The Reverend

The old rail line had not long been disused, but in a strange way it had always been dying – neglected. I reasoned much later that, just because something is alive it doesn’t mean it can’t also be dead. The transition from when the old, rusted, hulking diesels used to grumble up and down the single track, ferrying car parts from one factory to another about ten miles away, to the desolate silence of weeds poking up through the ballast and blowing in the wind wasn’t jarring to us. It was not immediate, like an explosion or a revelation that tears up everything you once believed in. Even a few years after the last diesel rolled, we still listened out for the sound of the stock clicking and grinding at low speed, just in case we saw the formidable yellow face of one bearing down on us. It remained a thrill to lay down on the tracks with your neck over one rail and your ankles over another, lying across a splintered sleeper to avoid the sharp stones and pretend that you had only minutes to escape before an express train cut you into three, just like in the old silent films of damsels in distress.

It came to exist for commerce, but it became our playground. Not just ours either – silly boys with overactive imaginations – but everyone’s. The graffiti that littered the high wall on one side, covered with thousands of names, people who loved other people, people who fucked here, woz ‘ere, smoked here and drank here. Love; Antony luvs Chloe, Cheryl luvs Scott, rubbed shoulders with slogans like White Is Power, Black Is Sour and the image of a man with a cross instead of a face staring down at us sternly, daring us to be anything other than bulldog white. On the other side, patches of long grass and a steep bank that plateaued and topped with brambles, creating an impenetrable labyrinth. We took care to avoid the long grass because of the syringes; our experiences at school had taught us that syringes hurt. However, we were too young to understand the significance of the aerosol cans, the tubs of industrial flux, or the partially broken, burned light bulbs that we threw high into the air and allowed to fall with a dusty tinkle of glass. The blackened spoons fascinated us.

One time we found a tramp’s hut. It’d been built out of pallets, draped with tarpaulin and propped against a tree, high on the bramble bank. To even reach the home was an adventure in itself, so you could understand why someone had built it here. You meandered for what seemed like ages, picking forked turns in the brambles carefully until you came to a narrow section that meant you had to crawl on all fours, fighting off the thorny tentacles that grabbed your trousers and sleeves and tried to drag you away. Finally, you would stand up in an open space; the hut contained a mattress, some filthy blankets and an old table. It seemed dry inside, even cosy, if you could ignore the patch of stinging nettles in the corner and the small cross that the inhabitant perhaps had erected out of twigs and elastic bands.

We felt like intruders, and in many ways, I suppose we were. My friend wanted to take a piss on his mattress but I stopped him. We went back a few months later and it was clear that someone else had found this little cubby hole and had not been as gentle. The pallets had fallen in, the tarpaulin hurled away; the mattress draped over the lower branches of a nearby Beech. The nettles had been stomped down; the little cross broken into three.

Another time, we found an old, partially submerged, bunker. We spent hours clearing away shrubs and dirt with sticks, bits of brick or our bare hands until we uncovered a staircase and the top half of a door. We went back, every day, for nearly a week – sometimes working for eight hours at a time, trying to unblock the door so that we could open it and go inside. On the sixth day, just as we were about to make a breakthrough, some older kids caught us in the middle of digging, obviously looking for trouble. We tried to beg them off, but my friend muttered something under his breath and they turned on us.

We sprinted, we thought, for our lives. The gang outnumbered us in presence and age and at least one of them was carrying some sort of metal piping. Hammering across the sleepers, a combination of adrenaline and intense fearful concentration meant that I somehow hit every single one cleanly. Realising they were catching up I left my friend to run on and scrambled up the bank, hoping to lose them in the maze. After a frantic climb that cut my hands, I threw myself into the maze. Ducking left and right through passages now as familiar as my own bedroom, I found the fence I was looking for – a shortcut to our road and freedom, albeit topped with razor wire. I’d never used this shortcut in desperation since discovering it, and considered it an emergency measure only. I started to climb, but before I got very high, the hooked barbs snagged on my coat. As I tried to wrench one part of me away, another part became caught. Panic started to rise in my body, and I was now using all of my strength, ripping myself away, the fence itself rocking from my energy. I ended up more or less crucified against the damn stuff – still on the wrong side – pinned up like a waiting punch-bag. I held my breath as the assailants sniffed around like dogs, trying to pick up any sign of me. Occasionally they got so close, I could see them moving between the gaps in the bushes, before they gave up. It was, and remains, the single scariest moment of my life.

Then, one day, we met The Reverend.

We’d been away from the line for a few weeks during one summer, lying low after being suspects in a small but significantly smoky bush fire that had burned a lot of the long grass away. It had smouldered rather than licked, the grass turning black beneath our feet and creeping like lava. When we eventually came back, the smell still hung in the air and when we showered later on in the evenings it lingered in our bathrooms, hitching a ride on our hair and clothes. We’d always wanted to add our own mark to the line but, being too scared to take cans of spray paint, we grabbed some chunks of chalk and scribbled on the rusted rails. My friend wrote something about his favourite football team, and I wrote about my love for a girl in my class called Elizabeth. She was probably the most desired girl in school, a girl who could send the bad lads into raptures, leading to Jason Cooper – pre-teen tearaway with a family history of convictions – to dance for her with his trousers around his knees; he later burst into tears when she sniffed at his peacock display.

We were in the same class for four years, but she never knew who I was, except for one day during my third year there. We were on a school trip; thirty kids piled on a coach for three hours. Unable to sit with her friends at the back due to travel sickness, she sat up front with the geeks, with me – in the seat next to mine, where I spent most of the time trying not to break wind through nervousness. After a few moments of awkward silence, I started to try to talk to her. As I was the only human being available, and with all of her normal friends several rows behind, she responded. I made her laugh. She maintained eye contact. We started to tease each other. She allowed me to poke her side to show how ticklish she was. By the time we pulled into the place we were visiting, her dimples had creased so much that they remained even when she wasn’t smiling. She was not carsick once during the journey. Perhaps buoyed by this, on the return journey, she ignored the free seat next to me and sat with her friends at the back.

I wrote; I Love Elizabeth. I thought it appropriate to use the correct spelling. I also wrote my date of birth for some reason, as well as the date at the time. Finally, further up the line, I wrote the name of my favourite football team, my name and some nonsense about how smoking was cool, to try and sound tough. We left with chalky fingers, smelling faintly of rust, expecting it to all be washed away the next day.

When we returned early the following morning it was misty and cool; the precursor to another swelteringly hot summer day. We walked down the line, feeling ourselves shivering even as the temperatures were beginning to rise. I found the piece of graffiti I had left stating my name, my favourite team and my (false) passion for smoking. My friend went further on to find his efforts. As I leaned in, something caught my eye. There was writing, in black marker, just after where I had finished. Clear, bold capitals, stretching away.

My graffiti had said: Liverpool Rule. Adam Woz ‘Ere. I Love U If U Smoke.
And next to it, someone had added:
Liverpool will never win anything with Evans. Happy birthday when it happens, Adam. Don’t expect gifts you want beyond your thirties and practise your false smiles. Smoking causes cancer, but I cannot tell you what to do. No one can.

I looked to the rail behind me where I had left something about Elizabeth.
If you have her, keep her. If you don’t have her, do not give up the chase. No one is unworthy. No one is too good. Best of luck.

By now, my friend was calling me over. He’d left something about a crush of his own, but only using her initials, Y. P. The black text ran afterwards.
Y.P will love you back if you want her to.

We looked to each other, before jogging further up the line. Below, in chalk, were the last doodlings of my friend, ‘A.P was here, 9T5.’ And then, afterwards:
This town will kill you, eventually. You were here then, but don’t be here in ten years time. Never vote Tory, they will crush us all. This line is a museum and respect it. Where once was freedom and trade, soon will be slow strangulation. Remember it all started here with that great hero and his big axe; but don’t forget those cuts and that Beeching was a right cunt wasn’t he.

I could tell my friend was breathing more quickly and I started to look around, expecting someone to appear suddenly. The line before and behind us looked empty. We ran to find the chalk we had discarded and then sprinted off in opposite directions. Looking for the end of one of these long sentences, we chalked responses as best we could. We were young and didn’t understand most of what was being said. I found the section where the person had responded to my love for Elizabeth. Finding the end of the sentence, I wrote ‘What Should I Do?’ At the end of the ‘Beeching was a right cunt’ section, my friend had simply added ‘Who Are You?’ We left shortly afterwards, our minds buzzing with what we had seen and resolved to go back the next morning.

We endured two weeks of disappointed mornings where nothing seemed to happen. The chalk was already starting to rub away, so we took care to go over our latest statements, hoping for a response. Then, during the third week since the mysterious words began to appear, I noticed some more writing, running away from my own question:
What Should I Do?
You should make her laugh. You should make her realise that you are important and have things to say. You should make yourself an essential part of her day. I can’t tell you anymore.

I ran to my friend. We looked at his chalked words ‘Who Are You?’
I am boredom, bred out of throwing stones at naked windows. Believe in the things you see and feel every day. Enjoy gravity, it keeps your feet on the ground. Hug strangers, but be careful who you choose. Kiss with your lips wet.
We could see the writing stretching further along the line, still going strong. We quickened our reading, walking sideways like crabs, hunched over.
Look to the past and rebuild your future from the ruins. Do every drug at least once and then leave them well alone. Don’t believe in God, or Gods, or if you must then believe in all 2,900. Virtue does not solely belong to the blessed. Be cautious around people who wear suits. Do not ever (and this was underlined) trust someone who wears a suit even when they are not at work. Love Elizabeth. Love Y.P.

The words ended there. We wrote some more things in chalk after this long piece, but I cannot remember now what we said. That was when we christened him, The Reverend. Later that same afternoon I ran back home, and got a notepad and a pencil and wrote down everything that The Reverend had left. I’m looking at it now, the faded pencil lines retraced with pen. The paper is yellowing and torn, often folded and often read. The bottom of the page, after the instructions to love Elizabeth and love Y.P is blank and was supposed to be filled with more of his teachings. It was never filled. We went back almost every day for two or three years. The Reverend never came back.

It’s all gone now, which is why this tattered piece of paper filled with clichés, nostalgia and platitudes is still in my wallet. Only a few months after the last visit, the writing faded badly under the rust and disappeared. We still left little messages in chalk every now and then, but it never enticed The Reverend back. Eventually, the line was torn up completely and concreted over. The brambles were cleared and now a housing estate sits on top of where a tramp used to sleep. I managed to rescue a single piece of bent razor wire before the fence came down, a souvenir of our mighty struggle.

I sit here now in the single room of the bed and breakfast I’ve been living in for six months. Me and four other tenants in the last chance saloon above the Black Dog Café; a place notorious for drug dealers, speed freaks and suicides. Last year my friend was the latest to go and now I have his old room with his name still scratched into the crumbling plaster. I share my bed with ticks and I ram my eyes closed at night in the hope that I do not wake up until morning, so that I don’t have to see the dark blobs scurrying up and down the walls. There are always fights in the landing, cold turkey screams, bangs and crashes. We don’t have many possessions between us, no one does who comes here, and yet they always seem to get broken regardless.

I unfold the piece of paper for what will be the thirtieth time this evening. My arms are covered with scabs as I sit rocking on the stained bed, arms around my knees, trying to sweat everything out. I remind myself that some of those cold turkey screams are mine. Some of them are the echo of the young woman I mugged trying to steal her purse in desperation for another fix. I wonder where The Reverend is now, whether they heeded their own advice, if they got away. I’d like to thank them, and apologise for not listening. This town will kill you, they warned.

I can see where the old line used to run, from my window. Below is the traffic crossing I used to walk to my old school, to hope for a glance from Elizabeth, to hope for a quick term so that another summer or Easter break can be spent on the old line, so full of idealism, hope and potential. I wonder; when is it too late to change your direction? At what point do you pass the last signal, the last chance to be diverted onto another route? Maybe I should offer my own advice, but, oh… of course. It’s not there anymore.

I fold and unfold the note – thirty-one now – and prepare myself for another night.