Acid Rain by R.D Rhodes (ebook reader txt) 📕

He sat back up. “Are you okay? After what you told me last night? I can stay,..if..”

I watched my breath billow into the air, “Yeah. It feels good to have spoken about it. To tell someone else. I have been trying to process it for a long time.” I thought about telling him of the dream I’d had in the hospital, about my dad. But I let it slide. “No, you should go. I’ll be fine, honestly.”

Harry passed the block of cheddar and I took a big bite then drank some of the milk. A curtain twitched down the street, but that was the only movement other than the smoking chimneys.

“Can you phone someone, please? When you’re there? A government office, or the police. We have to try to do something.”

He rolled his eyes, somewhat irritably. “Can it wait? I can’t even think who to call. Wait till we are settled, till we have a place to go. Then I will. Promise. But I really don’t think it will make a difference.”

“Fine.” I said. “But we will phone. I don’t think it will either, but,”

“Cheese is good, isn’t it? I should have got the blue one though.” He took another bite. “But I’ll get some in town, and for half the price.”

“Remember the bananas, and dates.”

“Yeah. I said three times,” he laughed. The bus came towards us and stopped, and we hugged goodbye before he got on. I watched as it did a U-turn then disappeared around a bend.

I sat alone on the wall. I didn’t know what to do. It wasn’t as cold as the night, but it was still freezing. I put the food into my backpack and started walking.

I did a tour of every street in the village then circled round the park. I walked past the campsite, by the pair of static caravans- but smoke was puffing from their cylinders. The rickety, old hotel was closed for the season. Then I saw the church. Dreamy thoughts of the warmth inside those stained-glass windows swarmed into my head. But the door was shut and padlocked.

The frost was nipping me so I turned away and walked briskly on, out of the village. From the oak wood to my left golden leaves were falling and fusing an Autumnal collage onto the road. I spotted a hill through the trees and stepped off into the wood. There was no path and I headed straight, my thoughts beginning to run again as my body warmed up. I thought of my dad. Of what had happened. How it had happened. I thought of Harry. I left the woods behind and climbed the slope.

Forty minutes later I sat on a rock at the top, looking out over the mass of forest, which stretched up every mountain to just below the jagged summits. The river snaked out into the distance, and directly below me was Cannich. I gazed down on its tiny houses, amongst that vast landscape, and I could feel just how small I was. White cumulus clouds drifted gently and impressively across the blue sky, a sky so big, I thought, so 3D-looking, its expanse could cover us all a thousand times over. Then I remembered something I thought Andrei had said in War and Peace, “That sky, that great sky, why had he never noticed it before?” I seemed to remember him lying on a battlefield, dying, when he saw it. I thought I understood him.

And beyond that sky are the stars, I considered. We are all just little ants wrapped up in all that. Something greater, that we can’t even begin to comprehend. Then it hit me with great force- so what if my life is pointless?! No life means anything when compared to all this anyway. I am just a wee tiny dot, a blip in the existence of the planet. My pain, all the suffering throughout my life, what Dad did to me, really means shit in the grand scheme of things. I will go and be forgotten about, just like everybody and everything else on this planet. I am nineteen measly years amongst four and a half billion. It felt good to know that. It felt reassuring.

I took out my bottle from my rucksack and filled it up from a nearby spring. I drank that pure water and sucked in deep bursts of the cool fresh air. I was a million miles away from the city. Nevermind didn’t seem at all relevant now.

Harry’s watch said it was only eleven. The cold started to bite again though, so I started off along a ridge that led to a higher summit. As I neared its top the clouds blew around me, and turned the world all white, before they floated on again. I was up with the Gods. I lay down on the rocks and soaked up the views and the smells and every sensation, trying to capture it all to memory. I said a long prayer, then headed back down out of the clouds.

I got down, then started up another peak, a much higher one. It was tougher, but even from half-way it had better views. It was addictive, this climbing. I hadn’t done much of it before. My adrenaline was going. It was like nourishment for the soul. And as I overcame each new blockade or scramble, I felt like I was growing and growing. I need these experiences, I thought.

Thirty minutes later and fifty metres higher, I misjudged my footing going up a steep rockface and almost fell, but instinctively grabbed hold of an old tree root which somehow held my weight. With the one hand supporting me, I looked down. I would have been paralyzed at least, more likely dead. One little mistake and that was it. My senses were at their peak. This is living, I thought- pushing