Bridge of Clay(35)

Her hair was out, her footsteps fast.

She was in jeans. The customary flannel shirt.

The first place she looked was across the road, and when she saw him she put the bike down. It lay there, stuck on a pedal, the back wheel whirring, and the girl walked slowly over. She stood, dead center, on the road.

“Hey,” she said, “you like it?”

She was quiet but it came out shouted.

A delighted kind of defiance.

The stillness of predawn Archer Street.

As for Clay, he thought of many things to say to her then, to tell her and have her know, but all he said was “Matador.”

Even from a distance he could see her not-quite-white, not-quite-straight teeth, as her smile laid open the street; and finally, she held a hand up, and her face was something strange to him—at a loss for what to say.

When she left, she walked and watched him, then watched a moment longer.

Bye, Clay.

Only when he imagined her well down Poseidon Road did he look again into his hand, where the lighter dimly sat. Slow and calm he opened it, and the flame stood straightly up.



* * *



—

And so it was.

In the dark he came to all of us—from me lying straight in bed, to Henry’s sleepy grin, and Tommy and Rory’s absurdity. As a final act of kindness (to both of them) he pulled Hector from Rory’s chest, and clamped him across his own shoulder, like one more part of his luggage. On the porch he put him down, and the tabby was purring, but he, too, knew Clay was leaving.

Well?

First the city, then the mule, now the cat did all the talking.

Or maybe not.

    “Bye, Hector.”

But he didn’t leave, not yet.

No, for a long time, a few minutes at least, he waited for dawn to hit the street, and when it did it was gold and glorious. It climbed the rooves of Archer Street, and a tide came calling with it: There, out there, was a mistake maker, and a distant statue of Stalin.

There was a birthday girl rolling a piano.

There was the heart of color in all that grey, and floating paper houses.

All of it came through the city, across The Surrounds and Bernborough. It rose in the streets, and when finally Clay left, there was light and gathering floodwater. First it reached his ankles, then his knees, until, by the time he made the corner, it was up to the height of his waist.

And Clay looked back, one last time, before diving—in, and outwards—to a bridge, through a past, to a father.

He swam the gold-lit water.





So this was where he washed up.

In the trees.

For years now, Clay had imagined a moment like this—that he’d be strong, he’d be sure and ready—but those images were swept away; he was a shell of all he was.

Trying to recapture his resolve, he stood motionless, in this corridor of strapping eucalypts. He felt the pressure in his lungs: a sense of oncoming waves, though they were made now only of air. It took reminding to breathe them in.

Out here somewhere was where waters led.

Out here somewhere was where murderers fled.



* * *



—

Behind him, there was sleeping and reading, and the city’s distant subdivisions. A lazy chain of metal, and countless miles of pure, ragged land. In Clay’s ignorance, it was a place of great simplicity. There was train line and earth, and reams of empty space. There was a town called Silver, and no, it wasn’t the town you might think (of dog, TW, and snake)—it was a town halfway between.

Small houses. Tidy lawns.

And winding past all of it, dry and cracked, was a broad, misshapen river. It had a strange name, but he liked it: The Amahnu.

    In the afternoon, when he arrived, he considered having the river lead him to his father, but opted for the town instead. He bought a foldout map from the petrol station. He walked the rusty street signs, and the drunken, sprawled-out beer cans. He found a road, north and west; he left the town behind.

Around him, as he walked, the world grew emptier still; it seemed to surge, continuously out, and then there was the other feeling—that it was also coming at him. There was an obvious, slow-approaching quiet, and he felt it, every step. The emptier it became, the closer the way, to our father’s lonely home.



* * *



—

Somewhere, nowhere, there was a right turnoff from the road. A mail drum said the number, and Clay knew it, from the address in the wooden box. He took the dirt road driveway.

Initially it was stark and open, but after a few hundred meters and a gently sloping hill, he arrived in the corridor of trees. At eye level, the trunks were more like muscled thighs—like giants standing around. On the ground there were knots of bark, and long streaks of shedding, crumbling beneath his feet. Clay stayed; he wouldn’t leave.

Beyond it, a car was parked, but still on this side: A Holden, a long red box.

Further away, across the dry river, was a gate, in the light. And beyond the gate was a house; a hunchback, with sad eyes and a mouth.

Out amongst the tall bony weeds, there was life. Crouched in the heather and scrub and the Bernborough-like grass, the air was overrun. There was a teeming noise of insects, electric and erudite. A whole language in a single note. Effortless.

Clay, on the other hand, was laboring. He’d found in himself a fresh hemorrhage of fear and guilt, and doubt. It weaved through him, triple-tiered.