheriff.” His elbow glances across my face, and I flinch, thinking of his knife as he sweeps past to the doorway.

Gregory pauses, his breaths quick and laboured. ”Look now, it’s all a pack of lies, but I can make it worthwhile for you if Ginnie retracts her accusation.” He jangles his tally chain. “Six months of days for you all. It’s a good offer, think about it.”

“Leave,” says Father.

Is Father’s pistol aimed and cocked still? How will this end? My teeth ache from the clamping of my jaw. I expect to hear them crack at any moment.

Gregory emits a growl. “A year’s tally. Which is more than generous against false witness. My last offer.”

What a sum.

With a scuff of boots, he turns and leaves.

I hear the snick as the gun cock is released. I breathe again.

The wooden chair next to me protests with age as Father sits. I feel the warmth of him through the sleeve of my shirt. No words pass between us. I am lost in a storm, head spinning.

The house ticks in the afternoon heat: a count towards nightfall, the issue of a writ, the delivery of the poison, then the bounty hunt for those that run. When I hear Mother’s soft footsteps coming down the stairs, it feels like a crossroads moment for whatever life we have left.

& & &

We sit around the kitchen table. A family. Our bonds tested by awful circumstance. Who will break the silence that has crept over us like a sea fog?

It is Father. ”What did you do to us, Ginnie?”

“I did nothing to us.” Her words plead for understanding. “I did something for us, for our future, so we would have a future.”

Father hrumphs. “What Gregory said, is it all true?”

Mother fiddles with her tally chain, her wedding ring clinking softly against the markers. “Nothing Gregory says is ever entirely true.”

“So help me out.”

“That scoundrel cheated a family of their tallies down south. Left them to the Cutting and got his start in Dunswell. He knew this farm had a history of sinkholes when he sold it to us. He’s a vile man who has a reckoning coming his way.”

Father’s hand rasps his stubble. “But Gregory has been tipped off. I would guess by the postmaster or his rider. Gregory’s rich. He can bribe his way out of it, like his type always will. Where does that leave us?”

“It–”

“Let me tell you. At his beck and call, his mercy even.” He pushes from his chair, an inky form passing before the window. “Why are you privy to his dirty secrets? In the name of the Growers, I have a right to be told.”

I listen for the answer; I want to know, feel I deserve to know as much as Father. Mother does not answer. Her quiet speaks of something, for Father issues a deep sigh.

All she says is, “I’m so sorry, Matthew.”

I can hear Mother starting to cry. I feel for her face, to brush away the tears, but they evade my fingertips; her chin is raised, defiant like the prow of a ship. I don’t know what to say because I don’t understand.

Father draws a long breath, wheezing as if the act is painful. “We’ll talk more of this later. In the meantime, we must act. The shadows grow longer in the yard. We have no choice but to take the tally Gregory offered.”

“He will own us if we do.”

“You should have thought of that before you… you… ”

“I’m sorry,” Mother says again, wiping her eyes. “But he shouldn’t get away with the things he’s done.”

 “Got bored of you, did he?”

When my world is already in ruins, the ground opens up and threatens to swallow it down to hell.

Mother issues a plaintive wail. “I won’t take his tally rings. I’d rather face the Cutting. Let them send the writ and the poison.” She knocks over her chair on the way to the stairs, sobbing as she goes.

I suffocate in the airless silence left behind, an intruder in my own family. It has been so long since I have spoken, I feel like I have lost the right to say anything.

The minutes tick past. The clock chimes and chimes again.

“What do we do now, Father?”

He takes a long time before answering. “You go to Gregory and tell him we accept his offer,” he says, voice low. “I’ll stay here and reason with your mother.”

& & &

I take a deep breath and knock on Gregory’s door, for real this time. No answer. The stable lad, a surly boy, says his master has ridden his new colt in haste to town.

I must await Gregory’s return.

I tip-tap a painstaking path to the fork in the road, the gush of water below, querulous starlings on the line to the loudspeaker pole above. Lady Decima’s pronouncements of nightfall’s curfew, then second moonrise – the Cutting moon – will skewer the summer evening from here, arrowing their way to our homes.

I consider returning, hoping Father and Mother have reached an accord. I realise this is more wishful thinking, that a fire has broken out in their hearts. What I find on my return may be much worse.

So I stay put. I am at a place Gregory must pass. I stand where he will see me, the late afternoon sun beating down on my head. I will redden and burn, my floppy hat left behind in my hurry, for time was short. Yet, I wait. Sweat rolls down my face, seeps from my underarms, trickles down my back. Flies bother me, exploring my ears, eyes, and mouth. Should I go to town? But where? And how long would that take?

I long for a drink when there is abundant water so close. I can smell its coolness, hear its freshness. But there are vertical walls. Father says the sinkhole is more than one hundred feet deep. I break clods of earth from the rutted track with my heel and throw in the pieces to judge which attempts thud at the edges and which are lost to the drop.

Approaching hoof beats still my hand. A whinny greets me from the direction of a hulking shadow.

“Mr Gregory?” I call, from a husky throat.

The hoof beats slow to a stop, but not without a skitter to the side. “What do you want, boy?” Gregory asks, slurring his words.

“I have a message.”

Leather creaks. Uneven footsteps approach on the baked mud. As they come closer, the pungency of the rider’s body – hard exercise, the smell of stables – comes downwind, followed by the stench of strong wine.

“So your parents accept my offer?”

I hear the glug of a bottle swigged, followed by a belch in my face. The whiff of stomach juice hardens my resolve against the current of the truth. “They do.”

“Excellent. You have the letter of retraction?” I hear the smooth nick – the unlocking of a tally chain – the jingle of tally rings counted hand to hand.

I have no letter. My chest is wrung tight as a mangle. I cannot imagine Mother writing that document. Not ever, regardless of what Father might say. All I can do is buy time, barter for the hope of salvation. “She’s writing it now.”

He stops counting. The chain nicks shut. He huffs. Mother’s life, on the Cutting list, balanced on the point of a sharp blade. Gregory hasn’t mentioned that. I realise he doesn’t know – doesn’t know just how strong his hand is in this matter.

“I’ll give you half now,” he says, “the other half when I have the letter.”

Half is more than enough to save Mother. It’s a hefty sum to us. But it is an advance on a letter that may never come.

Hard tally rings are pushed into my hand. I fear their stain of corruption on my skin.

‘You despise me,” he says. His imagined stare adds to the heat of the sun. The colt nickers, as if to confirm his master’s opinion.

No point denying it. I put the tally markers in my pocket. My mud-throwing has taught me that there is a stone like a tortoise’s back six feet from the edge of the sinkhole. I keep my foot pressed to it.

“You should learn a lesson from this.” Gregory cannot help but gloat. “There are two types of people in this life – the strong and the weak. It’s what the Cut is about. Do you understand, boy?”

Movement. As he turns to leave, I see his shadowy form between me and the setting sun, between me and the sinkhole. I hear the bottle chink onto the ground. Empty. “Yes, I think I do.”

I brace my foot against the tortoise stone and push Gregory over the edge – into the hole.

He makes no sound until he splashes into the torrent below and then vents only a single, gurgling cry – the one which will be his last. Gone. Dead as a rotten tree, washed away.

People always assume I can see nothing. That is not true. I see things only too well. Mother and Father were both right about Gregory. Only, he gave me the answer – there is no room for weakness when you live under the Cutting.

* * * * THE END * * * *
Copyright David Caunce 2025

Image Source: panosbp from Pixabay