‘You ever notice how Martin uses a lot of chimney sweep slang?’
The pasteled hue of a morning sky streaked across the horizon.
Baulking in fright against sunrise, the wind decided to remain still with pale hope that no one noticed, it was a stillness that almost echoed.
In a shack of curled wood and stolen nails, two men sat searching for scraps of idle conversation, scant moments of chatter that made a seemingly eternal workshift all the less eternal and pushed the lingering thoughts of a quick nap to the back of the mind.
‘Like, what does “up brush, down soot” even mean?’ said Mack, the station’s log keeper, as he rocked backward on his chair and became lost in the rafters.
‘Not sure’ replied Tipper flippantly, his full attention was drawn on catching the fly that rested on the edge of an empty mug.
‘That look like the sunrise to you Tip?
Lifting his tired gaze, Tipper looked up to the horizon just as the fly decided to abscond. ‘Bloody hell!’ said the old rail worker, removing his hat and rubbing a hand over his dirty face. ‘We, ah, must have missed the nine-o’clock shipping report on the radio then? …Bugger.’
Trying to stand up from his wicker chair Tipper buckled under the immediate rebellion from both of his sleeping knees; giving up, he placed his head down to the table and contemplated existence from the heart of a yawn. ‘Sunrise again, another trite day of luminescent radiance. Ye’ oh ye’, oh life giving sun, why must thou’ maketh sleep so hard? Mack, turn on the kettle and pass the radio, I’m gonna check in with station 34.’ Reaching his bony hand out without bothering to look up, Tipper took the receiver and coughed as the hut’s kettle began its lethargic boil. ‘Radio call, radio call. Station 34 are you receiving?’
The following silence was abruptly cut by the crackle of a return call.
‘Receiving caller. Tipper you’re supposed to say your station number by the way.’ The disembodied voice of station 34 replied with a faint politeness, his tinny rasp buzzed with static out of the Mocom AP65’s RFI output inducer. Repeating the morning log coordinates, station 34 croaked on as he always had, sounding much like he hadn’t talked for the entire week.
Tipper, forgetting the station operator’s name, paused before replying.
‘Copy. Station 28 to 34…Sunrise checked at maybe 10-minutes ago, reading at about 180 Lux at the moment, radiation nominal, still 3600 ticks to the hour.’ Taking his finger of the transmitter Tipper thought for a moment and added. ‘Feels 5400 ticks though.’
‘Noted “5400 ticks” to be a feeling and not a measurement. All is well here, no abnormalities to report, my shadow is still attached to my feet and keeping me company, we’ve stopped talking at night though sadly.’
Nonplused by 34’s operator making a passing joke, Tipper took pause to wonder if that was in fact a moment of brevity and not something that he should definitely worry about. ‘Copy that 34, you stay away from that whisky mate.’ said Tipper signing off. After a small buzz he thought he heard the sound of two glasses clinking but chalked it up to imagination. Placing the receiver back in its cradle Tipper drummed his fingers upon the table for the lack of anything else to do.
The kettle, in time, reached its boil and water was then sloshed into two browned mugs, each stained with a powdered coffee residue that had leeched into the ceramic of the mug.
‘Tip I’m ducking out to stretch my legs’ said Mack as he took his mug off the coffee ring littered table, ‘One of us should probably get some sleep when I get back’.
Unlatching the station door the weary log keeper walked out into the first flushes of morning and squinted at the embering dawn.
Dried earth turning to dust under his step, Mack looked across the cracked landscape that flatley surrounded Station 28. The old lemon tree, petrified by the sun, stood motionless in the idle breeze, and, to Mack’s tired eyes, almost mirrored the crumbling skeleton of the blanketed desolation within these salt plains. Staring at the still rising sun creep its way through the tree branches Mack, for a moment, felt a quiet pang of misplaceed happiness that on reflection was probably nothing to worry about. Casting his eyes down to his pocket watch without taking note of the time Mack breathlessly sighed and went for a walk in no particular direction
The flats spread so far, I am but a marble sunken in the ocean.
Do we deserve this?
J.McCray
2020
Sunday Short Stories 