Fusion

by Kate Richards

  ‘What’s happened to me?’ she asks him.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘It’s that word, that name.’

  ‘My name?’

  ‘Well.’

  ‘Can I help?’

  ‘I want to go home.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I want to go home.’

  He takes her hand and squeezes it. ‘Just call me Wren like everyone else. Then it’ll be okay.’

  She wipes the tears from under her nose and from her lips and chin. ‘Wren. I don’t think it’s you. I mean, it’s not about you.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘Are you lonely Wren?’ Her voice is so soft and so sad that we begin to weep too.

  Never have we seen the sea. Wren says seawater is always moving, rushing in to the land and fading out again, that it has something to do with the wind, and also with the moon and its pull on the earth. We look at the moon and wonder. It agitates the great seas and in a littler way the lakes and rivers and streams. What about the blood in our veins? And the waves in our souls? Hello Moon, shine. Hello Moon. So bright today. Your gaze. Our hearts go still, stiller than quiet, the way pain is quiet, the way thought is quiet, the way thought is waves, the way the stars are quiet and the moment of death is quiet.

  ‘But how can you live with no music?’ asks Christ from where she’s lying on her couch with a pillow behind her back, watching us as we sit in the fraying armchair and mend the rips and tears in our clothes. Wren buys us cheap dresses and men’s shirts and jumpers in size Large and we alter them to suit us by cutting and restitching the neck to widen it and reworking the position of the armholes and shortening the sleeves – the extra girth and length are useful for keeping warm in winter.

  ‘We love the music in trees

  and from birds of course

  birds yes of course

  and the breathing rhythm of wind, the wind rising and falling and breathing

  without ending, dowsing itself in leaves and on the sides of our mountain

  there’s music in the creek too, and in rain.’

  ‘Nah not the same,’ says Christ. ‘Can’t dance to the wind.’

  ‘O yes!

  o yes you can.’

  ‘But what about a melody? And a bass, a beat? Music has a big heart. There’s no heart in wind or rain.’

  ‘Skin of wind and skin of rain on our skin

  raw, tingling

  blissed

  blessed.’

  ‘But real music – it tells a story. I don’t just mean lyrics, I mean the harmony and pulse, how they get right deep inside you. And echo there. Like, the way a song starts all slow and foggy and then piles up in you before falling away again so you’re left wanting more. Music searches for the hidden in you and finds stuff out that you never knew before.

  ‘Better not to know

  sometimes.’

  Wren stands and ties his bootlaces and disappears down the hallway.

  ‘Where’s he going?’

  ‘Wren! Where you going?’

  Things are rattling in the kitchen, he yells, ‘Won’t be long,’ and we hear him go out into the yard and the truck’s door creaks and the engine turns over and starts up and the truck turns round and the noise trails off into the autumn morning. Our drive is full of small rocks and potholes. It curves round a couple of ancient snow gums, just about turns back on itself, then drops down on a steep gradient through long, dry tussock grass before the montane woodland begins and it is swallowed up in fallen bark and heath and baby wattle where it merges with the council road.

  ‘Where’s he going?’ asks Christ.

  We don’t know though we feel we should and we fold our unease away from Christ – unease because every time he leaves like this – rushed and without explanation – he might not come back.

  Picturing him in the driver’s seat, we see him turning onto the graded road, picking up speed till he hits the truck’s maximum of fifty and then settling back on the cracking vinyl and sticking his arm out through the window to catch the wind in his fingers, humming probably, to still the nerves rustling around inside him like bits of broken bone, the kilometres falling away and the sky rolled-out flat white. We are quiet with all this imagining.

  Christ says, ‘So what now?’

  And we can think of nothing, so we go on sitting in silence listening to the wind until the memories of Hope Home find us because they’re never far away and they pin us to the chair. We are free of Hope Home – and of everything that happened there – and yet we are not free of it at all.

  ‘So anyway, I parked in the main street, got down and walked to Sammy Whistle’s store,’ Wren says, to begin his story. He’s standing with his back to the fireplace, shifting his weight from one leg to the other, his eyes brilliant, bloodshot, red-rimmed. He’s been drinking.

  ‘I wasn’t looking at anything much and when I got inside there were these – boys – teens – near the counter and I – oh I don’t know, I just got weird about it – I kind of stayed behind the shelves of tinned spaghetti and beans, and waited for them to go away. They kept talking about – gore and shit and they kept saying something was the key to happiness and I’m there with the spaghetti tins thinking what is the key to happiness? They were all like, is it brutal? and I’m telling you now and Serious? and Key to happiness, bro. Key to happiness. But I still didn’t get what it was.’ He sighs.

  We say, ‘Ah mmm.’

  ‘Well the boys get to the counter and they’re all fingering the packets of chips and Sammy Whistle says hey and they nod and buy Cokes and chips and Sammy Whistle gives them their change and they pull their caps down and on their way out they nick a handful of chocolate bars. It was weird.’

  ‘It was?’

  ‘They were, like, so sure of themselves. Their feet on the earth, y’know? Sure the earth will hold them. I don’t think I’ve ever felt like that. Well anyway—’ Wren glances at Christ. Says to her, ‘Sammy Whistle has this way of leaning over the counter. He calls me Hermit. He laughs a lot. Always says the same thing like, how’s life up in them hills? Well so I said, d’youhavearadiotosell? And Sammy Whistle kind of weighed the question for a bit and then he said, a what? A radio? I said, yeah. He said, nah. And he just stood there. He’s got these weird red flecks in his eyes.’

  Wren’s eyes haven’t left Christ’s face even though we are sitting directly in front of him. We nod and say louder than is necessary, ‘Go on.’

  Wren says, ‘So I just stood there too with my face blistering and the rash all on my chest. I thought, what the hell. So I turn around to walk out, put my hand on the door and pull it open and that’s when Sammy Whistle says, Karma fixes old radios. He’ll fix you up a spare.’

  Christ blinks, sips her tea.

  Wren says to Christ, ‘Anyway, folks live on the main road further east from the shops and off the main road down one of these dirt tracks that end in paddocks and beyond them all this wide, carrying bush. Some families have a horse or two, some a few sheep or goats, cows, pigs, chickens. It’s pretty much what you’d call unsentimental land, the soil doesn’t have a lot in the way of nutrients and it’s friable – not a heap better for crops than it is up here. Most folks work at the hydro plant sixty kays down the highway. Swiggin is where folks live who can’t afford homes in the town where the plant is. Karma’s place is down one of the dirt tracks with electric wires and weeds and there’s all these rusting broken cars. See, the tyres and engines and steering wheels and all that stuff get carted away to sell and kids smash in the windows. They’re kind of sorry-looking things y’know, cos they’ve lost their history and they’re getting buried by the dirt and the weeds and the slow pit and crack of water. Corrosion and whatever. Most folks have sheds like ours, tacked-up sheets of corrugated iron. They ripple up the heat in summer and get beaten back by the wind. Fly off in the air sometimes, who knows where. Anyways, I found Karma’s place – all weatherboard and asbestos sheet. Pale blue. But I couldn’t get the hook on t
he wire gate to work. Shit.’ He gives Christ a little smile.

  ‘So there’s a pram and a kid’s bike with trainer wheels in the front yard. I never knew Karma had kids and I go up to the door and I push in the grubby doorbell and this woman comes out and she had these eyes like wow eyes and her jeans kinda tight and her – arse—’ He stops and gives Christ a second little smile and this time she returns it along with a flicker roll of her eyes.

  Wren says, ‘Um anyway so I asked for Karma and she’s like, Karma? Yeah maybe. He know you? I said something about a radio, a spare one, Sammy Whistle said, I dunno, and she goes and yells over her shoulder for Karma and she let me in and man, mould and burnt fat everywhere. Not that we’re anything to go by here – but y’know, so I followed her into the living room. She said she’d get him for me and then she said, you from up on the mountain? I stared hard at my feet so she didn’t see the rash. I said, yeah and she said, you on your own? Other folks up there too? and I said, nah, no-one else and she touched my arm and said, thought so. Oh well. And she went out and when she went I finally looked up and there was this kid staring straight back at me, almost the same height, in this, like, wheelchair with a homemade seat raised high. His head kind of dropped down like his neck couldn’t hold it up and he was thin, with this huge red mouth but he had these deep brown eyes that sparked. So Karma walks in behind me and says, people ain’t ever gonna look down on him, not all his life. He went over to the boy. He said, right? I said, right. The boy gurgled, his mouth was all twisted but the thing is, there was this cheeky smile in his eyes and Karma – well he ran his fingers over the boy’s forehead and down his cheek and tickled him under the chin and the boy breathed in and heaved out this roar from down in his chest. And then he started crying, I mean god, tears like a storm. Well I was stuck. Couldn’t go forward or back, nothing to give.’

  Wren sighs, scratches his throat.

  ‘Oh hey,’ says Christ. ‘What then?’

  ‘Figured I’d run. Looked at Karma but he didn’t say anything for a bit. He just stood there by his son. Then he wiped his son’s cheeks and nose and eyes with a towel. Karma wasn’t looking at me but the boy was staring right at me and I remembered I had a ball of string in my pocket so I pulled it out and put it in his hand and wrapped his fingers around it – and right then he stopped crying.’

  ‘Did you feel better?’ we ask.

  ‘Some. Except he tried – the boy I mean – to keep hold of the string ball in his hand and he couldn’t and it fell and he cried again but Karma caught it halfway to the floor and wound it around the boy’s wrist and tied the ends together with a knot and then a bow. It was sweet. Then Karma says, so Hermit. Now you’re here. What can I do you for? I was just looking at the ground like an idiot. I mean like a real idiot. He says, Hermit? I say, yeah. The boy kept on gurgling and I looked up and he flapped his hands at me and grinned so I grinned back. I said, soyoumaybehaveaspareradio? He said, what? And I said, radio. Sammy Whistle. Thought. You might. Have a spare. Karma winked at his kid. Said, I’ll have a look. Then it was just the boy and me in the room. The boy was gurgling and drooling and he stared at me and kept on gurgling and I thought, what if he chokes? what if he chokes and dies? oh jeeez and anyway, but the thing is, it was like his eyes were saying I see you, I see who you are, all of what kind of person you are.’

  And what do we see? The volume of life, of living things abounding. Here is Autumn, with her still-warm days and cooler evenings and cold nights, reminding us of the coming winter – hence all living things are louder, quicker, and focused. The berries and fruit are bruising. Non-indigenous trees along our driveway – the perfectly named liquidambars and the Chinese maples – are letting go of their chlorophyll-green and are instead flush with the last of the glucose in their leaves, burning red under the sun like skin does. In Blindeye Creek, the water beetles, midges, tiny fish and, nearer the surface of the water, frogs and dragonflies and mosquitoes feel the same pressure to complete the cycle of eating and sex and opening before the sun, ripening, and laying eggs, giving birth. It is a kind of instinctual covenant to which all living things are beholden, humans too. Birds are hoarse-voiced. Flame robins flame. Wombats are digging their burrows a little deeper. Lizards flash through the grass with their ordinary skins, astonishing blue tongues, their orange-sparking eyes. We saw a lizard like us sunning itself on top of the mountain once, one body and two heads. The baby wallabies and grey kangaroo joeys are out of their mothers’ pouches, fending for themselves, learning all they can to survive before the coming winter. March flies surge and bite and cicadas beat and foam and mate and die. The grass seeds have flown, and the mountain gentians, sopranos of the alpine choir (violet enough in summer to scorch our eyes and make us blush) have folded themselves away, pale-green leaves flat against the earth and quiet. We recite Gerard Manley Hopkins: his sprung-rhythm poems, those he always hoped would be spoken aloud rather than read in silence, and we wonder and we mourn his equally measured understanding of desire and melancholy and we wonder and we mourn all the things he offers us that we don’t understand. This we call the anguish of being. Hopkins wrote to a friend that his poetry errs on the side of oddness, and o perhaps it does and we are grateful for it. Snow daisies, yellow and white, have finished flowering – the world burst open.

  ‘So Karma came back and said, No luck with a radio, Hermit. But you can have this if you want. And he had this—’

  As Wren goes out into the hallway, he’s waving his arms in the air and doing a little sashay to one side and then the other and we all laugh. When he comes back in, he says, ‘Karma’s showed me a couple of chords.’ In his hands is a guitar – mellow brown wood and metal strings and varnish coming off around the battered edges.

  ‘What are you going to do with that?’ we ask.

  ‘Here’s the thing – Karma said he’d help me get started. This here, is a six-string acoustic Tanglewood, beaten up a bit but still, not bad sound. Anyways, back in the house Karma said, gotta tune it first, right? I said, right and then realised he wasn’t talking to me. So I had a bit of a coughing fit. Then Karma swings the shoulder strap over his head and stands there in the middle of the room with his feet apart and plucks the highest string and the one below it and tips his head to the side like a bird, plucks all the strings, one by one, and goes back to the highest one and he says to his kid, lower? and the boy snorts and shakes his head and Karma says, too high? and the boy nods and so Karma turns one of these pegs at the top here – just the tiniest bit – and plucks the string again and as the note changes the boy nods again and then he says, ah! and Karma says, what’s that? that’s E? and the boy grins, and they did this until – I’m guessing, because I don’t know anything – all of the strings were tuned right. Karma said, See? Charlie has what they call perfect pitch, not that it’s something you can see, but oh well, he kept strumming the guitar, rocking back on his heels. He said, we found it out when he was four. If I played a song out of tune he got so upset it was like I was hurting him. I said, That’s—and then I got stuck on what the next words should be. I mean, excellent? neat? cool? but like, you know, there’s something not right with them words, something missing – what I mean is – what’s the word for amazing-and-utterly-tragic-and-deep and, well, shit all at the same time? I guess I just tried to be that, like, hold it in my eyes.

  ‘Karma said, music’s his thing. And then to Charlie, whadayareckon we teach Hermit a couple of chords? Charlie’s head updownupdown and Karma says, we’ll do the easy ones. So he showed me C and E and E minor. He strummed them and then got me to hold the guitar and showed where to put my fingers.’

  Wren stops and grimaces. ‘Look here,’ he says to Christ. ‘These are the frets for your fingers to go between and here is where you pluck the strings.’

  She nods.

  ‘Actually, I’m hopeless,’ he says. ‘Brittle as that layer of ice on Blindeye Creek and lord my fingers are sore, but anyway, I got through it and I said, thanks a lot to Karma and
bye Charlie and I got back in the truck and put the guitar on the seat next to me and then I hit the lowest string and it kind of boomed out through the cabin all naked and mellow-deep and I just sat there and yelled out, hahaha key to happiness bro.’

  He looks so happy. He says, ‘Dunno, but maybe I can learn to play it.’

  ‘How are you going to tune it though?’ we ask.

  He ignores us, studies the neck of the guitar for a moment and places the fingers of his left hand on it and plays a chord. It doesn’t sound right but Wren smiles. Shifts his fingers, wobbly between the metal stripes. ‘Wait,’ he says. ‘Nearly.’ He tries something different but it still doesn’t sound right.

  ‘Give it here,’ says Christ, reaching for the guitar. She stands up on her good leg, leans her body on the arm of the couch, and in her hands the instrument ceases being a piece of polished wood and becomes something delicate and supple. She closes her eyes and her left hand moves between the frets of the neck of the guitar like she’s feeling for its pulse. Her right hand is quite still over the strings. Our breath still too. She strums a chord and then another. Now her hands are quick across the strings, yet relaxed. Inside us, one of our hearts frissons joy but the other beats out fear.

  ‘How are you doing that?’ Wren asks, his face lit up, surprise in his eyes.

  She says, ‘Don’t know. What’s going on? My fingers just—’

  Her fingers move hardly at all yet she plucks the strings so that they vibrate in symmetry and resonate and – a song!

  It’s a song.

  She closes her eyes and sings and her voice is much bigger than she is, mellower, darker, luscious, it swells through the room. Her expression changes too, lifts up somehow, and her back lifts up and her neck and finally her head. Then she stops.