Rules of Occupation

Steve Finbow
 

I carry the City around with me. The Director does not know this. The City is in my pocket next to the dry lash of a bus ticket and the lint of candied yams. The Director sees above head height. Most of the time, pigeons are invisible to him. As is dead wood. As is circuitry. I specialise in road marking: yellow lines, and red, the odd word, the stops and slows. The Director concerns himself with signs: humans ahead for 80 yards, to the north, ring roads. If we exhale together, our breaths never mingle. They circulate, singularly, in curious, ever fragile, and diffident currents. When I use three, the Director uses one. Where I use three, the Director strikes out two. Similarly, lamps and star clusters are exchanged for damaged goods. My job today is collecting the sweat that gathers at the base of statues. I use the outside of my pocket to collect the sweat for fear of losing the City. This is against the Director’s guidelines. The Director has written at great length on time loss and external pocket use. I collect the sweat. The Director is looking the other way. The pocket is wiped on the back of a pigeon. The pigeon is momentarily unable to fly. The Director cannot see the pigeon. The sweat evaporates because of my breath and the warmth of the pigeon. None the wiser, the Director eats his lunch.

There are no grey birds where the Mother is. The Mother is where there are only pictures of birds, grey and otherwise. There are also coloured squares. Painted wood that opens but never a sniff of breeze. The Mother cradles coal. Puddles milk. Fondles apples. Cuddles logs. When the furnace is a hexagon. The chimney wears a hat. The Mother wipes her hands. The Mother’s hands are reading red. Fingers like the spines of bibles. Think polite but plug-like. Upstairs it could sleep. If it were hounded and alone. The Mother does not own it. Cannot pay for it. Does not want it. There are twenty-three steps between the Mother and the up above. Twenty-two between the up above and the Mother. Some chairs are bandaged. Some are hobbled. The table turns its back in embarrassment. The larder is cowardly but cordial and the Mother has a talent for luggage. She carries. At the remembering time of day - the Mother thumb of him. The manholes and the kerbsides. The tyre marks and the mouse runs. The Mother folded in the material in the material. The makings of the City. In the warmth. In the nap. It will grow. The Mother knows.

If windows had hinges in the middle. For cupboards. For closets. For cubbyholes. If he cannot see down. He cannot see up. Pointing the way in metal. Standing the heat with coats. The only flowers he sees are fireworks. The birds bring him smells. His entertainment is the herding zoetrope of buses around the City. Endless slideshows of bottomless people. His one wish is a ladder. A climbing frame. A rope. Only once was there a smoothness of lions. Up above the Mother. No doors where he abides. Scalps are his undergrowth. The tanglefoot of hair. If it is there, he will use it. The Mother will never know. Be amongst familiars. Beds. Blankets. The Mother’s Mother’s clothes. His boxes are neither things. He brings his glow in folds. A yeasty quilt, a decimal throw, a low remedy to remind. His stilts are invisible. Carrier bags battle birds for money. But the Mother does not know.

Sounds from above sounds like the start of him. The Mother’s hands are monstrous. There are gaps between. But in between, he cannot see. Red-bevelled post box. Red-bevelled phone box. Sunburnt babies’ heads. The Mother equals fabric. Breeze brings him in. He has disappeared. As the white of his eyes and the knead of his brow. Below the twenty-two. The Director and the Mother look right. Look left. The heat leaves them to go to him. The dust leaves him to go to them. They throw him the sun in the early morning. He waits and watches and reaches and misses. If he does not catch it, he was not there. He feels them under him. Sticky human gum. Pink shadows. His pockets are empty. The City tossed to the birds. The whites of his eyes. The Director and the Mother look right. Look left. He scratches his days. The Mother ruffles his stuffing. The Mother washes her answered. He stands at the top of the twenty-two. Twenty-three. The painted wood slams and shook. The breeze that never stops starts.  

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'Rules of Occupation' previously appeared as a flash presentation in Locus Novus.

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