Boy on the Edge (20 page)

“A miracle,” he murmured.

“The only thing we have to do,” Mark said, “is to move it to the cliffs.”

John nodded, mesmerized.

“And then we can sail wherever we want to. Even to Spain,” Mark said.

John laughed a little, but then he fell silent and looked at Mark as if he had suddenly understood what he was really talking about. “I’d like that,” he whispered finally.

A few weeks passed until a day came when Emily decided she had to take Ollie to the city to buy him new clothes. At breakfast the reverend told the boys to keep up the good work in the smithy and said they would be back before dinnertime. As soon as the car had disappeared down the road, Henry emptied the last bucket of milk into a container. Then he hurried to the smithy, where the other two were waiting.

The rusty hinges creaked loudly as Henry pushed the double doors open. Mark and John turned the boat and dragged it between them out into the yard. There was a fresh southerly wind; the sun was bright between the light clouds. Now and then a few large drops fell from the sky as if it was about to rain. But the wind grabbed the curtains of showers and threw them north across the red slopes of the mountains.

After several failed attempts to lift the boat and carry it, they decided to turn it over. Mark slid one oar under it, which John grabbed on the other side. That way they were able to lift the stern. Henry placed himself under the bow, letting it rest on his shoulder.

As he limped onward, they followed. They inched their way across the yard with the boat on their shoulders, along Spine Break Path. They had to stop many times on the way to rest, especially Henry. His foot ached under the weight of the boat.

Gray curtains moved past the sun and heavy drops smacked the hull of the boat. As the rain showers glided across the lava field, glowing rainbows appeared in their wake.

When they finally reached the cliffs, a wave broke, lashing white foam around the rusty wreck of
Young Hope.
A little farther out the sea was calmer. The timing was right. The tide was low. They had four hours before it would begin to rise.

They rolled the wheel into place and fit it on the iron bar. Then they pulled the end of the cable and locked it to the iron ring on the stern of the boat. Henry rotated the wheel slowly while Mark and John eased the boat carefully over the edge.

The iron wheel squeaked as Henry unwound the cable. The boat drifted slowly down the cliff wall, but Mark hung on to the chain by the steps, supporting it with one hand. The white birds screeched all around them, astonished to see a boat sailing down the cliffs.

Henry clung to the rusty chain, following John down the steps. When they had reached the sandbank below, they pushed the boat into the water and stepped on board. It rocked sideways, light on the waves. Mark put out the oars and practiced rowing.

John just gazed up at the birds on the cliffs, spellbound.

Once they were out of the bay, Mark turned the boat westward.

From here the cliffs seemed to rise much higher than Henry had imagined.

Monstrous rock formations rose from the deep, reaching higher and higher to places that no one could reach but the bird on the wing. The birds seemed so tiny as they spun in an endless whirlpool, like snowflakes spiraling around the cliff wall.

A single bird followed the boat for a while in silent observation. The joyful sound of its beating wings rapidly approached and then faded into the distance.

The day was pink and fresh, and clattering sounds echoed from gorges and peaks above them, across the silvered surface. The waves barely rose before sinking again to the rhythm of the ocean’s slow and silent breaths.

John smiled.

“It’s a good life, being a fisherman,” Mark said.

“It sure is,” John said. “It’s perfect freedom.”

His eyes were shimmering again.

Henry glanced at Mark. His determined look gave nothing away, but Henry knew that he would go through with the plan, now that John had more or less agreed to it. The escape had been set in motion; there was no turning back now. In a week or two they would be boarding a freighter out on the open sea, heading for freedom, out there somewhere, where dreams came true.

Mark turned the boat and headed back to Shipwreck Bay, the boat gliding past the wreck of
Young Hope.
He pulled in the oars as they looked up at the wreck.

It was much larger than it seemed from the edge. It looked like a rusty red whale carcass, with broken ribs jabbing the sky, its portholes like hollow eyes.

From the gaping wound lay chains and wires like rotting intestines, all tangled up with long blades of seaweed that rose and sank in the slow waves with a heavy sigh. As the undercurrent moved the boat toward the bank, John stretched out his hand so his fingertips brushed gently along the rust-burned carcass.

They pulled the boat up the cliffs, but there was no place there to hide it properly. So they raised it upon their shoulders and carried it toward the Gallows. They put it down behind the two boulders, where it was invisible from the farmyard.

They didn’t speak on their way back. The next time they walked Spine Break Path would be the last time.

Ollie was out and about again, measuring the important distances around the farm with poems. It was a project he took very seriously; Henry couldn’t understand why, but there was much he didn’t understand about Ollie. The way he thought, the things he talked about, how all of a sudden he could burst into a song without any reason at all, just because he felt like it.

Henry had noticed that he wasn’t the only one being neglected by Emily because of Ollie. Reverend Oswald seemed somehow to have fallen into a shadow. A lot of things had changed, now that there wasn’t a big group of boys anymore. The reverend spent most of his time at the farm in his office. Occasionally Henry saw him walking to the new church, perhaps to check if the windows were tightly shut or to sweep dead flies off the windowsills.

He had decided on a date for the first service in the new church, and had invited all the people in the area to come. He spent his days out walking, preparing his sermon, or so he said. And he continued to drive off to the city for days on end, without returning.

Emily didn’t seem to mind. Henry knew she had moved Ollie to her bedroom when he caught the flu, and since then the reverend had slept in the Boiler Room. Even though Ollie was fine now, they hadn’t changed things back to normal. Early morning when Henry came into the kitchen with the home container full of milk, he heard the reverend’s snoring from behind the Boiler Room door. It was as if they had ceased being husband and wife. Ollie and Emily were like mother and child, and it seemed that the reverend had become a guest in his own house.

Sometimes Henry thought about his mother, but it was getting harder for him to remember her face. What was left in his memory were a few moments from his childhood, some of them happy, some of them sad, but her face seemed to escape him. More often than not it was Emily’s face that appeared in his mind when he thought of happy things. And then sometimes he got angry, because she was being the kind of mother to Ollie that he himself felt he needed the most. Maybe he was too grown-up for her to behave like a mother to him. Maybe she was afraid of him because he had beaten his mother and broken her arm. But perhaps it was his own fault; if he hadn’t thrown her book away, then maybe things would be different now. And if Ollie hadn’t arrived? Yes, things would definitely be very different.

Henry put the last shovel of dung in the wheelbarrow and pushed it out. Somewhere behind the barn he could hear Ollie’s voice, reciting a poem once again. When he came around the corner Henry saw him walking in his peculiar way, taking long strides very slowly along the wall of the barn, singing out the poem.

Henry emptied the wheelbarrow and wiped his forehead with his arm. Ollie stopped and looked at him.

“You startled me. I forgot the next line,” Ollie said.

“Sorry,” Henry replied.

“No, wait! What’s that? Over there?” Ollie said, pointing at the lava field.

Henry looked at the two boulders.

“The Gallows,” he said.

“Where they hanged the thieves and the murderers?” Ollie said, and shivered in horror.

Emily had obviously told him the story. Henry gave him a nod.

“I must go there,” Ollie said, suddenly excited. “It is most important!”

“Why?”

“Because bad things happened there,” Ollie said. “They need a poem.”

“Who?”

“The thieves and the murderers,” Ollie said, as if it was obvious. “And of course, all the little children,” he added in a lower voice.

So Emily had told him about that too.

“It’s important to spread poems over all the places where something bad has happened,” Ollie said in a serious tone.

Henry wondered for a moment what on earth had put such a strange idea into his head. Perhaps it was his way of dealing with bad memories, his way to erase the sadness from his mind by performing this strange ritual.

“I know just the right poem,” Ollie said with a smile. “It’s so long it could reach all the way out there and back again! The ‘Poem of the Sun.’ It’s perfect!”

“You can’t,” Henry said, and lowered his brows, trying hard to give the impression that he had some authority in the matter.

“Why not?”

That was a harder one. Firstly, if Ollie walked to the Gallows he might see the boat that they had hidden behind the two boulders. Then he’d begin to ask questions or tell Emily about it. Secondly, the pits and crevasses around the boulders were dangerous, and Emily would definitely not allow him to go there on his own.

“It’s forbidden. It’s dangerous,” he replied finally.

But Ollie just smiled, as if he knew very well that Henry wasn’t telling the truth.

“But you go there,” he said. “I’ve seen you many times. You and Mark.”

This came as a surprise. It probably showed on his face, for Ollie burst out laughing.

“That’s different,” Henry managed to say, racking his brain to come up with an explanation that Ollie would accept.

“Why?”

“’Cause we’re two. If something happens,” he finally said.

“Then you’ll come with me,” Ollie said, and his face lit up with sheer joy.

But Henry shook his head and grabbed the handles on the wheelbarrow.

“I’m busy,” he growled, and limped around the corner. Hopefully this would be enough to keep him away from the lava field, at least for the time being.

Back in the cowshed he could hear Ollie continue his recital behind the barn. That was a relief; he wouldn’t dare to go out there on his own.

Time working in the cowshed passed slowly for Henry. He was, once again, left alone with the milking. Now that Ollie was busy with his strange project of measuring the farm in poems, he had no time to hang around the cows, as he put it. Henry was pleased and a little sad as well. After all, he had become used to having Ollie sitting there reading his books, his tiny voice filling the cowshed with words and questions. Yes, now that Ollie was busy with other things, Henry couldn’t help feeling a little lonely. And the cows sighed with boredom, mooing, annoyed, as if they missed him as well, the little calf that used to give them so much attention.

That evening, when Henry had filled the home container, he dragged it outside and carried it across the yard. There was a raven sitting upon the Cairn of Christ, looking around as if searching for something. Henry let go of the container, raised his hands in the air, and waved them above his head to scare it off, for the little gray bird with the long black tail had made a nest in the cairn and Henry didn’t want the raven to discover it. The raven spread its wings, glided over the yard, and sat on the roof of the barn, croaking loudly as if mocking him. Henry grabbed the container, but then he noticed the silence in the yard. He looked around him, listening, but he heard nothing: no poems, no chirping in the lava, and no distant chatter from the birds in the cliffs, just the rumble of the surf and a gust of wind on his cheeks.

The raven croaked loudly as Henry limped toward the house, dragging the container with him.

Emily was preparing dinner in the kitchen: a spicy goulash with mashed potatoes, Henry’s favorite. John was setting the table in the dining room; Mark had just arrived from the village with the reverend. Mark had bought himself a beautiful hunting knife with the money he got at Christmas. It had an ornate handle, a huge blade, and a fine black leather holster. Emily wasn’t pleased that Oswald had allowed Mark to buy a knife.

But the reverend said, “Well, boys are fond of knives; it’s always been like that.” It sounded as if the reverend was trying to make up for the past, somehow.

“What on earth are you going to use that for?” Emily asked Mark.

“Don’t know. Hunting perhaps,” he said.

“For hunting you’d need a rifle first,” she said.

“I would have gotten one, but they didn’t have any rifles,” Mark replied.

Henry stood by the kitchen door and put down the container. Emily turned and looked at him. “Where’s Ollie?” she asked.

Henry shrugged. He hadn’t seen him since the morning.