His Petrol Smell
His name was Joe-Thomas, I don’t remember his little brothers’ names. He was our age. He lit matches and threw them to his feet.
Let’shaveacrackonyourskateboards. Not a request.
Dad taught us to fear them. He told us how one of the men of their encampment, a man with “Shotgun” on the front of his name, murdered a groom at his wedding. Something like that would usually result in the caravans fleeing in a midnight convoy, off for another stretch of land to perch and build fire pits on. But they stayed put this time. The police were round soon after, dressed as plumbers, asking to use our back windows as spy nests. Is that the term? It’s the term he used. Dad declined them out of fear of a Molotov through the letter box if they ever found out we helped the coppers. I didn’t know what a Molotov was.
Don’tbeshynow. His words blended into each other, silky, slier than an Irish I’d heard elsewhere.
We obliged, and the two little brothers rocketed off, up and down the road, our boards underfoot. Joe-Thomas stood with us watching them, parent-like.
The brothers fell a bunch, backs heads hips hands slapping the ground again and again, hard enough that if it were one of us we’d go in and lie on the couch for a day with a lemonade. But they bounced up and bounced up and bounced up, bones intact miraculously. Borderline flagellation.
Herefeelthis. Joe-Thomas grabbed my hand and pulled it up to his head, above his right ear. A thick scar snaked down from his crown to his jaw, a shiny pink worm. His black curls were oily ram’s horns, he smelt like petrol, and his cheek was leather. Tough, soft, cold.
What’s that from? I asked as his action demanded, a conversational hostage.
He explained how another boy dropped a curbstone from a tree onto his head and how he was in a coma for eight days. My cousin Kyle and I chorused the expected whoa.
Kyle proposed we go over to his house, but Joe-Thomas overheard and, after a one-sided bicker, Kyle left me alone with the three traveller boys. Don’t let ’em nick my board, his parting wish.
Comewi’me,let’sfucktheseoff,Ihaveaspotforus.
I need to go in soon. Ignored.
Joe-Thomas whistled his brothers like he was calling sheepdogs, and like sheepdogs they spun on heel and raced back to him.
Givetheyoungmantheboardsbacknow. He was my age, and not. They looked ready to bite until Joe-Thomas raised a fist and they subsided. He chased them and smacked them and pointed for the camp, not far from here but out of sight. He took my hand when they were gone and neither Kyle nor the brothers knew that we’d met before. More than once before. Before summer. Before it was warm. Before, it was warm. And was again, then. The camp appeared a year and a half ago; its vast courtyard littered with weight benches and nondescript piles was visible from my bedroom. I saw him then from my spy nest. He must have seen me too.
He led me for the wood and through it, with one syllable sentences, stories of fights and of jobs and of fires and of moments that bled through the T-shirt of most days. And I was a vessel for his out-of-step feelings. Willingly. We were a diesel puddle.
He led me over the overgrown railway tracks. He led me past the fishing lake, low-sitting at this time of year. He led me over blue iron gates. He led me past the dozers and the diggers and the cranes. He led me to the gravel pit—a place he deemed not of his world enough to kiss me. It was further each time. Further this time than before. The next would be further than now, and he’d be closer. Closer to me. Closer to the truth he wished he could help but act on. Further in summer’s outstretched reach we’d go.
D’youloveme?
Idoes. My accent robbing letters from his, falling out my mouth like sugary spit.
Goodlad.
I did love the scalding hot worry. I did love the flight. I did love his grip. I don’t know if I loved him, but those are the richest in my deck of days.
We’d trek back each time unseen, then depart again another day for the edge of our expanded world until we reached the sea and had to swim. I would go with him, just as scared of my people knowing. Dad would melt at the thought. A Molotov through the letter box.
We returned one day from far far far and a girl in a bedazzled velvet track suit saw us alone, our hands closing tight together like a Venus flytrap, and six weeks later the caravans were gone. Midnight convoy.
He can’t be far. He is there, far far far, one of the fars anyway. He tells me without words. Little burnt matches stick up from the yellow grass from the tracks, from the mountains of gravel, from the wet sand. One day I’ll be there too, and he’ll burn me alive at my request.
Jack Barrie (@jackstrynawrite) is made mostly out of meat and ideas, both of which need work. From Leicestershire, England, he is the recipient of two Royal Television Society Awards including the Sir Lenny Henry Award. Ravenstone Press published his debut novel, Sundown: An Other World Fairytale. Other short works can soon be found in The New Flash Fiction Review, Beyond Words Magazine, The Blood Pudding Magazine, and elsewhere. For the moment, he lives on Vancouver Island in Canada.