Smile when you get there by Edward Rowe

Author:Edward Rowe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: LearnLoads.com
Published: 2015-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

Billy ran recklessly, at times closing his eyes, not caring if he went down and smashed into the ground. Twice he stumbled and almost fell. He ran until his breath came in heaving painful gasps and he could run no more. Finally, scrambling over the nearest hedge, he threw himself on the grass beyond. He lay there, his face pressed against it, still trying to shut out the sound of both the kick and the world around him. But the sound was there and before long the world, like a rejected cat, was creeping back.

He lifted his head and rubbed the wet from his face. He looked around. The October field was as empty as he felt. Beyond it other fields stretched away and were also empty. Far off over a line of trees crows circled. The sun was going down. He watched it prepare to sink beyond the distant hills. But he had never seen it like this. This was a strange sun in a new world he did not want to know.

Trying to blot out the image of boot and face, he looked up at the small fire-edged clouds dotting the sky. High above a plane was drawing a straight white line beneath them as if attempting to add them up. From the vapour trail he knew it was on its way to America, America with its cowboys and Indians and beautiful horses, as far off from him as the sky itself. Though Billy had never been outside the village, there was in him a vague yearning for what wonders might be out there waiting and for what he might become if ever he had to chance to go and see them. He wished he were on the plane.

As its trail faded, his eyes moved back to the clouds. Since his mother had told him where he came from, they had become part of his imagination. He saw himself slowly dropping down through them, like a leaf wafting down from a great towering starry tree. Their ever-changing shapes fascinated him: how they gambolled so independently about the vastness of the sky, sailed so majestically across it like ghost armadas, suddenly piled up to build awesome towers and citadels. Sometimes, thinking of Mac and the sculptures he made on the floor, he imagined them as great cats, moving just as silently above his head and resting from time to time on mountain tops to create wondrous shapes and magical colours against the sun. Other times they were not above at all; he was. He imagined how beautiful and cosy it would be to live among them, jumping from one powder puff cushion to another, or sailing off in one of their armadas all day long before turning on the moon and sinking down to sleep safe and warm in their cloudy softness above a world with no dark stairs to climb.

But today Billy knew all this was childish. He had fallen down through them and that was that. Never again would he be back among them.

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