Harvest by Steve Merrifield Read Free Book Online Page A

was fragile and could be broken at any time.
    He thought it odd how something
missing could change things so drastically, like when he was
younger and had seen the fairground with its bright attractive
colours, madcap clowns and entertainers and its rushing and soaring
rides. He had begged his dad to take him, and that night he had.
The sun had gone down. The lights of the fair flashed and raced
causing the shadows and the dark (which he had been frightened of
back then) to leap out at him. The dark made the clowns look
sinister with their blood red mouths, and it hid the ground from
view making the high rides seem higher and more frightening than he
could cope with.
    Now he was older, but he had
other fears.
    There were so many bad things
in the world, bullies, hoodies, war, perverts, murderers, bombs,
fighting. They had always been there, at school, in the street as
he walked with his mum, on the TV in the background while he did
his homework or played, but since his dad and Emily had gone they
all seemed so much more real and frightening.
    He took advantage of Amy being
oblivious to him and tried to be the Jason he had always been with
her. She didn’t need someone else talking slowly and clearly to her
like she was deaf, as adults had seemed to do with him about his
dad. Jason stepped into the room and soft-footed over to the bed
and ventured a natural, “Hello.”
    Amy looked up and gave him a
half-smile, her face puffy and flushed, then returned to her
drawing. Seeing she had been crying, and having heard his mum and
Claire’s grief in the other room, stirred something overwhelmingly
sad within him. All the people he loved were hurting and he
couldn’t think of a word or a gesture that could make them happy.
He was powerless and wanted to crawl away and get lost in games,
but he knew he couldn’t escape the worries in his head and the
heaviness in his chest.
    He sat beside Amy on the bed
and put his arm round her. She was shaking a little. She snuggled
into him, resting her head under his neck while she scribbled on a
dog-eared sheet of paper. Jason’s eyes grew hot and moist and he
swallowed against the emotions he felt for his mum, Amy, Claire and
missing Emily – even for his dad. Hoping Amy didn’t sense his
weakening.
    “ What you drawing?” Jason
asked meekly, knowing she wouldn’t reply, but just needing
something to say to break the quiet.
    She carried on with her idle
work. Jason picked up some other scattered drawings and leafed
through them. They were all of her room and her toys, but one of
them featured a little girl. That’s when Amy’s reality hit Jason,
without her having to speak. Whenever the girls put themselves in
pictures, it was always both of them. This crayon girl was alone.
He squeezed her tight.
    “ You like the green and
yellow crayons, don’t ya?” he remarked at the colours that swirled
within most of the pictures. Behind the girl in the picture was a
green scribble with yellow splodges that had some symmetry within
the spirals and swirls that threatened to swamp her. Somehow there
was something in that picture that teased the hairs on the nape of
his neck. She scribed two words next to it. Two words that labelled
the thing that was in her picture, and she looked up at him, not
with tears in her eyes, but fear.
    Jason jolted when Claire’s voice
broke the moment as she called for him to collect some drinks for
them from the kitchen. He slipped from the bed to collect them and
tried to understand what Amy had shown him in her picture and what
it meant. He hesitated in the doorway and turned back to her. Amy
had stopped her drawing now and was sitting bolt upright looking
warily around her with awkward jerks of her head like a dog that
had heard a sound only it could tune into. Claire called him again
before he had a chance to ask Amy what was wrong. Reluctantly he
left Amy to collect their refreshments from her mum.
    Claire passed him two large
glasses of cola with lively