Tuesday 20 October 2015

Joe





Joe

the snow lay heavy
crisp
diamond sparkles in the sunshine
ice blue, the sky

...she loved this cold, all new to her and she felt her lungs contract as her in breath chilled ...not too often though...it really was very cold...
...she loved the sound of her boots on the snow, the dull crunch under foot and all the sounds in the village were muffled, held in by the snow banks....six feet high in some places...

the sun cast ice shadows
the song of the sea seemed far
ice floes on the beach and no wind

...he was walking towards her, a slight figure, almost frail, a boy of 12 perhaps or younger, she thought, has yet to grow.  He held out a hand, avoided her gaze and she saw how dirty he was, unkempt and unwashed, his hair dull over ashen skin, purple, thin lips...
‘Miss,’ he said, ‘forgot my lunch, got a quarter so I can buy some chips?’
“I’ve got a quarter’, she said, but chips will not warm you, ‘come with me and I’ll get you hot soup and a sandwich to eat, what is your name?’
‘Name’s Joe Miss, Joe Williams.’

...she noticed then how thin he was, and not at all dressed for the cold like everyone else,  his jeans were frayed, thin, his feet bare in old trainers,  no laces, just a shirt on his back, too big for him in blue and white tartan, once a smart shirt , now blackened, his collar...

He looked up at her then, his eyes as dull as his hair, lifeless and of no particular colour, telling his story...’a quarter Miss, just a quarter or even a dime?’

‘I don’t have a quarter after all and I don’t have a dime,’ is what she said,  ‘but I’ve got soup on the boil and a sandwich, a warm kitchen to sit in awhile’...

‘You the new teacher’s wife, ain’tcha?’
‘I am’, she said, leaning towards him, ‘you coming?’
‘Naaa,’ he rasped, ‘not hungry for that, just chips, is all...’
...and he turned and he ran  as fast as his stick legs would go...
...poor boy, she thought, must find where he lives...
...she knew he would be hard to find , they were all Williams at the school and in this little town most were called Williams...

...he ran and slid to the ground, a glance back at her as he picked himself up, turned left by the funeral parlour, past the old MacKenzie house and disappeared behind the wall of snow the plough had made in the night...

...they keep the bodies in freezers in winter someone had told her, can’t dig the hole when the ground’s frozen solid....

...and...

...how many Williams’s exactly were there in the village she asked...150 maybe someone said, you could never be sure, they all stuck together, if she knew what they meant, not quite right, some, hard to tell and hard to tell them apart...

...unsophisticated kids at the school, some of them exceeding bright, most of them good kids, you know, like the world over but the boy Williams did make them wonder...genius in Math, good at art, could draw like no other he could, just thought his way around things and drew them...he would go a long way if only he wasn’t so dirty or he took a bath at sometime...but you know how it was in the village when the wells went dry, no water for baths...and  what puzzled them the most was that some days he was as bright as a button and others he would want to sleep at his desk and knew nothing at all, too much TV, the shrug said it all, can’t interfere... is what they told her, and the same clothes he had on, same every day...

...these Williams lived on the far side of the village, past the fish plant, past the bridge where the lobsterpots were stacked, his dad would trade lobsters for veg  that they needed...tinkers they called them, too small to sell on but still worth something at least, if only a cabbage,  he left the brown paper bag on the doorstep with tinkers if he could see a cabbage for trade or some beets with the tops on... you’d get the bag, he’d get what was left by the door and you never saw him...

The house as unkempt and as dirty as Joe, lay grey, rotting slats behind rusting boat parts and an old fridge, nets and old floats, a pick up with only three wheels, the fourth where it rolled by the brambles and small tracks in the snow...rats, she thought and she shivered but she pushed herself forward and knocked on the door...

‘Who’s there,’ asked a voice, ‘you can’t come in!’
‘Open the door now,’ she called back, her voice steady, and the door opened a slit.

‘Joe’? she asked, ‘Joe, is that you?’ and she pushed the door further...

...she saw a man lying on his back on the bare floor, legs astride, and a woman stretched out in a chair, asleep, mouth gaping, no teeth, drunks, she thought and she turned away as if to undo what she’d just seen, unsee as it were, all the empty bottles, she could see that they spent what little money they had on hooch...poor Joe, poor boy, is what she thought, should have given him the quarter he asked for...the house reeked of stale beer and of sweat and she stepped back to breathe the cold air...

“Joe?’
‘Who’s asking’?
‘Teacher’s wife’, she replied, ‘remember? I’m here, with some soup,’
‘You can’t come in but give it,‘ he said and he stretched out his hand...
‘Joe Williams?’

‘Yes,’ was the answer, ‘but which twin would you be wanting  now Ma’am?’
‘little Joe or big Joe’?


ice blue, the sky
diamond sparkles in the sunshine
crisp
the snow lay heavy