A future explosion

Though he touched her and felt alive, he found himself more afraid of this girl than he had been afraid of anything, at any time in his life.
Her priapic presence was a joy to him, a real joy. He wanted to sing it to every man he met, that he was there, that he was at last in love. So long a disbeliever, he'd finally succumbed. He had found his faith; his calling.
Looking at her, as she slept, he examined what it could be that induced this terror in him, something that disturbed his slumber and worried him all day at work and then later when they ate (and he ate, but a little).
He analysed his fear, and it had always been aimed at the future. With other women, he had no such fear. The future was something unbeknownst, and he always felt that it would not contain the woman he was seeing at the time.
Now, however, the future was different, almost clearer. But it seemed to him a green field with a paradisiacal beach at the other side of it. This green field looked, at first glance, inviting; a thing to stroll across on a sunny day, arm-in-arm with one’s lover.
Stare at the scene, at the field, for a second or two, and see that it is strewn with ruptured bodies and dangerous craters caused by the eruption of once buried landmines parked, shallowly, beneath the lush and healthy exterior of the field.
This field, of his, was a trial. Everyday he would have to step carefully across it, measuring the green blades below with the progression of his feet, striving to cross with safety, without explosion.
He was scared because he now had to try and navigate this field, not alone, but tied to another who must somehow be shielded from potential carnage, underfoot.
As he lay there in bed – scratching his arm, a light sweat upon him – the bright beach seemed very, very far away.

The perfect place

I took her hand as we came to the perfect place.
We’d always just walked past or come to keep watch while others rolled there. This time she led me over the style and into the beautiful field. I held her face in my gaze so that I’d never forget it. Her face was tattooed with freckles, her lips anxious. Occasionally I could glimpse her ivory-white teeth, biting at her lips or finger.
She held my hand firmly but she led the way, she showed me where we were going, and as we waded like refugees amongst the long grasses I was burning inside.
That afternoon was filled with exclamations. I told her I loved her for the first and the twenty-first time. She left strange marks on my body that I did well to conceal.
We were hidden there, that day in the meadow, rolling and grasping, and crushing all the insects around us.
I like to imagine we’d stayed there, quite hidden, forever.

Field skeletons

If a man stands in a field for long enough, he might become one of its skeletons.
As his shadow grows long in the afternoon, he may find that his feet have fixed to the tilled earth below him and that fate has made him part of that idyll forever.
That is a dream to have anyway, this dream to become a part of the field. Perhaps when I die someone will find my bones and scatter them there, bury them among the compacted clods and roots, plant them kindly.
A field holds many skeletons and not all of them below its green-brown canvas. From the dead sheathes of yesterday’s harvest to the slender sapling that yearns to grow so thickly and quickly towards the sun, all are skeletal beings. Spectral before you, transitory, without flesh, promising either life or death... but who knows which side will win through?
The very nature of the field is a slowly convolving routine; the ageless schema of death to life to death and life again. Nature is a wonderful thing of permanent resurrection.
But where does man fit into the field? Is man like this long dead machine, left to rust on the sidelines? Set there for eternity to watch its successor, the better machine, doing its role, doing everything better, while the new grass grows fresh and long all around it? What torment, it must feel.
No, I think man has a place closer to the field. It’s almost kin, to me, that aching pasture, that threshed turf, and we sit somewhere between that rusting carcass and the steady green grass. Though it’s hard to say just where.
I hope I’ll find out, some day, when the sun casts its long fingers across the shadow of my life and leaves me standing there, naked before the winter, still and skeletal in the midst of the great field.

James, Wilberforce and the adult world

James watched the flock, pecking and honking in the grass. He rested his young arms on the old fence and made tentative steps towards whistling. He hoped to train his puppy, a recent gift whom he'd named Wilberforce, to be a sheepdog and thought he'd train him using the lazy white geese that lived in the meadow.
In honesty, James had a strong dislike for the geese. They always hissed at him when he ran by on the way to help with the milking, and one (he nicknamed him Goliath) had bitten him on the hand when he was very young and trying to feed them. He paid little attention to the attempts of Wilberforce to herd the birds. He just settled back to practice his whistling and watch the small dog terrorising the flapping, feather-shedding, creatures.
Like the repeat of a rifle shot, the snarl of the dog and the rampant honks of the geese suddenly reached a shocking pitch. James was on high alert now and sprinted into the melee of scattering birds and yelping puppy.
Wilberforce whined and cowered before his master as the voice of James' mother called out in concern from the farmhouse. There at the boy's feet lay the slain Goliath, it's neck bloody and broken.
A sense of satisfaction fought with a sense of impending doom. His father would be striding now, black boots menacing, across the field towards the house. James regarded the sniffling dog below him and couldn't be angry. He felt an extraordinary kinship with him then and knelt down next to the body of the goose, awaiting the fearful arrival of the adult world.

A door closes

How quietly one closes a door is a sign of how selfless they are, how much respect they have for their fellow human beings.
That’s my opinion, anyway, and you can have it for free. It doesn’t take any time for someone to slow the closing door, to put out a hand and soften its click with the handle. It’s a sign of how social-minded a man is; does he think for a second about doing or not doing a thing because of simple concern for his neighbours?
But then, some of them are quite aware that the noise bothers their neighbours, and some of these just do it anyway. They just let the door swing, because it’s easy. It will take a few precious seconds away from their wonderful life, it will mean making a special effort for the benefit of another person. No, that just can’t be done by these people.
It was one such person of this variety whom I tried to drown in the stream near our home. He lived downstairs from me. I could hear his every movement around his apartment.
One morning as I heard him going out I slipped out of my front door and deftly followed him down the stairs. I allowed the front door to slam shut before I left the house.
He crossed the farmer’s field in order to easier reach the bus stop. That’s trespassing, but I broke the law too, in order to teach him a lesson.
As he rounded the field edge and came onto the gravel path at the waterside, I sprinted full pelt and dived over a bush, tackling him with all my weight and we both tumbled into the stream.
His shock made it easy for me to hold him under, but I let him come up for air twice. The third time when I let him come up for air he’d stopped struggling. I dragged him to the bank and explained why he’d made me so angry.
He lay there, impassively, listening. He seemed to take it all in, his eyes bulging and staring straight into mine, but he didn’t speak or nod or barely draw breath.
When the lecture was complete I stood up, shook myself and made my way back across the field to our small converted house on the edge of the village. I turned, halfway across the lush meadow and saw that he was still lying there on the bank, contemplating how ill he’d behaved.
When I got back, so hastily did I wish to go in and get dry, that I’m afraid to say I let the door slam behind me.
I listened intently that evening, but I never heard a peep out of my neighbour again. I think he must have learnt his lesson, this time.