Come, Time
Page 1
Come, Time
Richard Jenkins
Weston Books
Copyright © Richard Jenkins, 2011
All rights reserved.
The right of Richard Jenkins to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
ISBN: 978-0-9570560-0-8
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
CHAPTER ONE
Why does God need people? What use are we to Him? In His possession is absolute knowledge, so what can God learn from people? Why create people? What’s the point of doing anything when you know it all already? He knows the beginning and the end of each and every one of us, but still we keep coming, faster and faster, spamming His world with nothing he doesn’t already know, with nothing He hasn’t already seen. We enter His world and face two exits. We are tested, judged. We dare to live and fear to die. We can pass into heaven or fail into Hell. You created me God, but you knew I would ultimately fail. Was I necessary? Was I needed? Did you need me, God? Or am I weight, just ballast? A spec of junkie dust? What can you gain watching me suffer here or forever in Hell?
Does this, us, make Him happy or sad? Can we move God to tears? Can we make him smile? If we fail to educate Him, is our purpose to entertain? Is life an audition for God? Well if so, look away, God, look away from me. I seek no recognition. I need no fame.
God, in my mind, is insane. Imagine knowing everything; imagine needing to do nothing and having eternity to do it in. Imagine having no hunger, no need or urge to know. Nothing would ever surprise you. Nothing would ever challenge you. You would exist in a singular state. Nothing would ever change, not even time. Nothing would really exist.
Why bother with people? Does He consume our souls? Do people have value? Is God addicted to beauty, to perfection, in finding it in something other than Him?
All this drama, it all seems a bit much to me, but then I am a simple man. My use to God, I dig graves. I earn money from death. In the countryside, you can often earn a few quid digging a home for the dead. I enjoy it. It’s one of my most favorite jobs, even in a winter freeze when the earth becomes one, a solid, zipped-up mass. I’m good at it, too. Not a boast you’ll often hear, but digging a grave satisfies well. Nothing morbid, you’ll understand. To me, it’s thirty quid cash-in-hand and a full body workout. Hard, manual labour can get me high.
Anyway, I have dug the grave; job done. The final resting place of Tony Spence, who died from a heart attack aged just fifty two, a local man who I’d acknowledge with a smile or a nod of the head, whose death has inspired great pity and sadness and created the catch phrase,
‘Just fifty two, so young, too young to die.’
But then tell that to the billions who came before him. To all but a few the life of Tony Spence would seem divine. He was never short of food; he was never out of work. Not once did he fear for his life; not once was he told to kill. His house was solid and rightfully his own. He travelled to foreign lands as a free man, for pleasures as simple as lying in the sun. All his children lived. At forty-five, when a mole on his shoulder became cancerous, a medicine man cured him, not with magic but with science. Of course, as modern wisdom insists, his fondness for cigarettes, pastries and beer pushed him hard to an early grave. But did he care? Should we? Historically speaking, he lived a long and successful life. In the history of humankind, Tony Spence was a winner.
My time is up, my thirty minutes gone. I’m lying in the grave looking up at a near cloudless sky - my usual practice once I've finished digging a grave. I enter the earth to rest and think. To let my thoughts drift with the clouds. Not that they ever do. They always seem stuck on a topic that is rarely of my choosing. Often, I hear people, those visiting the dead, their feet on gravel, rarely the spoken word, but only once, and then a child, has someone looked down into the freshly dug grave to witness me resting. The child, a boy of about eight, on seeing me asked,
‘What are you doing down there?’ I should have replied,
‘Keeping it warm.’ But I didn’t. I smiled, shrugged and stared.
I live off the land. I hunt, forage, grow and poach. When you live by the coast, you can always find food. I eat well, better than most: fresh fish and seafood that I catch myself; fresh game, poached of course by me. I even rustle the occasional sheep, and the farmer’s crop I treat as my own.
I live isolated, perched on a cliff top, in a four birth caravan on an acre of land, which I bought for a single weeks labour. Cheap, you may think, but listen, hear the sea work the cliff, hear it smash and grab the earth and rock. In three years time, my land will be gone, erased and fully consumed, a tenant of the sea once more.
The area where I live has never been a tourist haven. The coastline is too wild, the beaches too pebbled. Only walkers seem to visit. Today, however, we have marked the map, and the map has called us treasure town.
It is a brisk, autumn afternoon. Thick, sunken cloud docks in the sky above. Embraced by a beautiful wind, I walk along a ragged stretch of coastline on my way to gather mussels. This should be a solitary affair but today I am joined by people, crazed, manic people. Some are local, most are not. Whole families are out to snatch the bounty.
The full details, to me, are vague, but we have made the news, captured the public’s imagination. A cargo ship, which failed to hug a storm, has spilled forty or so containers. The contents of which, from toys to homewares, unable to resist the desire of the people, have been pulled towards this beach, and now the people embrace the bounty as if a suddenly found long lost relative, a rich one at that.
Two women mother and daughter would be my guess, bred in the fashion of Chinese Whispers, both wearing near identical sportswear and both carrying that fat gene, the one activated after eating copious amounts of cake, furiously drag a reluctant bounty laden shopping trolley up along the beach. I know that modern women, men too, like to own things, but thirty sets of cutlery? Thank God no one invites me to weddings. The beach becomes steep, the pebbles sharp and slippery. The trolley becomes stuck; their fury thickens. The trolley is now the latest scum that clogs their passage through life that conspires to deny them all that is rightfully theirs. They stop, unable to progress. One pulls out a mobile phone and makes a call. Somewhere a skinny man with emotional problems splutters into life. Seagulls glide on the wind looking down, picking up tips.
I scramble up a grassy embankment onto a narrow footpath. Instantly my scent is snatched by a TV News film crew, one of six out hustling for the action. Without hesitation, the Anchorwoman charges towards me, her microphone thrust forward and aimed directly at my face. A crew of two dutifully follows. Her smile glitters through the grey of the day. She rapidly nears me. I hear her purr,
‘Are you local? Can I ask you some questions? We are the news!’
They are the news. I thought we were the news. I have no intention of stopping. I lower my head and stare at the ground, enough body language to inform them all of m
y intent. The purr begins to growl.
‘We’re national! This is your chance to be on national television!’
They block the path. I continue to walk. The Anchorwoman stops; I do not. Her reactions are good. She just manages to twist her body beyond my course. The cameraman fails to react so gets lightly shouldered aside, as does the soundman.
‘Oh for fuck’s sake,’ she snaps, with bemused contempt.
I turn to look at the news. The Anchorwoman stares at me with a look of absolute contempt. A look I know well.
‘Bashful, are we? Grow some fuckin’ balls!’ she continues.
Heard that said, too, only said with more aggression.
What is it with balls? Everyone wants balls, especially people in suits. Get balls, be ruthless. Fine by me, but why draw the line? What if I now pulled out a knife and took it to her throat? What if I answered her with a cold, ruthless action? Would she congratulate me for having king-sized, made-of-steel balls?
My father, who was a violent man, loved to recall how he and an army friend once beat the living daylights out of four Punk Rockers. The irony, of course, which my father knew, was that the Punks, who claimed to be anarchists, ran to the arms of the fascist police for safety and to demand the arrest my father and his friend. As my father would say, they got taught a proper life lesson and all for fuckin' free.
I wouldn’t volunteer to live in a society without laws, but if it happened, then I believe I would prosper, certainly I would survive. Would the mid-ranking men and women in suits? I leave the knife in my pocket and politely flash them a smile.
I gather the mussels quickly. The tide is starting to turn and will soon rapidly rise. The mussels grow on a six decayed wooden jetties that have long stopped having any other use. In the distance, to my left, I can see the scavengers, all high on their own good fortune, and all blissfully unaware of how quickly the tide will turn. To my right, set back against a foaming sky, a Land Rover ambles slowly away. It is the same Land Rover that I have already encountered four times in the last two days. Now, I’m not classifying this as suspicious, but five times, in my isolated world and each time in a separate location? Whoever sits in that Land Rover may not be watching me, but me, now, I am watching them.