Ademu - Ian Mathie

 Ademu had heard jackals prowling several times during recent nights, but they never came near enough to upset his goats. Tonight something was definitely amiss, as the goats were restless in their thorny enclosure. Taking his old hurricane lamp, he went out and checked the gate, then walked all round the outside of the pen.

Everything seemed to be in order, and the goats, hearing his soft voice talking to them, settled down and stood quietly. Satisfied that the enclosure was secure and his small herd was safe, Ademu returned to his hut and pulled the crude wooden door closed behind him. 

Lying down on the thick grass mat beside his son, his mind wandered back to his wife, Enniou, who had died six weeks before from a snake bite. He felt lost without her, and Abdi, just eleven years old, was now all that remained of his family. His other children had all died from diseases brought on by the drought over the last three years.

Perhaps this year the rains would return, and he could grow some crops. The government had promised free seed when the rains came. In the meantime, it was meagre rations for Ademu and Abdi, living off goat’s milk and the few small fruits they collected in the bush from the Marula trees, which still produced a little fruit, despite the drought.

The distant bark of a jackal looking for its mate reminded him again of his loneliness, but slumber eventually overtook him.

A haunting, laughing sound intruded into Ademu’s dreams. He woke to find Abdi climbing over him, towards the hut’s doorway. He was about to ask where he was going when he heard the laughing cackle again, together with the frantic, frightened bleating of his goats. Instantly Ademu was fully awake, rising from his sleeping mat, reaching for his spear and his machete, ready to defend his livestock.

As Abdi pulled the door open, pandemonium erupted outside in the goat pen. Roaring, snarling, hooting and yipping, intermingled with the terrified bleating of the goats as the night air erupted. The boy didn’t hesitate, rushing straight towards the thick pole which held the thorny gate to the enclosure in place. He had barely laid hands on the pole when a hyena coming round the outside of the pen, lunged, grabbing him by the shoulder. It clamped its jaws so tightly that Ademu could hear the bones crunch, even over his son’s screams.

The boy howled as the beast’s teeth sank into his flesh, but he didn’t let go of the pole. As a result, when the hyena tried to drag him away into the bush, the pole pulled free, dragging the gate open. Another hyena, alert to the opportunity, plunged through the opening, its jaws snapping as it encountered the terrified goats.

At the same moment Ademu reached the gate and hurled his spear at the spotted shadowy form. A squeal told him it had found its mark, but seconds later a tumble of furry bodies overwhelmed him, knocking him to the ground as two other hyenas entered the enclosure, and scattering goats sought desperately to escape.

Ademu lashed out blindly with his machete, hacking into flesh, no longer caring whether it was a goat or a hyena his weapon connected with. In his rage, he was barely even aware that jaws had closed around his own leg, until the crunch that signalled breaking bone sent an intense stabbing pain up his leg. It sent him tumbling once more to the ground, rolling into the barrier that surrounded his goat pen, to be stabbed by a thousand sharp thorns and adding his own cries of pain to the cacophony.

The furore was over in minutes, the last of the goats that was able to run fleeing into the darkness, and the marauding pack of hyenas retreating with the booty of their hunt. The only sounds that remained were Ademu’s own laboured breathing, and the diminishing bleats and grunts of a few dying goats that littered the pen. In the distance he could hear the faint calls of another goat being carried off into the darkness, and the anguished cries of Abdi as he was dragged further away. Suddenly these too stopped, and Ademu felt a stab of pain in his heart worse than any spear could inflict.

The grey light of dawn was creeping over the countryside before Ademu was able to extricate himself from the thorny tangle where he had fallen. He found his broken spear lying nearby and used this as a crutch. Slowly, as the light improved, he looked around and surveyed the wreckage of his domain. Five dead goats, their bloody, shredded bodies, victims of those fearsome snapping jaws, lay scattered around the pen. Blood covered everything, including Ademu. It was like a battlefield after a five hour sword fight.

As he hobbled towards the gate, he could see a trail of blood on the ground and gouges where his son’s feet had fought against the monster that dragged him away. It made his chest tighten again as his mind flooded with despair.

Through the deep pain of the wound in his leg, Ademu felt something trickling down to his foot. He looked down at the savage gash, with deep puncture marks. Blood was oozing from the dust coated, scabby crust that had formed while he lay on the ground. The wound had reopened, and flies were beginning to gather to feast on the fresh blood.

Propped on his broken spear shaft, and wincing as every step sent pain lancing through his body, Ademu tried to follow the marks left by Abdi’s scrabbling feet. The trail of blood showed him where to go when the marks of his son’s struggle petered out, and he stumbled onwards.

By the time Ademu reached his son’s final resting place the sun was high in the cloudless sky. There was blood all over the ground, and many pug marks where the feet of the milling hyena pack had jostled for space and purchase. All that remained of the packs feasting was the boy’s head.

Ademu sat through the heat of the day, cradling his son’s head in his lap, tears streaming down his face until even these ran dry. So deep was his anguish, he didn’t even have the energy to scream or wail to mourn his son and his only movement was to brush the clustering flies away from Abdi’s face.

Eventually, as the first wave of his grief subsided, Ademu thought of the happy times he had shared with young Abdi. He remembered the day his son had first walked. He thought of the way he put food so delicately into his mouth as an infant, while the other children would stuff it in by the handful. He remembered teaching him to twist bark into string and to braid strong fibres with which to tether goats, to tie knots, and how nimble the boy’s fingers had been. He remembered teaching him to make a slingshot and to hunt. And he thought of how supportive the boy had been when his mother was bitten by the snake.

As the sun reached the horizon and day began to fade into night, all Ademu’s anguish poured out in one final, agonised scream. There was nothing left to go on for, so Ademu made no attempt to move.

The hyenas came again that night. He could hear their hooting laughing calls as the pack moved through the bush, no doubt summoned by the smell of blood that still lingered in the night air. As they got closer he could smell their rank odour, hear their shuffling feet, but still he sat.

Despite the darkness Ademu was aware of the shadowy forms moving around him. The smell got stronger, and he felt the breath on the back of his neck.

Still Ademu sat, aware of the teeth as they surrounded his neck and …

Ian Mathie © 2014

A Path to Nowhere

Below is a short observational piece inspired during a visit to Wales. Calvin

A Path to Nowhere

Llanberis, a village buried amidst the hills of Snowdonia, happened to be my starting-point for a hike up Mount Snowdon.  I looked forward to the prospect.  The sun was at its brightest, and there was not a wisp of haze.  My route began between the Llanberis Lake Railway’s boarding point and the Padarn Country Park.  Having gathered my kit together, I set off towards Llanberis Lake.

            There were in fact three paths: a nature trail and the Snowdon walkway were sign-posted, but the third was not marked.  My curiosity ignited immediately.  I suspected the third route to be short, uninteresting, and not worthy of signage.  There was no harm investigating, just to be certain.

            The path led between a steep hill and a copse.  Beyond the trees, the mystery began to unravel.  A pool lay here, hemmed in on the far side by a rocky bluff.  The water’s colour was the most striking iridescent blue, metallic, shimmering, fantastically bright.  Its beauty held me motionless for some time, but I realised such vibrancy had to be unnatural.  Something had caused it, and I suspected industrial pollution.  There was something else about the water, or rather, the air over it.  For some reason, there appeared to be a hazy effect above the surface, as though the scene were being viewed through a camera’s soft-focus filter.  I shifted my position, but the haze remained, adding a romantic, almost magical edge to the beauty spot.

            I glimpsed something hanging through the trees.  It was a small red railway truck suspended from a rusting jib.  These objects seemed ludicrously out of place, but it was now obvious there had been workings of some kind here, and this dazzling lakelet served as the spoil pond.

            The path curved to reveal another piece in an intriguing jigsaw.  Up the hillside, a cutting had been made, and a narrow-gauged railway ascended out of sight.  Everything about this place seemed strange.  The cutting was of some antiquity.  The rails, distorted and encrusted with flaking rust rime, had long been redundant, and yet the cutting itself remained free of grass or plants — odd because both banks were replete with growth, and the bare soil did not look tended or much trodden.  Not far off, flagstone steps ascended.  Some were loose, and the entire stairway was roughly hewn and without the security of a handrail — a strange omission given the ever-increasing tyranny of the health-and-safety paramilitaries’ carping about bumper car dangers, the perils of snowballing and conkers, or any covering of winter ice no matter how millimetric in thickness.  The flight climbed a hundred feet or so and emerged onto a flat terrace thirty yards deep, carved out of the hillside.  This was journey’s end.  All about lay irregular pieces of blue-grey slate like shed dragon scales.  The thinner fragments crunched underfoot; larger pieces sat half buried in the mess.  It was a scene of hasty abandonment.  Near the cutting stood shoulder-high stacks of cut slate.  Each slab was five feet long, two wide, and four inches thick.  At the back of the terrace, a ten-foot strip of bare slate marred the hillside as a dark scar.  Its face caught the sun in places as I moved, making the rock appear wet and as though cut just the day before.  A line of stout slate dwellings overviewed the precipice.  They were small, rectangular, squat, flat-roofed, and functional, utterly functional in fact.  They were so bereft of aesthetics, their ugliness seemed a begrudging concession, a reluctant admission of the weather’s privations.

            I took out my Pentax and fired off a few shots of the hovels, but it was only after having snapped several picturesque landscapes from the terrace’s edge that I realised I was missing the point.  I was basking in the heat and luxuriating in the tranquillity, the solitude, and the sheer beauty of the hills.  Snowdon’s great mass, serene and blued by distance, dominated the skyline.  Nearer mountains, bedecked in an olive-green drab of fir and larch trees, tumbled down to the long, thin shoreline of Llanberis Lake, which stretched to the right almost out of sight.  Closer still, great outcrops of grey rock erupted from the earth, their rugged detail emphasised by early sunlight.  Shining through it all as a backlit sapphire was the gleaming quarry pool.

How different the outlook, though, for those wretched souls who had lived in and worked this place: a captive community toiling amidst the din, filth, and perils of a working quarry.  Each breath, laced with razor-edged slate dust, induced emphysema, increased misery, and hastened death.  Life was Saturday night’s binge and the dutiful trudge to Sunday chapel.  Such rugged remoteness would add to the workers’ pains, their scenic appreciation eroded by drudgery, hunger, ill health, and bone-deep weariness.  Most desperate of all was, for those bygone workers, week followed week, month after month, each a milestone on a path, but where did it lead? — not to an escape from poverty, toil, or sickness.  Perhaps the path led to salvation, or perhaps it was a path to nowhere.

            I put my SLR away, shucked my bag onto my shoulders, and headed off, more thoughtful than when I had arrived.

 

© (2014) Calvin Hedley all rights reserved

Snappy Pete

Calvin writes - The following is the product of a writing exercise set some years ago.  I was braver then, so to write a piece ‘… in the style of Raymond Chandler …’ fired my enthusiasm, as I was and remain a definite fan.  Could the task be anything, I ask now, other than a poisoned chalice?  Chandler was a true craftsman of immense talent.  Such backhanded compliments as, ‘Chandler was great … in that genre …’ reflect literary snobbery among critics far more than they do the writer’s genius. 

I would, of course, be far more cautious these days in attempting the task.  It’s difficult to ‘fill’ anyone’s shoes when you’re not fit to clean them.  However, if writing were easy, everyone would try it.  I don’t normally write in the first person either, so what follows is a true labour of love.  Wherever he is, I hope Raymond forgives me.

Snappy Pete

 After three dead-end leads, fifty a day plus expenses didn’t seem all that easy to earn.  My head felt like it had bounced through several rounds with Jack Daniels and several more with Joe Louis.  Someone was getting nervous, flexing muscle, but whatever they thought I knew … I didn’t.

          The heat had pressed on my chest all day, pushing my lungs flat.  It was impossible to move without dragging in breath, pushing it out, and oozing sweat.  I was tired, felt dirty, and just wanted to wash up and kick back, ready for dawn’s furnace door to open.  But the thought of ‘Snappy’ Pete nag-nag-nagged.  He’d left a message at the office the day before: he wanted to see me, said it was urgent, and I should come the back way.  Everything’s urgent for Pete Jarrow, but something was spooking him.  There was no back way.  There was a way in the back, but that meant jumping a few fences and crushing the odd weed.

          Jarrow had a small patch on the south side, a community of Russian immigrants in crowded brownstone tenements on crowded narrow streets.  He ran the numbers, a few girls, and protection — nothing big, just enough to stand out in the neighbourhood like a fat maggot.  People thought ‘Snappy’ got his nickname because he habitually snapped the fingers of both hands on concluding business.  That wasn’t it.  Once his scams began paying off, Jarrow suddenly dressed like a movie star: silk suits, shirts, patent leather wing-tips, and especially ties.  Whether he wore pastel, stripes, or fine check, vivid colour always dropped from his button-down collar: azure, cerise, carmine, or bright yellow.  ‘Snappy’ Pete would sell your daughter, pick your pocket, and dress for the occasion.

          I walked the last few streets.  The sawmill looked deserted but still gave out a resinous hint of working days.  I cut through its rear access way, stepped round two bums sharing a bottle, climbed a wall, and landed in Pete’s tenement yard.  Light showed through Jarrow’s curtains, and I made my way to the fifth floor, smelling poverty and over-boiled food.  There was no answer at the door.  Possibilities rattled like streetcars in my head.  He was out — maybe, but his message suggested Snappy wasn’t making a splash just then; he was scared to answer — unlikely, no one who wore those colours scared easily; or there was something worse — if so, the door wasn’t saying.  I shrugged and sighed.  If I had to wait, it would be on my rates and Snappy’s bourbon.  I picked the lock, called, waited, considered myself in Pete’s hall mirror, called again, and waited some more.  Pete might not scare, but he could get nervous.  My companion in the mirror looked back at me; he looked uncertain too.  I went inside.

          I found Pete Jarrow in his office.  It was the first time I’d seen him without a jacket, just a white shirt, taupe waistcoat, trousers with knife-edge creases, and shiny two-tone shoes.  As usual, his tie stood out, blood orange in colour and twisted to a tight cord, suspending Jarrow from the ceiling fan.  The tie’s short end — much shorter now — jutted like Pete’s tongue.  The fan’s motor still turned, labouring, slowly rotating the body like it was a shop display.

          No kicked-over chair suggested suicide, and nothing else in the room seemed disturbed.  It seemed only common decency to snoop a little, but smelling a set-up, I soon wiped what I’d touched and scrammed, reaching my car just as sirens sounded.  Jarrow would increase some flatfoot’s paperwork, and I had more to think about.  It was late and I drove away.  The night still felt hot.

© (2014) Calvin Hedley all rights reserved

 

Leap Year Travel

Douglas wrote a shorter version of this story for the Daily Telegraph ‘Just Back’ short story competition in 2013. He did not win. Another version of the story is included in Ywnwab! his first book by the Allrighters’ published in September 2013.

Leap Year Travel a fantasy journey — by Henry

 I am just back from the airport, standing at my front door, shivering in my new, warm-weather holiday clothes. I walk in and hear the cacophony of the house alarm. I think for the code 8532 or 8253? I press 8235 and all goes deathly still and quiet; I am home again, alone. My wife reached eighteen birthdays last year — yesterday to the day.

We are heading south — a familiar route. Our jet aircraft banks west and I see lakes and woods. Then we bank east and lose height very quickly, dropping in steps, as though in turbulence, airframe banging, wings flapping. Down we go… fear rises as I see the terminal building to one side and we are still not down; a runway overshoot looms, so I tuck my feet under the seat, brace myself and close my eyes...“Please, God, no.” My prayer is answered, as with a huge roar, full jet power comes on again. The pilot, in a monotone robotic voice, says.

 “For safety, we are going around. We could not take the early landing slot. You will have a good view of Mont Blanc.”

 My peers converse in the seat behind.

“Scary.” I hear in a broken trembling voice. 

 Her male colleague makes a terse, sober reply. “Most unprofessional, failed to take the slot, he should not have tried, not even an apology for making us late.”

 I wholeheartedly agree. I feel my wife’s long, sensuous fingers holding my hand tight and draw my breath thinking of more intimacy later. Her magic still not dimmed by age.

 I change my watch for the hour time difference and worry about our train leaving in sixty minutes. We complete a circle, Mont Blanc is on the wrong side for me to see, and land smoothly all right second time around. We sit out of breath on the train to Brig. A comfortable hotel and good food await us. Cuddles and more at night and dawn in a net-curtained room, her still-perfect ivory skin caught moving in beams of new day sun.

The Glacier Express for Chur is not anywhere to be found in the main station. Departure is due in five minutes … we should not have dallied in bed. I start to panic … then see the narrow gauge track in the town square outside. We board, putting our bags in a luggage-van at the rear. We are off and soon mountain and valley scenery is running by, all grand and magnificent. At halfway the eating car is swapped from the westbound train. Lunch is adequate … poor exchange rate cost to be forgotten else troubling. Our train dives into gorges with fast-flowing rivers and is split into two before we reach Chur. When we reach Chur we find our two bags of luggage have gone to St Moritz.

  “Do not worry, dear, we are travelling on Swiss Railways.”

Even with communication in Swiss English I am not completely sure what I hope I have agreed with the helpful staff in the Chur platform signal station.

 We buy a shared toothbrush, paste and T-shirts and go to our hotel, enjoy rosti and steak followed by brief satisfying T-shirted sleep and more. 

At 8.00am we leave Chur’s large rail station and it’s yellow buses. The flanges squeal and the rack engages as we wind our way up the valley. The brochure picture of a red train going over a high viaduct into a mountain face with dark spirals inside is now real. Wow! — the reality is better than expectation. At St Moritz a miracle — by our carriage as it halts at our door stand our two bags on a trolley. Anxiety over Swiss English and Railways are now relieved.

We travel onwards, in fantasy, on the winter running Bernina Express over a snow-ploughed route through a high pass; then falling into warmer Italy, the snow soon disappears. We spiral around on rails and arches in another brochure picture and rattle through main streets to reach Torino for an enjoyable slow lunch, amble and a night’s rest in full night attire. Then to Milan and a coast train to cold Pisa. Few look at the amazing leaning tower. We enjoy a belated winter birthday celebration in front of roaring fires at the retreat and lots of good views while on rambles, both well wrapped up against the biting cold.

Of course all these delights took place last year. I am now going away again to somewhere warmer; booked specifically I stated to travel on the last day of February, alone. No cuddles this year unless my widow temptation fantasy matures.

I sigh; the queues for booking in are much longer than last year. I only have a single bag now. I eventually shuffle forward and reach the counter and the young lady with a name badge smiles; I feel a glow inside, she has a face similar to my daughter’s. Tracy Evans inspects my flight details and looks at me with a sad expression as though I might be her demented father.

  “Do you know the date today, sir?”

 I smile, my stress from queuing relaxed by her melodic, gentle Welsh accent. “Yes, my wife’s birthday — 29 February.”

She replies slowly. “I am sorry this year is not a leap year; it is 1 March today, St David’s Day.”

 Douglas started this story with an idea about the awful prospect of turning up at an airport a day late, which is a recurrent nightmare he has about travel. He thought then about leap years, added details of an actual flight to Switzerland where they overshot the runway in Geneva, another train journey where luggage was lost and put an overlay of loss of a dear partner to support the arrival a day late.

Of all his creative writing Douglas likes putting together short stories the most. Indeed his longer books under the Allrighters’ name are made up of many short stories linked together.

Open http://www.amazon.co.uk and search on Ywnwab! to find Kindle and paperback versions for sale.

Green Giant is felled 11 July 2012 - by Douglas

Leamington Spa - Northumberland Road

I am not on the property game board in the purple space. I have been dying for years now. When my peers sprouted green this spring in drought I am left grey brown. The post drought rains and wet summer have not revived me. Now time is even too late for any fantasy genetic cloning. No children will enjoy playing with my conkers anymore. Given someone to understand me I could have told a long story of all I have seen here since 1878. Now all these memories will turn to ash.

          My children each side planted years ago died first; the brown trunk staining an early warning. The tree surgeons came for them last Monday. Watching one’s children cut down to earth is so bad; one does not expect one’s children to go first. Their young branches and twigs shredded, leaving ugly stumps and roots. I recall them being planted all so small. Ideally, if they knew I had any thought or feelings, they would have taken me down and chipped me first.

Morning rush over at 9.15am today, they come for me two months before my 132nd birthday. A bright-red lorry with a dazzling flashing light, hydraulic arm and a chain-saw man in its yellow bucket. As he comes close I smell hot breath and his bright-orange jacket hurts my kind of tree sight. He saws off my dead twigs and branches.

“I feel little. Hell the noise! No earmuffs for me.”

I sense the other trees wince as each branch falls, all their tree nerves on edge. Human time 11.00am. I am now left as a lonely ‘Y’ catapult shape sticking upwards into the blue sky. Below they saw up my severed branches into logs and shred my twigs. Lunch break 12.00 noon. They leave me naked, limbs cut off, too late for a miracle cure. Surgeons would never do this to a human or an animal.

A pensioner walks slowly by, his head bent forward similar to the elderly couple on the road sign up the street. He is a regular daily visitor, also past his prime waiting for the chop, coming by back from the newspaper shop. He pauses, removes his hat in respect, a tear in his eye, I think for me. He stoops and takes a few pieces of me as mementos, turns off home with his paper under his arm for another day’s bad news reading. I hear him thinking about writing this story. Old William, a popular and regular sitter on the seat opposite must be away again in cold and wet Wales. He too will miss me.

Maybe my friends and other local tree families, the surviving Chestnuts, will outlast the Ashes in the gardens. We thought the Ash families were safe behind fences, away from crashing cars, until the Black Death die back arrived from Poland. When Grandfather Ash across the road went last year I overheard the tree surgeons say to the pensioner.

“We would all be gone in twenty years.”

I know the pensioner, William and the tree surgeons all share sad feelings about us when we are felled, the giant trees in Northumberland Road.

Trees do talk to each other. Fact or fiction?

Notes 

• Another giant and a child are felled today 11 June 2013. Fortunately, finance permitting, the Town Council and the County Council plan to replant a new tree for everyone one felled. 
• Good news February 2014 - several new trees planted, including one where the felled tree stood. Well done to those who have the long term vision to plant now for the future as the trees planted will take 30 to 40 years at least to have some scale.
• This story published September 2013 in Ywnwab! - "You will never write a book."  An Autumn Story-book 

Open http://www.amazon.co.uk and search on Ywnwab! to find Kindle and paperback versions for sale.