Riverman #5 - Baked Beans 

11/10/21 

Seagulls drop from the sky. A ceremony of sunburning, sin-laden lizards lay just upstream. The motorway roares: saturday afternoon. It is the supermarket races for the sofa Kings and Queens. The Riverman suddenly exclaims his dream to me over his early evening supper. He heaves his padded slippers. They slap in time to his story, across the cold tiles of his cement boat whilst he holds in his hands two forks and giant plate of pasta. Then a mummer freezes him.

"What's that?" He turns.

"Bet it's that damn mouse, I'll murder that slick thing."

I laugh.

"No, listen..."

I listen to the river.

"It's the ghost, the one I caught hiding inside the tin of baked beans I got yesterday. They were buy one get one free. It told me I'll get sciatica soon, if I don't rest. It said I need a doctor, to check out my memories. It also told me to tell you soon, that you need to leave me, because I'm too old to love again. It said to say 'leave me here, leave me forever, for I am dying'." 

The river man is crying now. I try to tell him that the baked beans lie. That there is no ghost, that they are just chit-chatting aluminium tins.

"You don't understand," he grumbled. "You are too young, you're too young."