Only If You Have To

Waiting For Sunrise

It was a long, quiet drive from Melbourne. Only nine words were spoken before we got to town. It was a long walk after the truck ran out of fuel. It has been a painful few days.

Janes eyes are spherical mirrors beneath her scars. From the front they reflect sorrow shared from my own face. They draw in the blight, the sun burned country all around. And just a faded glimmer of all the pain that sits behind them.

“f*****g done with this place anyway.” She said. I admonished her language on a reflex. The words struggled from my numb, tired lips. They sounded blank and disappointed. Jane's face fell. She said no more until we were almost home. And refused to touch the medicine. I pictured a molten iron rod beaten flat beneath a hammer. No matter how high the heat the steel would not purify.

Jane only spoke nine words in between Melbourne and home. We drove in silence from Melbourne in Ricky's truck. We only stopped when the truck ran out of fuel, and that was within sight of the hills on the edge of town. Without a word we started walking. I carried my sun clothes on one shoulder, the money on the other. Every time the sun jacket rapped against my back I felt the satisfying weight of four things. Jane's lighter, Osrik's note, Ricky's gun and a single box of Michal Phadramine. Probably worth enough to buy the entire town. Had grabbed two from the crates on the beech before we left, given them to me with an honest smile. I had secreted a third, just in case. I wanted her to take the drugs right then and there but Jane would not accept them. She wouldn't talk to me at all and it dawned on me that perhaps she could not. Perhaps Ricky struck her dumb with his words.

When we got inside the truck cabin Jane lit one of Ricky's cigarettes, seemingly on instinct. Then her head darted towards me and she moved to crush it out. I raised a hand, waved it, continue. She smoked it guiltily. Then passed me a well worn and many times folded sheet of paper. She prodded it towards me tentatively, almost like it was an apology. Or some kind of plaintive offer.

It was a letter. Or rather many letters. Or else it was many beginings to a letter, or notes that might have one day formed a letter. Different paragraphs more faded than others, whole sectioned crossed out in thick, lancing lines of pen. Jane had made hundreds of attempts at writing it, dozens of crossed out dates dotted the corner.

Do you know that I can still remember the pain of it? Burning its way down my scalp. Flesh bubbling and breaking beneath the light of the sun. It haunts me. That feeling of skin shrivelling away from the bone. I don’t think that it will ever leave me. It scarred me in more ways than one.

…

I guess I left for more than just what happened, but also the things that went unsaid between the three of us. I tried to ignore what it meant for a long time. You kept a lot of secrets old man. I wonder if mom knew? I guess she must have, she did marry you. It just frustrates me that you thought you could keep it from me. Secrets don’t keep in this world anymore. That being said, I’m no better.

……

I thought about killing myself for a while. I suppose that’s natural. When the world presents you with pain and suffering time and time again, then perhaps it isn’t you that has a problem but the world that has a problem with you. It feels like it’s trying to purge me from its system. Like a virus, an infection. Just some parasite draining its resources. God knows that there isn’t much left to go around. So, I thought about killing myself. It wasn’t as scary as I thought it’d be. Staring at myself in the mirror it just kind of happened. That simple thought. You shouldn’t be here. The scary part was that the thought made me happier than I’d been in a long time. I didn’t sleep that night. I haven’t been able to sleep well since.....

But hey, I’ll sleep when I’m dead right?…

I didn’t do it though. Not because I thought I deserved better. Not because of how it would hurt you. Rather, I didn’t do it because I hated the thought of giving this evil world its way. They wanted me to disappear, some small gnat to be squashed underfoot to remind a far more important creature that it lives in a cage.

...

To be a lesson to you not to be late, for you were never really free. Just dreaming. It was a nice dream before it turned nightmare. Some days it was easy to forget the world was crumbling around us. But it IS crumbling. If I am a parasite then I’m going to live.... I’m going to suck this world dry. I hate it like I hate them, and when they get what’s coming to them, I’ll be there twisting the knife.

…I guess what kept me going what my hatred and the need for the answer to the question that entire day had me asking. Why me? Why you? I heard about it later. After everything I heard how they had used some girl to blackmail The Phantom out of retirement, and that after all that, he was late. I suppose it’s funny in a way. Not only that someone lame as you turned out to be one of the most infamous getaway drivers in the underworld, but also that when it mattered most, you were late for the first time in your career. It’s ok dad, I don’t blame you. Only a psycho would mutilate someone’s daughter for being 3 and a half minutes late. Don’t worry, he’ll get his. Sometimes that thought is the only thing that keeps me going.

……

You know it’s weird how things can never really stay the same. We are all just getting by, waiting for the next thing to go colossally wrong. I never knew I was waiting for it but looking back I don’t think I once thought about what happens after childhood. I never once pictured myself leaving that house. Everything just sort of happened and I just got swept away with the tide. We move from one moment to the next, and every second we are different. In a moment I went from a world living with you, loving you, to a world without you. My world was changed the moment the sun touched my skin.

…

It’s easy to forget how close we all come. To the worst version of ourselves. It’s not even that hard. It just takes a really bad day. Maybe 2 or 3 for the best of us, but we all have the potential to be monsters. Remember how you used to read me stories? In those funny voices you used to make? I loved those stories, but more I loved the parts where it got a bit too scary, the protagonist would be fighting some beast or other and I’d try to hide myself behind you. You’d smile and tell me that there’s no such thing as monsters. I learned later that you pass by the monsters on the street, and that the scariest thing about them is that they look completely normal. They could be standing right next to you and you’d never know. That being said, I loved those times you comforted me in the shadow of fear. They were the sweetest lies you ever told me.

…..

It’s hard not to think about you and mom, but it’s harder not to think about the reason I can’t go back. My being there would only hurt you, and if you didn’t know why at the beginning you would figure it out before the end. Considering that I was a walking, talking reminder that you weren’t in time to save me from my scars, I figured that I’d put you through enough already. I am sorry though, I hope you know that. Still, I don’t think I’ve ever felt so alone. Surrounded by more people than I’d ever seen in our little dusty town, and I still can’t help but be lonely.

…

There might be a way. That parasite Peter f*****g Doyle might be bringing you to me Dad. We might get out of this yet...

I read the final lines while we walked towards the hills on the edge of town. Jane drifted across the landscape like a white ghost. Not a word came out of her but she followed me. The need to have her talking, well and whole before me beat blow after blow on my back. But I counted each knock of the four totems in my jacket. Each one a reminder of why I did this, reminding me of patience. Just a little longer. Short but deep shadows lay all around the hills when we reach them. All the stars are clear and bright tonight, though only a crescent moon hangs in the sky. The ozone above us was very thin. The next day would be unbearable. I could barely bare the absence of that patient rhythm I had walked with so far.

“I'm sick.” Jane spoke and I started biting my tongue. All the life was gone from her voice. Only echoes of its faint melody remained. “Dad, you know that right? I think the new drugs will fix it. But I'm not sure. It's not a magic bullet.”

The light of all the stars, so strong that night, gave soft edges to everything beyond arm's reach. So, when I turned to her the hooded shape seemed little more than a shimmer. Like a ghost in a gentle fog. A fog which signalled a difficult day ahead. I couldn't see her face but felt her eyes on me. She knew that her still present sun cloak drew my eye. Why still wear it?

“I've tried a lot of cures. I'm a walking talking drug lab. And, did you hear about what those early treatments did to melanin levels?” At this she flapped her hands at her sides. It was worth waiting through the agony of silence to see it. It was not born of numb trauma. It was the gesture of a sweet faced girl who hated her school uniform. A girl I knew well. Though not as well as I should.

“I found out just before Peter Doyle.” She trailed off, sleeves and gloved hands reaching inside her hood. Perhaps on the verge of taking it off, perhaps only rubbing her eyes. Then she waved two uncertain sleeves towards her head. “I'm sorry it's just...I can't think of how to say it without cussing. Things are easy but hard.”

She stopped talking again. And then she giggled. A real giggle, not the helpless, heartless carroling that had blasted out from her before. This was Jane's giggle. Her 'oops I just told a dirty joke to my parents' giggle. I found a chuckle rose as well. It stifled on my tongue still firmly clenched between my teeth. But soon the pressure was too much to contain. My own weak laughter added to her own.

“Let it out.” Was all I could say.

“Before the goat c**k stuffing king of slime that is Peter f*****g Doyle tied me to a d**k compensating post and tried to laser my eyes out of my mother f*****g face!”

Every angle of her body flicked and twisted. In her voice shrill violence whispered. Tension long suppressed, and not the last of it. Like a sudden injection of nitrous to a body. She pitched forward, pinned to me. Crumpled like a wet shirt.

“I had already planned to leave. I wasn't going to tell you or mum. I didn't want to just sit around and die. But those early drugs mean I don’t even look like me anymore! I cover up completely, even at night. I don’t like people looking at me like I’m some kind of freak.”

Then she started sobbing in earnest. I held her for a time. Found myself gently shushing her like she was a baby. After even longer it worked. She stood still in my arms and I found my voice at last.

“You formed a criminal empire to try and find a cure. And the one thing you couldn't bring yourself to do was tell your family about it. To think. I always worried you were too much like your mother.” She started laughing joyfully. I stood there wondering why. I wasn't joking.

“You know what I've got then. You know what it does.” Her hands gripped to my shoulders in a vice. Her inhibitions were gone. I knew that much. But she seemed a little more of herself with me. Perhaps I was to her what her lighter, the note, the gun and the cure were to me. I knew I almost certainly had what she had. But she didn't need to know. I should tell her. I should have told her already! I don't know if anything would change. My first impulse, however, would not be denied. And it was to protect her. What if she thought she had infected me. Maybe she'd run. Something else curled through the idea. Some part of me that even the other parts of me don't like. She hadn't told me. Why should I tell her?

We stood against each other until all four arms were weary. A single step back. I didn't try to hold her still. Hands shook on either side of her hood but she stopped before pulling it off. Head twitching like scared prey. She took three careful steps until the moon was directly behind her. It crowned the top of her head like a jewel. The she shook the hood back to show the sheen on her face's edge. Nothing more than a glimmering shadow. She took a deep breath.

“Help me.” A voice as small as a grain of sand. My fingers hung from my hands like frayed rope but I offered them, palms out. Her fingers felt sharp on mine. No pressure but an electric pin held fast against my skin. Four hands barely touched the fabric enough to push it back. Just barely enough to slide it over the top of her head as she bent it towards me.

When she straightened the hood peaked just below the crescent moon's lowest curve. Its light soaked into my cheeks. Only the tiniest glimmer falls through her hoods thin shadow to her face. As white as a sheet. As white as a pearl. Brown eyes atop high cheeks. Red irritation around them. Her tiny black eyebrows stood wide with expectation and fear. Wavy black lines rippling beneath two jagged shadows. Scars like rivers of tar, brows to hairline.

Her mouth, always oddly wide beneath her tall cheeks, pursed; then fell open with hysterical gasps for air. The pale light of the crescent moon lit up the tears on my face. I think I saw the same reflected on my little girl. But it was very dark.

“They turned black” she said. We had finally stopped crying. “I thought they'd fade white, that they'd go away at least. But the scar tissue turned black, another f*****g side effect.”

“We can handle this.” I said on a reflex. Her lighter was in my hand. So gentle was her touch when picking it up that it seemed to float away. She kept trying to meet my eyes and each time winced away. I laid my hands on her shoulders and smiled to her as only her father ever could. They rose to gently clasp her cheeks. Slow and barely perceptible movements drew her gaze to mine.

Her eyes were spherical mirrors. From the front they cast an image of sorrow shared from my own face. They drew in the blight and sun burned country all around. And just a faded glimmer showed out of all the pain behind. But she kept on walking home. Only five more words remained to be said before we reached town. I spoke some but they were meaningless chatter. Only when I told her of the bottle I had saved for her, and how I had rebuffed it every day to stay strong for her, only when I then told her it was still in my car for her belated eighteenth birthday. Only then did she smile a little and speak.

“I don't drink, keep it.”

Jane's foot creaks lightly on the porch in harmony with mine. She is practised as I am at not disturbing her mother. The money is on my shoulder. Osrik's note, Ricky's gun and our medicine sit comfortably against my chest. I put the jacket on as the night turned cold. My feet were very sore.

Jane started talking. Every time we walked past a place she remembered. All small memories, all easy to remember. Only once her head moved abruptly away from a sight. I tried to offer her the medicine and she just shook her head.

“I've had to jab all kinds of things inside me in the last two years. No more until I can see my mum.” Creeping over the porch I feel a lead weight on my eyes. Weariness like chains. But there is something down there. A wooden cross is hanging from the door handle. Twisted into its leather thong a scrap of paper that bends it like a broken vane. I'll come back for this. I love you. Had I wondered as I wrote those words whether they'd be the last she ever had from me? I think I did. But I never once considered her never having the chance to read them.

The bedroom door was ajar, almost precisely how I thought I'd left it. But in the tiny gap of floor between door and wall there laid a grey hand. Gina was dead. A statue of ash broken on the floor. The smell of sick. Thick enough to be physically impassable.

Jane slid down the wall to perch on the floor. Squatting with her palms behind her feet. I dropped too. Straight down. Hands over my head and head between my knees. The bombs were falling, the dam was breaking. Duck and cover.

I had known deep down that if I considered the real chance of Gina dying without me to be at her side I'd have never taken the job. It wouldn't have mattered what Peter Doyle said. My wife had dragged me kicking and screaming from a terrible place. Had kept me from it. Had guarded me from it. But once again my last job took too long.

The weight of the money bags on my shoulder pulled me over. I sprawled in the hallway, hands over my head. Jane held onto her perch, eyes shut, mouth open. Whatever her warped brain made her feel was locked inside. I rose, shedding the bags. I had wanted so badly to show them to Gina. To let her know that it was alright now. I took a stride towards the door. I had to see her, I owed her that much. Never once did I deserve to be her man. Not when it counted. I should at least look at her. I couldn't prevent it but that didn't change a damn thing. But the strength to pass the door. Into that hideous smell. It simply wouldn't come.

Whether weariness or shock weakened me more I know not. And neither if I would have had strength enough if every ailment was gone. I don't remember deciding to hit the wall. I just hit the wall. One fist, two fists, plaster pounded into powder. I would tear the house down around the door if I couldn't pass it. I deserved to be as sick as her. I'd pound the walls down until I ran out of walls or my fists were reduced to bloody stumps. Then I'd have started pounding with the stumps. But I drew back to throw a fist at the door itself and saw that Jane had drawn her gun.

If a man is an engine and God is the driver then God had spent the last minute revving my motor well past the red. But when I saw that gun the pressure stopped. Everything stopped. Failure I might be, but in that moment I was still Jane's father.

Soundlessly I knelt, one gentle hand on her shoulder, the other on her arm. She wasn't sitting still, her body vibrated viciously, hundreds of tremors, tiny sobs.

“What are you doing with that?” I asked her. My hand coming to rest on the barrel of the gun.

“I don't know” she said “I'm so angry.” I barely heard her at all. She was speaking without breath. It was as if she had forgotten how. Her eyes glazed over for a moment and she remembered. She sucked in air. Covered her face and looked up at me from behind her hands. The gun clattered to the floor. When she spoke, it was the voice of a young girl who had yet to learn that we lived in a fallen kingdom.

“Normally when I'm angry I kill people. But I'm not supposed to, am I? But is that only if it's other people or...” I slid the gun away quietly as she peaked through her fingers, honest and confused as a baby in the high beams of a road train.

Nothing in the world made sense to her. But something had clicked for me. I don't remember it clicking. But the certainty of long contemplation was in my voice.

“Maybe someone who deserves to die.” I saw her scars first as she lowered her hands. Jagged black lines along her paper white face. Placid calm made them lance like painted lightning bolts. A gathering storm. War paint on an angel. I saw the red around her eyes, and the brown centres that were filled with rage.

“Peter f*****g Doyle.”

Jane's foot creaks lightly on the porch in harmony with mine. She is practised as I am at not disturbing her mother, not that it matters anymore. The money is on my shoulder. Osrik's note, Ricky's gun and our medicine sit comfortably against my chest. I left the cross on the door, took the note and tore it up. I wonder if Jane will agree to take her medicine now. Maybe I should take the vial meant for Gina. But the sense of purpose cannon balling me forward will not be denied. I don't want to deny it. I can't deny it. Jane is going to kill Peter Doyle. Then we are heading for the horizon.

She's had people watching him since she started. A dozen men in a guardhouse. Plenty to pursue with. She needs a driver. More specifically she needs the Phantom.

No wheel in my hands has ever felt so good. No smile on my face has ever been so wide. My little girl is beside me bristling with excitement. Revenge. I left Jane's gun in the hallway. The sudden rush of glee thinking of a world without Peter Doyle made me forget things. So, I handed her Ricky's gun. She nodded.

We drove quietly to the Doyle house. Jane had kept more than half an eye on the place. Knew that the guardhouse was across the road. In the building which had at one point been the town hall. She also knew how many fast cars they had. But nobody ever messed with Peter Doyle, and this would just be frail old Alan paying him a visit. So, we arrived unmolested. Jane slipped out the door with a nervous smile.

Her cloak gave her the shape of a wraith in the light of Doyle's windows. I sat back, relishing this moment, I was exactly where I wanted to be. A line of song in a familiar voice drifted unbidden through my head. A scarred young truck driver crooning as we had driven towards Melbourne.

“You can pull the trigger but only if you have to.” I sang to myself. Sure, that Ricky would be satisfied that Doyle got what was coming down his path, and that his gun would be the one to do it.

The medicine is still in my pocket, all three vials. Next to it is Osrik's note. It tickles me through my shirt and I pull it out. Another small fortune another long drive away. And none of it would buy back what I had done in the last two days. I crumpled the note in my hand and let it fall out the window. If paper money still exists in fifty years some drifter will hit the jackpot out there.

“Sorry Osrik”

He shouldn't have relied on me either. A high pitched scream filled the night for half a heartbeat. Then the crack of Ricky's six shooter overtook it. Katie must have answered the door. In short order I heard shouting both sides of the street. Hands flexed on the wheel. More shouting from the house. Then Ricky's gun spoke up again. A pause, an aftershock. Then it rang out three more times.

Blood spattered Jane's cloak when she hurried back to the car. “You know what? I feel better. Now drive!” We drove without lights, roaring through town like a bullet. Like a wrathful phantom. Doyle's thugs never had a chance, nor do I think they had the heart. But they followed us out of town into the hills.

These roads I knew well from years ago. Every twist, every bend came back to me. It was fed into my hands from the wheels and the road. But all roads crumble a little, year by dreadful year. One curve along the edge of a hill was nothing like I remembered. We started sliding then were jolted into the air. Flying off the hill with no control. The back wheel had slid beyond the edge. As we fell I pictured how, if I'd been ready, I could have compensated. But in the final analysis I most definitely am not the man I used to be. Even as I wear his skin. Jane and I are weightless. Time is slowing as we fall. Despite everything, I can’t help but enjoy the ride down.

Something is burning.

We landed on the wheels and the car broke around us. Shattering at every seam the way it was designed. Something skewered through my leg and the stars in the sky blurred and swam.

Jane was slapping me on the head when my head stopped spinning.

“Wake the f**k up. Wake the f**k up!”

The stars stopped spinning. The stars were gone. I saw Jane's pale skin as she fluttered away from my opening eyes. Dawn would be on us soon. A dark stain showed through my chest. Jane saw it and tore my jacket open.

Two vials of the medicine were broken. It pooled oily between my ribs. Only one was left undamaged in my pocket. Jane's eyes were wide and her fingers clutched so hard at my chest they felt like to break.

I don't remember deciding what to do next. But when I spoke a second later there was no doubt. Echoes of unanswered questions danced in my mind. Either dead or ignored.

“Take it” I said “sun's almost up. Run for it.”

Jane's shining eyes darted around with madness. I pointed faintly down to where my knee was twisted around. I might be all day just getting out of the car. She had to go now. And my little girl knew it. She clutched the vial to her chest.

“I love you Daddy.” She said as if I was about to tuck her into bed.

Something is burning.

I am burning.

The sun has started to rise.

Even the faintest ray can pierce you if you don't move. Soon I'll have blisters. Soon I'll go blind.

I could try and find shade. Could try moving to the other side of the car at least. The rising sun casts a shadow towards the hills. I sit facing the blighted horizon. I could move but I wouldn't get anywhere. And it would hurt.

It hurt enough getting out of the car. The only part of it worth remembering was finding a green bottle, still wrapped in black paper and miraculously unbroken. Its green neck still poked at my vision from where I had left it in the foot well. Jesus Christ but I am sore.

I'm burning in the sun but it's alright. I'll be alright. Judgement awaits me, beyond my control now. Jane will be alright. I hope so anyway. She's smart enough to take over a gang in Melbourne in no time at all. Maybe the cure will work, she'll get her head together and make her life better. Maybe make other lives better too.

Maybe a scavenger will find her charred bones some time in a thousand years. I think I've done enough. But after everything she's been through she knows where to hide, and she knows where to run. She's my little girl.

If God forgives me will I go in? I'll take it as the greatest mercy. Gina will be there for certain. I will spend the rest of eternity making it up to her.

What did God say to Ricky after I arranged their meeting. Will I see my young, misguided intern again. What on Earth would I say?

I don't know. So I turn pages in my memory for a quote from the good book.

“All who sin apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who sin under the law will be judged by the law.”

Romans book two, verse something or other.

“Still running around believing that are you mate.”

Ricky sits languidly beside me, sun suit hanging open, his face towards the horizon. I get the vague sense I should be surprised, but surprise is an emotion that takes effort. I just sit there. Too drained to argue religion with a hallucination. Ricky pulls out a box of cigarettes.

“One for the road mate?”

I shake my head at that. Wondering idly what a hallucinatory cigarette would be like. Ricky shrugs that I'm to suit myself and lights away. He still hasn't looked at me. I almost don't want to look at him.

Almost.

My eyes fall on the green neck of the whisky bottle. Such a fine bottle. Shame to waste it. Like my memory of Ricky puts it. One for the road. I tip it back with abandon. But when the golden liquid enters my mouth I start to cough and gag. My vision swims just from the smell, and the taste reminds me only of petrol.

I pass it languidly to where I can still see Ricky sprawled with his back against the wheel. As I let the bottle go I hear it shatter in the back of my mind. I feel some distant echo of its fumes. But before my eyes the young truckie mulls the bottle, than casts it aside.

“f**k you Ricky.”

He shrugs and turns to face me. His face is clean, his hair as well kept as it could be. He looks like the night at AA when all the room was cheering for him. His eyes bug and his grin is sardonic. In the centre of his forehead there is a single, clean, red hole.

“Language Alan.” He says. That's all there is to it. I sit back with a chuckle and a croak.

“See you soon partner.”

It has been so long since I just sat and watched the sun rise.