Your turn on the Candy Guard; Labour of Love Brigade Leader
Harryson. So you
get up from the couch by the bonfire burning in the living room,
smoke rising
through the hole in the roof we punched when we came in last
week. I hand you
the watch, and you put it on next to the five striped cotton
bracelets that
you've won these year-on-years five past. Three months show by
its scratched,
ginger-green display; with luck we'll get twenty more before it
dies.
The post is outside, on the pavement, next to the old motorway.
It's a cloudy
day, raining, with nothing but the trees and ginger-green sky
reflecting in the
scratched metal rails that run from here to the next town.
Sometimes they
come alive again, but no-one knows how, the electricity surges
and burns off
the vegetation that crawls and falls across the road. Most of the
travellers
prefer to walk along the canals; they have their own
fascinations, and there's
no sign that they're any safer, but we all feel the old
conditioning that
keeps us off the roads, even those, like you, who've been born
since.
The post is nothing much. The floorboards from the house that
make up the
three walls and one ceiling of the hut that faces onto the road
are rough,
grey-black, damp, keeping the bluster wind and drizzle off at
least as much
as our punctured house does. Inside, there's no heating, just an
armchair,
a ghettoblaster, and a pile of chocolate. Old style, wrapped in
prism paper
and imperial purple foil, even in the tired light of an old day
like this it
glows and sparkles like firework. It's always been good
childbait, even for
those like you, Labour of Love Brigade Commander Harryson.
You sit in the slightly damp chair, and lean over one side to put
a tape in
the blaster. Your music is different from mine; I'm old style,
guitar music
and drums and the wailing woman, yours is the drone of
not-quite-strings,
phased and locked to the chunking of woodblocks and spoken words.
You can't
tell what'll get results, so we stick to what we like and work
with what it
brings.
Check your watch, it's probably been fifteen minutes since I left
so the
charger on the roof might have put a bit into the batteries. Not
very likely,
but there's plenty left, anyhow. On with the music, and you sit
back, looking
out over the false horizon of the motorway into the fifty-foot
trees growing
thick amongst the husks of houses across the road. The sound
builds, you know
this tape so well you don't hear it but stare into the trees
sensing nothing
but your own thoughts. Do you ever get lonely, in this
posthistoric world we
fell into, Commander Harryson? Do you ever feel the desert sand
shift inside?
I don't know if you do. I don't know you at all, or those like
you. Still,
we fight together, as brothers would, as brothers should.
Perhaps not this time, nor next, but perhaps eventually, someone
will come out
of the green wall ahead, curious about the sounds, feeling a tug.
Perhaps
they'll walk across the road, each step bringing them closer and
it doesn't
matter how hesitant, and stand, still curious, watching you and
the flashing
lights on the blaster and the chocolate. You'll make the signs I
made to you,
and perhaps they'll take one, unwrap it, taste it, eat it. Then
you'll get
another bangle on your wrist, and I'll get someone else back.
It's a slow
process, our Labour Of Love.
Perhaps it will not happen that way. I will never tell you this,
but sometimes
I miss my sleep and come back, watch from a hidden place nearby.
There have
been others before you, older, closer to me, better, and yet we
lose them.
Once I saw, on a bright autumn evening, the way it could happen.
It was like
this place, by a motorway, as all our guard posts are, if you've
noticed this
you've never said, nor asked me why, and the music was bright and
loud, brass
and chanting gospel songs. There was a girl, seven, eight,
something like that,
who crept tentatively, hopping across the rails, the long fringe
of hair around
the back of her skin-bare head plaited as yours was, in a weave
of dry vine and
thin, bright, wire.
I watched as he made the signs, as she stood, quietly, huge eyes,
nude body
honey in the late sun. Then she spoke, loud enough to carry over
the music into
the hut, not enough to reach me. He offered her a slab of
chocolate, letting
it catch the light, irresistable. She didn't take it. She held
out her hands
- they were so small, like the paws of a squirrel - and talked
some more,
quieter. There was a pause in the music, and I heard three words.
I will
never tell you those three words, although I carry them high in
my mind; if
you hear them, it will not be from me.
If you do, I know, I will walk out to find out why I haven't been
called for my
turn on the Candy Guard, I'll find what I've found before, the
watch and twists
of coloured cotton sitting neatly on the chair, next to the pile
of chocolate,
and the drone from the blaster flying, pilotless, out across the
impassive
trees.
(c) rg