Max Kowalski Didn't Mean It

by Susie Day

  Max hated the axe, hated the log. But Bill watched with no annoyance, no impatience. He waited until Max was brimful with frustration, till he threw the axe down into the grass still lumpy with melting snow. He left a space for the feelings to be felt. Then he asked Max to pick up the axe again.

  ‘Let me teach you a trick. Can I do that?’

  Max didn’t want to have to learn. But he wanted to know how to split wood, and he wanted to hold the axe again.

  Bill showed Max the secret: to lift and then to let the axe fall, its own weight doing the hard work. Max could feel the difference at once. His shoulder wasn’t pushing forward and hurting. His first tries didn’t split through the log entirely, even when he struck it in the centre; the axe embedded itself in the wood and needed a firm boot pressed into the log to free it. Then he had to swing again. And again, sometimes four times. But the wood split apart in two clean halves, and the triumph was warm and wonderful.

  They took turns: one placing the log on the trunk and gathering the split pieces, one swinging the axe.

  Bill showed him how to chip away thin shards, kindling, using careful short strokes of the axe and a twist of the handle.

  There was a sweat under Max’s collar, and he pulled off his top fleece.

  They worked till they had two full baskets of chopped wood.

  ‘We’re not done,’ said Bill, stretching his back with a groan. ‘We’ll not want to run out when the Big Snow comes. But I reckon we’ve earned a cup of tea.’

  They didn’t sit inside; Bill brought the two steaming mugs outside, with more cake, and set them on a tin tray on the ground while they carried on.

  ‘So how’s your dad doing?’ asked Bill, casually swinging the axe.

  ‘All right,’ said Max.

  It didn’t seem right, lying to Bill. Not now, when he was teaching him, and feeding him cake. But Max had secrets to keep.

  ‘What’s wrong with him, Max? If you don’t mind me asking.’

  Max lifted another split log from the trunk, and put a new one in place.

  ‘You don’t have to answer, if it feels too private now. Just … he’s been in bed a while. More than a cold, hmm?’

  ‘He does that sometimes,’ said Max quietly. ‘He just – stops. He – he says it’s like a big cloud has caught him up and is pushing him out of sight.’

  It came out without him meaning to say it, and it wasn’t Dad he was talking about, not big, bright Pete Kowalski who always had a joke and a smile. It was Mum who had sunk into silences in the middle of dinner and had to go to bed. It was Mum he’d heard crying in the shower and not being able to stop.

  And it was wrong to tell Bill, because it was a lie. But it was a truth. Not Dad’s. But it belonged to Max.

  Bill swung the axe, and chopped the wood.

  ‘I wondered if it might be something like that.’

  ‘The doctor’s tried some things. Like, pills. And talking to someone on the phone.’ Max caught himself before he said the wrong thing. ‘He’s tried writing lists of nice things to do. We gave him a sticker chart once. You know? When you get a sticker for brushing your teeth or going to bed when you’re told, or not swearing.’

  Bill laughed a little at that.

  ‘I know them, yes. So what was on his?’

  ‘Some of the same things. Getting out of bed on time. Leaving the house on time. Washing properly. And then hers –’ Max coughed – ‘Ripley’s had putting toys away on, but his was stuff like playing as well. Like going to the shops, and having a nice dinner. Scheduled fun, she called it. My mum – um … she was still around then.’

  Bill nodded, not noticing the slip.

  ‘That sounds hard. For him. For you too, I bet.’

  Max shrugged, and reached for the axe.

  ‘We do OK.’

  He let the axe fall, over and over, Bill removing the split halves and quarters when they reached the right size.

  ‘I had a friend,’ said Bill, after a while. ‘A girlfriend, who got depressed. It’s not the same for everyone. But I saw a little of it. She didn’t like getting out of bed either.’

  ‘It was after Ripley was born, I think,’ said Max. He chose his words carefully. ‘Everyone was so tired. She was poorly a lot; Mum thought she had something wrong with her.’

  It felt strange, talking about it. No one talked about it. Not then, except for shouting, and he’d been small, like Ripley, and it had been confusing, and mostly he’d been mad that this red squally baby had come and eaten up his mum. Definitely not now.

  ‘And where is your mum now, Max? If you don’t want to tell me, you don’t have to.’

  ‘She’s in the sea off Southend Pier,’ said Max, setting the axe on the next log and not quite having the will to lift it.

  Bill raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Her ashes?’

  Max nodded, grateful. ‘It was Louise’s idea. Mum always liked to look out from there and watch the waves. And the sea goes everywhere, so it’s like she’s gone on a holiday all round the world. Louise said.’

  They were going to scatter them from the top of the cliffs. But the day had been windy, and when his dad unscrewed the urn and opened the bag inside, the ashes began to blow about, up in the air, back upon his jacket like a carpet of dust. His dad had put his hand to it and she was on his fingertips.

  So they’d gone to the long-stretched beach, tide out, and walked and walked through boot-sucking sand to the low lap of the sea. Dad had waded in and upended the bag into the water. She swirled round his ankles like froth in a bath. She washed away with blobs of seaweed and bobbing plastic bottle lids. Then a dog came splashing through the water, jumping up, and Dad shooed it away and said, ‘Come on then, let’s get some dinner down you lot.’

  ‘It was a car,’ said Max, answering the question Bill hadn’t asked. ‘She was crossing the road on the way to the hairdresser’s. And there was a car, coming round the corner, and – she died instantly, they said. She didn’t, really, though. She died in the ambulance. I was listening when they told Dad. But they didn’t tell us that. Instantly, they said.’

  Bill said nothing. He didn’t try to be kind, or sorry. He just listened.

  Max lifted the axe and let it fall.

  ‘Do you think the dog knew what was happening?’ asked Max, wresting the axe from the tip of the log and lifting it again.

  Bill blinked at the sudden shift in subject, then caught up. He opened his mouth to answer, then hesitated.

  ‘Do you know, Max, it’s hard to say. Perhaps the dog knew it was hurt badly; that it was in pain. It sounds like it might have been quite frightened. But it had people there with it, didn’t it? It knew it wasn’t lost or alone; it knew it was being helped. If it knew enough to feel the hurt, it knew that too.’

  Max nodded, and let the axe dangle loosely from his fingers, suddenly feeling its heaviness like an impossible weight. He let it drop to the ground.

  ‘I think I’ve had enough chopping now,’ he said.

  ‘Me too,’ said Bill.

  20

  Max and Bill stored the wood in bins, replacing the unchopped logs in the outdoor wood store. The axe came inside with them, along with Max’s damp stripped-off fleece and the empty mugs.

  When he left, Max was presented with a hefty hessian sack of fresh-cut logs and kindling.

  ‘You’ve earned them, no fear. You’ll be wanting that lot, if you’re still here when the Big Snow comes.’

  Max went home tired and glad of it. It made it easier not to think about anything but the ache in his bones. But the girls would be home, waiting. He’d found Louise in the dark kitchen last night, sniffling over the silent mobile phone. Ripley had sleepily whispered ‘Night night, Daddy,’ to him when he put her to bed. They missed him. And Max was all they had.

  He summoned up a smile, and swung the bag on to his back like a sack of presents as he approached the dark little cottage.

  ‘Ho ho ho,’ he bellowed, slapping his imaginary belly. ‘Santa
’s early! Ho ho – Oh!’

  When he pushed the door open, he found the cottage quite transformed.

  Inside it was warm, warm like the Bevans’ house, and there was a smell of hot oranges and chocolate and something bready and delicious.

  ‘You can’t be home. We haven’t finished!’ yelped Ripley, barrelling into the hallway and pushing him away.

  In the living room, Thelma was standing on an armchair, hanging paper snowflakes from the ceiling. Louise was at the window, sticking more to the glass. There was a fire in the wood burner, burning fiercely and kicking out heat, and fresh twists of newspaper in the golden buckets on the hearth. Ripley had drawn snowmen and Santa, gingerbread figures and ribbon-wrapped presents – all eerily in charcoal, like some strange black-and-white Christmas.

  In the middle of the room stood the best part.

  ‘Look at the tree!’ said Ripley.

  ‘The stick,’ muttered Thelma.

  ‘Stop saying that,’ said Louise.

  It was a stick, true enough: a large leafless branch with twiggy offshoots everywhere and growing at an awkward angle, not quite up. But it was hung with lights, and paper lanterns in red and green, and stars of golden paper, and, inexplicably, sheep. It was a stick, but it was most definitely a Christmas tree.

  ‘We didn’t know if we should,’ said Louise. ‘But it’s so close to Christmas now. And the post office had decorations on special, and we thought … well, we wanted …’

  They all stared at Max, as if waiting for him to tell them off, or laugh at their efforts, and for a tiny moment Max wondered what Dad, if he was here, would say.

  But Max knew what he thought.

  ‘It’s brilliant,’ he said. ‘I love it. Good job. Da iawn.’

  ‘That means “very good”!’ said Thelma.

  ‘Ooh!’ said Louise. ‘If we’re good in Welsh, we’re definitely good.’

  ‘I made the sheep,’ said Ripley, unnecessarily.

  ‘And look at the fire we made,’ said Thelma. ‘Bill taught us – well, me and Louise – how to do it.’

  ‘You have to clean out the dead ash first …’ explained Louise.

  ‘Then put in twists of newspaper for tinder; then small sticks for kindling; then big logs for fuel,’ finished Thelma. She didn’t mention how patient Bill had been when she couldn’t strike the match at first, how he’d waited with them until the kindling caught and they saw a strong blue-orange flame licking the edge of a log.

  ‘And now, dinner is served,’ announced Ripley, with an air of importance.

  It turned out to be pizza slices and oven chips, with a tin of peas for show.

  They ate it on the hearth, in front of the fire and surrounded by twinkling lights.

  Girls weren’t so bad, Max thought. Even sisters. They were just people, doing their best, like he was.

  ‘It really feels like Christmas now,’ said Louise.

  ‘It’s not Christmas without Dad,’ muttered Thelma. ‘Like it’s not Christmas without Mum.’

  Louise looked stricken.

  ‘I didn’t mean – I only thought – it just feels like that time of year. Close. Like … we’re allowed to get excited.’

  Thelma sneered as Louise’s eyes filled with tears. ‘Woo, yeah. A stick. So festive.’

  ‘Will Santa know how to find us, if we’re still here on Christmas Eve?’ asked Ripley.

  ‘We won’t be,’ said Max.

  ‘You know that?’ asked Thelma sharply. ‘You shouldn’t say it if you don’t know it.’

  Louise blinked at Max through tears, as if she was hanging her heart on his words.

  ‘Trust me. We’ll be all sorted.’

  Of course they would be. Dad wouldn’t leave them to do Christmas alone. He just wouldn’t. And when he came back, he’d meet Max the hero, who had scooped up all the gold from the lake, and made them rich. Max knew that, too. This future was unfurling for him like a clear-marked path on a map: Elis Evans having the keys to the cottage; Bill giving them food; Michael teaching him mountains. Tal, and the dragon. It was all meant to be.

  For the first time in his life, Max felt like he knew where he was going. He felt right.

  This Christmas would be different, but better. Presents everywhere. All of them together. They’d go back to Southend with pocketfuls of gold, and everything would be like it was before, only a hundred times better.

  Max sat back in the glow of the fire and reread the guidebook, his hands sore and aching from the axe.

  The punishing scree.

  The scramble.

  The Castle of the Winds, on that unreached peak.

  They were real, all of them. He knew them now.

  Louise read too, out loud, for Ripley. Thankfully not her own new book, but more of Kriss’s story from the Dragonslayer Chronicles. Max wasn’t listening, really. He was imagining footstep after footstep up the mountain, like this morning.

  He remembered the dog, Willow; her furred chest moving and then so still.

  It ached like his hands, and he put the guidebook down.

  Louise’s voice was soft and lulling, and he found himself drifting into her story, watching the flicker of flame in the wood burner. It was much later in the book now, and Kriss was older: a trained Dragonslayer, sent to defeat a valley dragon.

  The blue-green scales of its body rippled as muscles moved beneath its lizard skin. It paced on all fours towards her down the valley, claws as long as Kriss’s arm tearing up the earth. Its tail moved in a sly arc, twining and twisting as if waiting for the moment to strike.

  But the eyes were the worst. Glowing red slits like the embers of an ancient fire, staring her down. She could sense its anger at being woken. She felt the heat coming off it in waves, as the fire within was stoked, building to unleash a lick of flame that would kill her instantly.

  It was all right, this book, Max thought. Like a film. He could see the pictures in his head.

  He shut his eyes, feeling the warmth of the fire as if there was not a comforting blaze in the hearth but a quick-breathing beast, covered in gold-tipped scales.

  Kriss paced, letting her fear radiate out of her along her limbs, as Meriden had taught her.

  Feel the fear, let it go. Feel the fear, let it go.

  But being here was more than any lesson could have taught her. This was real, and if she made a mistake now, she would die.

  The dragon sensed that she was afraid. The lashing of its tail grew quicker, the boiling heat rolling off its skin hotter than ever. The great claws flexed as it drew nearer, tearing lines into the earth like scars.

  Kriss felt the fear, and could not let it go. But with it still running in her blood she drew her blade and held her ground.

  Max clenched one fist, imagining the old curved kitchen knife in his hand. He tensed every muscle. He readied himself for the fight.

  There was a sudden movement to her right, and Kriss’s head snapped round and up to see a tumble of huge rocks falling towards her, dislodged by one perfectly placed swipe of the dragon’s tail.

  She cried out as she leaped to her left, falling, one boulder catching her arm – but the rockfall had been a distraction. The beast was expecting the leap, and was ready for her, its body coiled.

  She scrambled up, but not quickly enough.

  One vast paw swiped across her back.

  Kriss felt a sharp ripping pain as two huge claws sunk into her flesh and tore at it.

  She fell to her knees in agony.

  Then she heard a heaving sound, as the dragon drew breath.

  Its jaws opened.

  A torrent of flame washed over her, burning the clothes from her skin.

  The pain was unimaginable.

  She could smell her hair burning.

  Then everything went black, and she could feel nothing at all.

  ‘Is this age-appropriate?’ said Thelma, looking up from her Welsh book.

  Ripley was staring at Louise with her eyes wide like plates and her hands over her m
outh.

  ‘Oh! Um. Probably not, sorry,’ said Louise, snapping the book closed. ‘I’ll think of a different bedtime story for you, Rips. One with, um, puppies. And kittens. And a happy ending.’

  She took Ripley off to bed, Thelma following.

  The book was left on the hearth, the firelight picking out the gold foil of the dragon’s scales on the cover.

  Max picked it up, swallowing hard.

  They had a problem.

  21

  Max slept badly.

  It was now Thursday, which meant Tal would be at school all day, and tomorrow.

  Waiting was unbearable.

  It was nearly the last day of school back home too. It wasn’t like at Pilton Road Primary, where you’d spend half the term drawing snowmen and practising for the play. They’d do lessons. But Mr Brew would wear a Christmas jumper, and maybe he’d let Max put up some tinsel or put out the chairs for assembly.

  They wouldn’t be missing him.

  ‘It’s been ever so peaceful without you, Max,’ Mr Brew had said when Max had been off school with his sprained ankle.

  They’d like it, his being away.

  And then he’d come back, but he’d be rich, and he’d have a story to tell, and they’d all like him then.

  Max remembered tearing claws and burning hair, and felt a bit sick.

  It was hours till Tal would be back; an eternity.

  Max walked down the road to the post office, to stock up on biscuits and bread, potatoes and cheese; to have something to do.

  ‘White Christmas?’ asked the local paper, with a photo of a man dressed up as a Santa standing next to a sign that said SNOWDON, and pretending to shiver.

  The girls were fine, at least.

  ‘Mochyn cwta,’ said Thelma slowly, sitting by the cold fire. ‘Mochhhh-in cooh-ta.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Guinea pig,’ she said.

  ‘Very useful,’ murmured Louise.