Sign

by Colin Dray

  ‘That’s great,’ Jon said. ‘Good for you. Good stuff. Getting out. Seeing the world. So, what did he do?’

  But Dettie was busy tapping the steering wheel. ‘He used to wear all these ties to work.’ She laughed. ‘So many ties. All different kinds. I remember whenever we had an argument I’d just buy him a new tie. “You need these,” I’d say. “You certainly lose enough of them all over the place.” And he’d just shake his head and laugh. “You know me,” he’d say.’

  Half smiling, Jon fanned himself with his map.

  ‘Then one afternoon,’ Dettie said, ‘he was in the middle of a very important business meeting—Ted was very important in the company, very respected—and when he leant against a window, the glass popped out. Twenty-three storeys he fell. Onto the footpath. And died.’

  Jon coughed. He sat upright, staring at her with his mouth open, murmuring an apology. He obviously had no idea what to say. Sam didn’t know either. He had never heard Dettie talk about the day Uncle Ted died. It was one of those things no one ever discussed. He knew something had happened around the time he started primary school, but it must have all been very sudden. He couldn’t even remember a funeral.

  ‘That’s terrible, love,’ Jon said, rubbing the hair on his top lip. He shrugged. He shook his head. ‘Life, eh?’

  Dettie’s hand snaked into her handbag, scratched around and came out with the photograph of Ted. ‘You have seventeen good years,’ she said, ‘and then—gone.’

  Sam couldn’t see the photograph from where he was sitting, but he knew which one it was: Uncle Ted in his brown suit, his sleeves pulled up too short, drinking a can of beer at a family barbeque. He was bald, but his hair was combed over on top, and in the photo the wind was lifting it slightly at the edge, like the lid peeling from a tub of yoghurt.

  ‘He looks like a friendly sort.’ Jon passed it back.

  Dettie held the photo out a moment, glancing down at Ted’s lopsided smile. He was facing away slightly, distracted by something beyond the camera. Her fingernail picked at the sticky tape that held its edges together, then she stuffed it back in the bottom of her bag. ‘So what about you?’ she asked.

  Jon held up his left hand. ‘There used to be a ring on here,’ he said, ‘but you’ll notice there’s not anymore.’

  Dettie stared back at him. ‘Is she dead?’

  ‘God, no,’ he said. ‘No, she’s in Liverpool.’ He made a clicking sound in his mouth. ‘Some people might argue that’s much the same thing, though.’

  She didn’t laugh. ‘And you took your ring off?’

  Jon crossed his legs again. ‘No point in keeping it, love,’ he said. ‘There was no more marriage, sad to say. That’s partly why I came over here.’

  ‘You left? You ran off on her?’ Dettie was glaring.

  ‘No. Untrue, love. No, I had the opposite problem. My lady didn’t want me.’ Jon was talking slower, picking at the hole in his jeans. ‘Second year of marriage,’ he said. ‘Thought we were happy. Heading for kids and all. But the missus—apparently wasn’t so happy.’ He cleared his throat. His tongue ran across his lips. He swallowed. ‘She did some things that weren’t nice. I got upset. She told me to leave. And I left. All very civil. Very grown-up.’

  Dettie’s face softened to a frown. ‘She was cruel?’

  Sam could only see the back of Jon’s head. He had turned away from Dettie, towards his window. The side of his beard was twitching like he was moving his jaw, but he didn’t speak.

  Against his shoulder, Sam could feel Katie stirring. She was breathing in shallow gasps, her eyelids starting to flutter. He moved gradually, trying to nudge her off his arm. With Dettie and Jon concentrating on the road, he pushed slowly, quietly, easing her away. She slid softly against the opposite door, her head rolling on her neck, but as her cheek touched the doorframe, she kicked. Her foot clipped Dettie’s seat and she shook awake.

  Jon looked back at them and Sam squeezed his eyes shut. He heard Katie beside him, stretching, smacking her lips; then she settled in her seat and was quiet again. After a moment, Sam pretended to be slowly waking up, easing his eyes open, but Jon had already turned back to watching the road.

  There was a soft thump on the windscreen. Sam could see a streak of grey where something small had struck. It was a moth. There were hundreds of them, a cloud rippling across the sky. Spots lit yellow by the headlights, whirling away into the trees. Another struck the glass in a dull pop, only a puff of smeared dust remaining.

  ‘It’s getting late,’ Dettie said. ‘If you wanted to head on with us tomorrow, we’re probably going to just pull up along the road somewhere to sleep.’

  Jon was flicking through Dettie’s collection of cassettes.

  ‘Or we could drop you off at a hotel along the way.’

  ‘No, it’s all good for me, love,’ he said. ‘If you don’t mind the company.’

  Dettie shrugged and scanned the rear-vision mirror. The sun had sunk below the horizon. The sky around it was a wash of orange dissolving into blue ink. Sam thought about his uncle Ted as he closed his eyes, the occasional thump of a moth hurling itself against the window punctuating the quiet.

  43

  Tomato soup. Lapping at his thumbs. Steam drifting towards his nose. The can lay in the garbage under the sink. Was the microwave door still open? He stepped slowly across the carpet, heel to toe. Katie was sulking in her room. Dettie was staying over. She was over a lot since his father left. She and his mother were on the veranda. They had hospital papers. It was a week until he had to go to hospital. He could hear them whispering.

  ‘He’s going through something terrible, Dettie,’ his mother said. ‘Maybe he needs you to talk to him.’

  There was something about the papers. His mother was waving them. But the soup was almost spilling. It had dribbled around the handle of the spoon where it met the bowl.

  ‘I wouldn’t even know how to talk to him.’ Dettie’s voice was tight. She sniffed.

  Sam’s mother took a deep breath. She was leaning against the back of her chair. ‘You’re acting like he’s dead or something,’ she said.

  Sam wasn’t watching where his feet went. Katie had left out her shoes.

  ‘He may as well be dead,’ Dettie hissed.

  The concrete bit into his knees, his hands were scalded. His mother jumped in surprise. She called his name and knelt by his shoulder.

  But there was something before that—back when he was inching towards the glass doors. As the curtains quivered in the breeze. They’d been whispering. Arguing about something. He’d heard them. He’d forgotten.

  It was hard to remember. They were talking so softly. And the bowl was so hot on his fingertips.

  ‘He says he’s worried,’ he heard his mother murmuring. ‘About you. About how you’re dealing with things.’

  His vision was filled with the ripples on the soup, but he could make out their voices.

  ‘He shouldn’t be asking.’ Dettie was sniffing. But it might have been sobs.

  Sam felt carpet between his toes. The fish tank bubbled by the window. He was almost at the door.

  ‘He thinks he’s made a horrible mistake.’ His mother exhaled. ‘I think he wants to try and make it up to you.’

  ‘Not a mistake, Joanne,’ Dettie spat. ‘A choice. He made a choice. His decision. And after all this time? No.’

  Then they were quiet. Sam was confused. He inched closer, balancing the bowl. If he looked up he could see their silhouettes. It reminded him of the conversation Dettie and his mother had had after his father left—except this time it was Dettie who seemed upset, with his mother consoling her. A bubble winked on the surface of the soup.

  ‘He’s been going through something terrible, Dettie,’ his mother had said. ‘Maybe he needs you to talk to him.’

  Dettie’s wedding ring clacked on the handrail. ‘I wouldn’t even know how to talk to him.’

  The hospital papers in his mother’s hand. His papers. There was something wr
itten on them. It was written small. Written sideways. But as he got closer he could make it out. He tilted his head. It was his mother’s handwriting. Two words. But they didn’t make sense.

  But by then he was stumbling. He felt the concrete.

  When his mother knelt down he could see the papers lying on the ground in front of him. Scribbled in pen beside the doctor’s contact numbers, on the pages she always left by the phone, his mother had scribbled and underlined two words:

  Ted called.

  44

  Sam rolled over and was awake. It was night. The car was chilled and someone had laid a blanket back over his and Katie’s legs. The front seats were empty. He sat up and spun around to peer outside. As he did, Katie moaned and yanked a handful of blanket over herself. Sam could feel moonlight on his face, its gleam tracing the outline of the window beneath his chin as he peered through the cold glass into the gloom.

  There was a mumbling. A hacking cough. Someone spat into the dirt. Sam turned, slowly, and saw movement. Now there were two shadows. A metre or so from the back of the car. Two figures. One of them grunted, its hunched, gnarled shape elongating as it raised its head, stretching as if to howl at the sky. But smoke drifted from its mouth instead, and Sam could make out the spongy thatch of a beard elongating its chin. The second figure was squat and seemed to be pacing. It was Dettie and Jon, both with cigarettes, both talking. The trees behind them were twisted and still, their branches lit white. Sam allowed himself to breathe.

  As he settled himself back under the blanket he recalled the uneasy feeling that had followed him out of his dream. There had been writing. Words, on some kind of paper. Or a sign maybe? Something he’d read? And something about his hands. A sensation of heat. His fingers. He looked down at them in his lap, grey in the gloom. As he turned them over, his watch face glinted.

  His scratched watch.

  Ted. Uncle Ted.

  Ted called.

  He was alive?

  Dettie had always talked about Ted as though he had died. But as Sam thought about it, it occurred to him that there never had been a funeral. There was no grave to visit.

  Ted had called Dettie. Even after he was supposed to be dead. Because he wasn’t. He’d left. He’d left her.

  Like Sam’s father had left his mother.

  Another cough—it was Dettie—filtered through the window. Sam crouched out of sight and crawled sideways over the handbrake to the front seat. Dettie’s handbag was tucked beside the pedals. Keeping low, he unfastened the clasp and slipped his fingers into the bag. Smoke lifted in thin clouds outside, and Katie lay sleeping, her skin tinted blue, cold like marble. Sam felt something jab his palm. He pulled a screwdriver out of the bag and laid it aside. Reaching in again, taking out her purse, he found Uncle Ted’s picture beneath a thin fold of cash and eased it free. Creases shone across it in the moonlight. The sticky tape at its edges rustled under his fingertips. He held the photograph closer to his nose and stretched his eyes wide, trying to focus. Ted was smiling, the hand holding his beer almost pointing at the camera. His cheeks were plump, and though it was too dark to make them out, Sam remembered the blotches of red that would always stand out on his face. He could still recall the heavy way his uncle would breathe, sucking in dramatically whenever he was about to speak. The way he talked loudly, and had a barking laugh. How he used to tell jokes at the dinner table that made Dettie slap his arm and say, ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, Ted.’ The way that made him laugh even louder, until she placed her knife and fork together on the plate, excused herself, and left the table in a huff, Ted calling out to her that it was all just a bit of fun.

  Dettie wasn’t next to Ted in the photo, but when Sam lifted it closer to the window for more light, he thought he could see the shoulder of one of her cardigans in the background, an arm carrying a salad bowl. Sam turned the picture over and saw Dettie’s handwriting in the corner. The words Ted—45th Birthday and the year had been scribbled over in red pen, and he noticed that one of the creases down the picture was actually a neat rip through its centre that Dettie had taped back together.

  The car shook as Jon’s silhouette leant against the door. Sam stuffed the photo back into the purse, shoved it and the screwdriver in Dettie’s handbag, and clambered over to his seat to slip back under the blanket. He lay in place, eyes open and staring up at the unlit ceiling light. The murmur of conversation went on outside, a noise like a persistent guttural groan.

  As though outside of himself, Sam realised that the very same sound, garbled and otherworldly, would have filled him with dread only one night ago, would have evoked images of rotten corpses and ravenous blood-drenched maws. He wondered if it was having Jon nearby—another set of eyes to keep watch, someone to help remind him it was just his imagination gone wild. Whatever it was, the thought of zombies seemed further away than it had for days, even as the car creaked and rocked beneath him.

  Somehow the photograph of Ted tucked in Dettie’s purse—suspended in time, still smiling, and alive out there somewhere—was far more disturbing. He just couldn’t explain why.

  45

  A sliver of pale sky slit the horizon. The road they were on was bare, off the main highway. In the distance a bird squalled like a dying cat. Sam’s neck was stiff, and he felt the bones clicking inside it as he stretched. In the front of the car, Jon was asleep, rolled on his side, snoring into his armpit. But the driver’s seat—Dettie’s seat—was empty.

  Beside him, faced in his direction, Sam could see Katie’s eyes open wide, white and glistening, staring past him at nothing. He took hold of the material of her shirt and pulled on it, but she stayed stiff and didn’t blink. Eventually, she shook her head. He yanked again, but she lifted a finger to her lips and pointed through the window on his side. Turning, Sam listened too, until above the chittering insects and the warble of birds, he could hear a strained voice hissing insistently behind them.

  ‘This is not the worst of it,’ it said. ‘There’s more. More time. Just tired. Get through it. Halfway already. Still moving. On the way. Just never. On the way. Don’t stop. Never. Keep watch.’ Dettie’s voice shuddered in a quick rhythm, the stream of words only broken when she gasped for breath. ‘Should call again. Given him a chance. He’ll know. He knows.’ She sounded hoarse, as if she’d been muttering to herself for hours. ‘Let him know. Worried sick. We’re coming. Still coming. Joanne will have called by now. They’ll talk. He’ll have talked. Made it. They’ll make it. All there. Still there.’

  Sam stole a look at her through the back window. Strands of hair were pulled loose from her usually tight bun. She was sucking at a cigarette, hugging herself, bobbing while she walked. They were parked in a rest stop about the length of a soccer field from a cliff face, and Dettie was staring out at the hazy ocean.

  Katie’s bottom lip shivered. ‘What’s wrong with her?’ she whispered.

  Feeling a stinging heat rising behind his cheeks, Sam shook his head. He shrugged.

  Dettie’s shoes were grinding a tight circle in the grey stones beneath her. It was like watching an animal pace the edges of its cage. She was glaring, but her attention kept jerking from the trees to the road, to her hands. Smoke lapped at her face and she blinked heavily through it. Another mournful birdcall whipped the air and Dettie tilted upwards, listening, until suddenly she flashed a look through the car window at Sam.

  He ducked, and Katie stiffened beside him, her clenched teeth showing between her lips. They could hear footsteps crackling towards them, and Dettie’s voice dipped to an indistinct mumble. Sam realised that both he and Katie had their hands clasped tight on their doorhandles.

  A shadow passed Katie’s head and they jumped as Dettie leant in through the driver’s side window.

  ‘Good to see you’re both up already. Bright and early.’ She tried to keep her voice low, but it came out as a gravelled hiss. Her clothes stank of nicotine.

  ‘How are you kids? You tired? Hungry? Do you want something to nibble on? I’v
e got some Life Savers somewhere.’ She opened the door and knelt halfway inside. The suspension squealed. ‘Or there could be some biscuits. No, we finished those, didn’t we? Good. Not filling. I had two. Jon had a chocolate one. And those horrid birds took the last couple, didn’t they? Sixteen biscuits like that—gone.’ She snapped her fingers.

  In the car’s cabin-light, blotchy shadows hung beneath her eyes. As she smiled, Sam could see a fleck of tobacco stuck between her front teeth. ‘Here we go,’ she said, holding out a scrunched tube of mints, torn open, on her palm. The wrapper and the foil clung to her skin.

  Katie was sniffling, and Sam shook his head, kicking the back of Jon’s seat until he began to stir.

  Dettie picked the hair off one mint and pushed it between her lips, almost burning herself with the cigarette still in her fingers. She flicked her hand, loosening a spray of orange embers that tumbled over the upholstery.

  ‘Oh, for pity’s sake,’ she spat, dusting more ash into the headrest.

  Calmly stretching his arms, Jon sat up. As he did he made a noise in his throat like creaking wood. ‘You right, love?’ he asked, ruffling his beard.

  Dettie coughed, surprised, and put a hand to her cheek. ‘Oh, I’m fine,’ she choked. ‘Just a little—just tired. Couldn’t drop off last night. Headaches.’ She took two sharp breaths. ‘But a drop of coffee and I’ll be right. Right as rain.’

  ‘Good to hear,’ Jon said. He rolled over to look at Katie and Sam. ‘And how about you lot? How’d you sleep?’

  Neither moved. Sam kept glancing at Dettie, watching her teeter as she bent closer to them.

  ‘I’m scared,’ Katie finally whispered.

  Jon tutted. ‘You got scared?’

  She tugged at her seatbelt. ‘No—’

  ‘We were just sorting out breakfast, weren’t we?’ Dettie said, popping open her purse to thumb through her cash. ‘Trying to pick something to eat. Now Sammy, you’ll want bacon and eggs, I know. And Katie, I bet you’d love an omelette and some orange juice.’ Her voice was melodic.