Steven Hitchins

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When daylight comes there are no hymns. People scuffle through classrooms, one looking for dawn. Smoke pours down at small panes collapsing above us. Fog so thick we can barely see each other. Last time I would see many of them. Mr Williams shouts. I hear a rumbling and look outside.

 

Birdcheep brambles. Net window dog yip. Gustled bouquet of dead TV aerials. I don't like anything else. Recycling sacks flail billowfull. Bus breezes the corner. Every time it's the same person. Hedge blooms and exhaust. Cigarette logo on sleeve-swirled window. Maroon hive skewered with bun-pins. Stubble heads sweat. Stop saying it shut up. I was like oh.

 

Wreath visited almost everybody. The tailor sews his last black tie. Chapel lights wink. Breath of white chrysanthemums in front room. I run out and see a man's legs sticking out of the ground. I try to pull but someone shouts and water pours down I think he must have drowned. Somewhere in the mud lies a girl’s shoe. I think she's alive but a man says it's no use. My leg hurts but I manage to pull it away from the shoe.

 

Stream plaits sky. Ladybird bag stuffed litterbin. Trolley parked in gravel lane. Deli club triangle box. Oh my god I was just about to say that. Frays of Pepsi logo quail from roadsqueezed litre flask. That fucking thing no let's not go there. Purpley brunette leatherlegs propped against bus shelter. He didn't do anything this time no he was just standing there. Pylon over rooftops. Huge boys in shorts clamber into tiny Corsa. Keys tinkle engines wheeze.

 

A crash and I'm lifted, carried across the room still at my desk. Knot of window. Eyes open then water. Man rubs dust from trousers of glass. Smoke hands. Woman on front wall cradles baby. Miner in hardhat holds steaming papercup. Breath mists, hands on hips. Flashbulbed policemen. 11am I hear the newscast. Put my helmet, spade, torch, gumboots, oilskins in back of the VW. Tell Olwen I'm driving to Wales.

 

Feet-balls ache in old sole-fucked shoes. Dry leaf weaves around corner. Branches heave in breathing breeze. Twenty pound I said you're wasting your money butt. Hills quilted in smooth stratus. Copper perm of birch. Yeah yeah that's what I'm gonna do with my mother now as well. My husband his brother he only goes up twice a year. He's still alive I was gonna say is he still alive? Cold blue sky-ache. Curdled leaf.

 

Sounds of children playing. Tattered roofbeams splay. I sit at my desk reading. I hear a rumbling and Mr Williams shouts. I'm up against the classroom wall above the slurry which fills the room. The Duke of Edinburgh strolls through the rubble. The Patna Express ploughs into a crowd at Lakhiserai station. Nurse Griffiths dodges between the excavators. She rests on a makeshift bed but cannot sleep. Lord Snowdon climbs through a classroom window. Smoke hangs.

 

Distant carhorn. Blackbird twiddles. Pylon wire up in mist. I trudge the daisied gutter. Corrugated outposts, barbed yards, submarine glow of traffic light islands. Where you off now then? Hoodied in fluorescent waistcoat, walks headdown thumb chasing palmsized screen. Ta ra buddy. I'll​ see you one day next week or whatever. Growly sigh of homeward cars. Wrinkly road markings. Sniff snot.

 

Inspector on the main street says no traffic to Aberfan. I see a moving mass of men and machines on the opposite hillside. Lock up and leave the car, carrying my spade. A lorry picks me up and drops me at Moy Road. Slurry to the gutterings. Trench of men shovelling along corrugated sheets to the lorries. In the gutter from the farthest slide I cut from above with my spade of dawns. I put back the roof: leave them all my life.

 

Mobile twings. Yawn rub wet eyes. Back together yeah they're not good they're alright. Went to supermarket but I forgot to buy Peperamis. Under hedge a bit of a Coco Pops carton monkey smiling. Torn scratchcard terms and conditions in tiny font. Plenty of money see he got. Young man in suit and fleece smiling with a real cigarette. Please ring reception bell for assistance. You can have it whatever heighth you want.

 

Girl comes running around corner of Angus Street and runs off down Cottrell Street. I didn't know her at the time and never discovered her identity. The roads are hushed as mourners race from their desks. Eyes open they utter not a word. Knot of fathers shovelling along corrugated streets. Legs still alive in fitful sleep. Smoke pours.

 

Car revs. Ferns twitch. And I'm just about to lose my mind. Squeeze my nostrils and palm away the snot. Yeah we were just talking. Thing innit? Blue-sleeve driver moored at bus stop, fist-pillowed cheek. I haven't been yet sorry I'm going now. Bus ticket tumbles along bitmac carpet. Great tits toot their day-fade signals. Trains of neon joggers trim roadside.

 

I stand near the calor floodlight. Young women carry milk and bananas on cinema trays. Blond lad stripped to waist asks to swap my spade for his shovel. Man shouts up from the trench. We will give them to the mothers if they want them. We are no hymns. I have known them all my life. I have sat in those classrooms. I have sat in prayer.

 

Tree drone. Lemon yogurt dusk. Haha I'd get my wallet out. Drained leaves pegged to black branches. Lowlight silhouette houses. It's not funny I'm not laughing at it. Empty playpark birdsong. Clattery breath of distant train. Car door clunks. Boots crunch pavement. Trainers scuff skim striding girl eyes on phone screen puffing. Padded jacket stops to light fag. Ice cream van chimes if you go down to the woods today. Sparrows whistle across the bedtime lawns.

 

When daylight comes people scuffle through the debris. One looks for his daughter, another for a nephew and niece. A car held vertically against a house. Mr Williams frees his foot from a desk. We climb out of a hole where the window had been. Men smoke rolled cigarettes on the kerb. A man places his arms deep in air. Glow of boy who fell on pavement. Little lives for the dawns. We find our throats: we will give them this. Tatter not a word.