The Boy Who Lost Himself

The boy looked younger than his age, but for all that he was still full of the life force. 

The kid loved nothing better than running to the top of a hill and shouting out – ‘This Is Me!’.

On one very sad and bad occasion the world tried to smash his little heart into pieces, and although there would always be a scar – he healed enough to keep on running and shouting.

As a teenager, he screamed and laughed and ran with his heart on his sleeve. Then one day, through fear or ageing, no one was sure which, he started to quieten his heart and his little soul.

His friends told him that his hands were not the hands of a friend of theirs – so he pulled his hands up inside his sleeves. Then his friends told him that his shorts were too short and not the kind of trousers that they would expect a friend to wear: so he wore trousers that were more akin to someone who was their friend.

Then they told him that his smile was too wide and gave away too much of his heart, so the boy closed down his smiling and eventually his face.

By the time the boy was an older man and had reached the age of thirty – he had all the friends he needed in the world – but his heart and soul had completely disappeared and he could have been anyone and everyone.

When he looked in the mirror, the face was the face of everyman.

One night, on the way home, when he was perhaps a little drunker than he should have been, he looked across the street and from the corner of his eye, he saw a strange man wave and shout. He didn’t recognize him at first, until the man on the other side, shouted:

“It’s me, I’m the man you should have been. See, I’m smiling.”

bobby stevenson 2017

Captain Oates' Last Walk

 
"Captain Lawrence Edward Grace "Titus" Oates was an English cavalry officer with the 6th Dragoons, and later an Antarctic explorer, who died during the Terra Nova Expedition/ Lieutenant Henry Robertson "Birdie" Bowers was one of the polar party on the ill-fated expedition. Bowers was born 29 July, 1883 in Greenock, Scotland."

"On 16 January 1912, as Scott's party neared the Pole, it was Bowers who first spotted a black flag left at a camp made by Roald Amundsen's polar party over a month previously. They knew then that they had been beaten in the race to be first to the South Pole. On 18 January, they arrived at the South Pole to find a tent left behind by Amundsen's party at their Polheim camp; inside, a dated note informed them that Amundsen had reached the Pole on 14 December 1911, beating Scott's party by 35 days."


---------------------------------
 

There wasn’t much he could see ahead of himself. It was cold and it was unclear and that was his future; he had never been more certain of anything in his life.
Before he’d set off, things had been good, probably better than good. They’d spent time, all of them, together on the west coast. A small Scottish town called Greenock, the birthplace of Birdie Bowers.

They’d got drunk, had punch ups with the locals, but most of all they had bonded. Perhaps that was why he was doing what he was doing, perhaps only God knew the answer to that question.

The beautiful River Clyde, had been spectacular on that last day. The sun had been setting behind Helensburgh and he could see the Arrochar Alps as the ship turned to head towards the Irish Sea.

What a life it had been; a life of laughter and a few tears but always full of adventure. Always on the edge, always completely alive. He felt the toes on his left leg grow cold.

It was hard to breathe but then nothing that was worthwhile was ever won easy. Life was hard but friends, companionship, and family took that particular sting away. That made it all worthwhile; love and adventure was everything.

I suppose, he thought, that he could have done things differently and not ended up here, not ended up in this predicament - but then, the ending should never over shadow the living of a life.

He’d never settled for what had been given to him. He could have lived comfortably and gone to his grave, relatively unmarked and unremarkable.
Yet, that was not what his heart was satisfied with. He’d had to climb the highest, run the fastest, jump the longest. That was the way he had been set to live in this universe and there had been no going back.

There was a price for everything - if his life had taught him anything, it had taught him that. He’d paid for his life of movement and achievement by never finding a place to belong. It did bother him, everyone should belong somewhere. He looked up at the little number of the stars he could see and wondered if one day a man would stand on the moon and look back at Earth and feel homesick. That was the best he could do – say that this planet was his home.

He was dying from the inside out and yet he felt more peaceful than he had ever done before. There would be something, he was sure of it, on the other side.

He started to smile, he had no idea why, but suddenly his life seemed simpler than it had ever been. What he was doing seemed natural, the right thing, perhaps it had all been leading up to this point.

He thought of the lies he had told all of them as he left. He hadn’t believed it and neither should they. But there were things that were better left unsaid, unspoken. Those things were shouting the loudest in the silence. He loved them all, that was the only reason he was walking in this direction.

He had written letters to those who mattered and one day they would find them. He wondered if he’d ever be found, ever be seen again, ever be held by a warm hand.

The coughing made him lose his breath and he bent down. Soon the pain would all go. Soon it would only be sleep. Soon it would all be over.
The wind was picking up and he pulled the woolen hat down over his ears. There was a whistling in the wind and he was sure he could hear choirs. Maybe there were angels after all, or maybe it was the cold and hunger.

Not long now, he could feel his time coming. He had to do this. There was no room in the tent for all of them to survive. So he’d crawled out, turned to the rest and said:
“I’m going outside and I may be some time.”

And this is where he was going to rest, and at least he’d got to stand on the South Pole.

He thought of his sister and he whispered, ‘goodbye’ and of his time in Putney.
He said ‘thank you’ on his frost-bitten lips and then his heart stopped.

bobby stevenson 2017

Strange Day

November 22.

The strangest goddamn thing ever, and I mean ever, happened to me this morning. Jeez, my hand is still shaking as I write this even although the boss told me ‘no notes, no traces, no records’ but hey, it’s only one little bitty diary.

I had got up this morning, had breakfast and kissed my wife and prepared myself for what I was going to do, today. ‘Change the world for the better’ is what the boss said to me. So last night I double checked everything and the equipment was all ready. I’d taken it out to the Plains last weekend to make sure everything was A, okay. It was.

So I took all I needed up to the top floor and waited. I kind of guessed it would be a long wait but I was ready. ‘You’re the man’ as my boss told me last week.
Jeez, I nearly died when those folks turned up right behind me. I kid you not. One minute I was alone, the next they were standing right beside me. I didn’t even get a chance to reach for the rifle.

“Did you do this on your own?” Asked the man with the grey suit.
I asked him what he meant. I mean were they Feds or what?

Some guy shouts in a strange voice that they weren’t meant to get involved, that they would have to abort the trip and everyone was to return. Sounds crazy? That’s what I thought. When I got myself together I started to chase after them as the disappeared around the corner. Then I felt real weird and blacked out.

When I came to, I heard one of them say that I would have to be dropped off later. A kind blonde haired girl, a bit like Marilyn offered me a drink, smelled like coffee but I turned it down.

She asked me how I was doing and I said fine, she said that we’d need to wait till the bomb had gone off before we would return to get me home.

I know this is going to sound crazy, if anyone reads this – but she said they were time travelers, that they were on a tour of the big ones: The Crucifixion, First Man on The Moon (I’m tellin’ you that’s what she said), The start of World War 3 in 2021 – apparently a dirty bomb went off in….no, I’m going to stop there you wouldn’t believe me if I told you and the Assassination of the President – J.F.K. and that was why they were visiting me. I asked her how she knew and she said she was from the future and that she knew everything about me including Jack Ruby. Wow, my blood ran cold when she said that name – how did she know the Boss?

She said that I would be given a drug or something to make me forget so she could ask me anything. ‘Did I work alone?’ – I asked her what she meant. Did I shoot JFK on my own? I haven’t done it yet, I told her. Well are you working alone? I told her of course I’m not, I am only up in the Depository to make sure there are no loose ends. There are two guys down on that grassy knoll that will do the shooting.

She seemed real puzzled at that. She left me for a while but she returned after she’d seen the city blown sky-high. She told me that the world would be at war within hours. She had been crying. She’d been on this type of tour before but never to Dallas or to the bombing.

I’ve no idea what went wrong but if they did give me a drug to make me forget it didn’t work ‘cause next thing I know I’m waking up in the Depository again and I’m wondering if I had taken a stroke or something. Anyway, things are back to normal, as I write this the time is 11.40am and the President is late.

bobby stevenson 2017

The Man Who Bought Hair

 

Now I isn’t here to argue the toss about, Robert Holloway. I knows what folks says about the fellow, and I says they are all wrong. Robert is my friend - well probably my only friend in this world – but what I lacks in quality of companionship, I makes up for in quality.

Yes he can be trouble - but then I got to ask you and Good Queen Victoria – who ain’t in these deplorable times, I mean who ain’t?. We all got to live. Can’t avoid it – ‘cause, as my dear Aunt Fanny used to say, ‘if you ain’t living, then you’re dead. Simple as that my boy’.

As with most things, my Aunt Fanny was always right (or there and thereabouts).

Now to get things in order, I have to tell you, my lovely readers, that I lives in the little place above Robert’s shop. From my window, if I dropped something heavy out of it, it could easily go right through the shop roof and hit someone (I only mention that in passing, ‘cause it actually happened).

Apart from my good self, (Zachariah), my pal Robert had two other acquaintances in his life. One was his boy, Albert, who had scarpered to the Americas on account of the Peelers looking him for some misunderstanding or another. The other was his wife of thirty years, Maisie.

It could be that Maisie was misunderstood or it could be that she was just as lazy as everyone said she was. The name the neighbours gave her up the street was the ‘Coat-tail Hanger’. On account that she was too lazy to walk up the street, and so she would grab on to a passing stranger’s coat-tail and get them to pull her up the hill. Now I know it is a steep hill, but still there are limits. When she got to the shop, she’d let go, and shout some complaint or other after the poor soul. Either that he was too slow, or too fat, or even too quick: ‘’E nearly took me breath away’ was one of her favourites. She was one of those little soul suckers who thought the world owed her a living, and that all she needed to concentrate on was breathing. We all know them. We all got them.

Locally, Robert was known as two things – 1. The man married to the coat-tail hanger, and 2. The man who bought hair.

For that is what he did - among other less lucrative things. The poor and the hungry would cut off their lovely locks and take them into my friend’s shop in exchange for a measly farthing or two. Some folks sold the hair from their recently departed (or Heaven forbids – the less than recently departed, if you gets my drift).

It was then my job, Good Zachariah of this parish, to wash the hairs, then stick them on to cloths, and shape them into wigs that could be used by gents and ladies of this fair town. Sometimes, you spent the whole day just killing the things that lived in the hair. Me and Robert would split the money 40 for me, 60 for him, on account of him acquiring the hair in the first place.

We used to keep the wigs in my house as Maisie sometimes took a fancy to one of them and would decide to place it on her riddled head and that would be that. Money lost.

The weirdest wig I made, at least so far, is one I made for a rather rich Gent who knocked on me door one Thursday evening.

“Just coming,” I shouted expecting that to hold the knocking, but instead it just kept on coming, harder and harder.

“What!”, I shouted as I opened the door, ‘cause I don’t like to be put upon, I don’t likes it at all.

“Well blow me down with a feather,” is what I says when I sees who it is at the door.

“Come in, come in,” I says to him.

Now I’m trying to act all……….well you know whats I mean. Here in my little room was Mister Charles Dickens – greatest writer alive – well that’s what me and Robert says.

And here’s the strange bit – he wanted a wig to fit him, but not a gentleman’s wig but one closer to a lady’s. Yes, you did read that right. He had a second request: if there was by any chance a lady’s dress that he might acquire, he would be ever so ‘umble. He really would.

It seems (and this is only between you, me and the Bells of St Mary’s) that he has a young lady companion who he is utmost fond of, and would like to travel in her company incognito. Can’t blame a man for that, can’t blame him at all.

So I go downstairs and ask if Maisie has any clothing that she doesn’t need. ‘All of it’ was what Robert said, but I took a little number I thought might go with the wig Charles was going to wear. Robert didn’t ask why – which in itself was a bit strange.

Anyway, within the hour Mister Dickens (or Toloola Bell as he asked me to call him) was on his way and off to meet his little concubine.

The funny thing as I was taking him down the stairs, Robert was on his way up with new hair, he said, ‘Evening Zachariah, evening Mister Dickens’. So much for the disguise I thought.

‘Does all the time,’ Robert told. Last week, Mister Dickens was a red-head called Cheeky.

bobby stevenson 2017

https://thougthcontrol.wordpress.com/2017/01/11/the-man-who-bought-hair/

 

The Cuckoo

He had waited all his life on it. I mean he was fourteen years and all – and nearly another half a year, come July. All he wanted was to be out of that room which he shared with his kid brother. I mean the boy was seven for crying out loud. What kinda talk could you have with a baby of that tenderness in your room?

He had to be ready, we all did if it came to that. He’d tried to talk to his Ma about his worries, but she was always doing something for Jesus in this county or the next. Jesus wasn’t going to save her this time. No way, he knew that much.

He remembered talking to his Great Grandpa about the war and all. How he’d only been a boy, but they had all seemed to know it was coming. That feeling that someone you didn’t know, or you’d never met, was up there like a sky-angel dropping these bombs on you. You had no way to know if it was going to land next to you, or on top of your head. That kinda thinking changed a man. That’s what Great Grandpa had said. You never took your life for granted again. ‘Just enjoy the air, boy’ was one of his favorite sayings.

He’d been born waiting - like his ‘watch-ma-call-it?’- DNA had been all fixed up so he would know when it was coming. He had been born for this time, this moment, this change in the universe.

He was ready. Really, truly ready for what lay ahead. He wondered if maybe there, were others like him in the world. The ones who knew – knew the precise time it would arrive – knew what the next stage would be.

Then his fourteen trips around the Sun, kinda caught up with him and he started to put things together – things he hadn’t noticed before. Sure, he’d been a weird kid (there were lots of them about), and he kinda didn’t look like his Ma much. She said his Pa had taken up with an unholy sinner and moved to Chicago, so he had no idea what he looked like. But he remembered reading about Cuckoos – they were kinda prone to laying their eggs in other folk’s nests and then let the poor folks do all the hard work. So, what if that was the truth? His truth.

What if he was a cuckoo for those that were arriving tonight. What if he wasn’t one of us, but he belonged to them out there? Perhaps he’d been placed here to wait and get ready?

That was when he snapped, and his took his fourteen old legs and ran straight back home (even past Crazy Ed’s ranch) to tell his Ma to phone Jesus right away. He was needed, real quick.

bobby stevenson 2017

https://thougthcontrol.wordpress.com/2017/01/10/the-cuckoo/

To Wonderland

There is a place. You might have noticed it, or maybe you haven’t, but if you take the train from south London, up towards the North, the station is there.
It’s in between Thameslink and St. Pancras and no one gets off – at least, not unless they are meant to - and it’s here that it happens. This is the entrance to Wonderland, and there is no great hole, nor a large white rabbit, but you’ll get to where you are meant to be going, all the same.

That day, the day when my life changed, had been due to a power-outage, I mean one of the really big ones. Someone on the train said it was to do with a sunspot flaring up – whatever that meant.

One minute we were rolling along and then the train shuddered to a halt, and everything went black. It was an early dark winter’s day when I had got on the train, and the day had just got darker.

Someone shouted that we were all to stay where we were, as help would arrive soon. Some woman shouted that she thought she had heard gunfire and that it was probably a terrorist attack – that was when people started to panic in the darkness.

I have no idea how I managed to prise the door open – it was one of the older stock of train carriages and the door didn’t put up much resistance.

I fell out onto a dusty concrete platform. I expected someone to follow on behind me, but within a few seconds of my alighting, the train had lit up again and was on its way.

The station was dark, but I still had a small light in my phone. All I could see was the big red sign stating ‘Do Not Alight Here’. Seemed a bit late for that now.
What was I supposed to do? Walk down the track to Farringdon or up to St. Pancras? I decided to stay put for the time being, maybe someone saw me leaving the train and called the authorities. Or maybe I was just stuck.

I heard a scurrying, which I assumed was a rat or mouse – although it sounded a little big for those two options. Then a hand grabbed mine – I have to admit, I did jump. The hand, which felt like a child’s, tugged as if beckoning me to go with it.

Then I stupidly asked, ‘Are you a ghost?’. The hand just tugged again as if to say ‘shut up and follow me’ – and this child or ghost or whatever probably was my big white rabbit – so I followed.

I couldn’t see anything at all – the only thing I could do was trip over stones, and bricks and notice the change of smells, from oil, to gas, to a putrid stench, and finally to a sort of perfume (like flowers in Spring).

When I did get to see the light again, it was under an unbelievably blue sky – which in itself, didn’t make sense – unless I had been asleep for most of the night. Sitting on a rock, below this Summer sky were two children and an old man.

“Welcome,” said the old man. “You were expected”.
“Me?”
“You! Now sit”. I sat, and the old man put an arm around my shoulder.
“This is where you come to breathe.”
“Am I dead?” I asked him. He shook his head. “Look on it as a rest stop. You were going to see your dying father in hospital, were you not?”
“How did you know that?” The old man ignored my question and moved on. “It doesn’t matter how long you spend down here, it will be only the blink of an eye up there. So relax, unwind for you are amongst friends”.
“Is this Heaven?” I asked. One of the little boys smiled. Maybe I was still on the train and dreaming, perhaps I had ingested fumes in the station, or I had finally gone mad; maybe visiting my father in hospital everyday might have taken its toll.

And as if he read my thoughts, the old man said, “you are not mad. Go on take a walk. Please”.

The old man walked slightly behind me and continued to talk:
“When a soul is lost or tired, there are two ways the universe looks after its own. One is to dream. By dreaming you fix the connections in your head which lets a soul continue for another day. If that proves inadequate, then you are invited here – for an extended stay. It is for as little, or as long, as you feel you need.

“Is this where the lost people also come – you know, those who disappear?”
The old man shook his head. “That is another station – one that is seen only when it is requested.” He said.
“How will I know when it’s time to go back?” I asked him.
“You’ll know. Continue – please, continue to walk and talk with the others, they would be most grateful to hear from you”.

So that is what I did and not being sure if I had spent an hour, or a day or even a year. It is a strange sensation when time does not exist.

Some of the parents had lost children, or were nursing them. Some of the children had dying family members and they too had been called upon to give support. But while they were down here, this was their time – this was a little vacation away from the pain.

Then my father came into my thoughts, and I saw him in my mind’s eye lying on his sickbed and I knew instinctively that it was time to leave. I was ready to go.

I woke with a shudder, as the train was pulling out of the tunnel and finally into St. Pancras. I was back in my seat. Maybe I had been dreaming, or maybe there is a Wonderland between two stations in London.
I would like to think that there was.

bobby stevenson 2017

Finding Beauty

As she watched the Robin look through her window
She was sure it was smiling
It might even be looking at her.
Upstairs her mother lay,
Motionless - gone now,
Soon she would have to telephone someone,
And tell the world,
But until then, she would just watch the smiling bird.

The light of his universe came into the room,
His granddaughter smiled and everything was right with the world,
She sat on his knee, and he kissed her on the top of her beautiful smelling head,
‘What is the longest word you know, Granddad?’
He wanted to say ‘Alzheimer’s’ - while he could still remember,
But instead he kissed her head once more,
And held her tighter.

She handed him a sandwich made with love and tomatoes,
Through the train window,
And he noticed that behind his mother, was a stranger helping up a woman
Who had tripped,
The man wiped her blooded knee with his handkerchief,
Then he smiled,
And the son realized that those were the things he was going off to fight for.

bobby stevenson 2017
painting: Pascal Campion.

Being There

To hold the sky from falling on your head,
To make you safe as you dream in your bed,
To stop the world from breaking your heart,
To help you build the most beautiful start,
These are the things I wanted for you,
But being there,
Just being there -
Is the best love I can do.

bobby stevenson 2017

On The Third Day

It happened in the time of war, and when Zachariah was at the right place, and at the right time – or perhaps that’s dependent on your point of view – and who or what you are.

The US and Russia had formed an alliance in those days. Each of them building weapons, not against each other (at least that is what they stated) but to keep China, North Korea, and India in their respective places.

Then it happened, as it surely must – the Russian President slapped his US buddy on the back, making an off-hand remark about the American’s sister. That was all it took.

There wasn’t a war – at least, not at first. First there was the rhetoric – the words – the apologies – then these two, these statesmen, found each of them taking a road where they would have to lose face to turn around, something they weren’t willing to do.

Initially there was the week of fear, followed by the first rockets. What can you suppose about the mental state of each of the leaders that they should go so far? It’s not as if we didn’t see it coming. The black money was on the Chinese as the cause, but they resisted, against great odds.

The rockets, when they came, arrived in the middle of the night in Western Europe. Most never got to see the flashes, most souls never got to cry out, most were blasted from their sleep by a nuclear storm.

Then came the silence.

It was on the third day that Zachariah moved from the cave. He wasn’t too sure how long he had been there. If there was any nuclear debris, then 3 days wasn’t enough – not nearly long enough. They’d been taught all that stuff in school. Just in case. They’d even taken exams on it: ’The Long Nuclear Winter’.

As Zachariah stumbled and slid down the road, he saw the outlines of dust, possibly the last shadows of humans. Those people who hadn’t taken the warnings seriously, or maybe they just got caught – like billions of others probably did. It had all been a joke – hadn’t it? Just like the way folks had underestimated Hitler – at least until the camps and ovens were built.

The War wasn’t like any other Wars. There hadn’t been time. No time to say ‘Goodbye’, or ‘I love you’, or ‘I am sorry’. How many souls died with love on their breath, unspoken?

In the inevitable course of things, the low Winter Sun returned, and then with it a new Spring, followed by a cold, dark Summer. In all that time Zachariah never found another living soul. He wondered if he could deal with the loneliness? And yet, nothing seemed to faze him.

He ate what he had expected to be contaminated grasses and roasted, dried flesh. Yet each night he examined his body and found that there was still no sores – no sign that his body was about to die.

He calculated what he assumed to be Christmas Day, and in celebration, he ate a dried-out bird he had found on top of a skyscraper several months before. He sang a Carol, and then slept that night dreaming of Santa Claus – the ghost of the Red Man who had haunted his childhood.

What would he have liked for Christmas Day? Probably to have another soul to talk to, or more importantly a body to hug. Some contact. Some warmth.

As he fell into a deep slumber, he failed to notice (or feel) the large tear in his back. The one that exposed the Titanium framework, and the cybernetic mechanisms of a truly Godless creature.

His programme would go into self-repair while he slept, and his reboot would always (always, mind) let him think that he was human - a man with a soul.

bobby stevenson 2016

https://thougthcontrol.wordpress.com/2016/12/23/on-the-third-day/