BETWEEN FOUR JUNCTIONS

Charlie Groombridge

The Truth

The boy ran, and the ghost followed. The moon low in the sky, silhouetting the shape of him and his follower, couldn’t penetrate the maze of streets below, which lay shrouded in darkness. The boy slipped down a telegraph pole and the ghost leapt after him. His sandals slapped on the dusty floor while the tin bucket clanged against the brick wall.

An engine noise approached, piercing the peace and the ghost showed its master into a doorway. The Toyota Hilux rolled past, its side littered with numbers. ‘Police,’ thought the boy. If he was caught within curfew, he would end up like his brother, dead. He shivered and bent down to touch his goat ghost, which was trying to get into the bucket, failing however to nick the salmon. He continued with his dark brown eyes, straining to see in front of him. He ducked under the woven cover and felt his body being heated by the blazing fire that roared in front of him. His mother smiled at him with that wonky, crooked smile and broken teeth. “Joseph,” she muttered, and her stool creaked as she stood up to embrace him. He collapsed into her arms as she gently ruffled his jet black hair and softly sang in Zulu about the love of life and the need to enjoy life. Joseph thought to himself how rare it was to enjoy life under white rule, but then these moments were what he loved and his ghost was lying around his feet, his heart beat slowed from running. He sat on the floor.

The tin bucket hung on the wall, precariously dangling over the dancing flames fuelled by The Rand Daily Mail, an edition from the 12 of May 1986 which he’d found the other day, down by the bins. While the salmon grilled, he looked at his mother pondering whether to tell her his discovery, but he decided against it and left the worn photo in his pocket. The woven cover was lifted by a stuffy breeze which sat on the skin like a flannel. Rays of morning light shimmered through and suddenly stopped as the cover came down again.

The salmon was okay, Joseph thought later as he gazed aimlessly at the dying embers of the flames. He glanced at his mother, who was looking at him with a soft smile of happiness. He got up and hugged his mother, kissing her on the forehead. He mumbled something about finding the news and so he came out of his house and turned right, with his ghost following him.

As soon as he had turned off their street he ran, holding the photo he’d taken from his pocket, which was worn, damp and torn half-way down on the right. His brother’s face was still clear in his mind, and his image was enhanced in his head by the photo of him from two weeks before in his hand. Robin Island. That was his destination. And so, to a fanfare of horns in Johannesburg, the boy went to find his brother Nelson.

Devin Birse Atom Heart Soldier

Once he remembered them all, every single one of them. He remembered their faces, their hobbies, their friends, their families. He remembered them because no one else wanted to. He remembered the war, the crack of gunfire, the crash of missiles, the cries of his men as they pushed on past the rivers of blood, mountains of corpses. The cries of the wildlife as their world was suddenly burnt to a crisp.

The day, the date, the time all still in his head. He remembered that day. They’d ordered him and his men on a search and destroy mission; they called it a brief jaunt through the moon’s bloodstained lakes to a village down the stream. Hard to forget a day like that. Hard to forget the shouts and screams of his own men. The shockwave of explosives tearing asunder his unprepared men. The sudden artillery strike from a crater 22 miles away. That’s when the memory stops.

He remembers the surgeons and the room. His legs replaced with machines. His once beating heart now an atomic core. There he stayed for weeks on end, adjusting to what he’d become, what they’d transformed him into. They called him a patriot, a symbol of a newer bolder age. They treated him like an overbearing mother treated her gifted child. Once they were done they sent him out to the frontline again; again he fought till his body fell apart; again they fixed him.

Each battle he remembered less and less. Each repair more and more was changed. He no longer heard the gunshots as they ricocheted off his helmet. He was no longer shaken by the crash of explosives. He no longer bothered to learn his men’s names. The land was to him a distraction from his orders, his men but shields, the planet but clay to be shaped by his empire’s Herculean hands.

Twenty weeks later the war ended. As they returned home the crippled and broken were forgotten while those still intact were paraded. The press called him a hero, an atomic soldier who’d won the war. He was paraded from colony to colony, a wonder of what the boys back home could do. A symbol to show the power and light of his homeland. Little more than a mascot for the war effort. To the people he became a legend, a stoic Homeric hero to be