Shooting Stars

by Brian Falkiner

  The lady did not look happy but went back to stand in the line.

  “What have you done to your leg?” June asked.

  “Broke it,” I said. I didn’t elaborate.

  June picked up a telephone on her desk and dialled some numbers. She listened for a moment, then handed the phone to me.

  “Sup,” I said.

  “Is that Egan?”

  It was J.T. I recognised his voice straight away, even though it sounded strange on the telephone.

  “J.T.!” I said.

  “What happened?” he asked. “Why are you in Auckland?”

  “Moma disappeared,” I said. “She went out for supplies and never came back. It’s been more than a month. I’m really scared about what might have happened to her.”

  “Shit,” he said. “Egan, I’m in Australia. That’s why I didn’t get your message until today. I will cancel what I’m doing and catch the first flight back. I don’t think it will be until tomorrow. Will you be okay until then?”

  “I’ll be fine,” I said. “I got a place to stay and I made some friends.”

  “I’m glad to hear that,” J.T. said.

  After a slightly awkward pause, I said, “I went back to your camp. We’d been away for a funeral.”

  “I’m real sorry I wasn’t there,” J.T. said. “I waited for three days but when you didn’t show up, I figured you weren’t coming back.”

  “I thought that was what had happened,” I said.

  “I’ll be there as quickly as I can,” J.T. said. “I’ll come to the office that you’re at right now. Just go there in the morning. I’ll ring June and tell her when I know my flight details.”

  “Thank you, J.T.,” I said.

  “No, thank you, Egan,” J.T. said. “You have no idea what you’ve … Look, I’ll tell you all about it when I see you.”

  I said goodbye and handed the phone back to June, who did something strange.

  She walked around the front of the counter and gave me a big hug, in front of everyone.

  Tomorrow is St Valentine’s Day. That is the day for lovers. Tomorrow I will give Reggie the poem I wrote for her, and then she will know how I really feel about her. I think it is important that she understands that I love her. Too many other people in her life have just used her. I don’t want her to think that is the kind of person I am.

  My poem is not perfect, I have been struggling with the rhyme in the last verse. It’s kind of cheating to rhyme a word with itself.

  But I don’t think she’ll mind.

  I am going to give it to her tomorrow.

  I hope she feels the same way I do.

  Thought for the day:

  Every writer has to experience true love.

  Regina

  My love is not a sweet red flower

  In vase of crystal clear

  No playful melodie is she

  A’tickling on the ear

  My love, my love is but a weed

  A’sprouting in the street

  In cracks that line the concrete paths

  Beneath good people’s feet

  You would not sing her song, my friend

  ’Tis harsh and has no rhyme

  You would not give her aid, my friend

  You do not have the time

  My love she is a broken thing

  A’wrecked upon life’s shore

  In midst of all, she’s lost, alike

  the raven, nevermore

  But still she is my one true love

  And I can see within

  The tortoise shell that she has grown

  Soft flesh beneath hard skin

  She is my very opposite

  The missing part of me

  A creeping weed beneath your feet

  A sweet, sweet flower to me

  February 14th - St Valentine’s Day

  I am terrified.

  I have locked the door and pushed some furniture against it. I tried to climb out the window, but it has a metal arm that stops it from opening more than a few centimetres.

  If I survive the night I will write more in the morning.

  February 15th

  It is morning. I am alive. There was no danger during the night, and in the light of day my fears seem a bit unnecessary.

  Here is what happened yesterday:

  I went to shower in the apartment. I thought I should try to look my best when I gave Reggie my poem. (It’s funny. When I lived in the forest I was always cleaner than here in the city. We had the stream to wash in every day, and Moma’s goat’s milk soap.)

  It’s really awkward having a shower with a cast on your leg, because you are not allowed to get the cast wet. (Junior told me that.) So I had to have a shower with one leg sticking out of the shower door, and a towel to stop water running down onto the cast. It wasn’t easy.

  I had just got out of the shower when I heard the front door open. I immediately thought it must be the owners come to check on the apartment.

  I got dressed as quickly as I could, which was also difficult because of the cast. I was looking for a place to hide when I heard Regina’s voice. I was really excited. I bet nobody has ever written a poem for her before.

  “Through here,” she said.

  Through here? Who was she talking to?

  I opened the bathroom door cautiously, not even bothering to clean up the bathroom like we always agreed.

  A man stood in the hallway, Reggie was standing a little behind him.

  He was a big man. He almost filled the hallway, and in my memory, which is probably a little exaggerated, his head seemed to nearly touch the ceiling.

  I recognised him. I had seen his face in the wedding photo and the newspaper article. He is easy to recognise with his broken nose and cauliflower ears.

  He is much older now.

  It was my father.

  I stared at Reggie for a moment in shock. She had brought him here? Perhaps he had forced her to – but the look on her face was one of excitement, not of fear.

  I stared at Reggie for a bit and she must have seen the horror on my face because she dropped her eyes and mumbled, “Sorry”.

  Ten thousand dollars. That was the reward, according to the newspaper. That was the price on my head. And my love sold me out!

  I wanted to turn and run (on crutches!) but behind me was only the bathroom and that had no outside window.

  “Hello, Egan,” my psychopathic evil father said.

  Strangely, he didn’t say it in an evil voice, the way I had always imagined it. His voice was soft and gentle. It sounded odd coming from such a big man.

  I was too stunned to say anything at first, and so he spoke again. “Hello son,” he said.

  “Sup,” I said.

  “I’ve been looking for you for a long time,” he said, in that same gentle voice.

  I was looking for a way out, but the only way was past him, and he pretty much blocked the hallway.

  He must have seen what was in my mind, because he said, “You are free to go, anytime you want. I’m not going to stop you. But if you’ll give it to me, I’d like five minutes of your time.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “I want to tell you some things that you don’t know,” he said. “After that, what you do is up to you.”

  “I don’t want to hear anything from you,” I said.

  “Don’t be too quick to judge me,” he said. “There’s more to your story than you know.”

  He got me with that one. Don’t judge. I had been judging him all my life.

  “Let me buy you a cup of coffee,” my father said.

  Strangely, the main thought in my mind at that moment was how wrong I had got his voice when I had imagined it for the ‘Of Mince and Men’ story.

 
He had a cup of coffee. A fancy one made in big fancy Italian machine. I had a glass of water. I don’t like coffee. He asked me if I wanted anything to eat, but my stomach was churning and I said no.

  After that he didn’t say anything until the waiter brought the coffee over. All that time he just looked at me. Taking in everything. I guess he hadn’t seen me for fifteen years, and that was a long time.

  Finally he took a sip of his coffee, which left some foamy stuff on his upper lip. He wiped it away and said, “Your mother was very sad after you were born.”

  “I know,” I said. “She told me. So what?”

  “More than sad,” he said. “She suffered from something called ‘post-natal depression’. Have you heard of it?”

  I shook my head.

  “It is a … an illness, I guess. A kind of mental illness. Your mother suffered from it terribly after you were born. It wasn’t your fault. It just happens. She dealt with it through alcohol at first, and then drugs.”

  “If that’s true, then why didn’t you stop her?” I asked.

  “I didn’t know,” he said. “I mean, I knew about the alcohol, just not how much. And I had no idea about the drugs. It was my fault, Egan. I was away a lot of the time, playing rugby.”

  “So what are you saying?” I asked.

  “Egan, I don’t know what she told you about me, but I’m going to guess that it wasn’t very nice. And I can promise you that it wasn’t true. Most of it, anyway.”

  “She told me how you broke my arm,” I said. “I know what happened as if I was there.”

  Actually I was there, but he knew what I meant.

  “Again, I don’t know what she told you,” he said. “So let me tell you about that night, and you see how it fits with what she said.”

  “Go on,” I said.

  “I came home from a training session,” he said. “Your mother was on her second bottle of wine. I confronted her about her drinking. I guess I could have handled that better, but I was quite angry. I told her she was endangering our baby. She was quite drunk and just started swearing at me. She went to pick you up and dropped you. Your arm got caught in the side of a wooden playpen and broke. I had to twist it free to take you to the hospital.”

  “That’s not what happened,” I said.

  “Yes it is,” he said. “There’s a police report, if you want to see it.”

  “She told me the police didn’t investigate, because of who you were,” I said.

  “I bet she told you a lot of things,” he said gently. “And maybe they seemed true to her. But you have to remember that she was depressed, drunk a lot of the time, and taking drugs.”

  “I don’t believe you,” I said. “She always told me that drugs are terrible, and to keep away from them.”

  “Of course she did,” he said. “She knew the dangers first-hand. Egan, a lot of people cared very deeply about you, wanted to help you and your mother, but we never got the chance.”

  “She’s gone,” I said, hardly able to believe that I was saying this to my father.

  “I know, Reggie told me,” he said. “But she didn’t know where your mother went missing. If you are prepared to tell me then I will have the police scouring the area with a fine tooth comb.”

  “What is that?” I asked. I don’t usually comb my teeth.

  “It means a detailed search,” my father said. “They’ll find her … or find out what happened to her.”

  “Really?”

  “Really, Egan, and it would have happened much sooner if you hadn’t been afraid to come and talk to me,” he said.

  So I told him exactly where Moma went missing. I didn’t tell him where the hut was though. In case I still needed it.

  The reason I told him was because I am so worried about Moma. Not because I believed everything else he said.

  About all the other stuff? I think he’s lying.

  I hope he’s lying.

  I really, really hope he’s lying.

  If he’s not, then my whole life has been a lie.

  Thought for the day:

  Stink! I forgot to go to the DOC office. J.T. would have been waiting for me.

  Some days I am really stupid.

  Another thought for the day:

  Love is stink.

  Pain is all I feel when I think of Reggie.

  I don’t like this pain.

  I hope I never see her again.

  THE FATHER PAGES, February 15th - March 14th

  February 15th - continued

  It is evening now. I am at my father’s house.

  I don’t really feel frightened any more. Maybe my father has changed. He seems okay to me.

  Today I met my new mother. I think that is how you say it. She is going to marry my father, so I guess that will make her my new mother.

  But that still seems wrong somehow. Moma will always be my only real mother.

  Lauren is a very attractive lady with blonde hair. She is quite skinny but has big boobs. They seem almost too big somehow, but I haven’t seen a lot of boobs so I am not really sure about this. They look nice.

  Lauren really likes Jack and he seems to like her too.

  I don’t think he likes my father much, he growled at him.

  He’s funny about who he likes. He didn’t like Reggie much when he first met her, but now they get on fine.

  I must stop thinking about Reggie.

  Apparently Lauren was here last night when I arrived with my father, but she kept out of sight. She thought I needed to spend time with my father before she ‘complicated’ things.

  I think I get that.

  My father has been polite and kind. He seems to care about me and he also seems to genuinely care about finding Moma.

  But to do that he says he has to involve the police, and he isn’t going to do that until I am ready.

  I don’t think I am ready, but I really want the police to find Moma, so I said it was okay.

  Tomorrow we will go and see the police. I hope they don’t arrest me for running away from the hospital.

  Speaking of the hospital, my father asked how long I had had the cast on my leg. I worked it out, and it was about two weeks. He said we should get it checked so we went down to the medical centre and they cut the cast off and examined it. Then they did an x-ray of my leg.

  They said it was healing well, but I would need another cast for a week or so.

  Yay.

  There were lots of other people in the waiting room at the medical centre. Some of them wore little speakers in their ears and listened to music. Some sat silently and wouldn’t look at me when I tried to smile at them. Others were staring at their portable telephones the whole time.

  People here are strange.

  February 16th

  Today we went to the police station.

  My father bought me new clothes to wear so I wouldn’t look so ‘scruffy’. Actually, Lauren chose them, but my father paid for them with a plastic card. (I wonder if he knows you can open locked doors with it.)

  I also shaved this morning, using a special plastic razor that is much easier and safer than my old bush razor. I washed my hair with special soap called shampoo, which I didn’t like because it smelled funny. But my hair did feel clean afterwards.

  I tied it back in a ponytail like I used to do in the forest, only this time I used a special rubber band for hair that Lauren gave me.

  In the afternoon, we drove to the police station.

  My father said he had made an appointment with a detective, but there were two of them waiting for us.

  We went into a small room with a round table in the middle. There was a video camera in the corner. I know what it was because I asked the detectives. They said it wasn’t on, so I didn’t have to worry about it.

  I hadn’t been worrying about it u
ntil they told me not to worry about it.

  Then I worried about it.

  One of the detectives was completely bald on top of his head, although he looked quite young. The rest of his hair was cut really short.

  The other detective had really smart hair that didn’t move even when he turned his head quickly. My hair gets like that sometimes when I haven’t washed it for a long time. I guess he needs to wash his hair more often.

  The detectives both wore special jackets that were the same colour as their trousers, and they had a strip of cloth around their neck. I asked about this. It is called a tie. I thought it was a good idea. If you needed to lash some branches together, or make a tourniquet or a sling, it would come in very handy, and it was a good place to keep it, around your neck.

  They laughed when I told them my ideas, but stopped laughing when they realised I was serious.

  Both of the detectives seemed to know my father, although he didn’t know them. I think they liked him very much.

  For the first ten minutes all they talked about was rugby.

  I guess my father is kind of famous.

  Then my father explained who I was, and I could see that both the detectives were very surprised. They wrote lots of notes on their little notepads.

  My father also explained about me escaping from hospital, and I apologised for doing it. The detectives said not to worry about it, they would take care of it.

  Then my father told them all about Moma, and how she went missing.

  I had to tell them exactly where and when she disappeared and they promised they would get onto it straight away.

  I believed them.

  Tomorrow I am going to have a DNA test. This is to prove if I really am who I say I am. (Of course I am!)

  I am not worried about this test.

  Moma gave me a lot of tests. Maths, spelling and so on and so on.

  I am sure I will do well on this test.

  Afterwards we went back to my father’s house.

  I forgot to say yesterday that it is almost exactly the way I described it in the story. Moma gave me that description, so I guess the house hasn’t changed much since she lived here. The only difference is that the back yard has a fence, which I didn’t know about, so maybe she forgot to tell me about that, or maybe it’s new.