Gravity (14 page)

Calm. It may have been shock, but I felt no emotion. There was nothing there. No hurt, no sadness, no anger. Nothing.

It took us almost a full hour to travel the fifty kilometres to the place where the National Parks utes and the cop cars had congregated. It seemed like such a long way from home. Mum and Dad weren't part of that crowd.

‘Squid said your mum and dad are on their way. We'd normally take the deceased to the morgue in Orbost, but we have to wait for the team from forensics. We have to investigate. One of our boys will have to escort the body to the coroner's in Melbourne. Do you want to wait?'

I shook my head.

‘It probably won't be pretty, mate. Are you going to be okay?'

I nodded. I'd be fine as long as my heart didn't break.

I could smell death from the door of the police car. I stopped breathing through my nose and could taste it. Cappo led me through to a sergeant wearing disposable gloves. They exchanged sombre greetings and he nodded to me, but we
didn't shake hands. He gestured with his head into the forest. Cappo cast a glance at me and I followed him.

The still air hummed with the low drone of blowflies. Cappo held a head-high twig so it didn't slap back and take my eye out. I took it with a shaking hand. I gagged and swallowed hard.

‘Bloody hell,' Cappo whispered. He stepped off the track and emptied his stomach among the ferns.

And there was my brother, his body cast face-down into the bracken like a stringless puppet, one arm bent awkwardly under his body and his head to the side.

They were his runners. One tracksuit pant leg had ridden up to reveal a blue, death-bloated ankle. The flies around the body were frenzied and every step I took launched a new squadron from their resting places.

‘Simon?'

Death had curled his chubby fingers into a half-fist.

‘Si? It's me, Adam.'

I crouched beside his head and stared at the dry slit of his eye. The haunting crescent of his iris peeked waxy and lifeless from beneath the engorged lid. Like a doll's eye. His colourless lips hung open and a fat blue-green fly crawled in and out of his mouth.

‘Shoo the flies, Si. Shoo.

‘What happened, matey? What happened to your world? What happened to your light? My beautiful brother.'

And I was moaning like my father in the church. The sound came coursing from my insides, bringing with it a flood of tears and crushing the air and life from my own lungs.

I felt so incredibly heavy.

Gravity. You spend your whole life fighting it, trying to rise up, to never be brought down, and then in death you finally surrender. I wanted to be dead with Simon. Part of me wanted that release.

Death hadn't been Simon's choice. It had been thrust upon him.

A puddle of blood had congealed beneath his mouth on the forest floor. More blood had blackened his shirt and followed the line of his collar to finish as a sticky pool beneath his chest.

His head had taken the force of the impact and had cracked like a melon. It would have been instant. Well, he would have died quickly. Quicker than he'd been dying since his last accident.

In time, Dad came crashing through the bush. Mum stood by the cars for half an hour before she found the courage to see for herself.

Silent tears.

We stood upwind and talked with a female constable from Orbost.

Looked like a car had hit him, she said. Hit and run. The body had been moved off the road. They'd found paint and plastic and flakes of chrome.

Dad sighed, and it spoke volumes.

The how and why were just details.

The immutable truth, the knowledge that both tortured us and set us free, was that Simon was dead.

Cappo dropped me at Hargate as the last of the day coloured the bottoms of a handful of streaky clouds.

Tori was waiting on the driveway and I hugged her without thought or question and sobbed into her neck. She held me and kissed my cheek, her fingers opening and closing gently in the hair on the back of my head. I could feel her warm breath on my nape and I knew she was the purest soul in my world.

I heard the window open on the police vehicle.

‘Take care of yourself,' Cappo said.

Tori invited me to stay for dinner. Todd invited himself. We talked in hushed tones while the boy buzzed around in the lounge. Tori sat at the table, shaking her head. There were no tears on her face, just a hard look of disbelief.

‘That's sick,' she said. ‘Unbelievably sick.'

‘Yeah,' Todd said. ‘Who could just leave somebody like that?'

I could, I thought. Not that long ago, I could have made
that decision. I could have run from my troubles. Just left the body and pretended it had never happened. I felt sorry for the driver. All of our lives came together in that brief moment. All of our stories, our hopes and our inadequacies were woven and on display for anybody who cared to look. The driver had chosen short-term gain in exchange for long-term pain. I felt sorry for that.

Francis put the shine back into me. He did it without trying, just by being himself, slurping and carrying on with his pesto. He farted at the table and our chuckles turned to proper laughter. After dinner, he showed me his new play-fighting move.

Nipple cripple.

Todd and Tori washed the dishes and cleaned up the kitchen like the parents and I taught Francis a lesson on the carpet like a kid. He squirmed and squealed and laughed and ran and came back for another beating. It ended in tears when Francis slipped off the couch and banged the back of his head on the floor. I hooked his screaming body into my arms, but he kicked and span until I let him go. He ran to his mum.

Tori kicked us out at ten-thirty. Todd had bumped down the stairs and she and I hugged goodbye on the verandah.

I almost said it.

Almost whispered the words into her neck but she was patting my back too soon and retreating indoors.

Todd was keen to have a session on the port at his place, but I couldn't sit still. In the end, I propped in the ute and drove to town. I wanted to be home. I wanted to be with my family.

Mum and Dad were calm. Something had happened between them. Some monumental understanding had come to pass. Their peacefulness was unnerving. They held hands on the couch and I told them everything I knew. Everything I'd seen. Everything I'd done. They took turns ripping tissues from the box on the coffee table and at the end of it all, there was just peace. They took it in turns to hug me, and then I wrestled with sleep in my old bed.

Sleep eventually won.

Dad spent the best part of Monday morning in the lounge with a detective from Traralgon. Mum paced the kitchen while Dad's voice could be heard rising and falling, variously burning with anger and howling with pain.

Eventually, they shook hands in the hallway and my red-faced father escorted him to his car and thanked him as he backed out of the drive.

‘They've caught the driver. Well, they think so. Caught him speeding near Traralgon. He'd been drinking. They found hair, human hair, in the broken grille. It seems like the paint will match the paint found on the road, but they won't be certain of all this for a month or so.'

It is the lessons that could have ended in tragedy that are the most profound in life.

That drunken driver could have been me. The old me. The falling-out-of-control-into-oblivion me.

I ran.

I found a crusty old pair of footy shorts in my drawer and ran out of town. I ran past the National Parks depot and
straight past the mill. I ran through the freckled bush shadows on the outskirts of Splitters Creek and beside Kent's paddocks to the post where I'd stacked the ute.

I stopped.

I'd come full circle. I was back exactly where I'd started. I stared at the oil stain and felt like crying. It cramped in my throat like an ice block I'd swallowed whole and I knew I was lucky to be alive. I could feel how much I'd changed, how much I'd stayed the same. How much I'd lost and all the things I'd found.

I knew what I liked.

I'd been torn and rattled and shaken and dumped. I'd run from the monsters in my life only to find that they were angels. And the things I lusted for turned out to be hollow. Debbie, Bonnie, that false sense of freedom.

I ran to the mill and into Mick Fenton's office. I didn't know what to say, so said nothing. I didn't know what to do, so I stood there and sweated.

Mick stared. His eyes didn't leave mine and I didn't know what to think, so I held his gaze.

Eventually, he smiled. ‘Aren't you supposed to be at school?'

I nodded. ‘School went back on Monday.'

‘Are you going?'

‘Yes, soon.'

‘Let me know when you're done with it and I'll see what I can do.'

‘Thank you,' I said, ran through the door and into the industrial hum.

Bully was high in the loader. I star-jumped until I had his attention. He dropped the revs and opened the door of the cabin.

‘You right, mate?' he asked.

‘Fine,' I said.

‘You looked like a fucking aerobics instructor bouncing around there.'

There was a comfortable pause in the conversation. The mill buzzed and rang.

‘Coming back to work?'

‘After school finishes,' I said, and showed him my crossed fingers.

He nodded and offered half a smile. ‘Welcome back.'

I showered when I got home and phoned Tori. There were things I wanted to tell her, but the words seemed too big for the phone. I invited myself over. She told me I was always welcome and that I didn't need to call.

My folks were drinking tea at the kitchen table, their eyes sleep-starved but still peaceful. Dad said they'd decided to go to Melbourne.

‘I'm going to clean out the flat,' Mum said.

I looked at her face. She'd come full circle, too. She'd made a decision. One of those big lose-a-lot-gain-a-lot decisions that might take more guts than you have but is made somewhere in your heart so you have to see it through.

‘You'll need the ute,' I said.

‘What about you, love?' Mum said. ‘What will you do for wheels?'

‘Corolla if I need it. Drop me out at Hargate on your way?'

They looked at each other, then Dad covered my hand with his. ‘Thanks.'

Bully came home from work just as Dad was backing the ute out of the drive. He scrambled across the road, waving.

‘Where are you going?' he asked.

‘I'm going out to Hargate. Mum and Dad are going to Melbourne.'

‘Can I come? Out to Hargate, I mean.'

‘Might be a bit squishy,' Mum said. ‘You're not sitting on my lap any more, Bully.'

‘We'll ride in the back,' I said.

Bully bolted home to grab his swag and tell his mum.

He was nineteen. A man. He lived at home. And showed some respect.

A young bloke like me could learn a lot from a young bloke like him.

Dad drove slowly past the police station and along the road to Hargate. Bully and I sat with our faces into the wind like mongrel dogs. His leg rested against mine and as soon as he felt the contact, he pulled away and apologised.

‘What? For touching me?'

His face soured then and he looked into the wind.

‘Nothing happened,' I said.

‘What?'

‘With Harry. Nothing happened.'

‘I know. I know that.'

‘Bullshit,' I said, and elbowed him. ‘You don't know what the fuck happened that night, do you?'

He looked at me twice, was about to protest and exploded with laughter. He shook his head. ‘Wouldn't have a fucken clue. Passed out at about eleven at the pub. Next thing I know I wake up next to this, this . . .'

He shivered.

‘You're not a poof.'

‘That's a fucken relief.'

‘Harry said you didn't have a gay bone in your body.'

‘That's right,' he said. ‘And he'd know.'

I squealed a laugh then that made Dad feather the brakes. I waved at him in the rear-vision mirror and Bully and I stood. We stood up together, as if on cue, and ute-surfed for ten k's, screaming with laughter, then singing Madonna songs at the tops of our voices, setting the forest alight with our echoes.

Tori and Francis were with Todd on his verandah. We tossed our swags onto the grassy verge and Bully slapped the rear panel. Dad waved, but Mum just looked straight ahead as they left.

One day, Mum, I thought. One day all that will be gone and when it goes you'll feel like you can fly.

‘You fellas look like you're up for a session,' Todd called.

Bully kicked his swag. ‘Ready when you are, Batman.'

Todd shook hands, Tori kissed hello and Francis hung around my neck and wouldn't let go. He showed me a scratch on the back of his hand where he'd bumped into the barbed wire. I kissed it better and Todd led us all inside. The talk was of a vegetarian barbecue and Bully flashed me a look.

Todd's house was a pigsty. Not just untidy: there were empty bottles and crusty plates and bowls in every room. It
smelled of incense and mould and I was reminded of Kurt, Mum's neighbour in town. My idea of domestic bliss would lie somewhere between the two extremes.

The guided tour of Todd's place led us out to the workshop behind the house. Tori dragged Francis home, saying they'd be back in a while, and Todd showed me through. Unlike his house, the mud brick shed was in meticulous order. Every tool had a place on the shadow board and the sawdust had been swept from underneath the saw bench and into a pile. He had a good assortment of hand tools and power tools, an armament of draw knives and chisels, and a crossbow.

‘What do you use that for?' I asked. ‘Hole punch?'

‘Mostly target practice. We had a fox marauding the chook pen for a while and I shot that. Hasn't been off the wall for years.'

He showed me the fox skin that he'd tanned.

‘How does killing foxes fit in with a vegetarian lifestyle?'

‘I didn't eat it.'

I frowned.

‘I'm not scared of death,' he said. ‘I just don't eat meat.'

He said I could use his workshop at any time and showed me some of the furniture he'd made from raw branches and timber burls. It was sound, simple and clean.

‘They're brilliant, mate,' I said. ‘Do you sell any?'

He nodded. ‘As many as I can make.'

Vegetarian barbecue at Todd's place. Bully rolled his eyes and offered to go down the back and grab a wallaby or something for the meatatarians, but sat and drank Todd's beer instead. Todd made vegie burgers and Tori and Francis
returned with sliced potatoes and onions, bread, salads and sauce.

It was a feast. Bully scoffed four vegie burgers and growled contentedly when he was done. We sat on Todd's verandah and got eaten by mosquitoes as the sun went down. For a vegetarian, Todd showed no mercy to the lesser winged animals sucking blood from his skin. He certainly wasn't scared of death. In fact, it was delight I saw on his face when he smeared one with his tam-o'-shanter. He and Bully wandered from beer to port, while Tori and I drank water.

I piggybacked Francis when it was time for him to go to bed. It was the only way we could get him home without a scene. Tori thanked me and I sat at the kitchen table listening to her read to him. She flopped onto the seat beside me when she was done, her face a picture of knackered contentment.

I loved that look. I loved everything about her, but I especially loved that look.

With my heart drubbing hard, I forced the words past my lips. They weren't the words I was busting to say, but they were words just the same.

‘I suppose it's time for me to go, hey?'

Tori smiled. ‘Not long now.'

‘How come it's always home time?'

‘I like my sleep. I need my sleep. Don't take it personally.'

‘It's more than that.'

She shook her head slowly and played with a crumb on the table. She flicked it left and right. Right and left.

‘Sometimes I think you hate me. Sometimes I think you hate everybody,' I said.

‘That's just stupid,' she said.

I raised an eyebrow. ‘Fess up. Own up. Take responsibility. That's what you told me. It was like a fucking revelation.'

There was silence then, but it wasn't comfortable. Tori flicked her crumb clean off the table.

‘I've decided I'm going to have a sit-in at Tori's. I'm not going to leave until I understand what's going on in your head.'

‘Don't be a dick,' she said. ‘It's got nothing to do with you.'

‘Ah, so it has something to do with something, but nothing to do with me.'

‘No, I mean it's none of your business.'

I swallowed then. She'd closed down.

Tori had opened the fridge in her heart and the icy breeze had wafted across her face. There was something extremely iffy tucked up the back there.

I pointed at her face. ‘That's it,' I said. ‘Whatever it is you're thinking about or not thinking about now is the thing that eats up the fun in your life and when I look at your face like that it's as though a handful of sleet just fell down my collar.'

The ice in her eyes seemed to evaporate. Just like that. Underneath the ice, I could see a little girl who seemed as frightened as a possum in the ute's high-beams. She wanted to run up the nearest tree but another part of her was fighting it. She sighed and stood behind the chair she'd been sitting in. Words knocked at her throat but didn't make it to her lips. She sat again and pushed the hair behind her ears.

‘I feel like it's all my fault,' she said.

‘What?'

‘Everything,' she said, and swept her arm through the air. ‘Everything.'

‘Global warming and that sort of shit?'

She smiled then. It flashed across her face like the sun escaping from clouds.

‘Simon. Pat. The whole mess.'

‘How?'

‘I walked away from that wreck and I was the reason it happened.'

She sat looking at her fingers for a long time, then sniffed and palmed at her eyes.

‘Simon was pissed, driving us out to Splitters Creek, right, and I told him that I didn't love him. I told him that I loved Pat.'

She looked at me. ‘He went ballistic. He flipped out. If I'd known . . .'

She rubbed her face again. I put my hand on her shoulder and she flinched. I rubbed little circles on the bunched muscles of her back.

‘It wasn't an accident.'

She stood abruptly and my hand fell away. She took a tissue from the box on the breakfast bar and honked into it with her back towards me.

‘He put the pedal to the metal and we were both telling him to slow down and he was just laughing like an idiot. Pat punched him in the head and Simon stopped the car. Pat and I got out and Si just floored it again, did a U-turn and . . .'

She put both her hands on her face and stifled a moan. Her words crumbled into a harsh whisper. ‘He mowed Pat down. Ran straight over him before he hit the tree.'

She stared at me with her red eyes, waiting for a reaction. The wave of understanding crashed on top of me, but I didn't drown. It all made sense and cast an ominous shadow of synchronicity over Si's own death. I shook my head, not from disbelief but from the riotous irony the world is capable of. I almost laughed.

‘It was my fault. Then, like a chain of fucking dominos, Pat's dead, Simon's . . . broken, I'm pregnant with Si's kid and the world just closes in. It nearly killed Pat's mum and dad. They just disappeared. Now, Si's dead. That's the end for him, but there's no end for me.'

She sucked in a breath and let out a choppy sigh. ‘Well, there is . . .'

‘Hang on a minute. You can't beat yourself up for that. Simon was an arsehole. He never gave a shit about anybody.'

Her eyes clamped shut.

My chair howled like whale song on the tiles as I stood. I hugged her and she folded into me, her hands clamped to her face. Her body shook with tremors that grew to a full-on quake. It only lasted a few seconds. She gained control again and stiffened in my embrace. She reached for another tissue and I let her go.

‘You know that boy in there, the one you so lovingly call poo-head, sometimes he's all the reason I've got.'

I swallowed hard. It was much bigger than I'd ever imagined, Tori's ghost. I felt like a bastard for poking it and making it show its head in the glare of the compact fluorescent.