THE SEED (I.P.)

The sun had all but settled behind the hills, the daylight once more handing power back to the night. The dark shadows that had pooled at the feet of numerous rocky outcrops and boulders had disappeared, soon to be replaced by a greater, all enveloping darkness.

As the rocks cooled a soporific rattle snake uncurled his coils and sort instead the warmth of his burrow. Even as he and his fellow daytime inhabitants slipped below ground the creatures of the night shift were already clocking in. In the distance a lone coyote howled in his delightfully creepy way, momentarily startling a hungry jack rabbit rooting for vegetation amongst the rocks and stones at the foot of the slope.

Like the rocks, the twin rails of the railway track were also starting to cool, stretching out in an unswerving line towards the horizon. The coyote, barely visible in the last of the daylight, appeared amongst the rocks at the top of the hill, sniffing the air and cocking his head to one side, listening cautiously.

Instantly he crouched low, aware something bigger and stronger than himself was rapidly approaching. At the point on the horizon where the rails seemed to come together before disappearing from view a speck of light suddenly appeared, sharp against the ever deepening dusk. Quickly it drew nearer, growing in size and clamour as it did so.

To a human observer the approaching menace was soon recognizable as a freight train, singularly intent on its journey across the desert. It passed quickly by the slope, watched all the way from his rocky vantage point by the coyote, perfectly safe but nonetheless wary and nervous. He pushed himself into the ground, his head nestled between his outstretched paws, seeming almost to cover his ears.

Lying among the dark rocks he was invisible to both the engine driver and the non-paying passengers riding in an open-doored boxcar towards the rear of the train. Karl Lieberwitz, the driver, and Harry Cumberland and Jack McGee, the two vagrants in question, were not the only ones to miss the coyote, the jack rabbit also failed to spot him. As the train rolled and rumbled out of view the hungry hunter struck, a savage yet simple reminder of the cruel life and death struggle enacted daily in harsh counterpoint to the visual beauty of nature. The jackal must kill to survive.

Even had they seen it the killing of the jack rabbit was of no consequence to Harry and Jack; a second killing, destined to take place later that night, would have serious consequences for both. It too would be in the name of food, but it would be more about greed than survival; it too would be savage, but totally without justification. Later that night Harry Cumberland, an old timer who’d been riding the rails for more than thirty years, would be murdered, but let’s talk instead of young Jack McGee.

When only thirteen Jack McGee had runaway from home. After years of violent physical abuse at the hands of his father he’d finally decided enough was enough; life on the rails held infinitely more appeal. He had no fear that his father would track him down and bring him back; Jack’s final act before leaving the family home was to end his father’s miserable existence. Finding Jack senior passed out on the living room floor young Jack took up the empty vodka bottle and crashed it against his father’s head, years of hate and fear giving strength to his arm. The bottle smashed under the weight of the blow but undaunted he used the remains to stab rather than to cudgel; either way his purpose was served.

The recently orphaned youngster had calmly showered off the blood, changed into his hardiest clothes and walked out the back door and away from his former life. The rail tracks that lay scant yards beyond the rear of the overgrown yard had been calling to him in increasingly strident tones, while every train that passed spoke to him of escape:
‘Clackety clack, clackety clack, clackety clack
Come-with-us Jack, come-with-us Jack, come-with-us Jack.’

The rusty chain link fence separating the back yard from the railway tracks had long given up any pretence of keeping folks out, or of keeping them in; breaking through was but a moment’s work. Scant moments later a snakelike procession of boxcars rumbled past, Jack had timed his escape to perfection. Over the preceding days he had practiced the art of jumping a moving train and had little trouble doing so again today; his new life had begun.

His new life had indeed begun but that night it could have very soon ended. In one of those cruel twists of fate that life seems to taunt us with Jack swapped one violent situation for another. He’d made no reservations for the boxcar he had chosen and he was not its only occupant; three homeless itinerants were already on board. One was seemingly fast asleep in a corner but the other two were very much awake. Within moments they had Jack pinned facedown on the dirty wooden floor, his jeans and underpants ripped down to his knees. Sobbing in terror he waited for what was to come, but what came was not what he had expected. The third vagrant had crept up behind the lustful would-be rapists and instantly cooled their ardour with a couple of hefty swings of a stout piece of timber.

‘Get dressed and let’s get out of here,’ was all he said.

Together Jack and his saviour, later to introduce himself as Harry Cumberland, jumped from the moving train; they’d been together ever since, one playing the role of father and teacher, the other of son and pupil. That was nearly three years ago, yet tonight their relationship would end.

Several hours after the coyote had furnished himself with a meal Harry and Jack were about to do the same. The train they had most recently ridden now lay dormant in the railway yard at the end of its journey and it was time to open the buffet car, otherwise known as Harry’s rucksack. After much delving he was able to pull out nothing more than a single cold sausage.

‘The larder’s pretty empty kid,’ he said. ‘I’d better go out and restock.’

Ever since they’d met it had been the same routine, Harry providing for them both. He always disappeared on his own to obtain fresh supplies, usually returning after little more than an hour. Tonight Jack had felt exceptionally hungry and unwilling to wait for the older man to come back he had delved into the rucksack for the remaining sausage the moment Harry had left. The sausage was gone.

‘I bet the old git’s eating it himself!’ Jack thought angrily, all of Harry’s kindnesses instantly banished by the ferocity of his sudden rage. He jumped up, keen to catch the “thief” and have it out with him. Some distance from the tracks lay a patch of overgrown waste ground and here it was Jack caught up with Harry. What he saw next stifled his anger immediately, replacing it with a watchful, calculating greed.

Harry was knelt on the ground beside a small, recently scraped hole. In the light spilling from Harry’s lantern Jack observed him taking from his pocket the missing sausage as well as something resembling a large walnut. After gently placing both in the bottom of the hole he scraped the soil over them and sat back as if waiting for something to happen. For close to twenty minutes Harry watched the disturbed ground while Jack watched Harry; suddenly, impossibly, miraculously a shoot broke through the surface. Within moments it had grown into a small bush, strange fruit instantly ripening on several of its branches. Inching as close as he dared Jack immediately recognised the “fruit” for what they were, cold sausages!

A world of possibilities crowded into Jack’s mind; if it worked with sausages would it work with other things? Sausage was not the only food Harry had provided so obviously it must, but what if one was to plant a bottle of whisky, or a wrap of heroin, or a hundred dollar bill? Even as Jack’s imagination honed in on the riches awaiting him Harry had stripped the sausages from the magical bush. With a gentle tug he uprooted it from the loose soil; amongst the roots the original sausage was now a shrivelled, desiccated husk, the seed however was intact. Picking it free and returning it to his pocket he carefully, reverentially almost, laid the redundant bush on the ground.

Jack resolved there and then that the seed would be his; Harry had saved Jack’s life through the use of a lump of timber as a weapon, it was tragically ironic that Jack now used a similar tool to take the life of Harry.

Later that night Jack was awakened from his sleep by the sound of someone entering the long neglected storage shed in which he had elected to spend the remainder of the night. Pale moonlight spilled through a hole in the rotting roof, providing just enough illumination for Jack to make out the intruder, it was Harry.

‘But your dead,’ he stammered. ‘I buried you.’

Harry, for his part, said nothing, as did the second Harry who had just stepped through the door. The third Harry to enter the shed was likewise tight lipped.

‘This can’t be happening!’ shrieked a terrified Jack, even as the strange trio drew nearer, disproving his statement as they did so. Jack scrabbled backwards across the floor as far as he could go but it wasn’t far enough; with the shed wall to his back he was trapped.

‘Please Harry,’ he sobbed. ‘I’m your mate, you’re like a father to me.’

It was difficult to know which of the three Harry’s he was addressing, but it was the one who’d entered last that now replied.

‘Jackie, Jackie, Jackie,’ he…it, chided. ‘I had another seed; I was going to give it to you next month, when we’d reached three years together. It was in my pocket Jackie, you buried me with it…you PLANTED me with it.’

Sudden understanding came to Jack, understanding and a memory. As he had beaten and stabbed his father blood had sprayed across a sampler his mother had stitched not long before her own untimely death. She had liked to sew, especially samplers, and there were several dotted around the place, but the one in the living room had carried an apt and poignant final message for his father. Even as the reborn, the re-grown, Harry put his hands around Jack’s throat and started to squeeze Jack could see that tonight that message was equally fitting. It had simply said:
‘As ye sow, so shall ye reap.’