Ketan scowled, gesturing to the guard to come closer to the bars. ‘Hey, you know I’m going to dig my way out of here, right? I’ll do so while you’re asleep. I’ve got the tools hidden away. Snuck them in, don’t you know. You didn’t even search us properly, idiot.’
The jailer scanned the cell, though saw nothing but the bare extremities that they were subjected to. What passed for a bed – a length of heavy, pitted wood – didn’t seem to have anything stored beneath it. There was nothing in the corners, gaslight illuminating enough of the cell to ensure nothing was hidden.
‘What would that be? You sitting on a shovel or something, rat?’ he cockily replied, calling Ketan’s bluff.
‘Oh yeah, I got your shovel.’ Ketan frantically searched in his pockets, and after a moment, showed his discovery. From a clenched fist he raised his middle finger in retort. ‘Right here, pal.’
The jailer scrunched his face together in annoyance, striking the bars once more. It was foolish to make him angry, especially since the held the keys for the only way out.
‘No breakfast either, is it? I can do that. Test me, lad, let’s see how far you can get. I’ll get you stripped naked and throw a dog in with you if you keep this up. Ass.’
He plodded back to his desk just out of sight and continued with his monotonous paperwork.
Franco resumed their conversation, now with a hushed voice. He could withstand the threats, but having to be sentenced for crimes on an empty stomach? To him, that just wasn’t right. He tilted his head back against the outside wall, though this time his ears picked out the smallest of noises from the gloom.
‘That’s it, isn’t it?’ Franco continued, keenly focusing on small taps against the stone behind him, each one forcing his smile wider. ‘You’re jealous because you’re here rotting in this dustbowl and I went off to see things new. You lacked whatever quality is needed to better yourself so I left you, literally in the dust. You may hate me for that but I apologize for nothing.’
‘Let’s say for argument’s sake –’
‘Oh my.’ It was Franco’s turn to be facetious. ‘Do I love arguments.’
‘– that you’re correct. So what?’
‘So you shouldn’t be so built up, all angry, stupid, and threatening. Damn, Ketan, your father is worried about you. See sense in this! You don’t have much in this life, in Her name, it passes by so quick that you have to make something of yourself. Properly. Respectfully.’
‘You’re a buffoon,’ Ketan dismissed, turning his head away.
‘And you would always call me that when I was right. And I’m right now.’
‘Keep convincing yourself of that. I’m just struggling to find a reason why you’re still here,’ he said, his words venomous. ‘Why are you keeping me company in this fleapit? What’s that grandfather of yours doing, Franc? A little late to rescue you, isn’t he? Surely he must be on his way to bail you out of another mess of your making. It’s just like the old days. You, here, with me, doing our thing. Yes, he’ll come rushing in to take you away to a better life in a matter of minutes. You lucky dog! Why whatever would you do without him saving your ass? Except for standing on your own damned feet of course!’
Franco lunged forward, blinded by his own rage. A cannonball of a hook almost knocked Ketan’s head clean from his shoulders, throwing him upon the cell floor. Franco launched three more punches before restraining himself, but it was one too many.
The cell guard barked for the pair to settle down from his desk, otherwise he would do things that they would sorely regret.
Ever so slowly, Ketan sat himself upright once more, spluttering a chuckle through a split lip.
‘There he is. Nice to see you still have it in you. I had worried that you had gone all soft.’ The words were preceded by a spat glob of blood. His fingers probed his numb jaw.
Franco’s first instinct was to apologize but as he stood – knuckles skimmed and bloodied – equally strong was the desire to finish the job. Fire still harboured in his muscles, still tense, still expectant of the next move. The apology was not forthcoming.
‘You don’t get to talk about him. Not now. Not ever. Are we clear?’
Fingers now moved to teeth, checking each in turn. Ketan licked the iron-tinged fluid from his fingers.
‘Yeah, we’re clear. Seems like that’s a sore spot for you. Guess things ain’t so perfect after all.’
‘You don’t want to know.’ Franco slumped back down, against the outer wall, catching deep mouthfuls of air.
‘He was a good man. A shade of angry at times, which would scare me to the bones, but he knew full well what he was doing. Refreshingly honest too.’
‘Did you forget what I just said?’ he asked, hoping that Ketan actually comprehended the demand this time.
‘Tanned my backside on more than one occasion if you remember.’
This conversation wasn’t going anywhere favourable. There was rarely a correct time to drag oneself through nostalgia, even in the company of someone who had known him since youth. Reminiscence was dangerous, fraught with scores of emotions that dulled the senses and buckled sensibilities. Incarcerated, all they seemed to have was time – the time until dawn and the old times that they had shared. Against his better judgement Franco indulged.
‘He never liked you being up to no good,’ Franco added. ‘Believed you were a bad influence on me. I can’t possibly guess where he got that from.’
‘It was the other way around from what I recall.’ Ketan’s memory being much more precise on the matter of who led whom astray. ‘Scrapping and thieving. How many times did you dare me, or any others who we hung around with, to grab something from a shop and run like the clappers? We followed your every word. I recall the pair of us hopping into the steelworks and making off with whatever we could carry to sell on a corner. Never did find a buyer for that sewing machine in the end. When my dad was sniffing around I had no choice but to toss it. Met its tragic end off a bridge if I remember. Shame, it was pretty too.’
This was met with silence and not a small measure of guilt.
‘Anyhoo. Your Pappy. What’s the old-timer up to these days? Is he part of your travelling entourage?’
Franco pressed his skull to the brickwork, listening to the taps that had begun anew. The mere mention of that name brought back a torrent of frustration that drink had been recently failing to suppress. He slunk his head on resting arms.
‘You don’t want to know.’
‘Try me,’ Ketan suggested, now quite curious and sincere.
Old habits were rising once more. The better part of their time apart had been spent ignoring his past or, worse still, reshaping it with falsities when asked about it. Pappy had encouraged him to do better, to be better, but the seed still remained within him, once considered dormant or dead.
He had been no better than Ketan all those years back, worse in fact if honesty was worth indulging in. This was one of the facets that frustrated him the most. The slumped man with a crippled leg opposite wasn’t an old cohort. He was a damned reflection of what could have been. Every bad choice and thoughtless reaction could have resulted in matters becoming very different.
Almost out of obligation Franco regaled what happened to Pappy and did so with wet eyes.
* * *
‘Thank you,’ Pappy managed in a croak. A glass of water was set on the table beside him with a dull thud, a tinge of red riding its surface.
‘Let me know if you need it again.’
Franco re-seated himself on a simple stool at Pappy’s bedside. This attentive routine was getting the better of him. His eyes had started to become weary and sleep was sorely needed, but his own wellbeing was of little concern. Since Pappy’s deterioration the stock car where they slept had been modified to accommodate his needs. Windows were almost perpetually darkened for he slept often, sometimes as long as a day at a time, only being woken to eat. Beside him there was always something to eat and drink, replace
d daily and the old food and drink tossed to prevent any further infection. In motion the carriage rocked, a motion fond enough to be soothing when Pappy’s pain manifested, such as was the case now.
‘What I need is to get out of this damned, accursed bed,’ Pappy whined, patting the mattress with his all too noticeably frail hands. They were hands that had lifted and lugged, fixed and fitted. They had taken to the back of Franco’s head and his backside upon hearing of his misdeeds plenty of times. Now though they were alarmingly brittle in their old age.
‘You need plenty of rest. Conserve your strength. I’m handling things fine. I’ve not caused a single delay –’
‘Last week, you were a good few hours behind on that cotton shipment,’ he nagged.
‘Rockslide. Like I explained, not my fault.’
‘A couple of months back you took that absurdly long route around Abel Pass rather than go through …’ he began, eyes rolling.
‘To avoid bandits that had set up there which, again, was not my fault.’
‘Do tell me, how is the new driver you hired coping?’
Franco cupped his hands together, squeezing.
‘Mister Rosso is doing just fine. It turns out he ran a C class back in its heyday so he’s had no problems. That is, unless you consider his rubbishing of some of our more creative attempts to get her up and running …’
‘Good to know we have someone sporting familiarity. I should let you off, I suppose. You’ve done far better than I thought you would. I had this damned crazy idea that you would stick around and make something of yourself. Now look at you. You’ve learned this train aplenty. I still wish I could teach you the rest but let’s be honest between us … I’m holding you back. I can tell. I can see it in those eyes of yours,’ he croaked.
‘No you’re not, Grandpa.’
With a wheeze his head fell back upon the sack pillow and he stared deeply at the wood-panelled ceiling. ‘You’ve never been a good liar. You can grow all the hair on your chest that you want, but that’s the one thing that’ll never change. Don’t lie to me. You owe me that much.’
Another bout of coughing erupted from the depths of his person. A hastily introduced handkerchief caught the bulk of what was ejected, though some dotted the sheet in specks of red. It was withdrawn and dropped into a wicker basket beside him with all the others.
‘Listen, Franco. I won’t be enduring this sickness for ever and truth be told I’ve already grown tired from it. I want you to do something for me. In fact, I need you to.’
‘Anything, you know that; you need only ask.’ Franco reached out and enclosed his grandfather’s hands with his own.
‘You won’t like it,’ came the reply.
It was true. He wouldn’t.
Unlike everywhere else, the region had plenty of places that could be considered the middle of nowhere. The Sand Sea itself was comprised mostly of nowhere, miles upon miles of nowhere in fact. This nowhere looked identical no matter the approach, surrounding towns and outposts, hubs and trading points with barren land fit for the wildlife and nothing more.
This specific nowhere had a sense of meaning to Pappy. The Condor Highlander line was a rail route built to shuttle tobacco leaf from successful plantations in the south. In his youth, these trips were spent smoking some of the finest cigars he had ever had the luck of acquiring, mostly as kickbacks from the plantation owners themselves to haul undeclared cargo on the side.
Crossing between ridges of mountains it overlooked the basin of the region, the vastness of the Sand Sea laid out before them like a blanket of saffron. Pappy had requested to venture this way one last time so Franco begrudgingly obliged.
Boots cut into the dirt, pushing deep into sand and stone. The ascent wasn’t particularly taxing, luckily wind-blasted paths were cut into the ridge side forming a natural path. What was a different story though was the cargo.
Hoisted over his shoulder, Franco carried his grandfather up the hillside, not once complaining or stopping. In fact he didn’t speak at all, concentrating on his breathing and mentally subduing the burning that ripped through his muscles. If he spoke he would think and if he thought, then the sheer absurdity of this farce would break him in twain like an axe to lumber.
His foot buckled a spell as he caught it against a protruding boulder, forcing him to regain his balance with an outstretched hand.
‘Watch it. I don’t fancy my brains dashed across the dirt because you’ve been getting careless.’
Franco allowed himself to speak, trudging onward. His palm was scratched and raw. ‘Thank you, but I’m fine.’
Pappy grunted in annoyance, spitting from his undignified place. This was how one carried a sack, or firewood, not a person. Despite this, the old man’s hearing still remained keen, or so he thought.
‘Dammit, boy, I told you not to cry.’
‘I’m not, it’s the sand,’ Franco contested.
‘Like hell it is. I can hear you sniffling from here. Liar. Pack it in.’
They passed the skeletons of trees, fractured rocks, and thorny bush that desperately clung to the inclines. As they made their way along the ridge side, the entire basin was laid out before them. Despite the abject desolation of the Sand Sea biting into the surrounding landscape, it still coaxed a degree of awe. At ground level all one could see was sand and rock. At this height the horizon itself laid the land before them on a grand plateau. An afternoon sky waned above them with the sun beginning its fall. A hand struck Franco’s back repeatedly.
‘Here will do just fine. Just here,’ Pappy demanded. ‘It’s perfect.’
Franco sorted through a canvas satchel, withdrawing a bottle of whisky and pouring a measure into their tin cups. The old man squinted his eyes to make out the label while this was done.
‘Cruden Black Blend. Well isn’t that all sorts of fancy. What did I do to deserve this? Am I dying or something?’
Franco’s hand juddered, just for second but enough to spill a little down his wrist. ‘Not funny,’ he stated, passing the cup over.
Down in the valley the locomotive was poised, straddling the rail tracks that followed the natural contours of the land, rising and falling as it dictated. Steel reflected the dusk as a monument to the pair’s labour, as did the four combine cars that accompanied it.
‘What a sight … Beautiful isn’t she? I always said she was, even the day when I first laid eyes on her as a youngster. Do you remember when I dragged you through that scrapheap to find her?’ the old man reminisced, fighting off sentimentality.
‘Of course I do. It was the biggest piece of crap I had ever seen. I thought you had gone senile for a moment. It was a shambolic ore hauler that even time hadn’t had the decency to kick to pieces. That’s a red flag right there. Look at her now though. She’s all manner of pretty.’ He laughed at the absurdity, a collective of bittersweet memories soon curtailed as reality rudely reintroduced itself.
‘I expected you to ignore me when I told you that you would be helping. Go back to hustling folks on the street maybe in an attempt to make your way. I’ve never been so glad to be wrong. I have no shame in saying it, but these last few years with you have been the best ones of my life.’ He paused to blink back the wetness that coated his eyes. ‘It made me feel hopeful again that life weren’t as cruel as those sands that threaten to swallow us.’
‘It’s been good for me too,’ Franco said, drastically swigging away to sedate himself. His heart was breaking, being here, talking like this. It was an agonizing pain, making him desperate to roll back the clock to a time when they were working on the train carefree.
Before the old coot was slipping away.
The sun hung heavy, finally letting itself take to the horizon and bleed its best into the cotton-white clouds, transforming them into hues of pinks and blues. The infinite sands blanketed the land before them, basins interrupted by numerous protruding mountain ranges that stretched out in all directions.
&n
bsp; Tranquillity reigned. Not a bird took to the sky, not a viper protruded from its nest. For the longest time either of them could recall, there was nothing to distract them from this one, wonderful moment.
They each took a sip, neither appreciating the spirit’s flavour but instead marvelling at the landscape.
‘From up here you would never guess how hard everything is,’ Pappy reflected.
Franco said not a word but instead drank deeper this time.
‘Your father said that to me once. Or something like that – may or may not have been the exact words but that’s the gist at least. He had a penchant for absurdities at your age, poetic ones mostly about how the world was weaved together.’
There was a pause before Pappy continued. ‘Do you miss him?’
‘He was a fool who abandoned his son. What do you think?’ Franco snapped.
The mood soured, though this was expected given the topic of conversation. It was something they never spoke of and given the circumstances Pappy felt compelled to change that. If they weren’t to discuss it now, then when?
‘You’re speaking out of anger. He’d have forgiven you for that.’
‘I don’t care what he would have done. He’s not here. So what he may or may not have decided to do at this point of time is irrelevant.’ Franco huffed.
‘It was never that simple, not for him. It wasn’t an easy choice to make. He watched your mother struggle with the pregnancy – terribly ill she was, and what with us all having no money coming in … well, your father decided to do the right thing.’
‘The right thing would be to stay put. To look after his family. Not to be gallivanting in places that no sensible people would go!’ Franco realized that his voice was rising. This was a wound forever raw and prodding at it, especially now of all times, did little to diminish that. He focused on his grip around his cup, tightly wrapping his fingers around it with such force that he expected it to collapse in on itself. ‘What kind of man doesn’t stay?’
‘Sure, you say that now. I imagine I would be all fire like yourself in your position. The thing is, you’re young and unburdened, boy. Being a father changes a man’s prerogatives. With you on the way, there would be another mouth to feed and your father had no choice but to go off to the mines. Nobody else was hiring, you see? We owed money to people just to keep fed, people who you wouldn’t want to owe a kind remark let alone currency. They rattled your poor mother something fierce with threats. Your old man would fall through the door at times all beaten and blue. That’s no way of living. I know you don’t want to talk about it. You’ve never wanted to talk about it. That’s your personal business and I get that. But you don’t have to talk right now. You just have to listen.’
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