The Rain Heron

by Robbie Arnott

  I had expected him to be gentle, yielding. But from the moment I came to his bed, pulling off my clothes, not speaking, he moved up and grabbed at me with as much force and hunger as I did at him. We were clumsy, and there wasn’t enough room in the little bed, but soon we stopped noticing the banging of our elbows and the squeeze of our hips as we rolled and repositioned. Soon a rhythm developed that took me out of that room, and I was grabbing at him harder, moving faster, putting my lips and teeth to his skin, saying things I can’t remember.

  It had been a long time. A whole year, maybe longer, and then it had only ever been with people I’d barely known. Men I’d been attracted to in the brief times of quiet during the coup—never other soldiers. Civilians who were just as willing as I was to make our time together urgent, transactional. Never anything that would last, never with anyone I wanted to see again.

  So at first, that night with Alec, it felt strange to be touched, as if my body was rediscovering something that had been lying dormant under my skin. Afterwards, in that tiny bed, our skin stayed together. His arms circled my shoulders, his hands resting on my back, while my cheek pressed at his chest and my knuckles pushed into his thighs. He dozed off, and his even breathing was the only sound I could hear. I leaned into his warmth and tried to go to sleep. I inched towards his body, closed my eye, and when I did I didn’t see the woman on the mountain. I saw only darkness, a high quilt of stars, and him.

  59

  THE NEXT DAY we walked again out onto the plateau, our skin marked all over by the night. The sky was free of clouds and the air was cold and scentless. Everywhere the land glistened with moisture. The rocks and grass and pools spread out before us in a patchwork of grey-green-blue-brown so vivid I wanted it painted, photographed, turned into something more than a memory, something physical that I could take with me.

  When we stopped for lunch I realised why I was thinking like this, finding ways to remember this place: I was going to leave. It hadn’t been a conscious decision, but as soon as it hit I also knew where I was going to go and what I was going to do. It must have been percolating inside me, growing in strength without revealing itself, until now.

  I looked at Alec. He was chewing some nuts, staring at the lake we were sitting beside. I was going to tell him that I was leaving, but I was swamped by the memory of everything he’d told me the day before, and how I’d said nothing. I wondered what he would do when he knew I was abandoning him, and I didn’t know how to tell him, what to say, and as he felt my eye on him he turned towards me, and suddenly I was talking.

  I’m sorry about what happened with your mother, I said. And I’m sorry I didn’t have anything better to say than that mine was dead, which is true, but it’s not all of it.

  I meant to stop there, to pause and gather my thoughts, but instead my words kept tumbling out.

  Things happened before, I said. I thought I was right but I wasn’t. I wasn’t justified; I wasn’t the lesser of multiple evils; I was just cruel and wrong. And before that, long before—I’ve been wrong for a long time. When I said my mother died I wasn’t lying, but I had an aunt. And there was a man from the north. He was so stubborn; he was one of those men who feels entitled to something because he knows it exists, the way the generals are about that bird, and the winter was so much colder than it should have been, and people should know how to swim, right? Can you? Everyone can. Do you know how much water can fit in a throat? Do you know how much blood runs in a body? By the time I reached the mountain—that’s where the bird was—I thought I was a different person, but I wasn’t; I never really changed, and…

  At that point my words began running into one another. I was out of breath, and a cold sheen of sweat had coated my face, but I tried to keep telling him what I had done. I didn’t care: I wanted him to know everything. My throat hurt, and I felt dizzy. Eventually I stopped trying to talk. I became aware of his hand on my back, resting light as fog.

  It’s all right.

  I’m trying to tell you—

  It’s fine.

  He gripped down on my shoulder.

  There’ll be time.

  I began to get my breathing under control. I took a slug of water from the bottle he offered me, before standing up.

  I need to walk.

  Okay.

  On the way back I pulled myself together and told him that I was leaving, that I was taking the bird back to the mountain where I’d captured it. I said I’d done terrible things there, and the people who lived there would probably kill me if they got a chance, but I was going anyway.

  He listened, and kept walking, and whistled at the possibility of my death. He only spoke when I was finished. And of all the things I’d said, both on the walk and back at the lake, he seemed most concerned about transport.

  I guess you’ll need my car.

  I stared at him.

  I suppose so.

  Not sure if you should be driving in your condition.

  I can drive.

  Sure?

  I don’t need your help.

  I think I’ll come anyway.

  We continued on, and didn’t speak again. But something took hold within me, something bigger and stranger than the world around us. I reached for his hand. A feeling of slowness came over me. In the cool air, my body was ringed by warmth.

  60

  AS THE SANCTUARY came into sight we were treading duckboards, stretching hamstrings over remnants of the rain, and the narrowness of the path and the wide expanse of the puddles meant our legs and hips kept knocking against each other. As we edged around a particularly large pool Alec stumbled and leaned on me, his shoulder pressing into my chest, his arm landing on my collarbone. This contact hauled me back to the night, our heated weight, and I wanted him again. He stayed pressed against me for longer than was necessary, so I knew he felt it too.

  We began to walk faster. Soon we came back into the compound, through the trees, and all I was thinking of was pulling him to me. Maybe it was this desire that distracted me, that prevented me from noticing what I might otherwise have seen. Or maybe it was just how I was now. The old me would have noticed instantly that something was wrong. I would have seen how the gravel had shifted in the driveway, or how the grass had been flattened into a faint line that led behind one of the abandoned enclosures. I would have looked closer, and seen how, in the distance, the door to the building my room was in had been forced open. I would have seen the black sheen of the trail bike that had been poorly hidden behind some bushes. I would have felt some kind of charge in the air; I would have known instinctively that something was wrong.

  But I wasn’t the old, full-eyed me, and I saw and felt none of these things. We came into the sanctuary grounds, covered by that blanking sheet of desire, and only noticed what was happening when it was deliberately revealed to us. As we approached Alec’s room someone stepped out from behind one of the ruined enclosures. Thin-limbed, shaking with energy, male. Closer to a boy than a man. A clutch of hair sprang wildly from his head, and dirt, sweat, exhaustion and emotion had muddied his face into an extraordinary contortion. He was trying to keep his expression still, but I could see that he was so angry and scared that he was nearly crying.

  We stopped walking. Alec held out both his arms. The boy shook, and raised the northerner’s gun.

  Time slowed. I stared at this boy. He was familiar to me. I was trying to place him, while trying to stay calm. I didn’t want to spook him with any sudden movements. Alec was talking to him, saying hello, that we had no money but lots of food, that he was welcome to have some, that everything was going to be okay. He introduced himself to the boy, then introduced me. When he said my name the boy began shouting, saying he knew who I was, he knew exactly who I was, and that’s when my memory clicked. It was the boy from the mountain. The son of the woman’s friend.

  Recognition must have appeared on my face, unlocking something within him. The arm holding the gun started wobbling, and he began shouting: How does it feel to b
e followed? How does it feel to be followed? How does it feel to be followed?

  He was spitting with each yell. Alec tried to interrupt him, speaking in a calm, soothing tone, but the boy ignored him.

  How does it feel to be followed? How does it feel to be followed?

  I didn’t move. I didn’t say anything. Despite his yelling, everything felt quiet. The trees behind the boy were so pale, so dusty blue and faded green. I let out a breath. I remembered how the mountain woman had received a bullet from this gun, and wondered if my body would crumple in the same way hers had. I looked at the boy’s shaking arm. I thought of the ocean in my aunt’s throat, of the northerner wrapped in salt and blood. A great sense of relief came over me. I stared into the boy’s red-cracked eyes, and I waited.

  I’m not sure what I would have done differently, even now. I don’t know how I could have stopped what happened next, if there’s anything I could have said or done. I just wish that, like me, Alec had waited. I wish he’d watched the light on those dusty-blue leaves. I wish he’d stood still, and focused on the stillness of the air, and not taken that sudden step. I wish he hadn’t chosen to do that, to move his body between the boy’s and mine. Nobody knows what a child with a gun will do. Alec’s superiors had been right: he was a terrible soldier.

  He moved and the boy, who had forgotten him, flinched, and let his fear and rage and exhaustion and nerves convulse into a squeezing of his finger. The gun fired. I jumped. A ringing took up in my ears. In front of me Alec stumbled, made a choking sound, and gave himself to the gravel at his feet.

  61

  HOW MUCH BLOOD runs in a body? Too much, I think. Too much to stay in precious equilibrium, whenever the skin’s dam bursts. But when Alec spilled too much of his blood into the gaps of the sanctuary’s gravel, I hollowed out before he did. Even as his life rushed out of the hole in his chest, what was left of my own life poured from my mouth, my nose, my ears. I felt it wick away from the moisture on the surface of my eye before he was finished moistening the grey gravel red.

  I scrabbled over his torso, mumbling and frantic, pressing at the hole that led to his heart. The boy was staring at us, saying: No, no, no. I balled up the lower hem of Alec’s shirt and pressed it to the wound as the boy’s words returned to shouts. And when I saw the glassy glint of Alec’s eyes and collapsed onto him, shivering and shrieking, the boy also shrieked, before he aimed the gun once more at me, and pulled the trigger again.

  No bullet or sound followed. In all the years I’d kept it, I never counted the ammunition in the pistol’s clip. I’d convinced myself I’d never use it, and part of this conviction came from refusing to know how many bullets it held. That its original owner had only filled it with two rounds was as surprising to me as it was to the boy. I thought he’d run, but he fell to the ground beside me, staring at Alec’s body in rank, formless horror.

  We stayed there for a few minutes. Perhaps it was as long as a quarter of an hour. I ignored the boy. I kept my fingers on Alec’s neck and cheek until he began to cool. And at the grace of the northerner, my life continued.

  62

  I HAVE MADE a lot of mistakes, but I like to think that I haven’t repeated many of them. There’s a good chance I’m wrong, but it’s a thought that keeps me upright, when everything else begins to crowd at me.

  When Alec died I scraped a place lower than I’d ever gone before. Lower than seemed possible while still being alive. But somehow, in the sickening, emptying howl of his death, I held on to the lessons of my mistakes. I looked back to a cold beach, an even colder ocean. I remembered bloody waves. I remembered the freshening scent of pine trees, the dark height of a mountain, how a gun felt as it erupted in my fingers. Then I looked again at the boy, and approached him the way one should approach a broken child—with concern, a net of safety, and something like love.

  I walked to his side, dropped to a crouch, helped him up. From the expression on his face I could see that he still wanted me to die, even wracked as he was by shame and horror. I started telling him that it was okay, that everything was going to be okay. He didn’t say anything, so I told him we should go inside, that we could deal with this—this being Alec’s corpse—later on. I said we should sit down, have something to eat and drink, that there was a heater in the kitchen he could use to warm himself up.

  He wrenched his arm out of my grip and turned away from Alec’s body.

  You shot her, he said. She was unarmed and you shot her, and before that you tortured her, and you used my father and me to get to her. She never did anything to you—she never did anything to anyone…

  On he went, detailing my crimes on the mountain. If only he knew what else I’d done. It might have spurred him to find a knife and cut my throat. All I could do was let him talk and tire. When finally he stopped I said that he was right, and that I was sorry, and that I wish I hadn’t done any of those things, but I had.

  These simple admissions confused him. I suppose that, in his head, I was a storybook monster who took delight in causing harm and glee in killing. He looked back at Alec and shuddered. The paleness of the boy’s skin was close to alabaster, magnified by the dark locks of his wet hair, the chestnut gleam of his reddened eyes.

  And now this happened. If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have—

  It’s okay. It’s not your fault.

  The boy didn’t pick up on what saying those words cost me.

  And you took the bird, he shouted. You gave it to the army! They’re probably doing experiments on it. Dad says they’ll try and make it rain whenever they want, or grow frost on the farms of people who don’t do what they say, or control storms and floods and droughts, and nobody will know how to stop them, and things will get even worse, and—

  The bird is in there, I interrupted, pointing at the aviary.

  I looked at Alec. There was nothing in him to look back. No quiet words. No touch on my back, light as fog.

  We were going to bring it back.

  63

  I DON’T THINK the boy believed me. Not about the bird, and not that we were planning to return it. But he consented to come inside and drink some hot milk, shower, rest in a blanketed bed. He took the pistol with him, even though it was empty, carrying it like it held a talismanic power—something I noted with bitter irony.

  When he woke up, he found me at the aviary. With the boy asleep, Alec’s death had hit me without borders or mercy, and I was a sobbing, mindless mess. I heard the door open, saw the boy approach, empty gun wedged into the slack elastic of his pants, and I tried to stop crying, but I couldn’t. All I could do was throw an arm out at the glassed enclosure.

  There.

  The boy turned. I was wiping at my eye, trying to claw together some composure, when I heard him gasp. As my vision cleared I was able to look up and see him standing close to the glass. On the other side was the rain heron, perched on a branch. It was regarding the boy as it preened at its feathers. The boy stared back, awestruck. It occurred to me that he’d probably never seen it before; that even in the clearing when I’d shot the woman in front of him, the bird had been hidden by the oilcloth; that his belief in it had been an act of faith.

  Suddenly the bird spritzed into a cloud of vapour, which floated towards the glass. As it approached the boy leaned in, his nose inches from the glass. Just before it met the barrier, the vapour slowly reformed into the bird, in a watery construction I’d never seen in such detail, and landed on a mound of dirt a metre or two from the edge of the enclosure. It cocked its head and fixed the boy with a curious stare.

  He stared back. A scene of wonder and reverence. At last, he spoke.

  You were really going to bring it back?

  We really were.

  Why should I believe you?

  I threw my arms back, exposing the ugliness of my grief, although he still wasn’t looking at me.

  I don’t know. I can’t make you. But…

  I left the word hanging, trying to draw his attention. Eventually he
looked over, and saw the red mess of my face.

  I’ll need help, I said.

  64

  WE BURIED ALEC next to Gladstone and Ramiro. There was just enough space for a grave big enough to hold him. I started with the shovel, but the boy soon took it from me, saying that it was his fault we had to dig it, so he’d do the digging. I could have resisted, but it didn’t seem worth it.

  I watched him toil at the dirt: he an angry adolescent, I an adult who’d made awful mistakes, creating a grave that shouldn’t be necessary. When the déjà vu came it was cruel, and it nearly tipped me into the hole, but the boy saved me by describing his journey here.

  He’d stolen the trail bike from a neighbour and followed us down the mountain as soon as he could get away from his father. Through the farmland we’d been easy to track, he told me—our truck had left clear trails in the road, and kicked up dust he could follow without getting close enough to reveal himself. The valley of the lake was easy, too. He just had to dodge the reaching holly and follow the highway. It was only when we ascended to the plateau that he’d lost us. At first he’d kept going straight, and found the other soldiers breaking into a fishing resort. But he’d seen that I wasn’t with them, so he doubled back. From there he’d spent days crisscrossing the roads and trails, shivering through cold camps, running low on food, finding no sign. He’d thought the road passed straight through the forest of cider gums, so delayed investigating it until he’d covered every other path on the plateau. It was only on the morning of the shooting that he’d plunged into the trees, and wound down the driveway to find the sanctuary. He’d only been there long enough to kick his way through a few buildings and grab the gun he’d found in my room before we returned.