The Mason’s House

The next morning the sun rose so high above the setting moon it looked like day was night and night day. Knowing that this was a mistake, a freak of nature, the legless man went about his day as if nothing out of the ordinary was afoot. He drew a picture of the sky, and sketching a line between where he was and where he was going set off in a straight line, never once questioning where he was going or why. He scrabbled and skipped, the stumps of his legs striking the asphalt like matchsticks, the sky bluer than birthday cake icing. He stopped and started, rested, then started again, his face bluffing in the warm midday breeze. When he thought he’d reached where he was going he stopped, rested, then started again, keeping up the pace until day fell into night, the sky turning blacker than a coal porter’s face. The next day when he awoke he found a sheet of foolscap on the floor next to his bed, and scrawled on the sheet, with almost geometric precision, was a straight line going from here to there then back. Thinking he’d was dreaming he shook his head, saying as he did ‘…the straighter the line the crooked’er the way from here to there…’. He remembered his da’s da telling him the very same story when he was a wee lad, cautioning him that there’s no such thing as a straight line so don’t waste your time wishing you were somewhere else other than where you are. In the yard behind the Mason’s house was a woolshed full of dust and wood shavings, the door hanging off its hinges. Inside the shed he found a picture of a Mason family, three children, a mother a father and a dog with three legs. In child’s crayon on the back was a crooked line drawn from one side of the picture to the other, from here to there. He crammed the picture into his jacket pocket and headed for home, the stink of piss boxing his nose.