by Tony Birch
And with that Charlie switched off the headlights at the same time that he pushed the accelerator flat to the floor. I felt the rush. I wound the side window down. A cool gust of air hit me in the face. And I could smell the river coming up to meet me.
Charlie yelled and beat the steering wheel with his fists as he pushed the car around the curves of the boulevard following the river. I looked out of the front windscreen. All I could see was a black sheet. The car roared, Charlie screamed, and the radio thumped a bass guitar riff at me.
And then there was nothing. No sound. No feeling. Nothing.
It was a warm rain. And it covered me like a winter blanket.
I had been drowning in a river of black water. My lungs were frozen and rock-hard. I grabbed for a breath of oxygen to save me. But there was none to be found.
And then the flood arrived. It saved me.
The river began to rise, lapping at the mudflats and swamping the clay-dry indentation that our bodies had left behind. It rose above the high point of its own banks. It swallowed the trees skirting its edge, the derelict skinning sheds and the abandoned factories. The bridges and roadways and, eventually, the National Park itself, all drowned. The river moved out further, across the city, until it also disappeared. All that was left now was an ocean of water. And there I was, floating above it all in a haze of blue. I woke to a hard light, somewhere between a dream and death.
As I opened my eyes I tried to focus on the shadows dancing in the foreground of the light. I felt a pain behind one eye and turned my body over, to where my view was framed by more light and a large window. I could see a dense wall of rain falling across the window. I was able to distinguish each drop of water and follow its path as it fell from the sky to somewhere below the window ledge.
I lifted my head from the pillow and began to search the room. It was obvious that I was in a hospital. I could see a long row of beds opposite me, full of plastered, stitched or coughing bodies; many of them hooked up to machines. A nurse was taking a patient’s temperature on the other side of the room.
I noticed a photograph of me sitting on top of a cupboard next to my bed. It had been taken in front of the old house in Clunes. I had not seen the photograph before, but I could remember that day. It was Christmas Day. In the photo I am standing next to my new red tricycle. My younger sister, May, is being held on the back seat by my father. She is nursing a doll that she had just received for Christmas.
Alongside the photograph were several ‘get well’ cards and a block of chocolate, a king-size Cadbury Dairymilk.
I sensed that something was holding me to the bed. My left leg felt heavier than the right and my left arm was pinned to my chest. I also realised that I could not see properly. I patted my hand across my forehead and then down to my left eye, which was also bandaged. I tried to sit up in the bed but could not manage it. I held my free arm in the air in an attempt to attract the attention of the nurse.
She came over to me and touched me lightly on the cheek. It felt nice to feel her warmth against my icy skin.
‘Well, young man, you’re back with us. I’ll get the doctor up here to see you and we’ll get your mother in. She’ll be relieved to see you awake. Don’t try to move just yet. We’ll get the doctor in here now.’
The hospital contacted my mother at the factory to let her know that I had woken up. She left work immediately and jumped into a taxi for St Vincent’s. When she ran into the ward to see me, she was still wearing her dustcoat with the Harding’s Crumpets insignia on the coat pocket.
As she rushed towards me I could see the hurt on her face. She wrapped her hands around my face and kissed me repeatedly on each cheek. I tasted one of her salted tears as it rolled down my cheek and into the corner of my mouth.
I was in hospital for four weeks and home in bed for another four. I was in a coma when Charlie was buried, although I did not find out about his death until I was out of hospital and back home. It was only then that my mother decided to explain the full extent and cause of the accident that I had little memory of.
Although I had been badly injured and Charlie had died, the police still came around to the flat and charged and summonsed me with larceny of a vehicle while I was still recovering, propped up on the couch under blankets watching television.
The copper laughed when he told me that the insurance company would sue my parents for writing off the car. ‘It was a Mercedes, son. Expensive taste, you Commission boys. Should have stuck to a Holden. And a bomb at that.’
Ordinarily, my father would have belted me, I was sure of that, but even he managed to restrain himself when he saw how badly injured I was. He didn’t say much to me at all, unable to find the words of anger that might replace his fist. He just glared at me whenever he came into the lounge room.
I went back to school halfway through second term. I was still wearing a patch over my eye and carried a slight limp as a result of a compound fracture in my lower leg. If I attempted to walk any real distance it became too painful to manage. So I persuaded mum to allow me to ride my bike to school.
I enjoyed it. I could get around a lot easier and it meant that I didn’t have to catch the tram with everyone else, and hang out with other kids at the stop, explaining what had happened to Charlie and me.
The accident, and Charlie’s death in particular, was the talk of the school. The first day that I returned to the schoolyard it was like the return of the dead. Everybody stood back and stared as I walked into the school building. They spoke to me in hushed voices, even the teachers. The kids in my class began asking me lots of questions — questions that I either could not or did not want to answer.
After school I would ride down to different spots along the river before going home. The river had transformed itself. As a result of the rain it was running higher than I had seen it before. And faster as well. If Charlie were with me now, we would fashion a raft from tyre tubes and rope, or steal a boat from one of the sheds and ride the wild current into the city and keep going to the mouth of the river, and into the bay beyond.
One night after school I rode over to the boulevard and found the spot where we must have gone over the edge and rolled down the cliff-face. The bluestone embankment had shattered where the Mercedes had apparently cannoned on its side, into the wall.
I rested my pushbike against the wall and looked out and down along the sandstone cliff-face that fell away into the water. Amongst the trees rising up from the river’s edge I noticed a gum tree, now sheared in half. It had been neatly decapitated.
My mother told me that Charlie’s mum had hardly got out of bed since the funeral, and his younger sister, Alice, refused to speak to anyone. Alice never spoke all that much anyway, but in the school year prior to that summer we had started to become friends, much to Charlie’s annoyance. He’d said that he didn’t want me trying to ‘crack onto’ his sister. ‘No offence, Michael, but I don’t want you for a fucken relative.’
After I got out of hospital Alice did not so much as walk across the courtyard separating our two blocks of flats to visit me. I saw her in the distance a few times when I got back to school, but it took weeks before we eventually came face to face.
At lunchtime I would sit underneath Hawthorn Bridge watching the river until I heard the first bell. I would then walk slowly back to class, always managing to get there late.
That is how I happened to run into Alice. I was about to go into class at the same time that she was running around the corner, late herself. She almost knocked me over. We stared at each other.
I smiled hesitantly. ‘Alice.’
Maybe I should not have been surprised when she went into a rage. But I was.
‘You bastard, Michael! What did the two of you think you were doing? You idiot! You stupid, dumb idiot!’ She pressed her face right up against mine and pushed me in the chest with both hands. �
�Why didn’t you stop him, Michael? Why didn’t you stop him?’
She turned away from me and put her hand over her mouth. She wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her school jumper. ‘He’s dead, Michael, fucken dead! Why did you let him do it?’
Alice did not give me time to answer her. She ran off through an alley between the portables. But I had no answer for her. Nobody could have stopped Charlie from doing what he had. And I did not want to stop him, anyway. He loved stealing cars, and so did I. Whenever I saw Alice after that, either at school or on the estate, she looked through me as if, not unlike Charlie, I no longer existed.
I had been back at school for about two months when everyone started getting excited about the forthcoming moon landing. The school had decided to dedicate a week of study and celebration to the Apollo 11 mission.
But it did not excite me. I had done no serious schoolwork since I had returned. I couldn’t concentrate. I even stopped reading books, which I had always loved doing. I could not get to sleep at night and when I eventually drifted off, I had the same dream over and over, where I found myself drowning again, in an icy black river, with my lungs filling up with water. And then, just when I thought I was about to drown, the warm flooding rain would return and lift my body to safety, up among the treetops, where I could look across to the city, bathed in its now familiar blue light.
On the morning of the moon landing I rode through a damp mist that had replaced the rain. It was dark and cold. At school we were all given ‘moon kits’ by our home teacher, Mr Crow, before being parked in front of a television set in the corner of an overcrowded classroom, watching commentators in a news studio somewhere, pointing to diagrams of the moon, the solar system, and the Apollo 11 spaceship itself.
I was sitting at the back of the room, against the window. I looked outside to the river. It was carrying rubbish from the recent rains. It would remain like that until the summer, when the debris would settle to the bottom.
Most of those in the room were glued to the television screen. I looked over at the television occasionally, faking interest for the benefit of Mr Crow before returning my gaze to the water. I noticed something floating on the surface of the water. It drew me from the classroom to the river bank.
At first I thought it was a red-coloured rubbish bin floating in the distance. But as the current brought it closer, I could see that it was the tail-light and the rear fin of a car bobbing up and down in the water. It was a 1964 Falcon tail-light. The river was carrying a stolen car just below the surface, with one protruding corner steering the car onward to the sea. The floods would have dislodged the car from the muddy bottom. There would be others too. And some of them would belong to Charlie and me.
While the others in the room watched the grainy black-and-white images of Apollo 11 bumping awkwardly onto the surface of the moon, I watched that tail-light shimmering against the dark water.
I had to get out of the room. I told Mr Crow I was going to the toilet, before hobbling down the stairs and heading for the bike rack.
Mr Smith, the assistant headmaster, was also in the yard. He saw me mount the bike.
‘Michael Byrne! What are you doing? Where are you going?’
I looked at him. Mr Smith reminded me of the rent-collector from our estate. ‘I don’t feel well, Mr Smith. My leg is sore. I’m going home.’
He tried to block my path to the school gate. ‘But Byrne, you’ll miss the first man to walk on the moon, an event of historic importance. You had best come back with me. Now!’
I peered over his shoulder to the surface of the river in the distance. He looked around but he could not have known what it was that had attracted my attention. I pushed down on the pedal of the bike with my good leg while attempting to go around him. He grabbed for the bicycle.
‘Byrne! The moon landing, Byrne! Come back!’
‘Fuck the moon!’ I yelled back as I rode out of the gates and chased a 1964 Falcon down the river.
The moon landing dominated every television station that night. Katie was sitting in the lounge room on the couch, next to the old man, watching the news reports with genuine fascination. I sat at the kitchen table looking out the window.
Mum was at the sink. She was on night shift. She would clean up after all of us and try to get a quick nap in before she went off to the factory. She came over to the table and put a hand on my shoulder.
‘What’s wrong, love? You’ve been quiet since you got in.’
‘It’s nothing, mum, nothing.’
What I really wanted to do was collapse in her arms and cry. I had wanted to do that from the day I got home from hospital, but I wouldn’t let it happen, not now, after all I had put her through.
I watched her as she cleaned up. She spent most of her life washing and cleaning up after people. She finished at the sink.
‘Come in to the lounge and we’ll have a look at this moon thing.’
‘Nah, it’s okay, mum. I saw it all at school today. I’m going up onto the roof.’
‘The roof? It’ll be freezing up there.’
She was about to tell me I could not go up onto the roof before changing her mind mid-sentence. ‘Here, at least take your coat with you, and don’t be up there too late.’
I closed the heavy front door behind me. I automatically reached into the broom cupboard for my torch. I used to shine it across the courtyard in the night, into Charlie’s bedroom, as a signal for him to come up to the roof.
I walked slowly up the four flights of stairs. When I reached the roof landing the cold air hit my skin. I stopped to put my coat on, buttoned it, and put the torch in my pocket.
Out on the roof a line of washing was swirling around uncontrollably. I looked up at the sky. There wasn’t a star to be seen poking through the low blanket of cloud. I walked to the rear of the laundry. The old kitchen chair that I had retrieved from the rubbish chute downstairs was still there. I put my right foot on the seat and hauled my body onto the laundry roof.
I lay looking across to Charlie’s block of flats. I could see families in lounge rooms, glued to their television sets, witnessing ‘history in the making’. I began to flick the torch on and off, searching the sky for a sign of life — a fruit bat, a night star, anything at all. But there was nothing but the dark clouds.
I heard footsteps in the stairway. It was probably one of the women coming to retrieve her washing. I turned the torch off and lay as still as I could. I didn’t want to frighten anyone. I looked across to the landing. I could see that somebody had walked onto the roof and stopped in the dull light.
‘Michael? Michael?’
I did not move.
‘Michael. It’s me — Alice. You there?’
I fumbled for my torch and let it shine in her direction.
‘Yeah, I’m here. I’m on the laundry roof.’
She walked towards the light. ‘I know. I saw the torch going off and on from my bedroom window. Can I come up?’
‘Yeah. I’m around here.’
I shone the torch down onto the chair. The light picked up her dark eyes and pale skin. At least she did not look as angry as the last time that I had been this close to her. She climbed onto the roof and sat down next to me. She was shivering and had only a thin shirt on.
‘Here, have my coat.’
I began to remove my coat but she put her hand on my shoulder to stop me.
‘Don’t, Michael. I’m okay. You’re the one who looks like you’re near death. You’d better leave it on. You need it more than I do.’
She took a packet of cigarettes from her pocket and offered me one. I looked down at the packet.
‘I’ve given up. Can’t breathe as it is. I reckon my lungs are still full of half the shit dredged up from the bottom of the river.’
She lit a cigarette. I watched her face as it gl
owed in the brief light of the match. She looked up and blew smoke into the air.
‘Did you watch the moon landing?’
‘No. You?’
‘No. I’ve been in his room. I sit there every night, looking at his stuff. Thinking about him.’
‘What were you thinking?’
She was dragging hard on the cigarette. ‘Nothing, really. Just what a wild idiot he always was. And how much I miss him. How bloody stupid the two of you could be.’ She laughed weakly.
Neither of us said another word for some time. We lay on our backs looking up at the sky. Alice’s shoulder rested against mine. Suddenly, through a small break in the clouds, the moon made a hazy, brief appearance, resting in a soft, white light.
Alice pointed to it. ‘Look, Michael. Can you see him? The man on the moon.’
I looked up. ‘Nup. Can’t see a thing.’
She took the torch from me, switched it on and pointed it at the already vanishing moon. ‘Me neither. Maybe there is no man on the moon.’
She switched the torch off and turned towards me. ‘Maybe it’s Charlie. Maybe he’s up there, Michael, with the man in the moon. What do you reckon?’
I thought about what she had said. I wanted to answer her as honestly as I could.
‘I don’t know, Alice, but I don’t think so. I think if Charlie’s anywhere, he’s floating along somewhere, down on the river. Or in someone’s precious car, burning along the empty freeway while everyone else is inside watching the box.’
She sat up, lit another cigarette and threw the empty packet over the rooftop. I watched her light that last cigarette.
‘Alice?’
She did not look at me. She focused out across the rooftops opposite. I slipped my hands into my jacket pocket and I immediately took them out again.
‘Do you want to hold hands, Alice?
She looked at me. I sensed a tinge of anger on her face, and in her voice.
‘What?’
‘Nothing, nothing.’
We turned and faced each other. A wisp of dark hair had fallen across her face. She looked at me just like she had when she yelled at me that day at school. She edged away from me, to the other side of the laundry rooftop. I looked away from her, towards the light above the stairway.