Puk
11-09-06, 09:17 AM
I wrote this short story earlier in the year for a laugh.
I am going to put the first two chapters up today, then 1 more every day for a week. (There are eight chapters)
Read along if you are interested,
Puk.
HIGHLANDS OF THE HEART
1.
Dale had been coming back here every year for as long as he could remember. First with his dad when he couldn’t draw enough of a bow to swat a fly with. Then he came alone as he grew, after his father hung up his bow, was confined to a wheelchair in their home at the base of the mountains and eventually lost all of his old stories to the haze of Alzheimer’s disease. The end when it came for him was a blessed relief.
Now he brought his own son, partly from tradition, partly for his old man, and partly to spend some time with his boy away from the rush of the world and the schools that teach boys by making them write things down. He recalls that he didn’t learn well that way when he was a boy. He was born to run, born to learn by doing, by smelling the musky soil, the crisp sweetness of the earth after rain. He remembers the joy of it all when he was a boy, learning to love his land and this Australian mountain country, to love the animals that ran here. He watches his boy now with pride swelling his chest, as he sees him turn and take in the virgin bush-land.
Ryan seems to be drinking in the atmosphere, absorbing the bush through his skin by osmosis, until the look on his face tells his father that all his senses are overloaded.
Ryan can tell that it is pointless trying to explain everything that he is feeling, smelling, seeing, hearing. At school, he is “just a kid”, gangly, not the best student, he feels kind-of “caged”. But out here, well, he feels like he belongs out here.
Dale can tell that finally his son has stopped categorising his world, trying to make sense of it, and has surrendered to simply becoming a part of it. He has become one with the bush. His senses are sharpening. He is listening, smelling, tasting the bush like a bloodhound picking up a trail. He is finding that thing inside him which Dale hoped was there. Something that harks back to the cavemen, with their spears and stones. He is ready, finally ready. He is ready to hunt.
2.
“You see that deer sign, mate?”
“yeah Dad, you thought I had missed it, didn’t you? One doe with a good stag following her. Not one of the giant reds you and Granddad used to tell me hid in these mountains, but he wouldn’t be too bad. Should we head up the mountain and glass for a while? Might even see The Ghost!” He said with a cheeky grin back at his Father.
“Smart-arse kid” Dale thought to himself. He had tried to explain to his son about the other reason that he kept coming back to the mountains behind their ancestral home, but Ryan had looked at him like he was telling a fishing story.
The Ghost. He was real! He had seen him once last year and a few times before that and Dale was determined to take him before something or someone else did. They only let a few mates bow-hunt these hills, and didn’t allow rifles, but you never can tell these days. That and the fact that The Ghost only got smarter every year meant that he had to get him soon or he might miss his chance. ‘Well…’ Dale thought to himself with a wry smile. ‘Maybe he will get that smart that no hunter will ever take him, myself included. Kind of seems right in a way, that a majestic phantom of the bush like him should die of old age peacefully. It would be better than what happened to the old stag that had to have been his Father. Boy, had he heard that story a thousand times…..
Ryan broke into his ponderings with an urgent hand signal which Dale caught out of the corner of his eye, and his answer was one raised eyebrow, which from a man that never said much was enough to ask “What is it, son”?
Ryan cupped a hand to his ear and this time Dale heard it: a distant roar, answered and then answered a second time. There were some stags about, but still a good distance. Not “The Ghost” (he could tell by the roar) but not bad, and definitely worth checking out. Cursing himself for being so deep in his thoughts that he had failed to hear it, the older man thought to himself that if he was ever going to be able to teach his son anything, he had better get his game face on. “My boy is ready to hunt, am I?
“The Ghost” wasn’t just a name that described the way the massive stag moved through the bush like a wraith, silent and ethereal. It was also a name that described something that lived deep within Dale, something he had never even told Ryan about. That deer haunted him. Every time he thought about it, which was often, it left him with the memory of his Father, a man he had loved and respected. He wanted to take the descendant of the stag that had escaped his Dad. To do it for him. For dad. To finish the story. To lay that ghost to rest.
to be continued......
Puk
I am going to put the first two chapters up today, then 1 more every day for a week. (There are eight chapters)
Read along if you are interested,
Puk.
HIGHLANDS OF THE HEART
1.
Dale had been coming back here every year for as long as he could remember. First with his dad when he couldn’t draw enough of a bow to swat a fly with. Then he came alone as he grew, after his father hung up his bow, was confined to a wheelchair in their home at the base of the mountains and eventually lost all of his old stories to the haze of Alzheimer’s disease. The end when it came for him was a blessed relief.
Now he brought his own son, partly from tradition, partly for his old man, and partly to spend some time with his boy away from the rush of the world and the schools that teach boys by making them write things down. He recalls that he didn’t learn well that way when he was a boy. He was born to run, born to learn by doing, by smelling the musky soil, the crisp sweetness of the earth after rain. He remembers the joy of it all when he was a boy, learning to love his land and this Australian mountain country, to love the animals that ran here. He watches his boy now with pride swelling his chest, as he sees him turn and take in the virgin bush-land.
Ryan seems to be drinking in the atmosphere, absorbing the bush through his skin by osmosis, until the look on his face tells his father that all his senses are overloaded.
Ryan can tell that it is pointless trying to explain everything that he is feeling, smelling, seeing, hearing. At school, he is “just a kid”, gangly, not the best student, he feels kind-of “caged”. But out here, well, he feels like he belongs out here.
Dale can tell that finally his son has stopped categorising his world, trying to make sense of it, and has surrendered to simply becoming a part of it. He has become one with the bush. His senses are sharpening. He is listening, smelling, tasting the bush like a bloodhound picking up a trail. He is finding that thing inside him which Dale hoped was there. Something that harks back to the cavemen, with their spears and stones. He is ready, finally ready. He is ready to hunt.
2.
“You see that deer sign, mate?”
“yeah Dad, you thought I had missed it, didn’t you? One doe with a good stag following her. Not one of the giant reds you and Granddad used to tell me hid in these mountains, but he wouldn’t be too bad. Should we head up the mountain and glass for a while? Might even see The Ghost!” He said with a cheeky grin back at his Father.
“Smart-arse kid” Dale thought to himself. He had tried to explain to his son about the other reason that he kept coming back to the mountains behind their ancestral home, but Ryan had looked at him like he was telling a fishing story.
The Ghost. He was real! He had seen him once last year and a few times before that and Dale was determined to take him before something or someone else did. They only let a few mates bow-hunt these hills, and didn’t allow rifles, but you never can tell these days. That and the fact that The Ghost only got smarter every year meant that he had to get him soon or he might miss his chance. ‘Well…’ Dale thought to himself with a wry smile. ‘Maybe he will get that smart that no hunter will ever take him, myself included. Kind of seems right in a way, that a majestic phantom of the bush like him should die of old age peacefully. It would be better than what happened to the old stag that had to have been his Father. Boy, had he heard that story a thousand times…..
Ryan broke into his ponderings with an urgent hand signal which Dale caught out of the corner of his eye, and his answer was one raised eyebrow, which from a man that never said much was enough to ask “What is it, son”?
Ryan cupped a hand to his ear and this time Dale heard it: a distant roar, answered and then answered a second time. There were some stags about, but still a good distance. Not “The Ghost” (he could tell by the roar) but not bad, and definitely worth checking out. Cursing himself for being so deep in his thoughts that he had failed to hear it, the older man thought to himself that if he was ever going to be able to teach his son anything, he had better get his game face on. “My boy is ready to hunt, am I?
“The Ghost” wasn’t just a name that described the way the massive stag moved through the bush like a wraith, silent and ethereal. It was also a name that described something that lived deep within Dale, something he had never even told Ryan about. That deer haunted him. Every time he thought about it, which was often, it left him with the memory of his Father, a man he had loved and respected. He wanted to take the descendant of the stag that had escaped his Dad. To do it for him. For dad. To finish the story. To lay that ghost to rest.
to be continued......
Puk