Four Letter Word

by Joshua Knelman

  I have a Muslim friend who says a son can never thank his mother enough. I can see what he means by that. That’s why I actually found myself in tears when I came across the enclosed letter. If only I’d just given it to you back then. I wish so much that I’d just given it to you then. I hate myself for worrying about what people like Keith Mackenzie said. For being embarrassed about getting called a mummy’s boy. How can I have been so stupid? There’s nothing wrong with being a mummy’s boy, is there Mum? I remember I even felt ashamed of myself at the time. But I didn’t know you wouldn’t be there one day. I mean, how would I have coped if I thought one day you might not be there? I wouldn’t have bothered going to school in the first place, would I? I wouldn’t have bothered watching TV or riding my bike or doing anything, Mum. But seeing as how it’d be impossible for me to thank you enough even if we both lived together for ever, it probably makes no difference whether I carry on writing this letter or whether I just end here and let you read the original one.

  Lots of love

  from Michael x

  To My Mummy,

  Hi Mummy!

  Mrs Arnold wants us to write letters to someone from a story. Keith Mackenzie told everyone he’s writing his letter to John Travolta. What an idiot, right? John Travolta is not a character, he is a real person. Keith says he is famous and he will never meet him, but that doesn’t make him not real, does it, Mummy?

  I told Mrs Arnold that Dad always says I have the most lovely Mummy in the whole wide world and so she is letting me write my letter to you. Sometimes Dad says I look like you. He calls me his Heaven sent son because he says that’s where I came from. But I don’t remember living there.

  I hope he remembers to buy you some flowers for Mother’s Day instead of forgetting like he did last year. I want to buy you some red roses but I don’t have any money.

  I hope you like my writing. I am using a pen now, not a pencil. And I am checking the spellings in the dictionary. I even checked the word dictionary but I didn’t have to look it up because it’s on the front cover. I hope you like the letter I wrote to you yesterday, and the one the day before that and the one before that one. But I didn’t write those other letters as part of lessons. I did them during break time. I wrote them to say Thank you Mummy. Thank you for being my mummy and thank you for being so lovely. I wish we had some new pictures of you. Dad still cries when we look at pictures of you. I don’t even want to ask him to send you this letter because he might start crying again like last time. But I can’t send it by myself because I don’t know your address. Whenever I ask Dad where you live, he says you swapped addresses with me the day I was born. But I still don’t know what that means. Why can’t we live in the same place? All my other friends live in the same place as their mums. Then I wouldn’t need to write you letters.

  Lots and lots and lots of love from Michael xxxxxxx

  MIRIAM TOEWS

  Dear Cadence Loewen,

  Thank you so much for your letter, and I appreciate your concern. And yes, of course, do feel free to pray for me. I don’t mind at all. When I first received your letter I didn’t recognise your name, but something happened recently and I realised that I know you! Your mom and dad were good friends of mine way back in the late 70s, early 80s. I apologise if my calling them your mom and dad upsets you. Maybe you don’t see it that way, and that’s perfectly understandable.

  The last time I saw you was when you were just a few weeks old, just days before Jackie and Tim, your birth parents, had their accident. A bunch of us were hanging out, smoking pot in this field behind the golf course, near Kokomo Road, and Jackie and Tim drove up in Tim’s brother’s old Vauxhall. Smoking pot, by the way, is something I don’t do any more, don’t worry, but we were all young back then, seventeen years old, and there wasn’t much else to do. So Jackie and Tim drove up and were all excited and happy and wanted to show everyone their new baby, you. Cadence, they said, these are our friends, and yours, too. You were so beautiful, and still are, by the way. When I saw your photo in the newspaper I almost had a heart attack, you look so much like Jackie did at that age.

  Tim let us all hold you, even though we were a little stoned, and we all started crying, even the guys. We were so blown away by you. Everything about you was perfect, you had Tim’s little ears and Jackie’s long, skinny fingers, and they were so crazy in love with you and each other and life and the whole big, amazing idea of being your parents. They didn’t do any drugs that day, or ever again, I’m sure of it. And they didn’t smoke around you, or play music too loud, and Jackie was always pulling your little toque over your ears so you wouldn’t get cold, and telling everyone to be very, very careful with your fontanelle, that soft spot on a baby’s head, before the plates of the skull fuse together.

  Look, she said, you can see her heart beating in her head. She’d pull your toque up a tiny bit so we could have a look. Tim told us you loved Warren Zevon and Jackie had embroidered the words ‘I like to rock’ on this little sleeper you had. Tim said ‘Jackie was like this machine, man, in labor. She was total business, told everyone to fuck off, she was doing this thing. She was taking charge. She was amazing, man. I love her so much.’ Jackie said she just couldn’t stop staring at you. She couldn’t believe that you were hers. She said she wished she could always stare at you, all day and all night, all the time, for the rest of your life. That would be her full-time job, she said.

  And then we all built this little monument to you out in the field. We made it out of rocks and sunflowers and we all wrote little notes to you with lipstick because nobody had a pen, welcoming you to the world, and we put them under the rocks and some of the guys poured a little bit of Wild Turkey over it, like a toast to you, to a long, happy life, and we spelled out the name C-A-D-E-N-C-E with little rocks in a circle around the bigger monument, and then we all sang that Cyndi Lauper song, ‘Time after Time’, because it was the only one we all knew the words to, and it seemed appropriate, even though it was also cheesy.

  So that was quite a while ago, almost twenty years ago. Most of us left town after high school. Then, a week ago, I got the news that my mom was very sick and so I came back home to help my older sister take care of her. I was sitting at my mom’s bedside, looking through the local newspaper and that’s when I saw your picture in the announcements section and thought holy shit! It’s Jackie! Except of course it wasn’t, it was you. I showed it to my mom and she told me that after Jackie and Tim’s accident, Tim’s parents had raised you. She said they did a very good job, too. She mentioned that Tim and Jackie’s deaths had been so hard for them to accept because they hadn’t been saved or baptised before they died, and how they agonised over how they would tell you that, how it would make you feel, knowing you wouldn’t ever be able to see them again, not even in heaven. She said you have perfect attendance at church and sing in the choir and even teach Sunday school to the little kids. That’s amazing. And now you’re off to do missionary work in Belize. Wow! I wish I’d been that focused when I was nineteen.

  Cadence, I do wish you all the very best with your work, and in life, now and in the future. It was an honor to have met you that day out behind the golf course, and to have had Jackie and Tim as my friends. They were such great kids, and parents. I know I have a reputation in town as a God-hating atheist, but it’s not true. I’m an agnostic, really, and I think about the existence or non-existence of God all the time. One thing that does bring me closer to ‘embracing the idea of God’ as you very aptly put it, is my memory of all us kids in that field. I can see us all perfectly, the sky, the sunflowers, Tim’s brother’s old Vauxhall parked in the clearing, Jackie showing us the soft spot on your head, your little I Like to Rock sleeper, and your tiny fists, and how we all gathered around our home-made monument to you, holding hands, singing, a circle of love and happiness and reverence for your precious life, and such joy in the moment. All because of you.

  Again, Cadence, I do wish you all the very best in Belize, and wherever else
you may be. I’ll be thinking of you.

  In friendship,

  Miriam

  p.s. By the way, Warren Zevon died recently, but his music still rocks, if you’re interested in checking it out.

  JAMES ROBERTSON

  I start to compose this in my head on a cold February morning, as I set out for you in the car. The village is in a mist of sleep when I leave, and Coupar Angus, Perth and Crieff are just stirring, each a little livelier than the last, as I drive through them, heading west and north. A huge, slightly squashed white moon keeps pace with me even as it fades and sinks. I think of my wife, still in bed, and then I think of you. My heart beats a little faster at the prospect of a whole day spent with you, and the many projects, commitments and words that have been jostling in my mind begin to separate and detach, clearing like the lines of mist from the air.

  It feels strange, and slightly silly, to address such sentences, such sentiments, to you, utterly indifferent as you are to me. In fact, I will shortly stop writing to you and write instead about you, thus I hope avoiding any embarrassment – not yours, of course, since you neither take nor give offence, and are beyond and above any such squirmings of the human heart. It is myself I don’t want to embarrass by referring, coyly or otherwise, to your ‘many other lovers’ or by decrying the ‘cold heartlessness’ you show to us all. I remember being warned by a teacher, decades ago, of the dangers to good writing of anthropomorphism. He was referring to animals, but he might just as well have been speaking of mountains.

  I stop in Comrie and buy some food for the day, then drive on. I am heading for Beinn a’ Chreachain and Beinn Achaladair, near Bridge of Orchy. I attempted these two Munros almost a year ago but had to retreat, fifteen minutes from the top of Beinn a’ Chreachain, because the wind had risen greatly during the long walk in and was so strong on the final ridge that I couldn’t stand up. I made several efforts to do so but each time the wind bashed and buffeted me and dumped me on the packed snow and ice as if I were in the ring with a heavyweight boxer. It was frustrating, but eventually I had to concede defeat and go back the way I’d come. So now I am trying again, intending to retrace my steps and, with luck, complete the big circular walk I was denied last time.

  By the time I reach Loch Earn the day’s bright, cloudless beauty is revealed in full. Expanses of dead bracken on the braes above the northern shore stretch like sheets of gold cloth, and even the brown larch plantations seem to shine in the low sunlight. I have driven this twisting road countless times, but it is always new. On the other side of the water rises Ben Vorlich, one of the first mountains I ever climbed. (I was eleven or twelve, and probably did it in wellies or some other unsuitable footwear.) Its profile, along with that of its neighbour Stuc a’ Chroin, is familiar to tens of thousands of people, since, seen from the south, they dramatically announce the start of the Highlands north of the Forth valley. Between the two mountains is a bealach or pass, with a steep ascent from it up the east side of Stuc a’ Chroin. Too late a start defeated me once, and bad weather a second time, before I finally managed to get up this mountain: and on that occasion it was snowing, and the climb demanded considerable effort. I had never before used an ice-axe in earnest, and I remember the sense of triumph as I hauled myself up to the summit ridge. It is, I know, a scramble of no difficulty for any real climber, but for me it was exhilarating, and I will never forget it.

  Glen Ogle, Glen Dochart, Strath Fillan – every mile of road takes me further from cities and towns, deeper into the Highlands. There to the north-east is the great sprawling mass of the Lawers range, and the lesser but more rugged Tarmachan hills beside it. A few miles further on, to the left, the twin peaks of Stob Binnein and Ben More loom, the road passing right under the bulk of the latter. (Once, on a Saturday three days before Christmas, I had the whole of Ben More, usually a popular mountain, to myself: I remember being quite sure, as I stood at the icy summit watching long, flat, sun-flushed clouds crowd over the ranks of peaks to the north-west, that there could not possibly be a better gift in all the shopping centres of the world than the view which was being presented to me alone.) And then, beyond Crianlarich and Tyndrum, where the road climbs up on to the great wastes that stretch from Loch Lyon and Loch Rannoch in the east to Loch Etive in the west, I feel an immense liberation: there is no turning back now, the day is going to be fine, I am committed. For the next few hours I will be beholden to nobody but myself.

  I used to believe that I went to the mountains in order to think. But when I considered this more carefully I realised that, whatever the intention, the effect was the opposite: I went and I did not think. The physical effort of climbing two, three, four hills, the concentration on underfoot terrain, the crossing of burns and rivers, the watchful eye kept for changing weather, the sighting of birds and other creatures, the sometimes tedious journey back out and the tired triumph of completing it – absorbed with all these immediate concerns, I had no inclination or indeed ability to think in any coherent, structured way about other things. Neither the plots of novels nor the meaning of life are worked out by hill-walking.

  But something does happen to the mind on these days: it empties, refills, reorders itself. Superfluous or temporary files are sent to the recycle bin; the brain is defragmented. It is a cleansing experience. I return, not with fresh stories written or problems solved, but with the possibilities of new narratives and solutions. This is the effect of the day’s journey: but where has the journey taken me?

  Where is it people go when they go into mountains? When they go alone, as I nearly always do, are they going anywhere other than into themselves? A number of apparently contradictory things, it seems to me, happen simultaneously to the lone hillwalker as he – or she, although the single walkers I meet are almost always male, especially in winter – leaves road, car, bicycle or both behind and pushes deeper and higher into places where there are no mobile phone signals and no human habitations: he is both magnified in himself and reduced in the landscape; he becomes stronger and more vulnerable; more self-reliant and more at the mercy of nature. And this double effect, that works on him externally and internally, is at once exhilarating and sobering, disturbing and calming. There are times, walking alone, when he senses another striding effortlessly beside him.

  Certainly there are moments when I slip outside myself: there are two of us then, and both are renewed and re-energised by this dislocation, which is not quite ever a complete dislocation. The great Gaelic poet Sorley MacLean captures this sensation in his poem ‘An Roghainn’ (‘The Choice’), although the circumstances in which he was writing were very different: he describes walking with his reason beside the sea, how they were together and yet how his reason kept itself at a little distance from him. On mountain days, my reason and I walk, sometimes together and sometimes a little apart, but I am not sure which of us stays in the body, and which has stepped outside.

  I am by no means a really dedicated hillwalker, out every weekend whatever the weather, let alone a skilled climber. Work and other commitments mean that my days in the hills tend to be single and spaced well apart. I wish this were not so. I’d much prefer to spend more time outside, engaged in this one-sided affair with the mountains, and less in front of a computer screen. Obviously I am not alone in this desire, but one of the advantages of my writing life is that I can sometimes choose, on the strength of a late-night weather forecast or an early morning sky, to abandon work on a weekday and take off. As a result, on many of my outings I meet hardly any other walkers or climbers at all. It is just me and the mountains, and whatever physicality or philosophy it is that joins or separates us.

  I have written this much when I begin to pick up echoes of voices other than Sorley MacLean’s in what I am saying. I realise that all I am probably doing is restating things that have been better said by other writers. I go at once to Nan Shepherd’s book The Living Mountain, her testament of love for the Cairngorms, written at the end of the Second World War but unpublished till 1977, an
d I find the following passage. She is trying to explain the feyness she feels, ‘that joyous release of body that is engendered by climbing’. Surely, she writes, she’s not such a slave that she cannot be free unless her flesh feels buoyant. There is more to the ‘lust for a mountain top’ than that. An exchange of some kind takes place between her and the mountain; place and mind interpenetrate till the nature of both is altered. And at the end of the book – a brief book, which yet contains vast traverses of thought – Shepherd articulates what I was groping for a few paragraphs ago:

  … as I grew older, and less self-sufficient, I began to discover the mountain in itself. Everything became good to me, its contours, its colours, its waters and rock, flowers and birds. Knowing another is endless. And I have discovered that man’s experience of them enlarges rock, flower and bird. The thing to be known grows with the knowing.

  … It is a journey into Being; for as I penetrate more deeply into the mountain’s life, I penetrate also into my own. For an hour I am beyond desire … I am not out of myself, but in myself. I am.

  For an hour I am beyond desire. Perhaps this is where walking alone in the hills really leads: to a place where nothing is yearned for, nothing is required, nothing is lacked. It is strange that Nan Shepherd says that this sufficiency grows, in part, from becoming less self-sufficient, but I think she is right. And there is something else. Man’s experience of them enlarges rock, flower and bird. I wrote in a poem once,