Feel the Wood.

And so the story goes …. improbable? 

Perhaps….

 

Joshua believed that the whole wide world was asleep – it wasn’t, but most people were already in bed dreaming as he stepped away from the shore and walked across the scratchy sand. He was thinking about Monroe, he was thinking about Snow-White and he was thinking about David Bowie who had sung about at least one of those two. Joshua was stoned.

He was also thinking about shoes. 

He knew he should put his shoes on but he couldn’t remember where he had left them; the sun had already passed from the day and the rocks, still pounded by raging surf, had settled into the shadows.

A hundred crickets started to rattle, a last humming bird disappeared into the evening and the thought that he didn’t need any shoes crossed his mind as he himself crossed the grass towards the car, the scent of the pines and wild hibiscus confirmed – if confirmation was required- that he was no longer in Croydon. 

He opened the car door and settled behind the wheel, and thought of nothing.

 

“Feel the wood.” He said. 

 

He spoke out loud and listened as the words echoed against the windscreen before bouncing out through the still-open door towards the ocean. He watched them tumble into the surf, closed the door and started the engine. The red lights on the dashboard distracted him for a moment with their intensity, making him forget that he was at the edge of the desert, perhaps the second joint he had smoked earlier on the beach was one too many. 

He experimented with the indicators and almost stepped back outside to watch their flashing, but shook his head clear and eased the car out of the parking space and onto the road that slowly climbed throw the canyon. He opened the window and fumbled with the radio, the jazz trumpet of Chet Baker brought him back to where he was.

 

“Feel the wood.”

 

He said it again, trying to remember where he had heard it before, the walls of the canyon closing around him in an embrace full of pine, cacti and wild cat as he searched his memories. His friend, Lee. He was certain, but when was it?

“Years ago, in another lifetime…” he let the words trail away through the open window to join the others he had left behind in the surf. He was thinking of the man who had sung them – Dylan – forgetting Bowie for the moment, perhaps because of Croydon which was near Beckenham where David had grown up. 

Or perhaps because of his friend Lee.

 

“Full of toil and blood.” He said, quoting Bob.

 

Lee had struggled, perhaps Bob had struggled and now Joshua struggled to keep the car on the road, and away from the canyon walls. The road was full of dust, when the winter rains hit it would turn to mud and be impassable, but for now it swirled around the car where he passed. Looking in the rear view mirror he watched the red spirals chasing him.

 

“Creatures void of form,” he thought. “Snakes.”

 

The road through the canyon was like a snake, twisting away under his wheels and Joshua had to use all his strength to maintain a steady line, he didn’t know it but he was driving at less than twenty miles per hour. If the state troopers were waiting for him in the bushes, then he would be stopped for crawling under the influence. He wasn’t sure if that was a statutory crime but he looked left and right to make sure. 

The canyon was empty except for the cacti and the stars overhead. The night was now pitch black.

 

“Come and take me!” He shouted through the open window and his words rebounded off the sides of the cliffs and impaled themselves on the spikes of the cacti hanging there like ribbons at a wedding. 

Being stoned, he was unaware that he was mangling the words of the songs he knew more-or-less by heart. There had been little else to do in Croydon when he was a teenager except to sing along to the lyrics on the vinyls he stole from the record shops whenever he could, but he was unaware that his mind had flipped from Shelter in the Storm to Spanish Harlem Incident.

 

He had a nice voice. 

 

Sweet, melodic and with a touch of something lost. Looking at him- he was a large man – you would have expected his voice to be deep and gravely, you would have been surprised if you heard him then in the desert canyon. Perhaps you would have thought of a choir boy, perhaps even an angel. His eyes could have belonged to an angel after all. They were blue but with specks of silver, as if someone had sprinkled the off-cuts of starlight at their creation. Thirty-four years previously.

 

“Thirty-four.” He stopped singing, listening to his age as if was hearing it for the first time. 

 

And then- “Feel the wood.”

 

Why did he keep coming back to this?

Lee.

His friend again.

They were his last words, just before he died. Now, the canyon walls closing round him made Joshua feel like he was in a prison; Lee had died in prison. With this memory, Joshua fell silent and his silence fell under the wheels of the car and he slowed even more.

 A paranoia took hold of him and instinctively he looked again into the rear–view mirror. The headlights of a car, some way back were following him.

 

There had been no other car in the car-park when he had left the beach and he had passed no one and no turnings.

He had been alone in the canyon and now he was not. 

His foot pressed a little harder on the throttle and but the car seemed not to want to respond. The headlights behind him were gaining and Joshua looked left and right seeking a place to hide but there were only the steep walls of the mountains hemming him in. 

He wished he was sober, he wished he was invisible, he wished he was at home in bed in Croydon, but that was long ago as well as far away.

Instead, he pulled over to the side of the road and stopped, killing the engine and his lights. Then, thinking that that was irresponsible if not dangerous, he turned them on again, opened the door and stepped out. He lent against the front of the car and searched in his pocket for a cigarette. 

Smoking made him relax.