Gravity

by Scot Gardner

That drunken driver could have been me. The old me. The falling-out-of-control-into-oblivion me.

  I ran.

  I found a crusty old pair of footy shorts in my drawer and ran out of town. I ran past the National Parks depot and straight past the mill. I ran through the freckled bush shadows on the outskirts of Splitters Creek and beside Kent’s paddocks to the post where I’d stacked the ute.

  I stopped.

  I’d come full circle. I was back exactly where I’d started. I stared at the oil stain and felt like crying. It cramped in my throat like an ice block I’d swallowed whole and I knew I was lucky to be alive. I could feel how much I’d changed, how much I’d stayed the same. How much I’d lost and all the things I’d found.

  I knew what I liked.

  I’d been torn and rattled and shaken and dumped. I’d run from the monsters in my life only to find that they were angels. And the things I lusted for turned out to be hollow. Debbie, Bonnie, that false sense of freedom.

  I ran to the mill and into Mick Fenton’s office. I didn’t know what to say, so said nothing. I didn’t know what to do, so I stood there and sweated.

  Mick stared. His eyes didn’t leave mine and I didn’t know what to think, so I held his gaze.

  Eventually, he smiled. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be at school?’

  I nodded. ‘School went back on Monday.’

  ‘Are you going?’

  ‘Yes, soon.’

  ‘Let me know when you’re done with it and I’ll see what I can do.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, ran through the door and into the industrial hum.

  Bully was high in the loader. I star-jumped until I had his attention. He dropped the revs and opened the door of the cabin.

  ‘You right, mate?’ he asked.

  ‘Fine,’ I said.

  ‘You looked like a fucking aerobics instructor bouncing around there.’

  There was a comfortable pause in the conversation. The mill buzzed and rang.

  ‘Coming back to work?’

  ‘After school finishes,’ I said, and showed him my crossed fingers.

  He nodded and offered half a smile. ‘Welcome back.’

  I showered when I got home and phoned Tori. There were things I wanted to tell her, but the words seemed too big for the phone. I invited myself over. She told me I was always welcome and that I didn’t need to call.

  My folks were drinking tea at the kitchen table, their eyes sleep-starved but still peaceful. Dad said they’d decided to go to Melbourne.

  ‘I’m going to clean out the flat,’ Mum said.

  I looked at her face. She’d come full circle, too. She’d made a decision. One of those big lose-a-lot-gain-a-lot decisions that might take more guts than you have but is made somewhere in your heart so you have to see it through.

  ‘You’ll need the ute,’ I said.

  ‘What about you, love?’ Mum said. ‘What will you do for wheels?’

  ‘Corolla if I need it. Drop me out at Hargate on your way?’

  They looked at each other, then Dad covered my hand with his. ‘Thanks.’

  Bully came home from work just as Dad was backing the ute out of the drive. He scrambled across the road, waving.

  ‘Where are you going?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m going out to Hargate. Mum and Dad are going to Melbourne.’

  ‘Can I come? Out to Hargate, I mean.’

  ‘Might be a bit squishy,’ Mum said. ‘You’re not sitting on my lap any more, Bully.’

  ‘We’ll ride in the back,’ I said.

  Bully bolted home to grab his swag and tell his mum.

  He was nineteen. A man. He lived at home. And showed some respect.

  A young bloke like me could learn a lot from a young bloke like him.

  Dad drove slowly past the police station and along the road to Hargate. Bully and I sat with our faces into the wind like mongrel dogs. His leg rested against mine and as soon as he felt the contact, he pulled away and apologised.

  ‘What? For touching me?’

  His face soured then and he looked into the wind.

  ‘Nothing happened,’ I said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘With Harry. Nothing happened.’

  ‘I know. I know that.’

  ‘Bullshit,’ I said, and elbowed him. ‘You don’t know what the fuck happened that night, do you?’

  He looked at me twice, was about to protest and exploded with laughter. He shook his head. ‘Wouldn’t have a fucken clue. Passed out at about eleven at the pub. Next thing I know I wake up next to this, this . . .’

  He shivered.

  ‘You’re not a poof.’

  ‘That’s a fucken relief.’

  ‘Harry said you didn’t have a gay bone in your body.’

  ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘And he’d know.’

  I squealed a laugh then that made Dad feather the brakes. I waved at him in the rear-vision mirror and Bully and I stood. We stood up together, as if on cue, and ute-surfed for ten k’s, screaming with laughter, then singing Madonna songs at the tops of our voices, setting the forest alight with our echoes.

  Tori and Francis were with Todd on his verandah. We tossed our swags onto the grassy verge and Bully slapped the rear panel. Dad waved, but Mum just looked straight ahead as they left.

  One day, Mum, I thought. One day all that will be gone and when it goes you’ll feel like you can fly.

  ‘You fellas look like you’re up for a session,’ Todd called.

  Bully kicked his swag. ‘Ready when you are, Batman.’

  Todd shook hands, Tori kissed hello and Francis hung around my neck and wouldn’t let go. He showed me a scratch on the back of his hand where he’d bumped into the barbed wire. I kissed it better and Todd led us all inside. The talk was of a vegetarian barbecue and Bully flashed me a look.

  Todd’s house was a pigsty. Not just untidy: there were empty bottles and crusty plates and bowls in every room. It smelled of incense and mould and I was reminded of Kurt, Mum’s neighbour in town. My idea of domestic bliss would lie somewhere between the two extremes.

  The guided tour of Todd’s place led us out to the workshop behind the house. Tori dragged Francis home, saying they’d be back in a while, and Todd showed me through. Unlike his house, the mud brick shed was in meticulous order. Every tool had a place on the shadow board and the sawdust had been swept from underneath the saw bench and into a pile. He had a good assortment of hand tools and power tools, an armament of draw knives and chisels, and a crossbow.

  ‘What do you use that for?’ I asked. ‘Hole punch?’

  ‘Mostly target practice. We had a fox marauding the chook pen for a while and I shot that. Hasn’t been off the wall for years.’

  He showed me the fox skin that he’d tanned.

  ‘How does killing foxes fit in with a vegetarian lifestyle?’

  ‘I didn’t eat it.’

  I frowned.

  ‘I’m not scared of death,’ he said. ‘I just don’t eat meat.’

  He said I could use his workshop at any time and showed me some of the furniture he’d made from raw branches and timber burls. It was sound, simple and clean.

  ‘They’re brilliant, mate,’ I said. ‘Do you sell any?’

  He nodded. ‘As many as I can make.’

  Vegetarian barbecue at Todd’s place. Bully rolled his eyes and offered to go down the back and grab a wallaby or something for the meatatarians, but sat and drank Todd’s beer instead. Todd made vegie burgers and Tori and Francis returned with sliced potatoes and onions, bread, salads and sauce.

  It was a feast. Bully scoffed four vegie burgers and growled contentedly when he was done. We sat on Todd’s verandah and got eaten by mosquitoes as the sun went down. For a vegetarian, Todd showed no mercy to the lesser winged animals sucking blood from his skin. He certainly wasn’t scared of death. In fact, it was delight I saw on his face when he smeared one with his tam-o’-shanter. He and Bully wandered from beer to port, while Tori and I dra
nk water.

  I piggybacked Francis when it was time for him to go to bed. It was the only way we could get him home without a scene. Tori thanked me and I sat at the kitchen table listening to her read to him. She flopped onto the seat beside me when she was done, her face a picture of knackered contentment.

  I loved that look. I loved everything about her, but I especially loved that look.

  With my heart drubbing hard, I forced the words past my lips. They weren’t the words I was busting to say, but they were words just the same.

  ‘I suppose it’s time for me to go, hey?’

  Tori smiled. ‘Not long now.’

  ‘How come it’s always home time?’

  ‘I like my sleep. I need my sleep. Don’t take it personally.’

  ‘It’s more than that.’

  She shook her head slowly and played with a crumb on the table. She flicked it left and right. Right and left.

  ‘Sometimes I think you hate me. Sometimes I think you hate everybody,’ I said.

  ‘That’s just stupid,’ she said.

  I raised an eyebrow. ‘Fess up. Own up. Take responsibility. That’s what you told me. It was like a fucking revelation.’

  There was silence then, but it wasn’t comfortable. Tori flicked her crumb clean off the table.

  ‘I’ve decided I’m going to have a sit-in at Tori’s. I’m not going to leave until I understand what’s going on in your head.’

  ‘Don’t be a dick,’ she said. ‘It’s got nothing to do with you.’

  ‘Ah, so it has something to do with something, but nothing to do with me.’

  ‘No, I mean it’s none of your business.’

  I swallowed then. She’d closed down.

  Tori had opened the fridge in her heart and the icy breeze had wafted across her face. There was something extremely iffy tucked up the back there.

  I pointed at her face. ‘That’s it,’ I said. ‘Whatever it is you’re thinking about or not thinking about now is the thing that eats up the fun in your life and when I look at your face like that it’s as though a handful of sleet just fell down my collar.’

  The ice in her eyes seemed to evaporate. Just like that. Underneath the ice, I could see a little girl who seemed as frightened as a possum in the ute’s high-beams. She wanted to run up the nearest tree but another part of her was fighting it. She sighed and stood behind the chair she’d been sitting in. Words knocked at her throat but didn’t make it to her lips. She sat again and pushed the hair behind her ears.

  ‘I feel like it’s all my fault,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Everything,’ she said, and swept her arm through the air. ‘Everything.’

  ‘Global warming and that sort of shit?’

  She smiled then. It flashed across her face like the sun escaping from clouds.

  ‘Simon. Pat. The whole mess.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I walked away from that wreck and I was the reason it happened.’

  She sat looking at her fingers for a long time, then sniffed and palmed at her eyes.

  ‘Simon was pissed, driving us out to Splitters Creek, right, and I told him that I didn’t love him. I told him that I loved Pat.’

  She looked at me. ‘He went ballistic. He flipped out. If I’d known . . .’

  She rubbed her face again. I put my hand on her shoulder and she flinched. I rubbed little circles on the bunched muscles of her back.

  ‘It wasn’t an accident.’

  She stood abruptly and my hand fell away. She took a tissue from the box on the breakfast bar and honked into it with her back towards me.

  ‘He put the pedal to the metal and we were both telling him to slow down and he was just laughing like an idiot. Pat punched him in the head and Simon stopped the car. Pat and I got out and Si just floored it again, did a U-turn and . . .’

  She put both her hands on her face and stifled a moan. Her words crumbled into a harsh whisper. ‘He mowed Pat down. Ran straight over him before he hit the tree.’

  She stared at me with her red eyes, waiting for a reaction. The wave of understanding crashed on top of me, but I didn’t drown. It all made sense and cast an ominous shadow of synchronicity over Si’s own death. I shook my head, not from disbelief but from the riotous irony the world is capable of. I almost laughed.

  ‘It was my fault. Then, like a chain of fucking dominos, Pat’s dead, Simon’s . . . broken, I’m pregnant with Si’s kid and the world just closes in. It nearly killed Pat’s mum and dad. They just disappeared. Now, Si’s dead. That’s the end for him, but there’s no end for me.’

  She sucked in a breath and let out a choppy sigh. ‘Well, there is . . .’

  ‘Hang on a minute. You can’t beat yourself up for that. Simon was an arsehole. He never gave a shit about anybody.’

  Her eyes clamped shut.

  My chair howled like whale song on the tiles as I stood. I hugged her and she folded into me, her hands clamped to her face. Her body shook with tremors that grew to a full-on quake. It only lasted a few seconds. She gained control again and stiffened in my embrace. She reached for another tissue and I let her go.

  ‘You know that boy in there, the one you so lovingly call poo-head, sometimes he’s all the reason I’ve got.’

  I swallowed hard. It was much bigger than I’d ever imagined, Tori’s ghost. I felt like a bastard for poking it and making it show its head in the glare of the compact fluorescent.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t realise. I didn’t mean to stir all that up.’

  ‘Don’t be sorry,’ she said. ‘It’s not your fault. I feel good when I’m around you and that shits me because every time I feel good, the guilt just creeps up and I go from feeling good to feeling shit in ten seconds. I hate it. It happens at other times, too, but it’s worst around you.’

  ‘What have you got to feel guilty about?’

  ‘I ran. I ran to get help and when the cops arrived, I lied. I told them I’d dragged Patchy from the wreck because I could smell petrol and I thought it was going to explode. I left Si bleeding on the crumpled bonnet because I hated him so much, but I still couldn’t dob him in. I thought he was dead, too. I hoped he was dead. Prayed he would die in hospital and then, when he came home, all the hate was gone. I was going to have his baby and I felt so guilty about the whole thing. It’s all my fault.’

  ‘It’s not. It’s nobody’s fault. It just happened. It happened a long time ago.’

  It was as though she hadn’t heard me.

  ‘And then when your mum started hating me, it felt good, you know? Felt like I deserved it.’

  ‘Are you listening to me? It’s over. It’s all over.’

  And we talked then. Properly. I stopped apologising and Tori didn’t kick me out. We drank coffee and ate pancakes at midnight. We talked about everything and nothing and the ghosts didn’t bother us again.

  Bully did, though.

  He came through the verandah door at full drunken throttle.

  ‘Hey!’ he said. ‘I knew you guys would be kicking on!’

  Tori shushed him and he covered his mouth.

  He flopped into a kitchen chair. ‘Todd’s gone to bed. Have you got any beer, Tori, mate? Any port?’

  ‘Bar’s closed, Bully.’

  ‘Fuck it,’ he said. ‘I knew you were going to say that.’

  I watched him wobble on his chair for a minute and realised he was quite trashed.

  ‘Is it okay if I sleep on your couch tonight, Tori?’ he asked. ‘I won’t be any trouble or anything.’

  Tori scoffed.

  ‘You’ve got your swag. Haven’t you got work in the morning, mate?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah, I’ll be fine. Shit, I have, too. I’d better get going. Thanks for the lovely evening,’ he said, and shook our hands.

  He made it to the door and must have forgotten what he was doing. He stood there with the door half open for a good five seconds – long enough for Tori and I to swap smiles and shake our heads �
� then he closed the door and staggered back into the kitchen.

  He kissed Tori and patted her back, then kissed me on the cheek.

  ‘I love youse guys. Thanks,’ he said.

  He forgot to close the door.

  There was a flap of activity outside and he swore as he bounced down the verandah stairs.

  We laughed out loud.

  ‘I think I’d better take him home,’ I said.

  ‘Good idea.’

  She leaned across the table and kissed my cheek. It was soft lips on stubbled skin, but it was so much more than that. It was supposed to be a kiss goodbye but it felt like a kiss hello. Bully moaned from the bottom of the steps.

  I smiled and made it to the door myself before it dawned on me . . .

  ‘I don’t have a car. Mum and Dad took the ute to Melbourne.’

  Tori didn’t hesitate. ‘Take mine, the keys are in it.’

  ‘I’ll stay in town tonight. Is that okay?’

  ‘Of course! Bring the car back in the morning? Before, say, eight-thirty?’

  Bully wanted to stick his head out the window and sing more Madonna songs on the way to Splitters Creek. Who was I to argue with a tanked Bullant?

  Twenty-four

  Francis was ready for school when I made it to Hargate. I felt a bit guilty seeing him in his uniform. School had resumed a week before and I hadn’t called anyone to let them know that I was coming back. Eventually.

  Tori looked tired and genuinely happy to see me. There was no morning after. She smiled and thanked me and kissed me hello like it really was the normal thing to do. Francis offered to make me some toast for breakfast, his mum nodding furiously at me over his shoulder.

  ‘With Vegemite?’ I asked.

  ‘Yep,’ Francis said. ‘Coming right up.’

  Tori made coffee and we talked in private tones as Francis cooked up a storm. Well, a cloud. A small smoke cloud.

  ‘All right?’ I asked Tori.

  ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Great, actually. Thanks.’

  ‘What? I didn’t do anything.’

  ‘Exactly,’ she whispered. ‘You didn’t have to.’

  Francis scraped the burnt bits off my toast into the sink and lathered it up with butter and black stuff. I chomped at it and groaned approvingly.