there.
Hargreaves thought about the time. Perhaps if it was midday the
people would be in their houses eating. He was hungry. He thought
43
44
Tim othy Dell
about the date. W ith this and the time he could locate his entry into
the town precisely. Asked about it, he would be able to make the
memory real in the mind of the hearer. He waited in the centre of
the town, reinforcing his memory.
He opened his ears.
No sound, other than the m urm ur of the desert as the wind
pushed its surface about. W ithin this m urm ur he slowly became
aware of a grating he could not identify. He recalled the image and
sound of other winds and sandstorms. There had been no rough
edges to those sounds.
He remembered the bare timbers on the sides of the houses at
the end of the town. He added the look of the timbers to the sound
in the wind to form an image. The particles of sand rubbed up
against the painted sides of the houses and took the clean white
paint with them on their journey and the timbers were slowly
revealed like the skeletons of sheep he had seen in the desert. The
wind never ceased; it always came from the same direction. Sometimes it would grow stronger and rage for a while and then settle and gently move again. The tim ber was painted on a day of lesser
wind, and the process of erosion repeated. He imagined the sight of
this event, and ran it over in his mind several times, the paint
appearing magically when the boards were clean.
Hargreaves waited.
He saw that he had made lines in the smooth sand of the desert
when he turned about. He made three circles with them. The town
became his as he combined the sounds and the sights and the feel of
the wind grating and the sun overhead and the town bounced back
from this spot. He was the centre of the symmetry, and it was
enough to wait with it. The wind cleared his face of hair. He forgot
about being hungry.
W here the track joined the horizon a minute point of disruption
appeared. Behind it dust boiled. He liked the way the point of disruption seemed not to move, though the cloud expanded in the wind. He waited, patient, knowing that it must come through the
town. It grew.
The origin expanded to become several trucks. They were large
vans with brightly coloured sides that even the desert could not
fully disguise. He wondered about the need for the reds and greens
in the yellow tones of the desert. He thought them outrageous in
the barren expanse of the plain; he disliked and tried to disregard
them. Now he could hear them. Loud and violent. They crushed
A step in any direction
45
the road. They began to threaten the town.
Hargreaves remained where he was, hating the trucks for destroying his peaceful symmetries, determined to stay in his place if they tried to enter.
They slowed, as if seeing him, at the edge of town. Stopped,
panting, there, at the first line of houses. The dust in the wind overwhelmed the trucks, and moved down the town. Hargreaves tried to see how the cloud would meet its twin and disappear into it. The
trucks ticked at him, cooling.
He felt the machines as a solid threat. Now they both waited. In
time he saw how the paint had cracked, how it had dulled in places.
The wind cleared. He smiled at them, as though these events were
his victory. They grew silent, impeding his view of the desert.
There was no pattern in them.
A horn blast shot from beneath the hood of the lead vehicle and
ran, screaming, around the town. He winced at the discordant
volume of it; but silence came. Again he smiled.
He began to hope that the trucks would leave now. They intruded on his vision of the town and the desert. He liked to keep his memories pure.
A door opened beside him. A man came out. He looked at John
Hargreaves and then at the trucks. Another blast came, and then
all the doors
