Fusion

by Kate Richards

  Since we left home I haven’t thought about the accident or relived it, but it’s taken a bit of work to keep it away. The sound of it especially. So now for instance I’m climbing our mountain in my head. Every stretch and step and the tufts of grass and the grass loud and the breath and the birds and the granite underfoot and the smell of eucalyptus oil in the leaves of the snow gums like snuff and crack and whiskey. And now – swimming in the creek. The cool water blooming. And now my foot down hard on the accelerator and her bones hitting the metal of the truck and the Austin grunting and dying and me opening the driver’s door and sliding down to the road and running and crouching beside her and a part of me watching from high above – watching me crouch down beside her. Up and down the road there was no-one, no sound except wind through the tops of the trees. I didn’t know what to do. I tried to turn her onto her side, got down next to her on the earth, my cheek almost touching hers, I said, hello? but her eyelids didn’t even flicker. I knelt close. Everything roaring. When I put my ear and cheek to her chest I couldn’t tell if she was breathing or if it was my head moving but after a minute thankgod yes and I took a breath too and held it in and leaned back and picked her up, pack and all. She was so light. Up and down the road there was no-one, no sound except wind through the tops of the trees. The truck has a front bench seat. I laid her across it. Her closed eyes were purple. I wanted to drive as fast as the truck would go, but I was scared of hurting her more with all the bumps and potholes. There was no-one else on the road as we went along, just the noise of the truck hammering and clunking, almost as loud as my heart. At the turn-off I stopped. Her clothes were dirty and wet. Her hair was dark and matted. Was she bleeding? She was breathing. I said, ohjesus. She had no shoes. No! she said, her voice so low and rough, he’s not yours. She opened an eye. Opened an eye. Wet and shot-red. The other swollen shut. Stared up at me, not seeing me at all. She said nothing. One of my hands fell off the steering wheel and cradled her head. Almost. It’ll be okay. Getting help. Not far. She said, no, but the sun was going down fast and the ’58 Austin hasn’t had working headlights for five years at least and with the dark clouds came the creak and chink of the ghosts of the dead – they’d found us pretty quick. I heard them come in behind us, condemned to seek out the dying and with their throats cut. I knew my life wasn’t worth much and her life was probably worth much more and I had a lot of amends to make. Not too far. Swiggin. Not far. Getting help. Her eyes flared. She said, no! Stop! Let me out. I’ll kill you. She was so broken. I stopped the truck again. Let me out! She tried to lift up her head and it bobbed there like a newborn’s and then fell. We were both still then. I was sure she was dying so I turned the truck right around to home and gunned it, humming off-key no no no no no, a wrenching deep in my gut, the world in and out of focus, I was running beyond myself and praying. Don’t die, pleasedontdie, I prayed. Then my eyes flooded with tears, not slow tears, these burst out over my cheeks and nose and I couldn’t see a thing except a prism of colour, all the colours in the spectrum flashing before me, burning up.

  Ice. Slush, running dark muddy slush. Ice and our fear. The wind moaning in the kitchen stovepipe. And no Wren and no Christ and no fuel and no truck. The sodden fog of our breathing full of spirits.

  ‘Where would they go in the middle of the night?

  somewhere in town

  why didn’t they tell us?

  they must have had a reason

  what do we do?

  wait for them to come home

  will they?

  wait and hope

  do we have any money?

  no

  they won’t come back

  why not?

  because he loves her

  no he doesn’t

  he loves her

  please

  is it impossible?

  he’s a boy

  he’s a man

  as if we know what that means

  yes

  yes what?

  we know

  no we don’t.’

  Sigh.

  ‘Christ doesn’t want Wren. Not like that. She doesn’t love him. Not his—’ Breath. ‘Heart or his soul. Not love.’

  Laugh. ‘His lovely lovely young body?’

  Strangled. ‘So? Isn’t love—

  whatever, it’s none of our business

  not as if she loves us. Not as if. At least … does she? A little bit?

  all of this is her fault. Wren should have left her out there on the road

  out there on the road to die?

  maybe.’

  Whack. Shock. Right across the face. Ringing in our ears. Palm stinging. Fright, face howlred. Print of a hand.

  Stinging.

  The ringing ringing.

  ‘What the hell? What for?’

  Then,

  ‘What for?’

  Then,

  ‘God.’

  Then,

  ‘Hell.’

  Then,

  ‘Don’t do that again.’

  Then,

  ‘Serene?’

  Then,

  ‘Serene.’

  Then,

  ‘This is getting really tiring. And stupid.’

  Silence. Smash of a cup. Shards of blue china flashing up in the air, tinkling back down, tittering on the floorboards, hysterical.

  ‘We have to pee.’

  Then,

  ‘Serene. Please.’

  Then,

  ‘Why?’

  Silence.

  Shift and heave and wrench and bite and ow and now tipping sideways, the floor coming up fast, thump, here we are again – fallen – the wet hot lips, the high scream in all four of our ears: freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek.

  Face down, pain held in tight, unspoken, unshared.

  Here an hour.

  More shifting, heaving, wrenching, dead legs, numbness and cold and pins and needles. Too heavy.

  ‘Too heavy? Haha

  for god’s sake. We have to pee.’

  Silence.

  Then an hour.

  Then the chill, the windows, the brewing dark.

  Wind humming low.

  Then,

  ‘Please.’

  Then,

  ‘Serene. Stop it. It hurts. It hurts everywhere. Please.’

  Then another hour.

  Ghosts knocking.

  The chill, the wind also knocking.

  Hunger and

  Hope Home knocking.

  Back broke at Hope Home.

  Broke slowly.

  One small spinal vertebra.

  The next day a second.

  The following day a third.

  We are still and solid and strong like our mountain.

  We are stillness in the middle of hell.

  ‘Are you crying, Sea?

  no

  sure you’re not crying, Sea?

  ahh-oww, okay sorry, sorry for—’

  Pain knocking.

  ‘—whatever.’

  Hunger ticking, bile, acid. Shards of blue china flashing up in the air.

  Then everything stopping, wind too, breath too. No shadows left at all. Half-an-hour.

  Ticktock.

  ‘Serene? Say something. Please!

  shut up

  but we can’t hold on anymore

  can’t hold on sing-a-song haha don’t care

  Serene! Please!

  go away.’

  THREE

  Sea thinks: we have one life. One life only. We mustn’t break. Us. Us. What we are, all that we are – togetherness – and love.

  Serene thinks: is identity a fluid thing? No.

  Sea thinks: no, we will not be broken. We are healers.

  Serene thinks: We are not a we. Yet our dreams are the same. Our thoughts are the same. Yet.

  Still sitting, warm flooding.

  Sea thinks: the natural world teaches us that nothing in life is black or white, everything is a continuum, everything interconnected.

  Serene thinks: loneli
ness and never alone. This is how it will always be. This longing. This pain.

  Sea thinks: we never lie in a cold bed and suffer nightmares and wake up alone. We are so lucky. We must stop this! All this misunderstanding. We have everything beautiful twice.

  Serene thinks: dream of flying, running and flying, moving like music, dream of friendship and reaching and dancing and love, dream of love, to say o love, dream of a baby, a child – and then morning comes.

  Sea thinks: we will make it right again.

  Still sitting, warm flooding our dress, chair, down our legs, the smell of it, the stink, more and more.

  Serene thinks: this is possessing and possession, a noose pulled too tight. Where there is no peace – is life not life but existence? Stop. Cease. Us a corpse – cold and hard. Corpse. What then? The anguish of not-being. But the anguish of being. What is it to be free? This is the truth. No more yearning, hoping, mourning.

  Stink puddled yellow round our feet, cold.

  Sea thinks: and tomorrow morning we’ll stew up the apples and make Wren’s favourite apple sauce, stir in the last pat of butter and some lemon peel, a pinch of cinnamon and a tablespoon of brown sugar and sit by the stove to keep warm while it cools. Wait for him to come home and he will have only us and we will have only him, all three together, home.

  Serene thinks: no more dreams of flight, no more breath holding, no more words. A vow. A death. A corpse. Because. Silence is power, silence is bitter, silence is narrow and unyielding, silence is breaking things that are strong, setting a heartbeat too slow, dissolving hope.

  Sea

  Her voice, ‘This is for us.’

  Her voice, ‘To be free.’

  The side of her face with its tears, her eye stricken, then her fist coming fast and blood and a tooth falling onto the snow, then her fist again coming fast coming fast.

  Dragging us and falling through the saplings and heath and slush. Crawling. The freezing. Grazes and nails on our palms, our knees. Stubbed toes. Blue skin.

  Down the hill. No sky, no voice.

  Hauling and snow, slipping and dazed, one eye swollen tight. Hammering blood, hammering head, hammering teeth, Why why, why like this. Our mother.

  Fall – crash through ice. Us in the creek. Clap! The cold, no time to shudder, no time to cry. Beloved hand pushing down no no no. Fist again, nose snapcrack, red in the water: warm enough to steam and melt. She’d rather die than?

  Chest and arms and up to our necks. Deep under, too cold for feeling, deaf, open eyes half, biting skin all the way to bone, her long black hair floating, none of mine and no breath, roaring heart, roaring lungs that refuse to let go. Of this strange thing: life.

  Head with its blood still running. A voice in both ears. Musical. Jubilant. Singing. Our mother singing through the water, her face so kind, here, her shining face – she smiles. At … me.

  Darkgreenbrown and slow the water where it’s deeper, I grab at the reeds as we go down. How to let go? The sorrow and the grief. All the hurting. But here I am, still here, though the reeds are like knives. I’m holding on.

  Surfacing, ‘Free!’ Her voice above the water – a word but the sound of it not human. I see the side of her head. The edge of her eye. She’d rather die. This hand that has stroked and soothed and loved me, smash on my skull, fracture my nose, blind and deep under only water to breathe, only the dead down here, dark dark dark and we are all the way down, we’re bound by birth and death, we are one blood, two hearts, until death one soul. Amen. I hear you my love, our mountain our mother, freedom. I’ll sing through the water till our lungs fill and we too are water, amen.

  Her voice again, ‘Let go!’ Her strength that of a man seeing death. But here is my hand in its cold rigor mortis, not letting go.

  And here is my first word: ‘No.’

  Bright bright bright.

  Serene

  O dark dark dark.

  She is the one holding on, pulling us up. She is the one with strength enough for life.

  O.

  I have no strength, not even breath. She drags us forward and rolls us over and hauls us out onto the bank of the creek. I am lost – I am not – I am not my dream in which I’m free, the place I fly.

  Lying prone on the bank of the creek, a way farther down the mountain. Retching. Mist rising over the stones and water. No feeling – blue and numb and all these tears and shivering. For thou shalt die and not live, said their god and so I thought, to be free.

  Here by the water, under the bursting sky, under the eyes and wings of birds and wrinkled clouds and the vastness called space going on and on and on. And this strange yellow howling light.

  How do we move? I can’t remember.

  How do we hope? I can’t remember.

  How do we let go?

  I am not my dream in which I’m free, the place I fly. Yet everything has drained from us and we are naked and we are bare of desire and fear and sorrow and grief, of all the hurting. Blood draining too, steaming down our legs. Is this her blood or my blood? Battered stars everywhere, frostbitten feet. Birth and Death are the bookends of existence but all else on earth is a continuum – if we are to try to begin again, that is. Tabula rasa, a clean slate. Here are my first words: ‘I think, I am.’

  A road. No, not a road, a single-file track visible here and there through the tussocks of snowgrass, a wild-horse trail, but it gives us hope, it represents the opposite of lost and it will take us somewhere (I’m secretly sure we’ve been walking in circles).

  ‘Lead us on down to water,’ I say.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘The horses know where the springs and creeks are.’

  The fog is gnawing our feet – we can see less than a metre ahead. We shuffle, hunched forward with our eyes on the ground, hands shivery and blue. Grief with its great ugly hands clawing at one heart and then the other, drying up our mouths, dragging us deeper under the earth.

  Even when we hear water running, we can’t find the spring. I look for hoof tracks where it’s wet and boggy and the ground turned to mud. Faint half-circles seem to be going somewhere and then vanish and then appear once again. The lower down we go, the thicker and taller are the spear grasses and kunzea and rope-rushes. We stop and listen and move forward and stop and listen again.

  ‘Let’s back up a bit and see if we can figure exactly where the horses found a way through.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘It’s not your fault.’

  No bird calls and no wind. We turn round and go back up the hill for a bit and then try a new way down. It is as though the fog has descended from the heavens and put the earth to sleep. When we finally find the spring bubbling out between some rocks, I lie on the rushes to flatten them and fill the bottle for Christ and give it to her and wait while she gulps the water and the water runs down her chin and she cups some in her hands and washes her face and grins at me with what looks like relief and I hope it really is. Then I kneel down, stick my head in the running water, let the cold of it run through my skull and drink. Pure and clear – the sweetest water I’ve ever tasted.

  We share the oat biscuits and dried fruit. Refill the water bottles. I ease off my boots and socks and stretch out on the flattened rushes. Blisters have formed on my heel skin and on all of my toes but my feet are numb so I can’t feel the pain of them.

  ‘Where do we go now?’

  ‘Up as high as we can, gotta try ’n’ work out where we are.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘When the fog lifts, we’ll look for the mountain peaks. I know them pretty well. They’re different shapes. I can show you. And then we’ll work out kind of where we are on the map relative to where they are on the map. And then, the compass will give us the bearing to follow to get from where we are now back to the road.’

  She nods. Her face is swollen. Her eyes are black.

  Screamandscreamand

  ‘It’ll be okay,’ I say, as we go on, shuffling back along the horse
trail until it muddies in its sudden dips and then narrows and narrows some more and peters out altogether.

  ‘Can you smell smoke?’

  We stop. Sniff the air like dogs.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Wildfire or camp fire?’

  ‘Dunno.’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘Can you hear anything?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘May as well keep going.’

  We go on.

  ‘There’s no wind, too much fog. It can’t be a wildfire.’

  We go on.

  ‘If it is a wildfire, get down low and crawl, look for a ditch, the deeper and muddier the better. Lie face down in it.’

  She nods. Her face is swollen. Her eyes—

  By evening the sky is perfectly clear and in the north-east is the god-bleeding moon, shivering and violent.

  ‘Help me get these clothes off quick.’

  ‘Can’t stop shaking.’

  ‘Like fever.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A blanket.’

  ‘The wood stove.’

  ‘Can’t stop shivering.’

  ‘My nose is bleeding.’

  ‘My nose is bleeding.’

  ‘O god, what a mess.’

  ‘What a mess. Sea, sorry, sorry I’m sorry.’

  ‘At least when the snow thaws and melts away—’

  ‘Mmm?

  ‘There’ll be no sign we’ve been fighting at all.’

  ‘Well.’

  ‘You’re freezing.’

  ‘You’re itching me.’

  ‘Move over.’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘This is ridiculous.’

  ‘Hold the door open and I’ll add some more wood.’

  ‘Ow.’

  ‘Too hot?’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘The air hurts.’

  ‘Some things will be better, others worse I guess.’

  ‘Sea?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you scared?’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Of me.’