Words

He sat for a long time regarding the newspapers, the pad and pens she raised from the bag at her leg below the table and placed carefully between them.

She had imagined how long those nights must be, couldn’t imagine, as the train wound it's slow path through the silent paddocks.

“The guard said that was fine”, she said quietly, looking directly at him as he refused to return her look. “I remember how much you liked to work your way through the crosswords.”

He took the small pile of things in his hands at last and held them suspended just above the table, and she wondered for a moment if he would simply push them back towards her again. 

He ran one finger slowly along the edge of the pad of paper on top and then brought his arms down to his lap. He left his hands lightly resting on top, took a long breath in and out, and looked directly at his gran for the first time. “Thank you.”

“Perhaps you can write again. Write down some of these things, so we might understand.”

He flinched as she spoke, just a little yet she saw him move as if he suddenly filled the cavernous room. His eyes closed around those words and their colour was gone when he opened them again.

“I hope I didn’t upset you. I don’t know if I could ever understand how hard this must be.”

He smiled and reached out and placed his hand over hers at the edge of the small table.

“It’s not writing down these things gran. I always believed that I could write, because of you. But I’m here now, for a long time. It’s hard to believe anyone needs to hear anything from me now.”

Fishing

The dark soil rose up in a long rectangle crowning the deep grass and stretching away towards the old boundary fence.

He had been walking slowly in his heavy boots, coming up the wide race salt and peppered with weeds and the cow pats of the herd that had preceded him. The race rose imperceptibly all the way from the paddock below.

He had been humming a quiet tune in time to his footfalls, and looking up towards the small crest that would take him over and in to the home paddock he would see Gran’s head appear, stop there, and disappear. He quickened his pace without ever taking his eyes from the crest as she popped up again, stood, and went.

When he made the top of the rise he stopped. She looked up to him and raised a hand, and then dug the spade into the deep soil again, stood up atop the blade to push it in far enough, and then climbed down, pulling the spade sideways so that the potatoes rose and flopped down on the dark soil, as if she raised a fish from the sea.

Music

This one is the beginning, Ed, of the next one, the young man with his gran.

She hadn’t been on a train in what, 50 years? Perhaps. As a young woman she had travelled to the city aboard the express for music lessons that her father would collect her from, and they would glide home silently, cutting their way through the endless stars of the cold night, moonlight picking out shapes in fields just like theirs.

Express was a term that would have made the young women she stood amongst now smile. Their eyes reached down the glinting lines, searching out the silent approach of the sleek electric commuter train that would take them to the suburbs of Auckland. She thought of the steam and smoke and commotion that had met her back then, a young woman with piano music clutched tightly in a leather hold all as the locomotive seemed to all but expire in the effort of gaining the shelter of the tiny country station.

And the city, a town really, a long main street and a café where she would breathlessly order a custard square with the coins mum had put in her hand that morning before school.

She had a large, darkly coloured hold all with her now and checked the clasp absently, ran her hand across the warmth of the folio’s broad face. She thought of the pages within, not music nowadays, rather pages she had kept religiously over time. Some old enough to hold a scattering of large colourful misspellings, and others stapled to hold a group of pages. She had become expert at coaxing the pictures and then the words from her grandson in the hours they had shared in the school holidays, in the big lounge of her home in the country.

The fire would be quietly calling for another log with the two of them ranged around it in armchairs, she reading the paper in spurts and watching the news in others and he scribbling and stopping, watching the images and then scribbling some more.

Returning

He put her down slowly and Holly set off, tip toeing intently out towards the water, searching out tiny rock pools, Andy following a few paces behind.

He watched her move so intently, delicately, daintily, and he could see Jess so many years ago.

“We were here a long time ago beautiful, do you remember?”

Holly stopped and looked up at him for a moment, and then broke into a slow smile. She turned back to look out over the rocks and suddenly took off in scurrying steps, a crab scuttling away before her and shooting into the shadows beneath one of the rocks. The little girl bent right down on her haunches so that her skirt trailed in the shallow pool she had just hopped over. The crab had turned and its bulbous arms jutted out into the light, pincers slightly ajar. The broad hat Holly wore cast a shadow that moved ever so slightly forward towards the crab and its arms rose imperceptibly to meet it. The two regarded each other as Andy came up silently behind.

“We were chasing crabs that day too. Your mum was so tired she stayed on the beach. She didn’t want to be living with your grandparents, her mum wore her out with all her worried kindness and her dad, he just filled the place up with all the anger he wished he could pour down on me.

Fair enough too I guess, I would hate anyone treating you that way.”

Andy bent down and picked up a small round stone. Tossed it lightly in his hand a couple of times, feeling it crumble slightly at its brittle edges. Then he leaned back and threw it, watching the long slow arc out over the water until he thought he saw its splash, in amongst the jumble of small waves running close to shore.

He looked down and saw that Holly had watched it too, stood up tall to try and see the splash.

“You and I found a big old man crab, with a dark green shell. He didn’t budge when you ran towards him and I threw a couple of pebbles to convince him he’d better move.”

Holly looked up to him again, squinting a little in the late sun. “Get it Andy!”.

He looked around amongst the rocks and found a stick blown down from the cliffs above, perfect, long and thin and strong. He poked it gently in behind the crab, moved it a little side to side and finally the little crab lunged out into the light, flaring its arms wide at them so that Holly jumped back squealing, and clung to his leg. The crab pressed itself low and scuttled away sideways, and disappeared behind the next rock.

“We’ll let him be now, eh hon?”

They walked on, Holly picking up her own stone and flinging it wildly towards the water so that it skittered away, clattering amongst the rocks.

“We left your mum reading on the sand. When we got back she was fast asleep and you woke her up, poking at her ribs and pulling at her big sunhat to see if she really was still there.

She sat up and looked around. She looked at me as if she was seeing me for the very last time.”

They reached the point. The path veered inland there, arcing away towards the bay beyond. Holly reached out and up and grabbed his hand, holding it tightly. The rock shelf fell away steeply and the waves would run in with a deep guttural roar and then suck back in an ominous hiss. They watched long tendrils of seaweed rise, sweeping up the rocks as the water came, seeming to wave manically for help as the water ran in to burst over the shelf in foamy fingers, and then plummet down again as the dark water rushed away.

“Do you remember hon, we got distracted. Maybe you were watching the gulls. A big wave surprised us. You got drenched. I took your t-shirt off and we chased each other half way down the path to the bay, I held your shirt out above my head like a kite hoping it would dry a bit. You thought it was hilarious and tried to rip your skirt off too.”

He swung her up to him and kissed her cheek. She squirmed around a little, so she could face out to the sea, see what he could see up there. The sun lay across the rollers out deep, stretching to the horizon where cloud had begun to cluster.

“We planned to come back didn’t we? Maybe even the next weekend?

I guess we finally made it.”

Love

While the coffee brewed he went over to the dining table, the pages of the paper warm yellow against the darkness of the timber in the light pooled from the single hanging shade above.

The lifestyle section had wormed its way to the top of the messy pile now that sport and world were somewhere else, probably still on the bathroom floor.

‘These are the things I know about love’. The headline spanned the page and ran out at the small picture of the young woman who had penned the piece.

Andy smiled to himself, looking wistfully off towards the blackboard shadowed on the wall beyond. The coffee maker gurgled and he hurried over and took it off the heat. The rich scent filled the kitchen as he poured in the milk. He almost forgot the paper as he padded quietly back towards the lounge, picking up the section in his free hand as he passed the table.

Sitting down he reached for the book and then thought, ‘no, I should give this a chance’, and retrieved the paper from where he had tossed it on the coffee table.

She spoke of many things, good and bad. Needy and selfless. Hurtful, hurt.

He sat for a time with the paper on his lap and then got up and took it with him as he went to his bedroom and brought back the pen and folder that had been sitting proudly atop the chest of drawers.

Taking the pen from its case and opening the folder he ran a finger across the paper, feeling its weight.

‘These are the things I know about love’, he wrote carefully across the top of the first page.

He thought of how the years had borne upon those words, changing them from those he would have written at the author’s age.

He crossed his legs and rested the folder against his knee, and began.

‘I don’t know if I know more about love, or just different things now I am older. I do know for sure that I have had the chance to be loved by women who could give everything of themselves, if they could just be sure that they were safe. They were strong women, the only thing that they ever asked for in return was honesty.

The only shame I have left is that I didn’t give them that. They knew real, searing pain. Because of me. Because they loved me.

Words like empathy go into love. When have I not shown empathy? When I haven’t been honest. When I knew the things I was doing were killing those women, driving them away and pretended I didn’t.

Selflessness. When haven’t I been selfless? When I asked those women to lie for me, to lie about the things they saw me becoming. To make do with the little I had left to give them.

It doesn’t hurt at all to be honest now. What hurts is that it’s too late to be.

I haven’t known many people implicitly in my life. But I knew Ben better than most. He loved everything in life, so long as he could love it as he needed to. When his wife asked him for honesty he left. When his work asked him to be honest he railed against it. When it came to the point where for him it seemed the world had backed him into a corner and nothing but honesty would do, he was enraged. He gave love in great bursts, wanted everyone to just wait for the next piece, knowing that it would come, that the pain he caused in between was less than the love to come.

I know because I did so many of the same things.’

The pen flowed so beautifully he stopped and held it up to the light, turned it in his hand. He thought of his knife.

‘I love courage. Courage isn’t anything other than being able to bring yourself to do something that most others would turn away from. The type of thing that hurts and may keep on hurting, and the pain may not bring the thing you want. But you do it anyway.

I didn’t have that courage. I ran away from my marriage because I couldn’t be honest. Ben is gone because he didn’t have that courage. He was the strongest man I ever knew, he would have ground my bones to hear me say he lacked courage.

You’re not running Sam. You know there may be nothing more to what you are doing now than an end. And you’re still trying. That’s courage. That’s love, because it’s honest.

I fell in love in high school, head over heels as everyone does. She was amazing, still is I’m sure. We could drive out into the country and just sit there, park in a farm gateway along a tiny road that hadn’t seen anything but the occasional tractor in years and share a cigarette with the windows down. In the late autumn back there the air is so still and heavy it laps at you like the sea. That night with the car on the hill, the air felt the same way.

The sun would be just strands of colour behind the hills and smoke would rise in ribbons, the cattle would come and stand at the gate, snorting so that gusts of hot breath rose steaming over their heads. I told her everything, left nothing out. And she did the same.

If I could have only known then that was love, purely and simply, and it couldn’t be anything else. I have no regrets. But I wish I had never forgotten that love can’t be different to that.

I’ve been so honest about the things that have happened lately. Left nothing out. And for the first time since way back then I can understand love.

He signed off with a single ‘A’ and went down the hall, and put the folder on Sam’s bed.

Meetings

Sam checked his phone and then realised he was looking for a message from Ben. Ben had always been running late for the meetings. AA. “Who cares”, he’d say when he got there, “you think you might fail the course? Does anyone here look like they’ve passed?”

It was part of their plan, Ben pretending to support Sam as he began to attend classes again. Ben could get away with it because he hadn’t lived with Michelle for that long, not long enough for her to have gone through the things the other women who had shared his life had. It made sense he was supporting such a close friend and he was practised at hiding his own drinking.

Sam wanted to do it, he had been sinking further and further into the drinking, taking nights off and then lying about it and barely being able to look at himself afterwards. His marriage was slipping through his fingers, when Susan spoke to him now he knew she didn’t trust the words he came back with even before they were said.

Ben had treated the classes as just another night out, he would joke around outside the class and during the hour drink coffee and listen to those who spoke with a look on his face as if Michelle had made him go to a French film festival. When they were done he would drive Sam to a café and they would talk. And Ben managed to find the little things to talk about from that day at work, or one of the days before, how young the dead driver had been at the job last night, things about the boss, money and how over-time had dried up. Anything and everything that left Sam wondering how he was going to cope with the next day and dying for a drink. And when Sam slipped he would ring his support network and Ben would be there in a flash, talking about how it was understandable, how they would get through, the classes would keep her believing, and what more could she ask anyway?

Sam looked down the length of the long bare hallway and saw Andy coming towards him, he was checking off the black stencilled numbers sitting starkly beneath the small frosted windows high on each door in turn. Sam could almost see Andy’s lips moving, imagined him repeating the number over and over in his head in a slow mantra as he walked. He offered to come back from work and get Andy for the meeting. But it seemed important to Andy, when he thought of it later, that he get here alone and on time. Find the building, find a park, find the room, find Sam. When Sam thought of the decisions he had seen Andy make without batting an eye he could almost feel the swirling storms that must have gone on inside the man’s head to leave him counting off room numbers so intently.

The room number never changed; Sam had been so many times, the faces changed but they never dwindled. And they returned. That was the hardest thing to see. They came back, only older, darker and more beaten. He saw some men he vaguely recognised, some were new to this and desperate to get well, standing near the door and wanting to get started. Others lingered back near the dark glass of the bank of windows running away down the hall, not too near the door as if maybe they weren’t here for that at all. Their routinely stained fingers fidgeted with phones and keys and they turned in small semi circles with their eyes on the light that pooled in the grey tiles of the floor.

--

When Sam and Andy were in their seats half way back on one side of the rows of folding chairs with Sam in the aisle, he looked around, really for the first time seeing the people he came here with, and seeing how much each of them fidgeted endlessly. Newcomers, veterans, men, women. Legs bobbed, some leaned forward and back, forward and back, others sat up and took long breaths or slouched and picked at their nails. He felt Andy next to him, his long leg still against Sam’s and his hands stretched out to his knees, simply looking up to Mark, the man who organised his things for the class at the front of the bare room. And Andy was the one who was supposed to be falling to pieces.

When later Mark asked if anyone else would like to speak, Sam was looking out across the room, as he and Ben always did. He had laughed about it later sometimes, remembering how angry Ben got at brigade events whenever the floor was thrown open and someone actually took up the invitation. “The right answer to that question is silence”, Ben always said. “Then you can get the hell out of there and back to doing what you’re paid for.”

Sam looked over to Andy, thinking of offering a coffee afterwards, before they went home.

“Why not?” Andy said it quietly, looking straight back at him.

Sam sat there for a moment, and then thought that’s right, if not then what am I doing here?

He got up and met Mark at the lectern, surprised by how relaxed he felt. “Hi, I’m Sam”, he began. “I’ve nodded hello to a lot of you. I’m sorry I’ve never contributed before now.

These past few weeks have been something I hope I don’t have to go through again. But then, the fact that at the end of that time I’m here and not in a bar doing things that would bring me back here next week feeling like an absolute waste of space is a massive step forward for me. I’m a firefighter. Lots of people are and they don’t end up like me so I’m not looking to make excuses.

A guy that I really respect left work a few weeks back now, all of a sudden. I don’t think we’ll see him there again. I had based almost all the things I did at work and outside it on what I had learnt from him, he is my greatest friend.

I didn’t know what I was going to do without his guidance and help and our whole shift has been a mess without him, without admitting it. I started drinking again because I was so lost without him.

I’ve been given a chance to keep on learning from him, which is fantastic. But I feel selfish that I am doing that at a time when he is the one who should be getting the help.

I guess that is the thing I have struggled with the most coming here; probably in other ways throughout my life. Seeking help can seem so selfish.

He looked out to Andy then and smiled.

“I’ve been coming here pretending that I wanted to stop blotting things out with drink. I feel terrible when I think how hard you all are trying, when I wasn’t. How selfish I have been towards the people in my life.”

He paused and looked down.

“I have been coming here with another man I worked with. He isn’t with us anymore. I feel so much shame that he didn’t believe that he could call me when it got to that.

I lost a great friend. His family are torn to pieces losing him.

I think if there is a heaven it’s somewhere you can take the breath you’ve been meaning to take for so long. I think he’s probably up there now, taking that breath. He wasn’t wrong about many things in his life. But he got that one completely wrong, it’s selfish to not seek help, not the other way around. We’re all doing a good thing being here tonight.

So I’m going to go home, not my home now. Like so many others my home became somewhere that I just wasn’t welcome because of my drinking and what it made me. And I’m not going to drink, and I’m going to be a dad when I can, and a firefighter and just a guy doing his best not to be selfish.”

Sam looked around the room as he fell silent, and then over to Mark who got up from the chair he had been listening from, offering his hand.

Tides

The milk came in a beautiful Holly Hobby cup that Sam realised matched the plate he could see now that Holly’s scone was a collection of small crumbs. He looked at Andy and wondered at the things he had had to give away to be there with them at work, the life he had here, and lost.

--

When Sam and Holly came back from the bedroom she had her swim cossie on and a huge hat, her skin glistening with the sun lotion.

Andy held out a bucket and spade to the little girl and she smiled as she took it, and then he passed two towels over to Sam.

Holly looked up at her dad and said quietly, “Where’s Andy’s towel?”

--

The street sloped gently down and then up to run out at the dunes masking the beach they could hear beyond, a small path cut between the houses at the top of the cul-de-sac and they ran down onto the sand and out towards the water as the sand burned at their bare feet.

They threw down their towels and things and went straight in, the two men diving through a wave and then coming back as Holly stood jumping up and down in the foam as the wave receded.

Small groups of mums and kids were dotted in a ragged line along edge of the water, little ones shrieking as the waves chased them up the beach, bigger kids just about ready for school tumbling about further out.

Sam flopped down on the sand and faced the next wave with his legs straight out in front of him as it broke, the roiling mass surging up the slope so that foam leapt from his legs and surged past. Holly stood close at his side and roared her delight, stamping her feet so that water and sand sprayed across her dad as he tilted his chin up and closed his eyes.

The wave pulled back fast and a long line of sandy water raced in at Sam’s back so that he had to throw his arms out to hold his balance and keep from being sucked away, tiny shells tinkled shrilly as they were tossed back with the receding water and Holly chased them, cupping her hands down to the sand and shrieking as they pushed between her fingers and escaped.

Andy moved past on the other side of Holly and sat down on the sand mimicking Sam, legs thrust out to the sea, a little further down the slope.

The next wave stood high and then broke with a boom and began to run at them, Holly came running back to Sam with frantic tiny steps and threw herself upon him, he grimaced as she pawed at him with her sandy hands and left long red stripes down his chest. She wrapped one arm around his neck and stood high on his thigh, and turned back to watch the sea. The wave seemed much bigger this time and the water shot up Sam’s chest, reaching for his eyes and his mouth clamped shut as he was knocked back. Holly leapt away and tried to escape up the beach, heavy sand flying everywhere as she collapsed on all fours and the foam surged in underneath her and a long train of seaweed wound its way around her legs, its dark greens garish against the pinks of her cossie.

The wave paused and then began its run back to the sea and Holly came tumbling with it, arms and legs cartwheeling everywhere, roaring her anger and surprise, and her dad grabbed her as she tumbled past, pulling her in and cupping some water to splash across her eyes shut tight.

The surge got the better of Andy, that much further down the slope, throwing him sideways and then lifting him up so that he hung for a moment, windmilling his arms vainly before he crashed back down and disappeared. Sam watched flashes of arms and legs in the chaos, and looking down he saw Holly watching intently too.

The wave gave one last hiss as it pulled away and left Andy face down, sand streaming in lines down his back. He lifted his head and spat out a mouthful, blinked more of it away.

Holly stood up on her dad’s legs and balanced herself with a hand on his shoulder, regarding Andy all the time. And then she threw her head back and laughed and laughed, laughed so hard she pushed her dad’s head forward so that his matching laughter was choked for a moment before he lifted his chin again.

“You right there Robinson Crusoe?”

Andy staggered upright and threw his arms wide, laughing all the time. He came back towards them with his legs splayed and sand coursing down them, and then threw himself down alongside Sam.

He looked up at Holly, her eyes closed with the water and the sun and the laughter. He had never had a sister, never spent any time with cousins who weren’t rough and tumble boys. And then Jessica came along.

He would pack spades and buckets and hats and set them out on the beach a good way back above the tide line. She would sit between his legs and fill the bucket carefully with sand. It would be too dry and the castle would tilt and collapse, so they would venture a little further down the beach. The castle would stand a moment longer, and then collapse. And finally they would go down to the wet sand where the biggest waves still reached and she would intently fill the bucket again, and the castle would be perfect. The first time she stood and admired her handiwork, back to the sea, and the wave came surging past and the castle was swamped and gone he had stood, waiting for the tears, not knowing what he would do that could make them stop. She had looked up to him, thrown her head back and shrieked her delight, threw the bucket at the receding water as if to admonish it and rushed headlong towards the next wave in a storm of flailing arms and legs. She would throw herself against the water as it came and push and push, until she came tumbling back at last and he would reef her up out of the foam and down onto her feet ready for the next. She would be so tired he would have to carry her back to the shade where her mum sat watching.

The next wave announced itself with a roaring boom, Andy looked up at Holly, standing with her hands on her hips in front of them and thought maybe she admit defeat and run away for good this time.

She turned and looked at Andy, and then over to her dad and started to come back towards them. Andy buried his hands on either side and next thing Holly was standing with a hand on his shoulder, the other reaching out to find her dad, digging her hands into the flesh and setting herself as the water came. It poured over them and her hand gripped even tighter. The wave ripped back and they swayed and rolled and then it was gone. Holly raised her head to the sky and whooped a long call of victory, her dad joining in, and Andy at last as her voice wavered and fell.

Huge shards of light filled the faces of the waves as the day grew and the sun filled the cloudless sky. The sea became as languid as the day and the tide began to recede so that water would gently pool around their feet and then sneak away.

Crumbs

They both looked over to the ring of trees guarding the path where it fell away towards the beach below. A gull scooted out of the shadows, it’s head twitching side to side as it scurried and stopped and eyed the food. Andy took out a short-bread and broke it into pieces, tossing them towards the trees. The gull watched them drop in amongst the grass, clucking in anticipation and then squawking in disgust as tiny sparrows flitted out to grab the crumbs and raced away back into the branches. The gull stalked about with his wings half raised in protest and the men laughed at the bravado of the tiny birds.

“You had a daughter”, Andy said after a time, “she was still in Melbourne. I think you were about to go back and visit for the first time.”

“I did. And I did. Soon after we met I visited and it was hard. But not impossible, and I kept visiting. She lives back here now, not too far away.”

“That’s great”, Andy said. It was wearing at you back then. I could see it. If you don’t mind me saying.”

“Don’t mind at all. If you don’t mind me saying, I think you look a bit like that yourself, now. Things were a bit up in the air last time I think, you were working things out with your little girl.”

“I thought I was”, Andy said, looking away to the glimpse of sea through the trees. I guess I just didn’t do things right, as you have.”

“I think you’ve probably done a lot of things right. I don’t know how you guys do that work you do”, the man said. “Maybe that’s what this breather is about, it’s just time you did things right in other ways, for yourself first.”

They sat for a while and the cicadas seemed to sense the silence and their drone rose and wavered and rose again. The still heat lay across them and the clouds peeked over the canopy of the trees, dark colours playing at their edges.

“I think it’s about time I set out”, the man said quietly.

“You don’t fancy one last wave, you’re welcome to come back down with me?”

“No. Thanks. This place is about having it for ourselves. Seems a crazy thing to say when we’ve been sitting here together for an hour. But I got what I needed down there, some peace and a few mussels. Now you need to get some waves.”

They stood up and hobbled about a little, old knees taking time to work properly after all that sitting. Seed pods stuck about the man’s cords and he brushed them off and picked up his bag. They shook hands and he looked up into Andy’s face, his eyes piercing and still.

“I reckon you’ve fixed a lot of things, terrible things, for other people”, the man said. “You can fix whatever it is you need to now.”

“Thanks. I feel like you’ve given me a lot more than just time.”

“I haven’t given you anything. And you don’t need anything. Not now. My name is Wayne, by the way.”

The man moved away and slowly climbed the stairs of the stile until he reached the top rail and looked out to the sea over the top of the trees.

“Say hi to your daughter for me, when you see her”, Andy called.

The man threw his head back and beamed down at Andy, the sun poured in and filled his face, his eyes huge and depthless, full of his smile. “I will, I will, and one day I’ll get to say hi to yours too, I know it.”

He looked out to the sea once more.

“They want to listen. In the end they’ll hear you, and answer, if you’re honest. Don’t ever be scared of their anger. Until that’s gone, they’re still there.”

The men looked at each other for a long time, the wind worrying at the long grass beneath the stile so that the seed heads brushed the timbers back and forth in a rattlesnake hum.

The man stepped down over the stile and looked back to him, running his hands through the grass, clumping it together in his broad hands. “Just make sure you take care of yourself first.”

He smiled beneath his hat, his eyes lost in the shadow of the broad brim once more and set out. When he reached the point where the path disappeared in the shadows of the languid bush he slowed and half turned one last time, raising an arm, and in a moment was swallowed by the darkness of the path.

At the top of the steep track down to the bay Andy stood and watched the spot where the man had disappeared. The darkness seemed to throb as the call of the cicadas rose again and filled the space. He had a vague feeling that if joggers were to come through the gap and pound down towards him, and if he was to ask after the man they would look at him wonderingly, shaking their heads. 

Light

John sat down heavily on the sand near the water, his knees drawn up and his arms draped around them. He reached down and took a small handful of the pebbly sand, tossing it lightly up and down so the sand sifted gently away leaving a few small stones cupped in his big palm. He looked up from his hand and then threw the stones lightly out into the water, watching the spattering spots as they broke the surface. 

Ripples spread and floated away downstream. He kicked the thongs off his feet and reached his legs out, sitting still for a while and then leaning forward to ladle water over his lower legs, one leg and then the other, his back moving in a slow rhythm as if leaning to an oar.

“Looks as if you’re enjoying that John”, Angela said quietly.

The big man turned to look up to her, smiling, and then resumed his slow rhythm. “It could be a lot worse, couldn’t it?”

Andy came and sat down near John, and then lay back. He pushed his feet in and stretched up the bank, shimmying a little to get comfortable. The coarse sand crept in beneath his t-shirt and as he moved side to side he could feel it scratching away a deep itch. He felt his chest empty and he could breathe, his head emptied, and he heard the gentle burble of the river as an eddy doubled back on itself.

Sitting up eventually he looked past Angela, down the narrow strip of sand, past faces raised to the quiet sky.

“I think sometimes it is very hard to know what the future will be. But sometimes you just have to remember it will be made of times like this too” He looked up to Angela as she spoke and they held each other’s eyes for a while. He smiled at her as he hadn’t in so long, and she smiled right back.

 When eventually the group made their way back to the lecture theatre, collected their things and slowly drifted away it was different. No one rushed to be gone. If anything they lingered where before they raced away single file down the gloomy hallway to the glaring car-park beyond the doors. ‘See you next time’, some even called to each other.

Andy lingered until he was the only one left.

“That was a great morning Angela. I’m sorry for the first part. I didn’t mean to make anyone think there was no upside to this. Just the word future is a big one for me these days.”

Angela straightened up from picking up the handouts and boxes of pens and things she always brought along, holding them in against her as she faced him.

“Andy it was just nice to hear someone speak. And speak openly. You’re right, most of the others here, most of the people I see each time, are not even sure they want to be here. Because they just want this to all go away so they can go back to doing what they love doing. I’m so impressed that you know you are working towards being something else. But it can’t be easy, it is a huge hole to fill in your life.”

He smiled as he picked up a packet of pens that had gotten away from her and Angela accepted them back into her free hand.

“I would be a lot happier in myself if I knew that my life wasn’t just the hole left by giving up the job.”

“I think that’s what you need to work on Andy. It’s different to most of the others. You need to be able to remember what it was that you were best at in the job. And then remember that you would have been that good at the same things in your life outside the firefighting. You’ve just forgotten that, you’re still linking everything to your work. When you can stop doing that, then you’ll be getting really well.”

Future

There was a silence, there had been lots of silence at both the sessions Andy had been to so far. People moved a little in their chairs, each time someone leaned forward the others would turn slightly towards them hoping that it might be the beginning, the end of the silence. But the person would rock back and look at their hands and everyone would let out the breath they found they’d been holding. Andy was unsure of his thoughts, unsure how they would measure up against those of the woman next to him, she looked as if she hadn’t slept in years. How they would stack up against anyone’s.

“I don’t think about it at all. I just get from one day to the next. One appointment to the next.” He was a big man, two down to Andy’s left and the words came out in a loud rush, his eyes wide as if he had not known they would come. He looked terrible. Really tired, the darkness around his eyes spreading so far down his face that it seemed to weigh upon his mouth, his neck, seep down the length of his body.

“That’s exactly what happens for so many people who go through what you are experiencing John. That’s why I wanted to start with talking about the future today”, Angela said.

“Is that what a lot of you are feeling, today?”

There was a murmur around the circle as they all nodded assent, looking to her, glancing over to John and then quickly away as he looked to the floor.

Andy had never spoken at either of the sessions he had been to. He waited for the next voice and none came, and then he began.

“I think for me you’ve hit the nail on the head with those two words”, he said, clearing his throat as his voice grew husky. “I was a firefighter. I can’t see myself as one anymore. Apparently that’s a really good thing, to have decided one way or the other. Specialists tell me that it’s the beginning of me getting well.  Some people manage to get well, find a way to do again what it was that was making them sick, without falling to pieces.

Part of being here may be that people don’t want to give up what they do. I was the same, I fell to bits because I was so scared of a future that was different to the one I’d always imagined.

But in the end, I didn’t want to get up every day thinking that it would be the one that meant I could go back to being a firefighter. When it couldn’t be, I would go back to square one, or worse.

Sometimes I feel like I have failed because I had to admit I was giving up trying. Sometimes I feel like I’ve won a booby prize of a future.”

John turned towards him, Angela had made to speak then stood back and waited.

“I would get up and put on my uniform. Make my lunch and pack my bag. And get to the door and throw up at the thought of opening it. I still fight myself. As if I am two people, one shouts at the other to not be so weak. The other says you don’t even know what strength is.”

Andy looked from John to Angela, and she nodded, willing him to give them his answer.

“I was a firefighter so long I will never really be anything else. It gave me days that made me proud of myself in ways I don’t believe I’ll have again.

I didn’t want to believe it was over. But for me it is. I feel like I have saved myself from something I don’t want to think about, that I have seen happen to a lot of men. But my prize is thirty years pretending I don’t miss something that it tears me to pieces not to have anymore. I understand addiction.’

Angela stepped forward slightly so that both John and Andy looked towards her.

“You are here for different reasons. John you simply have to begin to get well. Well enough that you can make the decisions that Andy already has. And it is a long process. Andy, now you understand something that is maybe even harder, that becoming well may not be everything that you had hoped to begin with, something that needs to be redefined.”

“If I was asked about the future Angela, I would say today that I didn’t make any decision, PTSD did.

I have been selfish all my life, loving the firefighting. My marriage went quickly. My relationship with my daughter disappeared almost as quickly. I destroyed another relationship because I was starting to not cope with these things, even though I didn’t know it at the time.

I have had drinking problems all my life. I recognise things I learnt in trying to beat that. I have to give up the one thing that I gave up everything else for. I don’t know if I feel more sadness, or shame. But I don’t get any other choice.”

He looked back to Angela standing with her back to the whiteboard, and smiled. He looked at John and the man held his eyes, then leant back in his chair, spent.

Faces

He looked at the woman who stood there, and didn’t know her. He took a moment and still nothing came. He worried that she would be disappointed.

“That was lovely Andy, what you had to say.”

“Thank you.”

She smiled. “It’s okay Andy, we only met once. And even then it wasn’t something I would think you would remember.”

“My memory is pretty bad at the best of times. But I apologise.”

The woman reached out and let her hand rest against his elbow now. “I’m the woman from that night. Ben came and told me about my son. I’ll never forget what he did.”

They looked at each other for a long time. When Andy looked up they were alone on the steps and the crowd stretched out before them on the long arc of dull gravel. He turned slightly and they began down the steps together, the crunching of their feet loud in the rough stones as they set out.

“You’re right Andy. He was so strong when he came to me at the ambulance, and he just kept pouring that strength into me, every time I thought I couldn’t go on he held me a little more and I could somehow. I remember right at the end, I looked at him and I thought he had given too much. And you came and put your hand on his shoulder, and I saw him draw all that strength again, from you. I’ll always remember your face too Andy.”

Cokes

He was alone, he had never been afraid, yet she wondered now. She thought of him in those waves, in the dark, in the cold. He had always been so big, filled spaces. Even he couldn’t do that here, and she wanted so much to be able to see him, let him know she was here.

She looked at the men in their uniforms, the sleeves taut over their big arms, their hair cropped short.

Some of them looked so young, they looked just like him, when she was his little girl.

She missed him on those night shifts, missed the smell of him when he leaned down to her as he tucked her in. In the morning she would see his shadow fill the glass of the front door, hear the key and he would bump through with bags full of the gear he had worn through the night. Her mum would be late for work and they would be together there at the door talking hurriedly before she rushed away to the car he had left running. Sometimes he would just want to sit on the deck and eat eggs while she drew or coloured in.

But sometimes, he would have the huge tunic and trousers that he wore in the fires, the helmet and the boots. And he would help her dress in them, cinching the over pants right up with a long belt, pulling the suspenders until they couldn’t get any tighter. The boots would come half way up her legs and she would hug the helmet to her it was so heavy.

Then he would sneak away and hide, and soon she would hear him calling ‘help, help!’ He would always be under one of the beds, hers, his, the big spare one. Sometimes by the time she found him he was actually asleep. When she thought of it now she realised how tired he must have been after those shifts. She would shake him and he would moan and cough.

And she would drag him to safety, out the front door to the lawn. It would take ages and she would be exhausted, even though he did most of the work pushing himself backwards along the floor. Whenever she paused and looked down to him his eyes would be closed, his breathing slow.

When they finished he would pull the big tunic off her and throw it to the grass and they would sit down heavily on the front steps so she could kick off the boots. He would go inside and get them a coke each and they would sit in the sun and talk nonsense about the job, how it had gone.

He would put his huge arm around her and say something like, “That’s all I do hon. You’re ten years old and you can do it already. There’s nothing you need to be afraid of, you can do anything.” And he would hug her into him so that so much strength and warmth and love filled her, so that she never wanted anything more.

She turned slowly back to look towards the coffin, wondered who could ever make her feel so powerful again.