Where There's Smoke (24 page)

Nor was it much different when Dane was there. Although after a time it settled into an uneasy banter, Toby saw how Dane tensed up when Mav appeared, the way his jaw set and his hand closed tighter over whatever he was holding, the way he grew still as if he might disappear.

But Mav wouldn't let him. Leaning on the counter he made a point of asking Dane's opinions, of including him in the discussion. ‘Hey cockhead,' he'd call, grinning as he paused so Dane would have time to recognise his failure to respond to the insult. ‘You listen to this metal shit, right? What's the point of it?' Or, ‘Is it guys' cocks or their arses that turn you on?'

There was something oddly coercive about Mav's manner, a sense in which the openness and ease of his belligerence made it almost impossible to protest without seeming unreasonable. Part of it was that he was often genuinely funny, but it was more than that. For Toby understood that to complain would be to show he was like Dane as well, and that to do so would be a mistake.

What made it worse was that Toby understood how much Dane hated it. Although he only rarely responded it was impossible to watch the two of them together and not see the way Dane tensed up in Mav's presence, the way Mav's taunts unmanned him.

All of which made it stranger to see the two of them here again, to see Mav staring at Dane in his demanding way and Dane, his face obscured behind his hair and his mouth loose where the piercing in his lip protruded, staring, refusing to meet their eyes, his gaze sliding down, or away over their shoulders, as it always had.

At first Mav seemed unsure how to engage with Dane, preferring to stare at him while he asked Toby questions about when he had turned up, how long he had stayed, whether he had looked this fucking bad last night. But then he paused, his manner growing more deliberate as he asked Dane how he had got out.

For a brief moment Toby had an image of Dane swimming up through the earth like something quick and slippery, the flash throwing him off balance for a moment.

‘I dunno,' Dane said. ‘Dug.'

Mav shook his head. ‘Jesus,' he said. ‘With your hands?'

Dane nodded.

‘And they're not all torn and shit?'

As if the question had not occurred to him before, Dane looked down at his hands. Still covered here and there with black nail polish, his small, bitten fingernails were chipped and broken, his fingertips black with grime. But it wasn't his fingers or fingernails Toby found himself staring at but Dane's skin, which was waxen pale and mottled purple and green, as if with fading bruises.

‘Huh,' said Mav. For a moment nobody said anything, so when Toby's voice came again it sounded loud, uncertain.

‘What was it like?'

‘What?'

‘Dying.'

There was a pause. Dane tilted his head and looked past Toby. ‘I dunno.'

‘What do you mean, you dunno?' Mav asked incredulously.

Toby glanced at Mav, willing him to be quiet. ‘Was there a light or a tunnel or something?'

Dane shook his head. ‘Not really. I remember being on the rope, being afraid, and fighting, then next thing I knew I woke up in the coffin.'

‘So you weren't, you know, aware?'

Dane shook his head.

‘And it didn't hurt?' Mav asked.

‘No,' Dane said. ‘I don't think so.' He paused. ‘I remember being cold, I think. And alone.'

‘And now? Does it hurt now?' Toby asked then, one hand rising, as if to touch the mark on Dane's neck. Opposite him Dane lifted his head, his eyes meeting Toby's.

‘No,' he said. ‘At least, not compared to being alive.'

*

It was after three before Dane left, and although Mav wanted to follow him, Toby held him back, telling him it was better to leave Dane be. But as they watched him lurch off into the dark, Toby could see Mav already had some new object in mind.

‘We should get some of the others around,' he said, once Dane was out of sight. ‘Get some kind of party going.'

Toby hesitated. ‘I'm not sure that's such a good idea,' he said.

‘Don't be a dickhead,' Mav said, flicking his phone on. ‘It'll be cool.'

Which is how there came to be twenty people waiting in Mountain Bean when Dane turned up the next night. A couple were friends of Mav's, the rest kids from school, a group of girls, a couple of guys Dane had been friendly with years before.

Released from his shift, Toby lingered on the edge of the group, listening and watching. There was something skittish and stagey about the gathering. Several of the girls kept bursting into tears, while the guys talked too loudly, their movements forced and oafish.

Some time around ten it occurred to Toby that Dane might not come, that his first two visits might have severed whatever vestige of his past life remained. But then one of the girls gasped and, glancing around, he saw Dane approaching.

Despite the nervous energy of that past half-hour the room fell silent as Dane entered. Part of it was the fact of his presence, the way he looked, but Toby could see from the way several of them stepped back, hands raised to their mouths, or the protective way one or two of the guys closed their arms around their girlfriends, that it was more than that as well. For a long moment nobody moved, then Mav stepped forward, and with an oddly solicitous gesture placed a hand on Dane's shoulder and drew him into the group.

*

As Toby watched Mav's guests take Dane's hand and clap him on the shoulder he found himself wondering at Dane's manner with them. The Dane he knew would have hated this, would have sneered at the fake emotion, said they weren't here for him but for themselves. Toby had hated his anger, hated the way Dane could never leave it be, never stop riding the people around him until he provoked exactly the reaction that would confirm what he believed. Until he made them hate him.

Yet the Dane he could see tonight wasn't that Dane. It was as if the anger had drained away and in its place there was only a sort of emptiness, as if Dane was already gone.

At first that didn't seem to matter. Just as at the funeral the girls cried and hugged each other, though now they also made a show of sitting with Dane and talking to him. Some held his hand. The guys embraced him or shook his hand. Mav called him brother. People said you should have told us, and you know you can talk to me, we're always here. And for a while that was enough.

But as the night progressed, Toby felt something begin to shift in the mood of the group. Whether the others felt it or not he wasn't sure, but to him it felt like a sort of dissatisfaction was setting in. It wasn't enough, it seemed, for Dane to be there; he needed to give them something as well, to be grateful for their grief.

At first he wasn't sure whether he was imagining it or not. But as midnight approached it was obvious something was wrong. Even Caitlin, who had been crying on and off all night, burying her face in Amber's shoulder and sobbing about how much she missed him, seemed almost angry when she came to say good night.

‘I'm so sorry,' she said, but Dane just looked at her without speaking. Then he nodded. Yet that moment, that space of seconds, was enough for something to turn cold in Caitlin, for her to pull away, cheated.

Afterwards, when it was just Mav, Toby asked how it had gone. Mav glanced over at Dane.

‘You'd think he'd be pleased, wouldn't you?'

‘About what?'

‘All these people turning up. That they're so upset.'

Toby shrugged. ‘I suppose.'

Mav shook his head. ‘You don't think there's something really passive-aggressive about it?'

Toby turned to look at Dane, remembering all those Friday and Saturday nights the year before, the way Mav had tormented Dane.

‘What?' Mav asked, but Toby only shook his head.

‘Fuck you, Mav,' he said.

*

Outside, Dane was sitting in the air and water bay, his arms wrapped around his legs. Toby walked over, sat down beside him. Dane was doing the staring thing again, his eyes fixed on some invisible spot up on the service station roof, his expression blank. But when Toby spoke he knew Dane was listening.

‘Are you okay?' he asked. Seated beside him, he could see the line of stitches running up the side of Dane's head, the white of the skull beneath. Suddenly he remembered something he'd heard about the pathologists removing people's brains to do toxicology and wondered whether Dane's was in there or not.

‘They could have done that whole evening without me, couldn't they? I was only there to give them a chance to feel good about themselves.' When Toby didn't answer Dane looked at him. ‘Is that what my funeral was like?'

Toby hesitated. ‘A bit.'

Dane looked away again. When he spoke again his voice was quieter. ‘I spoilt it, didn't I?'

‘Spoilt what?'

‘This. Before. All of it.'

Toby didn't reply at once. ‘Why did you do it?'

Dane shrugged. ‘I don't know. I just wanted it to stop, I think, just wanted it to be over.'

‘You could have tried to talk to me.'

‘Would you have listened?'

Toby didn't answer, the blood rising to his face. ‘I'm sorry,' he said at last.

For a long time neither of them spoke. Then Dane rose.

‘I have to go,' he said.

‘Go where?' Toby asked, looking up at him.

Dane did not answer, just turned, began to walk away.

‘Wait,' Toby said, standing up. ‘Isn't there something I can do?'

As he spoke Dane hesitated and looked around. ‘No,' he said. ‘Not anymore.'

For a moment Toby thought to run after him, tell him to stay, but he knew there was no point, that however much the thing in front of him looked like Dane it was not, or not in any way that mattered, that everything that mattered about Dane, all his anger, all his need, had died with him, and all that remained was a memory of that need. And as he did, he understood something else, something about the Dead. People wondered why they were here, what they wanted, what they needed. But that was the wrong question. The Dead didn't want anything: it was the Living who wanted, who needed. And this was their tragedy, to be caught in a story that would not end, to be inconvenient, to be extraneous. To be alive.

FLAME BUGS ON THE SIXTH ISLAND

PATRICK HOLLAND

Go down to the rock pools when the evening tide is out and there is a chance you will see them. Sometimes one will swim in among the mangroves in the tidal flats but the rock pools are best. Flame bugs are what we call them. I do not know if they have other names. I do not know where else they are found but our island. I have never heard them spoken of by anyone who doesn't live here. The north-east wind comes in spring and blows the flame bugs to our shores. One October in boyhood, I took to going down to the rocks alone to look for them.

I never asked the boys to come with me. I never much wanted company. Also, I was worried they would try to net and torment the creatures, though they are rarely caught by hand. I thought about how the boys dragged mud crabs out from under rocks with hooks and tried to crack their shells.

The most precious time I went looking for the flame bugs was with the girl we called Shell. We called her Shell as before anyone knew her she was seen collecting shells on the south beach, and because she wore a necklace with a by-the-wind sailor pendant. She belonged to that tribe of children whose European blood naturalises here; whose blonde hair the sun and saltwater turn white and the white skin olive.

One afternoon I saw Shell sitting bored in her front yard and, though I had planned to go alone, I asked her if she wanted to come look for flame bugs and she said that she did.

We left Ooncooncoo Street at twelve years old and six o'clock.

Shell had only recently moved to Moreton Bay, so close yet so far apart from the big city. She was lonely and a little intimidated at school. Most of us had grown up together and there were more boys than girls and we boys were very rough unless isolated. First I pitied her. Then I wondered at her: at her way of sitting with her knees beside her; at her speech and her interests that were cultivated and strange to me. I made a habit of noticing her. But I did not know how to introduce myself. This night looking for flame bugs was the first time we had truly spoken. Walking off her street I got the feeling she was excited at the prospect of making a friend, even of me, and that she would have followed me anywhere – far further than the rock pools.

She told me how at her old school she had played the violin but here there was no teacher. Her mother was doing her best in a proper teacher's stead. She told me she liked the island but for that. I told her I knew a girl who played guitar, which was true. I told her my mother, being a schoolteacher, could let us into the community dance hall any time we liked, where there was an assortment of old instruments and the opportunity to nurture a band, which was not true at all. Between fact and fantasy we decided her musical ambitions did not have to end. We arranged public concerts that would never take place.

We walked off the bitumen streets, through a paddock of cattle on saltwater couch, to the Esplanade lined with wooden buildings and streetlights not yet lit. We came to the sand where more than a dozen tidal pools reflected the twilight arch. The sun sets quickly on the island and amid the pools we stood in true twilight.

I wonder if I hoped we would be left alone, or if that jealousy is mine – the man's rather than the boy's.

No one came onto the beach. The ocean was uninhabited but for a lonely fishing boat with lit mast-light in the offing.

I gave her my torch. I told her to shine it into the pools and look for the reflective eyes that would indicate the animals. You almost never found flame bugs in the tidal pools on the sand and mud and I did not hold any serious hope, only I was hoping to stretch time by putting more movements into it. A thing I knew was possible. She checked every pool on our way toward the headland where my true hope was.

We left our shoes on the sand. Our children's feet found all the footholds in the rock, and a girl of twelve gives up nothing in agility to a boy. Soon we were kneeling by a captured pool, a deep one the sea had only recently left. We did not need the torch now. Its light would not penetrate that depth of water. And anyway, all that was needed was to swirl your hand in it and if the pool held a flame bug it would light like an underwater candle.

She told me she had never seen one. If there was a flame bug there tonight I wanted it to be her find.

‘You try.'

She put her arm in past her elbow and stirred the water.

Two came alight. She cried with delight.

‘It's a good pool,' I said. ‘We're lucky.'

‘Yes. We're lucky, all right.'

Though she did not know how lucky we were. It was possible to come for days on end and not see one.

‘Should we look in the other pools?'

‘Stay here,' I said.

‘Yes,' she agreed. ‘We should stay here where we've been lucky, as long as we can.'

I want to say she was beautiful then, when she spoke those transcendent words. It is impossible for a girl of so few years to be truly beautiful, yet I think she must have been as normally I would have gone checking the other pools and left this one that was certain. Instead I wanted to stay where she was pleased.

I told her how flame bugs were rarely seen together like this. How their eggs float on the foam, through the air. At first she did not believe me. I assured her it was true. This was what my father had told me. Perhaps he had been speculating or restating a myth, but nothing I have learned since has falsified it. Our shores are protected, still the flame bugs seem to have no device for coping with even small waves – no muscular foot like a limpet, nor the ability or inclination to bind themselves into crevices like urchins. They are only ever seen at night. I do not know if they are resistant to high rock temperatures and drying out or if the trapped ones die when low tide coincides with the heat of day or if instinct tells them when it is safe to come close to shore.

The existence of flame bugs seems to have no practical point. Nothing in the pools ever rises to snap at them. Though if they are prey to some furtive thing, their glowing when disturbed can only aid it. They cannot be eaten by humans or used for bait and they die when put in tanks. Flame bugs seem to exist only to carry light.

‘Try to catch one,' I said.

‘I don't want to hurt it.'

I laughed, happy in my better knowledge; happier I had the opportunity to share it.

She stirred up their lights then made a grab at one that was at the far side of the pool by the time she closed her fingers. She tried again and we laughed together.

‘It's near impossible,' I said.

She sighed agreement. They could not be caught.

We sat watching them for I do not know how long. Their unpredictable movements and light meant there was no possibility of boredom. Children do not possess the accumulated pasts and anticipated futures that dwarf the present – happiness in the moment is complete happiness. Since time no longer pained us it was suspended.

There must have been a point that night when we decided it was late and we should return. I do not remember the decision. My parents were native islanders and did not care how late I came home, but her family was new to the island's customs and would be worried.

I did not wish it, but I found myself delivering her to her front gate. I stayed, hidden behind a fig tree, to see her father come out and pretend to be angry when he heard her footsteps on the path. He hugged her and took her in.

I was jealous. The night might have lasted forever had we not given up on it.

I never spent another evening with the girl we called Shell. Two years passed and circumstance and my shyness meant we never became the companions we might have. Though, if at any time during those two years I had been asked to choose one of my classmates as a favourite, it would have been her. This would have surprised everyone, though not, I suspect, the girl herself. Our relationship was locked in that night away from the island's inhabitants, where love was unthought of, unplanned, immediate and inevitable.

She moved back to the city for tenth grade. The day before she left she came unexpectedly to my house. She told me she did not want to leave the island. She had not told anyone else. She took my hand. It was the second time we had been alone together. Then she left.

Three years later I heard she had been accepted into the city conservatorium for violin. It was two years after that, having rowed back from my launch, my mother asked me if I remembered a girl who used to live on our island and pointed to a photograph in the already-old city newspaper, to a face that was hers, though I had to look twice to be certain. My mother told me she had been killed by a man in a nightclub who had baited her drink. The paper said she possessed a beautiful future, that had been meaninglessly cut short. Did I remember her? I cannot explain why I lied and said I did not.

I went to the beach. I sat on a high dune and looked out at the ocean, at the riding light of a distant boat. I was heart-broken, though I had little right to be. I had not seen the girl in more than five years. I wondered if my love should stop now, since it became futile with the death of its object.

I have heard it said our souls only live after death if God remembers us. I am frightened of God's forgetting. This clumsy attempt to write the night of her and the flame bugs is an attempt to redeem a night in time that meant something to me, in this world where not all, and ever less, of our time has meaning. Why do I remember the feeling of that night better than its forms? I cannot be sure all I have written here is factual, though it is – in some inexplicable way – true.

I am still here on the island. I will never leave. Men still fish these waters, but they do not live on the island or build their own boats and they say there is no future in living as I do. I am not concerned with the future. I am a man who most say has done little. But I have already seen more than I understand, and lost much more than I have kept.

The flame bugs are few now. Like all beautiful things, they grow fewer as the world moves degraded through time towards its end.

I walked down the beach to the headland and climbed onto the rocks. I stirred the pool, the same pool … An unlikely flame bug rose and lit.

I spoke to the creature, to the stars, to eternity, to whatever would hear me. I asked it to remember the lost and inimitable movements of that night that time had passed by.

Should we look in the other pools?

Stay here.

Yes. We should stay here where we've been lucky, as long as we can.

Why can't I keep you?

Deep in the pool a second bug lit and rose up beside the first like a fallen tear of light.