by Stephen Orr
‘She won’t bite you,’ Aiden added.
He stared at his brother, stood and followed Shakina towards the briefing, looking back and pulling a face.
‘No kissing,’ Aiden said, and he turned to come back.
‘Go on,’ Carelyn insisted, shooing him, gulping her wine, watching her husband laugh and slap his friend’s shoulder.
‘Who’s he?’ Aiden asked, noticing.
‘Your father used to play football with him.’
‘Football?’
‘When he was your age,’ she explained. ‘I remember … we went to his wedding.’ She squinted to see if this man was who she thought he was. ‘Gary … Gareth … who knows?’ The rope on the banner came loose and one end fell in the dirt. ‘I wonder if anyone’s gonna fix it?’ she said.
‘Maybe I should.’
‘No, let it go. Someone’s just gotta take it down anyway.’
She studied the children. There were two types: town (in thongs, with shoulder-length hair, seeking shade) and country (in polished boots and ironed shirts).
‘It’s all a bit sad, isn’t it?’ she said.
‘What?’ Aiden asked.
‘How all these people never meet, then have to be friends for a day.’
‘They don’t have to be.’
‘Try to be.’
Aiden sat back in his chair. ‘What choice have they got?’
But she didn’t reply. Harry ran past holding a small Christmas-wrapped gift. ‘Look.’
‘Keep going,’ Carelyn said.
Aiden waited a few moments. ‘You know, you and Dad could save yourselves a lot of money.’
She knew where he was going. ‘How’s that?’
‘If I didn’t do Year Twelve.’
She thought for a moment, sat up and looked at him. ‘Your argument assumes you want to spend the rest of your life … fiddling around with cattle.’
‘I do.’
‘You might change your mind.’
‘No.’
‘You never know.’
‘But it’s what we do.’ He couldn’t grasp what she was saying. ‘We always have.’
‘Doesn’t mean we always will.’
Dust, in a little tornado that passed onto the road.
‘Look at your father,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘It’s a lot for one man.’
‘It’s not just him.’
‘It is, mostly.’
Aiden wanted to argue the point, but suspected she was right.
‘All that weight hangs off a man,’ she said. ‘Day and night. It’s not healthy.’
Again, nothing but the sound of kids’ voices and a soft ball striking a hard bat. ‘It hangs off you,’ she repeated. ‘And things only get harder, every year.’
‘That’s why you do things differently,’ he said.
She guessed her son couldn’t be told. Not now, at least. Later, when he’d learnt the lessons that defied explanation. That problems were the inability to change things, to start again. She watched Trevor shaking his friend’s hand before walking back towards them. He sat down, smiling. ‘You remember Jeff?’
‘Jeff,’ she said. ‘Of course.’
‘He asked me to a reunion.’
‘You should go.’
‘I’m not coming back before Christmas.’
‘You two used to be quite friendly.’
He opened a beer and drank as a sand-shoed Saint Nick walked across the park ringing his bell. The kids shouted and ran towards him.
‘Go on,’ Trevor said to Aiden.
‘You gotta be kidding.’
Carelyn was still studying her husband’s face. She knew he’d given up everything for them. ‘You should go,’ she repeated. ‘You should stay in touch with your mates.’
‘What’s the point, if you only see them every ten years?’
‘You don’t have anyone …’ He watched his son receiving another present, this time from the budget Santa. Carelyn looked at Aiden. He met her eyes. ‘What?’ he asked.
After tea they drove west through a suburb of gravel lawns, broken fences and oleander. Only a few gardens had enough colour to break the semi-detached gloom of an unweeded, industrial dusk. A boy, slightly older than Harry, was pushing a girl in a shopping trolley. Wrestling with it, he managed to keep it on a footpath of cracked concrete.
There were factories and empty blocks full of rubble and flat, lifeless plains where the city gave way to what was already outback. And the highway, again, proudly dressed in fresh white paint, cooling in the early evening.
Harry was still looking at his three laminated certificates: ‘Presented to Harry Wilkie, 2004, Excellence in Spelling’; ‘Harry Wilkie, Mrs Lawrence, 2004, Most Improved, Creative Composition’; ‘Awarded to Harry Wilkie for Attention to Detail and his Willingness to Help Out and Encourage Others’.
At the end of the afternoon they’d stood listening to Mr Runkorn talk about how unique and special they were; how nowhere else in the world do kids learn like you learn; how you show that shared education can really work (as he thanked all the mums, dad, brothers, sisters and grandparents); how you are part of one of the great social experiments, an Australian icon, like lifesavers or the Sydney Opera House.
As Harry thought, How are we like the Opera House?
Dusk became night. Trevor drove in an almost straight line towards Bundeena. He ran parallel with then moved away from the train track; crossed low hills, a bridge, then back towards the east–west line. He felt himself tiring, drifting, jumping back to life. Winding down his window, he turned up the music.
The desert was dark, gone from sight. The only world they could see was the one their lights created: asphalt, the monotony of distance markers. There were stars but they were just a blur through dusty windows. The only sound in their movable world was Human Nature, tyres, and the occasional muttered comment.
‘Mr Runkorn looks like he’s been ’round a while,’ Trevor said.
‘He crushed my hand,’ Harry replied, as he remembered his principal’s sweaty palm and wedding ring.
‘Did you say thank you?’ Carelyn asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Show me.’ She took his certificates and read what she could in the dark. ‘His willingness to help out?’
‘What?’
‘I think this belongs to that other Harry Wilkie.’
Aiden was caught up with his iPod. He took off his headphones and looked at his brother. ‘You been ridin’ my bike?’
‘No.’
‘Mum, has he?’
The car drifted. Trevor suddenly woke, unaware of where he was. He grabbed the steering wheel and they shot off across the road. Carelyn and Harry screamed as their fast-moving world of clothes and books and half-eaten chicken and paint and certificates tumbled once, twice, three, four times across the desert, crushing, settling, bushes, grass. The car balanced uneasily on its left side. It started to move and fell back, flat.
‘Dad!’ Harry screamed. He could feel metal wrapped around and entering his right leg.
No one replied.
Back on the highway, a road-train stopped. Two men jumped from the cab and ran towards them.
‘Dad!’
‘Get out,’ Aiden said, undoing his and his brother’s seatbelt.
‘I can’t.’
The truck drivers were looking in. ‘Everyone okay?’ one of them asked.
‘The boys,’ Trevor managed.
‘You alright, boys?’ One of the truckies tried Aiden’s door. ‘No, it’s crushed shut,’ he said, before running back to the truck. ‘I’ll call for help.’
Trevor looked at the cold liquid on his arm. He touched it and studied his blue and green fingers. Looked over at his wife. She seemed to be asleep, still clutching Harry’s certificates. ‘It’s okay,’ he said to her. ‘We landed feet first.’
The second driver came around to her. He opened the door and could see, straight away, from the way her head rested too perfec
tly on her shoulder. He looked at Trevor. ‘Stay still,’ he said. ‘They’ll be here in no time.’
‘Carelyn?’ Trevor called.
‘You boys okay?’ the truckie asked.
Aiden was getting out through the window. ‘I can help,’ he said.
The driver stood back, overcome, thinking what to do, his eyes caught up in the dilemma of the dead woman.
Aiden had come around to his brother. ‘Shit,’ he said, trying the door. ‘Listen, Harry, it’s just yer leg’s caught, eh?’
‘Yes.’
Aiden felt the paint on his face, and it went into his eyes. ‘Shit,’ he said, rubbing them, collapsing to his knees. ‘I can’t fuckin’ see.’
And Trevor, sitting up, replied, ‘Come ’round to me, son.’
Trevor rolled out of the car and onto the ground. He felt as though every muscle in his body was burning. Nothing was broken, he could tell. Could remember the time he’d come off his trail bike, tumbled, and mashed his leg into a fence post. Aiden (at thirteen) had driven him back to house as he’d told him how to work the gears.
He sat staring into the darkness, saying, ‘I can help,’ as the voice of the fatter of the two truckies came back, ‘Stay there, let the ambos work out what’s wrong.’
He heard sirens and, in the distance, doors slamming and feet on bitumen. There was a short silence. When he looked into the sky, with its lines and circles and scattering of stars, there was a figure beside him saying, ‘Nothing broken … do you think you can stand up?’
‘Yes.’ He sat up, splayed his legs and stumbled to his feet.
‘Steady,’ the paramedic said, helping him.
‘I’m okay.’ He reclaimed his arm and looked at the car, mostly intact, its edges and corners crushed smooth. ‘Everyone’s alright?’
‘You should go with your son.’
‘Righto.’
The man led him towards the road. He looked back at the torches poking around inside the car. ‘What have I done?’ he asked.
‘Don’t worry about that. Your son needs you now.’
‘Carelyn?’
‘Come on. We got him out, but his leg’s smashed up.’
He felt the road beneath his feet. He was blinded by the light inside the ambulance—clean, white, drugged and bandaged, electrical equipment packed into bays; a spot for the sheets and a shelf for the rugs; little blue boxes full of dressings packed in plastic; a drip stand, a bag of clear fluid and a tube leading to his son’s arm; a catheter and his boy, bare-shouldered and flat-chested, lying on a chaotic bed of linen and torn plastic.
‘Christ, Harry,’ he said to him, climbing into the ambulance, sitting on a seat that was half as wide as his arse, squeezing in beside a second paramedic. This man smiled at him and said, ‘Relax, it’s just his leg.’
Trevor met his eyes. Right, he wanted to say. Nothing serious? But he looked at his son and wasn’t convinced. The paint on his arms and hands, his hair, wet with sweat, pushed back off his face by one of these strangers; the rug across his belly and the red cast clamped around his leg.
He leaned forward and ran his hand across his face. ‘Harry, can you hear me?’ he asked, but the paramedic just said, ‘He was awake … but we’ve given him a sedative.’
The back doors closed and they drove off, quickly picking up speed, switching on their lights and siren and hurtling down the highway.
‘You the father?’ the driver called back.
‘Yes.’
‘What happened?’
‘I don’t know.’
He held his son’s hand and stroked it. It was warm, and he could feel the bones and knuckles. He looked at his small lips, redder than usual, and his ski-jump nose with its little beads of sweat. His eyebrows, rising as they met in the middle of his face. ‘Christ … sorry,’ he said.
The world had stopped. There was nothing beyond the ambulance, the road, the two little tabs stuck to Harry’s chest, the monitor and the numbers that meant nothing to him. ‘Christ.’ He cried, placing his son’s hand on his knees, dropping his head down onto it, smelling him, gasping.
The paramedic touched his shoulder. ‘People have accidents. He’ll come good.’ He indicated the trace that described the boy’s will to live.
Trevor took a deep breath. He wanted to thank him. To say, Enough of this and you might make me believe. Instead, he said, ‘What about my other son?’
‘He went in the other ambulance. Seemed okay, but he’d knocked his head, so they put him in a brace.’
Harry opened his eyes and saw his father. He smiled.
‘It’s just your leg,’ Trevor said.
‘Again,’ the paramedic said to Harry. ‘One to ten.’
‘Nine.’
‘We’re nearly there,’ Trevor said, and Harry closed his eyes and took a deep breath from the mask over his nose and mouth.
‘My wife?’ Trevor asked.
The paramedic looked at him, thinking, deciding. ‘There was another ambulance.’
‘So?’
‘They’ve got her.’
‘But she’s okay?’
He shrugged, slowly. ‘Let’s just worry about the little fella’s leg.’
Trevor stared at his son’s closed eyes.
‘Where were you headed?’
But he couldn’t answer.
Trevor stood at the hospital window, third floor, high dependency, watching 3 am Port Augusta struggle through another night. An ambulance pulled into Emergency. Their ambulance, most probably, tasked with someone else’s disaster, driving from one nightmare-avoided (or realised) to the next, as if it were delivering bread.
He went into Harry’s room—small, stripped back, full of plugs and buttons and gas vents; monitors singing above the hum of the air-conditioning. He sat beside him, took his hand and studied his face. ‘I’m sorry,’ he repeated. ‘I’m sorry.’ He wondered if his hand would hold a whip again, or pluck lavender from its stem; if he’d ever jump back on his trail bike (and now he studied his trussed-up leg) or run around a paddock.
No, he told himself. He’ll come good. Two days, a week, a month, a year; small bones had a way of fixing themselves; skin, of healing, hiding its history of trauma.
A nurse entered.
‘When’s the doctor due?’ he asked.
‘He’s still downstairs,’ she replied. ‘I think they’re busy in Emergency.’
‘No one’s told me anything about my wife.’
‘The doctor will know. He’s the one you’ve got to talk to.’
She checked Harry’s pain relief—dripping one clear, cold millilitre per minute—and adjusted a red knob. ‘He looks comfortable,’ she said, but he didn’t respond. He stood and walked across the hallway into Aiden’s room. There were two beds. Another young man was listening to music through headphones. He sat beside his sleeping son, his eyes padded with gauze, bandaged, the paint still visible on his cheeks and neck. The young man slipped off his headphones, looked at him and said, ‘He woke up for a while.’
‘How long ago?’
‘Half an hour, perhaps. Said he’d been in an accident. Nothin’ too bad?’
‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘Told me he got some paint in his eyes.’
‘Yes.’
‘That’ll come good, if that’s the worst of it.’
He just wanted to say, Shut the fuck up, and perhaps the young man sensed this. He slipped the headphones back over his ears.
Trevor reached out and felt the bandage, soft and tight around his son’s skull. That’ll come good, he thought. The eyes too, he guessed, could handle their fair share: acid, diesel, metal splinters from grinders, Harry poking him with a stick, a face full of drench.
Anyway, they had to come good. Aiden himself had explained that he wanted, needed, to be a farmer. His eyes and hands would be his livelihood. There was no alternative, no other way to get around the problem.
‘Aiden, you awake?’ he asked. He heard the response in his son’s breath,
saw it in his jaw, opening and closing.
‘Can I take this stuff off now?’
‘No, wait for the doctor.’
‘I can see light … and the bandage.’
‘That’s good, but you’re gonna have to wait. Is there any other pain?’
‘No … my arse and backbone’s sore, but I can move.’ He wriggled his hips to show him. ‘How’s Shit-for-brains?’
‘He’s banged up his leg, but he’s okay.’
‘Is it broken?’
‘Several places.’ And he saw the door, crushed on Harry’s leg. ‘There were some gashes but they’ve fixed ’em.’ He could see crushed metal hanging from the car and fragments of Harry’s pants blowing in the breeze.
‘And what about Mum?’
‘Still trying to find out.’
There was a long pause. The prospect of bruises or a broken collar bone, concussion, or maybe, maybe she’d just walked away from the wreck? Of course; maybe it was worse; maybe she was dead; maybe the doctor was just waiting to tell them. Or nearly dead, strung up with a million wires and tubes? Maybe she was holding on, waiting for them, desperate to tell them how much she loved them.
‘I’ll go find out,’ Trevor said, standing.
Aiden reached for him. Trevor took his hand and squeezed it. ‘I know it seems bad …’
Aiden, blinded by the bandages, didn’t know if he could trust his father’s words. ‘Harry’s leg will heal?’
‘Yes.’
And then he asked, ‘Did we hit something?’
Trevor waited. ‘There was a roo on the road.’
Silence; nothing except the cymbals and bass drum from the second bed.
‘I must have swerved to avoid it.’
As Aiden thought, You should’ve hit it. You knew to keep going, Dad. Instead he said, ‘It’s just instinct, I suppose.’
Trevor leaned forward. ‘Get some sleep.’ He moved closer. ‘I’ll be back as soon as I can.’ He went out and stood in the middle of the hallway. ‘Hello?’
Nothing. There was a radio, somewhere, busy with country music. He approached the nurses’ station but there were just piles of unfinished paperwork, a half-eaten yoghurt, and charity chocolates. ‘Hello?’
He walked along the hallway, looking into each room. Darkness. Green and red light. A television left on. Someone smiling at him, asking when breakfast was due. He checked his watch. ‘It’s only three-thirty.’
