The world is so full of a number of things,
I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.
- Robert Louis Stevenson

Sunday 16 January 2011

Chapter Six: Tales from the Trails (Part IV)

When I opened my eyes it was well after sunrise. Two people were coming up Glen Tilt. They were still away enough for me to take a leisurely leak against the rocks, straighten my clothes, shake the ants from my hair, have a drink down at the stream, and light a fag.
My first impulse had been to scramble uphill and go into hiding somewhere, but I figured, they’d see me running away, and I didn’t like that idea. So I sat down on a rock by the side of the water and waited.
It was a bloke in neat blue jeans, and a neat, zippered sweater in dark marine, and a baseball cap in the same colour, and a lady in a grey tracksuit trousers, a sweater in a startling cool magenta, and a white baseball cap with a black bill. Both seemed to be in their 30s or so.
“Hi there, young man,” the bloke said, when he reached me, and wiped the sweat off his face. He had that athletic chubbiness that seem to be specific American. His eyes were brown and friendly, in a rather patronizing way. Hers were a water blue and shifty, as she sat down her backpack and sat down heavily next to it.
There was a funny thing going on between the two of them. One thing Uncle Valya had taught me is to never trust people’s words but – if anything – their bodies and their eyes. And looking at the two of them, beyond their surface behaviour, this was what I saw: His attempt at friendliness towards me, his smiles and words, was an act – meant to put her at ease. That she, while outwardly calm, was in the grip of panic, like a deer staring at you frozen in fear and ready to bolt. But she wasn’t afraid of me, nor of him. I think it was the mountains. I think it was their age, their silence and loneliness.
“Hull,” I answered, put the fag between my lips, and offered him my hand. A little bit astonished he shook.
“Hey,” he asked. “You wouldn’t be on your way to Inverey?”
“Inverness?”
“No, no,” he laughed, strained, and put more of himself between me and his lady as if to shield her from whatever I might have to say. “Inverey. A little, er, a little village, that’s… look…”
He pulled out an ordinance map from his pocket.
“Here,” he pointed to a small hamlet at the end of a tiny road in the middle of the mountains. “And, we’re rught about, er, here… right?”
His stubby finger poked vaguely at an area covering several streams and trais somewhere Southwest of Inverey. I took the map and looked for Blair Atholl an Glen Tilt.
“I’m not certain, Mister, but we should be somewhere in this valley, here. Probably near the end.”
Together we determined our most likely position. It was almost funny how they both began to visibly relax, like little kids that had just made it out of a haunted house, or peeps who just barely avoided a dangerous accident. I doubt it had much to do with the meagre and uncertain information I could provide. I think it was mostly the fact that the mountains had yielded another soul, a human face to speak to without feeling crazy. I wondered if they would have felt the same in some stretch of wilderness in whatever US State they came from, or it was in part due to their sense of being so far from home.
While he and I were brooding over the map, she put down her backpack and began to produce a surprising amount of food: Sandwiches, cut into little squares and neatly wrapped in cling film and stowed in little Tupperware containers, apples and carrots, peeled and sliced to finger size, and small PET bottles of Isotonic drinks.
“Can I offer you something too?” she asked. I studied her face, the one behind her mask. She really wanted me to share their food, to stay with them.
“We also got some Mars bars, somewhere,” she added, almost pleadingly, and began to dig for them.
“That’s my wife, Helen,” the man said. “I’m John. John Campbell.”
We’d already shaken hands, but he’d been too tense then for introductions, so there was a brief, awkward moment now.
“David,” I offered in return, clearly pronouncing it dah-vid, not day-vid. “David Silberknopf.” Sil-bur-kuh’nobf. And to Helen I said: “Wouldn’t say no to a sandwich and a drink, ma’am. Ta.”
She handed me both with a thankful smile.
I asked John: “Could I have a look at your map again?”
It was the first time I’d looked at a detailed map of the area, and I decided that I wanted to head north, through Glen Dee, towards Aviemore.
Helen looked around. “Are you alone, David?” (Of course she had to pronounce it day-vid.)
“Yup,” I said.
“Where is your family?” she asked.
Defiantly I looked her straight in the face. Then I pointed roughly East-Southeast. “Thataway, ma’am.”
She didn’t get it and actually craned he neck to look at the steep, bare hillside. I sighed.
“About one thousand kilometres thataway.”
“Kilometers?” she asked and frowned. Then she said: “Oh,” and after a moment, again: “Oh.”
I busied myself with the map, but I could feel her eyes ravelling all over me, over my oversized M65 jacket with the sleeves rolled up, and my face still bruised and scabbed with the traces of Ponyboy’s caresses.
“How old are you, David, if I may ask?” Day-vid again. This time from John.
“Sixteen,” I lied without looking up.
More silence while we ate and I studied the map.
“Are you a runaway?” Helen sounded timid, but she couldn’t let it go.
I looked up again and debated making up some story. But somehow the strange balance of power between them and me made me feel unnecessarily mean if I did so. So I answered as straight as I could: “I suppose that you could say that.”
John had watched me as well. I handed him back his map.
“Where are you headed?” he asked, as he took the map and looked down on it. I showed him, none too precisely.
“We’ll have the same route up until here,” he observed.
“Yup,” I said again.
“Do you mind if we walk with you?” I smiled, though I didn’t much care for the looks passing between him and his wife.
As we walked Helen wanted to know if I’d been abused. If I had been beaten. And she gestured towards my face. When I refused to answer that, she dragged her husband into this. They both began to offer me “solutions”, from finding some church organisation that would put me in a new home with good, Christian folks, to going to the American Embassy and asking for asylum (like, huh?). It was only when she tried to drag God into things, too, that I got seriously annoyed.
“I’ll square with God myself, and I’d appreciate it you stayed out of that, thank you very much, ma’am,” I said through gritted teeth.
“So you believe in the Lord God, and in our saviour Jesus Christ?” she asked, half apprehensive, half relieved.
I thought about quoting Riddick at here – I absolutely believe in God, and I absolutely hate the fucker – but then thought, that would only lead to more hassle. I certainly wasn’t going to tell her the fully story, was I? So I just nodded curtly and walked on.
After t hat we walked in silence for a while. Not much later, John, still trying to ease things for Helen, proposed a rest. They offered me more of their food, but I declined, probably somewhat haughtily, in favour of an apple of my own. We’d left the river Tilt and had not yet reached the Dee, so I had to do without drink.
Helen drew John away from me under the pretence of wanting to show him some part of the scenery, and when they returned, he said: “David, we have decided that we will accept your decision to run way” – as if it was theirs to accept – “and we’ll not speak of it any more. I apologize if we came on strong.”
And Helen chimed in: “If you are willing to put your fate in God’s hands, we shall have faith too.”
I smiled wearily, but  wasn’t especially sorry that I had made use of the time they’d been away to go through their backpacks and take 60 quid from thm. Since they’d been taking pictures during the break, I also decided to relieve them of their camera before our ways separated, to make certain they didn’t keep any record of our meeting.
True to their word they didn’t mention the topic for the rest of our time together. I the early afternoon we reached the White Bridge across the River Dee. They would go East from there towards Inverey, and I’d turn Northwest, along Glen Dee, deeper into the Cairngorms.
Helen insisted I take several of their sandwiches, and a bottle of isotonic drink.
“We will pray for you,” she assured me, as I reached with my right hand past John to shake hers, and lifted the camera from the pouch on his belt with my left.
“That you for the food and the company, ma’am,” I said, slipping the camera into my back pocket. “Have a good journey. God bless.”

10 comments:

  1. Great entry once again, but if I may, I do have one question that's been bugging me when you said,"“Sixteen,” I lied without looking up, knowing full well that I didn’t look it."

    You were 15 at this time right? I was just wondering, how does a difference of one year make you not "look it"?

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  2. Are you still worried that not enough is happening in this Chapter? Don't be. It is an appropriate point for a reflective pause; both a recap and a moment to wonder what comes next.

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  3. @Ray: Easy, mate. Cuz I'm a runty little bloke. But You're right, it would demand an explanation, and I can't find a way to fit that in here, so I cut it. Ta! (And you "may" anything here, except gimme dishonest praise. ^_^)

    @Ben: Well, I am still thinking about merging Parts 1-3 of this Chapter somehow, so I can cut at least one of 'em. Takes too much time to get into the Highlands. It all takes too much time anyway - I've barely covered one month of a tale that'll span 1 1/2 years, and I haven't even yet got into Norway. It is bloody hard to figure out what to cut. After all, I don't just want to recount events, but I want to say something. I know what I want to say (I think), it is the how that's giving me trouble. But for now I'll just plod on, step by step. This is turning out to be my War and Peace or Les Miserables or so. So, I hope y'all brought enough patience...
    (So, if anything ever strikes you as tiresome, or repetitive, please, please, let me know...) v_v'

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  4. Sure, it makes sense to merge them. But there's no need to cut them.

    There's nothing tiresome, not yet at least. Some of your terminology is, umm, unusual English, shall we say (I've never come across anyone who says 'rozzers'), but never anything that's so obscure that it doesn't make sense.

    Broadly speaking, keep doing what you're doing. Criticism is all very well (and I'll do that, don't worry), but surely encouragement is just as valuable?

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  5. Actually, 'peeps' does grate a bit, I must admit. Just my taste.

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  6. Actually, I don't want you to be in a hurry when telling your story. If possible, I want nothing "cut". I want something to look forward to every night. it took me a while to find a blog like this, and I don't want to end the habit of reading it every night soon.

    Well, my question doesn't really need an explanation from you. I was just wondering how you looked like. I don't don't know if I missed some details in some chapters, but all the description I had of you was that you were ginger. Perhaps, describe how you look like more? Haha

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  7. @Ben: Yeah, I had the rozzer discussion here. You know, I used to call them pigs or bizzies until I met Sim (you'll meet him in Chapter Seven: Padawan). He always called them rozzers, and I sort of picked it up, and 2 years later, well, I got so used to it, it feels weird and unnatural calling them anything else. Peeps I got from Alice, and maybe you're right. I do use it all the time, but maybe I shouldn't.

    And the one thing that really does encourage me is getting the feeling that what I write matters to someone. Honest criticism does that more than dishonest praise. Anyway, I got a prob trusting peeps (see, lol) who are too nice. In my experience, nice peeps got an agenda. But I'm trying to become more trusting. ;)

    @Ray: Thanks a lot. And don't worry, at the rate it's going, I'll need at least 2 years to tell it to the end. But I won't be able to do it every day. Got a job, and a kid to take care off, and, well, you know, a life to get on with. Even if I let that bitch kill me in 09 in Greece. ^_^

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  8. I know it's easy to forget at times, but here's the thing: most people, and even most peeps, are trustworthy. And that includes those with an agenda ;-)

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  9. @Ben/Ray: Tried to rewrite and made it all longer, instead of shorter. But I hope it has enough substance to stand.

    @Ben: About trustworthiness, can't say that has been my experience, all in all. But sometimes they surprise you.

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  10. Kind of got caught up in the commentary here. But just to add my voice, I'd say don't worry about length at this point. Spill the words now, get it out. Mop up and cut and bandage later. That's for editing time.

    In some ways, you're tapping into a Dickens-serial-tradition (in part due to your writing style, but also because of using the blogging medium). And Dickens wrote lengthy rambles that could have been cut down. But, nobody's cut Dickens books down to size... (take that as you like I guess...)

    I don't know what to think about poor Helen and John. When first describing them, I'd suggest maybe finishing describing one, and then go to the other. Don't mix the images half-way.

    In terms of characters, you have the language and personalities and relationship between them down cold. You couldn't resist adding the little "God bless" at the end, eh? :-) Nice touch.

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