The Lanyard

by Carter-Thomas, Jake

  Lacking a pair of sticks with which to fight, or a hole in a tree big enough to swallow him up, he kicked out at a small stone from the top of a pile of rocks nearby, hit it harder than he thought, and watched as it skittered away, rolling end over end a few times and then riding a slight raise before leaping into the air, spinning and crashing back too fast out of view. As he looked at the remnants of the pile he could tell his father had stopped work and was waiting for him to turn around.

  "Careful!" he said when the boy met his gaze for a moment before it dropped.

  "I wasn't aiming at you."

  "It's not that."

  "Then what?"

  "Someone built that for a reason."

  "Huh?"

  "That pile you just kicked." He stood and came over, pointing it out. "I bet it was a cairn."

  ""?

  "Someone made it."

  He put an arm around the boy, pulling him in close. The boy did not return the embrace, just stood there, leaning at an angle, staring at a fold of granite that seemed to cut through the bottom of the evergreens before joining with the dirt and the blanket of small rocks, turned yellow by the sun.

  "I Didn't mean to raise my voice," he said. "I do understand. I know you were just keen to talk to someone a little closer to your own age. I get it. I was young once too, you know..."

  "It's fine."

  "Doesn't excuse me getting short with you."

  The boy half-smiled but then that expression too dropped like the rock and he didn't say anything.

  "I don't want us to fight."

  "We're not."

  The man let go and moved back towards his backpack, stooping down again to the piece of rope he was working on, looping it around his arm, trying to tie together ends that would rather fray and fall apart, unravel, like all the tension in them and out of them, that seemed sometimes to come out and move into the environment they lived in, whether shown in the knocks in the bits of wood in their yard, the chips in the stones, or the majesty of the great mountain that would rise again somewhere through the mist and threaten to block the stars.

  The boy followed him and took the other end of the rope, doing what his dad was doing, only steadier. He could still feel the heavy sweat of disappointment in the air. He tried to make conversation.

  "What did you say the pile of rocks was again?"

  "Cairns?"

  "Yeah. What's that?"

  "Oh. They're markers people leave to guide others, to help them navigate. Like signposts."

  "So... This area was part of a trail?"

  "I guess it must have been. You know this practice goes back a long time, way, way before any of the houses we've been in were built."

  "So more people might come by?"

  "Well... Like I said stone piles like these have been around a long time. I didn't mean you should look after it to stop people getting lost, more just that it is bad to destroy stuff, you know? Like how I don't like you breaking things in the yard?"

  "Out of respect?"

  "Something like that."

  "So should I go put it back."

  He smiled. "That's not a bad idea."

  "Alright, I'll even try and find the right rock."

  "Good. And then we can get the tents up, start a fire."

  "Aha."

  The boy walked in the direction the stone had spun, following the path as best he could up across the slight incline it had skipped. Close to the far edge of the clearing were a few possible contenders. He narrowed down the choice to three options: a red stone with a pointed end that aimed back to the middle, a sparkling slice of quartz, or a large taupe pebble. He went for the red rock because of the colour, but then swapped to the pebble as it would be easier to place on the top of the stack.

  As he crouched down to pick it up he spotted what looked to be the end of a faded blue piece of plastic, about the size of his finger, sticking up out of the dirt at an angle like the foundations of a fallen building. He checked over his shoulder in case his father was watching and then rubbed the dirt from the bottom of it and pulled it out, watching as the plastic turned black and then shiny, some metal mechanism on the end -- a disposable lighter. He shook it, and dragged it across his leg to get the soil off, trying to see through the translucent sides is it had any fuel. There was just a sniff inside. He pocketed it in any case then went back to the tents, carrying the smooth rock that he put back on the top of the pile with exaggerated care, realising it was too clean to belong with the rest, as if some round trinket dropped by a crow, a petrified egg too heavy to hatch.

  "Do you think there could be other piles like this one near?" he asked later, after the tents were up.

  "Huh?" his father said, arm deep inside his backpack.

  "Other cairns."

  "Well, I'd be surprised if there weren't."

  "Can I look for them?"

  "Now?" he withdrew his arm from the bag holding a white brick of fire lighter. "Aren't you hungry?"

  "I mean after."

  He thought about it for a moment.

  "I'm not sure I like the idea of you wandering of when it's getting dark."

  "Oh, please. There'll be time."

  "We'll see. Maybe tomorrow. Here take this."

  The boy took the white square and held it at a distance to avoid the smell of chemicals. "Dad?"

  "I know you don't think it sometimes, but I am trying my best," he said, burrowing a small hole in the middle of the pile of twigs he had assembled.

  "To make the fire?"

  "To help you. It's tough..."

  "Why?"

  "Because. I know I have to allow you to be what you want to be, who you want to be. But it's not easy."

  "".

  "Look at me."

  "Dad?"

  "I mean it."

  The boy stopped and half-glanced at him, feeling the uncomfortable stare of eyes focussed into his soul before he even saw it.

  "I have responsibilities too, you know, like I shouldn't just let you go off on your own." He narrowed his gaze as if to try and sense if any of this was getting through.

  "I only wanted to--"

  "I don't just mean right now, around here."

  "Then what?"

  "...I'm talking about is the wider world, all the things that are out there that you might not expect. It wouldn't be right not to teach you about that, to just let you stumble into it, but like I said I don't feel like I can just tell you what to do, where to go, who to be, what side to fight on. God, so much. But I have to. I have to -- I'm not sure the best word for it -- prepare you. It's a no win situation. Chicken and the egg."

  "Then don't talk in riddles. Just do it."

  "I am. I'm trying. It's just not that simple."

  "Why?"

  "Because I feel I can't just say watch out for X,Y,Z as that would also be telling you."

  "So how can you prepare me without telling me and without letting me discover on my own?"

  "I don't know. It's a no-win, like I said."

  "I don't mind if you just say."

  "I know. But it wouldn't make it right, not in my mind anyway."

  "".

  "It would be too tainted by what I believe, and then you wouldn't so much be growing up to be yourself, but growing up to be me."

  "So, let me explore?"

  "Right, you're right... But like with those people we met back down the way, with the girl, I get this feeling you would have wandered off with them if you'd have had a say."

  "I didn't even see them."

  "But if you had... Like I said. I understand."

  "I would not... Would I?"

  "Well that's the thing. Who's to say which the right move was. They might have been friendly, cautious but friendly, or they might not... They might have been just like us."

  "Or they might not."

  "Right. How are we meant to know?"

  "You just have to trust them, I guess."

  "So you would have?"

  "I don't know."<
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  The boy put the fire lighter down by his feet and crouched to fiddle with his own backpack for no reason other than it being near him. He fastened up the clip and then opened it again, watching his fingers all the time, imagining them growing until they were adult sized, so much larger than the plastic snapper that would ever remain unchanged, designed to fit within its slot and nothing else.

  His father laughed at him. "Well?"

  "You actually want an answer?"

  "You might not have this long to decide in real life."

  "Well, alright... They seemed ok."

  "So you'd trust them?"

  "Yes. I say they were just like us, doing what we're doing, only one more."

  "Right, one more. That's the thing isn't it."

  "So you think they were bad?"

  "I don't know. But I think I made my choice based on that, numbers. Subconsciously at least. I didn't take the time to think about it. You don't have that sort of time in these situations. You have to follow your gut. There were more of them than us."

  "So?"

  "So I lied. And I think I was right. They were one more and I thought they wanted to talk a bit too much. Too many questions, too much interest."

  "People aren't allowed to talk?"

  "They wanted to know where we're from, where we're headed, things like that. Imagine if I had told them the truth. Two on one. Three on one."

  "Three on two."

  "You were in no position to do anything."

  "Pffft. You should have opened the trunk!"

  "Alright forget the hero narrative won't you. It's done."

  "I'm just trying to learn."

  "I know... Guess I'm a terrible teacher."

  "No."

  "You're too kind."

  "Or naive?"

  "Funny."

  "Biased?"

  "Alright, I get it... Can I maybe make it up to you with a good meal?"

  "Always."

  "Pass me that brick then."

  The boy handed it over and his father took it from him and then stumbled around for the box of matches that turned up in his back pocket and lit it. The brick covered in flame and he tried to turn it to keep it turning to guide the fire away from the corner he held as he lowered it into place, pushing the small twigs back on top of it when he let go and leaning over close to the pile as if listening for the crackle.

  "Are you hungry?" he said, standing up.

  "Sure," the boy replied.

  "Here, sit."

  He went to the line of trees at the edge of the clearing and returned with some snapped branches, still covered with leaves. He waited for the fire to poke its head out of the first layer of sticks then put these branches on so they began to squeal in the heat, smoke turning white and coming on thick, same colour as the mist in the sky.

  "I wanted to show you an old trick my dad taught me," he said, pulling a couple of eggs out of a beaten-up box that was also inside his backpack.

  The boy's eyes became wide. "Where did you get those?"

  "That's a secret."

  "I didn't know we had eggs."

  "Well, you do now... Watch."

  He placed the box of eggs down by his feet and removed two brown paper bags and a plastic bottle with faded lettering from the side pocket on his pack. He sat the bags down so that they stood open. He squirted the bottle into both of them from a height, exaggerating the act, putting on a show, and then used his fingers to spread the liquid around the insides until the outside of the bags started to go damp.

  "What is that?" the boy said

  "Just a little oil."

  "So where did oil and eggs come from?"

  "Don't ask too many questions, alright?"

  "Tell me!" the boy sat forward as he spoke and then rocked back.

  The man paused, bottle still half-pouring. "Your mother, ok?"

  "Oh."

  He turned away, put the bottle down and then picked up the eggs again, splitting them on one of the rocks before he let the insides of each fall into a separate bag. "I hope this still works." He put the bags down on the large stones he had moved into place, adjusted the branches he had laid over the small twigs into a grid. So that the fire could not show its teeth through this thatch. He put the bags onto the grid, upright, and stepped back.

  "Won't they burn?" the boy said.

  "Not if it isn't too hot."

  "Oh."

  "Yeah. At least, it shouldn't... Old camping trick. The cool thing is we'll know that it's ready when the grease from the oil gets about half way up the sides. Watch. It's a bit like a timer."

  The boy sat enrapt by the scene. As the first scent of cooked eggs got to his nose, his stomach started to turn on itself, each side of him become an army of flesh that wanted to charge the other and clash in the middle. He was hungry as hell. He looked at the bag with all his attention as it began to steam, and the wet patch at the bottom climbed the sides as his father promised.

  "When my Dad showed me this we would have bacon too. You ever tried that? I can't remember."

  "I don't think so..."

  "Well you'd know if you had. It's this greasy but delicious meat. It's pig. My Dad used to drop that in the bottom of the bag before he put the eggs in. I think the grease helped the whole thing to cook if I'm honest, but we'll see."

  "Was it tasty?"

  "To be honest it didn't cook that well for him, it didn't get crisp, but I can still remember it, yeah. I guess like with anything, somehow being out in the open eating tastes better."

  "Yeah... Why is that?"

  "Um... don't know."

  "You might not have this long to decide in real life," the boy joked.

  "Funny. Maybe it's not so much being in the open, but being colder, maybe it feels good because your stomach is full of this warm stuff and your outside feels cold? How about that? What do you think?"

  "I think I'm starving."

  "Good answer. Me too. It's almost done. "

  After another couple of minutes he grabbed the top of the first bag and handed it over, taking the other for himself. They ate out of the bags, and soon they were both chewing, silent, pulling out long strings of egg and dangling them into their mouths all the way down to their guts, warming like a wriggling yellow worm, like the sun reduced to a springy hot yellow strip.

  "So you want to go exploring?"

  "It's alright," the boy replied, feeling like it would be bad to abandon his dad.

  "I think you should. I think I should task you with scouting out the trail we seem to be in the middle off. Tell me which direction it goes in and where it appears to come from, how's that? I did tell those guys we were scouting." He swallowed some egg. "Wouldn't want to lie."

  "Right now?"

  "Well, no. Enjoy your food. But tomorrow. I think we did good for a first day, don't you."

  "I do."

  "Good. And I wanted to say thank you."

  "What for?"

  "For helping me see... I mean, you're right, I should let you experience thing. Not just for you, for me too. I should take the chance to learn from you. Maybe that's why I've been messing things up so much."

  "You haven't--"

  "Yeah, I have. But that's alright. You know, being out here... I mean, isn't it just incredible. This is what living should be, you know, like going back to nature, not crawling through broken up houses." He held up his arms and watched the glowing bugs that were circling around the food get disturbed like a circle of water and then settle back into their flow.

  "What would Mom say to that?"

  "I have no idea... But she can't say anything when she can't see us, right?"

  "Right."

  CHAPTER SIX

  The sloping orange fabric of the tent had caught the sun and appeared more like the inside of a burning loft. The night must have walked over the boy without a nudge. It must be morning. He knew moonlight was too white to create such intensity, like trying to see by reflected teeth. He leaned forward to inspect his toes ben
eath the sleeping bag. The air felt thick. He tried to move but his arms were pinned to his side, the thick track of the zipper not splitting until near the top, and he struggled to extract himself, fumbling for the fastener and pushing it away as far as he could whilst on his back. Only then did the heat drop. He put his hands on his face and crushed the large droplets of sweat that had formed on him. The light from outside faded, as if cloud had formed suddenly. As if the sun had never been there at all. He rubbed his forehead and was surprised by more damp. What had happened in there? He pulled his legs out of the sleeping back and sat on his knees, waking up.

  He must have been dreaming. He closed his eyes to try and remember what it was, switching instead to the memory of the campfire that he had stayed up late stirring with a twig, watching sparks leaping out as he wound the base the same way his father and he had used an old key with a single tooth one time to revive a clock. The sparks had landed on him, but had not burned. He had been scared of this touch of fire at first, but soon tried to catch more and more sparks like a wolf looking for droplets of snow with its tongue. Some of these sparks had followed him into the tent when he closed his eyes, piling one on top of the other at the base of his vision. Now he remembered, that was it, that was the last thing, these heaps of sparks in his head, become drunk and heavy, impossible to shift, as if his eyelids had been pierced by needles and he had been left out to stare into the sun, become a million firebugs that lulled him, drawing a curtain of flame across his view, become the boy who looked too long at the fire and burned out from the inside, watching the outline of a troglodyte made of flame, sitting on a rock as hot as the sun, beckoning to him with a red finger, that he had followed into the night, across the plain scattered with trees, to the mountain, to the cave, so black like the centre of an eye, so high that the air ran out and yet he could breathe something else, as if taking in the mist in slurps, smoke, filling his spirit with the blue thunder, that he had followed and then tumbled down the crevice at the top, into the soft-cushioned lullaby of sleep.