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Deleted Scenes for Lovers

Page 15

by Tracey Slaughter


  And you stop, now, in the wrecker’s, and you think of what your husband might be doing. You think of the burden of black hulks he’s hoarding in your house, the rooms he’s stocked with mongrel parts, and how the whole time he might be trying to trade you back there. To the place where things got put back together, in your past. Except there is no show. Because it was always your brother who fixed everything.

  So it’s a breather when the wrecker’s mate brakes up hard outside, a full speed park-up with the radio on max that sends out a rip of dust and static. The noise goes on, a rash of echoes on the tin, relayed on your spine.

  ‘Fucking tear up my drive, why don’t you,’ the wrecker yells out. ‘You manus. What are ya? Here’s me trying to make out to my customer, who’s fucking of the fairer sex in case you haven’t clocked on, that you are a fully fucking reliable source of helpful muscle. Not a total munter with too many muscles in your head. Or rocks more like.’

  But the mate has no comeback. It’s clear enough from the wrecker’s hassle that there’s a working pattern of pisstake between them and that most days they’d rark each other well up, take a crack big time, knock each other back. But the way they would give-and-take most days has gone flat, one-sided. The young guy doesn’t toe it. His face is shut down, looks thick with what he can’t start saying.

  Instead he shoves a page across at his mate.

  And mate is all that gets said at first, when the wrecker reads it. ‘Mate. Mate, you’re fucking kidding me. Mate.’

  ‘You can do it, eh? If it’s gotta be done, I’d fucking rather you.’

  ‘Nah, mate. I don’t have the rig. That’s the full-on deal. The compactor. And they tie all that side of things up, the legal side. And even if I did, mate, I don’t reckon I’d have the fucking heart to. Couldn’t do it to you.’

  ‘You could tow it back here, but.’

  ‘Mate. You won’t want that, eh. It’s like, you know I’d do it for you. But you should think that through. It won’t be fucking pretty. She’ll be totalled. Don’t reckon you’d want to put yourself through.’

  ‘Fucking got to bring her home.’

  ‘I don’t know. I’d fucking mull over that one, mate. You only just got this letter, eh.’

  ‘Fucking sticking out the mailbox when I come down just now.’

  ‘So, mate, yeah. I’d be thinking that one through.’

  ‘They sold the last one off. On Trade Me.’

  ‘Yeah, but. You won’t want to be doing that.’

  ‘Know how many bids?’

  ‘Couldn’t fucking stand to look.’

  ‘Got a stack, the way I heard.’

  ‘Yeah, probably. But that was the first one. In the bloody news and all. So the price was up.’

  ‘Went to some charity. So they fucking say. Yeah, right.’

  ‘Mate.’

  Which is when you catch on. You remember the clip, the first car they seized, some boy racer done for a backlog of charges. The law could take the lot now, crush it. You watched it on the newsreel. The lid of the unit wedged down. A smooth hydraulic stomp. The windshields fizzling. The panels giving up. Hardly much more than a crumple. Until the car was pressed, eased off the bed with a forklift. The woman who had put through the legislation climbed on the flat hood, posed with the order to destroy, in stilettos. It was level as a tombstone, the size of a hospital bed.

  ‘Fuck this,’ the kid says. ‘I’m shooting out back. I’m taking her up for her last burnouts. You keen?’

  The bloke looks flustered.

  ‘I owe it to her,’ the young guy says. ‘Before they wipe her out. She deserves it.’ His vocals get loose in the high shed’s acoustic.

  The older man’s considering, but frowning your way. He’s going to come down on the side of: he’s busy, he’s tied up, he can’t turn a cash job away. But you’ve done it before thinking. You’ve stepped up.

  ‘I’m in. You can take me up too.’

  Which feels like the moment when you were in the wagon with your brother, way back, when the seconds just came at you, terminal, their shape already locked into a countdown you couldn’t decide to rev out of, or brake, or swerve down a different track, because you don’t plan out the way time detonates, it just explodes into sudden being through you, it was always going to be, this machinery of seconds where every way you thought your lives would take you, you and your bro, where everything looked clear, splits wide, roars into the open. You and the vehicle that hits you go slamming over the known edge of all your lives, take all the corners you were ever going to turn down and pour over all of them at once. Except there’s not a scratch on you. You get out of the car and there’s not a mark. This happens. Everything folds up. Everything rolls and up-ends and crushes. And you climb out, you wander along the brink of it. And sure, your skull is ringing, your head is playing a pitch you never hear again. But you are upright. When nothing else is. You are untouched. Except for how your skin is very lightly smoking.

  They put you in the front. They don’t want to at first, the kid and the wrecker, but they let up when you won’t shift, when you won’t veer from it, however they try to talk you round. They’ve got good reasons, but nothing feels valid or immovable. You know what you’re meant to do. You don’t tell them that, though. You make like you’re into it, big time, like you’re so fucking buzzed. And the glare is a factor, coming down at you from some high-up east pane. It’s a half-arsed window but it picks up a good catch of sun, which you can’t afford to let in your eyes. Not after already proving they’re prone to run. But maybe it helps you play it up. And maybe the wrecker is thinking he could do worse. Of an afternoon, in the back of beyond. Where there’s not such a range to choose from. You’re not exactly export quality. But you’ll stand up. He could just about take you round the block. So maybe that’s what gets you in the front seat, despite the kid’s best Nah, mate, fuckoff.

  The three of you in the car go nowhere to start with. Then the kid heel-toes it, full throttle and hard brake at once. The tyres scour in place, pumping out rounds of gravel behind them. The noise goes like nitro through your mind. But then he lets up. And fats it. You’re roads out, it seems like no time, a mix of routes, metal and seal, taken wild. You wrap a hand up along the window frame. The wrecker in the back leans through and primes the radio, picks up a bunch of static and flags it, hits the off. No one says a thing. And after all, the kid’s in mourning. This is his girl and he’s got to put her down. He’s got to give her up, forfeit the keys and just leave her there, let them shut her body down, turned from this honey you’re moving in, with the only live air you seem to have breathed in days streaming in through her windows, and curves of torque sweeping gold dust out the back of her into an iron box, into a narrow slab. He handles her like he’d rather write all of you off. He rakes the gears and swings the corners out. Stones teem off the side, and she grinds up a pack of turf on the shoulder. He’s rigid, doesn’t flinch, got one arm pinioned to the wheel. You don’t like the range of his eye, it’s dead on, with a pinpoint on nothing like he can’t be much fucked keeping track of the details rushing through the screen, the swim of trees up the sideline, the sudden black weight of the animals bending in their bleached-out paddocks.

  But the wrecker knows how to tone him down. He hunches in from the back, not fazed, no speed in his moves. Just an offering.

  ‘Here, mate. Seems like you need one of these.’ And he’s rolled one for you too, passes them over, smooth. Sits back, lights his, doesn’t say much. Until.

  ‘You can put her in the yard yourself, if that’s what you want.’ He inhales, waits, follows up. Louder, to get it over the engine. ‘But if you’re going to waste her, I’d rather there was no one inside at the time, eh.’

  That’s all. Exhale.

  You wouldn’t know the kid’s heard, for could be a K, or even further. Then you feel a give in the air, just a notch, taken out of the momentum. Your gut relaxes a fraction, you can feel your torso lift slightly out its tough cramp
back into the framework of the seat. Just an easing. So even the smoke moves looser in the car, so all your breathing’s got more space to work with, and the smoke can stretch out. It’s better than anyone saying anything. No one watches the needle. It’s just a feel, a lowering, and when it gears down again, it’s good round the back of your neck, that velocity letting go, that levelling. So your heartbeat isn’t saying there’s something hard coming at the end of it for certain, some final wall waiting that you’ve got no choice now but to hit.

  It’s the kid who seems to take the most impact then, from the deceleration, the quietening. Like the grip that he’s got on the steering is suddenly slackened, and the wane opens up his chest. This sob comes out his body. He’s suddenly aiming off-road and whether it’s the braking or the contact with the bank that pulls her up when you jolt to a stop, the car and the kid both end on an angle, the car lodged up on a slope so you’ve got the apex, you look down on both of them, the kid keeled into his door, the wrecker tipped back at the low point. It’s not going over, nowhere near, it’s cant but not fatal. But you brace anyway, back to your door, knee on your seat, watching them.

  ‘Reckon I might be having to drop the price I charge your husband,’ the wrecker says to you. ‘Let the buyer fucking beware doesn’t really cover this.’

  You laugh. But the kid is all shoulders, shunted in to his door panel, head away, bawling.

  ‘Mate,’ the wrecker goes on to the boy. ‘Way I see this, you want to think it through. You want to take her out for a last burn, you’ve got to head where they can’t spot you. You go taking her out on seal and they clock you, you’re only making it a fuckload worse for yourself. I know there’s fuck-all traffic ever round here. But you know how fucking keen they are, you know they got a whole unit on yous. You tell me where your head’s at, and we can still go up and let her loose one last time. But that’s all we’re here for. We didn’t sign up for this eh. And same thing goes, you decide you just want to flag it. Fair enough, you just turn around here and head for home. We’re good to go. Nothing wrong with sending her off in one piece, mate. You could take her in so clean, so fine you make them fucking cry. That’s what I’d do. Drive her in shining. So you just chill. Then let us know. We’ll hang out here and have a smoko on it.’

  And it’s possible to just rest, even with the kid facing out, shuddering, in his state. It’s best to leave him: it’s clear in his ribs, in the grate of his breathing, he wants to work it out for himself. Is what you think. But then the shock hits. The kid turns and looks at you instead.

  He says, ‘I know you. You’re always at the hospital. They made me do a work programme down there. Community work, you know, I got stuck on a team. I was in that bunch, building the garden. Round the side with the benches in, so smokers can go out. I seen you sitting there. Not smoking, but I seen you. You sit there ages. Fucking like a statue, eh. One of the guys on the group cracked this joke about how we’d have to dig round you, concrete you in. And the warden told us all to shut the fuck up. Told me who you were. He made a point of telling me. He said, he thought it might help wake me up. He told me about your brother. He told me to go in and take myself a good look at him. Because that’s what I’d end up like. On machines. With someone sitting outside, day after day the way you do. And I’d never know they’d been.’

  ‘Did you go in?’

  ‘Shit,’ says the wrecker.

  ‘That’s right, mate,’ says the kid. ‘You remember, eh. You were there, you were working some of that time, down the boiler room.’

  ‘Fuck me,’ the wrecker rubs his hand round the side of his head. ‘I said I had a feeling I’d seen you. I didn’t know that was you, but. Fuck, you look like him.’

  ‘You went in too? You both went? Into his room. My brother’s room.’

  ‘Like the kid says. The warden took us. Thought it would straighten the little fucker out.’

  ‘Did a good job. Obviously. Yeah, thanks. That makes it all fucking worth it.’

  ‘Nah, nah. It shook us up. I know it looks like it didn’t make a difference. But, it hit home. Fuck. You couldn’t look at him and not feel sorry for him.’

  ‘You reckon? There’s plenty of people if you want to fucking know. Plenty of people can look at him and not feel sorry, not feel fucking anything. People nick his clothes, did you know that? Time after time, his clothes go missing. Fuck, it could have been you for all I’d know. I bring his clothes in, because he’s going to get up isn’t he, he’s going to wake up and need gear. I actually iron them, I iron his black jeans and his Tool T-shirt and I put them in a plastic bag, I put his high-tops in and I leave them waiting in the locker by his bed for when he wants them. Because he will. And people pinch them. So don’t tell me they feel anything. Plenty of them feel nothing at all. Half the staff at the fucking hospital. I’ll tell you what they want him for now. They want him for spare parts. They’ve run this stack of tests on him. And they come in to show me all their readings. They reckon it all points to the fact there’s nothing left. He’s gone. That’s what they try and keep telling me. It’s just the machines that are doing it. But I don’t fucking see it. Or I don’t want to. So they run the tests again. Because they’re so keen, by this stage. To get him out of there. They’re so keen to ship him off that their hands fucking shake when they try get me to sign. They’ve even got the papers ready. Far as they’re concerned it’s all good to go. I just give them use of what he’s got left. My brother. You know what they call it. A harvest. They call it an organ harvest. And they tell me how he’d help people. And I don’t give a shit. They’re not touching him. And I don’t give a shit if he helped you either. He’s not fucking spare parts. And that’s it. And I don’t see how he could be some big example to you, anyway. Because I put him there. It was me. I turned the corner, straight into oncoming. I looked and I thought the way was clear. And then it was over. It wasn’t even anything to do with him. And the thing that tops it off is, he was the pissed one. I wouldn’t let him put his tanked-up self behind the wheel. I took his keys off him, he was so dieseled. I had a go at him because he’d been at it all bloody night, I gave him an earful about what a loser he lived like, always taking off loaded, I shoved him in the front seat. Then I wrote him off. So it’s not like I even get to sit here and tell you, learn your fucking lesson or something. I don’t get to say it’s fucking boy racers like you. I’d fucking like to, because you know you’re a pack of total dicks. You don’t even fucking think. And it’s true, you will end up wiping someone out. You’re bound to. And you don’t stop to even give a shit, when you’ve got a choice. I’d like to sit here and tear fucking strips off you. But I can’t. Because the sick thing is, it’s people like me, too. People that aren’t tipping oil on the roads and driving pissed to bits or running mental fucking risks just for kicks. Just people who think they look both fucking ways. And nothing’s coming. And then they pull out. And it is.’

  And then no one can find a thing to say. There’s an age of it, just sitting there, the pack of you, on your lean. Waiting to have something to do or talk about, that gets the feel of pain out of mid-air between you. The long grass ticking at the chassis. The distant, thin trace of the fencelines trying to rule the wild off where they can, tipped over into the dark that hangs between hills, like so many broken ladders. Just stare out the car and try follow their threads. There’s a gust of shadow, a black run goes over the field like a season just spilled past. And the three of you, motionless, nothing to say for yourselves, just watching, until the sun floods back on high. Just the glare and the heat banking up in the cab means you’re going to have to get forward, get out somehow on the road from here.

  The wrecker says, ‘The thing of it, I mean, the only way you can look at it is, an accident. It’s just pure accident, right? What else is there. And like they say, accidents happen. Could be to anyone, too.’

  And the move you make back is both a yes and a no. Because you’re always in this skid of thoughts up in your head, where i
t’s yes there was nothing but the lurch of the car into a groove you could never pull free of, the two of you swallowed by the turn of the day, and the reap of the wheel you could not have seen coming. But it’s no also, the spiral goes back the other way, so you know there’s a moment when it all leads to you, to a point where it vanishes into a split-second blindspot at the back of your head, where you made a call, a decision that only you took. There was a window. There must have been. A brief flash of instants that looked wide and open and straight, where you watched and you judged and you gauged. And it was you who chose to act. And then the window was gone, already shattered by his body being driven through it.

  So you say, ‘That’s the thing. It seemed to me, at the time, like it was a choice. I made it, and I moved out, on what looked like a clear-cut choice. And then the accident was just … waiting. Waiting there behind it. So how am I supposed to know this choice will be different. I can weigh it all up, I can look at it from all sides. I hold onto their papers and I try. I do. But how do I know. That the worst outcome of all isn’t just waiting there. Right in behind it. Right there in behind what looks like a clear-cut answer.’

  And you give up now because there’s this massive gap in language, there’s a hole cut right through the thing. Like there’s nothing in between the fucking small talk, the bits of Yeah, for real bro? and Cheers, fucking fine, mate which are all you’ve got to trade. All you’ve got’s these spare parts of used-up talk, bits of munted word, secondhand to start, nothing to get what you need across. And if you found the real words, who’d fucking trade them. Reach out a fist and say, here, here’s a free handful of the heavy bits, make one fucked-up story of me out of that mess, if you can. It’s a trip round a wrecker’s, to even start talking through a life. A tour round a yard of burnt-out parts.

  And even the wrecker’s gone silent.

  But the kid says, ‘Well, what the fuck would I know. But it’s not like you’d want them to take that kind of choice off you. I’m not saying, I mean fuck, I know it’s not anything like it is with me and the car and everything, but you have to think how fucked it would be if they went and took that choice off you, like they just got to make it for you. Ah, look, I’m not fucking saying it right, eh? But you get what I mean. It’s like what it comes down to. There’s this choice and it’s fucked up, but only you could be the one to make it.’

 

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