Earliest Memory [fiction]

 A little boy stands in front of the wire. He is perhaps three years old and he is faced with a challenge. The fence is high, very high. It is one side of the four sides of a prison and the little boy realises that he has to go in there. He is scared and trembles a little. He has nothing in his hands except ... except his destiny.

His father is standing in front of the high, wire fence but it doesn't seem so high to him. He is tall, dark and determined. He places his hand on the wire and lets his fingers slip through into a sort of claw grip. The grip is gentle for he remembers that, not so long ago, he stood before a wire fence in another faraway land and his hand met the warm skin of another. That fence, so far away now, tied these two together despite the barrier it placed between their bodies and dreams. That faraway fence could not stop their kisses or the finger-tip caresses.

Just as this fence here and now could not stop what was to come for the little boy. He turned his face up to his father, letting the sun swim over his eyes that looked through slitted lids. His whole face was a question.

'Why don't you do this today', said the man from a long way up. 'It would be good to do, I think.'

A tiny, wooden wheelbarrow stood at his feet like a toy. The man bent and lifted a sturdy, brown paper bag in one hand and placed it on his other one. It should have been heavy but it certainly didn't look like it to the little boy. He said nothing.

Into that tiny wheelbarrow a stream of equally tiny pellets clattered and poured. The boy lowered his head to look. Tiny particles of dust rose up around his legs and seemed to settle on his knees, of all places. He brushed the dust away with a few slaps of his small hands.

'It's alright. You're in charge now. Here, I'll open the gate.'

The man deftly flicked the horizontal latch and pulled it out of the steel arc that held it to the gate post. The boy felt his heart flutter, felt the fear creep into his gut and his knees. Either the prisoners would escape and he wouldn't have to go in or they wouldn't notice and he would have to join them. 

The man placed his hand on one of the handles of the wheelbarrow and gently guided the little boy into the narrow space between it and the other handle. He looked down into the barrow and saw what he had to take inside that prison. 

Food.

'Just hold it here with both hands and go inside. I'll be here, at the gate, so the chooks can't get out.'

The little boy didn't know what to say but he nodded quickly and lifted that thing up so only the old pram wheel at the front met the ground. 

It rolled suddenly and he had to move with it, into the prison for chickens. He didn't have to push too hard. The ground was dusty here but soon it became softer and green with grass.

The gate slapped shut but the man was still there, holding onto it, keeping it unlocked and open, just a little. He nodded at the little boy, a smile growing across his brown face. The boy turned his face slowly towards the flock of birds that had, unaccountably, begun chattering towards him. They surrounded him. They menaced him and insisted. They clucked and muttered at him.

They did not attack him and this was an unbelievable thing. They seemed so big and angry.

'Now throw the pellets. Take a handful and throw.'

His father did this every day. He knew these talkative, animated birds who seemed never to be still except at night, and even then they flapped and chittered in their shelter.

He threw. Pellets scattered. Birds followed. He threw again. More birds chattered and followed the food. They bounced on their spiky feet in a frenzy. They formed a wide arc around him and thought of nothing but eating, heads down and bum feathers up (although the little boy would not call them bums for many, many years). Quick to see the situation, he grew bolder and more determined. He threw again, but this time with more force and the arc of food - and chickens - widened even further. 

The little boy laughed and turned to the tall man who laughed with him.

'Once again, Erke. Give it all to them.'

And the little boy did. All of it, to the last small pellet. He was their comrade, their friend, their provider. He was king of the chooks. He felt strong and worthy.

'Come out now, before they've finished.'

The boy turned the barrow around and wheeled it the two or three metres back through the gate. The father lifted him up and placed him inside and, bending low, he wheeled his first-born back to the shed, stored the barrow carefully, then carried his son back into the house on his shoulders.