Harlan: Globetrotter

Harlan rolled into town with his lost, beautiful kid in tow and a desire to fix something in his own life, it didn’t really matter what, so long as when they pulled back onto the highway in the morning, the van reeking of sleep and a week’s worth of food wrap, the list he kept in the glovebox was one item shorter.  They’d made it from south of NYC in one day, border hassles and all, and there was an argument to be made that that was an achievement in itself; the bucket list could wait. But his kid was off already on his roughed-up Landyacht: expanding my glacial horizons, he’d said - and so Harlan felt honour-bound not to give up on the day himself. A lot of what he’d written was selfish, of course, just ways of making himself feel better but dressed up cheaply as altruism or penance. He scuffed along the bank of a dank river the colour of pear, and past an old cotton mill, home it turned out to a climber turned photographer who curled up most nights, she told him, near the top of the chimney, and every morning her mouth was full of soot. Afterwards, he tossed rocks at middle-ground lily pads and rolling shallow water carp, and offered an apology to someone or other with every swing of his arm, watched the effect of those words ripple out into nothingness, saving the kid’s mother, his love once, for last and most heartfelt.

(The photo, and the inspiration for this one, are courtesy of Lucian.)