The Gin River
written by: Angela Huskisson
It’s the colour of the dawn that drags Jack straight back into the spiral, the one which takes him to the depths. He has awoken early as a stain of the deepest pink blossoms like fresh wounds behind cotton, curtains wafting carelessly in the cool of morning. The sharp scent of juniper fetches him slap into a new day filled with hard memories.
He and Crazy Jayne had been camping by the famous Gin River, set deep within the Blue Forest, so called for its clear crystal freshness set amongst the sharpness of juniper. It was a well-known beauty spot, magical in late September, and still full of those over hot days and crisp winter snap mornings, which they both adored. This had been yet another mad spark idea of hers, that sheer spontaneity for life which summed her up so very completely. This fearlessness which was hers alone, coupled with her constant search for adventure, where nothing was ever off limits. He had loved her then.
‘Let’s take the baby too,’ she had said.
Although Jo-Jo had been more of a toddler at the time and, he’d be a teenager by now. Jack carried made-up pictures in his head of all those years now spent. And the saddest thing was his mother had offered to take the baby so they could spend the weekend together as a couple, but Jayne had been strangely offended. She had never liked his mother.
Jack recalls again how they had woken with such suddenness and foreboding on that final fine and peaceful day. And when they turned to gaze at Jo-Jo’s little makeshift cot, he had gone, vanishing into the ether. With panic rising, hearts over fast, and a spinning fear clutching at their bellies, they ran barefoot, clad only in nightwear, searching and crying out his name, which caught like arrows upon air, cold and stinging. Stones tore hard at feet as pain spread large within their breasts as brambles snagged and scratched at bare flesh. And, after a long and heartbreaking day where each step was mired with stabbing pain, they saw him, their only child- floating so very peacefully. It was as if he was fast asleep within his tight white nightshirt, now changed to a strawberry hue, as he was carried fast downstream by the rush. As the light at the end of the day embraced the water, it moved to the sweetest blush, where the dragonflies hovered like delicate Jinn-fairies, waiting.
But now Jack remembers it all too vividly as his mind drags him back to that fateful day over and over. So, when the colour wash of rose bleeds yet more heavily into the dawn light, his heart silently breaks once again as if pressed by thorns.
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