In Absentia

Beyond the part-demolished, boarded-window disused mills, the weed-strewn patch of land for sale, and the two remaining soot-suffused, red refractory chimneys, the evening clouds are low. They bubble up behind the road-bridge like the mousse of peach champagne. Trees on either side spark the river deep-alive with tall reflections, whilst down the grassy bank on a trail that leads between the heavily scented pines, a man and boy make their way to the water’s edge. The child runs ahead, picks up and skims a stone, its bounce across the surface close to perfect. The grandfather raises his phone…

Hey, kiddo…

Diamond-bright sparkles and smiles.

A second stone…

Thwap, crack against a rock, plop, plop…

Wow, Grandad! Did you see that? Broke clean in two, it did.

A splash caught on camera, a picture to be stylized… More ‘pen-and-wash’ than ‘kiss-me’, if the man’s got any sense…

It’s spring and they’ve been walking, exploring the Woodland Community Project, a quarter mile or so upstream. Seeking out wildlife, no stag or doe to be seen unless one counted their 2D likenesses – online-sourced pictures printed and pinned to a bare-wood board between crayoned depictions of lowlier creatures unearthed on playgroup trails. And who wouldn’t despair at the sight of the recently vandalised statue? Marly, the snoutless, three-legged fox for now. 

But you heard the stag call, didn’t you Grandad? Up on that hill there, you told me.

Aye… Although it might have been the burr of a chainsaw.

Between the toad part-obscured by lily pads elipsed, talk of trolls beneath the bridge, and the contemplated crawl under the steel-wire fence designed to offer the newly-constructed pond its barbed protection, the man would spout forth about how the boy would tear his trousers, graze his knees. Not that the youngster cared about this, keen on discovering nature as he had been for some time, seeing it right up close, even if it meant getting down and dirty. The grandfather feared recriminations from both the ranger and his own kin, getting caught on a barb, getting stuck, and he wondered at the inequity of youth and old age when compared with the suppleness-come-toughness of skin…

Music welcomed their return. A highland fling upon the lowland countryside. A wedding? A birthday celebration on the edge of town? A sixtieth…? Had to be…

Drums beating, pipes blowing, how the child would dance; leaping and skipping the boulders, stopping only when the music came to an end to ask about those of his grandfather’s day – the ones the old man called ‘The Scares’. Those great solid blocks with iron ladders attached that he had to climb up and over, or dive into the water from the top, egged on by his thrill-seeking companions. But just like the boats, the bringers of cargo, which had moored there in the days of yore, they were gone now; crumbled, destroyed where the land had slipped, where the trunks of trees jutted out jaggedly horizontal, inviting modern boyhood dares.

There had been different paths back then, overgrown by the time the man was thirty, more so at forty, and at fifty when he’d viewed the land from the other side. Blackened branches, foliage laid waste by an infestation of grubs, a moth-home hanging, ‘Miss Havisham, I presume’ bridal veil… He’d come with a friend and had perused the poison wreckage – no leaping salmon, not a tiddler in the stream, but the anglers with their hooks and lines were still there.

What are you doing, lad?

The man narrows his eyes as the child kneels down where the river laps towards him, hands searching through the wet for pebbles.

Just gotta find the right one… One like I had before… Grandad…?

The boy edges back, twists onto his side and looks up… You know about girls, right?

Suppose I do, lad… The grandfather smiles… Then again, I wouldn’t count on me knowing too much about how they think these days. What makes you ask?

Well, there’s this one I like, and we went out once.

Oh? Bit young for dating, ain’t you?

Naw, not like that. We went to the park last week and were supposed to go see a movie at the weekend, but I must have done something wrong because now she won’t speak to me.

Laura. Just like Laura.

Oh, I see… Well, things might work out in the end, only time will tell…

Forty-four years to the day. Had it really been so long? Sundown’s early doors on her sixteenth birthday when they’d kissed, and him just a few months older. Then again when she'd turned nineteen, when they’d gone a whole lot further, after which ‘Goodnight Vienna’, ‘Total Eclipse’…

They’d slow-danced to the song before the last of the mills closed down and the town became redundant. Nineteen-eighty-three. All cordoned off now like that tavern turned community hall down the slip-road. Clotted cream and sepia pebble-dash to replace the black and white stucco façade, glow-bright by night with its neon lights and crowded entrance…

At twenty-three, he’d met his wife there. The first of three ex-wives. Drank there for years, one eye on the door. And how many times in all the years since had he thought he could be just like Andy Dufresne breaking back into Shawshank, chip, chip, chipping away at those walls to tunnel himself right back in? Only he’d be different from good old Andy, he’d make it his mission to reinvent the existential hero. He’d be content in his cell and his poster girl wouldn’t change. Except, he guessed, he wouldn’t recognise her now, any more than she recognised him…

‘Turn around’… Ah, Bonnie, how the young still sing your song, lyrics learned in a season of Glee but without the silver shimmer, years of smoke and mirrors, without the cowboy-striding line-dance when some new number one took your place. More of a stomp on his part, a careless treading on toes, he realised that now…

Right lad, up on your feet, you don’t want to be lying there. How’s about we skim another stone…?

And another, and another…

Thwap, plop... Thwap, plop... Thwap, plop...