got tired. I did all the pushing, you'd do all the laughing.”
“Huh?”
A little smile crept to his face, “You'd hop in, whether there was dirt or dust or sand in there or whatever, you didn't care. You'd get in and brace yourself so you didn't fall.”
He laughed a little.
“And then, if I didn't start pushing, you'd look back, all impatient like, and would be like, 'come on'!”
He let the smile linger on his face for a couple of seconds. The lights turned green.
He prompted, “Remember that?”
“No,” she said, “Why?”
The smile reluctantly melted away from Henry's face and slithered down to hide under the driver's seat. He swallowed the memory. Somehow it tasted a little bitter.
“Nothing. I guess I was just...”
“Ew! Gross!”
He started, “What? What's up”
“That's just gross,” she said, holding up a white and red item in her hand, “Is that a – a tooth? Is that a tooth? Oh, there's another one! Ew!”
“Ah, sweet. I was looking for those – crap! Aw, geez, no!”
Paula had wound down the window and flung the teeth out into the night, wiping her hands on the car seat. Henry pulled over carefully.
“Damn it, I needed those, Pea!”
“What were they doing here? That's gross. I had to touch them!”
“Am I that repulsive?” Henry asked.
“Just keep going! I'm going to be late!” she stormed.
“Can you please go and get them back?”
“Ew! No! I'm not picking them up again. And they're on the road, now.”
“Pea...”
“Just go!”
Henry engaged the gear and pulled back onto the road, making a mental note of the houses.
“I needed those, Pea!” he grouched.
“Turn into that street there. Just pull up over here!”
“Where's the house?”
“Just pull up.”
“Which number?”
She insisted, “Just pull up.”
“Oh. You don't want to be seen with your old man, is that it?”
The perceptible pause was enough for confirmation, “Just pull up.”
He sighed, indicated, pulled over and let her out.
“What time am I picking you up?” he asked dutifully.
“You're not.”
“What?”
“I'm sleeping over.”
“Hell you are!”
“I've already told Mum. She said it was fine.”
“You didn't tell me.”
“Good night, Dad!” she called, hitching her backpack on her back.
“Come back here – Aw, shit!”
Henry slumped back into his seat. He could go after her. He could make a scene and pull her back to the car, kicking and screaming.
He watched as she walked briskly up the street. She was confident. Independent. Society and the Law said that she was old enough to make decisions for herself. They said she was a grown woman who was capable of making rational choices.
On the topic of his role as a guide, a mentor, as her dad, they were curiously silent.
Still, maybe he could compromise and bring her home at, like, eleven.
Or, he thought, he could go back home and not worry about it. If Loretta said it was okay, then she must know something he didn't. Maybe that Jackie girl was the responsible type. Maybe they were just studying.
His illusions were shattered when she turned into a house with the porch light on, and was greeted at the door by an unmistakably male figure. They kissed.
“Son of a bitch!” he growled, revving the car engine.
Paula looked back, frowned, gave a cheeky little wave and went inside.
His stomach boiled. His kidneys squirted juices. His eye rolled sideways and his abdomen tore open, spilling the hot acids and adrenaline over the car seat and all over his pants.
“Aw, damn it! Damn it! Son of a bitch!” he yelled as his stomach and liver nosed underneath his ribs and pushed their way through the rift.
He poked the escaping bits here and there to keep them inside, but his abdomen was crumbling to pieces. His seatbelt was the only thing holding it all together. If he unbuckled, he feared, he would lose it all. There was nothing for it but to go home and try to get the mess sorted out.
Garage Again
Henry never did find his teeth. He had turned the car around, retraced his route and looked out from the window where he thought they might be. He wanted to get out, use his phone as a torch and find his dentine articles, but the risk of losing his stomach and intestines was too great. Entrails were more valuable than teeth, any day of the week. He stayed in the car, wound the window back up and drove slowly home.
Getting back into the house was difficult. As soon as the seatbelt came undone, Henry's abdomen gave way and his stomach fell out. He had caught it inside his shirt, but the flimsy piece of material was not much of a support and it was getting soaked in a sea of succus and blood.
He hunched forward, holding all of the bits and pieces in as best he could, hoping that nothing had moved so much that he wouldn't be able to figure out how to put it all back again. He needed to go straight to the garage and avoid Loretta. It was better to get it all fixed and tidied up before anything else.
Overhead the gentle flapping of fruit bats sounded as they made their way from tree to tree. Normally Henry would stop and have a look at their dark shapes drifting overhead, blocking out the stars as they went, but he was in no position to lift his head up. Instead he went, head down, pressing his stomach contents in with his bad hand, leaving his functioning hand free to unlock the side gate.
Upon the concrete was a dark patch that drew Henry's attention. He hobbled over and squinted, looking down at the mass with his good eye.
“Oh.”
There were ants. Lots and lots of ants. There was a marching trail that led from the grass to a black mound and back again. In the twilight he could see them trundling mandible to abdomen, dutifully working away to do whatever it was that needed to be done.
He pressed his stomach in harder and leaned in a little bit closer. It was a dark cluster, warped and twisted. The massing ants prevented him from seeing just what it was they were pulling and tearing at.
“Oh,” he said again.
There was a leg protruding at a rude angle from the pile. It was a black, spiky leg, spindly and shiny. It was thick and bulbous at the top, tapering down to a strong joint, terminating in a narrow stump. It was the leg of his cricket.
It was under there, Henry realised, underneath the rippling coating of insects. It was being chewed at and pulled apart, bit by bit, nibbled and chomped and sliced into little pieces to be dragged back to the nest. The long, smooth, twitchy antennae had been yanked off and taken away. Its tough carapace had been breached. Its internals were now at the mercy of an efficient demolition team.
“Bastards,” Henry said, “Leave him alone!”
He flicked at the mass, dislodging the ants. A few clung on, some crawled up his hand, the rest scattered in panic.
Henry held the corpse up and looked at it. It was light. Too light. There was nothing left inside it. There was no chirrup, no wonder, no confusion. It would never stomp about or scuttle or twitch any more.
There was nothing left but the dull, black armour and some sinewy bits holding the flaky mass together.
An ant, having missed the memo, popped out from a hole that had been bored in the side and looked back up at him, shaking its head and showing its mandibles.
He dropped the cricket. The ants had already got what they wanted. They might as well have the rest. With a mighty effort he hauled himself back to his feet. He needed a second to steady himself on his good leg. He shambled to the garage and turned the light on.
He stopped, peering into the room.
Something was different. It was his garage. It was the one in his backyard, filled with his m
emories and junk and unopened packets of nails. All of that, it was still there. It was definitely the same garage. But something was different.
It was the smell. That was it! There was no smell.
There was no smell! Where was the kerosene? Where was the cut wood? Where was it? Had someone cleaned up or something? No, surely not. Even if everything within had been removed, the smell would remain.
It had been there forever and now it was gone.
His hand slipped, his stomach dropped out and spilled the braised steak and onions on the floor.
He grunted, picking it up, “Bugger!”
He put his stomach down on a bench and opened a cupboard. Inside was an array of bottles, each containing a different aromatic.
He opened up a container of methylated spirits. He licked his lips in anticipation, brought the bottle to his nose and sniffed.
Nothing.
Well, it was a clear liquid, after all, so perhaps he had just filled the bottle with water at some stage in the past. Ha ha, that was it. That was it. It was water. He closed the bottle and put it back.
His eye fell on a bottle of blue kerosene and he paused.
He shut his eyes, took a deep breath and opened it, taking a long, deep sniff.
Absolutely nothing. He could feel the air moving through his nose. He could feel his lungs expand as the air rushed into them. He knew that he was sniffing properly. He had done it a few times before.
But there was no smell. He had lost his sense of smell. Inside his skull his olfactory bulb had given up.
“Great. Just sodding well great! Fantastic!”
He opened up another bottle, and another, and another. He pushed his nose into his armpit. He nuzzled some old rags, a half-empty beer can, the dust on the counter, even some old mouse droppings.
Absolutely, positively, without a doubt, stone-cold, motherless nothing.
He threw his hand
Atlas, Broken Page 10
