“Don’t hit shit,” was the advice his first supervisor had given him. He remembered it now as he drove his 53ft truck with 102,000 live Chinook salmon in the tanker. He was transporting them from a hatchery in the north of the state to the Imnaha River, where they were listed as a threatened species. He didn’t know much about it, other than what the hatchery man had told him. He said you could always tell a hatchery fish from their overdeveloped left fin – something about how they always swam around the tank clockwise. Upon hearing this, he’d pulled out his left arm and shown the hatchery man his trucker tan. They’d both laughed.

He kept his eye on the rain-hazed road. As a child, he’d been here for summer camp, dozing in his mother’s car on the way home, sunstroked and nettle-stung. It was as he remembered. The Douglas firs striped the roadside, woodland sprawling for who knew how many miles?

He was from a small town. He believed in God, but didn’t subscribe to a religion. His favourite drug was cannabis and he preferred to smoke alone. He was the son of a farmer, but had only spent his early years on the farm, moving away with his mother when he was nine. Sometimes he remembered the dead pile; where the farmhands dumped stillborn lambs. He’d had only one girlfriend: Helen. Towards the end, she’d begged him to let her in and so he’d sent her his favourite videos on alien conspiracies. Now, he rented an apartment just outside Pendleton, which was less a home and more a mailing address with a microwave. He called his mother once a month, always expecting something revelatory: a confession, or acknowledgement of the past. Instead, they spoke about her lawn, the turf war with her neighbours, the squirrels who ransacked her birdfeeder.

He’d been driving for two hours, had been awake for thirty. The coffee he’d bought at a roadside stop was cold in its paper cup. He’d told the barista about his trip to the Imnaha River, and she’d looked at him with something like admiration. Then she’d shown him the ichthus tattooed on her wrist and said that Jesus gives each of us a single quest in life, and it is our task to recognise it. It was only when he’d returned to the truck that he saw she’d drawn another ichthus on his cup, beside his name: wrongly spelled.

As he turned a wide corner, he touched the rim of the coffee cup and began unfurling the paper. He thought of the fish swimming clockwise in his tanker. He’d never paid much attention in Sunday school, but knew that several of the apostles were fishermen, and that Jesus had fed the five thousand with fish. He decided he would say a prayer.

“Dear Lord,” he said under his breath. “Help me deliver these fish to where they’re supposed to be.”

Suddenly embarrassed to be asking for help, he picked up the cup and crushed it, rolled down the window, threw it out. It skittered in the tyre backwash of rain and grit. He sniffed, looked up at the rear-view mirror, saw the cup flying away and tried not to think the thoughts which came regardless: he pushed people away; he always gave up too soon.

To distract himself he turned on the radio, glanced up again at the mirror, saw only the wet empty road. The voice on the radio was the voice of God. He couldn’t have explained how he knew, but he was certain. It was something about its profound ordinariness. It said something he immediately forgot, but which would lie dormant in him for many years until the time was right and it emerged again, blinding and euphoric. God’s voice disappeared, and he heard only a low, repeated whooshing like a foetus in ultrasound. His knuckles were white on the wheel. He listened to the noise until he could hear all the little variations in each parabola of sound. There were strange oscillations. He heard his mother’s frantic yelping laugh, the one which always followed some sort of tragic statement or critique. The laugh she believed softened whatever she’d said before. He heard the vibrations of his ringing phone, the voice of Helen, subdued on the answerphone, asking what she’d done wrong. He listened until these sounds emulsified into one thing, the true sound: the Chinook salmon swimming clockwise. He swerved as a grey Volvo came around the corner, veering into his lane. There was no time to curse at the driver, only enough to steady the truck, to accelerate out of the skid and onto the upcoming stretch of straight road. When the truck was right again, he switched off the radio.

The barista had been pretty. He should have asked her name. Last month, a Buddhist at a gas pump advised him: “Every day, start one conversation with a stranger,” then they’d talked for ten minutes about how through interaction we experience becoming.

“I like your tattoo,” he said to no one.

He downshifted as the road began to climb.

“I don’t have any, but I want one. I just haven’t found something I want on me forever.”

The rain lessened and cracks of blue came through the clouds.

“What time do you finish by the way?”

The road flattened and ran along a ridge.

“Yeah, that’s just what I was going to ask. I guess you’d want to do something other than coffee?”

He saw a river running parallel to the ridge. It wasn’t the Imnaha – he’d not driven even half of the way.

“Ice cream it is. I’ll come find you after your shift.”

He looked at the river, wondered what it was named. How could you name something that was always changing? What was it you were naming?

The corner was tight and he didn’t see it. He pulled the wheel, knew there was no manoeuvre that could save what was now inevitable. The seatbelt cut into him. Rolling onto the passenger side, the truck skidded and sparked along the pavement, tumbling over a rocky embankment and falling on its roof.

When he came to, he was upside down and his ears were ringing. He unfastened his seatbelt and crashed down, scrambled out of the truck and fell, shivering, among slippery bodies. Looking up, he saw how the tanker had burst open and released, in a silver spray, the 102,000 live Chinook salmon. They flopped down the bank and into the river, the name of which he didn’t know.

He helped as many as he could find their way to the water before he needed to sit down. He climbed halfway up the embankment and sat with his head in his hands. He wasn’t sure what would happen next.

An approaching car slowed, parked. It was a little red fiat with an ichthus sticker on the bumper.

He looked down at the moving water and spoke to himself. “Well,’ he said, “here we are.”

My Novel

Euan walks down to Camasunary Bay. His pack sways like a lazy metronome, he treads in time. The path is etched with land veins that weave from a high loch, down to the sea. Day sets down its instruments and there is a pause, a tuning, before the night begins its movement. Euan strides through the interval, through the unfurling wind, towards the bay. The sea ebbs in his skin like a blood-bruise. Not far now.

He looks down at the bay, bordered by mountains that circle like wary dogs, spines arched and pale. There is a structure; an ink smear on the land that wavers in the salt-mist. He knows it from his childhood. Bothy-hopping, his father called it; wandering across the country, sleeping in these abandoned places at the edge of the world. Growing up, he and his family had stayed in so many. Now, he is returning to them, one by one. This is the last.

The land flattens as the dark moon opens like a seal’s eye. The bothy coils from the ink smear, a quiet sentinel looking out to sea. The ground is boggy, and Euan feels the grey mud seep through his boots and wet his socks as he treads on. Ahead, the door comes into view. A memory: he and his sister racing to be the first inside. Natasha. He sees her now, bolting ahead, silhouette shrinking. She bursts inside and closes the door behind her. She is singing a song to tease him. He hears her now, as he rests his grimed hand on the doorlatch. He throws open the door.

No one there. Two empty rooms yawn at him, one with a table, another with a raised platform for sleeping. He slings off his pack and lays it on the table, taking out his stove. He boils some pasta, and in the amber stove light, watches through the window as the waves blur the shoreline. There is a thrust of shattered stone that wends out into the sea; a finger of land seeking another.

He rubs his eyes, tired from the long walk. Standing, he gazes around the bothy and sees a glimmer in the corner. A metal box. Paint flakes from it, and in the dark wells, rust bristles like mould. There is no lock. Anyone may stay in a bothy; there is no knowing who could have left it. Wreathed in the flickering stove light, Euan approaches the box and kneels. He puts out a hand and rests it on the lid, feeling the warped and cracking paint, cold against his palm. A memory surfaces like a drowned body rising, bloated, to the surface. He inhales sharply, opens the box.

Chocolate bars. Tea bags. Biscuits. Supplies left by kind wanderers. Euan smiles, then closes his eyes and stands. There is a rule: if you take something, you leave something behind. So far, Euan has taken nothing. He comes and goes like a shadow. He shuts the lid, and returns to his stove.

As he eats his pasta, he hears the wind murmur from over the sea, hears the sob of water over sand, hears the door open.

He straightens. “Hello?”

The stove is out, and the only light is a silver streak from the window. The doorway is in darkness.

“Cold,” says the stranger. They step into the room, and in the window light, a sea- glow rimes their skin. A man, older than Euan, wearing a long coat. He lowers his hood and moves to the table, sitting beside Euan to remove his boots. His greying hair hangs in lank strands. After he kicks off his boots, he offers a hand to Euan. “Nick,” he says.

“Euan.”

They shake.

“Colder than a well-digger’s arse,” says Nick.

Euan laughs.

“Dram?” Nick reaches into his coat and produces a flask.

“What is it?”

Nick drinks from the flask and sighs, “Good stuff.” He plants the flask on the table and runs his hands through his hair. In profile, he has a hooked nose, a chin like a crescent moon, and heavy-lidded eyes. His skin is wind burnished, red.

Euan takes the flask and offers his bowl of pasta in return.

They eat and drink in silence, before Euan asks, “Where you from?”

Nick wipes his mouth. “North.” He reaches into his pocket and takes out a red

woollen cap, pulling it down over his brow. “Glencoe,” says Euan.

Nick smiles and sets the bowl down on the table with a clank. He takes the flask from Euan and stands, wandering to the window and looking out at the shore. “Did you see all the debris across the bay? Bottles, glass, rope and such.” He drinks from the flask and sighs. “It just washes up here. Beautiful sometimes. When the light hits it right. Like a broken mosaic.”

“Hadn’t thought of it like that.”

Nick drinks again and tosses the flask to Euan.

Euan catches it and grins. “My father said sharing a drink with a stranger is a sacred

thing.”

“Aye,” says Nick. “We must look out for each other. There’s a code.”

Euan feels warmth radiate through his limbs. He takes off his coat and tucks his hands

into his pockets. “Travelling light?” he says. Nick raises his eyebrows.

“You’ve no pack.”

“Got everything in my coat,” says Nick. He turns back to the bay and watches the water. “Here, let’s have a story.”

Euan leans back, smiling at the giddy sensation. He says, “Part of the code, eh? Getting pished and telling stories.”

“Tell us what brings you here.” Nick’s breath fogs the window. The light drifts through in cloudy wraiths.

Euan is quiet. The memory surfaces again.

Nick rubs his woollen cap and says, “Eh, no worries.” He clears his throat, then walks over to the metal box in the corner, taking out a pack of biscuits. He opens them and eats like a starving man. He punctuates with a mighty burp, walks to the windowsill, takes out a piece of bone from his pocket. It is whittled into the shape of a small dragon. He places it on the windowsill and meets Euan’s eye.

Euan does not know what to make of the man, but there is a sense of knowing between them. A complicity. He likes him. For a while, they talk in the way men do, at the edge of the world; time’s eye strays from them and words become weightless. Above the bay, the stars fall into place like cast runes. The men laugh and drink, until Nick says, “Now, what about that story?”

Euan considers, then sighs and leans forward across the table, facing Nick. “I’ll tell it, if you want to know.”

“I do.”

“Well I’ll trade you. You tell yours after.” “I will.”

Euan nods. “Okay then.”

#

She was waiting to be picked up after school. She had stayed late for art club. I remember she told me the teacher kept making them paint apples, but she was bored of that, so she painted giraffes instead. She wouldn’t stop going on about giraffes. She wanted one as a pet. She was funny, my sister.

It was winter, and she was wrapped up in her green down jacket. Her hair would pool in the hood. By the time Dad remembered he needed to pick her up, it was dark. The streetlamps were on... I keep asking myself why he forgot. Maybe it was the change of schedule; her staying late for art club? He was a single dad, so he always seemed stretched. When he finally realised, it must have been around six, seven. It was only him in the house. I was out.

Dad got in the car and drove. On the road, he tried to phone the school, but no one answered. At a set of traffic lights, he checked if Natasha had sent him any texts. She hadn’t. He tried to phone her, but it went straight through to voicemail. She must have been out of battery. Why else wouldn’t she pick up?

He sped down the narrow road that led to the school, telling himself she’d be there waiting. Maybe a teacher was with her? The country lanes were winding and dark, but rarely used at that time. He went faster. She would be waiting. He pictured her, standing by the school gates, nose reddened by the cold, her straw-yellow hair turned grey by the dusk. She would be waiting.

He pulled up to the school gates. No one there. The gates were locked. The lights in the classrooms were all out. He got out the car and searched.

“Natasha!”

Nothing. Only the roosting of rooks and the echo of her name. He waited for three minutes. He got back in the car and phoned a friend whose child went to the same school,

asked if they had seen Natasha leave with anyone else. They said no. They asked if everything was okay. He hung up on them.

He drove around the school, searching the darkness. Figures of lurching men formed from the branches of trees and the shadows under streetlamps. He drove back, scouring the roadside, window lowered, calling her name. How long had she waited for him? Had she been scared?

Recently, another child had gone missing. A boy. He’d not been from Natasha’s school, but everyone knew. They found his gloves in the forest.

He decided he’d drive home and grab a torch so he could search the wood around the school; sometimes Natasha would get lost in thought and go walking. He would call me and ask me to search with him. Driving on, he pulled out his phone. He came to a corner and slammed on the brakes, skidding on the fog-damp road. He drove his foot down on the accelerator and drove away, finding my number, tapping the dial button, bringing it to his ear. It rang.

My voice coming through. “Dad?”

His eyes rolled back to the road. Too late to do anything. On impact, he flew forward, hit his head on the wheel.

Blood misted the air around the car.

He blinked, and saw that green down jacket lying twisted on the road.

#

Nick is quiet. He lays both hands down on the table.

Euan sniffs and rubs his nose roughly with a sleeve. “To lose someone... in that way... God.”

“Almost funny.” Euan lies back on the bench beside the table.

“You told the story like you were there.”

Euan snorts.

Nick rubs his woollen cap. “That’s why you’re walking?”

Euan crosses his legs and folds his hands behind his head. It’s all the reply he gives. Nick takes up the flask and drains it. He screws the top back on and places it

delicately in the centre of the table. The tide fills their silence with its slow pulse.

“So,” says Euan, “Why don’t you tell me?”

“Tell you what?”

Euan sits up. “You come here alone, won’t say where you’re from, and you’ve no

pack. What business you have out here?”

Nick’s eyes drift up from the table and meet Euan’s. He licks his lips, and then slowly

smiles. His teeth are like those of an old comb. “We’re bold when we’re drunk, eh?” “Only fair. I told you my story.”

“How will you know I’m not lying?”

“I’ll know.”

Nick scoffs. He rises from the table and wanders around the room for a while. Eventually, he settles by the window, picks up the bone carving and holds it in the moonlight. In that moment, his face begins to drip with water, his clothes are sodden, barnacles rise up through his skin, and the scent of festering seaweed is thick.

Euan blinks, and Nick is back to normal. He wonders what was in the flask. He rubs the bridge of his nose and tries to calm his hammering heart.

The carving shimmers.

“You take something, you leave something behind,” Nick says. “Who... are you?”

Nick tosses the carving and catches it in a heavy fist. “There’s a code. Who knows when the rules were made? But they’re there, and should be followed.”

Euan stares at the man, the sting of seaweed still in his nose. His limbs feel heavy, his head light. Nick’s eyes glitter like sunken coins. He speaks.

#

What makes a person wander? Two reasons. The first is that they are searching for something. The second is that they found it already, and don’t like the answer. My father called it the tread-song. Sometimes a man would pass through our village with that far-away look in his eye, and my father would say to me, “You see that one, he’s lost in the tread- song.” When I saw someone like that, I always thought how lonely they must be. But they weren’t alone. They had their tread-song. I know that now.

It was a man like this that came to stay at my father’s inn. He had with him a daughter. Georgie. They arrived one night, paid for a room, and when the morning came, the man was gone. We found Georgie, alone, weeping. My brother and I peered from behind our father’s back as he took up Georgie in his arms and held her until she quieted. We didn’t know why her father left. We never knew. Our Pa told Georgie that it would all be okay. He would care for her. My brother and I said nothing, we only stared up at the sallow faced girl, amazed.

Years passed, and Georgie almost forgot about her father, lost to the tread-song. She grew tall, keen eyed and quick – she had to keep me and my brother at bay. He and I did what brothers do; we squabbled over her, showboating and fawning, scrapping in the dirt while she laughed. I’d always lose the fights and my brother would stand triumphant over me, and then sulk, when Georgie came to my side.

That was the pattern of our days until my brother grew tired. He moved away to the city and left me and Georgie alone. We cared for my father as he died, and grief brought us closer. It was natural, the way we fell together, like an answer to a question that had lain dormant in us.

We looked after the inn, as my father lay dying, and our roots drove deeper. My brother returned and stayed at the inn, while we arranged the funeral. After Dad was buried, he stayed a little longer, helping us with the business, telling tales about where he’d been over the years. He was exciting to listen to; he made you want to run away with him.

No surprise Georgie fell for him. When I found them together, I felt every root I had planted in that earth torn up. Seeing them... I had a choice. Hurt my brother, or leave and seek the tread-song.

I set out, walking until every sinew in me howled. Then, I came to this place. To Camasunary Bay. I lay down on that thrust of rock, just out there. I let the salt-waves lap at my ankles and the seaweed tickle my toes. I fell asleep there, and when I woke, there was a man beside me.

He was an ordinary man. Older than I. A gruff way about him. I told him my story, and he told me his. He said he had come to the bay by boat, and that he was done with it now. He was ready to return home.

After a long time talking, he asked if I wanted his boat. He said it had served him well and would me too. He gestured down the bay and there it was, rocking slowly against the shore. An old barnacled thing, but stout. I took his offer. Sailed out that morning.

As I left the shore, I saw him walking, surefooted, out of the bay.

#

Euan staggers to his feet.

“If you want it, it’s yours,” says Nick. He gestures out to the thrust of rock.

Euan moves beside Nick. He looks through the window, out at the bay, and sees the

boat. It juts from the thrust like an old stone. “...Where would I go?”

“Where it takes you.”

Euan turns to face Nick. The old man’s breath is cold, like wind through a sea-cave. Euan feels it on his cheek. He shivers. Nick is gazing at him, eyes narrowed, as if he were following a skimmed stone. A moment of quiet.

“I would not have judged you, had you told the truth,” says Nick.

Euan feels something rise in him like the need to cough. There is heat behind his eyes. He blinks back tears. “What do you mean?”

Nick steps closer, puts a hand on Euan’s shoulder.

The sea stills, the light fades, and there is only the memory of his sister’s broken body through the shattered windscreen. His hands still on the wheel, shaking.

Euan finds himself in the arms of Nick. He weeps into the man’s shoulder, smells the sea.

Nick says nothing. There is nothing to be said.

By now, the stars are fading, being gathered up one by one, to be cast again. There is a moonlight road stretching from the horizon to the shore. It is singing.

A silent agreement is made. Nick takes up Euan’s pack, shoulders it and walks to the door.

Euan puts on his coat, and follows Nick out, bracing himself against the cold. They share a look, then part.

Euan walks along the thrust, to the boat. He closes his eyes, and listens to the song.

            Listen for a drumming woodpecker. The noise will stir you to action. Rise like a weary marionette and, as your vertebrae snicker back into place, stand for a full minute, letting your equilibrium adjust. Take this time to visualise your destination. This is something only you will know. But, for the sake of example, let’s say it’s the ruined paper mill where she kissed you for the first time.

            Take a step. Be prepared for an overwhelming sense of dread. You will feel hungover in an existential way. Try your best to accept that feeling and realise it’s perfectly normal. If you can’t accept it, take a step anyway. It will help. Carry on; wander through the goosegrass and thistle, let the thorns snag at your bloodless legs. Remember where you’re headed.

            If you see another like you (and they will all be like you) act civilly. Smile, because your teeth will still be there – don’t wave, because your hand may not. They will be just as confused. They may ask for help. If you can spare a minute, try to soothe them, but know you can only do so much. If they’re inconsolable, kiss them lightly on the head and lay them back down. Let them gaze at the sky’s dark hide, and the stars cast across it like runes of pale bone.

            Find the riverbank. Tread alongside the water; drift, with the algae, downstream. Hear the pigeons gathering on the fence and see the jagged silhouette of the housing estate beyond. Remember it was here she called you small-minded for never trying baklava. Remember the conversation you had about silkworms, Chinese satellites, and reality TV. Remember how she illustrated everything with her hands. Watch out for tripping hazards. If a limb drops off, let it go. Don’t sulk.

            As the river narrows and you see, in the distance, the ruined paper mill where she kissed you for the first time, notice the dread fade. Follow the water as it churns down a chalky stair and hear it laugh. If you can, laugh with it. Though, try not to think about breathing.

            When you reach the paper mill and feel the torn cobbles under your mud-clad feet, slow. Stagger to the wall where you sat, she in her sundress, you in your jeans which made your bum look nice. Be mindful of the roots of the nearby willow, binding the ruin, cracking the time-worn stone. Sit on the wall. Smile. Remember the taste of baklava.

And, when you finally fall, try to land face up, so you can see the clouds passing, the moon shining, etcetera.

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“Okay,” I replied, sliding under the covers.

She nestled beside me, shuffling about, making happy murmurs.

Wavering on sleep’s edge, I held her, eventually kissing her lightly and turning away. As I teetered into dream, I felt her feet climb up my legs, over my bum, and press lightly into my lower back.    

            Under the covers, her body coiled like a question mark, and when locked with mine, became a new glyph. Perhaps it seems strange, but to us it was the most natural thing in the world – sole to spine. A question posed and answered.

            The next morning, she said she’d not slept so well in years. It was as if her feet had been roving, searching for a back to settle against. I told her my usual lumbar pain didn’t feel so bad. Her feet had done what my expensive Norwegian chair could not. She said she’d never been so happy to be compared to a chair.

            She was a long-distance runner, and would get itchy if she remained in the same spot too long. There was a constant movement to her. She joked her restless legs were a way of training while asleep. When we first met, it seemed to me there was a music only she could hear: she would tap her feet in time, or bob her head. The tread-song, we called it. Sometimes I’d catch her staring out the window, bouncing her knee up and down, and ask “Is the tread song singing?”

            I was content to be still, as most writers are. Being with her, I became a stave, over which she’d paint her notes.

            After a year of sleeping in the same bed, feet to back, a silence spread through her. She became withdrawn, as if by delving into herself, she might find the song’s source, fan it back to life. One evening she approached me as I sat at my desk, writing. She laid her hands on my shoulders, kissed my head, and spoke quietly. “I can’t hear it anymore.”

            There was a long pause, as we listened in hope, both knowing it was gone.

            “Okay,” I said. “I understand.”

            The next morning, I woke with a sore back. She’d risen early, as she always did, but this time, she’d made breakfast and left it in the kitchen with a note. I didn’t need to read it.

            As I ate cold bacon, my lower back ached with a phantom tail. It was as if the bones were parting, drifting, searching. Perhaps everyone has some part of them that’s searching; a bone, calling to another, somewhere on Earth. As if a creator mixed up two parts from separate assemblies.

            She’s running long distance again, sending pictures of her medals as she wins them.

            I’m writing again, sitting at my desk every day, trying to keep good posture, failing.

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The hand lay on the shore like a pale anemone. He knew it. He’d felt those fingertips against his cheek, traced the lines of that palm.

In disbelief, he ran.

In the morning, standing on his cliff and gazing into the violent water, he pared meanings from patterns in the waves. But these were not answers.

The meanings evaporated when, descending into the bay, he saw two arms, sinuous as eels in the sand. Now, he went to them, brushed grit from her skin, which came away like gold leaf.

Atop the cliff he tried to recall his meanings, mouth groping for forgotten words. Beneath him, trails of white foam searched like hungry tongues among fissures in the dark cliffs. And there, salt-sodden and silver, her torso, lying in the bay.

Throughout the night, he waited by the tide, plucking her parts from the spume. He assembled her tenderly, cooing to himself as the wind rolled over the treeless island. When she was whole, he left her, as he had before.

Sorry, he said.

From his cliff, he searched the horizon, heard nothing.

But below, in the bay, the wind caught in her throat, and knotted itself into the shape of an answer. She spoke it to the sand.

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            What are they doing? she asks, breaking her silence. We watch the dark one move its mouth as the little one palpates it.

            Seems dead, she says, looking back to the path, moving on without me.

As we look for a place to pitch the tent, she calls me over, points to a blackened snarl of sinew. I pick it up by its leg. We joke it’s cursed, but when I place it back, I lay it on a tall stone. It must have dried out in the sun, she says. Mummified frog. We bow to it, laugh uneasily, pitch on the far side.

In the night I hear them croaking. They migrate inland, lurching along the shoreline. I lie there, listening, as silhouettes move across the membrane of the tent wall.

            Let’s watch, I say, touching her.

            She lies there, cocooned, mouth moving in her sleep.

            I unzip the tent, see them scudding up from the still water. Some are fused together; one clasping the back of another in a desperate kind of love.

In the morning we return in silence, stop when we find the splayed frogs again. The little one remains, its kneading slower. Its body is pressed against the dark one, so they are almost the same.

.