One

by Andrew Hutchinson

  The yellow grass paddocks rolling by, the crumbling stone fences. I looked back to the woman in the passenger seat. Her foot up on the seat. Leaning on her knee. She reached over to the fan and flicked the switch, held her fingers up to the vent.

  I pushed the tears away from my eyes as they dribbled out, blurred my view.

  The woman’s fingers falling away. Again.

  I drove along the blank road in the sunlight. Defeated. Hopeless.

  The woman was no longer talking, she was just staring straight ahead. Withdrawn and vacant.

  There seemed to be nothing left, nothing more that could be done. Just drifting in aimless motion, waiting for the next, for another episode that seemed like a memory, that awakened buds of recollection in my fractured mind. But ultimately left nothing.

  Dragged through by a stranger, swept away on vague connections.

  I drove on.

  With no destination, no direction.

  Nowhere else to turn.

  But in the depths of my confusion, I still felt hope. It felt like something was there. The woman, leaning in in the dusk light. The touch of her skin. The smell of her hair. In amongst the gloom there were these sparks, these flashes of life, which felt so real, so close. But I couldn’t hold on to them.

  Moving on to the next, acting on instinct.

  The scene unfolding and drawing me through, stuck on a single path like a train track. When I tried to change it, it stopped. It reset. Kept me inside the parameters of what I knew. And I didn’t even know that. I had to let it play out.

  There was nothing else.

  I drove on.

  I drove along the light grey road, the paddocks and trees flashing by. The woman despondent in the passenger seat. There were no answers, no clues to deliver more clarity.

  And I was alone.

  Drifting.

  Detached.

  I drove on.

  With no hope.

  I drove on.

  As I drove along the grey road, the freeway trailing into the distance, another memory clicked in, played out in my mind.

  I was driving on the freeway and I was by myself and I was talking into the phone, on hands-free, my phone rested in my lap.

  I was talking to.

  My mother.

  She was upset and she was talking about a man in her house. Her old house, with the woodshed by the side. The trampoline out back.

  My mother.

  She was upset, and she was saying that she was hurt, she’d been hurt. That she’d let him in. And I told her I couldn’t talk. I had to go.

  ‘Oh, okay,’ she said, her voice crackling through the speaker. ‘Okay.’

  I remember watching the road, being focused on the road ahead. I had to be somewhere. And I remember that she wouldn’t hang up. I could hear her breathing down the line, waiting. Holding for me.

  Then I pressed disconnect.

  It was already dark when we reached the next town, insects caked up along the streetlights, the glow highlighting the patterns of their flailing wings. Who knows where the day had gone, the straight road trailing on forever. There were no directions, no choices. Floating on into nothing.

  The dusk breeze cooled in through the wound-down windows and I watched the shops and motel signs flash past, beaming bright against the fading daylight. The headlights of cars rattled towards us like a search party.

  The woman had fallen asleep, her head rested against the passenger door, and I drove on. My elbow rested on the windowsill, my head in my hand. My fingers touching along the side of my head.

  And then, up ahead I saw a petrol station out on its own. We didn’t really need petrol, we could still get by a little longer, but I felt like I had to stop. There was some reason, something familiar about the blue glow beneath the canopy, watching over the pumps. A beacon shining in the approaching night.

  I pulled in, rattled the car up over the entryway and I swung round alongside the petrol pump. I sat in the car a moment and took in the surroundings. The bright tube lights buzzing in the roof. The clear glass of the shopfront, magazines and snack foods and refrigerators inside. There was no one behind the counter. No one any place that I could see.

  I got out of the car slow, careful, so as not to wake her. I held the handle up as I eased the door back into place, clicked it in. The white lights of the station washed all the colour from everything, making my skin look like paper, and the fumes filled right up into my nose, right back to my throat. You could see petrol stains shining and iridescent across the concrete. Back along the way, I could see the lights of the town we’d just passed, the homes settled in for the evening. Up ahead there was nothing. Just black. The road fading out beyond the station.

  I felt the vibration of the petrol flowing into the fuel tank, humming through, and I closed my eyes as the breeze shifted through the tunnel of the station, filtered through my hair. The wind was warm, fresh, reminded me of the beach house, and I closed my eyes, smiled thinking of it, the pink mattress in the blank room. The pines waving overhead on the path.

  I heard a car pull in, bounce up the concrete into the station, and I already knew what this was. Before I’d even opened my eyes.

  I knew this.

  The driver pulled in alongside the bowser opposite, lined up his car next to mine, and I took my hand off the trigger of the pump, left it hanging out the side of the car. I curled my fingers into a fist at my side.

  The driver switched his engine off and stayed in his car a moment, his dark shape holding on to the wheel, waiting. Then his door opened and he rose out, slow. He stood up, his face shadowed beneath the brim of his cap. He didn’t move, just watched from beside his open door.

  Through the window, I could see the woman sleeping. No movement. Peaceful. Then I looked back to the driver. My blood surged, sweat rising and cooling in the breeze.

  This was it, I thought.

  This was the end.

  I pulled the nozzle out of the car and clipped it back into place then I walked towards him. Quiet. Calm. I stopped a few steps back from him, just in case. Just in case he had something. My muscles tightening in the wind.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I asked.

  The driver smiled, his teeth at the edge of the shadow. He leaned his arm onto the top of his open door.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he responded.

  I looked back to check on the woman again. She was still sleeping, still in the same position, curled up in the passenger seat. I turned back to the driver. I signalled for him to walk with me, away from the cars, towards the empty concrete, outside the glare of the station lights. The driver hesitated, then he leaned into his car. He put something into his jacket pocket.

  The driver stood back out, threw his door closed. Then he followed after. He bent down to look in the windows of my car as he passed.

  His figure blocked the lights behind us, projecting his shape across the concrete in front of me, hands out at his sides like a cowboy, and I turned to face him in the darkness, his black outline rising, swarming across. The driver stopped short, a metre or so back, waited. His black shape dominated everything.

  Like.

  The shadow that loomed over the ocean.

  My body felt weak, limbs held together with sticky tape. I flexed every muscle right through.

  ‘How did you find us?’ I asked.

  The driver said nothing, stood at the ready. His face was black, no hint of his features. Like darkness consumed into form. The sounds of crickets and car engines all round, buzzing, fading, rising.

  The driver waited. Watching.

  ‘Don’t,’ I told him.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Just leave her alone.’

  ‘This has got nothing to do with you,’ the driver told me, and he lifted a hand and I flinched, closed my fingers tight, fingernails pushing in. ‘Just don’t you worry about it,’ the driver said. He dropped his hand, slow.

  ‘It’s what she does for a job,’ I told him. ‘She doesn’t st
ay. She didn’t mean to …’

  ‘Seriously, this has nothing to do with you.’

  ‘But it does.’

  The driver took a step forward, his shadow expanding, and I slid one foot back, steadied myself.

  ‘Don’t,’ I told him.

  His black outline was still, paused in the light.

  ‘Does she love you?’ the driver asked, his voice softer. My eyes switched to my car over his shoulder, waiting by the petrol pumps in the bright light. The woman sleeping inside, unaware.

  I looked back to the driver.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I told him.

  The driver dropped his head, looked down at his feet, his shoulders sinking. He shook his head slowly and I stepped towards him. The driver didn’t move, just stood there. Defeated. Detached. A worn black outline in the night. The driver took in a deep breath, his body filling and releasing, and as he went to look up I rushed him, charged him with my shoulder, felt the impact resonate through his chest. The driver tumbled over, his back connecting with the concrete, then he moved quick, scrambled to get back to his feet and I stood over him, shoved him down again. I raised a fist.

  ‘Don’t,’ I told him.

  ‘You push me again,’ the driver said, an elbow up on the concrete, other hand raised in front. He went to get up and I pushed him back down. The driver used more force the next time, pushed up hard against me, but he wasn’t as strong as I expected and I shoved him back to the concrete again, his body thumping against the oil-stained surface.

  ‘Don’t,’ I said.

  The driver reached up and grabbed the bottom of my shirt, stretched it, tried to pull me down, and I slapped his hand off, kicked at his body. Then I kicked him again, hard. I felt the ripples of his ribs flex against the ends of my toes. The driver recoiled, curling back. He tried to shuffle away from me on the deck and I moved round with him as he went. He held up a hand to ward me off, his shoes scratching patterns across the dirty ground.

  ‘I’m gonna …’ the driver said, and he pushed up off the ground again and I kicked him hard and he dropped, put his hands onto the pain at his side, twisted into it, in the foetal position. Then I kicked him again, into his spine, the impact reverberating through my leg.

  His hands switched to his spine and he threw his head back, his mouth open.

  ‘Don’t,’ I said again, rising over him, my shape now blocking the light, my shadow looming. The driver raised a hand, his fingers flickering, and I bent down and grabbed his face, squeezed his cheeks till his lips bulged forward, forced him to look at me. I could feel his skin gathering beneath my fingernails, his unshaven stubble.

  ‘Don’t,’ I growled, my face right up close to his. The driver’s eyes rolled up into white, then came back, his fingers still moving, like playing a piano in the air. He tried to get my hands off his face but he was weak, his limbs bumping against my wrists. He was skinny, pale, looked sick. His T-shirt hung loose over his stomach, falling across his slight frame. The driver was breathing hard through his nose, his teeth.

  ‘I’ll catch up with her,’ the driver growled, his words crowded with spit, blood, and he was crying, tears moving down the sides of his face, warm on my fingers, and I squeezed his face harder.

  ‘Don’t,’ I told him, and I pushed his head back onto the stained ground, forced his skull against the concrete. I pushed till my hand was shaking on his bones.

  The owner of the petrol station was running out now, yelling. His arms were raised and he was swinging a torch and I pushed the driver’s face away, his head scraping across, his cheek rolling into a shallow puddle. The driver had stopped moving, his body slumped, and the station owner was yelling, coming towards me, swinging the torch above his head, and the woman, woken by the noise, she burst out of the car, screaming, rushing towards us. A beam of torchlight shone over the driver’s face, rattling with the station owner’s steps. Tiny clouds of red blood spilled through the water of the puddle. And then I saw me.

  The dents and craters of my skin.

  I’d spent months looking at that reflection.

  And there it was, bleeding on the concrete.

  ‘That’s me.’

  The woman was screaming, rushing at me, and she got up in my face, blocked my view.

  ‘What are you doing?’ the woman yelled. ‘What have you done?’

  ‘That’s me.’ I pointed.

  I couldn’t see my face now, blocked by the station owner, and he was yelling, pointing at me. He pointed to the station shop and there was a woman in the lit-up glass box of a building, standing behind the counter. She had a phone held to her ear.

  The woman was grabbing at me, screaming, and I pushed her off, pushed her arms away, and I stepped towards the driver, could see his eyes in the torchlight. My eyes. The station owner stood up in front of me, held the torch next to his head, the light shining into his ear, his black hair. He motioned like he was ready to strike.

  The body of the driver was still, lifeless, laid out in the darkness, and the woman pulled at my arm, dragged me back, and I angled to see what I could of the driver’s face. My face. The station owner yelled something again and I turned round, grabbed the woman by the arm, pushed her back to the car.

  ‘We have to go,’ I told her.

  ‘What have you done?’ she was screaming, over and over. She was hitting my arm, my chest, and I pushed her back to the car, back into the passenger seat, shut the door over her. The station owner was pointing at the woman behind the counter, yelling instructions, the legs of the driver’s body still poking out from the shadows behind him, and I hesitated, looking at the feet on the concrete. My shoes.

  Then I got back into the car and drove out.

  The woman was crying in the passenger seat.

  ‘Why did you do that? Why did you go after him like that?’ she yelled. ‘What did you do to him?’

  ‘It was me,’ I told her.

  ‘I can deal with my own problems. I don’t need you for anything,’ the woman told me. ‘Fuck you,’ she screamed.

  ‘It was me. It was always me.’

  The woman was still screaming, yelling at me over and over as we drove through the night, the white lines flashing through the reach of the headlights.

  ‘I told him to come,’ the woman yelled, and I turned to her. ‘The only way to stop this was for me to speak to him. I needed to sort this out with him.’

  ‘She told him,’ I said, watching the woman, her eyes strained red, her lips shining. ‘She told me to come.’

  ‘It’s my problem.’ Her voice wavered and cracked. ‘He’s done nothing wrong.’

  ‘She told me.’

  ‘What’s okay here? How is this okay?’ the woman screamed. ‘What did you do to him?’ And I slowed the car down, pulled off by the side of the road, bumping over the loose gravel in the darkness. ‘It’s not his fault – it was me.’

  The woman was still yelling as I opened my door and stepped out of the car and onto the bitumen in the night. There were no stars in the sky outside, no moon. The world was completely black all around. There were no lights from the town behind us.

  ‘Why did you do it?’ the woman screamed, still yelling as if I was right there beside her. I could see her in the internal light, my door hanging open, and I watched her. The venom in her words as she roared at me, roared at my empty seat. She stopped suddenly and she braced herself, grabbed onto her seatbelt.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she asked, and she looked at the road ahead, then across to my empty seat.

  ‘What are you … Where are you going?’ the woman said, and her eyes scanned outside the car then she unclipped her seatbelt and opened her door, stood out into the darkness. ‘What are you doing?’ she yelled. ‘Why have we stopped?’

  I watched her from the side of the car, an actor in this one-person play. I remembered this. This was the part where she got out and chased after me, when I walked away. But it wasn’t me.

  This was someone else.

  The
woman stomped out into the middle of the road, out to the edge of the headlights, her shoes on the white line.

  ‘I can look after myself,’ the woman said. ‘There is no reason for you to step in. I do not need a protector.’

  Then she stood wilting, crying in the street.

  ‘Because I do,’ she yelled. ‘Because he doesn’t deserve that.’ She struggled to get the words out through her tears. ‘I called him because he’s hurt. Because I hurt him.’

  Then she paused again, waiting for the other person to speak.

  ‘Yes, I still love him. I always will,’ she said.

  And it all came together, connected in my head. I knew this.

  I knew what she was going to say before the words crossed her lips.

  It all came back in perfect detail.

  I remembered. Everything.

  I remember.

  The night I met Sarah I was at a pub, an amber-lit bar that smelled stale and wooden and like stomped-out cigarettes in winter. I didn’t go out much and I wasn’t sure what to do or where to look, so I just stood up by the bar, over in the corner. I sipped at my drink slowly to give my hands something to do. I watched the TV screen above the door, though I had no interest in whatever sport was playing. I chewed through the ice blocks when there was no drink left in my glass. I studied the colours of the bottles lined along the wall.

  Then she came up and she spoke to me.

  At first I thought she was talking to me out of sympathy, that she’d spotted my awkward body language from across the way and had taken pity. I was hyper-aware of her glances as she spoke, whenever her eyes shifted from mine. What she was looking at on my face, my body. She had her hair tied up tight, the pulled-back parts shining under the bar’s light.

  She waited patiently when the conversation lulled. She smiled whenever our eyes met. She stayed at my side throughout the noise and movement of the evening.

  I don’t know why she did.

  I walked her home along the city night, the headlights of the cars flowing towards us and flashing by. At some point, her hand slid into mine as we walked, and then she stood in front of me, smiling. She wanted to show me something, something cool.