A Long Line of Plastic Straws
Carter, a
nine-year-old who had recently moved to 4 Woodland Road, compensated for
everything by trying to connect the longest line of plastic straws in the
world. The obsession started at McDonald’s, where his grandma took him every
Saturday. She sat Carter down at a booth while she queued for the Happy Meal.
It was a box of food and a boring toy; what was Happy about that? He did like
his frosty chocolate milkshake, but not as much as the paper-covered straws. He
blew the wrappers across the room. Grandma couldn’t ask Carter to pick them up,
so she did it herself and tottered to the bin. Carter scrunched one end of a
straw and inserted it into the other.
He started the
project in the garage, which smelled like cardboard and dust, on a long folding
table; judging by its rickety groaning joints, it had been unloved since
Grandpa died. On a hot day there was even a lingering hint of his musky
aftershave.
Each week, Carter
picked up more and more straws, grabbing them from the McDonald’s dispenser
while Grandma Chrissie supported his arm. She never told him to stop stuffing
them into his hoodie pouch.
Their house was the
first of a three-house terrace, right at the edge of the village. Their garden
was overgrown now Grandpa wasn’t there and had a low-lying fence separating
them from the neighbour. The garage soon became too small for Carter’s venture;
he asked Grandma Chrissie to help by taking the straws outside.
Carter tucked his
good leg underneath him and stretched the other out. He missed being able to
feel his foot and sometimes woke at night, thinking he still could, but then he
remembered. Working in the garden, it was too easy for his mind to wander. He
tried to focus on other things, like the dampness of the grass and the rustling
sound from a hedge, which was trimmed neatly on the neighbour’s side.
‘Quite a project
you have there,’ his grandma said, shielding her eyes from the stark
cloud-filtered light.
And then she
returned to the house. She hardly left it, apart from to check on Carter. She
didn’t do her own food shopping now; what was the point when the Tesco delivery
service was so obliging? Carter had to ask what obliging meant. She said,
‘Obliging is when people make things good for you.’
He glanced at the
house. His grandmother was obliging, and calm. She never talked about any of
it.
‘Hello,’ came a voice.
Carter jumped. The
voice came from the next garden, the direction of the sun. All he could see
through looking at the light was a shadow above the neighbour’s fence and the
red specks and dark patches in his own eyes.
‘Hello?’ Once
Carter had shielded his eyes with his hand, he could see a boy about his age
who was leaning on the fence, making it creak and groan.
‘What are you
doing?’ the boy asked.
He felt silly when
he told him. ‘I’m… I’m making the longest line of plastic straws in the world.’
But Billy didn’t
seem to think it was silly. ‘Cool. How long does that have to be?’
‘Erm, long. Really
long.’
‘Why don’t you do
it underground?’ Billy suggested.
Carter bristled. ‘I
can’t, it’s plastic. That’s bad for the earth.’
Billy climbed over
the fence, landed softly, and darted over to where Carter sat. He joined him,
mirroring his position, with one leg stretched out in front and the other
tucked under him.
‘What happened to
your foot?’ Billy asked, in the matter-of-fact voice that no one else used with
Carter. ‘I’ve seen you…’
‘It was trapped in
the car.’ Carter touched one of his crutches.
‘Okay…’ Billy
nodded slowly. ‘You know, my mum has a big box of straws in the cupboard for
when we have parties. I could ask her?’
Billy’s mum was a
nice lady called Tara. She smelled like roses and felt soft and plump when she
hugged him, which she did as soon as Billy made the introduction at the doorway
of their house. Carter’s own mother had always been a hugger too and helped him
with his homework and took him to play football at the Green, back when he had
two proper feet to use and… but he didn’t have to worry about that at the
moment because the adults decided he should have time to ‘process everything’.
Tara was happy to
help and presented a box of straws that were a mixture of colours, to make a
change from the white ones with thin coloured lines.
‘Actually,’ said
Carter, holding the box of straws. ‘I think I’ll stick with the McDonald’s
ones.’
Billy’s mother just
smiled and told them to have fun.
Billy helped Carter
connect the straws. It was not long before the line stretched over Carter’s
whole garden and under the fence. Tara provided cans of Fanta and Grandma came
to say hello, perhaps checking if Billy was ‘suitable company’.
‘Where are your
parents?’ asked Billy, dragging a chipped terracotta pot to pin down a section.
‘I’m living with
Grandma.’
‘Oh.’
‘Where’s your dad?’
asked Carter.
‘Mum says he scarpered when I was little.’
‘What’s scarpered?’
‘Ran away cos he didn’t want us.’
Carter tried to imagine what this would be like. ‘Oh…’
‘Yeah.’
Carter’s dad hadn’t ‘scarpered’. He’d held his mum’s hand and his
whenever he could. Dad said it was to make sure no one got lost, but Carter
didn’t think that was it; he just liked them being connected.
The straw line progressed quickly; Billy’s kind mother started
taking Billy to McDonald’s at the same time as Carter and his grandma, doubling
the number of straws they were able to sneak out.
‘We really
shouldn’t let them,’ said Chrissie, on their second visit.
‘No, we really
shouldn’t, should we…’ Tara chomped into a Big Mac and put her hand under her
chin to stop the trickle of sauce in its tracks.
The two women
smiled at each other and said no more. They had never really talked before
Carter came to stay, but now they often had a cuppa and chat together,
initially over the garden fence. Then they started going inside, especially on
rainy days. Grandma and Tara would sit downstairs while Carter and Billy played
in each other’s rooms – video games, mostly, though they also liked to
construct big Lego towers. Yet their ‘great big straw line’, as Tara called it,
was their favourite thing to do together. The plan had been going so well; they
had nearly reached the other side of Billy’s garden.
Then one Saturday, everything
changed.
Carter knew
something was wrong the moment he felt the straws at McDonald’s; they were
lighter, flimsier. He unwrapped one, slowly, put it into his Coke, and after
only a few minutes, the straw began to soften and his heart thumped harder.
‘Billy,’ he
whispered. ‘Billy, look.’
He drew out the
straw, which made a screeching sound as it left the claws of the plastic lid.
It was limp and starting to break.
*
Carter’s
crutches swished through the overgrown grass until he was just a couple of feet
from Billy’s neighbour’s fence. They had discussed only earlier that morning
how they would knock on the old man’s door, ask if he would let them carry on
in his garden, but now it wasn’t possible: McDonald’s had changed their straws
from plastic to paper.
‘I guess that’s it
then,’ said Billy.
‘Yeah.’
‘How did your foot
get trapped in the car?’ he asked, suddenly.
This time, Carter
gave the real answer. His parents had told him many times not to squeeze his
leg between the seat and the door.
‘And then the lorry
hit us. And then I woke up in hospital. And then…’
They would never
tell him off again.
‘Your parents died,
didn’t they?’
It was the first
time Carter had cried about it; it was the first time anyone had said ‘died’.
‘And now my foot doesn’t
work. And I can’t do the straws anymore because of stupid Maccies.’
Billy threw his
arms around Carter. It knocked the crutches out of his hands, but with Billy
gripping so hard, he didn’t fall. Billy didn’t smell of roses like his mother
and wasn’t soft; he was sticky and skinny.
‘It’s okay…’ Billy
didn’t sound like he believed himself. ‘At least the paper straws won’t hurt
the earth. You know?’
Carter nodded,
banging his chin on Billy’s bony shoulder. He broke the hug, squatted to the
floor on one leg, and wiped his nose, leaving a trail on his sleeve. ‘I guess
so.’
‘It’ll be okay.’
‘You’re obliging,
Billy.’
They sat there,
silently. Carter glanced towards the house and wondered what the adults were
talking about – maybe Grandpa, the car accident, or Tara’s man. Or maybe they
were talking about plastic straws. All that potential.
‘Billy,’ said
Carter.
‘Yeah?’
‘I’ve been thinking
about towers.’
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About the author
Hannah Retallick is a
twenty-seven-year-old from Anglesey, North Wales. She was home educated and
then studied with the Open University, graduating with a First-class honours
degree, BA in Humanities with Creative Writing and Music, before passing her Creative
Writing MA with a Distinction. She was shortlisted in the Writing Awards at the
Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival 2019, the Cambridge Short Story Prize, the
Henshaw Short Story Competition June 2019, the Bedford International Writing
Competition 2019, the Crossing the Tees book festival competition 2020, and the
Fish Publishing Short Story Prize 2021.
https://www.hannahretallick.co.uk/
