The
nearest road is over a mile back, with another maybe a half-mile on up ahead
and yet here, just off the main track through the forest, a car, albeit
engulfed by the overgrowth, choked with spring’s thick flourish.
ache1
(leaving their path to examine the wreckage): You have to wonder, don’t you?
There
is something to her careful enunciation of even casual language that makes
obvious her pain. That, and her eye still bearing its souvenir of assault. She
leaves the picnic basket in the grass and begins picking her way around the
car.
Skunk:
Has it still got number plates? You should be
stopping
as ache1 reaches in through the driver’s window (there is no glass,
not even on the ground) and grips the steering wheel, which moves at her fist.
ache1
(surprised): Hey! Check this out. It still moves! Jesus!
and
then she frowns.
ache1:
But this is
Skunk
(looking at her through the absence of windscreen, his hands spread upon the
bonnet’s corrosion): I bet there’s been kids at this since, from the git-go.
You know, whenever, or however the hell it got here, I bet there’s been,
the day after whatever happened here happened, I bet there’s been kids in that
seat
pointing
at the skeletal structure long-naked of its upholstery
Skunk:
sitting there driving around in their heads.
ache1
laughs a little, swallows quickly on the back of it.
Skunk
(continuing, oblivious): And now probably their kids play on it, and on
and on. All these um... generations, families, the... all these children...
ache1
tugs on the wheel and lets it spin.
ache1:
Yeah, and then at some point, if this is still here, then at some point,
like say if this was a movie? Right now they’d do a quick edit to some old man
and his kid, but then this wouldn’t be here, this would all be... but say it
was, say this is all still here as a forest, and there’d be the old man and his
grandson and the old man would say “Well lookee here, a car” and the kid would
say
ache1/Skunk
(together): “What’s a car?”
ache1
(smiling): Exactly, yep. Yeah.
Twisting
his lips a little, as if chewing on the gumwall of his mouth, Brother Skunk
then offers this out of nothing:
Skunk:
That’s ehm... My dad died in a car accident.
ache1:
You’re kidding me
and
then, with a blush crawled quick into her jaw
ache1:
Shit! I don’t
He
waves this away as they move from the car and back to the path, ache1
retrieving her basket with its bottle-upon-bottle audio.
Skunk:
Well, this was when I was, I was really young, you know and if I tell people
and they do that whole ehm, “Oh I’m sorry” thing, it rings false, it doesn’t...
I don’t feel it. I was too young...
ache1:
What age were you? When he died?
Skunk:
Ehm... five. It was just before my birthday. I remember that. You know,
because, well... Do you want me to take that?
ache1
(his offer unacknowledged): Did he, was he in a car, or
Skunk:
Oh, my mum was pregnant at the time, and he’d been to visit her in the hospital
and ehm, he was driving home and, this is just what I was, or mostly what I’ve
been told since because my mum never really, some ti-, I mean, I used to ask
her about him, but she didn’t, I knew, even when I was younger I knew she
wasn’t happy about it and I think that’s why I didn’t, I wasn’t
snapping
a twig from a tree as they pass
Skunk:
I never really pressed her for, about my dad because I knew she didn’t want to,
I knew she didn’t want to talk about him. You know what I mean?
ache1
nods, silent.
Skunk:
I think for the longest time she had to consciously just block him out, and
then...
and
then throwing it hard into the air between the branches.
Skunk:
But he’d been to visit her at the hospital and then he was driving home and as
far as I know, it was just, he lost control of the car and he drove it into the
side of a building, and that was it. But one thing I do know: he killed
a little girl, or, she was killed when his car hit the, or when it ehm, when it
drove onto the, up onto the pavement there was a little girl there, and she was
killed.
ache1
(stopping, her free hand up to her mouth): Fuck
and
then after coughing quietly, examines her hand.
For
want of an appropriate gesture, Skunk simply shrugs his shoulders.
Skunk:
So...
He
leans against a tree, not looking at her.
ache1
(letting the basket to the earth between her feet): That must have been awful
for your mum, with... Had she had the baby when, or was she still...
Skunk
(shaking his head): No ehm... I mean, again I, I didn’t, I knew what had
happened but it wasn’t, I couldn’t really... She ehm, she lost the baby.
He
reaches down and takes up the picnic basket, moves on along the track, ache1
following.
Skunk:
I think the
and
then puts his boot up on the tree trunk that bisects their way, tightening the
loosened lace.
Skunk:
Here
helps
her over, awake again suddenly to the fragility of her condition.
Skunk:
Are you okay?
ache1:
Yeah yeah yeah. God...
and
ache1:
So do you ah, have you got any brothers and sisters? Did
Skunk:
Nah, my... no. Do you?
ache1
(a nod which he cannot see, being slightly ahead): Yeah I’ve got a sister,
she’s older and
Skunk:
Back in Canada?
ache1:
Uh-huh. Hey, can I ask you something?
He
turns around; his raised eyebrows yes and she makes a flat gun from the thumb and
first two fingers of her right hand, points it at his feet.
ache1:
How come you have a limp?
