We Follow the Boy

(All the writing in this set was based on dreams. For more info,
please read: 'An Explanation - 25 Dreams'.)

The leader is just a boy, a blonde kid with a baseball cap and
problems.

He loves a girl in his charge, but he is forbidden to go out with her.
She is a little older than him and he thinks she is the most beautiful
thing, he would rather have a life with her than lead this crew, but he
must fulfil his duty.

He is often reminded of this sad fact by Arnold, a snooty, older boy
who is chaste but desires the same girl. He takes great pleasure in
pointing out the leader's need for solitude, enjoying rubbing in the
needles, because while the leader would have a chance with the girl if
it were not for his position, Arnold has none.

Sometimes the kid cannot take the grief and love that wells up inside
him and so he slows down the mission. It is one such time now and he
inserts money from the mission budget into a vending machine.

The coins get stuck; and so he bangs the front panel with his fist. The
coins fall into the returned coins slot and as he slides them out with
two fingers he also pulls out a receipt. It has a message on it in the
kind of writing you get on Texas WANTED posters.

The message tells of rewards and liquor and women, all at Barbados. The
kid has never heard of this place.

Barbados.

The message is fictitious.

It was probably placed there by Arnold, maybe in an attempt to slow
down the mission even further and to blame the ensuing disasters on
their prodigious leader.

The kid suspects nothing, on the contrary he is very excited and passes
on his enthusiasm to the rest of the group until they have all packed
up their canvas tents and head for Barbados.

At Barbados, on the beach, they make huts out of bamboo tubes. The huts
are like squat pyramids, but rather than the tubes meeting at the top,
they point outwards like the points on the Millennium dome. It is
strange, but it works. It looks as though the rain will be channelled
through the tubes straight into the hut and onto the sleeping people
inside, but the kid is confident it won't, and so it won't.

He instructs them to put leaves on the huts, large leaves first, and
then successively smaller as they build up the layers. The other way
round, he tells them, and the rain WILL be channelled into the
huts.

A plump, bald friar says that if he had known about Barbados he would
have come here straight away, instead of setting up tents in that last
miserable place.