The Journey (3 page)

T
hat evening Argus was caught in a violent thunderstorm that frightened him. He was soaked through. It did not last long, but at its climax a tree on a slight rise on the other side of the river was struck by lightning and exploded with a booming crash. The world was reduced to nothing but noise. Argus knew he was probably not going to be frizzled by a stray bolt, but it was exciting to realise that it was a possibility. He enjoyed the storm while being terrified by it and wishing it would end. When the thunder and lightning finally moved away, across the plains, a heavy downpour of rain completed the drenching of the shivering boy, who by this stage was huddled under a fallen tree. He waited until the showers too had ended and nothing was left of the storm but an unspectacular drizzle; then he set out across the fields for some trees that he guessed concealed and sheltered some buildings.

It was a long and uncomfortable walk but his guess proved to be correct: the trees hid a farm, a large white house, a spread of outbuildings and yards. The house was too grand for Argus, who felt that he was probably a miserable sight in his bedraggled clothes. And there were wet strands of hair plastered across his forehead.

He picked out a large low building on the edge of the complex and slipped over towards it. The smells and scuffling noises emanating from it suggested to him that it was the stables. Argus entered the building quickly and quietly, but there were no people there. The horses, most of whom were eating from feed-bins, paid him no attention. Argus, however, was astounded by their number. He had never seen so many horses in one place in his life. He walked down the central aisle of the building, examining them more closely. They were fine-looking creatures, obviously well-tended, though Argus, a farmer's son, thought rather contemptuously that they would not be good for more than an hour's hard work at a time. He was accustomed to the sturdier, less glamorous mountain ponies.

But the building was dry and warm and the presence of the horses gave it a homely feeling. Argus found an empty stall and stripped off his clothing, then leant over into the adjacent pen and grabbed an old towel that was hanging there, which had obviously been used to rub down the animals. The occupant of the stall, a restless-looking, beautifully-contoured young stallion, tossed his head and glared at the boy.

‘Don't worry,' said Argus, grinning to himself, ‘I won't be bending over in front of you.' The stallion pranced a little, then went back to his food. Argus began to dry himself, wondering if he had ever experienced anything so good as the feeling of the rough, worn towel on his damp body. He felt the blood sing under his skin once more. He completed the job by drying his hair, not knowing or caring that he was making it stick up like the hay under his feet. He put the towel back on its nail and stood looking down at himself, taking pleasure in the evidence of the long-awaited growth that his body was now indisputably experiencing. He had never been taught about sex in his life, but his years on the farm left him in no doubt or confusion about what was happening to him. He looked at the stallion again. ‘Not up to your standards, maybe,' he said to the horse, who had now lost interest in him, ‘but good enough for me.'

He began to finger himself curiously; the object of his interest, already stimulated by the attention he had been paying it, quickly rose to full arousal. Argus continued to touch it, lightly and smoothly, as irresistible feelings grew in him and his hand moved more urgently. There was no gainsaying the feelings: Argus realised that he would be compelled to go on until his body gave him permission to stop. The pleasure was becoming so great as to be almost frightening, and it was obvious to the boy that this time, unlike his earlier immature adventurings, there would be a definite climax, not just the inconclusive excitement he had enjoyed in the past. He continued to stroke himself, fascinated by the growing thickness and coarseness of his organ, by its darkening colour, until at last the inevitable happened, and he was grabbing at himself and at the unbearably stiff thing that had temporarily become the centre and focus of his life, and which was now convulsively shooting jets of thin liquid across the hay.

For a few moments Argus stood in the stall, bent over, exhausted by the intensity of the experience. Yet he was pleased and proud too, and aware that it was an experience that he would repeat — and perhaps he could enhance it too, he thought, as he imagined a girl's hand doing to him what he had just done to himself. That idea caused him so much turmoil that he had to place it aside; instead he watched with interest the steady detumescence of his penis. He realised that something else had changed: the desire that would plague him for hours in the past had suddenly become a finite thing and had disappeared with the ejaculation of the fluid from his body.

He dressed slowly and walked back down the centre aisle to the store-room that housed the huge feed-bins for the horses. There he made himself a gruel of oats and barley, a meal that he was pleased to flavour with carrots and apples from trays that stood beside the bins. But his greatest delight came when he found a supply of sugar cubes. Starved of sugar since leaving home, he added handfuls of it to his gruel until it was a sweet and syrupy concoction.

Up until then Argus had been acting with complete disregard for the possibility that someone might come into the stables, but after finishing his meal he decided that it was time to take a little care. He eventually settled in a row of unoccupied stalls at the back of the building, choosing the second last one as his bed for the night. He knew from his experience at home that hay was not comfortable unless a good covering was available, so he used his own blanket as well as a couple of horse rugs from the tack-room. Sometime quite late into the night he heard voices and could see a reflection of a moving light dancing along the ceiling: another horse was being brought in and stabled, after a journey perhaps, but the activity was well away from Argus' corner and the boy soon went back to sleep.

F
or the first time on his journey Argus found that he was never out of sight of buildings and, by inference, people. He was constantly passing cottages, guesthouses and farmhouses. Occasionally he went by a cluster of buildings that could be called a hamlet. He enjoyed the evidence of increasing life that was all around him; he gazed curiously at each new sight and approached each bend in the road with anticipation. There were new problems for him — mainly the difficulty of finding places to sleep — but there were compensations too, particularly the plentiful food supplies. Many of the fields he passed were given over to market gardens, and after dark these provided him with a varied diet.

He worked for a few days in an orchard, picking oranges for a married couple who spoke neither to each other nor to him. Their moroseness did not bother Argus, but the work did. It was hot and boring and dirty. As he flicked each orange towards him to be picked, the accumulated layer of dirt on top of the fruit flew into his face; by the end of each day he was spectacularly black. Still, the food was good, and he supplemented the meals by eating huge numbers of oranges, despite the obvious irritation this caused his employers. After four days they told him they would not be needing him any more. As there were still plenty of oranges to be picked, he could only assume that they were not satisfied with his work. Certainly he had been quite slow, but he swung his pack onto his back and set off again without great concern. He did, however, take a dozen oranges with him; they weighed a lot but the refreshment they gave was sweet and nourishing.

As he walked on he quickened his pace, knowing from signs on the road, and from conversations with other travellers, that he was closing in on the large town of Ifeka. The curiosity and excitement that had been sparking in him for a long time now burned steadily. He had never seen a town bigger than Random. Now he was walking past rows of houses that were close together. Children played in their gardens, and there were footpaths made of gravel beside well-defined roads. Sometimes stretches of countryside broke up the clusters of houses, but gradually these became less and less frequent. He slept that night in a haystack, guessing that it could be his last such bed for quite a time. Next morning he was off early, after an oddly mixed breakfast of carrots and oranges.

The traffic became quite heavy and Argus had to adjust his pace occasionally when held up behind family groups or older people. He did not mind but was surprised to find that for the first time on his journey people were not meeting his eye and smiling or exchanging friendly words. He passed a man working in his flower garden. Argus gave him a cordial greeting and stopped to chat, as was the custom in his own valley, but the man ignored him and kept stolidly pulling up weeds. Argus, disconcerted, did not know what to do. He waited for a long, embarrassed moment and finally went on his way, but his cheeks burned for a long time at the insult.

Around lunchtime Argus noticed crowds of people and a number of large tents on a rather poorly maintained common a few hundred yards from the road. Filled with curiosity he went over and mingled with the crowd. It appeared that he had stumbled across some kind of fair, or travelling show. There were food stalls, games, a dance troupe, storytellers, and displays of various oddities, some of them animate and some definitely inanimate. The latter included a collection of carvings made from human bones, and a rock said to have come from the moon. The animate were not so easily visible: there were pictures of them outside a tent but to see them in the flesh, one had to pay. They were supposed to include a two-headed woman, a fat lady, a human skeleton and a person who was half man-half woman. Argus could not pay his money quickly enough, and, heart fluttering with excitement, he went in.

The inside of the tent was shadowy and it took his eyes a few moments to adjust. The exhibits were arranged in a circle of small booths. Other spectators were walking around examining the displays and at each booth there was a low murmur of conversation. Argus went across to the nearest stand and found himself gazing into the eyes of a man of incredible thinness, who was seated on a stool and looking at the spectators. He wore a long tall top hat, and it, like the rest of his strange garb, was striped in orange and green, colours which accentuated his remarkable shape. Argus felt he could have joined his thumb and forefinger around the man's arms or legs, without any trouble at all. He was reminded of a praying mantis, and giggled at the thought, then blushed at his rudeness. There were people beside him who were not so sensitive, however.

‘Hey mister,' a girl called out, ‘can I take you home? We need a new scarecrow.' The crowd tittered but the man continued to look blandly into their faces. ‘Guess he's heard every line before,' Argus thought, moving on to the next stall. There was a bigger crowd here, watching what Argus supposed was the two-headed woman. In fact the two-headed woman was two girls who were joined at the stomach. They were seated half facing each other, in the only possible position they could have adopted, and were playing cards, ignoring their fascinated audience. Occasionally one would speak to the other but only in monosyllables, and only to comment on the card game. Argus, not as self-conscious here as he had been with the living skeleton, whose direct gaze he had found disconcerting, stayed a long time, until one of the girls, in the middle of shuffling the cards, looked at him with a casual grin and said, ‘Hiya honey, you live round here?'

Argus gulped and shook his head, then found his tongue and said, ‘No, in the Random valley.'

‘Well, that's quite a way off,' the girl said, and Argus warmed to her as someone among all these strangers who appeared to know his home district. The other girl, however, gave him a sour glance and picked up her cards without a comment.

Argus waited a while but the twins said nothing more to him, so he moved on. The fat lady, astoundingly fat, wobbling all over every time she moved or laughed, was deep in conversation with one of the spectators, while she knitted a long scarf. Argus listened to them talking; it was mainly about the fair. It seemed to be a nomadic life, travelling to another town every week or two, always on the road. The longer the fat lady talked, the more ordinary she seemed to Argus, just like some of the women from Random. The boy left her and crossed to another booth, this time the half man-half woman display.

Here was a person who was groomed and dressed as though split down the middle. One half was male: a short haircut, a moustache, men's clothing. But all that ceased at the dividing line: the moustache was only half a moustache, the clothing specially designed. The hair on the female side was long and decorated with beads. The group gazing at this person was the biggest and quietest group of all. Argus stood at the side and watched with them, fascinated but anxious to avoid notice. There was something frightening yet compelling about the quiet figure who was looking out into the distance, over the heads of the crowd. Argus shivered and walked away. In front of him, as he left the tent, was a group of young people. They were subdued until they got out into the bright sunshine but then they broke into an uproar of speculation and jokes about the hermaphroditic figure they had left behind.

Argus bought some stuffed capsicums for lunch then wandered among the various shows and games. He sat on the grass and listened to a balladeer with a piano accordion, who was singing a melancholy song about a shipwreck. Finally growing bored with the entertainment, he strolled a little further afield, into what was clearly the living area for the members of the travelling fair. It was a quiet part of the common, spread with caravans and tents; few people, apart from toddlers, were to be seen.

Outside one caravan, however, was a man with a brown beard, who was tying pieces of fishing line together. Around him, all over the ground, was a scatter of bits and pieces of fishing equipment. As Argus approached, the man said, with barely a glance at him, ‘Here, give me a hand will you. Put your thumb there, while I tie this.'

‘What kind of knot are you tying?' asked Argus, obliging but rather sceptical about the ugly lump the man was producing in his line.

‘I don't know,' the man said with a laugh. ‘I don't know much about fishing and I don't know much about knots. This is my grandfather's stuff. No-one's used it since he died, so I thought I'd better have a go at it.'

‘I think you should be using a blood knot,' said Argus with authority.

The man looked up at him, this time with real interest. ‘Well, go right ahead' he said, promptly handing the whole mess over to the boy.

Argus went to work, quickly tying the difficult knot to connect the first two thick pieces, but labouring somewhat as the pieces became thinner and his hands and eyes became tired. For the twenty minutes or so that it took Argus to do the job, the man watched quietly, helping where he could but generally proving too clumsy to be of real use.

‘You're a country boy, I'll be bound?' he asked Argus when the task was at last completed. ‘Yes,' Argus nodded, ‘from near Random.'

‘Yes, I thought so. These town boys have a different air about them. What are you doing in these parts?'

‘Oh, just wandering,' Argus said vaguely, still mindful that he was not supposed to discuss his quest.

‘Ah, I see,' the man said. ‘I'm sorry I asked. It's just that one forgets . . . the old customs. I guess your folk live in the traditional way. We've been travelling in the populated areas too long. Once there was a time when many a lad like you could be seen following his star across the countryside. Yes, and girls too. Guess it just became too dangerous for many.'

There was a pause while Argus digested all this. ‘What do you do with the fair?' he asked then.

‘I'm a storyteller,' the man replied.

Argus, who had a great love for stories, warmed to him immediately. ‘My name's Argus,' he said.

‘I'm Mayon,' the storyteller responded, and the two gravely shook hands. Knowing that the time would come when he would have to be a storyteller himself, seven times over, Argus wondered what he could learn from this man. The opportunity came unexpectedly when Mayon said, ‘Why don't you get a job here for a while?'

‘Could I?' Argus asked in surprise.

‘Oh yes, no great problem. They always prefer to take on country boys. And there's not a week goes by that someone doesn't leave; so if there's no vacancy today, there will be tomorrow, in a manner of speaking. These shows always attract drifters. Any strong lad with a practical mind and a good pair of hands can walk into a job here pretty easily. If you're interested I'll send you over to my brother's caravan. He's in charge of the stringers — they're the, you know, workers. The fellows who put the tents up and so on.'

Within twenty minutes, to Argus' great pleasure, he was hired as a stringer by Jud, Mayon's brother. He was given a bed and a cupboard in Mayon's caravan, and sent off on his first job — to pick up litter around the shows where he had so recently been an interested customer and spectator.

He worked on various odd jobs until well into the night, with only a brief break when he was invited to dip into Mayon's cooking pot and serve himself a generous helping of a concoction in which mushrooms, carrots, tomatoes and herbs figured prominently. He was grateful when he was at last free, at around midnight, and he could fall into bed and sleep. It was the first late night he had had since leaving home; and it was the noisiest and most crowded evening that he had ever spent. He had become used to nights spent in solitude under the stars, reviewing the day's events and thinking his own thoughts. But tonight sleep was upon him too quickly to allow for any conscious thinking.