Idlebones

Next Door. Part 4

Jessie is here again, the back of her blonde head facing my admiring gaze. She sits, crossed legged, reading the paper, gingerly tipping her ciggarette ash into the small ceramic ashtray I’ve placed before her. I’ve tipped her hair, and kissed her brow, and returned to the hob as I make scrambled eggs for her. She breathes out soft tendrils of smoke as she turns a page. I watch her, wanting to hold her, as I always do these mornings. I watch as her slim shin rocks against the calf of her other leg. A flat thin Pump, tiny, I could hold it’s volume in my hand, beating to the rythym of some song that’s singing, silently, in her head. I stand here most mornings, watching her slender frame relax into our kitchen table. She sometimes releases her hair from its pony tail, letting it unfold and spread, sweeping delicate fingers over her smooth shoulders. I am sometimes jealous, ridiculous as it may seem, of her hair.

I sit before her, placing a plate of scrambled egg on hot buttered toast before her, and watch her eat. She is delicate, even in her tired state. Not even one buttered crumb remains on her lips as she idly places the fork to her mouth, over and over again, until she has eaten her fill. Her breakfast finished, she smiles at me, placing her finished fork neatly on the plate. “Thank you sweetie” she says, before rising. She leans in to me, slowly, as if she wants to savour the moment, and presses her lips to my forehead.

“Goodnight Sweetie”. Her voice is almost dreamlike. I watch her as she slowly turns, and mounts the stair to our room. A door closes somewhere upstairs, followed by the sound of Scotts feet descending the stair.

I rise and claim the bathroom before him.

After I shower, I sit on my front step, looking out onto the road as I fasten the Velcro straps on my cycling shoes. It’s a crisp, clear Sunday morning and I have decided to take a spin on my bike out through the hills that run along by the beaches of Clogherhead and Anagassan. It’s the kind of cool, breathless morning that demands attention. Demands to
have me feel its cool fingers on my face to wash away the fatigue that clouds my mind. As I sit here, I hear the door of my neighbours house click open. An ambulance rushes by enroute to the hospital up the road, lights silently flashing the empty road. From the corner of my eye I can see the front two wheels of a buggy being pushed outdoors,
followed by the rest of the buggy, and two swarthy hands clutching the push bar. I turn around to see Mark standing in his doorway, a cigarette dangling from the lips of his browned face. I have to admonish myself silently for the thought that rises in my head. The thought that Mark is still alive after all. I nod in his dierection.

“Howsit going Mark?”

He returns my nod with a smile that greases his face, his brown tan forming dark furrows in his cheeks, great crows feet around his eyes. “Howya” he says, rolling the cigarette to one corner of his mouth to let the word escape.

“hows the little fella?” I ask, inclining my head to see into the buggy. A little mound of blankets tucked high up in the chair is all I can see from my seated position .

“Grand” Mark says, tossing his head a little as if to say “you know”

Are usual short greetins dispensed with, Mark closes the door behind him and disappears round the corner while I mount my bike and freewheel off the curb.

Later that night, as I lay sleeping in the warm August breeze that billows my curtains, I dream once more:

In my mind I was riding.
I am chasing. Standing on my pedals I am climbing over tall foreign
mountains; I can feel the urgency in my legs, the surge of adrenaline
that is powering me up the steep incline. The insurmountable climb
ticks under my wheels as I press and pull on the pedals, warm salty
sweat pouring down over my face. Through the narrow tree lined road I
reach the summit and plunge down into a steep cliff edged descent,
tearing into a beating hot yellow sun through steep stepped lush
green vineyards. My legs felt like indominatable turbines, pumping and
grinding out mile after mile without weakness. Tucked with chin to
handlebar I am then freewheeling down a sheer drop from the mountain
top, the wind cooling my face, I bend right, then left at impossible
angles on these switchback curves, wheels biting on the last solid
part of the tar macadam, kicking up trails of dust from gravel margins
as I feel my back wheel almost give way, then find purchase at the
last minute with a sudden jolt of acceleration. Down into sleepy
mountain villages of poplar lined streets and cobbled lanes. Cafe
culture onlookers second glancing the streak of blue and silver
streaking past their cappuccino tables. Out into the flat countryside
passed the breathing trees and chattering breezes of the hedgerows.
The bike beneath me indecipherable now from my body, the wheels my new
legs, rolling smoothly, rhythmically in syncopation with my body, a
flying, rolling, unstoppable dynamo. Stone houses, petrol stations and
cars sweep passed in blurs of colour, streaming into each other until
the black road in front of me becomes a hissing snake of tar through a
kaleidoscope tunnel of watercolours, it’s ending stretching miles in
front to a sharp pointed tip that pierces the burning sun as it set
in an eclipse of blood red twilight. My legs pummel on, steaming my
wheels onward and onward, trying to stay within the suns grasp before
it slips beneath the horizon. My face contorts with grim effort,
desperation as the blur of colour converges around me, closer and
closer, narrowing the road below me. Faster and faster my legs spin
and my wheels sing of hot black friction until my chest heaves and
muscles bulge under shining skin as the suns dimming tip sinks
silently below the edge of my perception. Fear and desperation fuels
my legs, they burn with boiling blood and straining, aching sinew
until, abruptly, the light blinks out and the road falls away into
inky blackness, plucking the sight from my eyes and plummeting the
road into black space, down, far beneath my feet…

Suddenly, I am awake.

This time I am lying on my back staring a the ceiling at three luminous stars, acrylic dots placed there for the child of the houses’ previous occupants. They wink and glitter as I watch them. They tell me that light is coming in from somewhere outside my window. Turning on my side I gather the curtain in one hand and look out out into my neighbours garden.

I see nothing at first. The night is still and moonless, save for a gentle breeze, a welcome cool breath against my face. The shed at the bottom of my own garden yawns a gaping black hole where I have left its door ajar after returning my bike to it earlier today. A partial red outline of my face reflects in the window from the clock radio beside
my bed that reads 4am.

A shadow is moving in the garden next door. At first I had thought it to be the old dead tree stump that protrudes from the chaotic, overgrown lawn. But now a movement has caught my eye. A shadow has peeled away from the tree stump, as if the person had been standing behind it, making me believe for a moment that the old tree was itself on the move, before I make out the head and shoulders of a person walking slowly away from the stump, separating itself from the dark shape. Shapes begin to reslove themselves as I concentrate on the figure as it slowly turns and faces the tree stump. Suddenly a light from a small torch flicks into life, a low, covered glow from the hand of the figure. It throws an elongated shadow against the ivy covered wall to the left of the figure that I now can recognise as Mark O’Learly’s slim frame. He holds the light downwards, as if to hide the white light it shines on the weeds before him. Slowly, I watch him place the torch on a the stranded picnic table that barely shows above the undergrowth. He steps forward and appears to take stock of the ground before him, before raising his arms before him, now holding the sharpe outline of a spade, or shovel before him. I can hear the “Shink” as the blade bites the earth, and a subsequent “Shunk” as he leans forward and applies his foot to the shoulder of the spade head. I lean forward, just enough to block the reflection of the LED display from the window. The figure raises itself to it’s full height once more, and I catch the glint of moonlight that flashes from  Mark O’Leary’s wristwatch.