A Red Unbroken Mile

Each Saturday the fires in the Connelly house raged.

Voices raised.

Doors slammed.

Plates smashed.

By evening the house fell into a tindered silence where every glance was a spark and little Jimmy Connelly, sensing new fires to come, fled to the land beneath his bed where it was safe.

It was a place more suited for monsters, but now populated by imagined friends.

He gave them names: Dust, and Grime, and Old Sock. They whispered to each other in the darkness.

“Let’s run away,” Dust said.

“Where to?” asked Grime.

Below, in the house, a spark caught, and the fires burned again.

“Anywhere but here!” said Old Sock.

Jimmy stared at the underside of his bed and conjured a blue sky and white clouds there.

“To the city in the clouds?” Dust said.

“How will we get there?” asked Grime.

“Train!” Jimmy said, without moving his lips.

“Trains don’t fly,” Old Sock said.

“Could,” Dust said.

“Might,” Grime added.

Jimmy shook his head. Old Sock was right; trains didn’t fly.

“Need something else,” Jimmy said, lips still sealed.

“Helicopter would be the best,” suggested Old Sock.

“Plane, better. The ones with the spinning bits on the front,” Grime said.

“Propellers,” Dust informed them all.

“A balloon!” Jimmy said, and closed his eyes, imagining his escape.

He flung himself into a basket and pulled the tongue that opened a mouth that burped blue fire into the balloon’s belly. He floated up, up, into the sky until the world was a map below.

Dust, and Grime, and Old Sock were there too, but new friends soon joined.

A passing stork stalled its delivery to perch and chat.

Three ducks flying south, turned frieze to say hello.

The moon, early to rise, smiled and—

In the house, the fires spread.

Jimmy clamped hands over both ears.

Flames licked their way up the stairs. Crackling.

Jimmy made a wish on stars not yet shooting.

The landing caught.

Jimmy curled himself into a full stop and imagined a balloon floating through the sky, where the ducks waved hello, the storks chatted, and the moon smiled a—

The flames knocked on his door.

#

At school he ate alone, a little, and in silence. Despite the summer heat, he wore long blue sleeves and long blue pants over the long blue bruises where the fires had burned his skin.

In classes he became transparent. On the playground the children avoided him like homework. Bullies sensed his defeat and let him be.

Jimmy watched clocks.

He watched the seconds on those clocks turn into minutes, turn into hours, turn into bombs. Three thirty was a lit fuse and two miles of wire between it and a waiting explosion.

Jimmy walked the wire every day.

First, he followed it through a half mile of quicksand, from the gates of the school to a corner shop. Then, a respite, as he reached the red, unbroken mile of sun-warmed brick wall that served as a divider between good houses and bad.

There, eyes closed, he flattened his hand on the warm brick, and in that trapped heat he found a mile of forgetting.

A mile of warm future.

A mile of calm.

But the mile always ended.

And the fuse was still lit.

Jimmy sprinted the last of the journey, until, at home, and panting, he’d pick the lock and cat-burgle his way up to his room.

But cats only had so many lives.

And young boys could only be quiet half of half the time.

#

“The Mariana Trench,” Dust suggested.

“North Pole,” Grime said.

“The South Pole,” said Old Sock.

In the shadows beneath the bed, Jimmy’s imagined friends imagined ways and places to put out fires.

“How do we send them there?” Jimmy asked, but there was no response in the dark, except his own. “Or maybe we don’t send them, maybe we…”

In the trail of the sentence, Jimmy found an if.

“If…” Jimmy mouthed.

“If?” Dust asked.

“If I can’t send them away, then…” Jimmy mouthed.

“Then?” asked Grime.

“Then maybe I can…”

“You can do what?” Old Sock said.

“If I can’t send them away, maybe I can leave?”

“To the Mariana Trench?” Dust asked.

“The North Pole?” Grime said.

“Surely not the South?” Old Sock added.

North, and South, and further south again were not places Jimmy wanted to be.

“How about a city?” Jimmy asked the dark beneath the bed.

“Which one?” Dust said.

“Too many too choose from,” Grime said.

“And all much the same. Too noisy. Too cramped. Not enough sky, if you ask me,” Old Sock added.

Jimmy ran his fingers across the wooden spine of the bed, playing it like a musical instrument, trying to strike the right note.

If not a city, then—

“The country?” he asked his imagined audience.

“On a farm?” Dust said.

“Or in a stable,” Grime added.

“No,” Old Sock said, “not noisy enough. Too big. And too much sky, if you ask me.”

If not the city or the country, where else was there?

Jimmy rummaged around in the few years of memories he’d collected—the swimming baths, the amusement arcade, the old aviary in the park—but none of them near enough nor far enough away.

Where then?

“The moon, that’s where you want to be,” Dust suggested.

“Light or dark side?” asked Grime.

“Fools, both of you. He doesn’t even have a spaceship yet,” Old Sock said.

The moon was too bright on the side he’d want to live, and too cold on the other.

If not the moon, then—

“The sun?” Jimmy asked, but he already knew he had an answer.

“Too hot,” Dust said.

“Out of the frying pan and—” said Grime.

“What kind of spaceship can travel to the sun?” Old Sock asked.

Jimmy knew.

“The sun!” he shouted excitedly.

Below the fires started afresh in response to his raised voice, but Jimmy wasn’t waiting for them to reach him that night.

He grabbed his backpack from the cupboard and emptied it of half-read books, half-chewed pencils, and a full year of mummy crisp dust, then packed for a trip to the sun.

“You’ll come back and visit us, won’t you?” a chorus of imagined friends asked from beneath the bed.

Jimmy didn’t answer.

He opened his window, slipped out into the darkness, and headed towards an old and friendlier fire.

#

Jimmy shivered his way towards dawn, his hand firmly pressed against the cold red mile of wall that separated the good houses from the bad.

The street lamps watched him with a bored buzz. A few stars wondered what the little boy was doing out there in the middle of the night. A cat sniffed at him, then trotted off following some other, more interesting scent.

Jimmy had no clocks to watch. No fuse to light. No wire to follow. Just his cold hand pressed on cold brick, and the disinterested sun still sleeping ninety-three million miles away.

Is the sun not coming out? he wondered. Has it gone forever?

No!

Jimmy pressed both hands on the cold red mile at the thought of it.

The sun will come out, he thought. I just have to wait. I just have to—

He slept.

He dreamed himself into the red mile of brick, where the fires couldn’t find him and the sun would soon rise.

And dreamed.

And dreamed.

#

The fires were quenched.

No voices raised.

No doors slammed.

No plates smashed.

A child’s backpack sat on the coffee table like an unanswered question.

How?

Where?

When?

But never, why?