Sunlit Shadow Dance
Page 33
It was in the next winter when the wildflowers were again in bloom. Rather than putting a headstone on the grave, they put a small bronze plaque on the cliff below the inscription that Mark had carved; just Josie’s name and date of birth and death. Mark’s headstone told the rest.
Then they and their children and their friends walked in the desert for the rest of the day gathering all the wildflowers they could find and piling them above the grave. When they had finished the pile was as high as their heads and almost obscured the stone. They hoped that for many more years the children of these flowers would again bloom in Josie’s Place.
The months and years rolled on by. It was wonderful for Jane to have all her colors back and gradually more pieces of the memory of her former life came back too. They did not all come at once but, like the myriad pieces of a jigsaw, when looking the other way one would suddenly remember a piece and where it fitted, then reach for it and place it.
So now, five years on, the jigsaw of her mind was mostly complete, just occasional spaces that may or may not be filled in the fullness of time. She knew some pieces may never return and her jigsaw would always resemble one of those much loved family favourites, built over and over again as time rolled on. These, like hers, had odd empty spaces, places leaving room for imagination to fill. She called these life’s missing places.
She remembered that morning when, as Susan, she had killed her lover, it was a sad place but the pain was gone. His spirit lived on in the lives of his children who she and Vic watched grow, Nathaniel, now apprentice air mechanic, soon to be a pilot, David, quiet and studious, but having a magic touch with animals, he could calm a wild horse and he rode like his father. Some days when he smiled Vic said Mark had returned to life. Annie had the least of Mark, at first she seemed to be Jane’s Susan child. But one day Uncle Antonio sent a photo of his sister, Mark’s mother, from when she was a girl of Annie’ age. The resemblance was so strong that Jane felt she was looking at a photograph of her daughter. So now she knew another part of Mark lived on in this child, along with a part of her too.
She remembered too, from within her own mind, on that morning of killing the crocodile spirit had sought out and found entry to her soul. In her anguish, as they tore at Mark’s body, she sent out a part of her to be with him in the place of crossing. Into that place, left empty, slid a remnant of another, the spirit of his devourer. Slowly its power had grown within her, filling her mind, taking over her spirit.
She remembered too those days of her vanishing, seeking to escape it. On that early morning she climbed into the car with the other Mark man as he drove to the waterhole in the pre-dawn light. She knew he was really just a fisherman but now she thought he had been sent to meet her, the man to escort her back to her first true love.
Susan had wanted to go back to Mark, Emily not. They had fought inside this car for the control of her body and, with Susan feeling cocky that she had won, Emily had seized her chance. She did it as they came to the red traffic light where the Arnhem Highway began. Emily had opened the door as they stopped and jumped out. She fled, bare footed across the dirt, with her overnight bag grasped in her hand while Susan was left in the car, holding the plastic bag that contained the Baru crocodile spirit and the pink sandals.
Susan had not been able to find her way back to her, try as she might. While, for a brief moment, she was Emily she knew Emily was not in a safe place. So she must leave Emily behind too if she was really to escape from all the evil that had filled the life that had been. So she tore Emily, protesting, out from her body and from her mind too. Then there remained to her only an empty body and empty mind with no life spirit living within.
So she had chosen a new name, Jane. But she had to be Jane somebody. So she had chosen a remnant of Mark, in the first B name by which she had known him, Bennet. It was a fitting name for her children to hold. She had, after all, made her marriage promises to him, their father, on that last night, perhaps that was the night when her children were conceived, so the name was rightfully theirs to keep.
At a roadside stop nearby she had found a marker pen and printed Jane Bennet on her bag’s label, lest she loose even this memory of her past life.
There was a road train parked nearby, its decks were empty of cattle, but still with the manure and other excrement of where the cattle had been. She climbed to the upper deck, up above eye view. She found a clean corner and lay down. There she slept, finding comfort in the animal smells. She slept for a long day. The truck went on and on, sometimes stopping for a short time. The sun rose high and then went down. She was sheltered from wind and most of the sun in her secluded corner. Late in the next night it stopped at another roadhouse, on the road to Queensland, at a place called Barkly Homestead which she remembered from before. She climbed down, had a drink from the tap and climbed back up and slept again.
Next day, somewhere in Queensland she left this truck, hunger having forced her exit. She found a place to shower and change her clothes, then bought a meal. Having eaten she found another different truck, this time a goods truck, again empty except for furniture blankets. She slept again for many hours, revelling in the comfort of her blanket bed.
Again she came out at a roadhouse, fed and washed again before she found another empty cattle truck with a resting place on its top deck too. It did not have the animal leavings of the first truck, it had been washed clean and she found that without this smell she was less comfortable. So, when a few hours later in the night, the truck pulled up by the side of the road, for the driver to relieve himself, she climbed out and watched it depart down an empty road.
A short distance down this road was a shed with a roof, an open side and a rough timber seat. She climbed on this and slept until the daybreak of her new life had begun. That day she was just and empty shell, the spirits of Susan and Emily had left her, so she took the name Jane, the name on her bag. Now a new spirit had created a new life within, the old was gone and she was glad to be only Jane.
It was now more than seven years on from the day of the ending of the first Susan and Emily. Jane was what Vic called her again, both agreeing that Susan and Emily had passed with the crocodile spirit. Each day since Vic grew more handsome and told her she grew ever more beautiful.
On this day, together they sat in a restaurant at Watson’s Bay, enjoying the autumn freshness of wind, sun and sky. The restaurant looked down to the beach in the harbor where a small tribe of children played, some of hers, some of them belonging to others.
In a circle around the table sat her closest friends, there were Anne and David, looking fondly at the children that they and others had created, there was Sandy and Alan with their own brood, Beck and Ross, Buck and Julie, and Jacob and Cathy. And of course, closest forever was Vic.
All their lives were good, no new tragedy had befallen any of them, their children were well; they were well too. It was more than enough.
Vic raised a glass and said. “I propose a toast to a long departed friend of mine, a man of two parts, good and bad, but still my friend despite all.
“Without this man we would never have met and so we would not be here today and this gladness we share would never have come to be. I still miss him after all this time, a man who lived at the far edge of danger.
“He would enjoy us sitting here, good friends enjoying life’s good things. But, even if he was here with us today, his spirit would be forever looking out for a new horizon, a place lit by sunshine but where the shadows gather.
“Let’s drink to my friend Mark B; may his restless crocodile spirit know peace in that dreamtime place where sunlit shadows dance forever.”
All raised their glasses – “To Mark!”
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