Helen McClory
Chrysanthemums
The shack on the hillside has been left with the solar porch light on. Miguel is grateful as
he makes his way towards it. The rocks catch at his unsteady feet, and often he almost falls.
Around him, thorny brush, snakes and spiders in their shallow dens. Maybe they should bite
him, get him done with. But the tiny light is always ahead of him in the blue murk.
The shack was his grandfather’s, a base built for specking gold. Miguel will make it there
for dawn. Collapse onto a board bed, sleep until midday. There’s a well at the back that will
have water for months. He can trap rabbits, he’s bringing a guidebook to know what plants, if
any, are good to eat – he can live. But there isn’t much consolation in all of this. Not now that
he’s killed two people.
Miguel turns to look back down at the flatland where he has come from. The turgid river
runs cleaned up by the moonlight. The few buildings of the shopping strip stand out, the
string of lights mark the railway station. Is anyone down there awake to know he’s fled? He
rubs grit from his eye and moves on, scrambling, stumbling, cursing softly. The only kind of
prayer he’s allowed.
It started because he drew real things, instead of things that had come from his imagination. It started because early that summer his neighbour Rose gave him pencils, pad, and the
Leica, and he decided he’d take pictures of trees on the edge of the garden, where the river
ran. He wasted a whole roll; close-ups of the bark, the way the sun came through branches late in the day. All of the trees then up and died. Overnight. His family said it was the
drought, the worst in a hundred years. And Miguel believed it. But the river, as thick and
scummy as it was, still brought water to the banks.