Dusty Travels (random odd extract)

Often, when I am seated late at night in a moment of devouring comfort, surrounded by modern luxuries and dignity, I reminisce the days where this living room fire would be replaced with the bodies of burning young women. Logs would not be spitting sparks, but instead glitter would fly off the little garments these women had draped over their twisting bodies, as they danced for me, through the deepening light of the evening. I was just a young man in his prime years. Years before my riches had consumed my free heart, I ran around wild with the energy that can only be captured in a heart of 19 years. I’d raced out of college as soon as I possibly could and travelled, against my dear mother’s wishes around the world. This particular memory was of a hot night in Hong Kong. We had no air conditioning at this time you understand, apart from perhaps in the most fantastic, expensive hotels which I could not at this point afford. I had made my way to Hong Kong earlier that month. I had taken a train through Asia as the third part of my journey, after leaving England at the tender age of 17, yet once I was on the road I learnt the ways of a man promptly.

I was in a shabby pub with some new friends I had acquired in this foreign land. If I’m honest, I barely understood a word they said. One was from France, and his English was so poor I had begged him to continue in his foreign tongue, but then the American, from Boston had protested. A drop-out of school at 12, he had run away. He knew the streets of the world better than any of us, however, his is accent, was so heavy I barely understood the drawl. The words slid off his tongue, and rolled around his mouth like he were grinding them, in a way which made me think of an old coffin dodger, as I used to call them, chewing his pipe as he lazed in the British summer. I sometimes grew so utterly mesmerised by the execution of his words, that I couldn’t begin to decipher the murmur his words blended to become. The last to make up out jolly foursome was an Irish man. With such a strong Dublin accent, and failed elocution, I had no hope of receiving his fast messages. But he never spoke much anyway. He just sat drinking, as though he knew no other life. He was older than us all. Must’ve been at least twenty-five, although for all we know he could’ve been forty. He had an ageless face, but sometimes as he sat, in a dreaming haze, a flicker of pain crossed his face. Sometimes he left to catch some fresh air, and never returning for hours at a time. Sometimes inthese periods he would be brought up in conversation. We would guess his age, his story and I remember clearly one night when we were having such a conversation as the latter when the American, who liked to be called Scuff, looked up from under his drooping hat and began a story. I listened hard, and despite his accent, I will try to replay this moment.

‘Ya both know I pick tha’ fella up lawng before I eva saw yas, righ’? Weeell, we used to stay up awl through the nigh’ and talk. No lies, this man were sayin’ things. He gots quieter as years passed but I still ‘member what he says to me those nigh’s.’ He took a long suck upon the cigarette he was always holding, and stared into space. Just as we began to entertain the idea that we’d never hear a word from our American friend again, he started. “He says he never went to no schools, no family had ‘im. He says he were a beg. Made a life outta pennies he foun’ on tha’ road. Drape in ‘is rag, he wuh sit awn them street corners an’ beg.’ He took another long suck upon the diminishing cigarette and looked me in the eyes. ‘One day, this war winte’, ‘e know he’ll freeze to his grave out there. He has in ‘is head the image of ‘is icey lil body lyin’ there months befaw no-one sees ‘im. He know he can naw live no more day. Then, ‘e say, this fella come along with this coat. An’ ‘e says to ‘im, “aw fella, I can’t be takin’ this na!”