IRON HORSE

A Taste of the New Book
Sometime around October, my new book of short travel stories will come out. To bridge the gap, here is a taste of what is to come. It is a story based upon an experience related to me by someone I met on the road quite a few years ago in Canada. I hope you like it - it's a freebie.

Iron Horse

It was back when he was living alone in the shack.  A long hard winter had kept him in one place – forced him inside. Inside was against his nature, as was staying in one place, but he’d have died otherwise.  The rusting metal cabinet he’d managed to drag into the shack had got him off the floor at night, but even with all the junk, the old blankets and newspapers, the cold managed to work its way through and into his bones.

It had been a still night with not much wind and he’d slept well until the early hours. Something had woken him.  Something out of the ordinary - not a wild dog or a twister. He stuck his head out from under the ragged blanket.  For a while there was nothing. Pretty quickly his head started to ache from the cold and he began winding the blanket back around him, then he heard it.  The rumble of a big old motorcycle engine, somewhere out there in the hills.  It was moving slowly, labouring over the rough terrain.  Joel sat up.  Were they coming for him?

Joel had always known it was a risk to camp out in the shack.  Apart from the pipeline, it was the only structure for miles and it stood near the track.  Anyone passing would be drawn to it.  A month back when a water company pick-up had passed, he’d messed up the interior in a panic then quickly buried himself in the sand like a desert gopher until the intruders had moved on.  The bastards had taken the binoculars he’d left hanging inside.  This time he decided he’d stay put.

“How do?” Said Joel, thrusting out his hand in the manner of a man who was the proud owner of a property. The biker had parked up right in front of the makeshift doors. He’d dismounted but left the old motor turning over.

“What d’ya have, mail for me?” asked Joel, with a smile.

“Saw the shack way back, when I cleared that ridge,” said the old man, gesturing back into the hills.

He was a sight for sore eyes, Joel thought. Like something from an old western – some kind of medicine man or fairground horseman. His long grey hair and beard were dusty from days or weeks riding through the desert. He wore no crash helmet. In its place a battered old cowboy hat. He had a cowboy’s bedroll too, strapped to his handlebars. The bike was probably as old as he was. Both looked in need of a good clean-up and some running repairs.

“Nice old bike… once upon a time,” said Joel. “Why don’t you turn her off so we can talk?”

“Ah she’s ailing a bit,” he replied, “kickstart arm’s sheared the spindle. I have to bump her. At my time o’ life that’s a bit of a challenge. Knees have gone south. Gone in the garbage is the truth of it. These ones is tai-tanium they told me. Take some getting used to. Ache like an angry whale in cold weather. I'da been better off with the old uns. This your place then?”

The old man tried to make more of the shack with his sweeping arm gesture than it really was. A generous thought, which Joel spotted and was grateful.

“Yeah, I kind a laid claim on it,” explained Joel, casually. “Was hiking cross country, heading up to Canada eventually. Clean air, rivers, fishing, all that. I done my time working in the city and I had enough of it. I though deserts, you know, they’re always hot. Well not here they’re not! When the winter set in I couldn’t survive in the tent. That’s when I came across the shack. I just pitched up behind her for a couple of days, keeping outa the wind. One night I was so cold I thought I’d die. I went delirious – right outa my mind. In the morning I woke up in the shack. She saved me. Saved my life for sure. Go on turn her off, I’ll bump start ya after. I got some coffee and a camp stove. Just one cup but I’ll drink from the pot. Name’s Joel. Glad y’stopped by.”

The coffee took some time to boil. The old guy introduced himself as Richard.

“They call me Kit.”

“How long you been travelling, Kit?”

“Travelling most of o’ my life,” said Kit. “No plans to stop, neither.”

“Ever had a wife, Kit?”

“Nope.”

“Me neither. Girlfriends, lady friends and what have you but no wives, no thank you!”

“Oh I’da had a wife if one had a been willing!” said Kit. “Just never worked out that way. Couldn’t change my roving ways I suppose. So Ruby there’s the nearest I ever had to a wife.”

Kit nodded towards the old Harley Davidson, clicking now and again as she cooled off.

“Hah, well she’s a fine old lady, Kit, I’ll say that.”

“Won her in a fight,” said the old man, chuckling.

“You’re joking now?” said Joel, pouring half the coffee into a battered tin mug.

“True as I sit here! I was with a bunch of other guys out west. We were a band I suppose you could say. Troubadours. Bunch of outlaws on bikes turned up at the bar we’d agreed to play in that night. Sons o' bitches said it was their local bar and we should git out of town. The owner he hid behind the bar counter. Customers slipped out the back door. They was all afraid of these guys. I was fearless back then – a bit stupid was the truth. Anyhow I asked ‘em who the leader was. A huge barn door of a guy with a big scar across his mean face stepped forward. I said I’d arm wrestle him and if I lost we’d leave town. While we sat down and prepared, Little Lonnie our fiddle player was round the side pulling the electric cables off their bikes. Meanwhile the owner’s wife had called for the cops. While I was being beaten at the arm-wrestle by the big ape, Lonnie was under the table cuffing the ape to the big steel table leg. When the cops came they had to chase him a mile into the brushwood, dragging the table behind him. Yep, them outlaws went to jail. Bikes was impounded. Cops told me if nobody else come forward, we could make a claim for ‘em. After a month that’s what we did. Ruby was the best of ‘em. Yep, I had my eye on her from the start.”

“Love at first sight then?” said Joel.

“Yep, that’s the story! She’s an old lady, but she’s never let me down.”

Kit drained his coffee.

“I hope y’make it to the border, Joel. I really do. Want my advice, get y’self a set of trucker's cards and bum lifts by night. Cops'll leave y'lone. Y'ready to bump her?”

Joel got to his feet. Kit did the same but more slowly and with a prolonged groan.

“Tai-tanium my ass!”

People I've Met On The Road should be out – in the first instance as an e-book – by the end of the autumn (2016). Sorry for the wait. 

Check out Mark Swain's other books at:

Mark Swain on Amazon UK
Mark Swain on Amazon .com

and on this blog (add your e-mail to receive updates)

New Travel Book

People I've Met On The Road
The title of my new book.
All my life I have carried with me, the memories of interesting people I have met whilst travelling. I have had a wanderlust since I was able to walk. My parents were afraid to leave the garden door open. Turn their back for a moment and I would be over the garden gate and heading for my local garage, pestering the greasy-faced mechanics with questions or watching petrol being put into old Morris Minors. They used to laugh when they saw my distraught mother arriving. My childhood was a rapid (not rapid enough for my liking) acceleration towards when I could escape – get out into the big wide world and travel.

Linocut for new book cover print

Memories
I am fortunate enough to be blessed with a very good memory (although unfortunately not for tedious academic work). When I began travelling, I was as much taken with the characters I met as I was by the fascinating places I travelled through. Even as a six year old living in Singapore and Malaysia, I used to wander into kampongs (small villages of thatched or tin-can roofed bamboo huts) and make friends with local children. They taught me noughts & crosses (tick-tack-toe) and card tricks. Later I began hitchhiking and taking trains and buses – initially without my parents knowledge. Despite being in big trouble on each occasion and suffering punishment, I was always eager to tell my family about the people I had met on my illicit trip. My parents worried of course. What kind of weird people might befriend me? Surely one day my luck would run out? And yet, be it through wiliness or good fortune, nothing bad ever befell me. Quite the opposite. People fed me and paid for me to go into cinemas, swimming pools, race circuits or motor museums. People even drove me home or phoned my parents to tell them I was fine (after we had a phone). The more I travelled the more emboldened I became and the more I knew this was where I belonged.

A Collection
The book is a motley collection of people I have met. Some stories tell of adventures I had with these people, where others simply focus upon their characters and what they may have told me. These little potted histories stretch over a period of around forty years, yet they are as vivid in my mind as they were the week after they happened. And if anyone should suddenly realise that they are one of the characters in the book – I have changed most of the names, for obvious reasons of privacy, since I am unable to contact them – then please do not hesitate to contact me, even if just to say hi.
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People I've Met On The Road should be out – in the first instance as an e-book – by the end of the summer (2015). Please look out for it at:

Mark Swain on Amazon UK
Mark Swain on Amazon .com

and on this blog (add your e-mail to receive updates)

The Travelling Storyteller

On The Road Again – A Message To My Children

I knew a boy who was from birth, lured by a life on the open road. Some of his first memories (at around 3 years old) were of sitting at his bedroom window looking out at the big wide world and planning his escape from the confines of home. Some days his mother would see him in the garden with his fingers clinging to the fence, looking. I hear she came out once and asked him what he was looking at.

"When will I be big enough to go, Mummy?" he asked her.

It was not that he was unhappy with his family. He loved them, and they him. In fact I think it was feeling so secure about home and family that gave him the confidence that he could leave it. And it was not long before he did. Much to his parents' horror, some months before his fourth birthday he set out. He had worked out how to get over the tall side gate to the house. Heart racing with excitement, he headed off up the hill with a chocolate spread sandwich and an piece of cheese wrapped in a handkerchief on a stick, just like the one he had seen in a storybook. He was not sure where he was going – just out there. After about a mile he had the idea of visiting his grandmother to tell her about the adventure upon which he was embarking. She had a great sense of adventure too and would surely not tell him off. She was pleased to see him and after about half an hour, was careful not to let him see her telephone his mother. Just as he was saying that he needed to continue on his travels, his mother arrived in a frantic state. The boy's journey was cut short and he was severely warned about the dangers of being out on his own along busy main roads at only three years old. The mother, of course, did not understand that her son was completely safe and capable. He had been planning the trip for some time.

As time progressed, the boy continued to escape - small sojourns that were a practice for the big escape. The gate having been extended in height, he resorted to crawling under the hedge. There was no holding him. The parents wondered what kind of child they had produced. Soon the boy discovered atlases, maps and children's encyclopaedias. He began listening intently to radio and television programs, learning about places he could travel to. Lying awake thinking about them at night. More thought was given to the things he needed with him and he packed a secret running-away bag. A small duffle bag. It had a front zip pocket, into which he put the odd few coins he found lying around the house. Generally when he ran away, his mother had a good idea where to look. He would usually call into the corner shop, where he was popular with the three elderly sisters who ran the place. His mother would call there first to confirm his route and time of escape. Then she would try the swings and slide at the park. If he was not there she would try his grandmother's house and after that a petrol station and car repair depot on the outskirts of town, on the London road. This was about two miles away. At three or four it was usually as far as he could get in the time before she noticed him missing from his bedroom or the garden and caught up with him. Being unable to drive in those days, this provided his mother with a good deal of exercise as well as worry. No amount of warnings would deter him. Even when told of a little girl of eight along the road, who had been killed by a lorry when sent to the greengrocers by her father, he felt not the slightest hesitation about escaping again. It was his destiny.

It may also have been destiny that protected this little boy from the perils of the road. Some would say it was simply good luck. He himself believed it was due to his careful attention to detail. He remained convinced throughout his early years that a small child could learn to be as effective as an adult at getting about safely. Nothing his parents did or said would deter him from this view or from continuing to escape from home and in the end they came to accept it as something they could not change. They bore it as an affliction, you see; regarding themselves as parents with a problem child. A 'disturbed' child, perhaps.

Eventually, after continuing to cause havoc and worry within his family, the boy reached adulthood. Free to make his own choices in life, he took time away from higher education, and then from work, to hitch-hike around his native England, before venturing further afield into Europe and then on to India and North Africa. Years of his life were spent in happy wandering through new and fascinating countries, meeting local people and sleeping under hedgerows, on beaches or in haystacks. He loved this life and put study and career ideas to one side for a number of years, in order to travel further. People he met on his travels and his friends and family back in England alike, loved to hear the stories he told of his adventures. They told him how they envied him his life, but could not bring themselves to join him on the road, for they were busy climbing the ladder.

Although the young man loved his wandering life, he knew deep inside that one day he might meet someone who would make him want to give it up, and one day that event came about. Returning from the Orient with a beautiful young woman, the young man soon channelled his sense of adventure into life with a young family, albeit taking his family during his children's early years to live in some of the countries that he had previously come to know during his travels. His children seem to delight in the stories he told them at bedtime or on long car journeys.

In middle-age, drawing upon his experience of life and people, the young man set up a business that became a big success. He became wealthy and comfortable, although he never forgot the simple things he felt were most valuable in life. As the man's children grew, they developed a similar longing for the adventure of travel. As teenagers they sometimes asked him to take them on wandering journeys on the road, but he was too busy with work. At the same time he began to find his life cluttered with possessions and responsibilities. Fortunately, however, his wife valued him for his free spirit and encouraged him to take time away from work to go wandering with his son. For a year they travelled overland together to the Orient, telling stories and drinking-in the variety of cultures and landscapes. The man realised that this was the true purpose of his life. The sense of destiny he had felt as a small boy flooded back and when they returned home he put commerce to one side. Travel, wandering, sleeping out under the stars and storytelling became his purpose again.

And so it was that a sense of happiness and calm became the true reward of this man's life. His life had followed a long and eventful circular journey, rather in the same way that his physical wanderings had. He had set out full of enthusiasm with a singular focus. He had encountered obstacles along the way, causing him to divert in another direction. But he had learned from mistakes. He had overcome difficulties that had made him stronger and wiser, and eventually he had come to reap the rewards of his efforts. Now that his children had grown-up, he was encouraged by his wife to take her on wandering journeys with him and to write down the stories that previously had lived only in his head. Sometimes his adult children joined them. No longer did he feel he needed to choose between a life with his family and a life on the road.
And the stories? The stories came forth from his mind like a river in full flood. Stories he had been telling for years as well as new stories, gathered from the memories of his life and the people he had met along the way. People were moved by the stories, and he was happy. Happy to be back out there, on the road again.

Hold on tight to your dreams.

Picture courtesy of www.nocaptionneeded