Читать книгу Kendra - Jane Keehn - Страница 7

Pink fairy floss on sticks hid people’s faces from Kendra as she unpacked her tackle box.

Small angular shells and sea urchins strung onto fishing wire clanking into bits of glass, that had softened from crashing waves hung from broken twigs and driftwood.

She removed other found-objects from the box that were cleverly tied into earrings and necklaces. Kendra hung them from a low hanging tree branch then untied her display of sea shells and metal objects on a shawl over the ground.

Her grey opal eyes flashed towards people walking past but hesitated at eye-contact. She hung her sea urchin wind chimes so that they made delicate music in the breeze and draped pairs of shelled hook and sinker earrings over a black fabric backdrop.

Her own ears showed off a pair with broken Heart Cockle shells. Around her neck was a heavy gold chain with a scrimshaw tooth – the one thing she hadn’t made herself; someone in her tribe had made it and her mothers had passed it down to her.

Leaning against a small limestone retaining wall she propped her crutches against the garden rocks. A clink of coins turned people's heads as she scraped the small change from her tackle box into the pocket of her jeans.

Her black t-shirt had a cartoon video game character on its front and hung loosely over her hips. Kendra shuffled her old boots against each other hoping that no one would notice they were two slightly different designs and mismatched sizes...one found on a rubbish pile under the jetty at Meg's Cove, the other on the road leading to Green Wood - forgotten, lost, not missed by their old owners.

Three teenagers sidled up to look at the trinkets on the shawl.

- How much are those earrings?

One of them, wearing black denim pointed to the smallest pair on Kendra's display.

- Usually ten dollars but you can have those for five tonight.

Her friend in a ruffled cotton tube top giggled while the trio looked through their combined spending money for the night.

- Sure. Here you are.

She handed over some gold coins.

Kendra watched them laugh as they skipped away, pleased with their unusual purchase. She clutched the coins before locking them in a compartment in the tackle box.

Her eyes scanned the pathways along the stalls and tables. She quickly sold a wind chime to a grey haired woman just before two blokes in yellow polo shirts began visiting each stall.

It was market security checking for permits, so she folded up her cloth, carrying her art works and jewellery like a sack and quickly ripped the wind chime from the branch.

Dangling from one hand, the tackle box clanked against the crutches Kendra shuffled into the holiday crowd to avoid any confrontation. Kendra dragged her feet through the sandy embankment, prodding her crutches sinking into the earth as she made her way to the esplanade’s car park. Walking by the food stalls, a deep-fried smoke from battered sausages on sticks stung her eyes and she wondered why anyone would want to eat something called a Dagwood Dog.

She followed the footpath trail away from the vendor’s generators catching her boots on some broken glass. Her orange plastic tackle box banged against her crutches’ poles, scattering a handful of seagulls as they swooped for a skerrick of discarded food. Dodging children with ice-creams Kendra found an empty faded bus seat near the corner hotel.

Singing, music, laughing, shouting came out the hotel’s windows to where she sat. Blurred faces showed through the window blinds, smiling and yelling into a microphone. Kendra tilted her head and focused through the crack in the light.

A kind of gentle wailing blew through the air like smoke, reaching her ears, in their night mode. The sound of a voice running alongside music and trying to keep up with it. It made Kendra smile. It made her skin tingle with warmth in the night air.

The woman singing had messy dark hair that brushed over her laughing blue eyes as she enjoyed the attention of the drinking crowd. There was something familiar about her determined smile and the way she narrowed her gaze when she looked at the woman singing with her. Kendra’s smile faded. She breathed in as she leaned forward for a clearer view.

It was the granddaughter. The one who’d nearly caught up with her in the kayak. Meg’s granddaughter with the brown dog and her note book always in her pocket - charting, searching, scribbling, looking for something. Kendra inched closer to the pub and found a perch on a bicycle stand outside the main entrance.

The sliding doors were open to let the cool sea breeze inside the hotel. The music was louder now.

“Across the sea...my destiny...two souls together worlds apart.”

The dark haired girl was trying her hardest to sing without laughing while a woman wearing dark purple stared at her from another microphone attempting to remember the words.

The music swelled and they groaned a final long note into the night air. Creeping closer together in time with the music the two women ended the song with an awkward embrace and a light quick kiss. Kendra felt her skin flush as the two women kissed again as they walked off the stage and the audience hooted and whistled their approval.

Kendra’s mothers knew of Emily as a child and they knew her curious nature and love for her grandmother’s legend would bring her close to their family one day. Emily and her companion with the purple dress and a streak of purple hair sat and gulped some beer. Their arms intertwined when they sat close to one another and they allowed their fingers to link and caress under the table.

Kendra once again felt her face grow hot and she smiled. She could see Emily’s finger running along the purple girl’s knee, stroking it gently and quietly and secretly. She smiled, remembering similar gestures of affection and passion that her mothers had for one another.

Her Mothers feared that Emily or someone like her would one day get too close to their cabin or their survival cave. They knew Emily would be curious about the legend surrounding her grandmother and the Mandalay wreck. They knew she would want to know more – more than she could ever imagine. And the closer Emily came, the further away Kendra knew she would have to go, but Kendra enjoyed something in the way Emily’s eyes sparkled at the girl sitting opposite her.

Something in the way her hand hovered too close to the other’s - the way her other hand ran softly over her dog’s head and ears. There was a gentleness in Emily’s strong hands.

Kendra couldn’t look away in time and Emily’s face turned towards her. Their sightlines collided into one another for an instant.

Kendra turned away, so Emily could only see the back scoop of her blue grey hair.

Emily smiled at her. She thought it was someone she knew from work. But no.

She didn’t know anyone who walked with crutches.

Kendra grabbed up the shawl and her trinkets. A lone beer bottle was propped in the hotel’s garden bed. She flung it with a light clunk into her tackle box along with her hand-made wares. Soon she was limping along the path towards the Fun Fair, through the market car park towards the beach. Bottles and glasses clinked, their sounds fading with every stride Kendra made towards the shore, drowned out by the whizzing of the rides, the wooden demolition of the knock ‘ems and the electric zap of the Dodge ‘Em cars.

She kept her head down focused on the ground beneath her walking sticks. People got out of her way. The stronger muscles in her arms kept her moving along at a rapid pace, keeping her weak legs and feet lightly scraping over the ground as the crutches balanced her body’s weight. Kendra shuffled down the driveway to the fence of the aquarium.

Carefully positioning her crutches to avoid the potholes cratering in to the worn and aged bitumen. Distant laughter and music from the Fair faded as she staggered further away and the banging and scraping sounds of skateboards riding and falling over the old pools in the Aquarium finally drowned other sounds.

The hard concrete walls of the old entrance crept up on her and with them, and unexpected threesome of skateboarders appeared from behind the broken turnstiles.

- Hey watch out, Spaz.

Kendra stopped in her tracks.

- This is our park!

Kendra clutched at the poles in her hands and remained silent.

- What’s the matter with you?

Kendra slowly backed away from the gang.

- Nothing....

One of the boys loomed in front of her.

- You better watch where you’re going….

Slamming his skateboard across the rusted turnstile shattering the sound of the wrought iron into the night air.

- You’re not going in there.

Kendra poked a crutch closer to the entrance.

- I’m just taking a short cut home.

He grabbed his skateboard and stood in Kendra’s path.

- No way, Girl! You stay here.

Kendra lifted one of her poles into the air in defiance.

The balance of her body’s weight fell onto her other arm and crutch, her tackle box dangling from her hand. She positioned the tip at the chest of the ringleader skater.

- I just want to get home.

As the skater started answering, she suddenly flung the tackle box into the air over the iron entrance into the empty wading pool.

The teenagers couldn’t help but watch where the box might land, jumping slightly at the crash of its landing.

While their gaze was diverted, Kendra quickly lowered the crutch, shifted her weight onto it and took a quick angle to her left, away from the skaters.

She used the crutches like limbs, speeding over the uneven surface of the gravel lane, clambering swiftly into the darkness of the beach’s edge.

Her legs dangled between the poles, swinging behind her as her body deftly navigated the scrub, away from the menace of the skater boys.

The way she would take longer to reach the shoreline on the opposite gateway to the aquarium but Kendra could retrieve her tackle box later, even if the skaters had found it and stolen the small amount of cash she had stored in it from her street market sales.

The crutches dug into the dirt and sand. Kendra’s vision faded in the dark away from the carpark lights but as her retina expanded extra light refracted from the moon’s reflection on the waves, illuminating the coastline in front of her.

The cliff track winding down to the derelict aquarium made itself clear to her new night vision and she raced towards it with a beating heart.