Meet Jack Duguid

Jack Duguid left his house before seven. He walked down Dallerie brae, round the corner, falling bank, rugby pitches, past the big house, cottages, deserted laundry, ruined buildings. He climbed a fence into fields. Frosted and frozen grass, exhausted beneath skies growing lighter but no brighter, skies universal grey, low, lowering. Echo of tree branches rattling in the wind. Roll of nearby water. Over there, if you knew it, the cemetery wall, rhododendrons behind, graves beyond. Jack knew it. He knew that. He walked the field, along its edge meandering beside the river. Grass lay flattened in his wake, footsteps like slices in time. He stooped and took a photograph. Another. Another. He backtracked and photographed the same spot from a different angle, avoiding evidence of himself. Morning light, insubstantial, consequential. Blade of grass. Glimmer of frost. Earth, cold earth, hard and brown and bottomless earth…