by Mark Lowery
Stage 7
A Bench on Newquay Train Station
to a Bench on Newquay Train Station
0 Miles
Sitting Down
The End of the Line
We’ve been at Newquay for a while. I’m on a cold metal bench right at the end of the platform, as far away as I can be from the main part of the station. The surf dudes all poured out of here ages ago, shouldering their bags and surfboards and disappearing into the town. There’s a faint salty, seaside tang in the air.
The station clock clicks through seven minutes past five. A few people wander around here and there, waiting for trains, but the station seems desolate. Guards are laughing together down the other end of the platform. An old geezer shuffles up and down to kill time. My eyes follow a single plastic bag as it dances past in the wind. It somersaults along the track, then gets tangled on the buffers. This is the end of the line.
Hen returns. Sits down next to me. A hot drink in a paper cup is pushed into my hands. “Here. Drink this. Tea with three sugars.”
I sip it. Too hot.
Hen puts her arm around me. Her body is warm but not soft. “You’re freezing,” she says. I clutch the tea toward my chest and hunch my shoulders. I should really get my jacket out of the backpack. The clock ticks on through the seconds and minutes. A stationary train on the other platform coughs into life. Lights flicker on inside it. The old geezer walks around to it and climbs on. The plastic bag is stuck on the buffer, flapping uselessly in the breeze.
“Look,” she says. Deep breath. “I’m sorry. For . . .”
Her voice drifts off. I sip the tea again. Still too hot.
“It’s fine,” I say, my voice dry like sandpaper. And then, without looking at her, I start to speak.
I tell her about Charlie. About the vacation. About how he dived in to save the dolphin’s life.
“Oh God,” she says, hand over her mouth.
I nod. Then I continue the story.
Going Home
Someone had called an ambulance. They wrapped Charlie up in blankets and this tinfoil stuff, then raced off to the nearest hospital, with Mum in the back and me and Dad following behind in the car. The drive to Truro seemed to take forever, even though it was only about a half hour.
At the hospital, Mum went in with Charlie, while I sat in a waiting room watching Dad pace up and down. He was wearing someone else’s clothes. A woman had come out of her house and given him her husband’s sweater and jeans. They were both about three sizes too small. At any other time, we’d have made a joke about it.
Finally, sometime in the afternoon, we were allowed to go in and see Charlie. He was propped up in bed looking pale and weak, and holding a gray cardboard bowl in his hands. There were these electric pads wired up to his chest, and beeping machines behind him. It reminded me of that photo of him from when he was born. “How’s it going, bum face?” I said, trying not to cry.
“Great news”—he grinned—“I’ve been picked for the Olympic swimming team. One of the coaches saw me. I’m doing the fifty-meters vertical sink.”
We all had a little chuckle at that, because it kind of broke the tension a bit, but then Charlie’s laugh sort of morphed into this coughing fit. They were really horrible, wet coughs. Spluttering. Bubbling. His heart monitor started beeping wildly. Mum jabbed at the panic button, and in two seconds, a nurse and doctor flew through the doors and pulled him upright in bed and smacked his back; then he spewed up all this water into his cardboard bowl. Slowly he caught his breath and everything settled down again.
“Sorry about that,” said Charlie, wiping the spit away from his mouth. “Where are my manners?”
I gave a weak smile.
“To be on the safe side, we’ll keep him here for a while so we can keep an eye on him,” said the doctor, listening to Charlie breathing through her stethoscope. “Especially with his medical history.”
“I’m all right,” said Charlie, but the doctor ignored him.
“Oh, and while I remember,” said the nurse, “someone calling himself the old-timer rang. Apparently the dolphin is fine. Some fishermen managed to cut the net off it.”
Charlie gave an enormous grin.
“You’re a real hero,” I said. And I believed it too.
Cold Tea
“Oh, Martin,” says Hen. One hand is still over her mouth. The other has kind of snaked its way around my shoulders. “You must’ve been so relieved.”
I swirl my tea around the paper cup, then take a gulp. It’s cold and disgustingly sweet. I feel like I’ve been talking for ages.
I know she’s looking at me, waiting for me to answer. Slowly I turn my eyes to meet hers. And there’s a split second when I can tell she’s reading something from my face. But I don’t want her to read it, so I turn away again and suddenly fling the cup as far as I can. It flips over and over, tea flying out of it like brown sparks from a firework. The cup bounces across the tracks, and my shoulders crumple. My head flops into my hands. Her fingers dig into my shoulders.
“What’s wrong?” she says, but her voice is distant.
My breath seems to come in ragged bursts that tear at my chest and arms. And the words are welling up inside me, forcing their way to the surface like dolphins kicking themselves up, until finally they burst out of my mouth and I start to speak again.
The Curtains
It was almost a week later when it happened. He’d been fine leaving the hospital. On fire in fact. He’d only been there two nights, but the nurses all came out to see him off. They thought he was amazing. Brightened up our lives, they said. Wish they were all like him. Breath of fresh air.
We’d driven the seven hours all the way home and got back to the house in the evening. Then, in the middle of the night, Charlie had pains in his chest. Rushed straight to the emergency room. Checkup. Night in for observation. But by the morning everything was back to normal. You’ve had a big shock. Take it easy. Rest. Come straight back if you notice anything out of the ordinary. Always best to take precautions.
He was quiet for the rest of the week, sitting on the sofa wearing his pj’s and watching back-to-back Peppa Pigs on TV, eating his ham-and-jam sandwiches and drawing pictures of dolphins in his little pad. He even joked about how sick kids get to swim with dolphins and maybe he’d be allowed to do it now.
And then it happened. Nothing dramatic. No fanfares. It just happened.
Thursday morning. I opened the curtains in our room like I always do to wake him up.
And that was it.
He was gone.
I knew it instantly. Cold. Gray. Still. But peaceful. Eyes closed. And on the floor by the side of his bed was his pad. He must’ve been drawing before he went to sleep. On the open page there was a picture of a leaping dolphin. “To Martin,” it said underneath. “From Charlie.”
Shadows
The plastic bag on the buffers has given up trying to escape. It’s dangling limp and still. The train on the other platform eases out of the station.
“Oh, Martin,” she says.
I shrug, picking at my thumbnails. I’m surprised that I want to talk about what happened. It’s the first time I have. Not that anybody else wants to. Mum and Dad never talk about it. People at school avoid it like a massive unexploded mine.
Eventually I carry on. “You know what? No one was even sure exactly what caused it. I mean, his heart was terrible. Always had been. The doctors think it was probably something to do with the shock of going in the water. But maybe it was always going to happen. Maybe it was a bit of both.”
“Oh, Martin,” Hen whispers again.
“He’s with me all the time, you know,” I say. Hen squeezes me tighter, and I realize there are tears running down her cheeks that mix with mine as our faces touch. “Real as if he was sitting here. I talk to him and he talks back.”
“Like an imaginary friend?” she says. Immediately I think she feels embarrassed to have said this, like it’s insensitive or something.
But I know what she means.
“No,” I reply. “More than that. He’s a part of me. He’s in everything I do. Everything I say. Everything I think.”
There’s a pause. “Is that who you were arguing with on the train before? I thought you’d gone . . .”
Her voice trails off. She doesn’t want to say crazy. I understand. “I’m sorry about running off,” I say. “He made me do it. I mean, I made me do it. I was scared and . . . the part of me that’s Charlie didn’t want you to find out about everything. It’s hard to explain.”
Hen squeezes me tighter. “You don’t have to.”
“Sometimes I can almost touch him,” I say after a long time. “I even fell onto my butt at Preston station ’cause I was picturing him tripping over me. He’s always there.”
“That’s so sweet, you know?”
I shake my head. “Not now it isn’t. I need to let him go.”
“Don’t say that.”
“Not forget about him. I need to just, you know, let him rest. We all do. It’s been fourteen months. We’ve got to live.” I can feel my voice getting stronger and louder. “That’s all Charlie wanted. To be alive. Like the dolphin. Mum, she can’t even get out of bed. Dad, he’s never at home, he just works all the time. Me—I keep having these panic attacks. None of us ever even talk about Charlie. I want my family back.”
I can feel that my hands have made fists, and I’m pounding my knees as I speak. “You know what? He was cremated, and Mum wouldn’t let anyone bury his ashes. We couldn’t even say goodbye to him. That’s why I’ve got to go to St. Bernards. I know that if I go back . . .”
“You’ll be able to say goodbye,” says Hen, wiping her nose on the sleeve of her multi-colored coat. “So when do you need to be in St. Bernards?”
“Seven,” I say. We both look at the clock. Five twenty.
“I’ll get you there,” she says, standing up. “Stay here. I’ll ask someone.”
Almost There . . . But Not Quite
A spider crawled up
The inside of a glass.
It took him all day.
Slithering, sliding on the slippery glass-cliff face,
Sticky liquid weighing him down
Clogging the tiny hairs on his legs.
He fought and strained,
Desperate to escape.
Three steps forward.
Two steps back.
Until finally he reached the top.
Exhausted, he rested on the lip of the glass.
Then someone took a drink
And swallowed him.
By Martin Tompkins
Age 13
Stage 8
Newquay Station to a Pub, Then Back Again
About a mile
Walking There, Sprinting Back
Disappointments and Solutions
I decide to write a poem. I hadn’t realized it till now, but I’m at the second-to-last page in the book. I’m about to start, my pen hovering over the page, when Hen comes back. Her face doesn’t look good. “Bit of a problem,” she says.
She’s right.
It turns out we can get to St. Bernards, but it’ll take almost three hours. I don’t understand this. I check on my mileage chart and it’s only thirty-odd miles away, but Hen says that the trains are terrible around here and you’ve always got to change somewhere to get somewhere else.
“So we won’t get there until eight? But we’ll miss high tide,” says Charlie. His voice is suddenly quieter, more distant, like he’s on the other side of a window. I turn to look for him like I always do, but he’s not there. Not to look at anyway. For a moment, I panic, searching all around me. I can’t be without him. But then I begin to understand. It’s like talking about him has shifted something.
“This is hopeless,” says Charlie, muffled. And I imagine, but can’t see, how he might flop down on the bench with his hands under his chin. “I feel like a spider stuck in a glass.”
He’s right. I can’t see him but he’s right. This is desperate.
Hen is talking to me. Charlie’s voice is babbling on. I know this might not be the time, but before I can do anything about it, the pen is scratching rapidly across the page. I’m writing another poem, about Charlie’s spider. I start to feel better, even though the poem’s basically about how hopeless everything is.
Writing is how I’ve managed to cope with everything since last year. It’s the only way I know to get my thoughts out. When I finally came back to school, three weeks after the start of the new year, I was kind of drifting around like a ghost in the hallways and classrooms. Then one day my English teacher, Mr. Hendrix, called me in to see him. He said he’d had an idea: a poetry club with one member—me. At first I thought it was stupid, but he told me that I could turn up at his office whenever I wanted, whether he was there or not. He’d even squared it away with my teachers. If I needed to just wander out of class, I could. As long as I was writing he didn’t mind. He even gave me a green notebook. I asked if I could decorate it, and he said Sure thing, daddy-o, which is one of his little phrases. I stuck Charlie’s last picture he ever drew on the front of it, then wrapped it with plastic to protect it.
Without the poetry, without Mr. Hendrix, I wouldn’t have gotten through the year.
I know that Hen is watching me write. I can feel her wanting to say something, but she waits until I’ve finished and the notebook is back in my backpack.
“Better?” she says.
I nod. She just seems to understand.
“How much money have you got?”
I count it out. Between us we’ve got eighteen pounds. With her holding my hand, we stride through the station and out into the town. People are buzzing about everywhere, out for the evening I guess. I stand close to Hen as she argues the price with a taxi driver.
“No, no,” he says, “fifty pounds to St. Bernards an’ that’s the best you’ll get on a Sat’day, love.”
I can tell she wants to fight or yell, but she knows this won’t do any good. She looks around nervously, then shouts over to some guys who are passing by. Tight T-shirts. Bulging muscles. Gelled hair.
“Where’s the busiest pub around here?” she says.
“We haven’t got time for you to have a drink,” I say, but Hen ignores me.
The guys all make sounds and say crude things. Hen rolls her eyes. “In your dreams, boys. Just tell me.”
They just walk off laughing. An older man and his wife must’ve overheard. He gives us directions through town and tells us to have a great night, and he hopes I’ve got some ID on me ’cause I don’t look a day over fourteen, if he’s honest.
I wince.
“Right. Let’s go,” says Hen.
“Where?” I say.
Hen smiles. “Pub of course. We gotta earn you enough for a taxi, old boy.”
Flames
We find the pub no problem. It’s a great big place. Music thumping out of it. Football on big screens inside. Tons of people even though it’s still early; musclemen, surfers, really lovely-looking girls in short skirts, all laughing and drinking inside, and pouring out onto the wooden deck that overlooks the road. It makes me feel really out of place and nervous, but Hen squeezes my shoulder and tells me everything’s going to be fine.
It takes Hen about three seconds to get ready. Backpack off her shoulders. Coat off. Clubs, sticks, and paraffin out onto the pavement. Floppy hat thrust into my hand.
“You got any food?” she asks before she starts. “I’m starving.”
I don’t want to tell her about the special- leftover-from-Christmas cookies. They’re for St. Bernards. I said I’d save them and I will. But I’ve got the ham-and-jam sandwich I made for Charlie still in my backpack. I really did make the sandwich for him, but of course he wasn’t here to eat it. She eyes it uneasily, but once she’s had a bite, she tells me it’s actually delicious and she shovels the rest down in no time.
Then she begins.
Doctor Lizard was right. She is incredi
ble. Without any introduction, she just starts. She begins by flinging the clubs in the air, four of them spinning, crossing them over, catching them backhand, forehand, behind the back, arcing throws that loop high into the air, hands placed perfectly to catch. Eyes closed then open again. A growing sense of realization and appreciation from the pub. People nudging each other and turning around. Others pressing from inside to see. Then she catches three clubs before bending forward and catching the other one on the back of her neck. Massive applause. A bow.
Then out come the sticks and she pours some paraffin onto them before slipping the little bottle into her back pocket. The crowd says oooh.
“Who’s got a lighter?” she calls out. I know already that she’s got one, but this must be part of the act. A big guy comes out and holds one up for her. His friends cheer. He lights the first stick with a woof.
“Stay here. You’re perfect,” she says, lighting the other three sticks off the first one. “Stand up straight. Hold these. Don’t move. I don’t want you to die.”
She’s speaking to him, but really she’s talking to the audience. The big guy’s friends laugh loud and hard but he does what she says, holding the sticks out wide as the flames dance up into the air. Then she climbs up him like a ladder and sits on his shoulders before taking the sticks off him in one hand.
“Hold this leg and this hand,” she says firmly, offering him her free hand. The flaming sticks are held as far away as possible in the other.
Big Guy looks surprised. Worried. The crowd goes tense. And in a few seconds she’s crouching on his shoulders. Bit of a wobble. Then she’s standing up slowly and letting go of his hand. Big Guy’s trying not to look like he’s straining as he grips her ankles. A small cheer. And Hen starts to juggle. Four flaming sticks dancing through the sky. Then she catches all of them and produces the bottle from her back pocket. A quick gulp and a hard blow on the sticks. A ball of flame erupts through the air. There’s an enormous cheer; then she leaps off Big Guy’s shoulders, lands on the ground, and bows.
