Do Not Walk Here

Arvid sits in the bus shelter at six in the morning. The village is on a hill. The shelter has the best view. The first bus does not come until eight. That is why Arvid likes it. Nobody is here.

He keeps a box of chalk in his bag. Every morning he takes it out. Every morning he puts it back.

Arvid is twenty-four, and he draws very well. His drawings fill four notebooks under his bed. Nobody sees them. Sometimes a friend asks. He says, "Oh, I only play with a pencil."

Today he looks at the pavement in front of the shelter. It is wide and smooth and clean. It looks like a giant sheet of grey paper. His hands feel strange. They want to move.

"Just one line," he says to himself.

He takes a white chalk and kneels down. He draws one long curve. Then he draws another. His heart beats fast, but his hand knows what to do.

By seven o'clock, a whale lies on the pavement. It is as long as the whole shelter. It has a round, kind eye and a wide smile. Blue lines run around it like waves. A small gull sits on its back.

Arvid stands up and looks at it. His knees hurt, and his fingers are white. He feels happy and scared at the same time.

A woman with a shopping bag walks past. She stops. She does not say a word. She only looks at the whale for a long moment and smiles. Then she goes on.

Arvid does not wait for anyone else. He puts the chalk in his bag. He walks home very fast.

The next morning, he comes back early. He feels shy, like a boy on his first day of school. Maybe the whale is gone. Maybe someone washes it away in the night.

The whale is still there. It has a few shoe marks on its tail. And something new is there too.

Four orange cones stand around the drawing. Yellow tape runs from cone to cone. A white card hangs on the tape. Big black letters cover it.

DO NOT WALK HERE. REMOVE BY FRIDAY.

Under the words, someone writes a short name. It says "B. Village Roads."

Arvid reads the card three times. He feels cold inside. Someone in the village does not want the whale. The village office knows about it. They even give him a day.

"Of course," he whispers. "You cannot draw on a public street."

He wants to run away, but he does not. He thinks, I made this mess, so I will clean it. That seems fair. At least he can do it before anyone sees him.

He walks to the fountain by the church. He fills a bucket with water. He finds a hard brush behind the shelter. His hands shake as he comes back to the whale.

He kneels at the tail. The brush is wet. He lifts it.

"Stop!"

A man in an orange vest runs up the hill. A small white van stands behind him with its door open. He is about Arvid's age, with messy hair and a loud voice.

"What are you doing?" the man says. He is out of breath. "Please do not touch it!"

"I am sorry," Arvid says. "I know it is not allowed. I will clean it now. Then nobody needs to be angry."

The man stares at him. "Angry? Who is angry?"

"You are. The card says to remove it by Friday."

The man looks at the card. Then he looks at the whale. Then he looks at Arvid, and he starts to laugh. It is a big, helpless laugh.

"No, no, no," he says. "I wrote that card. The cones belong to the road office. I must take them away by Friday, or my boss gets angry. That is the thing to remove. Not the whale!"

Arvid feels the bucket slip in his hand. "The cones?"

"Yes! Look." The man points at the pavement. "Yesterday, school children walked all over the tail. A boy jumped on the gull. A girl cried. So I put up the tape. I want to keep it safe."

"You want to keep it safe?"

"Of course. It is the best thing in this village." The man puts his hand on his chest. "My name is Bastien. I drive past this shelter every day, and it is always grey. Yesterday it was a whale. Do you know how that feels?"

Arvid does not answer. His throat is tight.

"Do you know who made it?" Bastien asks. "I want to thank him. Maybe I want to ask him for a favour too."

Arvid looks at the brush in his hand. He looks at the white chalk dust on his fingers. Bastien looks at them too, and his eyes grow wide.

For a long moment, nobody speaks.

"I did," Arvid says. The words feel big in his mouth. It is the first time he says them aloud. "I drew it."

"I thought so!" Bastien says. "You sit here every morning, do you not? I see you from my van."

"You see me?"

"Every day. You sit here with your bag. I always think, he looks like a man with a story."

Arvid laughs. It comes out shaky and loud. He puts the brush down in the bucket.

"I have a lot of stories," he says. "They are in four notebooks."

"Then you must bring them here," says Bastien. "The pavement is big. I can find more tape."

Arvid looks at the whale. Its kind eye looks back at him. For the first time, the drawing looks finished. It also looks like the start of something.

Bastien reaches into his vest pocket. He takes out a short blue chalk, the kind that children use. He holds it out without a word.

Arvid does not take it yet. He looks at the empty grey space beside the whale. It is as wide as a second whale. Bastien keeps his hand open, and the blue chalk waits between them.