Displaced and Other Etudes

By Lindsay Boyd and Arisara Phumprasop

A total of 21 short stories of various lengths are followed by a novella of approximately 50000 words. The focus is upon everyday people, often flawed and marginalised, struggling to eke out their existences.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: May 22, 2021
• ISBN: 9781008939080

Book preview

By

Lindsay Boyd

Published by Changeling

Copyright 2021 Lindsay Boyd

Cover by Arisara Phumprasop

ISBN: 978-1-008-93908-0

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favourite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Heartfelt gratitude and a million khop khuns to Arisara Phumprasop for the cover design. And thanks, again, to David Gardiner, the editor of Personal Bests Journal, this time both for the suggestions and the foreword. It is comforting, at least for this author, to know that short stories, much like short films, can eschew some of the major demands incumbent on feature films on the one hand and novels on the other, among them adherence to what are often arbitrarily assigned beginnings, middles, and ends. Life isn’t as neat and packaged as many movie narratives and novels would have us believe, and shorter pieces, with their snapshot or ‘slice of life’ focus, are perhaps truer to ‘reality’ than longer films or written works will ever be. They can comprise a handful of brush strokes on a canvas without edges. The line of Italian poetry quoted in Displaced is taken from the Pier Paolo Pasolini poem Febrraio (February).

The format of this book is very unusual. It begins with 21 short stories ranging in length from about 800 to 6,450 words. These are followed by a 50,000 word novella. With such a diversity of material it would make little sense to attempt plot summaries, and Boyd would probably protest that plot in the conventional sense is not the prime focus of his interest, as well as which he has already provided within the book short introductions to each of the pieces. I have known the author and been an admirer of his work for many years. As Prose Editor of Gold Dust Magazine for the whole 16 years of its existence I had the good fortune to become the first publisher of many of the stories in this collection. 

One of the areas in which he excels is in creating characters that are so well realised, multi-faceted and afflicted with the same contradictions and uncertainties as ourselves that as soon as we meet them we feel that we have always known them. This is a rare gift and by itself would be enough to place him in the first rank of practitioners of this particular art. You can find examples in practically any of the stories – one that I would particularly recommend is Intimidation.

But he also has a facility for making us stop in our tracks after reading a tale of ordinary, often very flawed and marginalised people struggling through their ordinary lives, when we realise that we have been left with a question to ponder that is of almost cosmic significance. An outstanding example of this is the ending of Walls where we are shown the survival of some core of what we might think of as nobility in the most damaged and abused of our fellow creatures. Who, we ask ourselves, is the more admirable, Andrew Carnegie or the bruised protagonist of this story?

Regarding Boyd's writing technique, his stories are mostly reflective pieces made up of the inner thoughts of the characters through whose eyes we see the world. His narrative is quietly compelling. The collection as a whole is nothing less than a master class for anyone wishing to study the craft of writing.

David Gardiner, editor Personal Bests Journal

(Words he wrote as a young man come back to an ageing poet one day in a most unexpected manner.)

The path leading up to the Amalec peak began near the hotel where the old poet was staying with his wife. Steep even at its lowest point, it opened into a semicircle on its climb toward the forest, studded with pines. Daily since their arrival the man of letters had taken a walk at the warmest part of the afternoon. Most days he tested himself on the path to Amalec though more often than not he advanced no further than a meadow one hundred and fifty metres above the hotel.

He had commemorated his seventieth birthday the previous July. His hair had long ago turned white, but he took pride in the leanness of his frame, and the fact that he immersed himself in the elements every single day unless his sciatica – a scourge most of his adult life – plagued him beyond endurance.

He ventured outdoors again on the second to last day of his retreat at the locale Lena and he had frequented often during their declining years. He passed by stalls closed for business in the heat of the day. Their clear canvas coverings called to mind those he’d seen at camps in the same area, and depictions in an old illustrated edition of the Bible. He liked to pass hours resting, sketching, and writing at innumerable sites.

Cloud masses oscillated about the snow-capped peaks in the distance, visible against a backdrop of tenuous blue. Sometimes, as though on a caprice, they lingered in weightless repose. At other times they drifted east, on wind gusts unnoticeable lower down. Mopping perspiration from his brow with an embroidered white handkerchief, he searched for a suitable place. All around, amid the sun and shade at the edge of the forest, visitors lounged away the afternoon, sleeping, reading or chatting, many of them partly or completely naked. A succession of hollows behind the path offered nooks within which people could rest without being seen, much less disturbed, by passers-by.

The poet found his niche among a clump of small rocks. He put down his rubber-tipped cane and balanced the weight of his upper body upon one bent arm. Here, alone, he felt that the shade of the forest, the meadow, and the vista of huts down below belonged to him and no one else. The sweep of his gaze encompassed the Lauterbrunnen valley wrapped in mist. How vast the space that separated the valley from the snow atop the stupendous mountains.

After a moment he recaptured his breath. Then, with a deliberate, slow movement he opened a small folder. The clothbound item, the work of Rudolf Mosse, had been a constant companion on his peregrinations over a period of decades. It showed little wear and tear. He opened the folder and commenced drawing with a fountain pen. He traced the outline of a garden wall, inserting in the background a wooden hut in the Bernese style standing in the shade of two maple trees. Next – further in the background – he portrayed the steep incline at the foot of the mountain and its crowning glory: a sharp pointed peak. Behind this anfractuous apex stood the Jungfrau silhouette, the line of which ran off his page, a mere suggestion.

After a while the effort and concentration required left a burning sensation in the eyes of the ageing man. He lay flat on the ground and didn’t move until he made out the hullabaloo of youthful voices down below. A group of children with rucksacks affixed to their narrow backs strode into view. He listened to their Bernese-tinged German and when they came close enough estimated their ages at between fourteen and sixteen.

Perspiration glowed on their faces and the bedraggled state of their uniforms testified to the arduousness of their hike. But they showed no great haste. The last one of the group made a detour that brought him and several of the others to an opening above the point where the poet sat.

Seating themselves on the grass, they took food and gazed all around. Little by little their conversation waned until one of the boys broke the silence with a recitation. Now and then his recall became hazy and his efforts bogged down for an instant. The poet pricked up his ears when he heard familiar words. He recognised not only the cadence but also the lines of a piece he penned when not much older than the one who spoke it back to him now. The poem lionised the beauties of nature – clouds and mountains – but had been forgotten by the author in the fifty years that had elapsed since.

The boy continued in the same harmonious if solemn tone. His companions heard him out in a respectful silence. Finally, he came to the last line: I hope you, beloved mountain, remember me in your dreaming. A minute passed before the poet stirred and gazed at the group. By then, they were disappearing from view and progressing up the mountain. He remained in the same place, marvelling at how his words had returned to him through an unknown schoolboy.

After Hermann Hesse

First Published in alongstoryshort

(A tragic, brutal reckoning takes place in the Guatemalan highlands circa the 1980s, the height of that country’s civil war.)

In the beginning was the Bird, and the Bird was with God and the Bird was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by the Bird; and without the Bird was not anything made that was made. In the Bird was life; and the life was the light of men. And the Bird was made flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.

~

Fleeing through the jungle at the sound of gunfire, Paco remembered the afternoon when his grandfather, the day keeper of the village, introduced him to the legend of the Bird. He was seven-years-old and listened with bated breath to every word the old man uttered about the beauty of the creature made flesh. A blend of blue, green, and gold, its plumes adorned the costumes of their ancestors in the time before the bearded men stole upon them like rain clouds. Their lords wore headdresses made of the creatures’ feathers as symbols of authority at sacrificial dances and other ceremonies.

Henceforth, Paco never went a day without dreaming of the ancestors. He absorbed all he could about their gods and rites. He imagined as clearly as if he could see them in front of him the red and white thorny oyster shells and the conch shells they used in ceremonies, warfare, and the chase, the cuirasses upon their breasts. He heard the din of their drums, whistles, shell trumpets, and war cries.

Yet none bespoke more loveliness than the bird. When will I see a quetzal, he inquired of his grandfather one day. The old man smiled and promised Paco that if he mastered the virtues of watchfulness and patience in the cloud forest he would sight one of the great birds. But Paco failed to realise his dream. The day keeper sketched the bird for his grandson. Another time he withdrew a weathered quetzal bill and showed him the green and scarlet image printed on it. The bird’s day would come again, he stated as a last resort in his efforts to mollify the inquisitive boy.

#

Paco surrendered hope over time. He became convinced the bird had returned to the same bedrock of myth from which it took wing in the flights of fancy he was subject to at a younger age. The colourfully ornamented lords must have sequestered themselves in the same element. In his seventeenth year, news filtered through to the villagers that the government in the faraway capital had been toppled. The men and women received it with disquiet though they hid their deepest fears much as they did the grains, seeds, and shoots they collected when they sensed in the marrow of their bones the approach of an epoch of drought and hunger.

The toppled president had tried to improve the lot of the campesinos, so they heard. He took steps to give back parcels of the land wrested from them years before by foreign-owned fruit companies. But now, ousted by an army general, he languished in exile and they knew neither their future nor that of his land reforms. The village doubled in size in a matter of weeks as dispossessed people from elsewhere in the country fled to the Verapaz hills bent on starting their lives afresh.

Paco stared in amazement at one middle-aged couple whose foreheads must have been flattened at birth, in accordance with the rite his grandfather told him the ancient Mayans practised on their newborn. In his astonished eyes they stepped straight out of the bygone era. Around this time, collecting shoots on the outskirts of the village with several others, Paco raised his head and glanced skyward on hearing a shout. Quetzal ... l ... l ... l ...! one of the younger men trilled. Through the treetops, against a background of raw cloud shot through with sunlight, Paco thought he glimpsed the green plumes and bright crimson belly.

Alas, his grandfather, all the grandfathers, spoke of the inauspiciousness of the times. The day keeper’s magic secrets revealed themselves unto Paco through voices that drifted out of the silence and the night. They advised the young never to abandon the professions of their elders because the professions were a link to their traditions. Were they ever to abandon those they would be like traitors to their kind.

They imagined menace in the surrounding mountains and hills, enemies intent on driving them away and seizing the land’s comfort and wealth for themselves. The cloud forest, the natural habitat of the bird, shrank by the year, a fact someone demonstrated to Paco on a hike through the hills.

#

In the early years of the civil war catechists joined them and quoted from the Christian Bible. At first, Paco wouldn’t listen because by then he knew that when the red beards arrived centuries ago they read from the same book and spoke of sin and idolatry, nothing but sin and idolatry. But the new preachers did not nurse ill. They helped the people cope, they helped Paco too when he gave them the chance. They explained that their ancestors suffered before them but put their faith in their conception of time as a circle, of a physical world on an endless cycle of creation and destruction.

One among them, a Franciscan, spoke with the authority issuing from respect and knowledge of the ways of others. He studied to be a day keeper and reminded them of the proximity of Baktun 13, an era that would turn fortune once more in their favour. Those who died would be prayed to where they’d lived. Their names would not be lost. Their days would be kept by those born in the light, begotten in the light.

The oppression made itself felt in ever more insidious ways. They heard of the random slaughter of poor folk like them and the brave souls who spoke out on their behalf. Successive military regimes promised them a better future if they fulfilled certain conditions. Guerrillas warned them not to be misled by the lies of the state and argued that they brandish arms. They had no idea who to believe.

Much that the guerrillas said made sense, but they rejected their aggressive means. They met the army detachments with silent protest. The placards they held high, upon which they wrote their demands, said all they wished to say. Paco reacted with a start the day he noticed a boyhood friend among the group of soldiers watching them. He’d lived in a village elsewhere in the mountains until press ganged into the army. Paco exchanged looks with him but the fledgling soldier ignored the former tie.

#

When the first rounds punched the air Paco took to his heels. But he’d advanced fewer than fifty yards on a manic zigzag through the jungle when shrapnel tore into his lower back. Brought to his knees, he slid in mud and water until he banged chest first into a tree. He lost the sound of his grandfather’s voice and the voices that belonged to the silence and the night. At his back he heard screaming and the report of Uzis and machine guns mounted on nests.

What use knowing the only difference between his forebears and him lay in the fact that they destroyed him with bullets? What solace in the thought of Baktun 13, in the concept of a better future, when they had to live and die atrociously in the here and now? His eyes bulging with pain, Paco turned toward the soldier who rushed to his side. It was his erstwhile friend. He uttered plaintive words to him in their indigenous tongue. But the soldier, through eyes blinded with tears, rejected the invitation and lashed out repeatedly with the butt of his weapon. Paco’s knees went out from under him and his head slowly sunk in a pool of water.

Before his eyes lost focus he sighted a bird soaring high above the canopy. In his death fancy it was the great bird of blue, green, and gold. He contented himself with the thought. He would never know the last thing he saw in this life was a zopilote, a species that had flourished in recent years, sated on the carrion amongst which it dance-stepped the length and breadth of the sad land.

First Published in Lite Lit One

(Set in late 1940s Castlemaine, Australia, a young boy buckles under the weight of his coercion into altar boy training at the local parish church.)

Young Tom O’Riordan had the distinct feeling the symbols of Catholicism in the room lay in wait, coercing him as powerfully as his mother or Father Cahill, both of whom stood feet away. His mute tormentors included a portrait of Jesus as the beautiful, impeccably groomed young lion cradling a heart in his cupped hands, a larger portrait of Christ and his disciples at the Last Supper, a set of rosary beads hanging from a tack, and a miniature statue of the Messiah on the cross. Tom found the last repulsive.

Well? his mother asked.

Yes.

Yes what?

I’d like to serve on the altar.

Margaret ignored her son’s irresolute manner and turned smiling to Father Cahill, the assistant priest in Castlemaine parish. There you go, Father. I knew he’d come round.

Thank you, Mrs O’Riordan. He eyed Tom. We’re glad to have Tom aboard, following in his older brother’s footsteps. Practice begins Monday at four o’clock.

He’ll be there, Father.

The priest had no cause to doubt the assurance. The boy watched his mother lead Father Cahill out of the room. He studied the symbols again. Without a doubt they intimidated on the same scale as any living, breathing being. Tom averted his eyes in acknowledgement of their influence, but raised them again when his mother reappeared.

Noel didn’t serve on the altar.

Never you mind that.

But I don’t have the clothes.

Brendan’s old outfit will do fine. You’re the same size he was at your age.

Tom said nothing else. He couldn’t imagine how he might abscond from the upcoming practice session.

#

On his way home from school the following Monday, he entered a general store near the family farm. Among the merchandise on display were newspapers and magazines covering every conceivable interest. They occupied a stand in the centre. Tom went over to the stand. The upper part of the glossy cover of a men’s magazine featured the golden contours of a semi-naked seductress, moist, pouted lips open. Tom picked up the magazine and began flicking through the pages. However, his perusal came to an abrupt end when the po-faced proprietor made his displeasure plain.

Tom left at once, reaching home at half past three. His day had been taken up with thoughts of what lay in store at four o’clock. But when he found the house empty and no sign of his mother round back he began entertaining hopes of evading the mandatory practice. He sat in the living room until the minute hand of a large clock on the wall reached forty-five, at which point he jumped from the chair, sensing it would be best if he absented himself for an hour. Upon his return around five o’clock his mother would, with luck, think he’d gone to the church as expected.

When he next encountered the priest he would explain his failure to show by saying he had fallen ill or something of the kind. The business was seedy, but surely it was shy of outright mortal sin. Unluckily, before Tom could act on his resolution he heard his mother bustle indoors. Margaret put down two bags of groceries and removed the scarf wrapped around her chin.

Don’t give me that look. It’s time you were off. Tom started for the door. Wait. Do you have Brendan’s outfit?

I won’t need it …

Take it. It’s on your bed.

Tom went to his bedroom and retrieved the hand-me-down. He then went to the front door via the living room, where the religious symbols observed him in unspoken complicity.

#

The boy stole a glance at his watch. Five o’clock had struck. He knew the ten other boys with him in the presbytery. All but two were classmates of his at school. For the past hour, the priest had blabbered on about what would be expected of them once they began assisting either himself or Father Hanrahan, the parish priest, at mass.

But this distinction would not befall them for weeks. They would meet three or four times for practice beforehand. Names would then be added to a rota. Tom listened to Father Cahill with a petrified expression, as if anticipating a fate worse than death. The fact of its lying a month or more hence did nothing to tone down his fear. His sole compensation that afternoon stemmed from his not having had to put on Brendan’s old outfit.

That’ll be all for today, lads. Let’s meet again same time next Monday.

Before the boys could disperse the ageing if kindly parish priest bundled into the room. They held themselves at attention and chorused as one. Good afternoon, Father Hanrahan.

The priest, a ginger-haired man with a ruddy complexion, looked round in surprise at the youngsters. He smiled, a mischievous glint in his eye. To what do I owe the honour?

We’re training to serve on the altar, Father, one of the boys answered.

Get away with you! You mean you haven’t come to see ol’ Hanrahan?!

Off you go now, lads.

The boys departed, sensing the hint of disapproval in the assistant priest’s tone. While they filed out of the presbytery, Father Hanrahan stared absentminded, as though he’d quite forgotten his whereabouts.

#

Walking toward the main street of town, Tom felt a comradely rap on the shoulder courtesy his friend, Walter, a dark-haired, spindly boy whose form guaranteed shenanigans of one brand or another. Walter waited until he and Tom were alone before bringing a carafe of wine from his bag. He had stolen it from the presbytery. Tom was both horrified by and admiring of his companion’s daring.

Did you take a good look at him?

Who?

Old Hanners. Mad as a hatter, he is.

What are you going to do with that?

Drink it.

You shouldn’t have taken it.

They won’t miss it.

You’ll be in trouble if they find out. Walter shrugged. He could not have cared less. They always find out stuff like that, grown-ups. They know everything.

Walter laughed. He and Tom walked to the narrow, unpaved road leading to the O’Riordan farm.

Are you coming or are you afraid you might get a guilty conscience?

Tom walked off with his friend. They strolled a short distance, drawing to a stop by the edge of a field. Climbing a wire fence, the classmates leapfrogged damp turf. They advanced to an old shed and sat with their backs against the structure, out of the wind and patchy rain. Walter drank first. Wiping his lips with the back of his hand, he passed the carafe to Tom.

My old man doesn’t know a bleedin’ thing, he said. He’d forget it was 1948 if he didn’t see it in the paper every day.

He laughed again. Struck by the unaccustomed taste, Tom thought back to the school day they taught him the word conscience. Together with the other boys in the class, he had been seated on the left-hand side of the room, the girls two to a desk on the right. One by one they conferred with the nun presiding over the class. The rest worked on an assigned exercise in silence until his or her turn came.

At the appropriate moment, Tom went to the nun’s side and held his exercise book open for her inspection. He had filled the two-page spread with words copied from the blackboard at the front of the room. He knew how to pronounce all but a couple of them and dreaded the thought of being asked to verbalise one of the words puzzling to him. The teacher pointed at the word conscience. Tom bit his bottom lip and felt the blood rush to his cheeks.

Try, even if you’re not sure.

Con … science.

No. Conscience. Repeat it after me. Conscience.

Conscience.

Satisfied with Tom’s effort, the nun gestured for him to go back to his place.

I didn’t think you’d dare. I thought you’d run off like a scaredy-cat. Tom was silent. Both boys  had become light-headed after the first sips. How old were you when your old man died?

Six, I think.

Do you remember him?

Not much. Just little things. Such as his drinking. He’d come in the door drunk but singing. I liked his singing even if he did stink of the grog. One day he sat me down and told me some of the things he saw in the war before he got his discharge.

Does your old lady like it here?

She thinks it’s better than Ireland.

Neither of the chums could believe their eyes when a figure materialised in front of them. In their dissolute state and in the waning light they needed a moment to recognise Father Cahill. The booming voice put the issue of the uninvited one’s identity beyond doubt.

Caught you red-handed, haven’t I, scamps?

Walter dropped the empty carafe and tried to dart away. But the priest immobilised him with a firm grip on his shirt collar. Father Cahill grabbed hold of Tom in like fashion. The assistant priest marched Walter and Tom back to the church. Locals were highly amused. All of them knew the priest and the two boys who had incurred his ire. In the presbytery, Father Cahill wasted no time with words. He administered a brief but harsh punishment with a thick rubber strap.

That’s nothing compared to the licking you’ll receive from your father, Walter Burns. He looked at Tom. And I guarantee you’ll get a mighty tongue-lashing when you get home.

Resuming the walk of shame through town minutes later, Father Cahill had no need to resort to force. Both Walter and Tom moved contrite by his side though Burns’ habitual grin had begun reappearing. The closer they drew to the farm, the more crestfallen Tom became. Since half past five Margaret had wondered what could have befallen her youngest. Opening the door and seeing her son, the assistant priest, and that nincompoop Walter Burns grinning inanely in the background she understood no good had come of the afternoon.

She cottoned on to the under the weather state of the boys. There could be no mistaking the fact though the events following their discovery had sobered both up considerably. Father Cahill pushed Tom in the direction of the living room. The boy chose not to look at Margaret in passing and sat far from the front door. To ensure the exchange between the priest and his mother went unheard, he blocked his ears.

But the religious symbols, those remote yet formidable accusers, remained in situ. Grown-ups maintained they offered hope and consolation to children and adults. But he’d never felt anything of the kind. Quite the contrary. Tom jammed shut his eyes but opened them when his mother forcibly removed his fingers from his ears.

How could you?

Tom kept silent, certain no words would overturn her rage.

So I’ve a son determined to follow the same road as his father? That’s where you’ll head if you become a slave to the drink. You’ll go to the devil like he did. I can feel it in my bones as sure as I’m standing here talking to you. To think you’ve begun messing with it already.

She dropped into a chair.

Tom chewed his bottom lip. I won’t do it again. I promise.

The boy sincerely believed he would never touch alcohol again. Not a drop would pass his lips again. He had not forgotten the legacy of his father. But when Margaret shuttled him off to bed he’d taken to speculating about the taste of beer, his late father’s preferred liquid nourishment. And perhaps there would be a few drops left in one or more of those empty metal kegs he and Walter had seen piled up out back of Pop Sullivan’s pub …

First Published in Gold Dust Literary Magazine

(An embittered young man reaches out to another in desperate need after a torrid night at his Brisbane boarding house accommodation.)

Chris had been laid out, flat on his back, on the grassy embankment most of the afternoon, one of many drawn to the manmade beach that sultry October day. A number of people were sunning themselves on the sand. Others kept to the embankments either side of the change rooms and toilet facilities.

When he opened his eyes he could tell from the altered position of the sun that he’d slept a long while. The giant orb sat lower in the sky than it had done on his arrival and yet the afternoon remained muggy. Gentle ripples skidded across the surface of both lagoons, at the whim of a faint northwesterly breeze.

Without raising himself, he peeked left and right. A woman he had noticed earlier hadn’t moved. Her face was turned toward him, eyes closed as she lay on her stomach, right cheek against the