Fusion

by Kate Richards

‘No. I’m not scared of anything.’

  ‘Liar.’

  ‘It’s true.’

  ‘I wouldn’t blame you.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘Fear isn’t weakness.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘It’s smart and wise.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Because when you are really afraid – I think that’s when you find out the most about yourself. Don’t you think?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m afraid that nothing will be the same.’

  ‘That may be true.’

  ‘Are your toes throbbing?’

  ‘Yes. Frostbite.’

  ‘I can’t feel the floor.’

  ‘Were you going to kill me?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘And you? Were you going to kill you too?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘O god.’

  ‘Sorry. I’m sorry, Sea. I’m so sorry. It’s all my fault. I didn’t know how to tell you. I wasn’t brave enough.’

  ‘Tell me what?’

  ‘The feeling is coming back in my foot. It hurts.’

  ‘Serene. What is it?’

  The sun long down, the moon blood-red, the god-bleeding moon.

  ‘Tell me.’

  The sun down, the moon blood-red, the god-bleeding moon. Possums skittering in the trees. The long low sound of a frogmouth, ooo-oo-ooo.

  ‘Do you ever have—’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Do you ever have imaginings, dreams, maybe daydreams more than real dreams—’

  ‘Some.’

  ‘I mean special ones – when you’re close with someone, being held close, kissing even – and then – well—’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Aren’t you curious?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Remember when Christ was singing.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you feel something special like that then?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I don’t know – longing.’

  ‘Longing.’

  ‘For the kind of touch in the song.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘For a man or a woman with – with that kind of touch.’

  ‘What kind?’

  ‘Unexpected somehow. Surprising, melting. Strange and new and – and secret and blind and brimming – and I don’t know what else, I’ve only imagined it.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘Not really. Maybe.’

  ‘The thing is, Sea.’

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘The thing is.’

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘I. I am your echo.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘And – your ghost, your shadow and yet – for all of my life – you – have haunted me.’

  ‘Haunted you? No!’

  ‘Back at Hope Home something inside me got paralysed – died – I’m not sure exactly what it is – was – a shining thing – something to do with love.’

  ‘Shhhh, don’t say that. Nothing in you died, we’re both very tired.’

  ‘Friends I mean, other kinds of love and – and so on. But I wasn’t brave enough.’

  ‘No, don’t say that.’

  ‘It was safer to stay in the silence.’

  ‘Shhhh.’

  ‘You’ve never heard my voice.’

  The last of the kerosene burns up and the lamp stutters once, twice, dies.

  ‘Sea. Listen. You have never heard my voice.’

  Stove fire burning itself up into coals then ash, wind blowing down the stovepipe with a lonely high wail.

  ‘I’m sorry. I never meant – I didn’t know.’

  ‘You didn’t ask.’

  ‘You never gave even a hint.’

  ‘I’d surrendered.’

  ‘O, god.’

  ‘I gave you all of me.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘That’s what you do.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘That’s what you do when you love someone.’

  ‘O, god.’

  ‘Sorry about your nose. Here, careful. Is it still bleeding?’

  ‘It’ll heal.’

  ‘Don’t you wish—’

  ‘No. I don’t. Healing is a fine thing, a miracle kind of thing.’

  ‘I wish—’

  ‘I know you do.’

  ‘Thank god for the Dark.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter who we are or what we look like, right?’

  ‘Haha.’

  ‘The Dark finds the truth in us.’

  ‘But it doesn’t judge.’

  ‘The Dark hears our voice.’

  ‘Knows our fear but it doesn’t judge.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘Sea?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Are we monsters, freaks?’

  ‘No. We are fearfully and wonderfully made.’

  ‘Who said that?’

  ‘It’s in their bible.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Besides, it’s not what matters. The idea that people can understand us or that we can understand other people is a fantasy.’

  ‘I don’t know about that.’

  ‘I don’t think there is an answer to everything. In the end what matters is the world we create and everything in it, even the things not yet born. Our beloved world. Yours and mine.’

  ‘We make a freakish shadow in the world.’

  ‘That’s just a matter of opinion.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘It is.’

  Possums in the trees. The long low sound of a frogmouth, ooo-ooo. The towels under our noses soaking through with warm blood.

  ‘Sea, what do you see when you look in the mirror? Do you see me? Or just you?’

  ‘Do you dream about me?’

  ‘I look in the mirror and sometimes I’m afraid of you.’

  ‘I suppose we are peculiar. But we like peculiar. Don’t we? Sorry – I like peculiar.’

  ‘I like peculiar too, very much. But still. I’m lonely. Sometimes.’

  ‘Don’t say that. That’s a crazy thing to say.’

  ‘It can’t be crazy if it’s true.’

  ‘I’d know if you felt – if you feel like that.’

  ‘But you don’t.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘I want to love someone. I want someone to love me.’

  ‘We are together forever for always and forever. Remember how lucky we are to have each other – why isn’t that enough for you? Some people don’t have anyone.’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m sorry.’

  ‘When we were in the river.’

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘Did you really want to die?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Possums chittering in the trees and the long low sound of a frogmouth, ooo-ooo ooo-ooo, and the lonely night wind falling down the stovepipe.

  ‘But then the water got deep and we were sinking and I couldn’t breathe and and – and then, I don’t know why, I just felt this – calm – everything fell away, the fury too, everything spread out flat and light. I forgot I was dying. All I could think of was you.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘I love you, Sea. I didn’t know it till then.’

  ‘You love?’

  ‘That’s why we’re still alive.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I love you. I chose you over death. I chose you over rest. I chose you over peace.’

  ‘How can I believe you?’

  ‘Hear me.’

  ‘If your voice lies?’

  ‘My hand in yours?’

  ‘Your hand lies. Your tears lie too.’

  ‘What can I do?’

  ‘Say it with your eyes. Not the mirror.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Not my eyes looking at yours in the mirror anymore. I want to see your own self with nothing between us. That is the connection I want. That is the strongest connection in the world.’<
br />
  Towel under our noses soaking through with blood. Fingertips feeling pillowed veins. Cut lips. Lingering here and there. Variegated lines, paths on the palms. Different lines, paths. Remembering. Dropping the towel onto the floor. Tentative touch. One offering to another.

  ‘Where do you end and I begin?’

  ‘You haven’t figured that out yet?’

  ‘I’m not a metaphysicist.’

  ‘Metaphysician.’

  ‘I would like to be close with someone else. Is that so much to ask?’

  ‘I don’t know. We can be with each other any way you want.’

  ‘I want to touch someone’s lips with my lips.’

  ‘Serene.’

  ‘So they sing.’

  ‘In the middle of the night when it’s really quiet, when you are really quiet, I wake up. I can’t always tell if we are both breathing and I get so scared that you’ve stopped breathing that I hold my breath in and wait till you breathe and then I try to breathe with a different rhythm from your rhythm so I know you’re okay and then I go back to sleep.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Everything I am is because of you.’

  ‘Everything I am is because of you and everything I’ve had to get through I got through for you. That’s why I ignored it – the fury. For a long time I ignored it and then I couldn’t ignore it anymore and I swallowed it and then when I was full up, I sicked it up over and over and even then it didn’t go away so I tried to fight it but I didn’t want to hurt you so I fought myself. That didn’t work either. I just got tired, so tired.’

  ‘Fury.’

  ‘You take the firelight and sunlight and lamplight and you suck up the light inside us and you take and you suck and you swallow all of it and what is left for me?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Shadow. Echoes.’

  ‘But Serene, I hold you up. All these years I’ve held you up, standing straight, carrying on. You’d never have survived Hope Home without me – you’d have died there all alone. Died. Alone. And besides, your eyesight is terrible and your ears are no good either – you hardly hear anything.’

  ‘Sea.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘When I’m hungry and you aren’t, I go without food for you. When I’m tired and you are not, I go without sleep for you. I’ve been sick and I haven’t complained. I’ve been afraid and I still stand tall for you. I hold the sun in the sky for you and keep the clouds at bay for you and let love go by for you.’

  ‘Love.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So you think it’s been easy for me?’

  ‘Where is the iodine?’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘What? I don’t know. I think it has been hard for you but not as hard.’

  ‘The fire’s gone out.’

  ‘My foot’s still cold.’

  ‘I’m hungry. Do you want porridge?’

  ‘I hate porridge.’

  ‘O god.’

  ‘I hate it.’

  ‘Well see, that’s not fair. You never said. Not in twenty-nine years. You could have said. You could have told the truth about that. How hard is it to say, I don’t like porridge?’

  ‘Much too hard.’

  Trees melt away in the late afternoon as we rise and rise and descend and rise and now we’re on the edge of a high, flat clearing and we stop because we can hear a fire cracking though we cannot feel any heat. Christ and I stand close together. Our breath coming out fast and white as the fog. Her eyes have lost all their colour, all their luminousness. We go forward again slowly. A one-room cattlemen’s hut rises up in front of us. It has woollybutt planks and snow gum for walls and a tin roof and is as well-hidden as our home. We come around the other side of the hut.

  A woman. Sitting on a camp chair beside an old Ford truck with an even older caravan, wheelless, beached on the tray. ‘Jeezus Christ!’ she says, jumping up. ‘Where the hell’ve you two come from?’ Her voice is husky, warm. She’s fiftyish, wearing a long flannel shirt and jeans, curly brown hair, soft brown eyes, soft chin and shoulders, soft-looking all over.

  Christ says, ‘We got lost in the fog.’

  ‘Jeezus Christ. Come on over here. Come on. Here by the fire. You gotta be frozen.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  The fire throwing sparks in a forty-four-gallon drum.

  ‘Ellen,’ she says. Her eyes are nice.

  ‘Oh,’ I say.

  ‘Hi,’ says Christ.

  ‘Angus,’ I say.

  Christ just smiles – vivid, bursting.

  And someone else materialises out of the fog. A man wearing a solid army coat like mine over a faded flannel shirt and jeans like Ellen’s but he’s at least six feet tall with wide shoulders and a barrel chest, sun-drenched hair, a beard flecked with grey and very very pale eyes.

  ‘G’day,’ he says, dropping the thick branch in his arms next to the drum and the fire.

  Christ looks at me.

  ‘These two need a bit of warming up,’ says Ellen.

  ‘G’day,’ he says again, his eyes travelling over us like he’s sizing us up. ‘How’d you get here?’

  ‘Passing through, more or less. But the fog got us.’

  ‘Been out here long?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Got lost, did ya?’

  ‘Sort of.’

  He nods. ‘John,’ he says, holding out his hand.

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘Need a drink?’

  Christ says, ‘Thanks.’

  And I say, ‘Thanks. Watersgood.’

  And John says, ‘Eh?’

  And Christ says, ‘Thanks.’

  John climbs the thin ladder from the ground to the door of the caravan. Ellen winks at me. ‘Like our home?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘On-road, off-road. Goes anywhere. Anywhere we like. No ties, see?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘We’ve rigged up the generator to run off solar panels on the roof. Even got a water tank and a proper mattress and a radio and a TV.’

  John climbs back down with a packet of chips and a two-litre glass bottle with a torn label for McWilliams Sweet Sherry.

  ‘Low on water, but this stuff is the real deal. A mate of ours makes it – no preservatives or shit like that so no hangover in the morning and you won’t believe how smooth.’

  He unscrews the lid. His hands are tanned and muscly – powerful hands. He gives the bottle to Ellen and she takes a swig and hands it round.

  Christ says, ‘Thanks.’

  I say, ‘Thanks.’

  It is smooth and strong, flaring through us, warming from the inside out. We’ve been so cold.

  Ellen drags a couple of camp chairs nearer to the fire drum. ‘Sit.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Cheers.’ We dip our heads to both of them. ‘Cheers.’

  It’s nice. I can feel my thighs and calves, if not my feet. Close my eyes for a moment.

  ‘We’re heading north for the winter,’ says Ellen. ‘Got held up with John’s arm. Three weeks in hospital.’

  ‘Broke in four places,’ John says with a good deal of pride.

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘But I’m bionic now, with all the metal in it eh.’

  ‘Eh.’

  ‘A-huh.’

  John drops a wire rack on the drum over the fire and lines up sausages on it and he gets plastic plates and a loaf of white bread and a bottle of tomato sauce from the caravan. He grins at both of us and flicks the sausages with a fork. He says, ‘Plenny room if you wanna stay.’

  ‘Yep,’ says Ellen.

  ‘Thanks,’ says Christ.

  ‘We’ll keep on,’ I say.

  Ellen turns to Christ. ‘Sugar, you shouldn’t be goin’ anywhere tonight, specially not out in the bush what with a crook leg. It’ll snow later. John’ll give you a lift in the morning.’

  ‘Bike’s back there,’ says John.

  But I can’t see anything beyond the fire.
<
br />   So tired of looking for shapes in the fog amid its ghosts.

  Christ nods. She doesn’t look at me.

  ‘No worries then,’ says Ellen. The bourbon goes round again. I wonder how they make enough money to survive, travelling around like nomads, but I don’t ask the question out loud. Too warm and relaxed. Tip my head back and there’s Venus and the Southern Cross and the two Pointers. Ah, the fog has gone. I draw an imaginary line from the Pointers and an imaginary line from the main axis of the Southern Cross and where the two imaginary lines meet in the sky is the South Celestial Pole. From the Pole I drop another imaginary line straight down to the horizon and I sit back and stare at the point and memorise where it is in relation to the caravan and the cattlemen’s hut and the drum of fire. Now I’ve found south and my sense of direction swings around and at least in the most enormous whole-world kind of way, I know where we are.

  ‘Youse got family? Kids?’ Ellen asks. She pulls a cigarette from a packet under her chair and lights it.

  ‘Family yes, kids no,’ I say.

  ‘John’s got a boy back in Hobart.’

  ‘Hobart?’

  ‘Yeah. Eleven he is now. But we moved on y’know. We like to keep moving.’

  ‘A-huh.’

  ‘Not the life for kids.’

  ‘A-huh?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘A-huh.’

  ‘You know these mountains?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  We eat the sausages and drink some more and we rest back in the camp chairs and a breeze picks up the flames in its arms and carries them skyward.

  ‘Feelin good now, eh?’ John asks.

  Our eyes are all shinysoft. We’re grinning at each other. Everything is beautiful yes, the richness and the warmth and the embrace, yes and yes this whole world here, this messy world, this beautiful world.

  ‘I’m having a baby,’ says Christ.

  Her words hang in the air and in the firesmoke and they hang there forever.

  ‘Are you?’ says Ellen.

  ‘I’m having a baby boy and his name is Angus.’

  ‘Nice name.’

  ‘Means one choice, one strength. Angus.’

  Skeins of fire and the air above simmering.

  ‘Does it, then, well good on ya.’

  ‘When you due?’

  ‘I’m having a baby boy and his name is Angus and he’s your son and you can’t touch us again not here not anymore not ever.’

  Ellen leans forward. ‘This ain’t the place for having babies. No help out here.’ She looks at me and frowns as if it’s all my fault but my mind has flown away away away. I try to swallow. I pick up the bottle glugglugglugg the hooch so it burns so it scars.