Only If You Have To

Hope is Strange

You never know how close you are to the edge until you move a little bit closer. Nothing has changed yet I have taken a staggering fall. Days appear then disappear, in consciousness and memory, like momentary recollections of old photographs. I make words stick to them.

Day 1: Early start. Ride with Ricky. He won't stop talking but I don't pay attention. Gina spent all night being sick. Even after she pushed me to bed I got no sleep.

Ricky gives me Jane's photograph back. Promises that soon her photo will be lining the roads to Melbourne. If enough paper is left in the world.

Skipped AA.

Day 2: Rode with Ricky again. This time he won't stop asking questions.

Suppose I can't blame him.

Realised I've started keeping a journal again. It's meant to help with the first sixty days.

I am back on day one.

A mouthful, taken on a reflex by someone I used to be. But it counts.

Made it to AA, told the full story. Ricky wasn't there.

Day 3: Ricky called, on a run. No ride today. Many apologies.

I've never felt so tired.

Day 5: I can't remember yesterday. Gina only leaves the bathroom to sleep. We're both trapped.

Day 6: Arrived at the mine. I've been replaced. Turns out I slept through day 4.

Gina never noticed.

We dance in silence.

I tell her I love her, said tells me she knows.

Day 7: Ricky's back in town. But he has nowhere to drive me.

Day 8: Just stepping out. I may be a while.

Every recovered drinker will name a different 'worst' thing about giving it up, I say that it's memory. We drink to drown things away, and when you stop you can't even get away from the little things, like the phone number to call when Peter Doyle and his friends need a favour.

Public phone booths used to be huge metal boxes, I've seen them in movies. The whole planet must have been so much cooler. The phone booths I'm going to have none of the privacy of a big metal box. Just four dozen handsets arranged in a pair of cubes, half buried under opposite facing sand dunes. I can remember when the first two dozen were set up as a temporary measure, when the power first started to go bad. They'd raised a sand dune on top of it the better to protect it from the sun, but for half a day the sun shone directly into it. It was ok, it was only temporary. Three years later they put another one up, facing it. A studious local council is ours.

Both booths spend all day in half shadow, only the strip between them, perhaps a meter wide, lets in any sun at all. At mid-day it splits the two booths with a ribbon of harsh white. Casting stark, refracted shadows within. With a little luck that little strip of sunlight can get you a lot of privacy. And maybe my luck is beginning to turn, it has to some time.

There are maybe a dozen people in the newer booth, but I can only spot one set of sun cloths near the entrance to the old one. A full sun suit, anatomically correct, well padded, with a slot on the back for an internal cooling system. Ten years ago, it was a hot buy, even today it would fetch two months’ pay at the mine. Its owner still has the pants on, I can see them poking down amongst the battered steel stands of the phones themselves. A male voice is murmuring anxiously.

“Two weeks is what they said, there's nothing I can do. Yes, I know. Yes, I know. Look this is a good thing, it gives me time.”

I tune the voice out, someone else's problems. He's over on the far-right side of the cube in this shelter, I guess I'll take the far left. The light fades into the shade eerily. Shadows and half shadows, black and blue. Back to back in the middle of the shelter the old stainless-steel phones look to be glowing a little. Fifty cents and a memorised number go into one of them. One of the few home numbers in town to still have a stable connection.

“Doyle residence” a throaty voice answers. That's Mrs Doyle. Unlike some wives I can think of she is well aware of everything her husband gets up to. The line is tapped of course, everyone knows. But no matter who calls she is delighted to hear from them, and an invitation to visit will certainly be forthcoming. When I give my name, she gives me enough earnest goodwill to produce faint nausea.

“How's Gina doing? Any news from Jane? I was thinking of you just the other day. You must drop by, we just got some fresh mint leaves in, the real thing! Come, I insist, I'd like to hear your news.”

That of course means 'six pm and not a minute later.' Mercifully she keeps the pleasant appearance short. It's ingenious to think about. Police could bring that wiretap up as evidence any time they like, and all they'd be able to prove is that Katie Doyle appears to be a pillar of the community.

“Thanks Katie. Six pm”

Draping up in sun clothes to leave I recognise the booth's other occupant. Only the face is visible. The sun suit is old but well made. Densely cladding every extremity of the anatomy, it looks like someone's idea of a space suit from the far future. A reflective visor, well scarred with age, stands open in the helmet and Ricky Fencer's face contemplates mine.

“Alan” he says, eyes and mouth wide with a little surprise. “Chatting with Katie?”

I can only shrug, everybody knows Peter and Katie Doyle.

“Just a favour for a friend” I say, the customary response. Hopefully that will end the matter. Ricky's brows furrow in response.

“This is what he came up to you in the canyon for isn't it? What's the job?”

“No idea yet. Moving furniture, I think.”

It's hard to tell exactly, with his face buried in the helmet, but the lines on Ricky's face start reading like concern. Neither of us need to vocalise what he's thinking. To be honest I've not thought too far ahead, this is the opposite of what I want and the less I think about it the better. And I've not thought at all about driving for Doyle after I tried, successfully I thought, to lock myself away from that option. Ricky's face outlines the problem.

“Yet here I am.” I say to the unanswered question and turn to collect my sun-clothes.

“Alan” Ricky cuts in “I know s**t's bad....” He stops there, I give him a look. He shuts up. I get the impression neither of us want to be here. Nor did we plan on running into each other. I give him a slow nod, he returns it.

“Just remember, if there's anything I can do.”

He doesn't finish the sentence. Just drops the visor and leaves hurriedly. I sit and watch him dart into the glare like a flitting shadow on negative film. My sun clothes are like baggy, slightly sticky sheets, fortunately I've all afternoon to put them on. And I need to think. I put off this problem longer than I should have. Truthfully, I'm amazed Katie didn't ask about it, that woman hoards local gossip the way some house wives hoard wine.

Heaven help me, don't think about wine.

Perhaps her and Doyle don't know. Perhaps she didn't ask because she assumed I had a solution if I was calling. It's true there was a time when I had a dozen fake licences, each a different age, name and jurisdiction. I burned them all years ago. No time to get another one now, and there's no way I can ask Ricky to go back on our agreement. Once you've jumped on a grenade you don't get back up and ask the man you've saved if he'd rather jump on it instead.

Ricky did pull the pin on this grenade, how bad is it to expect him to cop it?

I'm not going to dignify that with a response. God's definition of good and bad are radically different. Neither a good nor a bad deed can be undone in his eyes, except through repentance. I have to hope that I live long enough to repent, there's no other way out of this. Normally I trust myself to find a way through almost anything, but I'm so tired. Maybe calling Katie again and reneging is the way out of this?

There's a way out and there's a way forward. Simple facts are simple facts. The honest way has driven me into a wall. I'm not a good man, but I've spent years now acting like one and I know that it takes certain requirements. One of those is the absence of powerful desperation. And desperation might be all I have.

The scars on my back itch painfully. I don't want to do this.

Work harder, accept that I'll be more tired, save up, survive. I can do all those things the honest way, but Gina's condition might not have the patience for it. I could fix it all in just a few days.

Jane is probably already gone, fled this dying country for somewhere higher, cooler, less toxic. It's what I would do if I could. One may travel cheap and unobserved much more easily than two. She's probably long gone. Perhaps Gina will die soon no matter what I do?

Perhaps I'll bury her, then I'll find an honest way to slip away. Those mountains and beaches ringing the Greater Gulf look awfully beautiful, and they're an awful long way from this place.

Going there was Gina's idea.

I can see myself there for a moment, bent and worn on a beautiful beach and somehow, I don't think I'd ever have it in me to take it in. I'd just spend the rest of my life staring at the blank patch of sand next to each set of my footprints. I'll spend eternity thinking about someone who isn't there. I can't leave without Gina.

Hood and hat on, itchy and lean but keeping off the sun. I leave the shelter and go to try and catch Ricky. There's a third way here, I just have to convince him. Sometimes to keep back the flood you have to violate a few building codes. As long as the dam stands up, as long as your world stays safe. There is something driving me to that knowledge and I can only hope it will drive Ricky to it too. I just have to find it.

This is a good idea. It helps maintain the wall between me and my old life.

He's standing by his truck, arms twisting and pulling, fixing something. Ricky's truck is a sight to behold around town. It resembles less a prime mover than a tank. Every exposed surface either reflects, deflects or absorbs the sun's radiation. The same know-how that went into the ancient space program went into that truck. It looks more than a little alien. Ricky, clad in his sun-suit could be a recently landed E.T beside it. In the full light of day his suit looks even more scratched and worn with age, but he moves lustily within it. It was definitely made to fit him, at some point this truck driver was worth a lot of money. I wonder what happened to him?

If I asked him he'd say the same thing happened to him as happened to everyone else and our country to boot. The white moved in, the red moved out, and we were all caught in the middle. He doesn't, however, even give me the chance to open my mouth.

“Yes, I'll help you Alan.” he says, making a last strain on the pulley he's operating. Then he turns to face me. “There's no way I wouldn't. I owe you that and much more. Plus, just found out there's no more runs for two weeks at least. More trouble at the mine. Apparently, Doyle's none too happy about all the miners that jumped on him and his friends.”

I give a dry gasp. “He's muscling in on the mine?”

“Doesn't have to. He just makes Thompson send the message that no miner is welcome in the Canyon until he gets what he's owed. Miners want booze, miners go on strike, no more work for any of us.”

The visor makes Ricky's voice sound thinner than normal, maybe it's the suit but he sounds alien.

“What does Doyle think he's owed?”

“Who the f**k knows, that man's an asshole.”

Ricky stops there, one blasphemy later than I thought he would. This time though there's nothing I plan on saying. Right now, there are more important things than the ten commandments. It looks like we both need this to stay alive.

“Sorry” Ricky says after a moment. “He is, erm, he is a disreputable individual.”

“He is, but he's a disreputable individual who will pay one hundred grand if I move some cargo for him. Probably expensive drugs. You drive. We split the money. That's the plan.”

I can't tell what's going on behind Ricky's visor. All he says is;

“Get in the truck.”

We move. Doors slam behind us. When he slides up his visor Ricky's face is sweating, but also positively glowing.

“Fifty each?” It's his turn to gasp. He sits back, pulls the helmet away. It's shaped like half an egg, when he tosses it behind him into the sleeper cabin it rattles like plastic. Ricky's eyes fade in and out of focus until he finds the words he wants.

“This is the big score. You know what this means Alan. This is fix everything money. This is get out of town before it dies money! This!” he cries with a sudden double take “This is you getting Jane back money. I don't know how but where there's fifty grand there's a way.”

He looks straight at me. Grinning like a fool in paradise. I know it, of course I know it. I know every word escaping his parched lips for the truth that it is. Still, it's nice to hear someone say it out loud. This might be a genuine way out, a way forward. Something like a spasm runs around my left eye, tears are squeezing their way out.

Hope is a very strange thing.