MORNING SERIAL

HE had no appetite to home in on grief and misery, or even despair and anger. The earlier photographs which had suddenly brought professional recognition and fleeting fame, those faces featuring defiance, rage, bravery, resolution, unity, exultation, the gestures of speaking and listening through all the true joyfulness of what was, in the end, a false and fake scenario, none of those could suffice now, even as negatives.

The old man had warned of the vacuous drudgery and drift that was to be the fate of those with no boltholes left to find. Billy surveyed those inhabiting the ruins and instead picked up the bits and pieces left, the segments that told of their fracture. He shot backs. He blew up fists.

He took away the support of arms and legs and just left the torsos. He cast down at feet. He pinpointed an eye or two. He showed mouths shut. He closed off the things and cropped the people that had whispered and shouted, and let the ears remain deaf to further entreaty.

The photographs he made were a piled-up detritus of humanity. A tangle of hair. A sullen neck. An arthritic knee. A discarded banner. A child’s extended arm. An empty seat. A wiped brow. And hands, hands, hands. Fluttering, open-palmed and waiting, held together and praying. Something had fled. Had drained away. Something had been beheaded. Something had been killed.

He called the exhibition, and the book of it he made, “No Photographs of Crazy Horse”. And when it was finished, he said goodbye to the old man and left. He never saw him again. He carried him inside himself, and would now forever.

TOMMY told me I’d slept. On and off. For almost three days. That Lionel had remembered how he’d once been a St John’s Ambulanceman – a uniform, a peak cap and International tickets – and had strapped up my ribs.

Only thing to do for them, apparently. They’d used Dettol to clean out the cuts.

> The Crossing by Dai Smith is published by Parthian in the Modern Wales series www.parthianbooks.com

CONTINUES TOMORROW