Where the Sun Shines Brightly

Copyright © David Gullen 2013

The right of David Gullen to be identified as the Author of the work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988

 All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. All characters are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

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First published in Albedo One magazine 2013

Also available in the short story collection Open Waters, from the EXAGGERATEDpress 2013

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Where the Sun Shines Brightly

Under cover of darkness a column of heavily armed tourists moved inland from the beach and blocked the city road. Before dawn the village near the abandoned airport was cut off behind their lines.

Tomas lay on his makeshift bed on the floor of the cantina and listened to the rumble of heavy engines in the night. He had known something like this was coming, the same as it did every summer. The tourists had their favourite places to dig, bulldozing earth ramparts, diverting streams, damming the river. Then, when they left, days or weeks later, they knocked it all down, levelling the fortifications and even destroying the things that might be useful for the village. He pulled on his trousers and scudded barefoot across the stone floor to where his grandfather slept.

‘Grandfather Georges, the touristas have come up from the beach.’

‘All right, I hear them. Turn your back while I dress.’ Georges was already awake. He was too old to sleep well - recurring dreams, restless legs and his bladder all broke his rest.

Tomas listened to his grandfather’s groans and exhalations as the old man pulled on his trousers and tied his sandals. In the fly-specked and frameless wall mirror Tomas glimpsed the pale mottled skin of his grandfather’s back, his tanned arms and age-wasted muscles of his thighs and buttocks.

Georges slung the old canvas satchel that held his tobacco, eye glass and whisky over his shoulder, took down his old bolt-action Enfield and filled his coat pockets with a double handful of long brass-cased bullets. Finally he took up his pipe and slipped it carefully inside his coat. ‘Go wake your father,’ he told Tomas. ‘I’ll meet you at the road.’

Tomas’s parents slept in the kitchen behind the cantina. Tomas pushed open the slatted door and called out:

‘Father, mother, get up. The Panzertouristas have come up from the beach.’

Tomas’ father, Christos, woke slowly, groggily. Bleary-eyed, he drank from the beaker on the floor by his bed.

Maria, his wife, draped a black woollen shawl over her nightdress, ‘Tomas, you will go up into the hills with your grandfather.’

‘What about Julia?’ Tomas said.

Maria looked sick with worry, ‘She stayed the night with Rosa, at the other end of the village.’

‘What?’ Christos shook his heavy head, trying to think. ‘When was that discussed?

Maria filled a knapsack with food from the cupboard: two loaves, goats cheese, three handfuls of olives. ‘I told you yesterday.’

‘When?’

‘Yesterday.’ Maria faced her husband, ‘Before you were drunk.’

Five years ago the holidaymakers had blown up the weir across the stream that fed the village. That year and the next were difficult, with little water in the dry months. Then another group of touristas excavated the pool, rebuilt the weir, and stocked the now much deeper pond with fish. Life became a little better. Tomas’s father led a delegation of grateful villagers; Tomas and his grandfather spent the day in the hills.