Ian had found his name when he was 19, although he couldn’t remember exactly where, exactly how. Ian Riley. It had a nice ring, he thought. Better than his own name, which he couldn’t exactly remember either—James something. It had been a long time.
He was clearing swarf from the factory floor before the early shift arrived. He had thick gloves and a metal bin to dump the fine metal shavings into. It was very quiet, the daylight chlorine-green as it forced through the plastic sheeting between the factory and the loading dock. The swarf made a noise like insects as he scooped it up. You wouldn’t have thought it was worth anything, but there was usually somebody willing to buy most things. That was Malcolm’s job, finding people to buy what the factory saw as rubbish. Ian’s job was just to gather it up, put it safely away and get on to the next thing. He paused for a moment, stirring the swarf, but it wasn’t the kind of thing he could use.
He was thinking about the tree. The council had cut down a load of trees at the back of the park—Ash Die Back it was called. They’d cleaned up pretty well, but he’d found a perfect circle of bole, about four inches thick and bigger than a dinner plate, and brought it home. The factory had a special dye, blue and oily, to show up any cracks in the pipes and ferrules they manufactured and Ian wanted to steal some of it to stain the light wood, but he couldn’t work out how. He couldn’t wander over with a jam jar and just scoop some out. Or could he?
He used a damp cloth to gather up the last few fragments of swarf. When he pushed his metal bin outside, he could hear the swarf shifting, susurrating, under the rumble of the bin wheels. Malcolm was sitting in his car, on his phone. Ian didn’t mind—Malcolm never got on his case, never told him what to do, just let him get on with it.
Ian put the cloth, embedded with razor-sharp swarf, in the waste. He tipped his metal bin into a plastic dumpster. Ten minutes to shift start. He had an idea and went into the old Portakabin that he and Malcolm and the other guy used. There were five petrol cans in the corner, all new. They were meant for the backup diesel generator that had never been used. He took one back into the factory, siphoned off some of the blue dye and put the petrol can back in the cabin. Malcolm never raised his head. The other guy arrived—Phil, or maybe Bill—Ian had stopped keeping track of them, they’d had so many over the years.
When they finished work, Ian picked up the petrol can and walked home. He couldn’t count it, it wasn’t really a find, but he was pleased with himself all the same.
Once home he found another problem. If he painted the dye onto the ash circle with a brush, would it leave brushstrokes? He couldn’t be sure. He sat for a long time, staring at the wood, which was propped up on the table in his kitchen. The table was a find, too—one of the local coffee shops had gone bankrupt and when the new people took over they threw out all the old furniture. It was a really good table, solid oak, and he’d had to disassemble it in the skip where they’d dumped it, lift all the pieces out and hide them in an alley and then walk them home a few at a time because they were heavy. Sometimes he wished he could drive, but you couldn’t get a driving license if you didn’t use your real name, so that was that.
He’d never felt like a James. Or like he belonged to his family. Not that he felt adopted or anything, just never quite right. He’d had an older sister and a younger brother and two parents, and he’d known he was out of place. He took his A Levels and then told them he was taking a gap year. He walked away from Coventry with a backpack and some travelers’ checks and never returned.
At some point he’d found Ian Riley. He found jobs. He felt right. After about six months, he wrote to his parents; he didn’t want to leave them wondering. He said he’d met a girl and was moving to Guatemala with her and that they were choosing a different life—on a farm—and not to expect to hear much from him.
Eventually he worked out what to do with the dye. He took the wood down to the covered walkway where other tenants stored their bikes and laid it flat on a tarpaulin, pouring the dye slowly and carefully from the petrol can, directly into the center of the circle, so it spread evenly outwards, dripping slowly over the edge of the bark. As he’d hoped, it soaked into the rings, rendering them an ethereal pale azure. After a while he lifted the wood from the tarp, tilting it in his gloved hands to tip off any excess, and then carried it upstairs. He wasn’t sure about fumes, so he laid the wood outside his kitchen window, propping it on a couple of egg cups to stop it sticking. Then he went down and cleaned up the walkway, throwing away the old tarp.
Egg and chips for dinner, then he brought the wood inside, laying it on the linoleum floor and squatting over it, gazing into the endless ripple of the rings. If you could count them, you’d know how old the tree had been. It was better than the telly, letting his eyes travel the wood.
In bed, he heard the rustle of the swarf—a good sound, calming him to sleep.
Kay Sexton has had hundreds of short stories published, been a finalist for writing awards including the Sunday Times Short Story Award, and winner of both the Fort William Festival Contest and the Wollongong Literary Festival Short Story Contest. In addition, she has had two nonfiction books and one novel published.
Header photo by Couleur, courtesy Pixabay.