Among the Ashes

[Fiction]

I had no way of explaining it even to myself, let alone anyone else. They were halcyon days. It was the twilight of youth. I was still very young but somehow felt on the brink of manhood. I felt the onus to perform as a man somehow without the faintest idea how to actually do it. As soon as I sensed it, the very instant, I felt myself profoundly removed from my family. Almost as though I resented the burden of responsibility that I felt, and in spite of knowing that they had nothing to do with it, they were somehow responsible for putting me in that position. It pushed me away from them more forcefully than any argument or outburst or emotion ever had.

In those days before I could take stock, I wandered about in a daze. The world was strangely out of reach, as though a veil had been thrown across my senses, but rather than obscuring everything it was laid bare with excessive detail. Reality was marred by the vivid perception of it. Everything was connected somehow, everything harkened to something else, and that in turn to something else. Lines stretched and elongated, while whole battalions of colour surged across my swimming vision. I preferred to be alone. My parents seemed to content themselves that I was going through a phase. That interpretation satisfied me, indeed it gave me hope that perhaps it was in fact all it might be.

The little cave seemed a sanctuary, unlikely as it seemed, with the rough brownish black stain over the surface of the sandstone. It wasn’t much of a cave – not very deep – and it provided scant protection from the elements when as a little boy I would jump under the overhanging bulk of rock to wait a spell for the rain to stop. It required making vain attempts to dodge the large drips of fecund water that fell from the mossy rocks above. It was always cold there in winter, the wind blew sideways along the bluff face straight into you and those drips always found their way down my back one way or another. I don’t remember where I had been intending to walk that day, or why I had the urge to stop in such an inhospitable place. Once I’d ventured beneath the sandstone overhang I felt drawn to the ashes that lay in a mysterious little pile at the back of the cave. The ashes were unique in that they didn’t seem connected to anything else. Through the trees you could almost spot the counterfeit sails of the Opera House across the uneasy harbour waters. We were hardly out in the country. Why anyone would want to build a fire in this leaky hole in the wall was beyond me.

At first my mind attached itself to the notion of a wounded criminal, on the run and needing warmth as well as some light to fix his gear, or perhaps to stitch a wound. It had been a small, economical fire, built for utility and shedding only a small area of light in fear of being reported. The shabby figure huddled before it with needle and fishing line, a half empty bottle of whiskey by his side while he stitched up a deep cut in one leg caused by broken glass. It had been a hasty escape from a house that had become unexpectedly reoccupied ahead of schedule. The poor fellow had been forced to abandon his loot but had made it out and that’s all that mattered. Now all he had to do was make it back to… well, wherever criminals lived and… well, plan another crime. I wasn’t old enough to fill it out much more than that, taken as I was by the prospect of such human desperation right there practically on my doorstep. That had been quite enough excitement for me.

There was a different story each time I visited the little cave but never spoke of it to anyone, in case it might be true. It was my fantasy that I made more elaborate each time I went by. Sometimes I would see strange objects in the ashes, half burnt. Random items of discarded clothing, not worth carting back to the place where such stolen things are sold, or perhaps stripped apart into bandages for a hasty post-crime triage. Then one day I found an empty wallet among the ashes I felt vindicated in my wild assumptions at last.

I scanned around the fireside for something else, anything, for some indication of who had been here. I spotted a ball of paper, right in the corner at the back, almost completely obscured by blown ash. I smoothed the papers out against my thigh. The author had completed it without many errors, as though the words flew freely in a rush, but I could tell by the way the letters were formed on the page that it had taken some effort to write legibly in haste.

Ill probably never send this.

Our house is dark now. Im sitting in a cave in brand new clothes. Ive burnt everything that connected me with that old life. My credit cards, IDs, the entire contents of my wallet. I even threw my keys in the harbour. Im a new man now mum. Feels bloody good.

Youre wondering what you did wrong, though, I bet. Thats not something which is right and proper for you to be wondering. There are things you should know.

There are so many things Id like to write. Like how much of a great mum you were and how much I love you. You should know that Id really love to be able to write those words down, and even though I just did, I really cant. Not coz they arent true. Whos to say if they are, anyway? But coz I dont feel those things and Im not going to write anything, at this point, which isnt true.

So whats true?

Remember when you told stories, mum, at dinner, and had everyone laughing and Id pipe in with it wasnt like that, or thats not what I remember, and everyone would laugh even harder, not less? Im not sure why it was funny, me contradicting you like that, but somehow at the time it was. It was funny, coz youre you and Im me and were always going to be the same no matter how hard we try to be other people for one another, well always just be us.

Thats one thing I wanted to say. Well always be the people we are, for better or worse. So in a way I always was going to do the things Ive done and you get to call that destiny or whatever, and hopefully put it out of your mind.

And its a good thing, you know, mum. Not a bad thing. That is a good thing. I look at Charles who ripped you off all that money (no, dont argue. Thats what he did.) – he changed all the time. I saw him change when he was alone with me and with other people, but he was always only one way with you so you never saw that changeling thing that he was. He wasnt even a person, I dont think. I hated him. I didnt want to tell you that coz it would have offended you, but its the truth he was a really bad person. Not evil. He wasnt that. He was just ignorant and unsettled in himself and without a spine. He couldnt stand up to things. He let things affect him. I guess we all do let things affect us. All of us. But he was a really bad case. Then he stole all that money out of your account and I just couldnt stand seeing you make excuses for him. It wasnt chump change, it was two hundred thousand dollars! You say money isnt important, but money buys time and that money was your future. He stole your future. Thats why we stopped talking. I couldnt stand it that you defended him and wouldnt talk about it. I couldnt stand it that you sided with them coz it meant that you were half way like him already and might never change back and I couldnt wait around and watch that happening. Not to you.

Everybody changes. Thats always going to happen, and in that time after Charles ran out on you we both changed a lot and we did it in very different ways. What happened to you? Why did you side with them? Pride? Ill never really know. Its too late now. Were in the last quarter of the game and alls left is for me to leave you right.

None of it was your fault, mum. Not Charles, not what happened with me. The only thing you did was to side with them, and that was probably coz you were trying to give me hope. As though you could wipe out everything they did, everything they were, just with your graces. Pretty funny, that is, to me.

When Charles did what he did, I waited for days and weeks and months for some outrage, for an honest reaction, for something real to galvanise us and that we could make a stand and do something about it. Nothing happened. It was like hed gotten away with it and so somehow, hed gotten a pardon. He disappeared in the UK, not in the slums of Calcutta. He would have been findable, but you, what did you do? You forgave him! You basically said that that kind of behaviour was okay. Not in so many words, you would never have spoken them, but yes you okayed what he did and you and me changed in separate ways and the more I saw you drift off the more angry I felt that he had done this. Forget about the money, look what hes done here in my own living room and hes not even here and who am I anyway and (god im never sending this) whats to become of me and so I thought well, get it back, but there was no way of finding him, youd never tell, so I decided it was all okay and to just get it back.

You knew who the cheques were coming from, I reckon. You cashed em, happily I reckon. Thats good, coz they were for you and now its mostly all paid back. Its been a few years and I havent done the sums exactly but well I reckon we got it back. Thing you have to know is that its that bastard is why I did it. That bastard and the world that engended him. You didnt ask to be treated like that and neither did I and I reckon you were owed all that money back so I got it for you.

You have to know that Im the same son you always had. Living the way I do hasnt changed me one bit.

I still love to hear you laugh. Did you think I wasnt watching? I know youre embarrassed to have me around so I watch out for you when you think Im not there. Thats why Im writing this so youll know Im not watching any more.

See, I have to go away mum. I have to say goodbye.

Thing about the crim world, its just like the real world: people get tabs on you. Maybe thats why old Charles did what he did, coz he was sick of people having tabs on him so he dreamed up a new life for himself. Thats what I have to do. See, you got what you wanted, he was more of a father to me than you realised. So what if there were no cuddles or stories at bedtime, he left his mark on the both of us. Turns out Im following in the bastards footsteps. Not on purpose, but thats the way its turning out. Maybe whats happening to me is what happened to him. Maybe one day Ill get to ask him.

Yeah people get tabs on you no matter what line of work youre in. It all these loyalty cards and business cards and validation tickets and little bits and pieces here and there that amount to a fucking whirlwind of look at me, watch me, dont forget about me, instead of doing something worth looking at, worth watching, worth remembering. Its the same in the crim world too. I got all messed up with a couple of people called themselves the Cranstons and they think they own me, just coz I operate in their territory. No other reason, just a miniture form of govement that only works on crims and the taxes are like sixty percent instead of your good old GST ten. All these people are no different, standing on the corner with their hands out, like Charles stood there waiting in his stupid John Lennon glasses that said trust me trust me, and you in all your good graces saying I believe in your face and want that face to be real, and hes just coiled up inside, waiting for his moment. Me standing on the sidelines screaming watch out, watch out for the spider like a kid in a pantomime show and you looking all around you except for where the spider was.

You didnt want to look, did you mum?

Anyway the Cranstons were brother and sister and no different than him. Maybe a bit more honest.They never bothered to conceal the spider, hell they gave it a friggin job as their PR manager. They made themselves sound like a family so that they sounded like they were real, like they werent just the crim thugs they were, and people almost thought that they were looking out for them. Wayne wasnt so bad, but Tracy, the sister, shes the real monster. Of course, they didnt do a damn thing for anyone unless they could squeeze a brass razoo out of it, like the police who did nothing for you either. They are all the same people, wearing their uniforms, trying to convince everyone they are different, but they are actually all the same. All uniforms are the same uniform, coz no one can guarantee you that. Its just not in their power, but the uniform says that they want to convince you that they have the power when they dont. They have the power to try, and to spend a lot of money trying to do good and whatnot, but really half they time they have the opposite effect anyway so why bother? But people need uniforms so that they can go about being who they want to be, becoming who they want to be, uninterrupted by doubt.

Oh my god I am really never going to send this.

So anyway, getting off the track there I reckon.

So these guys the Cranstons probably think they have got my wings clipped, and its true Ive got to go. I cant tell you where coz you might get a visit from em and I dont want you knowing. You can even show them this letter if you want. I dont care.

(Here it is for the record if youre reading, Tracy: fuck you and the pony you trotted in on, you mediocre bint. Youre only leeching off of other peoples talent coz youre too gutless and talentless to actually do a few jobs yourself. Get off your ass and get a job with the cops – thats where you really belong.)

Anyway they forced me into this mum coz at the risk of actually paying them a compliment they really arent to be screwed around with. Not at all. They have me pegged and theyll rat me out or do something horrid to you so Ive got to go. Thats it. I hope my plan works. At the time Im writing this, I dont even know where Im going coz im just heading to the airport and were going to do that thing you and me always dreamed of. Remember? Just walk up to the desk and ask what time the next plane leaves and wait for the question, to where, and just say destination is of no consequense, and watch the look of slow envy dawn across that hosties face. Just the next plane. Thats it.

Dont worry about me mum. Ive got my funds that I didnt give the Cranstons. (Ha ha fuck you, Cranstons. Your man at the airport wont touch me. You should sack him by the way Tracy, hes really obvious. He has bogroll stuck to his undershoe half the time. The other half hes reading the paper. Tell him hes supposed to pretend to read it, but hes such an idiot that he gets distracted by ads for Fatblaster and onion choppers and the like.)

Anyway by the time you read this mum Ill be gone. Im not going to say all the obvious things like I love you and stuff from hallmark who should be put away for false advertising for a hundred years. Were too good for that. I wont let that crap in. Not between us. I might be a dirty scum crim to everyone else but to you Im your son who never lied to anyone so you hold your head up high and tell em to stick it.

You know me, you always have, and I havent changed.

I just changed location and Ill always be looking out for you, coz I have to even if it doesnt make any sense. It makes more sense than anything else.

These Cranston scum want to make an example out of me, its pretty obvious, but they wont get me. Believe that, like you wanted to believe in Charles.

One day Ill let you know where Ive gotten to or at least where you can send a letter, but that will be a fair while away yet, but Ill do it and just need to know youre safe and strong and believe that im ok.

By the time I had finished I was reading only with the aid of the scattered light that shone through the trees into the cave off the afternoon harbour swell. I watched a ferry go by, a great black blob of a silhouette. Mosquitoes came out and hovered about my face curiously.

It had to be real. It was too weird not to be. Whoever wrote it must be long gone, surely. But what if they remembered the letter, decided to come back for it? The paper was smeared with ash but it was still crisp. What if it had only been left there just today?

While I was reading a man had walked by. I wondered if it had been him. I cursed myself for being so stupid. I had been sitting there, sitting openly in his hideout but he hadn’t approached. He would have seen me reading. He must have known what I was reading. Would he be waiting for me out there? Why would he do that? Maybe he didn’t care. He hadn’t signed it, after all. Why had he changed his plans? I needed to find him, to see what he looked like. I honestly don’t think that I had any plans at all past that. I certainly hadn’t thought what his reaction might be once he knew I had his letter. Once he knew I had read his letter.

I was cold and decided that perhaps there was somewhere else further down the path that he might have gotten to, perhaps at the lighthouse or down the long metal ladder at the cliff’s edge. There were plenty of caves down thereabouts. Out of sight too.

I folded the pages of the letter carefully in an attempt to restore its rumpled dignity. I took off towards the peninsula’s tip, peering through the undergrowth, trying to decipher the darkness into a human shape. I made a game of it and ventured off the path as far as I dared before the trees and wind and dark got the best of me and I ran in panic back towards the relative safety of the path. I went all the way to the lighthouse that way, through the kids park where the see-saws and swings stood lifelessly, waiting for dawn and children to give them meaning again. I circumnavigated that boundary but the trees were sparse and I was certain there was nobody there. I resolved to go to the very edge and if I didn’t see him, to make my way down the ladder and scout the rocks to the left, away from the city lights where he was more likely to have made camp.

I was forced to slow down and nearly had a nasty accident when I forgot about the rock shelf that immediately preceded the sharp drop where the ladder stuck out of the top of the cliff. My hands were a bit grazed but I considered myself lucky. I brushed myself off and peered down the ladder that had been bolted into the cliff face. The scant light from the city illuminated only one side of the ladder and I couldn’t see the bottom. I rested my hands on the top rung. It was very cold and slimy from the sea spray and wind.

I was still building up my courage to descend it when I saw movement out of the corner of my eye.

Somehow I had passed him and coming down the path toward me from the playground I could see a silhouetted figure. He looks different in the mind’s eye of my memory, but at the time I was completely convinced it was him. Who else would it be? He had found me out. He had waited for me to pass and now he had me with my back to the cliff.

I glanced down the ladder again and the climb seemed even more treacherous. He was twice my size and if he caught me on the ladder I was done for. Nobody would know. Silly boy ran away from home and fell off a slippery ladder. Wouldn’t even make the papers. I imagined my body at the bottom with my mum and dad and sister and brother huddled in a small semicircle, staring out to sea. Nobody was crying. They just looked disappointed.

Looking back to the path the man had made it closer but he didn’t seem to be walking with any great purpose. Just ambling along really. That was just a ruse. He wanted me to know how confident he was. How easy it would be to dispose of me now that I knew his secret cave. Without a further thought, spurred by my parent’s seeming indifference to my death, determined to mean something more than a crumpled heap at the bottom of a cliff, I took off. I was a pretty nimble mover as a lad. I dashed past the man in a flash and his head whipped round. He glared at me as I passed. I realised that I had startled him.

I didn’t give myself time to think about it. I ran as fast as I could and leaped between the chain swings and set them swaying crazily in my wake. I glanced around one more time then but the man hadn’t pursued me. He stood there stock still, following my progress across the darkened playground. I stopped and looked at him.

He was scary and weird and I liked him. He seemed more alive somehow. More alive than the trees and rocks and biting cold wind. More alive than the waves wearing away at the shore year after year. His eyes were focused keenly upon mine, and I could tell he was listening, really listening. And watching.

I stood there a moment on the other side of the swings, staring back and slowly began to walk towards him.

The man took a step towards me.

I stopped again, frozen to the spot.

What was I playing at, here in the middle of the night at half past god knows what, and confronting this stranger so much bigger and more worldly than I was. But having read the letter I knew I had nothing to fear from this man. As my mother used to say, what on Earth was I doing?

He took another step towards me out of the shadows, and for the first time I saw his face.His face was totally still, impassive.Twin runnels of moisture ran down beneath his eyes. He was looking in my direction, but he wasn’t looking at me. He was looking at the swings. He made his way slowly over to one of them and sat down.The chains jangled under his weight.He was humming a tune to himself, but I didn’t catch it.

He looked up to me then, smiling vaguely, as though at a bitter joke. The hum turned to a gasping, hitching chuckle.

He was still looking at me and I couldn’t move, couldn’t tear my eyes away. For some reason I felt a kinship with this broken-looking man. I asked him in a low voice if he was all right. His eyes seemed to focus on me then and I immediately wished I hadn’t spoken.

“You fly,” he said. “Don’t stop at the cave, keep going.”

I shook my head in helpless incomprehension.

“You’ll get it, in time.”

I asked for his name.

“I might as well ask yours,” was his only answer.

I had stayed out long past when my parents were expected home. I had to be honest with myself, I longed to see them: to look into their distant faces and inscribe their memory in my mind To show them how alive I was. To give them reason to mourn me even if I was lost tomorrow. To make them laugh.

I fished the letter out of my pocket and held it out to him. He didn’t respond. I asked him if it was his. His eyes flicked to mine.

“Not any more,” he said, jutting out his chin. I presumed he meant for me to keep it so I put it in my pocket. I was getting really cold now and had begun to shiver, my voice shook as I asked for the address to send it to.

His eyes held mine in a half smile for a long moment. I couldnt help feeling it was something of a challenge. He told me the address in a soft tone that implied a sort of forgiveness. I was put off by that, as I had asked for none.

I left him there, I’m afraid. I couldn’t see a way in. His world had consumed him. It didn’t matter that I liked him. There just didn’t seem to be anything left in His strange half smile and knowing glances were thoroughly disconcerting and young as I was I had no way of knowing what it meant. Looking back, there isn’t much of my life that I would change, but I would have stayed there if I could. I would have just sat there. I wouldn’t have said anything, I would have just sat with him if he’d let me.

For the short walk back to the house darkness had almost completely descended. Long streaks of shadow clawed and shook through the trees, conjuring the Cranstons at every step. I broke into a run and was out of breath by the time I climbed our stairs to the porch.

I read the letter again at school the next day. This time, though, the strong sunlight by the playing field where I ate my customarily solo lunch revealed a scrawled section on the back of the last page that I had missed in the half light the day before.

Its the dark the dark its watching mum. Its always watching. Ill never know if it stops. Was the dark always watching? All through my life? Its breathing on me, I can feel the breath at my ear. Was it always there mum when you nursed me did you keep it away with your soulful tears and your graces. Did you do all that for me? God I cant believe what a fool I have been. Ill never know. Ill never know if the night is truly empty, or maybe its just filled with the past. You can never change what youve done, can you ma? You never feel it at the time, but it catches up with you. I can say it now coz im scared. I wish you were here to hold me. I have to go away so they never get you. I cant send this even. Think about me as that kid who told your stories right. Just think of me that way.

The words struck a fear inside and clanged like a bell. Once the reverberations had died down I was left with the resolution that I would spend my life trying not to end up like that. This is the past I am making now. And now and now. I would know what was what. I would be thoroughly aware of the consequences of my actions. I would live a life in the passage of history.

I lied to my parents that I was visiting a friend after soccer. I went to the address he’d given. I waited on the street to see if a lady lived there. It was a leafy street, the terrace houses on one side almost completely obscured by giant fig trees that were beginning to drop their burden of seed pods.

I leant up against one tree for quite some time but was no traffic into or out of the house. The trees waved serenely in the light breeze and there was a lovely fragrant smell in the air. I saw a pod fall and get crushed by a slowly passing car. Released, the fine, light brown motes were lifted by the wind for a short time before returning to the ground. It was such a clear sequence: break, fall, roll, crush, release. I realised that the smell was coming from the fig seeds as they mouldered in the rainwater on the bitumen. What right did I have to send a letter that was none of my business? But surely she would want to know? Surely knowing would be better than not knowing? But it was such an awful letter. What right did I have to do that to a person?

I saw the door open, watched in horror as my own mother closed it gently behind her. Her face was much older and there were lines of strain around the eyes I had never seen before. I had to physically stifle the urge to call out to her by pressing my toes down hard into the front of my shoes. She didn’t look around, seemed wrapped up in her own thoughts as she proceeded down the street. It struck me as she disappeared from view that I didn’t recognise the coat that she had been wearing.

My mind refused to accept what I had seen and immediately began making excuses. She just looked a lot like her. It wasn’t really her. It couldn’t possibly be her.

I crossed the street in a daze. My hands moved of their own accord. I saw they had left the letter with one corner sticking out under the doormat. I walked away thinking, “no, no, no, no” repeatedly. I don’t know why – perhaps I was already starting the process of denial that has lasted right up until writing this.

Later that day when I got home I overheard my parents discussing what had been found at the bottom of the cliff near the playground. He’d been there a few days, apparently, which was impossible, as I had only just spoken with him the previous night. I didn’t go down there to check if it was him. I didn’t want to know. I was too ashamed.

Of course I know now that the corpse would have been removed by then, but in my child’s mind’s eye he lay there still, waiting, accusing.

I spent the next few days hiding in my room, coming out only for meals and burying my head in books. The extreme clarity that had burdened my perceptions faded away, a dead signal. It was like a piece of me I had not realised was rotten had fallen away. I didn’t feel better, on the contrary, I felt I became less somehow from the experience, and ever since I feel I have become less and less.

In my room, alone, I woke up in the middle of the night. The house was still and quiet below me. Time was suspended like a great drum, waiting for the next beat. I turned on the little light by my bed and hopped out. I was going to the toilet but suddenly stopped myself when I caught my own eye in the mirror. Light plays crazy tricks sometimes, and for a moment in that little pool, the light struck across the left side of my face, I looked much older than I was. Was it the hollows under the eyes? Was it the shape of the brow, the lips? It was no single thing, that was for sure, but for an instant I had looked just like him.