Garage Sales

“I went out last weekend, just for a walk, I find I can’t run anymore. I get a little way from home and I just about can’t get back. 

It was later on Saturday afternoon. I was up near the public school and the power poles had all the usual garage sale signs plastered to them and then I passed one that was still going. 

There was a little boy sitting in the shade with some trestle tables arcing towards the footpath in front of him. There wasn’t much left by that time, I think he was just hoping he might be able to sell a few last trading cards or something. His mum and dad were long gone, probably having a well-earned drink inside after a morning of haggling. 

But there were some beautiful dark glass pharmacy jars, very old. If I try to picture them I think they were shoved in between a baseball glove and a couple of cans of tyre black, you know how random those sales are. 

I said hello to him and picked one of the jars up. I was really tired by then and the sun gets to be too much for my eyes. I couldn’t make out the marks on the bottom of the jar and I held it out and asked if he could read the inscription. He couldn’t either so I picked up one of the other ones and held that out too, and he bent down to see if he could decipher it. 

I have forgotten all about the cuts on my arms. They don’t mean anything to me anymore. But I guess his mum looked out the window and saw a guy with big dark rings around his eyes and marks up his arms asking her son to come a little bit closer. 

She came out and stood behind the boy, put a hand on his shoulder so that he turned to look up at her. “You can have those”, she said. She put her other hand on her hip and stood up straight.

I said, “I must pay you for them though, they’re lovely. We were just trying to see the names on them.”

She didn’t look at the boy at all, she just kept looking at me. And I can’t really hold anyone’s eye these days. “You can have them, just take them and go please.”

I didn’t take the third jar, I just nodded thanks and turned and went, and walked home with a jar in either hand. I was too embarrassed to put them on the shelves where I had imagined them, I just put them away in one of the kitchen cupboards.

I don’t know what made me think of that now, I haven’t thought of them since.”

Decisions

“Everything I do, did, was a decision. 

And you make that decision knowing full well people could die. And I did it every day like it was as simple as putting my boots on.

I left this morning and checked the front door ten times because I didn’t know if it was locked. Then I got to the front gate and checked my pockets, and I didn’t even have the key. So I climbed back in a window to find them, and jumped out it again so I didn’t have to check the door ten times more.

And then I laughed at myself, because it could happen to anyone. 

And then I vomited in the front garden because I am so scared that that is who I will be forever. 

I hate being home. But I have to stand on the inside of the front door with my eyes closed and breathe into an imaginary paper bag before I go anywhere.

Skin

I opened the wardrobe and swept my hand along under the clothes. There were two little girls, on their knees facing each other, hugging each other. I got them out, but I know they didn’t make it. The next time I went to put my gloves on they still had pieces of skin pushed in to the fabric, bright pink. I threw the gloves in the wheelie bin and I lay there all night and I could still smell that skin. I heard the rubbish truck coming and I went down and wheeled that bin out so he did it first. He was looking at me like I was crazy and when the bin went up and tipped in I swear I saw those gloves, watched tiny pieces of skin floating down to the street. I threw up, right there in the gutter, and every glove I put on, straight out of the packet, I can see that skin pushed into the fabric.”

He turned back then towards Andy and there was a coldness in his eyes that made the older man sit back again against the rock.

“I was going to come and see you because I thought I should do whatever it was that you needed to get back to work. You can’t help me. Especially now. I don’t need your kind of help. I can do this, carry on, even if I have to see the skin of a little girl on my gloves forever, I can do this because it needs to be done.”

Stairs

He could see the hallway, the stairs as he climbed quickly, his breath coming in huge gusts when he reached the top. He lunged forwards through the door and came up against the young firie lying across the floor, sweeping the hose before him. Ben clambered over the man and threw his hands up against the mirror of the wardrobe, sliding the door roughly open.

He plunged both hands in, hanging clothes swept across his facemask as he moved forwards and he felt them before he could see anything, two shapes close together. He felt an arm, and then another, wound together. He ran his left hand up the arm and over the body, pulling it to him so that the child draped herself heavily over his squatting knee. He did the same with his right and the girls sat facing each other across his lap as if he was negotiating a sisterly truce. He heaved himself up holding them facing to his chest, roaring with the effort, and ran to the door, down the stairs.

Ben rolled to his side now, facing away from Michelle, and he felt the warmth of his tears.

He knew as he came back up the stairs, the man, and the woman. They were facing the wrong way, they weren’t trying to get out of the room, they were trying to get in. Both had thrown their arms towards the wardrobe in a last plea that the girls be safe.

He should have known. That was what made it all alright, everything, always. That he always knew, no matter what, he always knew those things.

Maybe he was done. Too. He closed his eyes tight, feeling the sticky warmth of his tears pour over his cheeks, pool against the pillow. He could feel the softness of the girl’s hair pushed in beneath his chin, bouncing slowly as he pounded down the stairs.

Waves

He crossed the street and went down onto the sand, far enough that the fingers of yellowish light from the tall poles lining the street petered out before they could reach him where the last of the waves peaked and ebbed.

__

He sat far up on the dune cradling the bottle, the breeze had stilled and the evening was cool, the quiet of the darkness broken each time the large waves crashed and surged up the beach, the night returning to silence as the water pulled back unseen.

He looked up at the cliff above, as dark as the night that had claimed it and marked only by the glow of the streetlights fanning along the road on the crest. The house he had built was up there somewhere, just in behind the glow.

He thought of Elisabeth and saw how her eyes burned that afternoon with so much anger she had waited to voice, how her long thin body seemed to turn in upon itself until it became pure hard steel. She was so strong, he could feel her pushing against him then, and he thought of her mother. He had always wanted to be the strength and had thought for all that time he was. And now he knew he was wrong.

He was suddenly so cold sitting there and got up, walked down the beach a little, patting the sand away from the backs of his legs. He juggled the bottle from hand to hand; a little of the whisky spilled on his wrist and he felt the liquid burn his skin and then go so cold so quickly.

He wanted to feel the water he still could not make out and he flicked his shoes off, pushing the heels down in turn with the other foot and then flicking his toes so the shoes flew away into the dark. He thought he must have drunk a fair bit, wondered if he’d be able to find them again, didn’t even care.

The next wave was so much closer now and Ben stopped still, and waited. There was nothing to see until the roar seemed almost upon him, then the dull white glow of the foaming mass ran in and over his feet, surging so that the water raced up his legs and he felt the bite of the cold water. The wave surged out again and he wobbled about, the bottle held tightly to his chest.

He looked up the cliff face again and could make out the houses that seemed to teeter at the top edge, looking down. He wondered what Elisabeth had told her mum when she got home, what she was doing now. He imagined her sitting in the café with Michelle and tried to picture himself there too, the three of them, and couldn’t do it.

He thought of Michelle, she would be home now, wondering where he was; his phone was in his pocket and he didn’t want to check it. She had already called a couple of times.

A wave came again and he was so far down the beach now that it ran up to his thighs and he had to bend against the surge of the water as it ran out down the slope and tried to take him with it. He took a long drink from the bottle, and then threw it out into the darkness of the water drawing away, his teeth already chattering.

He thought of his mum.

He looked back along the beach, the line of light blurred by the salt that rose and hung in the air, the fire station down there somewhere beyond the last of the dunes.

A long, rolling boom announced the next wave as it came and he threw his head back and roared a reply, a long note swamped as the torrent pounded the sand and swallowed him up. The heaving mass of water bore him down into the sand and kept coming, he felt the strength of his father, pushing him down on the lawn.

He surfaced in a rush as the wave ran away, his clothes so heavy; he was facing back to the beach and he could see his house now he was sure.

She would be okay, he was sure.

He turned as the next wave rolled over him in a huge roiling mass, he was silent this time. And it pushed him so far down, holding him, taunting him, ‘is that enough? Are you scared? Do you want me to let you up now? Do you need someone to understand?’

And he opened his mouth wide, screaming that he was not. He was not scared, he would not rise, and he would not be pushed back. He did not need anyone to understand.

Another wave came and roared into the silence. And it was an end. And it didn’t hurt. Anyone.

He was sure.

Roses

Those windows had been opened early today, welcoming the warmth as it grew and the tall metal frames threw long diagonal slices of darkness across the floor at his feet.

He reached the narrower hallway running away at right angles to her room, and the deep carpet swallowed his footsteps so that he reached her open door unannounced.

He stood on the threshold and looked in, beyond the single bed, to where she sat silent before the window. The long net curtains billowed and swept soft light backwards and forwards across her legs.

He cleared his throat lightly and she looked to him, her face moved a little and she remained facing towards him.

He took a step inside the door and said, “Hello, isn’t it lovely to see the sun?”

She smiled softly as he moved further into the room. He took the other chair from where it stood outside the small bathroom and moved it across so that he could sit near her, near the window, and he sat down.

“You should be at work dear”, she said.

“Not today, I wanted to see you.”

“You never take time off”, she replied, holding his gaze. His father had worked a six day week his whole life, and sick days were for malingerers.

Wisps of long grey hair moved lightly across her face and she would tuck them away behind her ears, smiling absently at their tickling touch.

“It’s a great day for a walk I thought”, he said, “would you like to?”

His mum looked slowly around the room, almost as if she thought she was forgetting something.

“I think I would, yes, I’d like that”, she replied at length.

She rose and he noticed that she had her slippers on. He wondered if she would change into her shoes which stood behind the door but she simply picked up the small handbag that stood next to her bedside table and turned back to face him, ready to leave.

As they turned to go he saw the broad blue hat that he had given her for Christmas hanging from a hook at the back of the door. He stepped to one side and she led the way out the door, and he took the hat down as he passed.

They moved silently down the narrow hallway, passing the doors that stood partially open so that he caught glimpses of the rooms beyond, beds with the heads raised holding narrow bodies with the green blanket and white sheet pulled up under impassive arms.

As they reached the far end of the hall the quick clitter clatter of sensible shoes announced a nurse who turned into their hallway while looking down towards the dining room beyond and pulled up short as she realised his mum was close.

“Hello there”, she said. “Off for a walk?” “Lucky you, your son is very kind.”

His mum turned a little and regarded him, looking down to the hat that covered his hands.

“Yes, I am going for a walk”, she said. “But I’ll be back for lunch. Won’t I?”

“Oh yeah, we won’t be that long”, he replied, smiling at her and then to the nurse beyond.

When they reached the door that would lead outside to the gardens he held the door open for her and then passed in front and held his hand out as she regarded the small pair of steps down to the path. She held his gaze and then lightly placed her hand in his and stepped down. “Thank you”, she said. “That’s not like you.”

As she moved ahead he thought of his father. She was right of course. His father held the door for a lady always. But never her hand.

Whenever they had walked as a couple he would take up a position one pace behind over her left shoulder, as if slightly on guard.

The gardens teemed with rose bushes and the blooms threw themselves wide in the heat, basking. Bees busied themselves from one to the other and back again.

“You’ve always been a man for the deepest reds haven’t you”, she said at last.

Ben had never gardened. He had planted shrubs that no one could kill and run drip irrigation hoses to them just in case. Once a year he remembered to make a show of pruning this and fertilising that but his father would have shaken his head in disgust.

The home his mum remembered had whole regiments of rose bushes down both sides of the path that neatly dissected the front lawn. The rows turned in perfect right angles at the front gate and marched away along the low brick wall that marked the front edge of the immaculate lawn.

Ben looked over to her and said, “I thought the reds were your favourites?”

She turned to him quizzically. “You’re teasing me now. You put the white ones, my favourites, at each corner. Just for me you said.”

He remembered them then. The whites so bright you had to look away, perfectly framing the edges of the front yard.

He remembered a Sunday in the middle of one of the school holidays. His mum brought toast to the table and said, “Dad is taking you down to the park after your breakfast.”

This never happened and he didn’t quite know what to do with himself. He usually spent all day dodging wearing shoes but this seemed important so he dug his trainers out of the wardrobe and found some socks.

When he came back through to the front of the house he could see dad waiting at the front gate. They walked the short distance to the park side by side, walking in silence, but it was a good silence, not like one when dad was at the breakfast table and just wanted his paper and absolute quiet.

They had moved across the field and lobbed kicks to each other, gradually moving further and further apart. His dad roared his delight when after launching a huge spiralling bomb into the air Ben had stood his ground and waited and waited, and then heard the unmistakeable ‘Clump!’ as the ball hurtled into his chest and he clutched it tight, collapsing backwards onto the grass.

They ran at each other, mimicking their favourite players and he threw himself at dad’s legs attempting tackles. Dad would fend him off roughly, push him down to the ground, and then reef him back up in as much of a hug as Ben had ever known.

He was exhausted when his father finally lobbed a kick towards the archway leading back towards their street. They walked home with their silence matching the stillness of the late afternoon, Ben clutching the ball under his arm and looking up to his dad every now and again.

His dad was busy the week after that. Each day Ben would put his trainers on and sit on the bed just in case. But his dad would come home and take the paper and sit in his chair as he always did, and Ben would put the trainers away and help his mum with the tea.

Towards the end of the week he had taken his ball out to the back yard as he always did. It was later in the afternoon than normal because he and mum had spent the day visiting relatives. The shadows of the tall conifers that lined the back fence covered the lawn entirely and the warmth of the day was gone so that the grass nipped at Ben’s feet.

He ran down the side of the house ducking under hanging branches and the sunlight called to him from the front lawn.

He burst out onto the glowing grass and dived theatrically to score a try in the corner.

He stood up twirling the ball and then began to recreate the games he had played with dad. He kicked the ball straight up, a little higher each time, bringing his leg right through as his dad had shown him. He made each catch easily and finally leaned back and kicked the ball as hard as he could, watching it soar into the cloudless sky, marvelling that he had done this.

A little breeze played in the hedges and the ball seemed to move away from him a little so that he took a step, and another, and as he was about to take a third he realised how close he was to the rose bushes and the tall hedges behind.

The ball plummeted down, smashing into one of the bushes with a cymbal crash, white petals cascading everywhere. The ball cannoned off the bush and struck him hard in the face, sending him sprawling.

He got up on all fours and saw the roses strewn everywhere and thought that he should pick them up and put them back, they made the lawn look so dishevelled and unlike itself. He touched his chin and there was a little blood, a petal came away stuck to his hand. He got half way up and then felt a huge, sharp pain course across the back of his head and he went down, rushing forwards.

His father stood over him, turned him over roughly using one strong arm so that Ben looked up to the face hidden by the sun behind and saw the blackness of the balled fist rush down to him, again and again.

He looked at the hat he still held and as his mum turned to him he held it out, and she took it with a smile. Brushed her hair back with one hand and put it on.

“How do I look dear, you always have been such a one for hats on a woman?”

“You look wonderful, as always”, he replied.

“Listen to you, you charmer”, she said and her face lit up.

He remembered the hallway cupboard with its neatly hung raincoats and umbrellas, and her hats. His father had always taken a coat when he went out, even if just to drape across his arm.

When they went out as a family he would take one of the grey coats for himself, and one for her. He would turn and she would point to the hat she wanted for the day and the outfit, and he would take it down from the hooks carefully, and pass it to her as they turned to the door. She loved hats and would put it on just so, and look up to him, she would beam at him, toss her head a little, and then slowly the smile would leak away, as his father simply nodded and held the door.

They continued on down the gentle slope of the path, the unseen coast beyond marked by the gulls that lolled in the currents of warm air above.

She tired so easily these days and soon he found one of the benches alongside the path, dappled in shade. The timbers of the bench were worn and coloured with age, the small plaque on the top rail illegible now. He waited as she came up to him and then slowly took a seat. He sat down next to her at last, close but not touching.

They nodded hellos to people passing now and again, and the morning passed.

“What vegetables do you think you’ll put in next?” She asked out of the silence.

“What would you like?”

“Claire loves broccoli now.”

His sister had always loved broccoli. He could imagine her now, ordering it on the side with pork belly in some super chic New York diner.

“Broccoli it is.”

“You usually don’t stand for being told what to grow.”

“Leopards can change their spots.”

She looked to him then and smiled. “Elisabeth likes broccoli too I think.”

He looked at his mum. She had not seen his daughter in so long now. Yet the Elisabeth she had known, the little girl, had loved broccoli. Had loved to sit up on the bench next to the chopping board and eat tiny slivers raw as he cut up the pieces for dinner.

The sun stood high above them now and their shadows hid in underneath the bench.

“I think it must be about lunchtime”, she said.

He squinted into the glaring face of his watch and saw that it was a few minutes before midday.

“It is indeed”, he answered.

He stood up and looked away over her head towards the buildings. She rose slowly and took a moment to straighten her skirt, reset the hat on her head.

They moved slowly back up the gentle incline with him slightly behind her. She slowed and took a last look at the roses but did not stop. He moved ahead at the last and held the door open and with his other took her hand as she negotiated the steps back up into the shade.

They made their way back to her room, where she took off the hat and placed it on the bed, and then went into the bathroom. He could hear her brushing her hair slowly, splashing water across her face. She came back to join him at last and he stood to one side so that she might lead the way back out to the corridor.

A young woman was coming towards them with a trolley laden with linen and soaps, cleaners. She smiled and said “hello”.

Ben looked at the name tag high on her uniform and said “Hi, Janelle, I don’t think we’ve met?”

“No, I’m quite new, just a week or so, so far.”

His mum looked to him then and he stood up a little straighter. “Janelle, this is Mrs Eloise Johnson. She is in room 404.”

His mum turned and said “hello”, to Janelle.

He had always loved the sound of his mum’s name. His father had such a strong, deep voice when it rolled over its vowels, it was something special to listen to him introduce her just so.

She seemed happy with the introduction. Not his best nor his worst. Janelle looked at him and smiled and said “I’d better let you get past to lunch.”

They made their way out into the corridor and a woman came towards his mum, a usual lunch time companion he guessed.

He longed to hold his mum then, hug her right in close as he had when a little boy.

But he stood as his father would have, hands clasped in front of him, nodding a hello to the woman when she paused at his mum’s side.

“Would you like me to walk you down?” he asked.

“No, I’ve taken up enough of your day dear, they’ll need you at work.”

He nodded and then took a step back, clearing the way for them to begin.

His mum stepped over to him then and pushed her arms in under his, her head against his chest.

She looked up, then kissed him on the cheek, holding his face close to hers with one delicate hand. She lowered her arms at last and stepped back, taking the hand of the other woman without ever taking her eyes from his.

“You don’t ever have to change your spots.”

Sun

It was cold, the sun was out yet he was cold with a wind that came soundlessly from behind him. 

He was sitting at the head of the table. One endless table which seemed to stretch so far away that it disappeared amongst the trees lined bare to the darkening hills. There were no chairs, just his. Nothing more.

He stood up and turned slowly, narrowing his eyes and hunching against the growing breeze, and there was nothing. The sky was bare and colourless, yet the sun waned as if hidden in cloud. 

It was so cold. He pulled his arms in tight and held himself and the pain came fierce and loud so that he threw his arms wide and blood spattered the ground as the wind grew and howled.

The sun was going, the blood on the ground black. The sun was gone, and everything was black. And the cold became everything. Became nothing.

Rain

His glass was empty and he bent to the task of refilling it, yet the bottle gave only a meagre morsel, he looked at it as if there must be some mistake, held it up to the light, and then took it with him through to the kitchen and dropped it lightly into the recycling. He pulled the blind down over the sink, went through to his bedroom and pulled the curtains shut. Taking the blanket he went back to the spare bedroom and grabbed another bottle, passed down the hallway closing doors and then sank back into the armchair hoping some of his warmth remained.

The television showed images of buildings leaning drunkenly, reduced to piles of concrete dust with groups of dazed people standing at the edge of the shot, strange assortments of possessions in their arms. They looked so tired and spent, he knew that at least, shared that with them, he was so incredibly tired.

He felt his selfishness again, he was tired because he spent so many nights hiding from the things the man in the car had demanded he face now, demanded in that silent, immutable way.

He took a cushion off the sofa and threw it down to the head of the long rectangle of the heavy rug running across the face of the fireplace and cast the blanket wide so that it fluttered down and covered the rug. He moved the glass and bottle down the length of the coffee table to where he would be able to reach them, and switched off the lamp. Slipping in beneath the heavy woollen blanket he leaned on one elbow and took a long draw on the glass.

Down low now it seemed he was part of the bright images which kept coming from the screen and leaping across the dark room, so that the faces with their huge, harrowing eyes were there at the end of the rug. He was so tired, yet sleep was the furthest thing from his mind.

 He propped himself on an elbow and finished the glass, reached for the bottle, and again it gave next to nothing. He did not question this this time, didn’t care, and simply left it next to the coffee table and got up and went down the hallway.  

He grabbed another bottle, pulling it roughly out of the carton so that those remaining clanked a protest and he shoved a knee against the box to make sure it stayed where it was. The wind began in under the eaves, the one that whispers warnings of rain chasing close behind, and he stood for some time watching his blurry silhouette fill the blank windows. The iron of the garage roof beyond signalled the pattering of a shower coming and going, the beginning of the rain that would fill the night and he thought of how he should head to bed, how he wished there could be someone already there, someone longing for him and his warmth, his arms.

He went back to the lounge, the trees outside murmuring as the rain grew. Crawling back in under the blanket he took the top off the bottle, and then could not see where the glass had ended up and didn’t really care so he simply put the bottle to his mouth. He sat forward now with the blanket pulled up around him, the bottle nestled in his lap throwing the light of the big screen back as the images moved and changed. He did not really hear the words anymore, what he could not escape were those eyes, every shot seemed to hold a little girl, an older woman her face a patchwork of creases, or a man who simply stood and stood, and stared. And each one looked at him, each one knew that Andy had seen pain, really seen pain. And every one of them knew too that he had brought that pain as often as he had taken it away.

Their eyes showed that they had no choice but to stand before such pain, and endure, they did not bring it, and yet they could do nothing to stop it or take it away.

He had had the luxury of choices that they had not.

He raised the bottle high and drank, and he felt the wine fill him and the disconnection begin. He wanted his knife then, he wanted to feel it in his hands as he always did in times such as that. But more, he wanted to know he was worthy of sitting before these people and the things they endured, for them to believe that he could be that selfless, that he had done things that would stand for all time, as well as all the bad.

He got up unsteadily and went down the hallway to the table near the front door. His wallet and phone sat there still, he swiped the screen of the phone and saw that he had missed nothing. But there was no knife with them. There should have been, he knew. He checked under the table, stumbling forwards a little and steadying himself against the wall. He fumbled around the dark space inside the door, in case he had dropped it as he came in, knowing full well he had not.

He went through to the kitchen and scanned the bench tops, the floor. His beautiful chef’s knives stood at the far end of the bench and he took the largest of them from the holder, remembering the feeling when he had been given the set as a gift, and times when he and she had used that knife, there. He went back to the lounge and sat down on the floor, not worrying about the blanket he reached for the bottle and drank with his head thrown back.

Andy was so close to the screen now with his legs crossed as much as he could these days, and the man looked at him, standing before his home and his dead children he looked straight at Andy and Andy raised the knife, showed the man, and Andy cried the tears that the man was so far beyond. And he took the knife in his right hand and watched as it described a long, deliberate arc across the whiteness of his left arm, angling down from his elbow towards his wrist.

It hurt a great deal the first time.

He moved the knife across his arm again, and again, and it hurt. But a little less each time.

He swapped the knife to his left hand and it was much easier to begin on his right arm.

He drank long from the bottle sometimes, and then began again. The knife became sticky and when he drank some of the label would come off on the tips of his fingers and he would have one of those silly fights with himself trying to knock the pieces off with his other hand and only managing to transfer the fragments from one hand to the other.

The bottle finished and he got another without thought, and then it would be drink, three or four cuts, drink, three or four more, like that.

Blood ran into the heavy dark material of his trousers, blotched the floor where he placed his hands to steady himself.

He thought of the faces he had seen, people who had put themselves beyond his help, beyond any. He knew the crazy strength they had in those moments, sitting in his own blood, alone.

It was pain he wanted most, not death. Pain that would run out of him in long slow lines.

So that the man on the screen, all the men and women on the screen could know that at last he could admit what pain is. So the man and the woman on the hill would know. They would trust, at last, that he could never do such terrible things again.

There was no denial anymore. If he could have, if it would have helped anyone, if it would have undone anything, he would have done these things for all to see.

He was very tired now and he stretched out along the rug with his head turned away from the television. He could not think where the remote was, whatever it was too far away now. He cradled his head on his arm at the edge of the cushion and watched the dark liquid gather slowly beneath him and run across the floor towards the hearth of the fireplace. He saw it fill the gaps between the wide boards and then quietly run on again.

He heard the rain grow again in intensity and absently pulled the blanket up to cover him, feeling the stickiness holding the heavy material to the skin of his neck. The rain seemed to throb and he closed his eyes so that the blood behind his ears began to match its time to the strength of the sound outside.

He curled himself up a little more seeking warmth, pushed his head down into the crook of his arm and felt his hair stick to the skin, clump up and pull whenever he moved.

He slept at last, dreamless, lifeless.

The light of the television playing out over him unseen in stuttering bursts, the rain coming still, heavy and constant.

Strength

This time he went back through the engine bay to the small space with all of their turn out gear hung ready, meaning to find the clean tunic and over pants ready as spares on his rung. When he stood before them, and touched them, the clothes seemed so huge and heavy that he could not imagine that he had ever had the strength to wear them, the presence to fill them. Waves of nausea ran over Andy until he had to let go of the thick material of the tunic, his hands greasy and cold.

He hurried back through to the bathrooms at the back of the locker room, went into a cubicle and sat down heavily, closing his eyes.

When he was sure he would not vomit he opened them again, to the colourless tones of the sterile place, off whites on greys. He cried so heavily he had to hold his powerful hands down onto his legs as they shook uncontrollably. He wiped at his face and ran his wet hands over his trousers, and his fingers ran over the knife at his belt, and he took it out of its cover, turned it over and over and opened the biggest blade.

He put the blade up to his throat and it bit in so much more quickly than he had expected, easily, and he thought how this could be done with, so quickly.

The white tiles of the wall, the dull greys of the floor and the back of the door glared at him. He could see the depth of the colour his blood would bring, streaking across the emptiness. He could feel the floppiness he knew so well from all those cars, of arms and legs once the blood doesn’t run anymore. Thought of the stickiness that covers everything, how it would mat the hair of their arms as they wrenched him out of the coldness of that place. Those men upstairs, those to come soon.

He sat deathly still, the pain had stilled his breathing, and the tears too. All these years of being alone seemed to have become one moment of sheer loneliness here in such a place.

He could not bring pain to these men too, not here.

He folded the blade and put the knife away, his hands shaking so that it took some time. He stood slowly, weakly and listened, no sound came from the locker room and he went out and stood at the row of sinks, cupping water onto his face over and over, not wanting to see himself in the mirrors.

On the hill, in the night.

This is a piece of a manuscript I have completed, the piece that I began with and that makes the easiest sense to me.

The blued world is silent outside the windows of the truck, the air itself made whole with the weight of the cold that has come as they slept; growing steadily into these early hours. Andy is trying to concentrate on the simple piece of paper in his hand and yet his eyes are drawn back to the windscreen over and again, the huge tracts of starlight rendering the world utterly beyond the need for sound. His eyes take so long to focus these days, especially after the rush to wakefulness with the shrill call of the bells, the glaring lights of the station rousing itself to action. They know the stretch of road so well from nights before when cars have rushed through the emptiness that Andy has time, lets his eyes wander.

The sleek truck cuts easily through the streets so that they too seem soundless. Andy hunches down a little in the passenger seat, cradling the pool of soft yellow light that comes from above his head with the reading light on and picks out the scant information of the printout that guides them to the car wreck somewhere ahead where the houses run out and the road climbs into the hills.

He looks over to the blurred shape of Ben, the gentle points of light from the dashboard instruments rise to his impassive face, get caught in the crazy spikes of hair that betray the depth of his recent sleep, and run out in strange fingers of shadow on the roof of the truck’s cabin.

They are there soon, Andy leans forwards and takes a big breath, leans back hard into the seat and pushes his boots into the footwell, opening his eyes wide and willing himself fully awake. The truck turns at the bare crest of the hill where the roads meet, roaring to pick up speed and then running fast down the slope beyond as the empty expanse of the long snaking coastal road beckons them down. A woman stands and waves her arm high above her head as the headlights of the truck sweep around to pick her out, she is up on tip-toe with her eyes wide and staring as she stands in the haven of the passenger door of her car. As their lights bears down she runs a hand through her hair, tugs at her blouse straightening the collar. The headlights of her car run lines through the low, broken bush just far enough to pick out the dulled red shape that seems to be hiding, ostrich like, in the low bush beyond.

Andy gets out, as he is stepping down the cold engulfs him, and he moves quickly as much to bring some warmth as to begin the things that must be done now. The two men come together in front of the truck and cross the gravelly verge. Ben reaches the woman first where she has stepped gingerly up to the top of a small embankment. She points incredulously, impotently, towards the car down through the broken stumps of scrubby bush and clumps of raised soil, “there are a man and a woman in there, I didn’t know what to do…. I heard you, I thought you might go past”.

Ben thanks her, tells her she is doing a great job, her arm is still stretched out in front of her, pointing, and he takes her elbow and turns her a little, back towards the road and her silent car. “Others are coming now, the ambulance and the police, can you go back and make sure they see us too?”

Andy will be the one to decide what is to be done and he has stepped beyond the other two, towards the car, taking a breath and stilling his mind, running through the checklists he creates each time so that he will not miss anything. He has a torch in his hand and tentatively picks his way across the ground, the trail of small pieces of metal and rubber and glass catching the beam of the torch and he begins to hear the ticking of cooling metal.

In an instant everything is thrown into harsh light, and the torn ground before him becomes a patchwork of glowing orange and impenetrable black. Tufts of long grass stand at crazy angles in verdant green. Ben has put up the light towers on the roof of the truck and there will be no need of the torch. Andy tenses a little as he always seems to now in the light and looks back towards the truck with silly memories of war movies he loved as a boy with prisoners running away from spotlights, and something much more, a feeling that now there is no hiding, that everything will be seen until the lights go down again.

He turns and sets out quickly towards the car and he can see the face of a woman in the passenger seat, she follows his approach intently in the wing mirror of her closed door, her eyes fighting the pin points of glare the truck’s lights make, refusing to blink, refusing to let go until he is with her.

Andy reaches the door and her open window, the glass scattered about announces him and she looks up into his face as he bends down and places his hand on her arm.

“Hi, I’m Andy”, he says, running his eyes down the length of her narrow body and then across the car to the man slumped in the driver’s seat and finally over to the back seat, empty. “Just the two of you?”

“Yes”, she says, her voice is clear and very deep, her eyes widen further as she speaks and he knows that it has not had this depth before. Her eyes seem to run over him in waves, and he exhales slowly so that he might recapture a little of the peace the silence and the stars have brought so recently. In that moment he feels her arm relax a little, sees her chest rise and fall, and he has done what he wanted to, and can begin.

He stands up straight, away from the window for a moment and takes a long breath, soaking up the cold and the darkness and the silence now as the adrenalin begins and he is hot and fidgety, and then he hears Ben’s voice coming from the other side of the car. Bending down he sees the bright lights behind them and the depth of shadow thrown by the broken trees painting Ben’s face in stripes as he looks across the cabin of the car to meet Andy’s eye.

Andy smells the fuel that runs away unseen, the perfume and the aftershave, the blood, the soil and the bush.

The car leans drunkenly towards the man and Ben has to crouch down to the window on his side, the door he rests his gloved hand on is a mess of shapes and smeared with soil, and the steering wheel is bent all out of shape sitting down hard in the man’s lap. Andy cannot see the man’s leg, or his arm lost in the mess of the broken innards of the door. He has seen this set of a man’s body many times, the way he closes his eyes and measures his breath before he will open them and meet Andy’s eyes, or those of his wife.

It was just before 1am when they left the station and the ballet programme rests in the lap of the woman still, the beautiful sweep of the arm of the ballerina is matched by the arc of dark red that flows across the cover from the bottom edge of the glossy paper. She has raised her hand tentatively to her face, dabbed gently at the edges and retreated, not wanting to think of what that slow throbbing pain and warmth might mean and placing her hand deliberately back in her lap.

The radio is playing, the blue lights of the stereo dull and slightly askew in the dash. The music remains whole, bubbly and oblivious and Ben reaches across the man’s chest and switches the sound off.

The warmth of the air conditioning is waning and Andy feels it escape through the space of the broken window, feels how quickly the cold returns, seeming to rise out of the ground and desperately claw at the car now that it stands so still and quiet.

He reaches into one of the many pockets of his over-trousers and takes a sterile pad. Opening the package below the line of the window and keeping the pad cradled and hidden in the pit of his palm he places his gloved hand gently at the woman’s temple in one unhurried movement. The man eyes are locked upon Andy in that moment, and Andy knows the thoughts those huge eyes hold.

The man’s unblinking eyes will Andy to take the pain from her, if he could take it all for himself he would. Andy can see how the man’s body tenses and feels what it means for him to be held, entrapped in this crazy mess, away from her, away from helping her now.

He knows the clear, gentle strength that the man’s voice would hold for her, anywhere but here, now. He is about Andy’s age and their bodies match in size. Andy hears his own voice then, and it holds all that strength, and gentleness, and the couple look to each other, as if the man himself has spoken.

Andy knows them, this man and woman. He has been him, in fragments, and has allowed women to be her for him, in fragments.

Very quickly Andy opens the door, using his weight to push it forward unnaturally and then tie it to the bumper using one of the short ropes he always has in his uniform pockets. The woman seems tiny in the open space and incongruous in her gown, sitting with the seatbelt still fastened, raised off the ground with the buckling of the car.

Andy puts his hand back to her temple as if this is the most natural thing to do and with the other reaches across and undoes the seatbelt. He takes the programme from the woman’s lap and puts it down on the floor next to her small feet, and then as if to ask the woman to dance he holds his hand out, palm up. She looks to her husband then, and she does not want to go. The man smiles gently, looking at her and then moving his eyes deliberately to Andy and she follows his eyes, takes Andy’s hand and steps down gingerly to the broken earth beneath. And in that moment she is gone, the ambos and their blanket swallowing her up, leading her away so that the huge rounded shadow of them all close together passes over the car. Andy moves quickly, getting in at the passenger side so that he is close to the man now, and to Ben, their three heads almost touching as he and Ben follow the light of their torches down the length of the man searching for what it is that holds him here, makes his breathing shallow.

The second truck from their station has arrived, the slower, lumbering ‘pump’, full of water, bringing the men who do all the little things around them at these jobs, stabilising, lugging equipment back and forth, taking the mess away, things Andy has shown them over and over. They run hose from the truck and come back quickly carrying the tools they will use to dismantle the car, the stretcher, the blankets they will need when the man comes out at last.

Sam comes quickly and quietly to the space behind Andy at the passenger door and begins to place stabilising blocks beneath the car. Andy turns and gets out of the car, placing a hand on Sam’s shoulder as he passes, “Good, good, we’ll get the gear dump at the boot, where we can see it all Sam.”  Andy goes back around the car, and the boss meets him as he passes, “We’ll take the roof off”, Andy says, “and then we’ll see”.

Sam and the others bring the gear, start the pump to power the tools, set up lights to take away the final shadows, and the ambo’s use the space Andy has created to be with the man, their lines of fluids running from the bonnet of the car, the monitors beeping in indecipherable sounds and flashing colours.

It is hard work they rush into, their breath beginning to billow about the men as they move back and forth, back and forth, bringing the heavy things they need. Andy and Ben break the glass of the windows, cut through the heavy, crazily scored remains of the windscreen and they are ready to take the roof off.

Andy make his cuts quickly, the hydraulics pushing blades easily through metal, so that soon the weight of the roof is in the hands of the men spread around the car and they walk it away forwards, into the bush. The ambo’s spread more comfortably around the man then, and look to Andy, something in the beeping of the machines and the way his arm disappears into the innards of the door tells them he needs to be out soon. They run more fluids into the man, more lines, but he doesn’t talk to them as he did and urgency is all around Andy and Ben now.

They take pieces of the door one after the other. Sweat envelops them beneath the heavy uniforms. As if surgeons they turn to Sam and he gives and takes pieces of equipment as they need them, each piece of the car feels heavier in Andy’s hands as he works at the door.

They are done at last and the arm is free but it is not an arm anymore and the ambo’s do what they can, clustering around the space at the driver’s door with bandages and pads they rip from the large gear bags lying across the back seat and tossing the plastic wrappings away. Still the man is not free, and the insistent beeping of the machines seems to own the space now, stridently mocking them all.

Andy is sweating so heavily that he must take off his gloves as they slop about his hands, he half turns and shakes each in turn into the freezing cold of the air outside the small space left between the legs of the man and the crumpled footwell of the car. The orange earth has burst in as they took the door off and Andy has to dig it out, scooping it back under his body like a dog at the beach. He can see nothing it is so dark and there is Ben, knowing his thoughts, knowing this crazy, terrible thing they do together so well. Ben’s torch touches the shoulder of Andy’s tunic and lights the space. Andy looks up to see Sam on the far side of the car, sweat and dirt in lines on his face, tugging the long cable of the light that he sits on the sill of the open doorway so that light spills down to the feet of the man.

One of the ambo’s leans down into the space from the back seat and says quietly “We’ve got to go”, Andy looks again at the mess around the man’s feet and knows that there is no time for this to be what they had hoped as they began. He feels Ben and Sam quicken around him, knowing this just as he does.

Andy places his hand gently on the man’s ankle, where it seems to disappear behind the bend of the brake pedal, and in that moment the man puts his one good hand on Andy’s shoulder, and squeezes hard. Andy feels so much strength, and he can feel that something so whole can still come to an end, that there is nothing that will change that. He looks up as best he can, and the man is looking straight at him, to the very depth of everything that no one has ever seen. There is nothing in the man’s eyes other than an understanding. Andy turns back to his work, he must, and they have said all that they need to.

The feet of the man are there, but they face in directions they should not. They are stylish shoes, the sort Andy would ask the man about in a different world. They are a beautiful deep brown, but now this has become a deep red and the floor carpet mimics the shoes. The pedals the man’s feet worked so recently have become misshapen and entangle the cuffs of the man’s trousers.

Andy says without turning, quietly as Ben is so close, “I just need my knife”. And Ben knows exactly where the knife is, raises Andy’s tunic at the back and takes the silver knife from its sheath on the belt of his sodden trousers, opens the blade and passes it into Andy’s waiting hand. When he cuts the grey material and it tears away from the dark, bent metal, the weight of the man’s body takes him back into the seat they have lain down and he is free, yet the shoes remain exactly as they had been. As he rises and brings the man’s legs out of the space with him Andy realises the man is still looking at him, and he can hear the gentleness and the strength again. The man simply holds his gaze for a long moment and then closes his eyes.

There is a rush of movement and they have the man out of the car, onto the board waiting, and together the firies and ambo’s carry him quickly away over the rough ground, ambo’s holding the lines and the bags of fluid high, stumbling, bodies coming together, until finally they are over the embankment, onto the gravel and out into the road.

The ambulance is gone just like that, rising silently to the crest of the road so that its red and blue lights mingle for a moment with the stars pouring down, and then there is nothing. Andy stands facing up the hill. He is so tired that with his hands thrust into the pockets of his tunic his shoulders slump towards each other and he takes a step forwards to catch himself. It is so cold now they have finished, his saturated shirt sticking to his back, sweat pooling at his neck so that he fixes his tunic collar high and pushes his chin down into it.

There is a strange feeling of anticlimax. After so much noise and furious action.

It is often this way for Andy now. As if the performance began to a packed auditorium, and then as they reached the climax the audience discovered this was not the ending they wanted, these were not the things they wanted the actors to say and do. One last chaotic crescendo and everyone heading loudly for the exits, and then the lights were turned out, and there was only an empty silence.

He pushes his hands further down into the depth of the big pockets of his tunic and turns a little towards Ben, standing just as he, a little further over, a little further up the hill. They are completely alone, the other men busy already with the process of packing up all the gear they have used, rolling the heavy hoses back up the hill to the truck, wiping the dark earth from everything. The boss talks with the police somewhere behind them, his voice disembodied in the dark as the deep silence steals back over the crest of the hill knowing it will own this space again soon.

“I knew those people Ben.”

Ben turned to Andy, his eyes huge and hurting, a deep crease shadowing his forehead as he ran a hand roughly back over his head, slicking down his sodden hair. “What? Who are they?”

“I don’t mean like that. I mean there was something there, between us. He knew me, knew all about me, before he went. So did she.

That was what made it so hard for her to leave him with us.

She didn’t know how bad he was, we managed to hide that well, like we always do. She knew all the bad that there has ever been in me though. That’s never happened before. Anyone who can see all those things is going to wonder how I can ever do this, how it can be me sent to help them.”

“You did help them, no one could have helped them more.”

“I know that’s true. But that’s not the point.

The point is all the pain I’ve ever heaped on others was right there and I couldn’t hide any of it. Somehow they knew all those things, all that weakness, all the weakness in me still.

He told me that I can’t keep tearing everything else to pieces anymore, that all those things are not made alright by this work we do.”

“Don’t say that. We finish in the morning Andy, we don’t have to do this for a week at least. This will just be the last one we did by the time we come back to work, and you’ll wonder what made you think so much of it.”

“It is just the last one we did. But it’s the one that has been coming for a long time, and I can’t ignore it like I have so many other things.”

Ben looked back towards the other men, down the hill, beavering away towards getting back to the warmth of the station, a shower. He stomped each foot in turn in his big, dirty boots, anyone happening to see would have thought the cold trickling over the hill had crept up his legs unseen. Andy saw the way Ben shook his head, and then again quickly, little movements as if he shooed something away.

“Don’t say those things Andy. This is what we do. You are great at this. What more could you have done? This isn’t about anything other than you thinking that guy should be alive.”

“He was always going to die Ben, that’s not the point. He gave me more than I have to give anyone. I owe it to him to listen to the things he said.”

“He didn’t say a freakin word Andy!”

“You heard him Ben, I know you did. When we were there at the end, and he touched me on the shoulder, who was helping who then? I looked at that woman, at the complete trust she had in him, and she became my wife, and how I ran away from everything until she couldn’t trust me. He had so much to give even then, he put me to shame.”

Ben turned back sharply towards Andy, the hurt in his eyes imploring the older man to listen and stop this.

“He was just letting you know it was okay, that he knew it was coming and there was nothing he could do.”

“No, he held on so tight because he didn’t trust I had the strength to admit to the things he was telling me he knew.”

“That’s insane, he wasn’t saying anything.” Ben hissed these last words, sure the men down the hill could hear this craziness. He moved away as he spoke, down the hill, past the boss and over the embankment, joining the others as they went out towards the car again.

Andy watched him go and followed very slowly, hands still in his pockets. He passed behind the boss. Bob turned and looked at Andy as he went. “We’ll have a chat when the guys have all the gear back Andy, just a quick one and then we’ll get out of the cold.”

“Great”, Andy replied, without stopping. He climbed the small embankment and looked down to the car, and then far beyond to the line of street lights that marked the quiet coast and its sleeping homes. He imagined beds and warmth, sleepers seeking each other. He thought of the couple, how close they had come to reaching that warmth, sanctuary. How the man would have been there for her, his long strong legs accepting those delicate cold feet.

He smiled at each man in turn as they came towards him. They weaved about with the fatigue and the lights in their faces and the uneven ground. They bumped together with him lightly as each in turn passed over the embankment and he would slap their backs and murmur words of thanks.

There was nothing much left with the car when he got back to it. He picked up a couple of the blocks that Sam had used and circled around the bonnet, letting his torch beam play slowly, searching for little things forgotten and dropped. These scenes always seemed so surreal when they were done. As if they existed only for this time, a door opened to something which would never exist again. He could imagine his torch beam startling a huge beast lurking under the grille, a ghoul eyeing him from the sentinel bush.

And he burst into tears, stunning, huge tears. He stood with his back to the car as he heaved with the release of pain he had stored and forgotten as he looked out into the depth of the night.

The tears slowed in time. He was so messy, dried sweat and dirt and oil on his face already, that he didn’t even bother to wipe his face.

He finished his slow circuit and looked back towards the lights of the trucks, saw that the others had grouped at the rear of the pump. The lights on the rescue went down and his torch swung slowly from its hook on his tunic to pick out his careful steps on the way back to join them.

As Andy came up to the quiet group he saw that Ben had positioned himself as far away as possible, directly opposite where Andy now joined the rough circle.

The boss took a moment, looked to Andy and then began. “Good job guys, a hard one. But we did a good job I think, you agree Andy?”

Andy looked across to Ben, saw him tense a little, unsure of the answer that Andy would give and not wanting to hear again the words they had shared up the hill.

“Everyone here can be proud of what we did. I always think that.” Andy hadn’t looked away from Ben, and he saw the younger man visibly relax, move a little, shuffle his feet around. “That doesn’t mean this is easy, that maybe one day you won’t start to wonder what it has left for you to give in other ways when you’re done with this.”

Andy stopped then, looked around the circle and watched his words as they crossed each face in turn. Ben had turned away, intent on picking out one of those houses dark down on the coast, and the boss broke the silence. “Anyone want to say anything more?” He stepped forward imperceptibly as he said it and the others moved a little here and there, and shook their heads quietly.

“Good, let’s get out of the cold, we can talk more back at the station.” He looked at Andy as he said this and they held each other’s eyes. They had been friends so many years, had been here so many times. Andy did not want to ever let this man down.

The men walked quickly away and climbed to their seats in the pump, the heavy truck lumbering around in a wide arc, straining to the rise of the hill, and then it was gone.

Ben moved around the rescue and Andy heard the driver’s door close. He stood a moment and then slowly moved over and climbed up to the passenger seat, closing the door as he shimmied around getting comfortable.

Ben drove quickly on the way back, slicing back down the familiar streets so that they were soon close up behind the pump as its swaying shape neared the station. They backed the trucks in and the men fell to the task of cleaning and replenishing and replacing, so that soon the trucks were exactly as they had been when those bells had called them in the night. There was never much talk at such times, the men were tired and sore so that they kept going until all was as it should be, and then they raced to the showers, tearing off layers of saturated clothing and revelling in the warmth.

Andy moved slowly, deliberately, and when he finally crossed the engine bay the showers were silent, puddled footprints the only remnants of the men come and gone. He took his time in the warm water and in the selection of the clothes he put on in front of his locker once dry. Finally he climbed the stairs towards the rooms above.

Normally he would simply moved quietly down the hallway to the bedroom that had been his private space for years now, place his clothes over the back of the office chair neatly so that he was ready for whatever came next, face his boots to the door, and quietly climb back into the single bed.

But there was nothing normal about this night and instead as he reached the top of the stairs he passed through the open doorway into the kitchen, the shadowed mess room with its long dining table beyond. He stood at the empty bench and made himself a strong coffee knowing that he would not sleep, wouldn’t even try. The building was old enough that the windows were beautiful in their size and wooden joinery and the tall expanse of the kitchen window reflected the empty room back to him from its four large panels. He saw his long frame there in the corner of each pane of glass, tiny in the simplicity of his dark blue t-shirt and trousers, socks on his feet.

He took his coffee over to the long table and sat half way down on one side, facing back across the room towards the light of the kitchen so that he didn’t have to turn on the bright neon above his head, looking towards the open door to the hallway beyond as he took up the newspaper. The building was deathly quiet and Andy turned the pages quietly, knowing how deep sleep can be after something such as what they had just done.

The paper was the broadsheet Herald that Andy brought from home to catcalls about having tickets on himself. The tabloid alternative sat at the head of the table as always, dog-eared where men had passed by, flicking through the pages until they found a headline that would spark the next debate over football or mortgages, politicians or celebrities.

He carefully divided the paper into its many sections and found himself drawn to the Travel section which he placed on top of the pile and opened. He had no holidays planned. The words held him for a time, he read of a train in the Canadian mountains and a backpacker misadventure in Cambodia. His attention wandered half way through each article so that he had to stop and come back to them after a time, and finally decided he wasn’t really that interested to begin with. He brought the business section to the top of the pile, turning pages absently. He reached for his coffee and realised it was stone cold, it surprised him, and he looked across to the winking lights of the clock on the microwave high up amongst the kitchen shelves and realised how long he had already been sitting there.

He got up and went to the sink, pouring the foamy liquid away and then slowly making another.

When he sat down he leaned back into the straight back chair and scooted down a little to get comfortable; cradling the warm cup. The paper held no interest and as he put down the cup after a couple of long draws on the hot coffee he reached down to his belt and took out the knife that he has used so recently, thinking to check if the blade may need a sharpen soon.

He rolled the knife in his hands, enjoying the weight and solid strength. As he turned the knife more slowly he picked out each of the marks that he had come to know so well over the years, the silver body becoming scarred and scuffed seemingly in time to the course of his career.

Whenever as now he held the knife up longways in his hand the narrow body showed a large chunk out at the top left-hand edge, and Andy had always thought of that mark as the real starting point of his time as a fireman.

 The knife was expensive when he bought it for himself as an acknowledgement of how much it meant, graduating as a firefighter. He had been tentative to use it at first, and the knife had remained clean and shiny new, as he searched for a feeling of belonging in this work.

After perhaps a year or more Andy had been on day shift. It was one of the first shifts where he had been one of two men alone on the Rescue, and in the coming evening they found themselves rushing to save a life as it ebbed away in the tangle of a car rolled upside down against a shattered fence.

Andy still used the same main road to get to work now and sometimes, especially when he had the windows down and traffic moved slowly, he could smell the takeaway curry the man had been covered in, hear the voices of the crowd lined along the footpath as people came out of their homes. He had to get in under the man to cut away bent metal and plastic and he used the knife to cut the seat belt at the last, the man’s heavy body coming down on top of him and hands immediately taking the weight away. He had been incredulous that such a thing was done and then devastated when he learned that it had all been in vain. When he had returned to the station and sat very much as he did now, he had noticed the mark, the first blemish, the chunk missing and the metal raw with the jagged scar. He couldn’t remember what had made the mark or when exactly in all that manic effort.

Shifts passed and he worked at any number of jobs that were almost the same, but somehow they didn’t stay with him as that first job did, and he used the knife over and over and yet that single long gouge remained the only blemish, darkening and softening with age.

He had begun to think then that somehow the knife described what mattered and what did not.

Some jobs came and would stay with him, sometimes the job itself, the scale of what had been asked of him.

More often the people, the children in backseats. The men beneath trains. Each time that he sat afterwards and wondered at what he had done, perhaps began to question doing it again, the knife would be in his hands, and there would be a new mark of some kind. The kind that became the fabric of the knife as the jobs became the fabric of him.

As he grew in the job Andy found it was the sadness. He thought often how strange that would sound said out loud, the sadness, wasn’t it all so sad? But not the sadness that comes in moments, the moments that could go either way, the car veers off the road in the night and takes the man, or the car straightens and they are home dreaming of the ballet.

The sadness that comes with silence and anger, and guilt, building over years until they can be all the things that make up a life. One mark on the knife was a stop/go man run down on the side of a busy road, nowhere near as old as he looked. The only thing the other workers knew of him was he hadn’t been long out of jail. No one was coming for him, there was no one to call. He was often the face Andy saw in the early hours. The man’s mobile had rung in one of his forgotten pockets as they waited for the coroner and Andy had answered it, hoping for a friend, a sister. A crazy hope when he thought later of the news he would have to give them. It was a debt collector. The man looked as if he had had nothing. And now he had nothing. And still someone was looking to take more.

Concern for welfare calls were hard. He would force open the front door to the unmistakeable smell that spoke of how there had been no concern, for too long.

He always ached to know what had brought people to those final places, ached to know what he could learn from such sadness and pass on.

And then he had to look at himself, alone, mirrored in the empty darkness thrown back from the kitchen window, and think of where the end would find him.

With the years the knife was crazed and scored everywhere to the untrained eye, and yet tonight as any night Andy could make out the dozen marks that made up the times that would not leave him, that woke him sometimes. He knew now he had used these things as a crutch, the get-out-of-jail-free cards to justify the things he wished he could erase.

There was a new mark, as he had known there would be. The clean swathe ran in a straight line from the top edge to the bottom and carried on beneath, arcing away. Looking at how the deep gouge shone at its edges, emphasising the darkness at its depths, it seemed to emphatically sign things off.  As a young boy in school he had been taught to rule a line across the page of his textbooks once he had finished each major task, and this seemed to be the same thing. The deep groove seemed to mark an end point.

Andy had imagined this moment sometimes, thinking he would feel the fear that he had seen in the eyes of Ben when they had spoken on the hill. Seen in the eyes of so many men when he thought of years past.

He was frightened, but not of the things that Ben had seen.

It was confronting to think of being invisible. Of giving away the one thing that seemed to define him for others without knowing if there would ever be anything to take its place.

But it was far more frightening to think of what it was the man had seen and understood. How much of a veneer the work had been for him, how much he had used it to not think about the pain he had caused. He had left a marriage behind. He had left a little girl behind. Men had asked him for help and he had not seen it. He had always hated selfishness and now he saw exactly how selfish he had been.

He found himself crying again now, not as he had out there in the dark, these were different tears, they came from the sadness of all the things that had brought him here.

He saw his home as it was now, the quiet rooms that could not hide their emptiness, and he thought again of the man on the hill, and the warmth of the space he would have shared with his wife. Andy smiled as the tears ran down his face, thinking of himself when he was Ben’s age, how he had hoped that places such as this station could be a proxy to the lives that others worked to build, lied to himself that they were.

Lies he had told himself of stations filled with the life and warmth, honesty and love that he could see in the eyes of that man as he came to know what it was he was losing in the night.

Ben told himself the same lies now, Andy knew, and his anger came as much from Andy exposing the lie as it did from anywhere else.

It was early morning by then, the first sun painting the dark brick of sleeping buildings he could see through the kitchen window with the orange hues it seems to save for this time of day. The birds began to call in the unfolding day.

Andy went quietly down the stairs and took his gear off the truck, crossing the engine bay to hang it away for another time. The gear they had worn out there in the night was already stowed in bags, in the small room off to the side of the engine bay ready for the drycleaner who would come later and take the huge piles, and try to wash away all that sweat and dirt and fear.

He stood for a while in the small space set aside for the pegs they hung their gear on at the base of the stairs, with his hand on the dark heavy material of his tunic. It was the sort of place that you got into and out of quickly without a second thought as the bells called incessantly. He has so many countless times before.

So many times, and yet he barely knew the place and he found himself pausing to look about and try to get a sense of it, enough of a feel that it might remain. He had never thought of not being there again.

He made his silent way up the stairs, solid stairs that did not betray him and he was glad of that. It was still early, before the time he would normally be getting up in the small bedroom and he could hear the heavy snoring coming from behind other closed bedroom doors.

He went back into the kitchen, got a tall glass of water, thinking he had had enough coffee for a while. When he turned carefully to take it over to the table he realised that Ben was already there, sitting with a chair rocked back against the far wall so that he could look out to the sun starting to track across the roofs of the houses stretching down to the sea.

“You alright Andy, did you go to bed?”

“No, no I didn’t. Just needed to sit and think a bit.”

“Those things you were saying up on the hill, they were what comes from a job in a hundred getting to you that little bit more. That’s all.”

Andy smiled, knowing how much Ben wanted that to be the answer.

“I wish. Ben, I’ve always been proud that you believed you could learn so much from me. But this is the most important thing I will have to teach you, before it’s too late.”

“What am I supposed to learn? That you want to cry and think those people were judging you and you came up short?”

“Yeah. I do want to cry. And I did come up short when they judged me. And I know how far short you would fall too. I’m ashamed to think so much of what you are now, and the things you have thrown away to be that, are because you were learning from me.”

He saw Ben tense and rise in the chair, pushing his back up the wall.

“I am exactly what I want to be.”

“You’re not, remember how honest you’ve been with me, until now. But even if you were, you need to admit to what is to come. We’re no different to so many other men before us. Men who had it all, were exactly what they wanted to be. You only fail when you make the same mistake again.”

“I don’t make the same mistakes twice.”

“Really, how’s Michelle doing?”

Ben bristled at that, the mention of the woman he would go home to soon making this more real than he wanted it. He brought the chair down on all fours, leaning forwards and crossing his arms he looked up at Andy where he still stood with the glass in his hand.

“That woman made you think of your wife Andy, so what? And your daughter, so what? You were busting your ass to learn how to do this impossible thing while you were trying to be a husband, a dad. And it didn’t work. It doesn’t work for so many of us, you think we’re all wrong, bad people?”

“I don’t think we are bad people Ben. I think we know a lot more than we make out though. We drink and shout, and rage, and disappear. And break ourselves down, maybe trying to get those things out. And we expect our wives, our kids, to stand by and take all that and still be there without ever giving them the chance to ask why? Without ever listening to what it does to them.

You remember last week Ben, you were annoyed when I let you down on Wednesday, when I was supposed to help with that firewood? I went down the coast, a guy I worked with even before you came along, in the city, he rang me out of the blue just to catch up. I hadn’t heard from him in years.

He asked how I was, how my daughter was, that’s how long it’s been. Turned out he was on his way to a funeral, a guy I never worked with died, fishing accident off the rocks. Dan, that’s the guy, he said nothing more really. But I went down there, because he did say more somehow. I turned up at the funeral and we dodged the wake, sat up above one of those windy south coast beaches and drank coffee. He sat forward and looked out to sea so I couldn’t see all that needed to come out. His mate had a rod with him, no bait, no tackle. Maybe they washed away. Maybe. But his mate had a wife and kids and he was the king of a station in the south. And just a couple of times he’d talked to Dan, asked him if it really was everything, this thing we do. Talked of how he didn’t know anymore, how he saw all the things it robbed him of, how it left him with nothing to give once he was outside the station.

And then Dan found himself asking the same question of the men he works with now, when he felt safe enough to do it. And he saw them close off to him, saw them react the way you did up on the hill. And just when he was thinking of how selfish he had been, taking away what his mate had shared for himself, thinking he should try and help. Well, there was that fishing accident….

How many funerals have we been to Ben? You’re a smart man, you can see patterns, all those men had everything. And then they just had a bit of a blip, the sort that you take care of by taking a bit of time off, going on a bender, a week fishing with some mates. And we all carried on as if they would be back as good as new, and we had done all we could.”

“We did do all we could Andy. Men are different. We have to take responsibility, especially us. Think of what we did up there last night Andy, who would you trust to do that for you?”

“Not many. That’s not the point. What you do now, when you go home to Michelle is just as important, more.”

Ben stood up and moved around the table, he was the same height as Andy and bigger physically. “I know you might feel that you’ve let people down Andy, I don’t. Don’t you go judging me now, just because you want to break yourself down into pieces.”

Andy looked down to the water in his untouched glass and the blued shape of Ben passed through it, distorted, as he left the room quickly, taking the stairs two at a time. The others were up now and the station became loud quickly, Andy moved away into the empty space of the TV room with a section of the paper to escape the hubbub.

The oncoming shift began to arrive and Andy heard each in turn climb the stairs and say their hellos, heard the cars backing out of the yard behind the station and knew Ben had gone already. He folded the unread paper and was about to get up and find his things read to leave when Sam snuck through the gap of the door and pushed it closed behind him.

Andy watched Sam come quietly towards him, the way he carefully moved his big frame, the quiet tone Andy knew he would use when he finally spoke. They were Andy’s, he recognised them and knew how much attention Sam had always paid. It hurt him now, just as with Ben, to think of all that they had learned from him, and yet how little that really was when it came down to it. The man on the hill had taught him so much more, in those few snatched moments.

“I thought that was you Andy, mind if I come in?” Sam hovered over the armchair next to Andy’s and Andy smiled as if to say ‘are you kidding’ and the young man sat down quickly, leaning forward on the chair’s front edge.

“I’m knackered Andy, and I didn’t do anything last night.”

Andy smiled again. Sam was so vulnerable. He could have had such an ego, and he had none.

“There’s nothing for you to worry about Sam”, Andy said. “I know you, you think that something has happened between Ben and me. And it has. But it’s something that has needed to happen forever, and there is nothing you could have done to make it different or better.”

“I thought things did go well up there Andy, as well as they could?”

“Yep. It isn’t about that at all. It is all about what I said at the back of the pump, before we headed back. There may come a time when all this seems too much, and I want you to be as honest about that as you have ever been about anything.

But for me it’s more. I’ve done so many things in my life that I wish I hadn’t. And I have always used the excuse of this work.

You learn from me, you think. Learn this, that I am saying that I have been a terrible example for you to follow. That’s my shame. You are not a weak man Sam, not like me. You need to get home to your family.”

The men looked at each other then for the first time, Sam had told Andy all of what made up his life with his wife and young daughter, not good things.

“Don’t worry. I learnt something up there last night that I have to unravel. I wish I learnt it long ago, before I lost everything else. I wish I could go home and be a dad. You can, and you should. It might not be perfect today, and that’s your fault. But that doesn’t mean they don’t want you there.”

Andy put his hand on the young man’s shoulder and they just looked at each other for a time.

“Shouldn’t I be asking what I can do to help you today Andy?”

“Thanks Sam. I don’t know what it is I’m asking for just yet though. Its enough to know that you will listen when I do. Most won’t. It will help me to know you are heading home.”

Sam stood up to his full height slowly, stretching his back. He nodded down to Andy one last time, “You call me when you need”.  He moved quietly out of the room and the voices from the mess room came through the small opening left at the door. Andy got up slowly and collected his paper, looking around the large quiet room, all the things which had always seemed so inconsequential and yet now stood in stark relief. The whiteboard filled the far end of the room with its ghosts of rubbed out coloured lines and words dissecting all those jobs they had planned for, debriefed from. It seemed to him now they had tried so hard to expunge these things, rub them from their minds as finished and done. And the ghosts of the lines were the marks on his knife, and the shadows of his dreams, never gone, always another one to come. He didn’t know if he had room, strength, for the next.

He went out into the hallway, poked his head through the open kitchen door and waved hello to the men gathered around the table ready for their turn here. He moved away before they could ask the questions he knew would come if he stayed, stepping lightly and quickly down the stairs and out the back to the locker room. Sam passed slowly down the driveway in his small car, the window open and he raised his arm into a last slow wave and then was gone.

Andy collected his few things and stepped back out into the morning, looking up to the light splayed across the apartments that bordered the station, backing up to them with the small balconies uniformly crowded with clothes horses and BBQs.

And finally he too was gone, joining the flow of traffic and away. They would not be back for four days and he found his head full of thoughts of the woman, and the man.