Bridge of Clay(41)

An overabundance of cologne.

A boy with burning arms.

His shirt was too big in a country that was too big, and they stood on a front path all swarmed with weeds. The rest of the family ate No Frills ice cream inside, and the tin roof loomed, leaning at him as he searched for words, and wit. Words he found. Wit he didn’t.

To her shins, he said, “My dog died today.”

“I was wondering why you were alone.” She smiled, just short of haughtily. “Am I the replacement?”

    She was giving him a hiding!

He fought on.

“She was bitten.” He paused. “A snake.”

And that pause, somehow, changed it all.

While Michael turned to look at the deepening dark, the girl crossed from cocksure to stoic in a few short seconds; she stepped closer, and now she was next to him, facing the same way. Near enough so their arms touched.

“I’d rip a snake apart before I let it get to you as well.”



* * *



—

After that, they were inseparable.

They watched those much-repeated sitcoms of previous years—his Bewitched and her I Dream of Jeannie. They crouched at the river or walked the highway out of town, watching the world grow seemingly bigger. They cleaned the surgery and listened to each other’s heartbeats with Weinrauch’s stethoscope. They checked each other’s blood pressure till their arms were ready to explode. In the back shed, he sketched her hands, her ankles, her feet. He balked when it came to her face.

“Oh, come on, Michael…” She laughed and plunged her hand down into his chest. “Can’t you get me right?”

And he could.

He could find the smoke in her eyes.

Her mocking, dauntless smile.

Even on paper she looked ready to speak. “Let’s see how good you are—paint with your other hand.”

At the highway farmhouse one afternoon, she took him in. She put a box of schoolbooks against her bedroom door, and held his hand and helped him with everything: the buttons, the clips, the descent to the floor. “Come here,” she said, and there was the carpet and heat of shoulders and backs and tailbones. There was sun at the window, and books, and half-written essays everywhere. There was breath—her breath—and falling, just like that. And embarrassment. A head turned sideways, and brought back.

“Look at me. Michael, look at me.”

    And he looked.

This girl, her hair and smoke.

She said, “You know—” The sweat between each breast. “I never even said I was sorry.”

Michael looked over.

His arm had gone dead, beneath her.

“For what?”

She smiled. “About the dog, and”—she was almost crying—“for crushing that spaceship thing in the waiting room that morning.”

And Michael Dunbar could have left his arm down there forever; he was stunned and stilled, astounded. “You remember that?”

“Of course,” she said, and now she spoke upwards, at the ceiling. “Don’t you see?” Half of her in shadow, but the sun was on her legs. “I loved you already then.”





Just past the dry riverbed, Clay shook hands with Michael Dunbar in the dark, and their hearts were in their ears. The country was cooling down. For a moment he imagined the river, erupting, just for some noise, a distraction. Something to talk about.

Where was the Goddamn water?!

Earlier, when they’d seen each other, their faces searched, then down. Only when they were meters apart did they look for more than a second.

The ground felt alive.

Final darkness, and still no sound.

“Can I help with your bags?”

“No thanks.”

His father’s hand had been awfully clammy. His eyes were nervous, badly blinking. His face stooped, his walk was fatigued, and his voice was rarely used; Clay could hear that. He knew that all too well.

When they walked to the house and sat on the front step, the Murderer partly sank. His forearms were splayed; he held his face.

“You came.”

Yes, Clay thought. I came.

Had it been anyone else, he’d have reached across and placed a hand on his back, to say it’s okay.

But he couldn’t.

There was only one thought, and the repetition of that thought.

    I came. I came.

Today, that would have to be all.



* * *



— When the Murderer recovered, it was a good while sitting there before they went in. The closer you got to it, the itchier the house seemed: Rusty gutters, scales of paint.

It was surrounded by a virulent weed.

In front of them, the moon glowed, onto the worn-out path.

Inside, there were cream walls, and a great blast of hollow; all of it smelt alone.

“Cup of coffee?”

“No thanks.”

“Tea?”

“No.”

“Something to eat?”

“No.”

They sat in the quiet of the lounge room. A coffee table was loaded with books, journals, and bridge plans. A couch ate them up, both father and son.

Jesus.

“Sorry—it’s a bit of a shock, isn’t it?”