Winner of the Cardiff Writers' Circle Short Story Competition 2022
Katherine Wheeler
It's hot. There's a stickiness to the air - half sweet, half threat - and the boys have come to join their fathers in the bone yard.
It is this time of the year that the boys age up from play fighting and class scuffles of their schools and take on a trade. There are many new apprentices who are donning their work coats and trowels for the first time.
It is easy to forget that construction is a job. It is mindless. It repeats layer upon layer. The mortar is mixed with sand and water, spooned onto the edge of a trowel and the mixture patted into an even paste, upon which the long bones will be placed. Many of the men stay until retirement, the grind of the day is something they can teach their hands. The callouses equalling trophies of their great and worthy work.
Everard's son is not used to the heat of the day and hides from the sky underneath his father's coat. Like the other boys, it is his first day. His clothes are ill-fitting, the cuffs hang past his fingertips and his boots slide loosely around his feet. He and his father have the job of hauling the bones from the stocks and placing them on top of the mortar. Everard's son will lay the corners, his father, the connecting walls.
"A corner piece is the most important of the house," says his father. "For those, each part must be angled just so. It is the biggest job of them all."
The boy is given a piece to feel, to see how it weighs in his hands. It's light, easy enough to balance on the crux of a finger but weighty enough to shatter. The sweat on his palms is enough to slick the white until it shines against his skin. With it is a sensation, he feels it spinning around his head and ears. There's sickness in there, a sweet heady dancing of his thoughts.
He hands it back to his father, the surface leaving a white coating on his palms. The boy looks down at his arm, grabs around the flesh and to the harder tissue underneath. It is a straight line.
"How is it curvy?"
His father doesn't answer.
"I can bend sticks easy," the boy offers. "These are so powdery and weird."
"If you put it on right the first time, you won't have to adjust it. It dries fast. Look, I'll show you." The man scoops a trowel into the mortar and spreads a thick layer onto the bone. "Like this."
He places it down and the wall grows an inch higher.
".and then you do it again?"
"Again and again. Until you have a house."
When the day is over, Everard's son walks along the docks. The sun hangs sharp orange fingers onto the horizon, its rays spread across the water. It is still hot outside; the scorching heat of a spring day burns the air. It is easier to breathe than earlier but the warmth still plants an ache in his throat.
He has never been this way before; it is a path reserved for only a few. It is usually empty, the ships along the water often deserted. Now he is learning a trade, he can walk where he is allowed. When the boy had peered in before, he had seen farmers, brandishing new tools and heavy bags behind them.
He walks for a while, counting ripples in the water, when the path stops. There is the left turn and a right - leading to the hay market and to the sea. The boy turns around, doubles back down the dockside path. He's gone too far to turn off so he follows the path beside the water's edge.
There's a ferry boat cruising past a small distance away. The boy squints at it. The captain is missing from the cab but there is a thin trail of steam from the funnel atop it. He stops, pausing until the boat passes the gleam of the sun, and looks again. The boat is large, the same brown as the waveless water. There's a square platform at the back populated by a group of silent figures. Some are lying on their sides, knees splayed out, folded into wordless L shapes. The others are bent, like they are caught in a bow. A few are walking from side to side, fingertips grazing and skimming the floor. They scutter wordlessly, unconscious of Everard's son, a few mad eyes darting to spots on the water.
He watches the boat cruise out of sight. The sun is nearly down and the water a drastic orange. When he walks here again, he'll watch out for the boat and the bent-double people.
Everard's son walks the path home and drinks the soup his mother gives him.
The next day is hotter than the first. It aches to move but the men in the bone yard stamp across the yard like tanks. The boy has been tasked with carrying the finer bones whilst his father does the heavy lifting. It is nothing-work, the kind he's already done in the schoolyard, but the ache of the daytime pierces through him. It is too hot. Too oppressive a day for being out in the open air. He slumps back against a heap of rubble and tips his head back.
One of the men screams from across the yard. The boy scrambles upright, scurrying to attention before the man seizes his arm.
"Keep moving, boy! For God's sake!" the man shouts. "Were you slouching?"
The boy squints at the question. A drop of sweat falls to the corner of this mouth and trickles down like spit. He looks around, his father is nowhere to be seen.
"Answer me!"
He looks back, up and then nods. "It's too hot. To work, sir."
"You will not slouch in the heat. Tomorrow you will carry the big bones."
The boy nods again. He will have to swallow the heat and keep moving.
When the day is over, he walks home along the docks to see the flat boat again but the water is empty and brown.
The third day it thunders. The yard is showered with tropical rain which hammers hard enough to pick the sand from the ground. The boy finds himself dragging his feet through puddles, the relative coolness of the water easing his scorched toes. He manages a steady pace, trying some of the bigger bones with less mortar this time. The walls of the house are getting bigger and for every side built up, there is another corner-piece to set. He handles two over the course of the day. The pieces are ridged, but set hard into right angles, like they would curl if they could. He remembers his father's instructions - a little mortar spread along the underside of the piece, laid down and left until set, you must measure the angle or the piece will go to waste.
"Well done," says one of the older men. "You learn fast. Too fast." He laughs, but the sound is tinged with a hollowness. A few of the other men join in, voices absent.
Everard's son thinks of the boat and its passengers. They hadn't noticed him, though the waterside was otherwise deserted. The boy wonders if they had been taking a ferry or ducking for a low bridge. Perhaps divers readying themselves for harbour swimming.
On the fourth day, he finishes a side by himself, sneaking a moment to rest out of sight where he can. The men make examples of themselves whilst he's looking: shoulders back, heads poised and knees bent when they lift. His father too, with a tight smile.
The fifth and sixth days go much the same, the walls building higher and higher until the men are working on ladders.
Everard's son notices his father sitting as they climb, basking in the shade of the workmen's cabin. He is not slouching. Is that why the men are not shouting? He has a drink too, the bluest liquid the boy has ever seen. His father looks peaceful, something he has rarely seen, his eyes lazily drooping open and closed. When the day ends, his father remains, a lazy smile on his face and the drink drained.
He walks home along the docks again. It's as hot as it was the first day he arrived, the sun distorting the brown water as it peeks over the horizon. He's halfway home when he notices that he's not alone.
Up ahead, there's a team of haulers perched on the water's edge. They look rough and weather worn. Some are smoking long pipes, others cramming large wads of bread into their mouths. A flat ferry boat bobs up and down beside them, tethered to the shore, the very same he had seen before. This time, there are large tubs of blue fluid strapped to the back, strung tightly with binding ropes and plastered with foreign looking labels.
As he approaches, one of the haulers looks up and flashes him a weary smile. "A landlubber!"
The boy stops, smiles, opens his mouth and then closes it again. A few of the other men glance round to where he is standing, their jaws grinding on bread and tobacco. "Are you the ferrymen?" he asks.
"We do any an' all sorts," says the man. "We're waitin' up. Special delivery. They're closin' up dock soon, so we can get out safe an' all that."
The...
