21 June 2012
Note - This is an over-lapping story to my previously published story called "Oak". Although not a direct follow on, it may have more context once you have read that. I have just finished this piece so I would appreciate any feedback on how well you feel the story works. Thanx Ciaran
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‘Feckin poofs’ Hoofed with studded boot, John F. kicked the worn leathered ball over the pebble cracked school wall of dash, skimming deflected off through thorn bush, bringing the game to an abrupt end. ‘What did you do that for ?’ Jimmy’s shouts fell on deaf flapped ears as John hump-backed off down towards the town.
The back yard at Andy’s shop was enveloped in daily smoke. Cardboard stacks and woodened crate in off-balanced blaze burning with invisible flame. John F. with elbow covered face kicked blindly. Trapped flame erupted in volcanic ashed spray. An empty smoking aerosol can rolled out. With quick two fingered careful pinch, John lifted and balanced the hot canister in launching position, stood back in wild ash-faced laugh and started his countdown. Ten, nine, eight. On three it blew, with a deathly off-toned crack, launching right over his wildly ducking head. ‘Whoa’ John screamed in wide glazed-eyed glee. With boot scuffed scrape he searches about for another. A heavy thud unearthed boxed over-ripe Jaffa oranges sagged smouldering among the grey flake. John dragged them slowly trying not to let the hold rip. Rowed on purple moulded card, each orange wore an elliptical green speckled moldy-dry hat. Perfect missiles to the 14 year old boy’s mind. Back at the school, each windowed pane of nine glitters in easy target. Two over, three down, take aim, fire. Fruit in splattered joy shatters like noughts and glass crosses. With each shot John imagines himself back at his desk in Mrs. ‘Figgerty’s’ classroom, watching the trajectory of each fruited missile exploding with peeled citric shrapnel. On this rare occasion, he was ecstatically happy.
John had thought about that day as he dug flat blade on cut sod ankle deep in muck this cold watery morning. Jimmy would have to lie with his late father earlier than anyone expected. The grassed green plot of wet met upturned brown of clay. With each boot of leathered dig, he drifted and unearthed fragments of a lost youth.
“You’ll get in so much trouble for this” Catching Jimmy at the corner of one eye, John F. swings and fires another at Jimmy, deliberately missing him. “You think I feckin care, do ya ? No one else does. I haven't seen that drunk ass of a father of mine in two days" “Do you want to climb the ‘scala’ ?” nodding towards the forty foot water tower. Watching Jimmy’s nervous shrug “Are ya chicken, or what ?” “Come on” Straddled on metal of vertical rung, John swings upward with Sherpa like swagger. He captures the summit while Jimmy, fumble footed, remains at base-camp. “What’s wrong, do you need your boyfriend to hold your hand ?” John shouts down laughing whilst leaning over the precipice. Tilting one legged forward, John leaned forward in graceful abandon over the precipice. “I wish I could fly to the moon”. he whispers quietly to himself.
Off in glided open armed flight, soaring on tree-topped slide between green and blue. Swooping on sooted red pots stacked on chimney brick and broken slate of Bangor blue. Over field of scattered cow and reflected grey puff. Tracking salmoned river meandering home on smothered rock of slime brown. Flying in goosed up wild formation, arrowed south, landing steeple top, on the church below. With breath catching gaze John edges turret side to peruse his flight.
Below Fr. Sweeney wanders in holy stumbled stride toward the main door below. John F. takes aim and hawks a phlegm filled depth charge and dives for cover, laughing. Laid back, hidden within blocked bell-tower, he lights a red single Carroll tipped in brown. Kicking lazily at the large bell and blowing rings of smoke blue, he scratches a fresh "JF" on the bell's bead line with his blackened red worn Swiss knife.
John F. sighed, stretching ached back towards the blinding blue, coming back to rest elbow-smoothed on the wooden shovel handle wondering if twenty years on his initials still rung true.
“John?”, “John F, are you there? ” Muck eyed, he slowly edges a wet tweeded head above dampened ground level. The move to light temporarily blinded his scouring the head-stoned terrain. "Oh it's you Teresa." "What do you want now?" "Have you told him yet ?" "I can't tell him today of all days. Leave it 'till things die down" "Well, there isn't a lot of time John. Don't leave it too long. Enough damage has been done already" John's shadowed damp cap hid wearied eyes as he lowered a heavy head and got back to digging.
"Where did you go ?" Jimmy shouts. "I was up saying me prayers" John F. retorts winking. "I'm headin' to the river now. Have you any smokes ?" Out of sight, edged under bridge arch, slipping, hopping unbalanced from green mossed stone to river's grass edged. Skimming flats picked by eye and smooth hand. Racing flat karate-chopped lath boats downstream. Running bank side, breathless. Launching missiles broadside in futile attempts to sink plank with plunk, plunk. "What the hell was that ?" Jimmy shouts as he trips, tumbling off into wet bank. John F. stops suddenly and stares drop-jawed in glazed amazement at the blue blood lined hand stretched out in rigoured grasp. "Is it real ?" Jimmy squeals "Shh..stop your squakin'" John slowly pulls back the feathered fern cover. The blackened face, leathered in thick skins of life, stares a bulged eyed stare back at John F. "Fuck" John roars, stiff necked, pushing back, gasping at thin air. "Who is it ?" Jimmy whispers, edging forward on the verge of fleeing. "It's him, my father" "My stupid fuck of a father". "Shit John, what the.. ?" "I'll go and get help" John cleared the vegetation to get a better look. His father lay pinned to wet earth, arms out in a crucified stance more active than John had ever seen. No need to check for a pulse. One shoe off sitting nearby, shirt mucked streaks and fly undone. A large crusted gash above the left eye. Open palmed empty left hand, Jameson half bottled filled right. A sight to be proud of, John thought, noticing the wet whiskied rotting stink for the first time.
For an hour John hovered in weightless time, surveying the scene. Above a large black crow squaked a vultures squak in the tree. The river continued it's journey in quite splash. Puffed cloud looked down as it slid across blue sky.
"You couldn't do it, could you ? Not even once." John's scream burst through clenched teeth as he fell back on damp bank. He kicked out at his father's limp wrecked body. "You were never there, not once you selfish bastard." John kicked out harder each time and kept going until he tired in an flood of tears. Calming, he reached inside his father's wet jacket pocket. His tattered old wallet, once a proud gift from his son, now flattened from use and lacking in funds, fell out. Inside a single red ten shilling note lay lonely, crumpled. A memoriam card folded. John knew his mother sheltered within. A withered scrap of vellum with the faded words of prayer, it was married to a small faded vignetted picture of his father holding John as a baby, smiling. On the back in fading scrawl, "July '52". Full faced with crisp white shirt and rolled sleeve, his father looked young and happy. A postman's satchel wrapped over his shoulder. In the background a black bicycle rested against the end gable. John had forgotten the time when his father worked. For the first time he realised how much he looked like his father, not the dead drunk one lying sunbathing but this younger less worn more alive one. He may only be fourteen but a life of despair and disappointments had led John to often consider his fate. Was life set and unchangeable ?. He was his father's son and like any reflection, was he resigned to reflect ? John was still clutching the picture when Jimmy came running back, help in tow. Somewhere among the muffled shuffle of authority, a warm hand reached out and took his.
John stretched hard, the grave complete. All eightbyfourbythree clayed in wetting brown in rough pyramid to one side. Stepping on the spade's tread, John pushed himself out to a sitting position on the fresh cut edge pulling handled blade behind. He roughly rubbed the muck free on tweeded trousered leg and headed off walking the short narrow path in brief clay baking sunshine, smelling and enjoying the wet. At his father's headstone, now looking more than it's twenty years, he knelt in quiet prayer. John still carried the photo everywhere with him. He prayed in rhymed memory, with a heart long since healed. "Jimmy was there that day, by the river. When I think of you he is there too, always. Now he's found his way up here beside you. It's sad surely." "What will I do ?" John couldn't help smiling. No advice was ever forthcoming when his father was alive and drunk. Dead and sober had long seemed an improvement. "How can I tell Francie ? He thinks he got her pregnant, and now all this. It's a mess for sure" Stretching out, he traces a blackened finger along the "J" of his father's name. "Aye, you're right. Say nothing." sounds like good advice to me.
John F. gulped his pint of black, shuffling a nervous look over cream glassed rim. Francie's father limped towards the oak bar. Francie stared in stuttered heartbeat staring at the crumpled letter, anger subduing. "He doesn't know what he's saying Francie. Ignore him" "I wish the bastard was dead, " Francie whispered. "You don't Francie, ... you really don't " With each heavy creaking swing of the pub door, life's rhythms wafted in time. Young boys belting past in joyous carefree squak. Ladies in overlapped chat wait in elbowed circle for pthe afternoon bus. Doherty's tied dog ba
Ash • Opuss № I