It was dark inside the hut but the boy’s face was glowing as though lit by the moon and his eyes were wide orbs of pink glass. Kepler used a palm to close the lids and black ants crawled from the boy onto him. His skin was still soft and Kepler was gentle because he didn’t want to feel that hardness, the way the body goes.

The hut smelled of oil and engine grease and there were rusted tools on the shelves and boat parts long abandoned. Kepler covered the boy with a sheet of tarp and looked out of the square where a window had been; wind swept along the sea and stung his eyes with salt water.

Waves lapped at the shore and sunk in the sand. Ancient water from comets and volcanoes, water that was there yesterday and would be here tomorrow.

Beyond the jetty, rain fell on the factory and turned to steam. A tall chimney rose from the complex mess of metal, burning chemicals in the night.

******

tell ye somethin bout the twins, they aint even twins, aint even related.

years back when one got sick, the other moved in.

bought em clothes all the same, black shoes, black trousers, t-shirts, that sorta thing.

then he went an cut his hair off, shaved it right to the bone.

wears glasses without prescription.

anyroad, the last thing he went an done was change his name, theyre both called Jacob but everone at work calls em the twins.

I dont remember fellers old name.

*****

The whole time she called him Kipper and sometimes she giggled but she was in the land with all the pills she was taking.

She hadn’t been sleeping right, hadn’t slept much at all since the boy had gone. His name was Johan and the police were on it but the weeks passed like heavy iron ships and they wouldn’t tell her much at all.

Kepler made no promises but would do his best he always did. She tried to focus but her eyes kept darting about the room. On the little desk by the red telephone was a photo of an albino boy in school uniform. The mother saw Kepler looking up from notes scratched in pencil and said he was a happy child but was bullied.

Then came the part he said he didn’t like and he handed her a sheet with his daily expenses and she nodded slowly her eyes heavy and wet and the tears started flowing, he said sorry but he had to make a living. It’s not that, she said, and began to shake and sob heavily, those awful sounds, gulping for air and next her head burrowed into his lap and she wailed herself sinking to the depths of dark sleep.

****

The teacher did a head count of the little hardhats and they all went into the big elevator. The guide followed them in and pushed a button to close the steel doors and they began the descent to the factory depths.

Outside he had shown them the skip cars heavy with sintered limestone, iron ore, coal and coke and they watched it rise on the belt that fed the blast furnace. He explained to the children the complex reactions that reduced iron to its elemental form. Some stared back in fascination, others giggled when he used the word slag.

When yellow vests spilled out of the elevator into the control room, the engineers looked up from their desks and smiled. All along the walls were panels with switches and monitors and neat rows of glowing red buttons. The guide led the class around the computers to the back of the room where tall windows gave a view of the factory bowels and the glowing furnace beneath.

The children pressed faces and palms against the glass as the guide explained the workings of the factory: torpedo cars ferrying pig iron, dust cyclones separating solids; Cowper stoves and copper tuyere nozzles generating temperatures of over 2000 degrees centigrade.

Not one child kept their eyes from the furnace mouth, a belly full of angry fire, channelled steaming from the tapping pot.

A boy removed his hard hat and safety glasses and wiped sweat from his brow with the back of his hand.

Two aluminium clad factory workers were tending the blast furnace. One approached the narrow river of white-hot amber and filled a ladle with the lava like broth whilst the other scratched notes in pencil. Then he carefully emptied the ladle hissing and steaming into a hollowed-out brick. When they set down their equipment and removed their bell-shaped hoods, two bald heads glistened in the heat.

The teacher led the class back toward the elevator but the albino boy remained.

Through instinct or impulse, the men looked up in unison at the boy: his hair was white as burning magnesium and in his eyes swirled lithium fire.

‘Johan,’ said the teacher, ‘come along please.’

***

A pale hand lifted the red receiver and the telephone stopped ringing with its peal still busy in the air.

‘Hello.’

‘It’s me.’

‘Well?’

‘Listen, I haven’t found him yet.’

‘I see.’

‘But I’m getting close.’

‘Ok.’

‘I should have something for you soon.’

The air settled. She reached for the photograph.

‘Kipper?’

‘Yes?’

‘Thank you…’

**

I knowed Kepler years, one o the good guys though I bin worried.

went to his place few months back… it was a mess, noodle pots, empty beers, mail piling up.

place stank!

thats not Kepler, I told him, I said boy, straighten yourself out.

money burns a hole in his pocket, spends it drinkin and I think hes bin gamblin, old Bill sees him at the machines.

aint no money playin gumshoe, I keep tellin him, try somethin different but he wont listen.

anyroad hes a friend, always the first to buy ye a drink.

like I said, hes one of the good guys.

*

The sun was setting so the sea was black against the sky and it was cold because there were no clouds. Kepler staggered from rock to rock ahead of the detectives and the German Shepherd.

He pointed to the hut sticking out from the jetty. The dark factory loomed in silhouette like some steaming behemoth and black clouds of smoke wheezed from the chimney.

Kepler hung back when they reached the hut and told them to look under the tarp. In the cold air the smell of oil mixed with salt. The dog was barking constant and the handler pulled hard at the lead.

A detective stooped to enter the hut. When he hauled back the tarp, a large rat scurried away from the flashlight.

There was nothing there.

The detective swept the beam of light across the damp earth and lit up the ants; some had wings and others were tangled together and two carried a little white egg into a hole.

The policeman turned to Kepler but he was staring straight ahead: through the door and out of the square where a window had been; to the world of eels and sharks and underwater volcanoes. Of whales, seahorse and octopus.

January 2019