Riverbank
The moisture drifted through the air, eddying around Mike’s face, except to form a sheen on his beard and spectacles, as he carved the mist with the singular purpose of his reflective coat and his dirt-free mountain bike.
In his mind formed those ridiculous words, “Oh what a beautiful morning…” but the tune did not follow, leaving a resonant hollowness where joy for this dewy new day should have extolled the greatness of Our Lord.
Mike and his bike coursed over the rumbling wooden slats of the humped bridge that crossed an imaginary river. One jolt, rumble, two, then back to the smooth. Despite his inability to ascribe a function to the structure, Mike found it a useful landmark on his daily journey from home to work, work to home. Its removal would have left him bereaved for a little time - an addition to the hollowness where a frivolous song should have been allowed to reside.
The barely perceptible whirring of cog-on-oil-on-chain punctured the relative silence of the cycle path, the distant hiss of cars on the ring-road a mere memory of the humdrum that was an integral part of his life until he took this new job, which paid less, which demanded more, which he identified as the sink for his songless soul.
Mike wiped a dewy pearl from the corner of an eye, where condensation had rallied condensation to simulate the upset that would rip free from his placid skin, if only the perpetual coldness did not deter such escape.
“Aardvarks,” Mike muttered, wiping wet beardness onto his collar. It was forgotten in an instant as the bike climbed a hill and turned a subtle corner, to reveal the landscape which each day grounded him, gave a twinkle in some corner of what used to have feeling, and made the universe pause. This man-machine-oil-fluorescent being swallowed a remnant of the serene, before his eyes fell to that multi-million pound brothel of fiscal desire, the drift of gossamer threads revealing the capitalist excrement dung-hill that was his work.
“Arse” he said. Transitory and momentary. The sensual overload of such a see-saw did not help his fragile balance. His gossamer, their excrement, catapulted him into the cold screaming again, and he quietly pedalled on.
His bicycle slowed. A small click from behind made him swerve slightly, giving deference to an emerging tightly-short-clad monster, swathed in goggles and advertisements and an intention of superiority that blinkered him from perceiving Mike and his lowly mountain bike. The whole persona swept by in a plume of stolen air, which closed behind the alien form to puff the stench of designer deodorant into what had been the sacrosanct personal space of Mike and his Bike.
The goggles did not mask him enough. Ted the Marketing Mogul from the Third Floor. Ted, who created brands like they didn’t matter, like they could be discarded like the next designer deodorant, like the employees didn’t really need to identify with, or like their company. They were, like the brands, transitory assets.
Mike slowed further, to rest whilst his anger subsided. Perched on one leg, the other bent atop a pedal, he looked onwards, vaguely aware of the scuttle of rabbits finding haven in nearby bushes. The mist was heavy here, and only the bank, and the ethereal snake of the river were visible. And if you looked closely, if you let the tendrils draw you in, silent sirens sang the beauty of drifting swans, momentarily revealed by thinning drifts of mist, that banked and separated, obscured and revealed; Clouds of God’s revelation that revelled in the whiteness of the rolling escarpment, the whiteness of the swan, of the dew on the grass that was lifted by the otherworldly sun, as if the entire bank-side was a nativity to the glory of the pure whiteness of the holy lamb.
Mike dismounted, his legs a little weak. How strange to have an epiphany on such a day, earmarked for greatness as it was.
He led his bike down the grassy bank, springing dew from his shoes and tyres, until they were stopped just short of the river’s edge. The mist had become so definite that it seemed the veil could be swept aside to reveal Angels and Seraphim within.
From his oversized backpack, Mike brought a plastic bag into which his dewy clothes might go, but which now served to separate his fluorescent coat and arse from the wetness of God’s earth.
Sitting down to contemplate God’s plan, he drew his lunch from the backpack, released it from its Tupperware gaol, and took a bite from the ham, cheese and salad without pickle to revel in sensory delights that seemed to make the day complete.
- * -
Jodie pulled her swathes of swaddling scarf into her neck, and hooked the collar of her duffle coat more tightly around her in an attempt to keep the increasingly dense swirlingly cold fog from seeping into the cocoon she had built to form a barrier between her space and that of nature.
Jodie had a healthy respect for nature, but certainly not a poetic love. Take, for example, the partially occluded figure of the man sitting on the bank staring into what was presumably the river. He doubtless had a romantic attraction to something that was certainly a vision of beauty, but also held an element of danger and foreboding. Typical of a man to appreciate such qualities, and ignore those that were perhaps most pertinent.
Glad of her thermal gloves, she quickened her pace, and scuffed her feet slightly in the process, righting herself instantly. The noise, however, ripped through the fog to the lonely figure bank-side.
Jodie’s stomach tightened and her heart quickened prematurely to match her pace, as the shadow turned its head and seemed to contemplate her for a few moments too long. She suddenly felt too exposed, too vulnerable in such a solitudinous place. She even cursed her sex momentarily. Were she a bloke, she would undoubtedly brace her arms, swing them like an ape, and irrespective of fear, walk rather quickly out of harm’s way in a resolute-sort-of-a-fashion.
As the watching man passed from her sight, like a demon on her left shoulder, her alarm increased, until fear overcame her single-minded intention to take herself from this place, and she chanced a glance back. The man-shadow seemed to be with nature, fog and the river again, bringing something (raw meat?) up to his mouth, and perhaps eating, relaxed, sinews not readied for attack. She relaxed a little, and berated herself for assuming the worst. As if the poetic mind could even conceive of such an assault.
Still, she maintained her pace, the shadow disappearing into the folds and curls of mist and swirl until she was left only with the fleeting thought that he would be relaxed, wouldn’t he, if he had an accomplice.
- * -
Mike started at the artificial sound of shoe against tarmac that seemed to echo and become fog-stifled simultaneously. He turned his head, neck-sinews stretched to see a woman picking up pace, presumably at seeing him unexpectedly. He felt a certain degree of sadness at the solitary figure, huddled into her overcoat. The lamp-lights intermittently punctuated the fog to reveal her identity, but he knew that to her, he must be nothing more than a formless eclipse - Something to be feared, no more. He shivered, feeling the fog for its insidious curling chill, for how it greedily pulled the warmth from one’s vital self, embracing each traveller in its midst with the immediacy of fear and primacy.
It was Jodie. He recognized the overcoat by its black-and-white wavy interference patterns, which held a certain aptness in this habitat. Receptionist at work, he felt a certain fondness for her, as she greeted him by name each morning. But then, that was her job.
She scuttled off into the distant fog. He was safe from her memory if he turned and continued his sandwich. There was pork-pie later, after all. One could cut chunks from a pork pie with a knife, slicing through the crumbly epidermis, through the subcutaneous fat deposits to the giving consistency of the flesh within, and then out again. Time and time again.
He regarded the swans and fog once more, whilst rolling the sandwich flavours, textures, and considering that the visceral brightness of day may be on the verge of dissipating this ethereal beauty. And this, he knew, would bring his mind back to his task - Morning, day. Work.
- * -
8.30 now. Another cyclist passed by with a whirr and squeak of badly oiled gears and chainset. Mike could not understand what would make a person perpetually ignore those few oiling moments that brought chains closer to bike, and bike closer to rider. Did they wish to punish that which faithfully transported them, or perhaps just themselves. It left a pinprick of anger.
Mike took his knife and inspected it. Half a pork pie remained, a little blood sloughed onto and partly soaked into the upper crust where he had initially sunk the blade. He scratched his moustache, and crumbs fell to his lap, annoyingly.
- * -
Maïre sweated as she toiled on her Mother’s cycle. Old and unoiled, like her Mother. It got her, just about, to work each day. She worried whether the exertion might make her abort the baby, but exercise was good during pregnancy, she had heard. And whilst she stayed at her Mother’s she paid her way, and maybe put a bit aside to pay for a few nappies and clothes and wipes and pushchair and god-knows-what. She would not be a bitch to her child. Mary it would be. She would not let it take over her life, but she would not make it suffer. She’d show it how to live, and her Mother be damned. God be damned. Father, the Son and the holy Bastard that she bore. But she’d still love it, and she would show her Mother how a Mother could be, illegitimate or not. And she’d even spend a few pounds of her sandwich-packing job to buy some oil for the bike. Whilst it was hers, she would put something of her own into it, regardless of her Mother’s insistence that rust was nature’s oil.
Something whizzed past her ear fast. An insect maybe, but bigger? She couldn’t see anything as she followed its presumed path, but put her hand to her ear, and felt a little wetness. She rubbed together finger and thumb, and looked briefly at the small smear of blood. Damn those earrings, catching again, she rationalized, and rode on, checking the ear intermittently until the minor flow of blood seemed stemmed.
- * -
“Aasvogels” said Mike to himself, as he packed his remaining pork-pie portion into its plastic prison again, snapped the lid shut, and replaced it in his too-heavy, too-large, rucksack.
He liked “A” words. He didn’t know why. Aardvarks. Arse. Aasvogels. Probably peculiar.
Atop the plastic container he placed a mini notebook, clicked open a ball-pen, and started a thoughtful little poem to fill the pad’s final page. As he wrote, the container gave a little bounce with each word’s end, inviting the next word to flow with form…
*Mist dissipates, elates
my soul, agitates the lives
of the soulless passers-by. *
*I am relegated to pork pies,
observing light aircraft,
flying by, passing soullessly by. *
*Aardvarks, Aasvogels, Arse.
All that’s left are alliterations.
And life burning, faster, fast. *
Innocent of intentions, begone.
Alone, a little closer to God,
I am done. We are all, all finally
God’s Son.
Mike lay down his pen. Closed the notebook. This one would be untitled although, perhaps not anonymous.
- * -
Frank had, despite forecasts of fair weather, a feeling that the morning would be like this. Patches of mist here and there. Fog banks towards the aerodrome, he wondered whether he would be able to safely find the airstrip.
However, the fog seemed to be dissipating. As he passed over the river, he could see tiny flecks of white that could be swans, people passing on cycles, and a lonely figure sitting almost at the river’s edge. With the thrum of the engines, Frank never felt alone in the air. Each dot or at this altitude, daubed splodge, seemed lonely. Each splodge housing messy emotions, troubles, cares, desires. Neat at a few thousand feet. Splodgy in the hundreds. The detail was blinding when you got up really close, so that it seemed once more, normal again.
Frank used to write poetry. Now he just thought it whilst in the air, acted it in the evenings for the local community, lived it a little with his wife and children.
Frank flew by, and readied his mind for meeting the ground again.
- * -
The sliding doors slid open at Mike’s approach, glowing bicycle clips still holding his trousers from a well-oiled chain that would never deposit its familial stain again. It would be towed away, put on the tip, and selected by some person who couldn’t really afford Mike’s meticulous maintenance. The bike would be creaking with accumulating rust within weeks.
The poetry had slipped from a hole in his bag, created by years of wear and tear, of being cast to the ground to reveal its daily sandwiches and work attire. He had intended to replace it, but it seemed to be one of the few constants in his life. Wife, work, children, bills. They all unfulfillingly changed. The poems would be found one morning, bank-side, pages solidly inflexible with interwoven Rain and Sun. Only the front page would allude to a former owner: “Mike”. It would be cast aside, into the river, temporarily mistaken for bread by the Swans’ greed, torn, and then irretrievably gone.
Mike reached into his bag as he approached reception, his hand closing against the handle, cold from the morning chill. Behind him, the Sun began to emerge, forming him temporarily into an eclipsing shadow of Mike.
“Morning, Mike. You look frozen to the bone. Out in this weather - You need to be careful. Don’t know who might be lurking about.”
She seemed genuinely concerned. He relaxed his grip a little.
“Thanks Jodie,” the smile nervous, awkward. Mike was the sort of person women, including Jodie, were fond of. He seemed to need nurturing.
Today, Mike forewent the formality of changing into work clothes. Indeed, even his helmet remained, a crown catching the fluorescent lighting as he emerged from the lift, swept through the third-floor double-doors into the Marketing department, eyes blazing with an intensity only his wife and children had seen a few short hours earlier.
Almost before it was drawn from his rucksack (cast aside, holding no clues to his poet soul).
Almost before any hint of recognition passed any person’s face.
Almost before Mike had time to think, to see the Sun’s tint through sealed, polarized glass.
Mike opened fire.
-Simon Huggins, 23rd April 2002