A Concept Novel - Chapters 3-4

Chapter 3

O scenery! Take me there
O barbed and coiled ferns
O fox and unseen bird so fair
O forgotten, trodden worm

O far jet! Take me there
Abandon thy wake on my blue sky
And split that lofty firmament map
Echoing that far-flung tranquil hum,
Warm autumn! Take me there

I travel down the road too fast
A fleeting stop and stare.
And upstream down this river path
A tree! Oh take me there!

It was like I was experiencing feelings never felt before, not just by me, but by anyone. Like that guy in the papers who had invented a new colour, I had invented a new sensation. It was too quiet to be excitement, and too urgent to be contentment. It was daring, and felt a little out of place in my mind. No doubt it would join other immoral feelings like lust and persuasion, but I didn’t care. It was mine. It was a feeling of Gods. I should name it something funky.

I stopped by a farm gate to rest, to write the poem. I had in my possession only a water bottle, fixed already to the bike’s frame, half filled and de-labelled. I had also the scraps of note paper from my suit pockets and upon emptying them, finding my cell phone and some tissue, I left my jacket upon a fallen tree some two miles back from the gate. Now only in my work whites, the air was cooling. The sights and smells of simple grass and thickets warmed me like receiving good news. The sun shone at last, reflecting brilliant silver into my eyes whenever I looked down at the bike. I had birds in my sight, flurrying off like champagne from a bottle. I felt very quiet, annoyingly poetic but content, and glad to be outside. The path I had taken had not tapered, not diverged or forked for some way. I had gone the best part of three miles downhill fairy quickly, but now the ground was flattening and the hedges breaking every so often to make way for a view, always of a field, tractor tracks and combine imprints running parallel into the distance.

It had become one of the finest days of the summer and being alone meant that I could think it designed for me, my change in mood being acknowledged and perhaps congratulated by the pleasant weather. It justified my crime and silenced my conscience in such a way that I hardly recognized at all that the bike never belong to me. It now was a hyperextension of my ego, grafted to my esteem like a trophy wife.

Further up the path squirrels were scurrying in dry leaves and even a brownish blur, what was perhaps a fox, darted across the path not two feet in front of my wheels. How awful and quickly removed my mood would have been if I had hit it. Instead, I was accelerated by the relief of not hitting it. I wanted more. I wanted to see an owl or an otter. Something that would hold still for me. Having not engendered this thought even for a full second, I heard a deep set rustling to my left, something that had to be bigger than any squirrel or fox could be, laying wait behind a grassy mound. I gently lowered the bike flat to the pavement and approached the embankment thinking of all the dangerous wildlife in Carolina that could be waiting for me. No bears. Nothing really. So unembarrassed, I lay soldierly on my belly and slowly crept the dune on my elbows, hoping for a late nesting badger or rabbit colony.

I could tell by the noise, and the impending hurried heartbeat that must have disturbed insects in the ground beneath me, that I would get a good close view of whatever it was. Rustling was suddenly joined by grunting, by groaning, then by human coughing. At my deep breath’s release, my heart returned to rhythm. Rationality untuned the strings that once set a romantic mood in my gut. I was just a man. As I reared my head above the embankment, a skinny figure under a flat cap was sweeping leaves with the direct intention not to get his clothes dirty. He stepped to avoid the mud as ballet dancers step, often re-polishing his shoes on the back of his trouser leg whilst using the old rake as a balancing stick. He had gathered some leaves in a pile to his left, and working down what must have once been a road, he swept in uncertain motions, exposing the grey beneath the brown. It was not a bear or an owl, but he, not knowing I was watching, was wildlife observed. I reached for my notepaper.

I took the bike a little further in a middle gear, savouring the sights, until at length the hedges broke and I came to a t-junction. It was a road for cars, and although I couldn’t see any coming in either direction, tire tracks paved the way both up and downhill. I contemplated the challenge to my left, a high banked dust-track that disappeared where my vision failed, perhaps the horizon, and quickly decided against it. Down the hill to my right was a cottage building, and looking like a cosy travel lodge, I glided down the road and into the driveway, leaning the bike against a high-walled fence. The swinging sign said ‘The Thomas Becket’ and one swinging from that read ‘Rooms Available.’ Surely it would be indulgent, not to mention a waste of money to stay in a hotel room when my house was reasonably local. Yet it seemed defeatist to go back there. I removed my chequered tie and used it to fasten the bike to some lattice outside the inn. It would be safe there, I thought.

Inside, the mood and furniture arrangement reminded me of an old English Pub. I guessed that was the intent. I had never been to England, or even one of these English-themed bars, yet I could imagine myself immigrating to one of these places and spending a good few years in age in front of the hearth. There was a log fire, real ales on tap behind the bar, and padded stools that lined up adjacent to local drinkers. I un-tucked my shirt to look like I’d come from afar, an interesting place, then took a stool between two elderly postmen in caps, presumably on their rounds. The barmaid was another one of those nice types, in my age range, so I thought I’d try a smile as she came to serve me. “Howdy” I said, quite pert.
“Hey stranger” She said, and somehow, despite the definition, I felt welcomed.
“What do people drink around here?”
“Take your pick. You’re not from ‘around here’ are you?”
“Guinness then I suppose” I had never tried Guinness before. “Well I guess I am from here. I’m from the town. My accent fooled ya, huh?”
“Where’d you grow up?”
“Seattle”
“Awfully long way from home. Why you come all the way down here? Was it a girl?”
“No nothing as exciting as all that. It was a job.”
She laughed. Saying it aloud, I finally got the joke. “It was just a job” I repeated, for my sake more than any.
My drink was poured, and was settling beside me, the murky clouds as if it held Carolina sand, the grains chasing the liquid, I watched it settle, then fade to blackness, and everything became clear.
“Must have been some job to come so far” The barmaid said
“Not really” I smirked, “I just quit. Just this minute I quit” I was smiling to myself as I realised the implications of the day. It was done now, and I was in a warm house on a sunny day drinking Guinness.
“So where you going now?” she asked, leaning over the bar, “Would be a shame to head off home so soon.”

Home. The word was a gob-smack. Buxton had been my home for three years, or so I thought. Maybe all this time I was wrong. Maybe I came out here and got lost in the trees, lost in the sand, and my toilet paper job. Maybe it was time to go home. The sun was out here all the time, and I knew what was northward waiting for me. I knew who lived in Seattle, near the house I still owned by green picket fences, and I didn’t think I could ever see Mandy again, not without doing something stupid. The rain was in Seattle. Going back there would be a bad idea. But then again, it was something to do.

It didn’t occur to me at the time that the barmaid was coming onto me, because the moment she leaned over and offered me a place to sleep, I could hear nothing but the resonant pitch of a musical instrument behind me. When I turned, giving the woman my back, I saw one of the postmen over by the far window, picking away on a little guitar. It sounded the sound I could never make, a song of practise that scared me just to witness it. I could tell the postman was good, and I wanted to be as good as him at something of my own, but I had nothing, just the bike, and everybody could cycle. I took my drink over to his table and watched him play to the end of the song. As he played, I watched his hands move fast and delicate, pinching the strings firmly where he needed, his eyes and head still, focused on the slender neck. When he had finished, he looked up, his white beard and flat cap nicely framing his pale eyes for me.
“I wish I could play that” I said
After a pause and a quick retune, the man replied, “It’s not that easy. Takes lots of times getting it wrong. Play us a tune” He passed the guitar to me, and I felt I had been handed an infant. I was surprised he trusted me with it. The wood panel was painted blue, but you could still see the grain, and a heart shape carved in the centre revealed the instrument hollow, so it was light to handle. I played a clumsy strum that rattled the hollow box. It almost angered me that I didn’t play as well as the postman. “Musical instruments take time” he said.

Musical instruments take time. As I held it steady, no will on earth, no matter how hard I tried, could make me any better at playing at that moment. People would look at the postman and have an idea about him. He was the guy that could play the little guitar. He was the little guitar guy. There are piano guys out there too, violin guys and singing guys, funny guys and tough guys. But what was I? I had no conceptions. I was just ‘guy.’ That sort of thing can get you forgotten and I’d rather be hatefully remembered than forgotten. I needed to be good at something.
“Can you get a banjo like this round here?” I asked
“Mandolin” said the postman “It’s a mandolin. Used to have a music shop up the hill by the beach stretch there but that closed down long ago. Not many people wanna take up a commitment like that nowadays, not with your new fangled computers and music in your pocket whatnots. That little cherub takes time to master, but it’s worth it in the end. No-sir-ee I haven’t seen another like old Mandy round these parts in a while”
“Mandy?” When I next spoke I was reminiscent, almost morose, “Who’s Mandy?”
I pictured her pale face on the instrument as I held it tightly, clumsily, not wanting to break it. I remembered her voice then the playing of the postman. I couldn’t command either of those things now, no matter how hard I tried.

*

DECEMBER 3, 1982

The 14:21 to Seattle Central is a quiet service. The patterned seats of public transport often hold in them some pause for thought, at least for a stop or two, but today Dale Hailey is otherwise occupied. Mandy Hughes puts her feet up on the opposite seat, giving Dale the silhouette of her lavender legs against the window’s light. He has boarded the carriage hoping that there will be a seat near hers, not too close, but where he can see her. She has chosen a spot by the windows, slumped against the glass. There are two empty spaces beside, and three opposite. But Dale selects an inward facing, fold down seat on the other side of the isle. These seats are for people when no other is free, a sort of emergency seat, so Mandy thinks it odd when he perches here. Her arms are crossed, yet her body language is still open and willing conversation. She stares as favourably as she can manage in his direction without looking odd, as occasionally as she will dare without looking desperate, but Dale’s return attempts are fleeting and awkward. There is obvious unease in the isle between them, a call for release.

*

“It’s a Mandolin I said.”

The postman woke me from a demi-daze, “Mandy’s the only thing I got now, not gonna let her go”
I had to remind myself where I was. The dizzy motion of the train merged with the still room, and it knocked me into giddiness when the old man spoke. I rocked forward and nearly dropped what I was holding, what I now knew was a Mandolin. I rummaged in my pocket for my wallet and counted the cash I had in the sleeve left over from my 4th July bonus wrapped in a band. How much was she worth? “I’ll give you two hundred and seven dollars for her. For Mandy I mean.” The postman took the cash and held it, and I was still holding on to the mandolin. Surely I had made a sale.
“Damn thing’s not worth this much. Here, take this back” He gave me back seventy, and I felt doubly gifted, “It comes with a case, here” He reached down under the seat and pulled up a black bag, “Now she’s in tune so don’t you go twiddlin’ the nobs. See, you got your strap here. That’s about it” The postman put his wrinkled hand over mine, “Now you take good care of her. I’m gonna go take good care of this.” He stood with the money mpw stuffed in his shirt pocket and headed for the bar. I was left alone with the mandolin. I felt like an inexperienced babysitter. So helpless was I with it without proper instruction, all I could do with it was improper mimic.

So I gripped the neck of the instrument and placed a few fingers on a few strings along the fret, then began to strum up and down. There was no tune, no song, and most notes sounded tinny and half achieved, but I could keep time. It sounded nice in places. Though the melody was all wrong and I couldn’t sustain over my own voice, I sang aloud ‘Easy Like Sunday Morning’ and there came a titter around the bar. The postman looked proud. “That’s it boy” he called over “Show that girl who’s boss.”
The blunt thuds of my playing were enough for me to vow that someday I would be good, perhaps as good as the postman, and on that day I would return to the bar and play a tune by the fire. For that I would need to practise. It would be something to do.

I was still in the Thomas Becket at seven thirty the next day when I woke in a bed of stiff cotton. The room was sixty dollars. The patterned ceiling held me only for five minutes, and as I remembered the mandolin; quickly I leaned across the bed to get it. Now it was safe, I rested my head back to the pillow and it came to me that any other day I would be already twenty minutes late for work. I obviously wasn’t going, and this merited an extra fine stretch beneath the covers. It felt good that I wasn’t going in, like how I used to feel when school broke up for summer or Christmas. I think this time was my summer, as after all it was July, and for Christmas I would have much liked to get to Seattle again, to see Mandy and put my arms around her, to say those unspoken things I so needed to say. “I’m sorry” would be a good start, then we could start over. Seattle was across a dozen states and a thousand miles. It took five hand span changes just to get there on the map in the pub lobby. A bike and a mandolin wouldn’t be enough to take me the whole distance.

As I fetched my bike, I left the room behind me very untidy. Toothpaste and complimentary flannels adrift in the bed sheets, all drawers open, breathing for air amidst the bad smell I left in the bathroom. The mess was enough to distract them I hoped, from their missing laundry – a black pullover and some jeans; they were now stuffed in my mandolin case. With new found direction, and purpose for those two wheels, I set off back up the hill, past the t-junction and on again upwards, as far as my vision took me then on again, past birch and hayseed, until at last sandy remains were no longer dripping from the tires that passed me by. I was away from the beaches of Carolina, and eventually, after five more miles, the Atlantic had forgotten me. It would be some time before I forgot the Atlantic, but I was sure the Pacific could help. It would be like forgetting sleep, I told myself. After all, nothing really had happened to me in Buxton in all my three years there. I was only just waking up.

It is said by sea folk that the pacific holds no memory. I had heard that said on a film once. So vast and empty, it sucks your eyes away to horizons and makes you nothing again, an insignificant bug, and nothing but idle thought remains. The same is said of the Grand Canyon, and it scared me to know I was nearer that than Seattle.

On the road, the air was chilly, like sticking your hand into the freezer, only I was riding a bike through it. An air exhausting, it set my face aflame with vigour and I thought if I were to ever step inside again, I would surely die of the change. Road signs came scarce, but perhaps it was me moving too slowly to have them regularly. As I watched the hours and the miles pass, I tried to keep a ratio between them. I worked out my average, and by sunset I had reached route fifty. With each song that plagued and approved my mumblings, with each sonnet and encounter that I remembered, I thought of one thing; what I was going to say to Mandy when I saw her, and what she would say back. Mostly, her returns would suit my favour, but occasionally I imaged an argument at the end of my road, how I would win it and feel better because of it. Something needed to be relieved, and I hoped it would end happily for us both.

Seven o clock and daylight slowed. I felt a fair distance had been covered, and perhaps I was nearly at the mainland. This, I found later, was far from true. If I were to track my progress on a map then my before and after position would be covered under the same fingerprint. Of course, I didn’t know that then, and was quite optimistic about riding a bike to Seattle, or as near as I could manage. The journey would be full of city to city lodgings, nice barmaids and kindly postman. It took just three more hours to leave this impression far behind me.

A faint moon whispered that soon it would be dark, and yet, I had nowhere to stay. I looked around over cars. There were fields, more fields, and some electrical pylons. So that night, after travelling twenty miles or so, I came to the field where I thought it fit to rest. One where I would not be disturbed, there was a striking tree that would suit the contours of my bony back, and there I would last the night. I set down my mandolin, unpacked the case and thought if a fire were possible, then I would make one to set me to sleep. After a while, watching the leaves blow about and the traffic flicker, I found myself very alone, without even tiredness to attend me. It would be harder than I thought to sleep under a tree. Each moment the wind was gathering. The extra layers from the hotel would not keep out the cold, nor the unnerving noises from woken wildlife. Those creatures that during daylight were a blessing were now bothering my courage. I started to wonder what would happen if someone were to find me here – the owner of the land or worse, a roaming thug. Then a plucky, mannish spirit took me, and I realised that I was now in a world of hazard. And hazarding stillness in that field, it was better than being still in my apartment waiting for take out. If I wanted something new I would have to grow up and stop being so pathetic. So I allowed the rustling leaves and the occasional car’s purr to be my lullaby, and though I was cold like never before, I would get at least some sleep that night.

Of this outside path, you did not warn me
Of cold nights and nature threatening.
Stepping westwards where no steps are heard
In no daffodils, where Rustic’s settling

You swore pastoral, omniscient ground
Where I too could stand apart.
Yet in margins where no words can tell,
You too sat lone in heart.

Chapter 4

DECEMBER 3, 1982

Dale feels the time for advancement has expired. He has established himself as unconfident, unflirty, and quite possibly a friend. Wanting to break new ground, he leans across the table with an outstretched hand, delicately pinching the thin wire above Mandy’s nose. He removes her reading glasses cleanly. Dale tries them on to see if she will laugh. He is convinced that no glasses suit him. Mandy does not move away or flinch when he leers across, as if all along she knows his intensions. He watches an indistinct fuzz, Mandy’s face come bigger as she leans in. He feels her lips on his for a brief moment. Dale’s eyes come into focus through her own lenses as she squashes the specs against him. When Dale removes the frames it is as if she has never moved.

*

“He’s dead!”
I lifted my head from the soil. “I’m not dead” I said.
The kid turned to his friends and shouted back, “He’s not dead! He’s just a bum!”
“I’m not a bum either!” I said “I’m sleeping”
I scanned the camp with my waking eyes, “Where’s my mandolin?”
“What’s that?”
“It was here, a musical instrument, where is it?” I was projecting the best parental voice I could, but impatience was slipping through
“Relax, it’s behind the tree. Next to the girl’s bike”
I looked. Relief consumed me, but anger too affected my tone when I said “Don’t touch it. It’s mine. Now go on, shoe!” The kids turned and ran.

When I properly woke I realised what unconsciously I had been enduring. It had been a night so cold, I would never brave one half as bad again. I left the tree as I found it, sweeping over even the imprint of my head left in the dirt. The day still quiet, there was enough light for me to consider the night over, and glad I was to leave it there by the tree. My next concern was food. The road did not take long to exhaust me, and at every possibility I was reminded of my hunger. Trucks drove past filled with chickens. Others with Florida oranges.

I felt getting thinner and skinnier by the minute, and what I would have given then for a pint of milk is not worth making a clean breast over. A clean breast, oh what I’d have done for that. Unfortunately I had decided that an hour a day, come thirst or rain, I would devote my time to practising the mandolin. I did not know what I could practise, but I was sure if I spent enough time playing, something musical would naturally developed. Wasn’t it Beethoven that couldn’t read notation? I supposed that to be true so I could secure myself at the least, some encouragement. So I practised that day by the roadside, like a mute busker for passing cars, I half expected to have coins shot at me from their windows. Even if nothing were achieved by my playing, I enjoyed the rest, for cycling down the same road for two hours had just about jaded my patience to the limit. The exciting adventure was quickly becoming routine.

I only practised for fifteen minutes that day before setting off again. Nothing was developing. When I walked with the bike, I semi-contemplated sticking out my thumb. Three miles on, the idea was not only fully contemplated but fully failing. I knew I needed to get to Seattle faster than a bike could take me. I knew I needed to eat. But I think as I watched a dozen or so cars ignore my signal, I knew all I wanted was some company.

Car after car passed me by, giving me nothing but fleeting noise, sometimes a horn, until at last I saw a red four-wheel-drive look as if it would stop. It was a half-bumpered, mud-stricken, speedboat-dragging pickup truck that finally acknowledged my plight. It stopped about fifty feet in front of me and I remember approaching it with one thought. Please be a woman. Please be a good looking woman. It would be the first friendly contact I had gotten in days, and when I saw the human face, it dusted away all my gathered romantic dreaming and made me real again. It also made me realise how poetic I had been feeling all this time on my own. I thought I should say something completely un-poetic just to feel sane again. “Fucking hell, it’s a long ride from Buxton.” The language surprised us both.
“Get in then” The driver gripped hold of the hand rail above the window and displayed a saggy bicep “If you’re coming down this here road. I’ll put the flap down, wait a second”
“No” I said, catching breathe “I’ll leave the bike here.”

It would be easier on my conscience to admit I didn’t know what I was thinking when I said this, but the truth was I knew exactly what I was thinking. I didn’t need that bike anymore. It had lost its flare and importance, much like all new things eventually do, and besides that, leaving the bike was advancement, and it needed to be done despite my attachment.
“Please yourself” Said the driver, quite confused.
So I took my time in leaning the bike on a fence. Like some farewell service, I tried to spare all the melodrama I could as I fixed my work tie across the frame one last time. As I took my seat in the truck’s cabin, I couldn’t help but think that out there, somewhere behind me, was a man who had no idea his bike had taken me so far, and that now it was sitting beside some rusty gate halfway across North Carolina State, waiting to be picked up again. Perhaps I would go back to that spot someday.