After the rain (bryya)
Apr 22, 2012 12:13:32 GMT -5
Post by kneedles on Apr 22, 2012 12:13:32 GMT -5
The light rainfall had cleared almost as soon as it had come, thick rainclouds swollen and pregnant had burst and been swept away on a light breeze to reveal a pale yellow sun, as though it were birthed from the rain and the long stretching winter. Its reach was wide, across brown fields that would slowly turn to chartreuse, burnt umber and gold and its gentle warmth was like an eiderdown wrapped across the horizon. Robin’s egg blue, the same colour blue as Scutcher’s eyes spread over the sky when the heavy grey clouds parted revealing, at long last, the spring. Summer would soon follow, lazy heat and fertile land filled with cows and chickens pecking at the earth or pulling up roots and weeds with their teeth filling district 10 once again with life, proper. Scutcher’s own family pig farm was overtaken by new piglets, each of them small and pink like wiggling toes, all of them filled with the simple wonder that it was to discover a patch of mushrooms, a new root or an earthworm, the simple pleasure that it was to be alive. Throw away your winter coat, save the money on coals and heating and soon you’ll forget that it was ever winter at all. These true blue days, with the sun beaming after the rain and beads of water clinging to blades of glass like polished marbles or crystals could feel endless. It was a kindness that nature afforded them, even if men were cruel.
All through school, Scutcher couldn’t wait to be out in it and had kept one eye fixed to the window, the other to the clock- though he wasn’t exactly proficient at telling the time on them. Like any farmer worth his salt, his body had become attuned to the earth and not the man made machines so he could follow the sun on its languid path across the sky far easier and when it headed west he knew that the day would soon be over. Scutcher was a slow moving sort of creature at best, loping and inelegant as a hog or badger but when the bell rang to signal the end of school there was something quick and almost graceful in the way he gathered his things and twisted through the press of school children, one could almost see a different animal entirely, buried underneath his plush, thick outer shell. He missed the narrowed eyes of spiteful schoolmates and their conspiratory whispers. Clutching a battered, broken down book holder-one that had not changed in several years and seemed too small and too infantile, spilling over with tattered papers and broken pens that smeared ink across the books within and leaked through holes in the leather, he found his way outside of the school house.
One would not expect it of him, really, lingering wounds still faintly present and yellowy bruises smeared across his face the way that the reflection of a buttercup might when young children hold it underneath their chins in a silly little game to see if they like butter or not. But Scutcher had grown as used to his father’s ill moods in the same reluctant way that one has to grow used to a harsh winter, he weathered the storm and on a day like this almost forgot its brutalities. The birds sang cheerfully and Scutcher copied their tunes in his own shrill whistle like a tone deaf mockingjay. It was impossible to be sad or fret on a day like this, not with the true blue sky and the heady, intoxicating tang of iron that the rain left on the ground. Even the path leading away from the school house seemed to glisten as though it had been dowsed in a deep, rich, layer of varnish.
Unlike Scutcher, his sister Tallow, would not be in such a rush to return home. In the midst of their father’s drunken rages he would find her curled into herself like a child in the womb, hands pressed over her ears to block out any sound, eyes clenched tightly shut as though to wish away the world at large and be left with simply herself and her thoughts. Scutcher had never felt that way, and if he did then he would find his brain very poor company indeed. But Scutcher needed Tallow’s help today, and he thought he would wait for her, before she could have a chance to slope away, into town or off with her friends to do what people with friends often do. Craning above heads, which was easy for him, being so tall, he tried to find his sister and thought he spotted her somewhere along the road.
The head of curly hair seemed to be hers, brown as his and left long. If he’d paid attention to that sort of thing, Scutcher would have remembered that Tallow had chosen to wear her hair up today- something she was trying out, as she was wont to do in her ambition to cut hair and style it one day, but as it was he didn’t and instead of being tipped off when she didn’t respond to her own name, Scutcher assumed she hadn’t heard him and hurried along to place one large hand on her shoulder, his smile far broader than it had been all through the long winter, but why shouldn’t he smile on such a beautiful day?
As he did, he felt a weight knock into him, not so substantial as to send him over and onto the ground like a felled redwood tree but enough to see the book bag he carried fall into the dirt. There was a snigger from behind him as history and calculus books slid across the floor with jumbled up papers, bottle caps and what seemed to be coils of thin rope. Nothing of value, nothing comedic thought Scutcher who did not rush to the ground to pick them up, but still they laughed all the same. Let them laugh then, Scutcher was unperturbed.
If anything made Scutcher flush, it was the dawning realisation that the girl he had tapped wasn’t Tallow at all, “Sorry,” he muttered, looking like a freshly dug up beetroot.
“Nice going, idiot,” was the sneering retort of a boy from Scutcher’s history class. He was skinnier and shorter than Scutcher, younger too, though he held himself with an air of misplaced arrogance playing all over and tanned face. The girls thought he was attractive, with dark hair and what they perceived as an unkempt mystery. Scutcher thought he was a fly, that enjoyed buzzing in people’s ears- he looked down on Scutcher, that was obvious. What would he do, then, if he ever realised that Scutcher looked down on him too. He had something to prove, to make his friends laugh and Scutcher did not, instead he simply blinked down at his book bag, playing possum, hoping that if he seemed dead enough that the boy and his friends would go away.
Pinching his nose, the boy sneered again, “You smell like crap.” A fair assessment really, Scutcher carried an earthy sort of stench from his unwashed clothes and the manure beneath his finger nails. Facts were not insults, Scutcher didn’t mind.
“Lets go.” Said the boy, something almost like disappointment lingering in his voice, “wouldn’t wanna catch something from this moron. Probably stupid.”
Well bye, then. Now Scutcher sank to his knees and began to slowly gather up his things. His muddy hand was just reaching for his inky calculus book when the sole of a boot found it as one of the boy's friends stamped on it . Hardly accidental judging from the warm throb, but he’d had worse, and the pain would pass as quickly as the earlier rainfall and there was nothing to do but wait for the sun.
