Chapter 7
Tuesday
The three of them; in their underwear, long lithe legs stretched this way and that, two and a half pairs of run-ready limbs in a lattice across the lounge area of Flora’s House the next day.
Drew, sitting on the floor with his back to the wall, gazing at nothing.
He often looked gormless in such moments; he was anything but.
It was his default; staring at walls, out of windows, at bits of fluff, looking at the things no one else could see.
Initially, it frustrated the heck out of his classmates and professors alike until people deduced it was simply the way Drew’s brain worked and what a brain.
Top of his classes in everything yet every top mark appearing to surprise him.
Drew, the dorky daydream guy. Here he was now, looking like he possessed just the two brain cells, both hard at work playing an appalling game of ping pong and preoccupying him entirely.
Taylor looked up from his sprawl on the sofa where he had one long leg slung along the back of it whist the other lolled over the seat cushions.
He noticed how Drew’s fingers, mouth, leg, would twitch occasionally, as if some synapse was sending a brainiac charge through his body.
Taylor made much of aiming carefully before launching a crust of toast at him.
‘Did you just throw this at me?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Cool!’ And Drew munched on it quite happily.
Drew was naturally slim and always a little pale; he never went to the gym, overslept most days, hadn’t really learned to shave properly, didn’t bother to watch what he ate, got drunk a little too often, smoked anyone’s weed that was going – and yet those legs and lungs which he took for granted could carry him 26.
2 miles with ease, with balletic style, with minimal preparation; poetry in motion.
Drew always smiled when he ran, he possessed an inward, soul-deep connection with the pace and it brought him profound joy.
Taylor loved him dearly. Enough to chuck him his last scrap of cold toast from breakfast.
JB wrenched his t-shirt off. He was seated in the armchair, now just in his boxers and nothing else, his bad leg up high, coddled by a nest of cushions plus a pillow from upstairs.
There was a pack of frozen peas in a tea towel across his ankle, while his good foot performed an irritated fast jig at the floor.
‘Can we turn that thing down? Does it go any lower?’
They stared at the peats burning in the grate.
Taylor had built a hearty fire first thing when, despite the sunshine outside, the cottage had felt cold.
For a small fireplace it was now belting out heat.
They threw ideas into the room. Water. Sand.
Open the windows. Cold peat. Wet blanket.
Drew leant right over and looked up the chimney, his face roasting while he told the others it would just have to burn itself down, like a fever, like a bad mood.
It was nearing midday now and Taylor was desperate for fresh air, a brisk walk; to move, to do something.
That was his family’s way; up with the lark and out there soon after for a hike, a bike ride, a run, the walk to school, to the stores, to the river for a swim, to Breckenridge to ski.
Greet the day and stay fresh and energised until nightfall.
Being active was a simple daily habit, it was second nature.
Still being indoors five hours after waking, currently being cooked alive by clods of burning earth, was not natural to Taylor, it was stifling.
But they couldn’t leave JB. That just wasn’t fair, that’s not what bros do, not even when one of them was in a foul mood with the other two becoming his verbal punch bag.
‘What the hell is that tee-shirt anyway?’ JB grumbled at Taylor who’d carefully stepped over his elevated leg in the most direct if challenging route to open a closed window.
Taylor looked down at his chest. The logo was of a cartoon eagle and bear in a canoe and the words Greetings from Arladuke Falls in a large, happy font. He shrugged. ‘My Dad gave it to me.’
‘Your Dad? You’re wearing some random piece of crap your Dad gave you?’
‘Yep.’
‘Fucksake man! Where the hell is Arladuke Falls anyways?’
‘It’s fictitious,’ Drew, with his eyes closed, said evenly.
‘Yeah right – so you know every river everywhere to be able to declare this shit one fake?’
Drew opened one eye briefly. ‘Well, I’m pretty sure it’s made up.’
Nothing ruffled Drew, certainly not JB’s mood which he calculated in a millisecond to be entirely justified.
Taylor was grateful for Drew just then. Actually, he liked the tee-shirt his Dad had mailed to him at college; it was that heavy washed cotton in a wrung-out sage green and the eagle and the bear were in a canoe which was nonsense and cute all at once.
In his self-effacing way, Drew tutted and frowned at himself and googled Arladuke Falls all the same. Fancy that, he mused to himself as if it had been a lucky guess all along. There really is no Arladuke Falls, JB!
‘Can I get you—anyone—something? Coffee?’ Taylor wanted done with this topic.
‘You going to boil it up in the kettle?!’ Drew asked.
‘That’s coming straight off our deposit,’ JB growled.
‘I’ll pay it,’ Taylor snapped and he went over to the kitchen area and made the coffee his way.
He glanced over at the other two. JB was gingerly lifting the peas off his ankle.
They were no longer frozen. Good job the bag was unopened, the room smelled ripe enough with their overheated bodies as it was.
Even from the kitchenette, Taylor could see the purple and the blue creeping across JB’s foot and up his leg and he knew that somewhere, beneath the misshapen mound of flesh, his friend’s ankle lay damaged.
‘Man!’ Drew winced at the sight of it.
JB’s mood changed again. Now he just looked devastated.
Taylor placed the mugs of coffee on the side table.
‘Dude,’ he said and he paused, laid his hand cautiously on JB’s shoulder, gave it a squeeze. ‘I’m really sorry, man. It totally sucks. What can we do?’
‘We don’t have to run,’ Drew shrugged as if it had been just an impromptu idea anyway.
‘We could go to Edinboro—Edinburgh—early?’
‘Maybe you want to go back to the health hub?’
‘Or book a scan somewhere on the mainland?’
‘Did you call your Dad. Oh wait – the time difference.’
‘We could go to the hotel? See if they have rooms?’
‘Or just go hole up in the whisky bar – that’s good medicine right there.’
‘A dram of anaesthesia. Dramaesthesia.’
‘You know, we don’t have to be here on Harris at all.’
‘In Harris,’ Taylor corrected. The other two looked at him. ‘You say in Harris’ he said quietly. ‘So I’m told.’
‘Well, we don’t have to be here – we can leave.’
‘You know what I want?’ JB said, his voice now softened by exhaustion. ‘Candy.’ He looked at his friends. ‘And chips. Chocolate. Crap like that. Beer.’
‘You mean Drew’s marathon nutrition plan?!’ Taylor said.
‘I’m not running,’ JB said.
Both Drew and Taylor took an instinctive beat.
‘Hey, you don’t know that.’
‘A little more ice and rest?’
‘Guys - I’m not running. And I just want to eat junk and drink beer, okay?’
And for JB, to lift his mouth into a smile, however small, required as much effort as lifting his leg up and off the cushions because that woollen tweed one? There was an itchy thread on it somewhere and it was starting to drive him mad.
Drew and Taylor shut the front door behind them and stood awhile just breathing in the day.
Taylor beckoned with a tilt of his head as he walked off through the dunes.
There was a strong wind today but after the overheated fug of the cottage, it was welcome.
At the crest, they stopped. Taylor felt a strange sense of ownership, as if the view was his discovery, and he was gratified by Drew’s wonderment.
All this, right here? Taylor might bang on about being in not on Harris but it struck Drew that, from the ferry to the bar, and then the cars, the tweed shop and the cottage, he’d only been inside the island.
Here, now, with the wind flashing blades of silver through the grasses and flicking tiny shards of sand at his legs, all he could say was wow – wow!
Taylor gazed across the water to the island beyond; the sea was choppy and the surf today sounded irritable. ‘That island is called Taransay and these days it is uninhabited.’ He glanced at Drew. ‘It’s in the guide book,’ he said.
‘You think we can swim across? I see a beach right over there – look!’ Drew pointed across the water.
And Taylor thought, my genius friend the idiot. ‘You don’t see the miles of sand right here in front of you?’ he laughed. ‘And to the left filling that bay, and all the way over there, running the length of the coast?’
‘Oh yeah!’
‘You’re such a—’
‘—yeah I know it! But I’d like to swim it all the same. This feels so good, just being out.’
‘I’m exhausted from sitting indoors.’
‘I’m exhausted from no sleep – you snuffle and mutter all through the night, man.’
‘I do not.’
‘You do so.’
They’d shared the tiny twin room last night so that JB could have the double bed to himself.
In the two small single beds, they’d messaged each other on their phones for hours.
In between spurts of sharing stupider and stupider reels, they’d whatsapped earnestly, working through scenarios, dwelling on the tragedy of it all for JB, wondering what they could do, what would be for the best, how they could support him.
It had been late when they put their phones down.
And later still when, finally, Drew fell asleep after what had felt like hours listening to Taylor’s weird puppy noises.
‘Let’s go get JB his candy,’ Drew said, still gazing out at Taransay.
‘I’ll show you the route for Friday – it’s on the way. Hey – do you want to drive?’
‘Nope – these are your roads, this is your island.’