‘Shut up,’ Wren says.
‘You shut up you.’
So the silence spreads out again, hot and thick and black.
Christ is still, her hands folded in her lap, her head tipped to the side, looking at Wren, her eyes large with pity and he stares back at her and he says, garbled and then singsong, imitating – ‘You look like my father when I had the suffocation dream and I couldn’t breathe and I couldn’t even move and my mother yelled, He’s killing me. He’s bad for my heart. Boohoo. Do something, you stupid man – he’s a filthy liar.’
Again the silence, thick and hot and black and breathless, a little death in the room and some kind of devil in Wren – a fury. We’ve made a mistake, we read him all wrong and we’ve made it worse. He stands up and walks away and we get up too and he turns back to us at the doorway. ‘Fuck off. All of you.’
But we can’t – we follow him up the corridor.
His grandfather’s .38 Smith & Wesson Double Action is wrapped in a towel in the bottom drawer of the chest in his room. He pulls open the drawer and takes out the revolver and loads six bullets in the magazine and we say, ‘Stop. Stop it. Wren. We’re sorry. We’re really sorry.’ And he shoves another box of bullets in his pocket and he turns around and goes out of the house into the dark and disappears like a doomed man. What can we do but pad out in the dark after him, barefoot. The clouds must be low because there is no moon and there are no stars and the air has teeth and we stumble through some saplings and stop – he’s out here somewhere ahead of us, we can hear him swearing and then crack! and rebound and echo and crack! and ringing and the thump of kangaroos off in the distance, six shots one after another.
‘Nineteen seconds to go up, thirty-six to come down,’ he growls and then he’s coming back – straight at us and we curl down into a ball on the grass and he storms past us into the house.
‘Christ,’ we say, crawling after him.
‘Come on then!’ he shouts, waving the gun around in the living room, pointing it at us. Then at Christ. Then at himself. ‘Are you ready? Here you go, you bastards! Here I am! Right here! Take me to this place of yours all you bastards! Go on! All of you. I’m fucking ready! Where are you? What? Gonna suck up the lies the guilt the pain all the fucking pain? Hit me up you bastards, I’m fucking ready!’
He reloads another ten bullets. ‘Get up!’ he yells at us. We stand up very straight and back right into the corner of the room – stand very straight and still. We say together, ‘Wren.’ He leers at us and walks around in a circle and kicks a chair over and kicks the wall and then fires a shot into the wall and fires another that shatters the window next to us and now there are shards of glass over the floor and on the couch and in our hair and stuck deep above one of our eyes.
‘Offed!’ he shouts. ‘That’s it! Go off or be offed. Well?’ His head is high, eyes blazing, he’s muscled and armed and the .38 Smith & Wesson pointing at the roof one second and the next at the window and then at Christ and back at his own head.
‘Black arse and hole and—’ he points at us and hisses, ‘—you. You. Both of you.’
We stand up very straight in the corner of the room – very straight and still, whispering so our lips hardly move, ‘Is all right
solid like mountain
shhhhhhh
solid like – free—
free like b—’
He screams at us. ‘Shut up! What am I going to do? Don’t you see I love you? I love you both, what am I going to do?’ The gun on us, on him, on us, on us.
‘Stop.’ Christ’s voice. Breaking through the echo, the ringing.
We’d forgotten she was here.
Wren pulls the trigger and a bullet flies through his ear and into the couch and his ear hangs by the finest thread of skin from the side of his head and blood runs down his cheek and neck – dark dark and more dark. His legs go from under him – his body folds in on itself and he slides onto the floor.
‘Wren. Stop.’ She hobbles over to him and lowers herself down next to him. ‘Please. Stop. Just stop.’
He’s falling hard but something in her voice catches him and holds. He goes still. She uncurls his fingers and takes the gun from his hand and puts it down on the floor behind her.
Us standing in the corner of the room – very straight and still as still – standing with the ringing and echo and the blood with its acrid smell of iron and our own sweat blurring our eyes and the darkness full of blurry movement, the shapes of ghosts, their mouths and terrible red tongues foaming in front of us and off to the side and dropping from above us and then dissolving back into the void.
Christ shivers. She can see them and feel them too.
Wren says, ‘What am I going to do?’
‘Shhhhhhhh. Stop.’
‘It’s all gone wrong.’
‘Has it?’
‘I tied a padlock to the end of my belt. D’you know what you can do with that if you swing it at someone’s head as hard as you can? Do you?’
‘No.’
‘I’m no good, see? You already know that. No-one speaks to us. No-one knows us. No-one ever comes by or looks out for us. We got no-one.’
Christ doesn’t say anything, neither she nor Wren take any notice of the blood running down the line of his jaw and dripping from his chin onto his chest and staining in dark clumps on his shirt.
He says, ‘Words are no good. They’re no good.’
She waits.
She waits for him.
‘What do I do? D’you know what it’s like to have no-one? I can’t carry it anymore. It’s too heavy.’
She doesn’t say anything.
Wren says, ‘No-one comes by. We got no-one. Hell. We got no-one to care for.’
In the shadows, in the corner we stiffen, a flash of adrenaline from one to the other and a pricking hurt. She sits by his side on the floor – sits close – and takes his large, sun-tanned, dirty hand with its blackened creases and nails in one of her small and slender ones.
Wren says, ‘I don’t know how it happened, that we’ve ended up like this.’
She doesn’t answer.
‘You think I’m no good.’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘You’re doing the best you can.’
‘Am I?
‘Are you?’
‘No. I don’t think I am.’
She sits by his side – close – with his dirty hand and its blackened creases and nails held tight in her small and slender one and with her other hand she rubs his shoulders and back. His blood smears on her forearm and she doesn’t wipe it away.
She doesn’t say anything for a long, long while.
Holds his hand in hers and rubs his back.
Holds his hand in hers.
He says, ‘I’ve got no-one to care for.’
We stand in the shadows in the corner very quiet and straight – still as still, burning up a bit.
Then she says, ‘You’re okay. Just breathe in and out, breathe in and out and hold on. Keep breathing in … and out. That’s all you have to do.’
Now something seems to break in him, something we never knew was so taut in him, and he heaves and gutters – wet and untamed and messy. After a while he coughs and pushes his hair out of his eyes and he says, ‘The chicken will be ruined.’
She laughs a little. Stops. The fire is almost dead.
Then so quiet.
In the dark.
The dark wrapped around.
And us in the corner still.
‘She has to go
she has to go?
yes
where?
to wherever she came from, to Swiggin, to the police, to the city, anywhere but here. Wren will take her
Wren won’t go to the police
he can drop her off nearby
nearby? Just like that?
yes
so we won’t see her again
we won’t see her again
but Sea—
<
br /> she has upset our balance, ours and Wren’s, it’s enough. Go to sleep
but all the things she knows of the world
so?
all the things she knows that we do not, all that she can teach us
we don’t need to know, not any of it, we’re happy as we are
how do we know we don’t need to know?
Confucius said something like that
it’s true – we begin by knowingly knowing less, opening up, wondering, we’ve always said so
some experience is dangerous and some knowledge is dangerous too
but Sea—
the more we know the more we suffer, same as for anyone
then we are shut-off – forever?
rather shut-off than pocked, needled, laughed at, pitied, locked in Hope Home. We’ll die there
Christ isn’t like that
we don’t know what she’s like
Wren trusts her. She doesn’t laugh at us. It’s as if – as if through her we see the world as though we’re lying on the ground looking up, instead of standing up and looking down
what? No. She has to go
where is she going to go?
away
here is the only home she has
she has to go now – tomorrow, in the morning
but
no
but we like—
like? Like?
well don’t we?
no
—the smile in her eyes, the flash and the smile because she knows things more than us but she doesn’t make us feel badly – and – and – her laugh, even when she laughs with us – and her precious music – all the sounds of nature we love – turned into art. We’ve opened up. She’s opened us up
no
what about Wren
no Serene. She’s taking him away from us. We know better
do we?
she’s taking him away from us, and besides that she’s too much, much too much. We don’t know anything except there’s been violence in her life and a lot of pain and now she has brought violence here
it’s Wren’s gun – he shot it
and why did he?
why?
because of her. It’s her fault
she won’t hurt us, we brought her back to life, healed her body and now – and – she understands us – but different from anyone else – she’s got a good heart, a kind heart
that’s not the point, she’s turned Wren crazy
what is crazy, Sea?
he is crazy – he held that gun at us. At us!
no!
it is not possible to know someone
he did, all because of her. It is possible to trust someone
how hard was our lesson to learn, Serene? Life is dangerous. People are dangerous. Remember. We vowed. We’re strong
yes but Sea—
our happiness is not dependent on anyone else just as our life is not dependent on anyone else. Now go to sleep
but
no, we’re strong, we don’t need anyone
no-one till now no-one ever, this is the way it is and will always be
a real friend though – imagine
no
someone who isn’t obliged to be nice – not family, or – or staff – someone we really care for, someone who – maybe even someone who – maybe even—
the Tao teaches us, remember? There is no crime greater than having too many desires
mmm
and what can we offer her? Nothing
but Sea, imagine! Imagine someone who – who likes us for everything that’s in us, because and and – we’ll help find her family and then – imagine, together – us, Wren, all together—
we have nothing to offer her, she has to go
our one chance to have a real friend
the police will find her family and when she’s reunited with them her memory will come back. We don’t need her. We don’t need anyone. Go to sleep.’
Our eyes in the overhead mirror are not speaking to one another, not seeking to hold one another’s gaze or embrace – the depths of them like a lake whose bottom is eerie because it is unknown and too deep for sunlight to reach. We turn down the lamp until it goes out and lie
on our back
stiff
and silent
a little hell of
hope and no hope side by side
and the darkness spitting.
TWO
Sea’s hair is shorn above her shoulders, ragged and lumpy – cut like a child playing with grown-up scissors might cut the hair of a doll. Sea says nothing, neither does Serene. They get their bowl and two spoons, spoon oatmeal from the pot on the wood stove into the bowl, sit at the table and take turns to eat, to open their mouths and chew and swallow. Sea’s hand flutters to her shoulder, her neck, and then away. She coughs. It is otherwise a silent meal. I look from one to the other, waiting for them to begin, but Sea is slumped forward a bit, staring down at the table, and Serene gives me a smile that I can’t read at all and shakes her head once and then fixes her eyes out the window on the muscat vine. I bring them coffee in their usual cup. They drink it and leave their bowl of half-eaten oatmeal on the table.
The day after my father died I caught a bus from the city to the nearest army recruitment and training camp. I was close enough to seventeen so I enrolled for cadet training. The aptitude test was easy and I passed the medical assessments and they said they’d give me a few months to lose the fat around my middle and find some muscle but I failed the endurance course twice and worse than that, I failed all of the team exercises and – and after the lieutenant colonel asked me to leave I had nowhere to go so I got a train to the city and tried to start over. There was no way in hell I was going back home, not then, not ever, so I got the bus halfway to Swiggin and hitched and walked the rest of the way. The twins are my only living relatives. I had no money, no skill, nowhere else to go. I was a broken person and I’d lost faith in everything, in myself most of all. I asked Sea and Serene if I could stay for a month or so and work around the house however they liked – repair the roof, plant carrots and onions and trellis string beans, prune the fruit trees, add a second water tank, shoot rabbits and cook for them, sweep the floors, chop wood, debone fish, fix walls and furniture, hoe, nail, mend, clean, anything – until I could sort my life out. They accepted me just as I was and asked for nothing in return, though they were thin as dragonflies and the house was falling down and they were living on potatoes and onions and carrots and other random things that were growing wild from the old vegetable garden, from when our great-grandparents lived here. I really don’t know how long they’d have survived on their own, but I don’t think it could have been for much longer. Their skin was translucent, more blue than pink. I could see all their bones.
The thing is, they gave me a second chance and we went ahead and made our own world with its own rhythm – and in it I still feel easy – so fit and free, so fine. Of course their appearance is strange and added to that they’ve lived in the wild so long, their eyes have wildness in them. But they are the sanest people I’ve ever known. All the ways they’ve adapted to life, their awareness of the land and of each other. The things they know about human nature as if born with the knowledge. I can’t explain it.
Now the frontiers of this world of ours are being pulled into a different world, a bigger and stronger and wholly more human world and first I thought – first I thought I was the only one being pulled and I was happy and I guess I blundered in and it was full of a new sort of aliveness, here was such a thing as hope and I had no thought for anyone else – for example, I don’t know why Sea has cut her hair. She had such beautiful hair. I thought she thought it was beautiful. Serene looks happier this morning than she has for many days – less stiff, less like something is seething in her, almost gleeful. I’m probably wrong about that, too.
It’s dark outside though it’s only just evening, and the wind is scraping at the windows like there’s peop
le standing just outside, crying and tapping their fingernails on the glass. We’re dozing on a pile of rugs by the fire – Christ and me and Bear and Box Head and the Spirit Cat. Fire is surely at the heart of the earth and I reckon this is how it will all end – in fire.
‘He hasn’t come,’ Christ says with her eyes closed. She sighs. ‘He won’t come now, not now, not unless.’
Is she talking in her sleep? I sit up.
She sighs. She’s smiling in her sleep.
I close my eyes again, dry eyes they are and the pupils still wide I bet. Breathe out out out, the air like sea in my ears and how it rushes through! I think about where she has come from and where she might have been going and how I have stopped her life here and maybe changed it forever. I don’t feel good about it. And I sit back up, look again to the fire, all coals now but heat like the sun. Such colours.
Some nights you try to kiss her but
Some nights she turns her face away
Doesn’t matter
Isn’t real
Isn’t true
Isn’t
No
Isn’t love
Then Christ sits up so fast the cats tumble off the blankets and spritz their tails and glare. ‘Oh god. Angus,’ she says.
I’m on my feet. Pain in my half-ruined ear there and gone and there again in time with my heartbeat.
‘Angus!’ Her voice all scratchy and high-pitched and she’s standing too now, balancing on her right leg, her hands knotted and her eyes all velvet and red and black.
The warmth in the room vanishes. Instead – silence and a creeping chill.
‘I’m here,’ I say.
She whispers, ‘Oh, Angus,’ and the grief in her voice breaks me and for a while we stare at each other except Christ is looking at me and what her eyes see isn’t me and then she bends down and picks up Karma’s guitar. She pushes me away from her and limps to the fire, leans forward from her waist and drops the guitar in the centre where the coals are hottest. The fire cracks and spits and begins to gnaw on the guitar and I can’t move and all I see in her eyes is a reflection of the flames. She picks up her crutch, the one I made for her that left splinters in my hands, and she turns away and limps out of the room and the back door bangs shut.
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