It all started on the steps outside the house. The broken bricks and the old tin cans that scattered themselves around the place set a scene that was too delicious to ignore. Underfoot the crunch of wet gravel could be heard, it drifted slowly in and out making all things stop and all things begin. Slowly and deliberately one foot put itself in front of the other in an attempt to get away but it wasn’t an attempt that really wanted to happen, it wasn’t a brave and striking one like the ones that he read about in the books or heard the other men talk about in the bars. It was weak and it was insufficient, it cowered in corners instead of stepping into the light. So, with the pathetic inevitability of all the things before him, the footsteps stopped and he turned around. “Why do you think I want to go exactly?” His voice was heavy with cigarette smoke and all the other things that come along with it. Too many nights in the company of whiskey and wine, days spent shouting across the fields in arguments and neighbourly disputes. These had worn his vocal chords down to the rough. A dying tongue that hadn’t tasted what food really is for the last thirty years or so and a mouth that had given birth to far too many regrets and heartaches started the whole process again, “if you really wanted me to, you should have asked, you should have pushed me out the door,” but she didn’t say anything. Instead, she turned away from the doorway and made the short trip back into the kitchen. With a sigh she piled more weight on to a heart that was already heavy enough. Sometimes she could actually feel the weight of it, it was like someone was there and they wouldn’t stop until they broke it. They were determined to watch it crack. She wondered if the weight would get too much and it would just instantly shatter or if cracks would slowly appear. Maybe they would splinter up her heart, like a crack in a windscreen, until they covered the whole length. There would be a moment of still; a moment before all things came to pass and then it would all fall down and nothing more would be heard. She thought about these things as she busied herself with the menial tasks of the day and she thought of these things as she tried to sleep. Outside, taking a match and striking it, he made an attempt to light his cigarette in the rain but as it poured down relentlessly and unforgiving, as the rhythm kept on beating over the porch roof, he gave in. ‘Well if I can’t smoke outside, I suppose I’ll have to go in.’ And so he did. The excuse was a lie that led him back to where he, or at least part of him, wanted to go. He stepped inside even though he hated the house. He hated every single thing that it meant and everything thing that it pretend to be. He hated the dusty smell of the carpets and the secrets that they kept. The light switch that was broken that he never fixed. These were the things that started it all off for him. Every single inch of space reminded him of something that wasn’t really there or something that shouldn’t be there. Walking through the hall he passed photos and relics of all the times that had come before now. She had arranged them as a little trip down some sort of memory lane for everyone as they entered her home. But he knew this snare too well; this was no slideshow, this was a circus. He knew why she did it and he knew that it wasn’t all true. By now he should have learnt not to look at them and he should have known better than to stop. It was when you did that you were really caught. It was like stepping into a fare, it was a fantasy world and it just drew you in to spend your time and money living amongst illusion and sin. One photo, now stained with age, showed them happy, smiling enigmatically at the camera whilst it flashed on and off. They were sitting on a wall, overlooking some viewpoint somewhere in Spain. “No, it was Italy. No. I have no idea. I wish I knew where that was, I wish I could remember because it was my money that got us there. The train journeys and the telephone calls meant I was working late every night. I didn’t drink for a month. I can’t remember where that was and I can’t remember when it was taken.” What he didn’t say, but he knew, was that where it was taken was irrelevant. What mattered was that he wasn’t happy there. He wasn’t smiling in that photo, he was gritting his teeth. When it was taken he wasn’t smiling but somehow now in the photo he was.
Stepping past the shelf he walked into the kitchen. “The bread will be ready soon. We can have our lunch and forget this happened. I’ve made the kind you like the most and it’ll be just the right temperature by the time we’re ready to eat it. Don’t you remember how we used to bake like this all day? We’d walk into town, buy what we needed and then come back to our home and everything was just how we liked it.” She said this all without looking at him. She fumbled and felt around for things that weren’t there; pretending to change the temperature on the oven, and checking the sand timer for the bread. These were her nervous twitches. These were the ways that she showed him what he’d done and these were the things that would come back to haunt him as he closed his eyes in the mid-day sun trying to get some rest from the pressure of being there. Whilst he recognised this fact, sinking it down deep inside him, she stood dirty and cold in the kitchen. Her apron was worn and would be worn a hundred times worse if she could have it her way. She wouldn’t spend. Instead she would save and save his money, she would keep things in jars and cupboards instead of using them. Suddenly he remembered how beautiful she was when they first meet. A memory pulled him back and he could see her hair bleached in the sun, he could remember times in the hay shack and walks in the valleys. “But then again maybe that was just youth. Perhaps she never was beautiful, maybe it was just because I was a lonely young man in a place that I didn’t really understand that well.” It was true, he had been unsure of where he was and he had wanted someone there to help him grow, “but could that have been the only reason for it?” A few moments passed between this thought and the next, he felt nervous and dizzy. “I’m not hungry for bread today. I want something more than that. I’m fed up of scratching around in this dirt.” “No, no you don’t mean that. You love my bread and you love the cheese that I’ve bought to go with it. It’s what we nearly always have on days like today. What on earth is wrong with you? I thought we were going to forget about before? I said I would forgive you if only you’d come inside a while.” But it wasn’t enough. Something snapped and he could no longer hold it in. It was either eat the bread and go stale with discontent or walk out. A moment was all it would take but his body felt tired from all the years and he didn’t know if his spine could take it. “And don’t smoke in the kitchen. You’ll make bad the air.” And with that he picked his hat off the table, his jacket off the side and walked out and once he stood outside he suddenly felt like a free man. Drinking the air in deep he became an innocent man just released from his long-term sentence. Someone had freed him and it felt good. The blood moved faster round his body, rousing feelings and movements that he hadn’t had in a long time. His fingers were twitching and his mind was working at a rate that was terrifying him. “I don’t think I should be doing this, I don’t think this is right but I have waited for this moment for the last idontknowhowlongbutnowitisfinallyhere. I’m going to take what money I have and keep walking. She has the house, her house, and the car. She can keep it. She has the animals and the wine, the bank account and the pension. I don’t want it. I want the road and I want my life. It has been long enough coming and it is long enough spent so I think I deserve a return.” His feet moved one in front of the other in an involuntary motion towards a horizon he had never dared to visit. In a moment of madness he cut the rope and drifted free.
Two days later, at 12:30 PM a team of local men moved through the corn field at the edge of the village. They found his body tied up in the barn. He had been shot once in the heart and twice in the head. Whilst his body lay stiff and cold the villagers busied themselves by consoling his wife, telling her how much he had loved her and what a great man he was. Suggestions were made for the funeral and help was offered by near enough every man there. Having cried her tears she left, not once looking at the bruised and blood drenched body of the man she had spent 40 years of her life with. She went home, opened the oven, got out the freshly baked bread and prepared to have her lunch. It was now half past one. She would still have time.
