The Road to Woop Woop and Other Stories
Page 18
In the middle of the night the baby woke. It didn’t cry—he just felt its eyes.
He held it in a stranger’s hands. Borrowed feelings to feed it. Glanced without emotion at the child’s greedy tug on the tit. Onyx eyes fixed on his face. Tiny palm around his finger. Rapid breaths on its ribcage.
It slept.
The house once again talked. It shifted, walls and floors humping. But it too fell silent and slept, sounds scattered to nothingness. Only Calder stayed awake, listening to the unbeating heart of the house. What had changed?
He was unconvinced it was him who had changed to this life in monochrome. Every day was night. Everything dull and noir.
The baby was still as a corpse. He didn’t remember its face—it was a distant memory.
Suddenly the house spoke. This time it was the sound of a car endlessly rolling on mud.
Calder wasn’t surprised to wake up from a doze to find a trail of muddy tracks with wheels leading out to the backyard. He noticed the tree for the first time.
It was shaped like a phallus growing from the ground.
***
He hadn’t seen the neighbors in a while. How many days had passed? Or was it nights? It felt like a post-apocalyptic movie where everyone was gone. Work hadn’t called. Who was doing strategy and delivering on the corporate plan? But he was a manager. And managers, like sous chef Geoff, got away with things.
He warmed the bottle. Changed the nappy. The baby followed him with its eyes. What baby was this? It never cried. Now he wondered about the baby’s tiny palm around his finger when he fed it. He didn’t remember unbandaging the mummy wrap. And how the hell did he change its nappy?
Suddenly he was afraid. For the first time, he regretted succumbing to Bear’s goading. How it made him take the baby. He worried that, if he looked, he might find nothing inside the mummy.
***
It went dark early in winter.
He took his car, a sedan on good mileage he’d secured from a second-hand car city along Punt Road. He put the baby in the back seat, strapped it in the baby seat—who put it there? He didn’t remember buying a baby seat. A curtain parted in Unit One—that was the girl with the hat hair and the gumbooted baldie. A peek of brows but he couldn’t tell who it was. A flicker of television in Unit Three—that was the old man, the one with the empty trolley.
Calder set destination in the smartphone, pulled out of the driveway. A ghost of trees lined either side of the street. A man and his Labrador on a leash walked the crossing just before the main road. A jaywalking smoker dashed across the junction. The rest was smooth sailing. Lights that were red turned green as he approached.
He let the English-accented navigator guide him through the M1, down the freeway and along the M80. He drove all the way to Diggers Rest.
He leaped out. The baby stayed strapped in the humming car.
Calder banged on the wooden door of the gray townhouse. He banged like he was on fire.
“Yes, dear?”
A white-haired woman wearing a green cardigan and jeans peered at him at the doorway. Hau! Hau! A sausage dog, wire-haired, all tan with deep chocolate ears, barked at her heels.
Calder pushed inside. “I must speak to Bear.”
“Gracious, manners dear.” She faced him. “Who’s Bear?”
“He lives here. Right here. See?” Calder pulled out the address scribbled on a tear.
He blinked. The scrap of paper was blank.
“No. This can’t be right. There was a photo.”
He searched the big white wall and found its painting of roses. He sought the boy and his sister standing on golden sand, regal in bathers. Nothing was there.
Hau! Hau! said floppy-eared Barky, all bowlegged in a lively trot.
“Oh, my,” a float of the woman’s words somewhere in his consciousness. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost, dear—shall I get you help?”
But Calder was already legging out of the front door.
The woman and her dog ran after him. Hau! Hau!
Calder bracketed the wiener dog’s barking off his mind. Was powerless to unhear the woman’s exclamation: “Jesus! Is that a baby in the front seat?”
He leaped into the purring car, roared away.
Cars rushed on either direction of the freeway.
In the city he parked off the road. He took the baby and entered the office building. Up the lift to the sixth floor. He swiped in. Twinx was there.
The receptionist looked up with her dog glasses, cast him a weak smile. “Hiya.”
“Working late?”
“Something like that.” Eyes fixed on him. “You’ve been gone a while. We haven’t seen you since—” She looked at the baby.
“Do you remember the bearded guy with a checkered shirt . . .” He didn’t know how to continue.
“What guy?”
“You booked us the boardroom . . . ?” Twinx stared at him. “Surely, you remember?”
“I book a lot of rooms for a lot of people.” She eyed him funny. “Are you alright?”
He shook his head, laughed. “You’re messing with me. You don’t get to do this. Just don’t. I’m not your bosom buddy.”
“I didn’t mean to upset you, Calder. Why, you’re acting all weird.”
“Tell me this—am I holding a baby?”
“What kind of question is that? Of course, you’re holding a baby.”
***
He pulled into the communal car park. The jogging neighbor, tight trackies and white tennis shoes, crashed past on the way out. A thin black girl with slippery hair jogged nimbly after him.
It was weary feet that stepped into the husk of Calder’s unit. Fatigue washed over him. He sat with the baby, studied her onyx eyes intent on his face. Doll fingers wrapped around his big thumb. She broke into a gummy smile meant for him. Cooed and blew raspberries. Fat legs kicked in the fluffy rabbit onesie zipped up front. Why in heaven had he thought it was a mummy wrap?
His heart swelled with sudden affection. Titian curls on her head. She looked like a Zoe. He cradled her as she smiled, this time in her dream.
Somewhere in the night, the smell of formaldehyde got worse. His toes became ice and he knew M was there. Right there in the darkness, as he and Zoe lay. M was close, too close, because now his ears were ice. When the house talked, this time it was the swell of a roaring river cascading over a ledge. He unheeded it. Dozed, woke up thirsty. He put his feet on the floor—it was flooded.
He bundled Zoe into his arms. She was asleep.
He stepped out to the backyard into crisp air away from the morgue smell, from the pulse of the house’s malevolent spirit. The night was shimmer-free, no stars. But it was windy. He sat under the penis tree. Cradled Zoe from the breeze that thawed the frost in his feet and ears. An unkindness of ravens jumped in soundless unison from a branch.
The sky in the horizon unlocked itself to a float of light scanning the universe. As the penis tree unfurled its gnarled phallus, as branches reached and reached, cocooning Calder and Zoe from the biting wind, a shooting star shimmered and twirled with satellites out yonder.
Calder immersed himself into the language of life. I’m a receiver, he thought as he closed his eyes. For the first time in a long time he fell into a deep sleep.
A MAN FULL OF SHADOWS
Leaves crumble underfoot. Ralph Cooper steps into the mouth of woodlands awash with starlight. He carries night with him. Darkness chases his path. An owl leaps from a branch with a fearsome cry.
Ralph pushes his way inward. There is blood on his face, arms, bare legs and feet. No sound escapes his lips. Fear is nonexistent. He shreds through forest tight with black trees, gray leaves. Shadows. Claws and toes slash at undergrowth. Slash. Slash.
Lightning cracks overhead.
No rain. No pain.
Sl
ash. Slash. Reason is diminished.
Ralph staggers out of the woods and breaks into a quiet place. Here, he takes one weary step forward. His spirit is willing; his body fails. He falls, drained. Bathed in blood at the jaw of a new world.
He opens his eyes to a face full of light. Green eyes. Cascading hair.
She smiles.
“How are you?” she says.
“Rent money is dead money.”
“Are you in pain?”
“Elusive peace.”
“Do you understand why you are here?”
He lifts his head off the ground. “The scallywag,” he says in a dry rasp.
His head falls. He is unconscious.
***
Something soft and warm drapes around his shoulders. He opens an eyelid to blinding light. A blanket rubs his chin. He shrugs it off. Tugs at his shadows to hold him. He cannot stop the shaking. His night fights the light of this world. The room blinks with darkness and then brightness. Darkness. Brightness. The world resists. Darkness. Brightness. Finally, spent, Ralph stops fighting the light. His fog wraps around him like a wrap. His fingers shake oddly. His mind is a mosaic. A cascade of rocks.
***
“You are in parallel reality,” a voice says. “You have traveled between levels of consciousness. A portal of time.”
He blinks. Green eyes, a cascade of red hair swathes her cheeks. She is bending over him. He watches her without thought or fear. His fingers uncurl. Slowly, he reaches out. Touches the silk of her hair. Spreads his fingers, slides them to the white of her coat. The corners of his lips pull down. Fingers trace upward to her face.
“Pretty,” he says.
“And so are you.” She strokes his face. “In a complex way.”
He looks at her. She looks at him.
“I think I can help you,” she says. “I want to.”
He gazes one last time at her exuberant face before his eyes close.
***
Cables. Sockets. Circuitry.
Peripherals clasp him. He lies horizontally in the belly of a capsule strewn with gadgets. Two chips grip either side of his head. One end of the capsule elevates. His feet lift upward. His head lowers into a square of glass that swallows him. Wires plug into him.
“It won’t take long,” a voice says in the distance.
“Dead money,” he mutters.
Light. Darkness. Light. Stillness. Tremor.
Scallywag, he thinks. Elusive.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
His eyes are shut. He tries to move his limbs. They refuse instruction from his brain. He can’t move. But he can see through the eyelids. He can see what she sees.
Information download. She surfs through his memories.
Coo . . . There is the child in him: fat legs. Moonface. Cobalt eyes. A tuft of honey hair stands in a natural Mohawk on his head.
Softness. Warmth. Music: his mother.
Now he is a toddler. Asleep. Swift breaths.
Older. Long hands, all knees.
Older. Small town: pub, general store, post office, petrol station. The last two are an extension of the pub.
There’s Harriet. Lying by his side on a golden meadow mottled with violets. Legs entwined. Whispers. Giggles. Touch. He combs grass from ebony hair. Touch. Sun and chocolates on Harriet’s lips. Flowers on her skin.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
His limbs jerk. The controller circuit network strains to hold him.
War. He sees war.
Marching. Running. Crawling. Swamp. Bog like black jelly. Pits. Caves. Field: abandoned. Dust: heat. Building: engulfed in fire. Tanker: rolling. People: screaming. Bullets: cracking past his head. Jungle. Jungle. Jungle. Explosion. Shouts. Bayonet: blood. Smoke: stench. Horizon: cloaked orange. Soldier: head blown off. Hospital: hysteria. Straitjacket: madness.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
He is roaming naked in the streets.
Clank! tins tied to his ankles.
A hoard of children yell behind him, tailing him as he mutters over and over: “Rent money is dead money. Elusive peace. The scallywag. Pretty.”
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Keyboard. Command. A screen opens. Inoculation, it says. Memory buffer. New profile module. Installing permanent blocker, it says. War memory deleted. Insanity deleted. Monitoring information upload, it says.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
***
Cloud. Blackness. A burst of light. He is floating, floating, floating . . . He opens his eyes to a shaft of sun through the window.
Perfume. Purple magnolias, heart drops and white lilies stand in a vase half-filled with water. Sound fills the room. Two swallows sing on the ledge.
A stir on the left.
He turns his eyes.
Jade eyes. Cascading hair.
“How are you?” she says.
“Good. My head feels light. What happened?”
“Your fog of shadows has lifted.”
“What fog?”
“Tell me about Harriet.”
“Who are you?”
“Radiance,” she says. Cool fingers touch his arm. “Tell me about the war.”
“What war?”
“I think the treatment has worked. Tell me your name.”
“Ralph. Cooper.”
“Ralph. Don’t close your eyes. Look at me. Ralph.”
He looks at her.
“What are you thinking?”
“You are beautiful.”
“As are you.”
Ralph Cooper smiles.
“In a complex kind of way,” he says. “Now get me out of here.”
PLAYBACK, JURY OF THE HEART
1
Up the hill, they come. Ancient lovers old as sunset, younger than dew. Nothing is weathered about them, everything is new. They walk close-knit, fingers clasped. They know the land as distinctly as they understand their love, and theirs is a love of an unusual kind. Away to the right, past the hills toward an emerald stream below, white cedars sway. Their leaves hum, a lowly grove song much filled with wonderment. The year is 5019.
At the apex of the climb, the lovers stand silent. They listen to the cedars and an otherworldly sound of wind, first a soft chuckle, then something merrier that rolls. Now, slowly, a resonant echo winds up the columns of the trees from the ground up until, by and by, it is tall enough to stir the hillcrest with fresh notes of a brand-new song.
And so, the lovers dance. Their dance is expression, direction, transition. Her foot slides to the left. His steps in to close the space, alternates and glides to the back. She flirts toward it. He grinds his hips to her pelvis and guides her dance. When her foot meets his, she lifts it, flexes her knee, until her leg wraps fully around him. Her back is supple, leaned in a downward bend away from him. She sways from side to side, arms afloat, and then a complete stillness claims her. It is the stillness of a timeless kind. Finally, gently, the flat of his palm at the nip of her waist carries her rise from the ground until she is tall once more, until their lips are near enough to brush.
She tastes of rain and sun and snow.
Her hands are soft and beautiful about him; his are firm and coarse, strong and tender in their claim of her waist. Liam Keen opens his eyes, thinks how striking the world beyond her head, how happy and wild the wind blows, how it draws closer, closer still, until its closeness widens curls from their cozy tightness on her head, until they blow left and away from her face in a single, white sheet.
Dancing with her is easy as one. He kisses her deeply into dawn.
2
Summer of 2013
Sounds of singing cicadas filled the air. A red box chocolate selection (bite-size) lay scattered on the road. Heart-shapes soaked and melted in warm crimson as Liam Keen lifted off the ground. He looked from a distance at mangled remains
of him—meat, blood and bone—wedged around tire, glass and metal. He felt no emotion seeing himself like that. But he knew at once that he was dead.
A blonde woman with a bleeding face, driver of the Roaditor Turbo, a four-wheel jumbo, was dead too. Tossed through the windshield, impaled on a stump growing by the wayside. Her powdered cheek gashed to white bone. Crimson-spattered wood protruded through a jagged gap in her back. Torn flesh and blood hung from the stub’s spear. Sticky puddles spread from purple grass and crept along the road, as the malevolent spike of wood faced a lime sky. Streaks of cloud waded toward a golden sun in the horizon.
The world around and beyond Liam moved at normal pace. No crowd gathered, three-people thick to amaze at death. Two streets away, Hoochi Mama was baking fresh cinnamon bread. Cabbies leaned lazily by their yellow cars chewing gum as if it were cud. Forlorn cigarette butts stuck out of green, silver-capped rubbish bins. A curly-haired male carried shopping bags marked “Neutral Planet” in both hands. He gave the accident scene a passing glance and crossed the road.
Cyclists and cars diverted to unaffected streets. A woman with bouncy hair walked her dog as skimpily clad joggers ran this way and that past a revolving fountain sprinkling crystal water. Only naked mannequins stared, some in shocked silence, from the perspective of a shop window, others quietly amused at the magical indifference of the Metropolis.
3
Audrey
Before that summer there was Audrey.
Tonight, dinner was molecular food. It reminded Liam of black caviar and rose champagne. But it was neither. His wife Audrey, a born cook, was a retired actress. What she had placed at the dining table in a sizzling plate on a linen placemat was soft on the tongue. Its texture was like the pulp of a summer fruit. Its chew finished with a hint of zucchini flowers.
Together, they cleared the table.
Audrey handwashed the dishes, Liam dried. They worked in silence, always like this.