Strata

Strata

  by

  Nicholas Galt

  * * * * *

  Previously Published in Offset 2005

  Copyright 2011 Nicholas Galt

  Thank you for downloading this free ebook. Although this is a free book, it remains the property of the author, and may not be reproduced, copied and distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes.

  Hampstead Sheppard opens his eyes at 5.40am and sits up in bed and thinks. He sits there as the plastic clock ticks against the wall and against his head. Tic. Thinking.

  He isn’t going back to sleep now. He was awake at 5.41am and figured he should get up, have a hot drink and act on this thought. If not now when else would he find the time to do what his impulse told him he should?

  The kettle clicks and steams. Hampstead grips the handle pouring himself a cup of hot water. Coffee is overrated and tea is too pompous for his liking. He sips quietly in his kitchen with the lights off and looks out across the backyard to the neighbour’s house. Their lights were off too. Probably enjoying a mid-morning mug of hot water in the dark as well. He scrapes some butter across a dry bit of toast and crunches in the silence. Thinking.

  The thought had conjured in his sleep and swayed amongst thoughts of the new day and the ethereal image was now slowly making its self apparent to his waking mind. It was unclear to him as to exactly what it was. He could see its frosted image; a pale brilliance clouded in a haze of unknowing. Though all he can define is its importance, it was worthy, and it would be all too evident by the end of the day.

  Hampstead looks down at his hands and they are smooth and unmarked by hard labour. He places his empty mug of water onto the bench and throws the crust onto the floor for Madeline. Madeline pushes herself up against his leg purring for another look at the menu. Hampstead stands and thinks for a moment, he finds the thought.

  Yes. Of course.

  Hampstead walks into his room and switches on a lamp. The dull light pitches across the room and he opens his cupboard. He files past the suits and ties and picks out a gaudy Hawaiian shirt that was souvenired from the island of Maui, leavers it from the hanger and slides it onto his slender white frame. He remembers the good times that were had in this shirt, cocktails, sun, fun. Yes.

  He shuts the cupboard door and walks to his chest of drawers, cat under foot. Hampstead finds a pair of old blue shorts and lowers a leg into them one after the other. He sits on his bed and Madeline jumps up on his lap. He pats her as she rubs her head into his Tropicana tee.

  ‘It will be alright Madeline, I think I have found it . . . It will be fine by sundown.’

  He flicks the lamp off and heads for the back door.

  The sun is starting to peak across the continent. Hampstead pauses for a moment and gathers his thought. Yes. He steps onto the lawn but Madeline stops on the stoop. Hampstead treads carefully so as he doesn’t crease the grass and makes his way to the little wooden shed, a nondescript building harbouring a mower, three watering cans, a shovel and hobbies now neglected.

  He plucks the shovel from against the wall and looks at his watering cans. He ponders their uses and decides that they no longer exist. The mower smiles at him and he stubs his toe on it as he exits the cobwebbed shed. He has his shovel, his thought and the new day presenting itself across the tops of trees and chimneys. A rooster cackles in the distance and Hampstead asks politely,

  ‘Not yet Rooster, I haven’t found it yet.’ He shrugs off the intruder and places it into his draw off non-reality next to his watering cans. The thought? Ah, yes.

  Hampstead paces to the middle of his small suburban yard and urinates onto the grass, shivering, deciding where his thought should begin. Here is perfect. His territory. Madeline rubs herself against the door jam and eyes her master, unresolved on the situation. Hampstead zips his shorts up and lays the shovel into the earth. The soil slides across the blade like soft butter. He puts his barefoot onto the heel of the shovel and wrenches the first clod of dirt from the ground. Madeline settles on the stoop and lazily licks her paws. The rooster crows again but Hampstead doesn’t hear it anymore. He drops the shovel into the earth and he can feel its history telling a story as it vibrates up the handle. Strata upon strata of silt and decaying vegetable matter blanketing the earth’s mantle; the grains of life and death. He is going to find what he is thinking. It is just a matter of hard work. It is here somewhere.

  The sun trickles over the pitch of Hampstead’s roof as the cars on the road settle into a quiet after nine sigh. Hampstead steadily cranes dirt from his hole. No work today for him, not since the takeover. No work for him. He is busy now, busy thinking, looking, digging. It is here somewhere. He focuses on every sway of his shovel. Another clump of soil joins the growing pile. The phone rings. Someone must want to talk. His Mother usually calls at 9.23 every morning and leaves a message of good will on his machine, ‘Hi dear it’s me, made you a cake. I still love you son, bye.’ His mother doesn’t know that his work doesn’t need him, he doesn’t need the work. It is best that she remains ignorant; Hampstead needs silence while he is thinking. He is busy, he has a new job.

  He shelves the phone into the non-reality draw alongside the rooster and watering cans and it stops ringing in his head. He has to remain fixed on the thought. His every action determines the next and moves his mind towards eventual realisation of the purpose of being here. It is important. But he hasn’t the time to prioritise, it interferes with his process. Just keep digging.

  Madeline rouses herself from the stoop, yawning contently at the marvellous day the sky has put on for her. An object from the middle of the yard catches her slitted eyes and she stalks towards it. Thud! Madeline lowers herself into her hunting position. Curious. Slowly she creeps forward. Thump! She reaches the centre of her question and sees her owner busy in the bottom of a hole. She relaxes, yawns, stretches in the sun and finds a vantage point at the holes edge and settles into lethargy.

  Hampstead pauses his excavations and a small grin creases his mouth. He leans the shovel to the side of his hole and kicks at the loose soil with his bare feet. He sizes up his cavity. It is almost two feet deep. Clean and rectangular. He squats down and brushes his hands across the object. A thin tuft of brown hair mingles with the dark earth. The artefact is wet and its pale form stands out. He hears crying. He lifts the object from the hole and holds it in his arms. The naked baby looks up at him with quiet eyes and Hampstead can see a little of the frost lifting from the thought in his head.

  He delicately brushes the damp loam from the child’s face. The baby gurgles and Hampstead can taste milk on the edge of his tongue. He sways it in his arms and begins to hum a nursery rhyme. The naked baby smiles and Hampstead sees a woman on the edge of his thoughts, smiling. He closes his eyes and his mind becomes cluttered with visions of wooden horses and rattles of brilliant blues. He gently sways on the balls of his naked feet as the sun envelops his body in a warm liquid glow. The baby closes its eyes and turns to dust in his hands. Hampstead opens his eyes and looks down at his stained hands; he brushes them on his blue shorts and reaches for the shovel.

  Sweat beads on Hampstead’s worry free brow. His thoughts are concentrated as his hole is deepened and lengthened with every slide of the shovels blade. He knows it’s here somewhere. He had woken with a taste of what he should do. What he should find. And he had uncovered part of the question. But that was only a hurdle in his excavations, in uncovering the pastel radiance of what he could see on the horizon of his mind. The shovel bites into the earth.

  This summer was hotter than most. Though Hampstead had spent most of his time in air-conditioned offices sipping chilled spring water from a plastic cup. He hasn’t felt the sun as it is, as it should be. Not since Maui. ‘What a beautiful island in the sun, heaven on
earth,’ his girlfriend had commented. Hampstead had agreed from the comfort of the cooled beach side bistro. The place sure looked beautiful in his eyes. All the brochured beauty was available to his senses but lacking in its sheen. But today, now is what matters. Not the superfluous matter of a beach time resort 10, 000 miles away. Dig Hampstead.

  A trickle of sweat finds a concave in Hampstead’s knuckle and settles for a break before its descent down the shovel handle. Madeline raises her lazy head from its paws and scans her master’s progress.

  ‘Meow.’

  ‘Yes Madeline . . . I’m busy.’ Hampstead props the shovel handle under his roughing palm and surveys its wood grain. Madeline stands and Hampstead sits at the bottom of his pit. He doesn’t leave his work for long. He glances at his only real companion and sees hunger in her sway.

  ‘There is work to be done girl, work before pleasure, work before pleasure girl.’

  Hampstead angles the shovel to his front and presses his foot into the rolled steel top of the ancient implement. The mower fades, the rooster fades, the phone rings into an abyss and the cat rolls into a pit between Hampstead’s head and shovels blade. Somewhere. Here.

  The sun lolls about the afternoon sky and the mud on the blade reveals a thread of cloth. Hampstead pauses inspecting his archaeological uncovering. Is this it? Hampstead drops his shovel into the right corner of his rectangle and tugs at the thread. It spools from the bottom of the hole. Hampstead grabs his shovel and carefully manicures the outline of the relic. He squats in his hole, fingering the young boys face that peers at him through soiled eyes. Hampstead runs his palm across his chin and holds a breath flavoured with tan bark. He closes his eyes and he sees two small hands gripping the handle bars of a red BMX. The bike topples into a deep gutter and Hampstead descends from his thoughts, startled. The face smiles up at him baring a mouth missing a front tooth. Hampstead covers his mouth and a dollar coin rolls into the pit. Madeline lays on her side with a curious eye on the new arrival, the geological ghost in the bottom of the hole.

  Hampstead brushes the soil from the young boy’s face and grasps at the hand that waves. He slowly tugs on the little hand and the young boy is shucked like an oyster from the dark ground. Hampstead hands the dollar to the small boy and the child smiles, showing his mouth, less another tooth. Hampstead laughs and so does the little boy.

  Another dollar plops into the soil. Hampstead picks it up and brushes it clean of filth and gives it to the boy.

  ‘Can I buy some lollies with this?’ The boy looks into his palm at the two gold coins. Hampstead tastes milk bottles and jelly babies, he nods and pats the boy on the head.

  ‘You can do anything you want. You can do every . . .’ the child collapses to the ground in a heap, ‘...thing.’ Hampstead opens his drawer and adds another collectable. He reaches for his shovel and digs in as Madeline purrs.

  He is close. He can see it brightening in his mind as the sky fades. For the whole day he has tasted his question. But the questions still lingers as his shovel slews back and forth. Madeline slips into sleep again, but she doesn’t understand; she’s just a cat, leave me alone. Please. The shovel sprains off of a tree root and vibrates down Hampstead’s arm. He cracks its spine either side of the middle and the vegetable matter splinters,

  ‘You wait there.’ Hampstead throws the root onto the grass and Madeline starts out of a lucid slumber where cotton balls and tumble weeds crowd a market of fish and wingless birds. Madeline stretches with the shadows that have drawn out across the yard. She stands and wanders back inside to the warmth.

  Hampstead can see through the mist; it is becoming clearer. Clearer than the fuzz of soft white noise that lingered this morning. The beautiful day is slowly retreating westward across the continent, but Hampstead still has a small way to go.

  He is close.

  He throws his weight behind his shovel and the dirt seems to slither with ease out of the earth and onto the grass. The sweat on his body disappears with the quietening light. The rooster says goodnight to the day. But Hampstead doesn’t hear a sound. The dirt clods methodically onto his pile and he smiles as he strokes the earth, uncovering a familiar treasure.

  ‘Hey.’ The tired, familiar face in the hole smiles.

  ‘Hi,’ Hampstead responds shyly. Hampstead lays the shovel the length of the hole and brushes away the dirt from the body. In the dying light of the evening Hampstead can see the bright colours of the body’s shirt, a coconut tree, a lady with a grass skirt. He helps the figure to his feet and embraces him in both arms.

  Hampstead closes his eyes and he sees a ‘Sold’ sign flitter across his mind. He sees a woman in tight shorts smiling and she plants a row of azaleas. He smells red wine and tastes a kiss. A door closes behind a woman and then another in his face. Hampstead sees an old man sitting in a chair by the beach savouring the aromatic flavours. Hampstead pushes a lawn mower, answers the phone, it is his mother. The azaleas wither as he waters them from an empty watering can.

  ‘You are almost there. Can you see it?’ The figure asks within Hampstead arms.

  Hampstead opens his eyes and nods gingerly, a tear rolls down his cheek and the figure collapses into a petite pile of muck. Hampstead reaches for the shovel, squares the edges and empties the pit of loose, wet dirt. He inspects its depth and width and is satisfied.

  ‘Huh. I see . . .yes there it is. Yes.’ Hampstead lies down and sleepily closes his eyes.