Dear Backers,
To say thank you while we wait for Salt Lick to be published, I am writing a series of short stories about minor characters in the book to send out to you. This is the second, and it is about Jost, a pedlar who trades between the cities and the off-grid homesteaders. I hope you will like it.
The Swing
The softening colours of September, full summer growth bends to the pull of autumn, the earth of winter. A man walks the old road. His velvet coat is cut in rich swathes of azure, plum, tangerine. A hat, good for sun and rain, hangs at his back. Behind him a solar powered cart, large wheels bumping over mulch and weed. He hasn’t decided whether to stay on this path or turn off at the junction, the road bridge, slung across the airspace as though between treetops. It has lost its metal railings; a slab of cement fringed with the same thin growth that creeps over the road before him. As he weighs the choice, a wolf comes from the trees, slinks across the bridge. Man and wolf stop, man’s heart skitters, wolf sniffs the air, looks down at him, then without interest passes into the trees on the other side. The man keeps on ahead, his decision made. Three or so miles, he hopes, to his next customers.
Jost tutts; ahead are casual travellers, out of the city for an adventure and still new to the road. He can tell from their backpacks and their voices, reaching him in noisy swoops tangled with laughter. Sometimes, ill prepared for their trip, they are good for a sale but mostly they spend little and demand much, in chatter, in jovial awe at what for them is an extraordinary circumstance. They want an audience for the remarkable fact of them being there, on foot in this wild and abandoned countryside, these empty towns and villages, out of the familiar city where they live the whole of their real lives.
Some travellers are too scared to hail him, turning off into woodland or the overgrowth of forlorn gardens, hiding until he passes. He still calls out his wares, rings his bell, offers a greeting to a tangle that had once been a hedge.
At the city end of his travels, people are usually keen to make a quick trade. In the homesteads he has real friends, and the best of his business. There he can afford to take his time. Deals are valuable, worth a few glasses of the good brew or a tea stirred with real honey to sweeten the bargaining. What he has the homesteaders want. The tricky part is what they can give in return. He doesn’t doubt the value of their goods; spiced pickles, pungent and richly flavoured, better than anything that comes on the freights, honey from hives, eggs, fresh food that sells for extortionate prices in a few city specialist eateries. But most people in the cities are happy with their freight deliveries, not trusting food that doesn’t come boxed. Sometimes the homesteaders offer illegal goods; highs concocted in ramshackle labs and grown out of drone’s eye, wines of variable palette, higher in alchohol and lower in tax. Trade of greatest value and highest risk. He spins out a good bit of hospitality for those deals.
He picks up his pace, hails the travellers from a distance that won’t startle. The patter is part of the performance of his calling. What can I get my fine fellows found on the road this favoured day? Can I offer you sweets or treats? Have you what you need to drink? - he pauses, one finger and two eyebrows raised - or would you care - he turns to look sideways at his bag, points his finger towards it - for something a little special, something a little too out of the way for my more, shall we say, common customers, something that four fine fellows on the road will surely appreciate? He leans over and slowly opens the zip on his pack, smiling at the boys. They are hooked by the glinting promise, sensing a valuable embellishment to their adventure.
Jost sells them a bottle of mushroom and lavender dream tincture, drawing their attention to the dosage on the hand-printed label. As he scans, waiting for credits to transfer in the patchy coverage, he catches a face, much younger, peeking round the wall of an empty building. Jost raises an eyebrow in silent greeting. The boy grins back, raises a hand and waits. The travellers go on their way, looking forward excitedly to their future tales of dream tincture and pedlars. Once they’re out of sight, Jost turns to the boy.
Marco, are you and Bella keeping well?
Yes. Can you come and visit us?
Of course, I’d be delighted. But I don’t have much to offer. On my way back I may but now, Jost gestures at the cart, it’s all solar boards, battery bits and sweeties and treaties in this direction.
Come any way! Marco beckons, turning away. He stops at a scant path leading into trees, waiting for Jost to hide his cart.
I’ve been waiting for you, Marco says over his shoulder.
Well I’m glad you have, but if you like, next time I’ll come and see you any way so you don’t have to wait.
Yes. Good. The boy’s tangled head nods in front of him. He looks at the narrow shoulders, the skinny, tough little limbs. Jost is taken by surprise by the upwelling of a wordless longing and sadness for the many predicaments of life.
Through the meadow and thickets of an old field, they approach the rear carpark of a motorway service station. The white painted parking bays make improbable pontoons between in-washed islands of weeds. They enter the building through a service door. Jost is pleased that Marco calls out, a sweeping bird sound, a signal to Bella that it is him. Jost had suggested this precaution on his last visit with the two children. Bella calls out in reply
Did you find him?
Hello Bella! Jost answers.
He hears Bella’s feet, slapping bare on the floor as she runs to greet them. She’s grinning, but pulls up short, still shy. Jost bows, fetches a flourish and a bag of sweets for each of the children from the deep inside pockets of his gown. The children tuck into the sweets with delight. Marco drops the shiny papers, Bella picks them up, smoothes them with hers, folds them into her own small pocket to add to her magpie supplies.
Come and see, come and see! Bella pulls at Jost’s sleeve. She drags him behind her, past the toilets, the empty franchise stands and into the double height central hall. In the middle hangs a swing. One side fat red links, twisted barrier ropes in six foot lengths, joined by metal hooks, the other is tied strips of fabric. The swing seat is at head height, above a platform of coffee shop tables. The ropes rise high into tubular metal rafters. Bella drops Jost’s sleeve and runs, scrambles onto the swing, begins to work it back and forth, picking up height with each slow swoop. Jost’s heart lurches instinctively at the danger, what if something snaps? What if the metal links unhook, sending Bella onto the hard floor, or into a wall of glass?
She swings higher and higher, her movement making the big space beautiful, perhaps for the first time. A lazy long arc. How did they manage to do it? He looks up to the criss-cross beam.
I climbed along from up there. Marco points to darkened windows tucked in above the canopies of food concessions. Jost can see his pride, doesn’t want to squash it with his own fear as he pictures the boy climbing along the beam, so vulnerable, so high up. His nerves are getting the better of him, and though he doesn’t want to disappoint Bella, swooping with rapt glee through the hall, he wants her to stop, to come down and be safe.
Later as the sun sets, burning red through the high glass of the service station front, they open a box of dinner each from the well stocked stores and Jost drinks a bottle of ancient, flat and bitter larger, pulled from a dead chiller. Marco tells him about how they could make more things to play on, to swing on and climb. Jost finds himself monitoring the safety of each option, each scheme, making Marco promise he’ll wait until Jost can help him.
Jost is a pedlar because he’s happiest on the road. The city oppresses him. The homesteads too, with their careful negotiations, their powerplays in miniature, their collaborative and petty rule books. The freedom, the independence of his life suits him. He’s never needed others and it feels safe to him, being out. The worst he’s faced is a couple of robberies and occasional territorial skirmishes with other pedlars. He’s taken the odd beating, thrown the odd punch, but flareups were usually sorted by flamboyant rows, a shared understanding of the necessity of accommodation hidden in the inventive cursing.
But the image of Bella or Marco, frail as baby birds dashed to the cast stone floor stays with him, makes the world feel terribly insecure. The awful realisation that the other child would be alone. Perhaps he should come more often, take more deliberate care of them.
He had met them first on the road, two children who asked him for some sweets. He was drawn as to soul allies, by their fierce characters and flamboyant inventiveness with found clothing. They had chatted at the road side and the children had eventually invited him to their strangely grand home. Over the last year, visiting when he can he has become fonder than he knew of them, touched that though they want to stay away from other people, for some reason they trust him. He is startled to realise he has never even asked how they ended up there, alone. Not that in these times it is so unusual. Dramatic shifts of fortune across the country have remodelled many lives.
As they settle for the night, he frets about the safety of children who are fearless enough to climb and swing into the rafters. Sleep eludes him until he has worked out how he can at least make the swing safer. He wonders, startlingly, whether he should take them on, if he really can care enough for others, specifically for these brave and wild creatures. He wonders if he can allow them to rely on him.
Many years later, Jost returns to the service station for the last time. The children, for he still calls them children, are away. They’ll come back soon enough, he knows. He opens his pack, takes out two bottles of Bella’s favourite elderflower champagne. She has moved into a house nearby, part of a homestead with families, so her own children will have playmates. He looks forward to seeing little Bea and Thomas. Thomas is too small for gifts but he has a hand carved and painted horse with plaited reins for Bea.
For Marco he’s brought more soldering wire, and an almost new pair of boots. Marco has stayed at the service station though travels to trade his building skills. Jost hopes he will return tomorrow, or the next day. Later he’ll check on the brew room, see if they’ll be able to have a beer from the new batch.
Jost takes off his velvet coat, still warm but worn and patched with flashes of kingfisher blue and sparks of emerald green. He lies down on the narrow upholstered bench, pulls his coat over for a blanket. He aches. It’s getting harder and harder to make the long trips. Bella and Marco both want him to stop. They say he’s done enough miles, he should let them look after him now. Perhaps he will. He gives in to the pleasurable lull of rest, waiting for the ache to ease out of his legs. He watches the sun set through the high wall of glass, glad to be home. He slumbers, waiting for the return of the children.