He scatters the black ash mulch of the campfire and sets off with the boy through the miasma of greying rain. Hollow and cold the abandoned houses watch as they lug their heavy packs through the slick streets.
They walk on.
In the noon they shelter in the second story of a bus left open on the wayside and heat up beans on a small blue stove. The boy asks him questions he already knows the answers to and he offers up patient answers.
‘Keep asking but it won’t change things.’
‘I know.’
He blows on the spoonful of beans before handing them to the boy. Then the boy screams as the man jumps up and sends the beans and the stove flying across the faded felt seats. The boy feels himself roughly pulled along by the man and they scramble down the winding steps and rush out back into the rain hungry and terrified.
The boy struggles to keep pace with the man who pulls him along by the arm. He glances back at the bus and the world that bobs up and down in his vision and sees a dozen figures or more stood out in the street behind them with arms lank by their sides and features blurred and darkened by the haze of rain.
Paddy Dobson
5th October 2021