The Kicking Tree
Trevor Stubbs
This book is dedicated to all those
who, for whatever reason, have never been
able to have an adventure.
Contents
Cover
About the Author
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
About the Author
Trevor Stubbs was born in Northampton, England in 1948 and studied theology in London, Canterbury and Exeter.
He has lived and worked in West Yorkshire and Dorset in the United Kingdom, and Australia, Papua New Guinea and South Sudan. He currently lives in Keynsham, nr. Bristol.
Trevor Stubbs is married with three adult children and two grandchildren.
For more information about Trevor Stubbs
or to contact him visit:
www.whitegatesadventures.com
and follow him at
www.whitegatesadventures.wordpress.com
or on Twitter
@TrevorNStubbs
1
The bus rounded the last bend on the descent onto the Zongan coastal plain. The driver heaved a sigh, slapped the side of his dashboard and drew to a halt behind a queue of traffic. It extended as far as he could see into the stand of trees two yukets ahead. They were now less than ten yukets from the village of Zonga where all of his passengers were headed. He knew they were impatient to get to the village and had been longing to get home or to see their relatives who lived there, since the earthquake two days ago.
A few anxious passengers stood up, craning their necks to ascertain the cause of the hold up. Little Jalli stood up on her seat to see too but her grandmother quickly pulled her down. If the bus made a sudden movement the three year old might have fallen and Momori was not going to deliver her granddaughter back to her parents with bruises after all they must have been through. Although the earthquake had been felt all along the coast, including Wanulka City, the capital some sixty yukets away, the village of Zonga had suffered the most.
Remarkably, there had only been one dead and two seriously injured reported so far, but there were still half a dozen missing in a single collapsed building near the centre of the village. Mercifully the phone connections had not stopped working, except for an hour or so due to overloading. The authorities had kept people away from the village for two days, fearing further shocks. They were also wanting to keep the road clear for emergency traffic. But now the way was clear, and Momori, Jalli and hundreds of others in cars and buses were on their way back, not knowing quite what to expect.
As the bus had set off along the coast road some two hours before, the passengers were all chatting excitedly to their relatives in Zonga on their phones. Not long into the journey they had gone out of range of the final mast and they had calmed into a murmur of anticipation. But now they were getting frustrated.
The traffic queue was not moving at all and the bus began to heat up. The passengers threw down the windows and the scent of ripening ibon, the staple crop of that part of Raika (the second smallest of the planets in the Jallaxa solar system) filled their nostrils. It had been a good growing season this year and, in under a Raikan month if the weather held, the farmers would have a rich harvest.
All three suns were now high in the sky and the glare on the yellow sand that lined the road caused the occupants on the nearside of the bus to avert their eyes. If the passengers on the offside had been attentive, they would have noticed that nothing had passed them in the opposite direction for some time.
The bus driver turned off the engine. He might as well conserve his fuel, and besides, the people in the car behind would be grateful not to have to breathe his fumes. Gradually the other vehicles in the queue that now extended up the hill and around the bend behind began to do the same. The silence was almost deafening.
Suddenly, from behind them the scream of sirens could be heard coming round the bend. Two police vehicles hurried by on the wrong side of the road. They were followed a moment later by a fire engine. Two minutes after that there was a spate of emergency vehicles and soon it seemed that the whole of the uniformed services from Wanulka City was on the move.
One of the last police cars drew up about a yuket ahead and two policemen approached a lorry driver. They spoke to him and he manoeuvred his lorry to form a kind of road block and then a police car turned round and started back. As they passed, the officer shouted through a megaphone:
“The road’s flooded. No-one can get through. Go back and clear the road.”
Flooding? But it hadn’t rained for several days!
The bus driver started his engine, but several passengers stood up and stated their intention to walk. Others called on them to sit down because it would take them far too long at the hottest time of the day of the hottest time of year. People were flushed with heat and frustrated, and soon became angry. Jalli put her hands over her ears.
Then from somewhere at the back of the bus, a man with a big voice shouted loudly and authoritatively for everyone to “shut up!” A slight woman beside him was listening to a portable radio which she held against her ear.
“The dam’s burst,” she declared. “All communication has been lost with Zonga. The government fears the worst.”
The passengers stood, sat or perched where they were in stunned silence. The woman sobbed, “They think that a giant body of water has smashed into the village. The sea is full of debris.”
The news had clearly reached others in the traffic queue. People were streaming from the vehicles and running down the road. Two police cars pulled up from alongside the truck. One of the policemen addressed the crowd with a megaphone.
“The way is blocked. No-one can get through, even on foot. Please go back to your vehicles and get them away from the road to allow the emergency vehicles to pass.”
The bus driver did not hesitate, he pulled across the road while it was clear, did a three point turn and headed back up the hill.
*
Three hours later they were back in Wanulka City bus-station. Momori took Jalli and looked for somewhere they could stay for the night. All she could do for the present was to ensure the child was safe. She dare not think about anything else.
2
Fourteen years later. Jack: Age: 18. Home address: 68, Renson Park Road, Persham, England, Planet Earth.
Jack kicked out at the bush by his front gate as he had done every day since he was eight. It was a habit he had indulged in for the last nine years. He had no idea what variety of bush or tree it was – he simply called it his “kicking tree”. It no longer resembled a tree now but a stunted shrub. But that battered bit of creation simply refused to die, no matter how many times it was kicked. He called it a “tree” because once it had actually been a tree – a young sapling with bright green shoots in the spring. It had grown more quickly than he had, and, when he was aged eight, it had suddenly appeared to be bigger than him. It was then it came in for its first ill-treatment. Jack had taken hold of the pliant young trunk and had swung on it until it splintered. He left it broken and torn, just hanging on to life through its sheer toughness. When Jack’s efforts were spent, he had taunted it. “That will teach you to be bigger than me!” he had hissed.
But the tree persisted in producing new growth each year,
and Jack never ceased assaulting it. Now, at the age of eighteen he did it more out of habit than anything else – the tree still got on his nerves.
In truth, lots of things annoyed Jack. He had little concern for anything outside of himself. The fact was that Jack and contentment simply did not go together. It wasn’t that he hadn’t got a brain, or average sporting ability, but he resented the rest of the world and what he had decided it had thrown at him. Here he was, sharing a house with his mother who made him do jobs and live an existence he hated. Other young men his age lived in much nicer places he told himself. And they had fathers at home, and brothers and sisters too. They didn’t have to help with this, clean that, and do the other. Their mothers tended their gardens, but the garden in front of his small house was a heap of junk and weeds that his mother rarely got round to doing anything about. It didn’t occur to him that he might clean it up and tend it himself – it wasn’t his junk. Those other eighteen year olds had fathers who brought home wages that bought clothes and luxuries that he had never known. For Jack, life sucked, or so he decided. It owed him plenty, and he owed it nothing.
He had had a father of course, but Matilda, his mother, told him that his father had gone off with another woman while Jack was still a baby. Jack hated him for not being there – he hadn’t bothered with either his wife or his son since. He had never contacted them – not even on Jack’s birthday or at Christmas. Christmas. That was the worst season of the whole year for Jack because it brought to the surface all that Jack didn’t have.
Jack spent a lot more time thinking about his father than he would care to admit. Some of the time he speculated about the kind of man he might be. Most of the time, though, he wanted to meet him so he could kick out at him and beat him, and tell him what a sod he was, and get him to plead forgiveness, and then send him away and tell him not to come back again. If his father had ever sought to come by that is precisely what Jack most likely would have done. But, of course, he didn’t come by. Had he done so and received the rejection he deserved, it might have been better for Jack. Could his father have just been there to take it, to let the hatred pour out of his son’s heart, it might have set him free. But, as it was, the absent parent left a gap in the centre of Jack’s heart which fostered the smouldering resentment that affected so much of the rest of his life.
Jack’s mother was a survivor too. Life hadn’t been easy for her bringing up a wilful son all on her own. She had been bitter because of the poor choice of husband she had made, and had always seen some of this ungrateful man in Jack. Yet she knew Jack was not him and that this must be resisted. Still his anger and self-centredness made it increasingly difficult to get close to him. Everyday life, making ends meet, did not allow much time to dwell on what might have been. The last of her own parents had died five years ago disappointed in the mess their daughter had made of her life. She hadn’t heard from her brother since then. He had his own life and he didn’t bother with her and she wasn’t going to bother with him.
But her son worried her. He could have turned out worse though, she thought. He had never got into trouble with the police like some of the boys at his school, and somehow he had avoided getting caught up with the drug-taking layabouts she saw on the street corners in the town. She had been outspoken about this – but she felt that it wouldn’t have made any difference what she had said. Jack lived in his own world, and didn’t do anything he didn’t want to do.
In fact Jack had not shown much interest in having friends. His naturally introvert nature had probably been his saving grace in this regard. And his innate intelligence had meant that he had got on at school, despite his preoccupations. He had stayed on simply because there had been nothing else he wanted to do. He needed to get out of the house, away from his mother, and occupy his bright brain with something. He might have been the kind who spent his time surfing the ’net or playing computer games but he did not have a computer at home, there was no way they could afford one. He did most of his homework on the computer at school after hours. (In the senior class people without their own computers could make special arrangements.)
That morning Jack was going to the school but it was to be no ordinary day. This was the last time he would go there. He was going, not because he wanted to meet his friends, or participate in any leaving ceremony, but because this day was the one in which he would receive his results. What he was going to do from now on he did not know. If his results were good he might consider going to do further study somewhere. Not a local place though. He wanted somewhere far enough away so that he would have to find digs or a college hall. He could have applied earlier in the year but he had not decided which subjects he wanted to pursue. Some of the other students had done the research, paid visits on open days, and got excited about this or that course. Jack had not known where to begin, or what he was capable of, and when it came to these things his mother might as well have been on another planet. So he decided to have a “gap year” and apply for the following year. But he hadn’t done much about that either. He resolved to call in at the library on the way home and see if there were some ideas there. He had already asked other students what they were doing and how you found a gap year opportunity, but they all seemed to have had “connections”. One had an uncle in the diplomatic service and was going out to do something in some remote corner of the world, another had decided to pursue a year in industry and his next door neighbour had got him a post in a local factory office. A third had gone off to the antipodes on his father’s yacht. But when it came to uncles, useful neighbours and fathers, Jack, as usual, fell short.
*
Later that day Jack felt good. In fact he couldn’t remember ever feeling quite so good before. He had got his results and had done better than anyone had expected. His teachers were pleased. Fellow students were impressed. He knew he had been lucky with some of the questions. If they had been on other parts of the curriculum which he hadn’t revised he would not have done so well. But the teachers and the others didn’t know that. So he had a spring in his step as he headed off for the library.
Perhaps his good fortune would continue and he would find a line to pursue. His way took him past his former middle school. This was in an older part of the town with red brick terraced houses and tiny front gardens in different styles. Some had pots of bright flowers, others a small patch of grass, one or two were unkempt like his own, and one had a large greenhouse. “I wonder how long that will last?” mused Jack, remembering what some of the pupils had been like in his former school. He found himself actually caring, actually wanting the greenhouse to survive! He was in a good mood!
As he passed the long brick wall that surrounded the St Paul’s Middle School Jack had left five years before, he was suddenly aware of a new white gate in the wall. “What have they been doing here?” he asked himself. He could not imagine why they wanted to put such a gate in this wall. It looked so out of place. It was a low wooden gate, with a solid frame and a rounded top. Vertical bars carved into curves and swirls gave the gate an ornamental air. It shone with the lustre of new, pure white, gloss paint. Jack stopped, looked at the gate and then beyond it. The remarkable thing was that the gate seemed to lead to a short, narrow path about two metres long through a high dark-green hedge. He remembered no hedges around the middle school! But the really astounding thing was that the path didn’t lead to a school yard but a garden with a green lawn overhung with trees. The corner of a country cottage was just visible. It was completely incongruous. There was nothing akin to this anywhere near Jack’s part of town. Indeed Jack could not remember ever seeing anything quite like it, not even in books.
Jack deliberately closed his eyes for several seconds to make sure he wasn’t seeing things. But the gate, the hedge and the lawn were still there when he re-opened them. Jack reached out and touched the gate. It felt good and solid. He had an irresistible urge to open it. Somehow, in a way he couldn’t explain, the gate, he felt, was there for him. For a moment it crossed
his mind that perhaps he had died and was being invited up to heaven. But his body seemed real enough, and anyway there was Persham on the other side of the road as he always remembered it. He didn’t know what he believed about “life after death”. He had not given it much thought, but he always imagined dying to be a painful thing, and you would feel it when you died. But here he hadn’t noticed a thing. He could still feel the stony path beneath his feet, and now the shiny paint hard under his hand. The gate had a simple catch on the inside operated by a circular iron handle on the outside, although it was low enough for him to lean over and lift the catch by hand. This he did. The gate swung open readily without a sound as he leaned against it. Jack stepped gingerly onto the short path and took a pace forward.
3
Jallaxanya Rarga: Age: 17. Home address: 127, Sikilai Buildings, Wanulka City, Wanulka, Planet Raika
Jalli was not sure exactly how it had begun. She had been engrossed in her book in the local public library when this man had appeared, and the next thing she was aware of was that they were walking down the street together. She could not recall exactly what he had said to her inside the library – she had been deep into the life-cycle of parmanda colonies – but he was there, waiting for her, when she had emerged with her notes and her head full of how she was going to begin her essay for the biology teacher in the local secondary school. She had been attending the school for over six years. Now she was coming to the end of her final year and people were talking about her future. At seventeen many of the girls in Wanulka City had already left school and were actively seeking husbands. They had dreams of leaving their parents to establish new homes of their own. How proud they were when they found a respected, good looking boy – especially if he had a decent income, or at least the potential of one. But ambitions of this nature did not occupy Jalli’s mind. She could never imagine leaving her grandmother, Momori, with whom she had been living for the best part of her life.
The Kicking Tree Page 1
