By now Wild’s entire body was shaking, as if possessed by fever. Breath fluttered in his throat. He was aware of time passing, could sense its trembling movement. He’d spent two years outlawed from the possibility of being responsible for another’s life—and now this? Unconsciously he raised a hand to his mouth to chew a thumbnail, only to realise what he was doing and stop himself.
Lee groaned and clutched at his left side. The pool of blood on the table swelled until it outgrew its thick meniscus and trickled onto the wooden floor. Another groan. What if he died? What if the boy died? What then? And he was dying, that much seemed obvious. Right in front of him. Dying right in front of him. Again.
What should I do? And Frank’s round, unshaven face staring, disbelieving, staring at him. What? You’re the doctor. Thinking that Frank probably should shave twice a day—maybe he usually does but missed today because of the fuss of the pregnancy and so on—and realising even at the time that it was an idiotic thought. And that silence and the feel of it in his hands, as good as dead, everyone waiting. The silence peculiar to tragedy. Everyone waiting.
Tears assembled in Wild’s eyes. One thing at a time, he thought. One thing at a time. He stepped forward to test Lee’s pulse again. Faint. The skin was still cool, but there didn’t seem to be any immediate sign of arrhythmia. Ideally, Lee’s knees should be bent but there was no means to keep him balanced in that position and it would make access even more difficult. He wished there were someone else present, just so he could ask: What do you think we should do? He wanted no more than that, only the companionship of a question.
But there was nobody. He inhaled deeply then mopped up the blood and drew the skin apart. Meditatively, he ran his hands over Lee’s skin again, feeling for clues, for signs of swelling or rupture, all sense and feeling crammed into the tips of his fingers. Through his very hands, he breathed.
Let me tell you about the ribs, he murmured. There are usually twelve on either side but not necessarily. Sometimes more or fewer depending on the development of—what’s it called?—a lumbar rib, I think. Something like that. The middle ones are of a certain shape and have particular characteristics—thin and flat with a groove for nerves and vessels—but the first two and the last three are different again. I suspect that your ninth or tenth ribs are broken, which may well have saved your life.
A long pause before he spoke again. Doctor Sherman was not too badly equipped, he said at last. Luckily for us. These forceps are perfect. Hold on, son. Hold on. Skin is amazing stuff. The stretch and the ability to repair itself. Strong and stretchy. Waterproof. Think of a pregnant woman. That stomach. Jane was huge when she was pregnant with Alice. Incredible. Big as a house she was, almost as wide as she was tall. I know a lot about the body. How it works and what goes where, but the idea of pregnancy still amazes me. That you can carry something alive within your own body, a version of yourself. And afterwards, it’s almost as if nothing has happened. The day after Alice was born it was as if she had been with us all along, which maybe she had in some obscure way. The child you have is always the only one you ever could have had.
Wild stopped talking and looked up, realising this was an idiotic conversation. Tell that to Frank and Louise, he thought. People only believe in fate when the outcome is positive. It’s in the face of disaster that we entertain other, multiple possibilities, when we imagine better alternatives. What is and what might have been stare longingly at each other but will never converse.
People look in all sorts of places for their proofs of God, he continued. But it’s right here. You’re walking around in it. All you need, under your nose. A vessel of wonders, sloshing about inside, perfectly arranged. Think of . . . well, think of just about anything to do with our bodies and you’ll be amazed. In fact at this very moment certain cells are running around your blood looking for antigens so they can present them to the T-cells because they can’t recognise them unless this happens and then the T-cell can get to work to repel the foreign body. So much work even in breathing. So much for the body to do to convert everything to useful stuff. No wonder we get so tired. No wonder our bodies wear down. Just to fight infection, which your body will be doing right now, as we speak. At the ends of science is God.
This light here is medieval. I feel like I’m in that Rembrandt painting. Don’t know how I ended up here. There are other places, if you can imagine. Better places. Not everywhere is like this. I know because I’ve lived there. Once upon a time. Where it’s light and there are clean surfaces and . . . I don’t know, where there’s a sense of possibility or something. Women. There’s even a horizon.
Over Wild’s head, the kerosene lamp’s lean flame guttered, wavered and finally rallied. It was too late to back out now. Already his hands were smeared with blood. He’d located the bullet, could see its dark edge nestled within the red and yellow membranes of the deep fascia. This was a lucky break. He might be able to retrieve it. Lee remained utterly still.
Wild took a breath and kept talking. When we were first married, Jane and I went to London and stayed in a posh hotel. What was that? More than fifteen years ago. Our honeymoon. Now that is a city, people everywhere with their rubbish and bags and whatever. Just stuff. And quiet. I’d expected it to be really noisy, but people just moved through the streets in a gentle way, sort of whispering to each other, not because they were shy but because they were considerate of the people around, of not making too much noise. But the hotel. The hotel was the most modern thing I’d ever seen, shiny and neat and ordered. Even the flowers looked symmetrical. Amazing.
It was only later, much later, that Jane told me that she had cried on that holiday. One day when I was visiting a medical museum she’d sat by the window and wept because she knew it would never work out with us. And I wasn’t even using drugs then, was actually a pretty respectable sort of catch. She told me this when she left, like it was something she’d been saving up for our entire marriage. Wild shook his head. For nearly twenty years she tended that scrap of information.
Strange thing is that I knew all along. I remember coming home in the early evening through the drizzle. It was cold and I knew she’d been crying and I knew exactly why, but I resisted asking her because I didn’t want her to say it out loud. So when she finally told me it was like we decided to have the conversation we should have had years earlier, but by then it was too late. I didn’t even know about this kind of world then, and now that I’m here I don’t know that I can even remember what it was like in those other places. What it is like. Still going on out there somewhere, I suppose. One day you’re a guy with a wife and kid and the next you’re on the street, living like a bum.
And on this murmuring raft of language, Wild managed to bear himself and Lee through the darkness. Who knows how long it took? It seemed like an age that he crouched over that table, picking up and replacing things, wondering what to do, tapping his upper and lower teeth nervously against each other. He managed to imagine himself into another different, more capable person, so much so that he was almost disappointed to finally stitch Lee’s wound and stand back, merely himself once again. Still talking, he carried Lee and laid him on a sagging bed in one of the bedrooms. He covered him with heavy quilts and waited until he seemed to be resting more or less comfortably. He made a fire in the dusty fireplace and it was only then he heard the rain spattering on the windowpane and, having rinsed himself of words, fell silent. Hands still sheathed in bloody gloves, he pressed a palm to the windowpane and allowed the darkness to pass into his hand and splinter through him. What a place to finish up.
20
Wild woke to find himself on the couch in the lounge room. The open fire had weakened throughout the night and his exhalations were visible in front of his face. He rebuilt the fire and staggered into the garden where the air was sharp and watery. It felt like late morning, although he couldn’t be sure.
Sherman’s house was set in about two acres of scruffy garden that might once have been contained but was now
unravelling. The cloudy sky was only occasionally apparent through the low canopy of leaves glistening with rainwater. Bright-green moss coloured the underside of branches. Vines squirmed over the gutters and fingered any tears in the grey flywire over the windows and doors. He waded through the damp, knee-high grass, pushing aside overhanging branches. The place, as always, reminded him of an Edwardian children’s book, a cross-hatched landscape for orphans and their melancholy guardians. He recalled his attempts at detoxing, sitting out here day after day with a rug across his shoulders, like some ancient being, shivering in the afternoon sun and wondering how bad one would have to feel before dying from it all.
He came across objects in unexpected places: a crumpled soccer ball on one of the tiny lawns; a stone birdbath overflowing with scummy water; a crippled wooden chair; a rocking horse in the grasp of a blackberry bush. Thorns and weeds caught at his coat, like anxious infants plucking at him. At the rear of the house behind the kitchen, two small sheds slumped against each other. When he peered inside, all he could see were boxes piled on shelves and a small army of dusty bottles on the floor, watched over by shapeless shadows of machinery.
The perimeter of the property was marked by a collapsing wooden fence. There were no neighbouring houses to be seen, just a grassy plain stretching for several hundred yards into thickening bushland that merged into a low bruise of clouds. It was difficult to discern where the earth ended and the sky began. The property seemed miles from anywhere, the only sound the susurrations of the wind through the trees and grass.
He turned his face skyward. His body felt even larger and denser than usual, as if swollen with the extra quantities of morphine he had taken in the past few days. Even his skin was thicker, a sort of hide. But it felt good to finally stop somewhere and not have to go on anytime soon. He felt like he had been on the move for a long time, longer even than the past few days with Lee. This was, he supposed, just a new version of what should by now be a familiar wilderness. At least out here the air had an unfamiliar bite. It was air that hadn’t already been inhaled and exhaled a million times. It was somewhere else.
Wild strolled, gnawing at a thumbnail as he went. At the lower corner of the property he stumbled across a small, cleared patch overflowing with vegetables. The swollen heads of pumpkins, a tangle of green. A family of cabbages shouldered from the soil. He grinned and rubbed his hands together. Bingo! Just what we need. Food. Thank God. Perhaps we can survive here, after all.
He kneeled and set about extracting vegetables from the ground. He did it gently, almost regretfully, tugging at the bodies of these delicate things. Their bony crunch, the fragile grip of the earth and the scent of dirt as he shook soil from the fine webbing of roots. He would make soup, or a stew of some sort. It would be good for him, good for Lee.
Dirt smudged his broad hands. When Jane left, his gaze had fallen to her hands clasped in front of her. She had stepped back so quickly when he moved to take them that she almost tripped over a curling lip of carpet in the hallway. Hey, she’d said. Stay away from me. Please, stay away. You’ve done enough. She had paused. I really think that maybe I should move out for a while. This is a strain on Alice, on all of us. The words had come out in a rush, half garbled; it was obviously something she’d been wanting to say for some time.
He would never forget that wide-eyed look of hers. How she had pressed her hands to her chest as if fearful he would tear them from her, when all he wanted was to wash away the dirt that had collected beneath her fingernails from digging in their garden. The way she had gathered the silent Alice to her side and left, as if fleeing a strange and unpredictable animal.
Because I wanted to clean your hands?
How was it that love, when it has nowhere to live, becomes something else entirely? It was three months since she’d left. She said she was going to stay with her sister, but isn’t that just what women say? Isn’t that just the line that emerges under pressure? He remembered the older sister Carol, with her immaculate children that always seemed primed for a formal photograph.
He ran his tongue across teeth. He flattened his palms on the ground and tilted forward until their imprint was pressed into the soft soil. He inhaled the loamy smell. To think that Jane was actually somewhere on this very same earth, striding along in her practical way, blinking hair from her right eye, tapping a fingernail on the wineglass on the table before her. Alice in the background, rolling her eyes and twirling her hair, gazing at some point on the ceiling. He wondered if he might be able to intuit her whereabouts should he press his ear to the soil, perhaps detect an echo of laughter.
There was a soft thud from the bushes behind. Still kneeling, Wild turned but could see nothing. He was unsure from where the sound had come. He wiped a hand across his mouth. A bird, perhaps. A possum? Then a rustling, a shuddering of leaves, but closer this time. Rainwater spattered from leaves to the ground. Whatever it was, it was larger than a bird. More solid. Like a man. He waited. Nothing. Cautiously, he cleared his throat. Lee, he whispered, is that you?
He looked around and wiped his hands on his trousers before lumbering to his feet, leaving the pile of vegetables on the ground. Should he speak again, or just run? From his vantage point, he was unable to see the house through the thick foliage, but reckoned he could make a run for it. It was somewhere over to the right. He thought of the crumbling steps leading up to the large front door and the skeletal deck chair on the verandah. He clutched his coat around himself so it wouldn’t catch on branches. He waited. But what if the house wasn’t a good idea? The police. Perhaps it was the cops? Did the old bastard who drove them here in his cart say something to the police?
A shrub in front of him wobbled. Wild gasped. He stepped backwards and turned to run. His foot caught on something. He toppled partway to his knees with one hand outstretched to break his fall. His hand closed over a branch. A twig or thorn scratched his wrist. Suddenly in mid-fall, he felt ludicrous. To come all this way. Crashing around in some dilapidated garden. After all that had happened. To have come all this way for this—whatever the hell this was going to be.
Some sort of animal skittered, twitching and flickering, from the undergrowth. Black with pointy ears. Like a large, angular dog. The creature’s face was long and bearded, with yolky eyes and fence-post teeth. What on earth? He tensed, indecisive, his muscles charged with adrenaline. What on earth? The creature shook its head and rolled its unhinged eyes. He released his grip on the branch and tumbled the rest of the way to the soft ground. By the time he crash-landed and felt the lumpy soil against his cheek and the nudge of a carrot in his ribs, laughter had tickled right through him and completely taken hold. With his face against the soil he laughed in huge, wheezing bursts, sending up puffs of dirt. He supported his weight on his elbows. Still more he laughed. His shoulders heaved and his lips became gritty. It must have been decades since he had laughed so much.
21
Lee stood at the window, slumping slightly to accommodate the dull pain through his side. He felt like an intruder in this strange room. On the pane of glass in front of him was a ghostly red handprint. A dream of faint laughter had woken him. The remnants of a fire smouldered in the fireplace and the room was woolly with heat. Wearing only trousers, his body was frail and bony, reduced to just the necessities. A milky throat, and nipples like thumbtacks pressed into his chest. The suitcase of money was on the floor beside him. He had checked it upon waking—his hand reaching out for it—while still anchored within his dreams.
A bulky dressing was taped to his torso below his ribs. He raised his left arm like a wing to gauge his freedom of movement, but his entire side was still tender and he was unable to lift his hand higher than his shoulder. Pain still gnawed on his lower ribs, but not as fiercely as he remembered. Perhaps the bullet had been removed. He gasped and lowered his arm, but smiled a slow smile anyway, a smile that had been biding its time. He’d made it. Gotten away with the money and nobody knew where the hell he was. How could they? He did
n’t even know himself. He allowed himself a small laugh.
He wondered what day it was. How much time had passed since all this had begun? Two days? Three? A lifetime. Perhaps it had been like this forever? He thought of his old apartment and felt a stab of pity for his former self still sitting on the windowsill staring down into the street, wondering what to do.
When he was eighteen, Lee had visited a brothel. Sex was a mysterious and complicated land; once, he’d snaked a damp hand beneath a girl’s blouse at the back of a pub, but that was about as far as he’d ventured. Surprisingly, the brothel had a slightly domestic quality. There was a mug of half-drunk coffee on the arm of a chair in the lounge, a paperback face down on the floor and the radio was tuned to talk-back. The women who worked there were a soft and fleshy tribe sauntering half-naked through their kingdom.
Once he’d selected his girl, he sat on the edge of the bed, still fully dressed, playing with the zip of his jacket. The girl wore pink underwear and had a tiny roll of skin at her belly. The room smelled of talc and laundry and cheap incense. He was aware of the girl’s hot thigh next to his own and had wanted something to happen but didn’t know what.
The girl coughed into her hand and said her name was Isobel. Trying to be polite, Lee had asked her something about herself, to which the girl said: Only thing you need to know is that I’m good at my job. Let’s just say I don’t plan to be doing this forever, mate. Now, shall we get those silly clothes off? From the street outside had come the rumble of a truck followed by the sharp hissing release of air brakes. A woman had laughed next door or perhaps in the thickly carpeted hall outside the room. A throaty, wide-mouthed laugh. A hooker’s laugh.
The Low Road Page 15
