Gravel

The guy from the garden centre had asked him something really hard. Something about surfaces. So much by so much, so he could work it out for him. ‘N-ormal,’ Johan Kaan had said. ‘What fits on t-op of a little kid.’ After that it took a very long time before the garden-centre guy had figured it out, and after that, they had to fill a bag, separately and just for him, because they didn’t usually stock the kind of stones he wanted in bags. He had money, yes, of course he had money. Otherwise you can’t buy anything. ‘D-you think I’m c-razy or what?’ The guy had started speaking slower and slower – slower and louder.

Now he’s walking down long straight roads with the bag on his shoulder: first one shoulder then the next, sometimes draped across both on the back of his neck and, when it gets too much, very briefly clamped to his stomach. He doesn’t know how heavy the bag is, he’s forgotten what the guy said in the end, but it’s just as well, because what difference does it make – a number, an amount – if you still have to carry the bag? It’s really quiet, except for just now, on the stretch of bike track right after the white bridge over the canal, where a few cars passed him. He knows these long straight roads, and that one winding road before the white bridge too. He knows where the junctions and bends are, he knows the roadside ditches like the back of his hand. In the old days, yeah, in the old days, he’d ride long stretches with his eyes shut, keeping it up as long as he could, and then a bit longer. The Zündapp between his legs like a . . . well, like a moped. Since the day he turned sixteen, he hadn’t ridden a bicycle once. Out drinking in Schagen: sober on the way there, drunk home. He knows the roads in storms and in hail, misty, hot and cold, under a full moon, with the tang of ditchwater in spring, the sour smell of poplar leaves in autumn, a hint of metal when it rained (was that the Zündapp or did the rain itself smell of metal?), a sense of animals resting in the dark (along the winding road there were always sheep). And belting along, always. Never going off the road, never smashing into the rail when he crossed the white bridge they repainted every five years, never ending up in a ditch. No, not until he started jumping with as much control as possible over cars and tree trunks and slabs of . . .

He starts singing. Very loudly. There was something in his head just now that needed drowning out. The bright-blue stones are leaving dents in his flesh; that helps too. Along the side of the road are a few big trees, with yellow dots painted on two of them. Between the big ones there are smaller ones with shrivelled brown leaves. It’s getting too heavy, he has to put the bag down for a moment. Next to a causeway gate he takes off his trainers and sits down on the end of a culvert that runs under the causeway. He sees steam rising from his bare feet. In his head. He’s stopped singing and for a second forgets where he’s going. He pulls a pack of Marlboros out of the back pocket of his cut-off jeans; the cigarettes are squashed flat, but unbroken. On his right is the road, with patches of melted tar; on his left a field, two birds with long curved beaks walking in it. They pretend they haven’t noticed him. ‘Currrr-lew!’ he calls, and even then they don’t take off. Stupid things. Or is it too hot to fly today?

Today. Isn’t it today that Jan . . . ? He thinks. He tries to think. He pictures Toon. Maybe that will help him get the day worked out. Did Toon say something before he left? No, because he made sure Toon didn’t see him go. He draws on the cigarette. He slaps the soles of his feet against the water in the farm ditch. Jan lives on Texel, he thinks. Boat. Seagulls. The cigarette’s finished, he draws on it once too often, the filthy taste of the filter gets stuck in his mouth. He slides down off the culvert and stands up to his thighs in the water, which was clear, but isn’t any more. He scoops up some water and uses it to rinse out his mouth. The filter taste is gone. Climbing back up out of the ditch he kicks the sludge off one foot and then the other, then uses his white socks to dry carefully between his toes before putting them back on, filthy and damp. Shoes too, and then he has an elaborate scratch of the crotch, it’s all a bit sweaty down there. Bag back on his shoulder. ‘Currr-lew!’ he calls again and walks on, in the middle of the road. A few minutes later a car beeps him over to the side. It’s like a giant apple driving past; never before has he seen a car this colour, a strange kind of green, it hurts his eyes. The car doesn’t brake; it wouldn’t have occurred to the driver to give him a lift. Johan Kaan rests his free shoulder against the trunk of an old elm. He looks up. Dead, he thinks. ‘Stone dead!’ he shouts.