Children of the Warhod Liner
Almond Bay, named for its shape, once thronged with commerce upon its placid waters. Now it is little more than a crater, the same as those produced by nukes. Upon its red dust floor lies the corpse of the Warhod Liner, reduced to a skeleton by creatures that, from a great distance, seem to be flies picking at dead flesh—closer, they are men: men over generations who have lived within the orifices of the metal-framed body and who have transformed, again and again, its constituent parts into new forms. For these busy men, rubbing their hands together as they plot and scheme, take no part of the Liner for granted. Screws, nails, bolts, corrugated sheets of metal, cables—all, again and again, are used and transformed, the guts of the beast shared amongst feasters desperate for raw material, moved by a need to create change, no matter how feeble.
And is that white creature a maggot? Its skin not yet tanned to a ridged brown by the sun of the Red Desert, it runs between the legs of its scheming father, leaps away from the embrace of its mother, and smiles. This is a child, and around it are children. They, away from the body of the Warhod Liner, yet in view of the adults who labour above, have found a Roly-poly, to them a creature of endless fascination. With a rusted piece of pipe he, slobber round his mouth, eyes each a knife's edge of concentration, bangs the Roly-poly upon its back—a solid thwack, which he feels somewhat bad for, enough to cause it to roll into its shell. Boys and girls cheer and, victorious, he raises the ball above his head.
Another: she, with a clumsy hustle, takes old bottles and lines them up down the slope—9 bottles, arrayed in a triangular formation. Tubby follows her, though he is ponderous and slow to move without first being prodded, and crouches behind the pins. Now he (the first boy who whacked the Roly-poly) takes a running start then lets fly the shelled bug—it spins and spins down the crater, picks up momentum, hits a small stone and leaps! but it stays on track, and he is now praying—a sincere prayer to a nameless God he knows is real—that it will strike the pins and that his braggadocio will be substantiated, and that she and others will know he is a Hero—he is praying and one pin is hit, and the bug-ball spins out flat, rotating on the ground like a discus, its little legs spindle here and there as it seeks for the illusive earth (surely the bug is very dizzy), and the pin hits another and another! a cavalcade of bottles, each a flying gleam and sparkle under white sun-shafts, the climax of a small dream but—
One bottle remains standing. Now Tubby is tangoing with the wriggling bug, who, with a casual saunter, tried to walk off after feebly flipping itself onto its many legs. Tubby is afraid and he (the first boy) hates this display of cowardice—it is only a bug! Just grab it! The boy thwacks Tubby with the pipe. The struck boy cries.
Above, leaning on a railing, Tubby's father laughs. His leg is missing and it will be a long way down but, begrudgingly, he hobbles his way on his steel crutch. He played games, too, when he was young, and he was hit, spit on, all the rest. Best he help his son, though, or else he'll cry at dinner and man! that'd be a drag after a long day.