Free From the Tracks

by K T Bowes

Chapter Ten

  Dane handed the car keys over, waiting for the other man to either hit him or shout. Edgar did neither. He took the keys and ran his hands through his dark hair, making it stick up at the front like a rooster. Then he beckoned Dane into the house. Dane hung around on the front step, unsure.

  Edgar turned in surprise and found the boy hadn’t moved. He gave a tired smile nicely and invited him in again. “Come on, I won’t bite!” he said. “I don’t have the energy for games.”

  With great reluctance, Dane kicked off his shoes and followed Sophia’s father up the stairs and into the main part of the house. They talked for two hours.

  “I thought you’d give me a slap,” Dane said to the man opposite him. Edgar shook his head and took another slice of pizza.

  “Why would you think that?” he asked. “I don’t think I’ve ever hit anyone in my life!”

  Dane shook his head, unable to explain. “Doesn’t matter.”

  “Hey, thanks for trying to clean the blood off the car seats I’m sure it looks better than it did. The cops said it looked a mess.”

  “It was. I didn’t know what nine pints of blood looked like until I saw that.”

  “Yeah, she lost heaps,” Edgar agreed. “You did great getting her to hospital, son. I’m grateful. And a fantastic job of the car seats. I’m glad I didn’t have to look.” Edgar shuddered.

  Dane shook his head. “Na, I saw what happened to her but when she ran out of school I thought maybe I imagined it. I followed her but lost her at the Bridal Veil Falls turn when a coach pulled out in front of me.”

  “There’s not many places to overtake after that, is there?” Edgar said and Dane nodded.

  “It took me ages to find her. I scoured the town until I ran out of gas and then started at the surfers’ beach after I filled up. I remembered the car from when she drove to my place last week so I waited with it but she didn’t come back. I thought I saw her down on the beach and should have gone to her then.” He touched his lower lip, feeling the scab underneath his finger. “But she’s scary and someone told her I was using her. I didn’t want to upset her even more. I didn’t realise how bad the wound was.”

  He kicked himself for walking down to check the main beach and missing Sophia as she walked up a different way and locked herself in the car. Deathly pale, beads of sweat coated her brow through the window. His efforts to bang on the glass attracted attention from two groups of passing tourists who shouted at him when he approached them for help. “I should have driven into town and rang an ambulance when I couldn’t wake her up.” Dane apologised for the fiftieth time, waving away Edgar’s reassurance and continuing to beat himself up. “I was scared for her. I thought if I left, she might wake up and drive away. She seemed so unpredictable and fragile.”

  Edgar nodded and looked guilty. “I found my wife,” he said, staring at the remaining uneaten slice of pizza. “She left us for another man. She met this guy through work and walked out. We’d had an argument but I never expected her to just leave. I imagined all sorts of things and all the time she lived around the corner. She didn’t take anything because she doesn’t want any of it.” He rubbed his hand across his eyes. “How can a mother do that? She says she wants to see Soph, but I asked her to leave it a while. I want my daughter to get over what’s happened before I drop this on her. I haven’t told her mother about this. She saw the headlines in the newspaper, I mean, who could miss that? ‘Stabbing at troubled local school.’ I told her Soph was fine and she assumed it was some other poor girl.” He ran his hands through his hair. “How do you tell your kids their mother doesn’t give a crap about them? How do you say something like that to a child?”

  Dane looked down at his hands. “I’m probably not the best person to ask.” He examined the dirt under his fingernails from work the night before, where he potted up one hundred different vegetable seedlings for sale. He turned up late for his shift, but his boss knew where he’d been. Carl drove him and the two little kids out to Raglan to see the remains of his car. To their amazement it sat there waiting for him. Nobody had touched it. It still had wheels, wing mirrors and a radio. It was as though angels stood guard over it.

  “Where are you living?” Edgar asked the boy and Dane gave a small smile.

  “With the little kids’ foster parents,” he replied. “I called them from here early last Saturday and they came and got Maisie and Will for me. They’re good people. My stepdad doesn’t know where they live and Mum will be too drugged up already to remember. It’s the safest place for them. I didn’t expect them to want me as well, but it’s just temporary.”

  Maisie and Will were ecstatic to have him stay with them for a few days. He woke up that morning to find one of the littlies on either side of him in the big double bed, snuggled in tight. He wasn’t sure what he’d do next though. “I’ll find something else and move on. Maybe if I’m out of the way, the kids can forget some of what they’ve seen and live a normal life.”

  Edgar nodded. “Maybe,” he replied.

  “Pizza?” said a voice from the doorway and both men got to their feet. Edgar reached Sophia first, leading her to the sofa and sitting her down.

  “There’s a bit left. Do you fancy it?” he asked? She nodded and smiled. He walked into the kitchen to microwave it for her, leaving Dane still standing and looking shifty.

  “You need to stop smoking,” Sophia said he nodded.

  “I already did.”

  She smiled at him from the sofa. “Good.” Her Sponge Bob pyjamas looked askew as always with the trouser leg rolled up high above the white gauze bandage protecting her wound. Dane felt nervous as he walked to the sofa and sat next to her. He looked and felt awkward, as though he’d run a long race but couldn’t lift his hand to collect the winner’s medal. Sophia caught a scent of something sweet and smiled. “I love that spearmint gum you buy,” she said with a sigh. “I always know you’re nearby when I smell it.”

  Dane leaned in and kissed her on the lips. Sophia closed her eyes, realising it wasn’t the gum she liked, but the person it reminded her of. Dane pulled her closer, his hands shaking as he kissed her again. She felt the roughness of his chin on her soft skin and the urgent pull of his lips and excitement rose up into her chest. Her stomach flip-flopped as she enjoyed the proximity of this man-boy and the gentle, but heady sensations he invoked in her.

  They didn’t hear the microwave ping as it finished reheating the pizza, or Edgar return to the family room with a plate in his hand. He stood for a moment as a familiar look passed between his daughter and this boy from the other side of the tracks and he felt fearful for them. Edgar Armitage lived his life by the tracks, growing up poor and crossing over in adulthood. He sighed as he pictured himself, deserted, separated and soon to be divorced if his wife had anything to do with it. His job hung by a thread in the current recession and he’d mortgaged himself up to the hilt to please a woman he lost anyway.

  “Which side of the tracks am I on now?” he whispered. “I’m sure as hell not on the right side anymore.” As the pizza cooled on the plate, Edgar Armitage turned away and walked back to the kitchen just as the freight train from Auckland blasted through Hamilton, sounding its sharp piercing whistle and thundering off into the distance.

  A woman in a derelict house not too far away heard the noise as the black bruises bled into her neck and face. Her children were gone and a drunk man snored next to her in the double bed with dirty sheets. She didn’t know which side of the tracks she was on, or where they began and ended because she was everywhere. And nowhere.