Running Man

by Michael Gerard Bauer

  ‘How many will we need?’

  ‘About ten.’

  ‘I’ll help you bring them up.’

  Tom Leyton nodded and turned to leave the room just as Caroline appeared. She looked questioningly at her brother.

  ‘We need to get more boxes … from downstairs.’

  ‘Downstairs? Oh … but what about this?’ she asked, holding up the plate and glass and peering around her brother to Joseph.

  ‘It will only take a minute,’ Tom Leyton replied flatly.

  ‘Well, all right … if you’re sure you won’t be too long. I’ll just leave this on the desk, then.’

  Tom Leyton moved out into the corridor with Joseph following behind.

  ‘Tom?’ Caroline’s voice was thin and strained. ‘Do you need me to come down and give you a hand as well?’

  Both her brother and Joseph stopped and turned. Tom Leyton’s gaze lingered on Caroline and then drifted down to the young boy beside him.

  ‘No … it will be all right.’

  ‘Fine … well … I’ll just … be in the kitchen,’ Caroline said vaguely. Then, remembering the glass and the plate of biscuits in her hands, she disappeared into her brother’s room instead.

  Joseph followed Tom Leyton down the corridor, past the lounge room on the left and two other rooms on the right, a bathroom and what Joseph guessed was Caroline’s bedroom. Near the sunroom that led off the main entrance, they turned down a narrow staircase that led to a room built in under the house.

  The room itself was musty and only a weak light struggled through the wooden blinds that covered its solitary window. At one end was an old fireplace, in front of which squatted a bulky lounge chair. Its brown floral pattern was dull and faded and its big rounded arms reminded Joseph of two gigantic loaves of bread. Except for a small side table, there was no other furniture in the room. Most of the room was used for storage, and frayed and collapsing cardboard cartons took up most of the remaining space. Many seemed to contain books, and more books were stacked on the floor and on top of other cartons. Here and there towers of books lay collapsed like the skyline of some war-ravaged city. Other crates and boxes revealed glimpses of scrapbooks, old diaries, photo albums, picture frames, newspaper clippings and various odds and ends.

  As Tom Leyton worked his way to a stack of shoeboxes in the corner of the room, Joseph read some of the titles of the books around him. He wondered about the empty bookshelves upstairs in Tom Leyton’s stark room. Somehow he knew that if he was ever going to find the real Tom Leyton it would be here, hidden somewhere in these boxes.

  ‘Are all these books yours?’

  As usual, there was a delay before Joseph’s question was answered, as if Tom Leyton feared some hidden danger behind every word.

  ‘Most of them.’

  ‘Why don’t you keep them in your room?’

  ‘I don’t read any more.’

  ‘Why not?’

  This time Tom Leyton stopped what he was doing and thought for a moment. ‘I just don’t.’

  Joseph’s eyes drifted around the crumbling city of books. ‘You must have liked to read once,’ he said.

  Tom Leyton picked up a book, looked at the cover and let the pages flick slowly off his thumb. ‘Once …’ he said thoughtfully, ‘once it was like breathing to me.’

  Joseph watched and waited as the last pages fell and Tom Leyton stared at the book like a father at his child’s coffin.

  ‘What happened?

  ‘One day … I just stopped breathing.’

  Nothing else was said as they gathered up as many shoeboxes as they could carry and made their way back upstairs.

  Once inside, there was plenty to do. More leaves needed to be collected, the original boxes had to be cleaned out and the young silkworms carefully distributed to the newly prepared ones. Eventually there would be ten boxes with around thirty silkworms in each.

  Joseph found himself more relaxed than ever before in the company of Tom Leyton. When the time came to start moving the silkworms into their new homes he brought in a small stool for Joseph and they worked side by side at the desk.

  Joseph liked taking the young silkworms from the limp leaves and placing them on the firm, glossy new ones. The fresh food brought them to life and they moved quickly to satisfy their relentless hunger. Like little dragons, Joseph thought, recalling a line from the poem. He glanced at the man beside him, who continued to move the silkworms as if he were alone in the room.

  ‘Thanks for the poem … I like it.’

  Tom Leyton kept his eyes on the boxes in front of him but nodded his head to show that he had heard.

  This time Joseph was not discouraged by his silence. He placed another silkworm on the serrated edge of a mulberry leaf and continued. ‘It’s the first poem I’ve ever really liked. Some bits I don’t get, but most of it I do.’ Joseph paused and looked into the box of silkworms before him.

  ‘I wonder why they don’t crawl out?’ he mused. ‘I wonder if they’re really scared of the outside?’ He stared blankly ahead and shook his head slightly. ‘All their lives in a box … Well, I couldn’t find any on the mulberry tree, anyway.’

  Suddenly Joseph felt the eyes of Tom Leyton upon him.

  ‘I didn’t really think I’d find any,’ he explained hastily. ‘I remembered what you said … It’s just I thought I might as well …’ Joseph felt a flush of embarrassment overwhelming him.

  Tom Leyton’s gaze lingered for a moment before returning to the silkworms. Joseph felt the room shrink around him as the silence pressed in from all sides. He could feel his face and ears burning and he desperately wanted to speak, to say something to break the painful hush that had fallen over them. Finally though, it was Tom Leyton’s voice that breathed life back into the room.

  ‘I looked too.’

  Joseph turned to Tom Leyton. He gave no indication of having spoken as he continued with his delicate moving of the silkworms.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I looked too … for silkworms.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘When I was a boy … younger than you.’

  Joseph wanted Tom Leyton to say more and he tried hard to think of a question that might encourage him to continue. But then it happened. Tom Leyton began to speak, slowly at first. His words fell into the barren room like drops of rain on dry and brittle grass.

  ‘I was young … in primary school. Some children brought in silkworms … to sell or trade.’ He picked up a half-eaten mulberry leaf with a single silkworm on its stem. He moved it closer and watched as it repeatedly carved away little curves of green. ‘I would have given anything to have some. But I had nothing to give in exchange. Then I remembered our mulberry tree.’

  He placed the leaf back into the shoebox and continued as if describing a dream. ‘How I searched that tree for silkworms,’ he whispered, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘Every leaf … as high as I could climb or reach. But there was nothing.’

  Tom Leyton drew in a long slow breath. ‘And I prayed …’

  The shadow of a frown formed on Tom Leyton’s face and a hard edge of bitterness crusted over his words. ‘Just one silkworm … such a simple thing. I was always taught that your prayers would be answered. You only had to ask. I believed it. So I would pray and close my eyes and reach out in the darkness for a leaf, any leaf … hoping for a miracle … a tiny, silly miracle. Over and over again …’

  Joseph held his breath, afraid any noise might break the flow of words.

  ‘But every time the leaf was bare. In the end I could hardly see the leaves through my tears, and when the light faded I cursed God with all the passion of betrayal.’

  Tom Leyton picked up the leaf with the wrinkled grub clinging to it and twirled it slowly by the stem. ‘One silkworm … was that too much to ask?’ he said coldly before returning sullenly to the task of setting up the new boxes.

  ‘Did you ever get some silkworms when you were little?’ Joseph asked quietly.

  Tom Leyton turned
his head slightly as if only just remembering Joseph’s presence. ‘That very night,’ he said. ‘We had just finished tea. There was a knock on the back door. I went out with my mother and on the landing was a boy from down the street. He was older than me … went to a different school.’

  As he spoke, Tom Leyton reached forward and drew the cardboard carton towards him. ‘In his hands was a shoebox … just like this, with holes pushed in its lid. I knew right away what was inside. The boy said that he and his family were going away on holidays and he couldn’t take the silkworms with him. He said they wouldn’t be too much trouble because we had a mulberry tree in our backyard and if I wanted them I could have them.’ He paused. ‘We had never spoken to each other before that night. So I got my miracle after all.’

  ‘You must have been happy,’ Joseph said.

  ‘I had never felt so frightened in my life. I remembered all the terrible things I’d said that afternoon. It was like I had failed some important test. I’d asked for just one silkworm and I’d been given a whole box full that I didn’t deserve.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I took the silkworms to my room, this room, and sat on the bed with the light off. I felt I was not alone … as if there was someone there with me, in the room, watching me. I was too terrified to open my eyes.’

  Tom Leyton dropped one last silkworm into the shoebox and pushed it beside the others. ‘That was the miracle of the silkworms, and it made me believe that it was all true, that my prayers would be heard because there really was someone there to hear them.’

  A floorboard creaked behind them and Caroline popped her head around the door. ‘Sorry to disturb you both, but I’ve just seen your mother walking up your driveway, Joseph. She might be wondering where you are. How is it going?’

  ‘Almost done,’ said Joseph.

  Caroline left the room and Joseph placed the last of the silkworms in a fresh container. He looked over the ten boxes that covered the desk. ‘That’s better,’ he said, and pushed back his stool. ‘I have to go.’

  Tom Leyton stood as well and watched Joseph sling his schoolbag over his shoulder.

  Joseph had reached the doorway when Tom Leyton’s voice stopped him.

  ‘Do you believe in miracles?’

  The question confused and worried Joseph. He wasn’t sure if he believed in miracles or not, but he was certain of one thing. He didn’t want to upset or offend Tom Leyton after the progress they had made together. ‘I … I don’t know. Maybe … I guess so.’

  Tom Leyton’s face darkened and hardened like cooling lava. ‘Don’t,’ he said bluntly, then turned and sat back down.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Over the next two weeks of school holidays, Joseph became an almost daily visitor to the Leytons’. As Caroline worked part-time, she was the one who arranged times for him to drop in. The understanding was that she would always be there when Joseph called.

  Most visits followed a similar routine. Joseph would bring a plastic bag and fill it with fresh young leaves from the mulberry tree and then he and Tom Leyton would set about the process of cleaning out the boxes, removing the silkworms and shaking out the old ragged leaves and the hard, black droppings before adding a new layer of foliage and returning the silkworms to resume their feasting.

  Joseph loved watching the caterpillars stir to life on the crisp new leaves and he loved the sweet, pungent smell that wafted from the boxes and filled the air of Tom Leyton’s room. It would always be the smell of the colour green for him.

  The changes in the silkworms fascinated Joseph as well. The wrinkled pearly-grey skin began to stretch and tighten on their swollen bodies, and as they grew fatter and firmer, details that he hadn’t noticed before began to emerge. He realised that the silkworms’ legs were divided into three separate groups. The front six legs were small and pointy, whereas the middle eight were larger, and the back two larger still. He looked even more closely to see the tiny hairs and small pads that must have helped with gripping and climbing. He saw how the caterpillars’ bodies were creased into segments and how each segment was marked with a tiny black circle. He ran his finger lightly from the wrinkled collar behind the small grey head to the little soft spike and felt the silky smoothness of their skin.

  Once or twice in the early visits, Caroline had asked Joseph how the portrait was going. When he had told her that he was still working on it, it was almost the truth, for every so often he would take out a drawing and make subtle changes here and there. He still found himself observing Tom Leyton closely, and it was these little details that found their way, almost subconsciously, into the drawings.

  ‘Well, if you need to do some more sketching any time, just say so,’ she replied. From then on the portrait seemed to fade into the background.

  Now it was the silkworms that brought Tom Leyton and Joseph closer.

  For the first week, little real conversation passed between the two of them, but Joseph enjoyed their time together. For his part, Tom Leyton remained silent and remote, yet a little of his initial apprehension appeared to have subsided. It wasn’t until the beginning of the second week of the holidays that the door opened once more into the private world of Tom Leyton, and it was to be the secrets lost in the cluttered room under the Leytons’ house that would provide the key.

  By this stage the silkworms had more than doubled in size and even with ten shoeboxes they were becoming overcrowded. Joseph had just finished cleaning out and refilling the last of his cartons when he volunteered to get some more from the room downstairs.

  ‘I know where they are. I’ll get them.’

  Tom Leyton regarded him with uncertainty. ‘All right,’ he said, before turning back and placing a squirming silkworm on a fresh carpet of leaves.

  Joseph headed along the corridor and down the staircase into the room below. Once there he turned on the light and breathed in the stale air. He spotted some shoeboxes at the far end of the room and began to wedge his way through the maze of cartons. At first he could find only two boxes. He gathered them up and was about to leave when he noticed a third box perched on the edge of a tea chest behind a stack of books. He leant over and grasped it with his fingertips. As he began to pull it, Joseph realised too late that the box was full and heavy, and it slid from his hand and spilled its contents on to the floor. He worked his way between the tea chest and the chair and knelt before a jumble of black-and-white photos that fanned out in every direction. Many of the photos were small and faded and had a thick white border around the edge. Most were old shots of babies or people dressed in old-fashioned clothes at weddings or out the front of houses or at the beach. Some had dates and names written on the back.

  Joseph gathered up handfuls of photographs, shuffled them into rough alignment and dropped them back into the shoebox. As he did so, a hint of colour caught his eye. He picked up a washed-out Polaroid photograph and held it to the light. The photograph was of a young red-haired soldier beside a tent. He was bare-chested and he sat on a box with his elbows resting on his knees, and holding a tin from which he was spooning some kind of food. He smiled broadly at the camera. Joseph turned the photo over and found a barely visible inscription on the back.

  To Tommy

  Mates forever,

  Mick (Nam 1968)

  Was it possible that the wiry young man with the open, friendly face had once laughed and joked with Tom Leyton, a man whose brooding countenance seemed to Joseph as impenetrable as stone?

  He dropped the picture back in the box and began raking up the last scattered photos with his hands. As he replaced the final few, something familiar in the montage of images drew his attention. It was the old cement incinerator in Leytons’ backyard. He slid the photograph from behind several others to reveal the complete picture.

  Only a corner of the incinerator was visible. Beside it could be seen the trunk and branches of a mulberry tree. Under the tree, in the middle of the photograph, was a small blond-haired boy, grinning widely. He was dres
sed in baggy shorts and a loose striped T-shirt and it seemed as if he was trying to stop from laughing. The shadows of the mulberry leaves fell on his clothes and face. Joseph flicked the photo over. Thomas 1958 aged 9.

  He turned back to the boy. Joseph searched for Tom Leyton in the crinkled joy of his eyes and the irrepressible grin that lit up his face, but if the man he knew, and the boy who grinned out at him from this old black-and-white photograph were really the same person, then where had this Tom Leyton gone?

  ‘Did you find them?’

  Joseph’s body flinched as if an electric current had passed through it. Tom Leyton stood motionless on the staircase.

  ‘Yes … I … I found two,’ Joseph replied quickly then realised he was still kneeling on the floor. ‘I thought this one was empty. All the photos fell out. I was just putting them back. I wasn’t … I didn’t mean to …’

  He looked up warily, but Tom Leyton’s eyes were not on him. They were on the photograph that Joseph had forgotten was still in his hand. He looked once more at the picture then held it gingerly towards Tom Leyton. ‘Is it you?’ he asked.

  Tom Leyton’s eyes met Joseph’s and the photograph was left dangling like the last leaf on a tree. Gradually though, without taking his eyes off the boy, Tom Leyton raised his hand and Joseph came closer to give him the photo. For a while he thought that Tom Leyton would not look at it at all, but then reluctantly, as if he had been asked to identify the body of a loved one, he lowered his gaze.

  ‘It’s you, isn’t it?’ Joseph prompted gently.

  Tom Leyton’s head began a slight nodding motion before a husky, ‘Yes,’ forced itself from his throat.

  ‘But it’s not the same tree.’

  ‘What?’ Tom Leyton said vaguely.

  ‘It’s a different tree. It’s on the wrong side of the incinerator. That’s not the one you’ve got now.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Is that the one you tried to find silkworms on?’ ‘Yes.’