Grayling Junction - Chapter Three

When we are three

Tam Flint stands on a wooden platform overlooking a railway line. Usually after a night of rain the morning sun makes the metal sparkle. This morning, late in the comely month of May, there is only the dry, dulled colour of shattered brick as terracotta tracks poke into the distance.
Moments before, a shriek from his whistle had bid the 8:17am to Randall City on its way. He was sorry to see that there were no passengers and he was saddened by the thought of the train heading briefly south before curving progress spooned the single carriage into a narrow passage between exposed red rock and back toward the coast before it eventually arrived in Randall City after the turn of nine.
Tam pushes the whistle back into a pocket of his uniform, a liveried suit of the keenest bottle green. The worn material laughs at the elbows and knees and is crowned with a peaked cap that has the appearance of having lain for many years in a locked chest, in a neglected attic spun from dust.

Tam Flint is a hillock of a man. Broad like an oaken ship, his arms are like picnic hams, his robust legs those suited to a mountaineer. His round, red face is obscured by a vast, tangled beard of berry brown. Creeping like vines it winds around his ears, poking inside his collar, moving down over his throat before it can be seen to vanish inside of his clothing, reappearing later as thick hair on his arms. When he speaks – something of a rarity for a man living alone save for a colony of Deathwatch beetles – his voice bursts forth with a deep, booming bass tone not unlike the foghorn of a vast ocean liner. Even polite conversation has brought down shelving and overturned small boats. The last time Tam Flint lost his temper part of his home was so badly damaged by the volume of his uproar that it had to be demolished soon afterward.

Tam Flint finds great sadness in his voice, for were the truth to be unwrapped like a freshly plucked Portobello mushroom, he would like to have been a man of song, rather than a stationmaster. Few rooms, however, can tolerate his soaring vocals. Once a year, on his birthday, Tam will walk toward the bottom of the red mountains behind his station and sing one song. He watches in amazement as loose rocks and scattered soil spill down the mountainside. He collects samples of the soil and carries them home in a series of plastic containers. These are donations to his soil museum.

This particular morning Tam is making his way toward the home of Lalo Morrow. He expects to see his usual companions on the way. They will usher in the arrival of a new day with a three-way toast.
He has a gift with him. It is a specially sifted box with alternate strands of the finest red soil and golden sand, arranged one layer over the other, like a dusty lasagne; 29 layers for 29 years. The lid is sealed and the contents magnificently visible through the clear sides. A small label has been stuck on the lid. For a man of such overwhelming sound and stature, his handwriting is a scribbled mess that appears like the debris left behind by a muddle of spiders. Only by the third or fifth reading do the words reveal themselves:

To Freyja,
With love on your 29th year
Tam.

His heavy feet thunder from the station building.
There is no need to lock the door behind him for no individual has ever gotten the better of trifling with Tam Flint.
With the box in one of his huge hands Tam heads for the bench. He can see it as he crosses the road. No one has arrived yet.

Meanwhile, a 1969 Ford F100 pickup truck is taking time to start. The engine wheezes and splutters but goes no further. This is not an unusual start to the day and Ron Backwards keeps a heavy mallet inside the cabin of the truck for such eventualities. Lifting the ridged bonnet he thumps the head gasket three times. He returns to the cab – the raised bonnet like a lifted skirt revealing unfathomable inner workings – and tries the engine again. Nothing. The procedure is carried out again and again. On the ninth strike of the mallet the truck comes to life with a cloud of apologetic exhaust fumes.
The pickup has powder blue dented panels, a chrome grille, chrome bumpers and chrome wing mirrors. The sunlight shines the chrome, revealing a series of small creases in the bumpers. This is a vehicle with 203,333(3) miles on the clock and apart from the routine with the mallet the vehicle is as reliable as time itself.

Ron Backwards has owned the pickup since he was first able to drive. To see Ron without his truck is like a sandwich without filling. Over time it has become much more than just a means to get around, for Ron makes three journeys a week to Randall City to fetch provisions for the people of Grayling Junction. He is a good man, a very popular man, with long, untidy white hair and a drooping white moustache. He is essentially slender, built from an economy of skin and sinew, as though manufactured from an indestructible, lightweight metal. His insistence on wearing black shirts and black trousers lends him an air of a preacher man – though nothing could be further from the truth.

In addition to fetching provisions Ron has been known to fill the cargo bed of this pickup with people, crowded in like those beginning a new life elsewhere. They hold tight as he carries them away from Grayling Junction. Looks are often deceiving, however, for they leave the town reluctantly, visiting the city only when essential, mostly for running repairs to tooth enamel, to the body and occasionally for emergency maintenance of the mind.

Having started the engine and jumped inside the cabin Ron checks the passenger seat for a brightly wrapped parcel before swinging the truck onto the main road. The journey is a short one, the road surrounded on one side by faceless business units with heavy grilles and steel shutters. Ron passes the mouth of the boatyard and cruises past the industrial estate toward the bench where he will pass the time of day with his friends.

Although not expected at any particular time Ron will arrive late. Ron has a mind filled with a candyfloss of daydreams and invariably arrives late for everything.
Ron is, in that respect, like each of us at one time or another.