TWO SUNS
A short story of 1200 words
© David Lowe, October 1992
For him the world was a long walk punctuated by sleep. The walk led nowhere. The sleep did not refresh.
His life was like a long tunnel, growing narrower.
There was no sun in the life of the watchman. Machines woke him. Exhaustion came round like anaesthetic to put him down once more. He was aware that there were only so many nights left in his life, but this realisation produced only a vague sense of desperation; it led nowhere and solved nothing for him.
The watchman spoke rarely. His pay was transferred from one machine to another silently, efficiently. His uniform was cleaned while he slept. His dreams were caged, malnourished things.
Memories were his companions.
In his youth the world had been a different place. Elemental. A place of things that could be caught and held.
Before the fall, his living had come from the ground itself; from stones, not soil. Stones fed and clothed him. They were his passion and delight. Prospector's hands, now watchman's hands, had held tools to uncover magical things, secret riches. He had been like a sorcerer then, able to see through dull gravel to fiery jewels.
Once upon a time the sun had been a friend. Now it was a stranger.
The watchman's right hand held a flashlight, his left rested on a bunch of keys. Black shoes squeaked as he trod cold concrete, footsteps echoing. There were no surprises in the beam from the light. High stacks of cardboard boxes, tin cans, plastic bottles, glass jars. A universe of packaging stretching into the black void above.
Aisle after aisle walked the watchman, in slow measured steps. Sometimes he would count the steps, 112 in each aisle. The warehouse was like a maze. There was only one difference: in the warehouse there was no way out. Each aisle led only to another aisle. It was a prison of plenty, a city's larder, and the watchman's job was to keep out the mice.
For her the world was a delicious blanket. Each sound told a story, each smell was a song.
The wild creature knew her place in the community, and did not imagine there to be anything she could want in the world that she did not already have. Her food was her bed. She knew no enemies. Past and future did not exist. There was only the endless, glorious moment. Moon and sun circled about her and she loved them both. Fur kept her warm when it was cold and cool when it was warm.
Life was good, and what else could it be?
True, there had been a moment when it was further to the edge of the forest than this moment, but change did not bother the wild creature. She knew that the forest was the world, and the world looked after itself. Square shapes and straight lines could never be more than shapes and lines - it was grass and clear water that matttered.
In her belly was another she; a worm that would become another friend in time. There was nourishment for all, and the wild creature neither regretted nor looked forward to the arrival of the child. It was simply the way things were.
Ten bounds took her to the new shoots where the fire had been. Fifteen took her to the bubbling stream. When she lay down in the shade to scratch, the other she, dreaming inside, turned over in her pouch and kicked. In the distance, beyond the world, rain was on its way.
The watchman locked the warehouse at 4am, and walked to the machine that would carry him home. He felt no hunger, no desire, no pain. The car was like a raft, and the high speed expressway a river.
Before dawn, she was bounding with a young buck far from the familiar forest, a playful race. Suddenly, he was gone. Beneath her feet, smooth rock. Something was wrong. A smell like sour smoke. What was this place? The ground rumbled. In the distance, coloured stars, receding.
For the first time the wild creature knew fear. Which way home? The smells and strange ground disoriented her. Lost. Lost. Which way home?
Suddenly... two suns!
The watchman wrenched the wheel and slammed the brakes. With a crunch, the car bounced off the concrete barrier. Sparks flew as the metal screamed. At last the car came to a stop. Burning rubber in his nostrils, the watchman stared at the creature standing inches from the front bumper. She watched him. He watched her. An eternity passed.
Danger.
The kangaroo began to hop, down the expressway. On the right was the concrete barrier, on her left a rising embankment of rubble.
The watchman found his voice. 'No!' he shouted, 'Go back the other way!' He started the car and followed her, glancing every few moments in his rear-view mirror.
Rhythmically, hopelessly, the kangaroo hopped blindly ahead of him.
He sped up. She sped up. He slowed down. She slowed down. A painful lump choked the watchman's throat. Nothing he could do would make her get off the road. Any minute a car would come, and then...
He accelerated as hard as he dared, trying to force the animal up the embankment. She refused to let him get past. The embankment became a cliff.
The lights! It was the headlights she was running from, thought the watchman. He switched them off. But what if another car hit him from behind? He switched them back on.
The car. The car was scaring her.
The watchman pulled over to the side of the road. He got out of the car and began to run. The kangaroo hopped ahead of him, unevenly, panicking now.
As the watchman ran, something clicked inside him and he began to feel alive again. Tears welled in his eyes. He didn't know whether he was crying for himself or the kangaroo. 'Get off the road you bugger!' he screamed at the animal. 'You're gonna get killed'.
The kangaroo pricked up her ears, but didn't stop.
They passed two, three, four streetlights. Any minute a car would have to come.
Slowly her night vision began to return. Smells of the bush, somewhere nearby. Another animal, pounding behind her.
The watchman panted as he ran. 'Go left,' he wheezed, 'Up the embankment.'
She stopped. Looked at him. Looked at the embankment. In the distance, an approaching roar.
The watchman heard nothing. He ran round her in an arc, trying to head her off from the barrier. 'That way,' he pointed, almost out of breath, 'Up there.'
She took a couple of tentative hops.
'That's right girl, that way,' the watchman waved his arms desperately.
The truck was round the bend in an instant, blaring its horn as the driver swung the wheel to avoid the car parked on the road.
'Go! Go!' screamed the watchman. The truck was almost upon them as he ran for the safety of the barrier. Still she stood frozen in the headlights.
With a roar and a rush of wind, the semi-trailer wailed past like a freight train.
It was gone.
At last, dreading what he might see, the watchman looked up. No crumpled body on the road. The truck must have thrown her clear over the barrier, he thought to himself. A great ache paralysed his chest. And then the watchman saw the kangaroo, hopping over the top of the embankment to the safety of the bush.
Slowly, he sank back down the barrier and sat on the road. For the first time in ten years, the watchman began to smile.© David Lowe, October 1992