Hell’s Angel

Despite driving at speed, the ute feels sluggish, as if its tyres are melting into the bitumen. The aircon is struggling and the heat hazing outside is filling me with dread because, after years of living out here, I've learned how to spot widow-making days like these. I drive faster, flying under the gums’ deadly canopy, as if I can outrun what I can't possibly see coming. 

Of course, the worst doesn’t happen and I’m soon bumping up my driveway, illogically relieved because I’m still moving under trees whose veins are swelling with hot sap. As I pull up in front of the house, I look down the cutting to the bottom of the hill and see a black ute and a red sedan parked in front of the cabin. Unease flutters through me. Guests never check in this early, and couples usually turn up in one car. The few times two cars have turned up they’ve almost always been packed with kids hoping for a cheap weekend of partying.

I remember Andy’s voice on the phone last night. ‘Hi luv,’ she’d said, as if we were old friends already. ‘Sorry t’call so late, hun. My boy just got a spot in respite. Pete’s rapt. We’ve been knockin’ about for years, now, but ‘ave never gotten away together. Not once! Can you believe it? D’y’ave room for us?’ 

Well, of course I did because, since the coast went up in flames, my mostly city-bred customers have been cancelling all their bookings. So what if the fires are two hundred kilometres away? I accepted Andy’s booking though—I admit—I flinched when I took down her details and she told me that she lives in one of the most notorious suburbs in the state.

I look down the hill at the old cars and remind myself that the rudest, filthiest, most unfriendly customers I ever get almost always turn up in posh cars driven here from posh places. 

I get out of the ute and take my groceries inside. I potter around the house, mustering myself for the day’s work but just as I take my coffee to the study, a terrible drawn-out howl unrolls across the cutting. 

I freeze in the study’s doorway, my senses on high alert.

Another howl unrolls into the ever-listening, ever-watching forest.

Are they fighting? Are they fucking? Are they off their faces? What should I do? I’ve never heard a sound like this before. Not here. Not anywhere.

Silence stretches. Then, the dull thud of a car door. 

I go to my front window. The little red car—the car I've assumed is Andy's—is moving slowly up the driveway. She’s leaving. Already. 

For the rest of the day, I try and fail to do my work, my body scanning for sounds or movements from down the hill. All night, I lie awake, aware that it’s just me and this stranger-man, alone in the middle of nowhere.

In the morning, Pete's ute has disappeared. I’m swamped with relief, assuming he’s gone home, but when I drive out later, I see him driving back in. 

We pull up next to each other. The bushy raised banks of the driveway tilt our cars so that, when we open our windows, we’re within touching distance. 

He’s rough stuff alright. Tatts everywhere, even creeping up his neck and cupping his shaved head. He’s big, too, though I can’t tell—sitting as we are—if he’s muscly or fat. He’s wearing a sleeveless top and mirrored sunnies and has a long grey beard stained yellow around the mouth. There’s an ashen hue over the blood vessels that have burst across his nose and cheeks. I’ve seen faces like his many times before, especially out here: faces battered by booze and smokes and sun and fists and God knows what else. 

We chat, though really we’re sizing each other up. He talks in the friendly blokey schtick of blokes who may or may not be friendly, but when I hear Andy in the soft way he says luv and darlin’, he's won me over. So what if he looks like a Hell's bloody Angel? 

We talk about the heat that has turned this meant-to-be-rainforest into a tinder trap. He looks around and tells me how he grew up nearby. Lived with his mum and dad and brothers, a pack of kelpies, and two thousand head of sheep. ‘Went down t’the old place just now,’ he says. ‘Couldn’t hardly recognise it. Been sucked back int’the bush.’ He shrugs. ‘Dunno what I expected.’ Then he blurts something about the ‘little shit’ threatening to harm himself, making Andy ‘run home in a panic.’ He stares down the driveway. I watch his knuckles bloom white then pink, white then pink where he grips and ungrips the steering wheel. Then he fakes a laugh, nods cheerio and carries on his way.

The days boil along, passing without incident. There’s little proof that Pete’s here other than his ute parked outside his cabin. He’s quiet. Too quiet. 

On his fourth and final day, though it hardly seems possible, the heat intensifies. The air  stills. An eerie silence descends on the bush, as if its millions of insects and birds and animals have all dropped dead. In the afternoon, unable to concentrate, I go and lie on the bed under the ceiling fan. I begin to doze, but just as I enter that lucid state of almost-sleep, an enormous bang throws me awake. 

For a moment, I can’t tell if I’ve dreamt or heard the monstrous sound. Is a branch or a tree about to crush my house or Pete’s cabin? Has Pete just blown his brains out? Has a car crashed down on the road? Anything is possible. Sound travels strangely out here, making far seem near, and up seem down, and fast seem slow. 

My body doesn’t wait for answers. Within seconds, I’m on the veranda, pulling on my shoes and running to the middle of the clearing. I stand at its centre, my heart hammering so hard I feel sick. Everything seems okay, but just as I begin to calm down, a whooshcrack whooshcrack whooshcrack jolts through me. 

There’s no earthen thud. Just silence, vibrating.

I hurry down the hill to where my ears have located the hazard. 

I stop near Pete’s ute. I shield my eyes from the glare with both hands—my bare face and arms and legs searing—and I scan the canopy around the cutting. It only takes a few seconds to spot it. The broken branch is massive, as big as any tree you’d find in a suburban park or garden. It’s hanging, leaf-side down, about ten metres above Pete's driveway. I hear a door slide open and shut. Hear footsteps padding through the cabin. Pete appears on his veranda, dressed in shorts and the same sleeveless top I saw him in before. There’s a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, and a pack of cigarettes scrunched in his hand. 

So that's what he's been doing all these days and nights? Sitting on his back veranda, smoking? 

‘Y’all right luv?’ He walks over, squinting through the glare. 

I point upwards.

‘Thought I heard somethin’,’ he says. He wanders over to the driveway and stands right under the branch, teasing me. 

I laugh—horrified—and order him to get out from under it. 

He refuses. Grins instead.  

I can see him properly now. Yes, he’s a big man, over six foot tall and a few feet wide. He’s got a beer gut that’ll kill him if the smokes don’t first. His calves look swollen and bruised, and his bare feet are edged with rough grey skin. He looks like a Santa Claus who’s been put through the wringer. 

‘Yeah,’ he says, looking up. ‘Yeah, nah. Looks pretty tight up there, luv.’ He points. ‘Hooked on those two big bastards, see?’ 

I look, but I can’t see anything clearly through the oily glitter of the gum leaves. 

‘Don’t reckon it’ll drop any time soon. But it might.’ He chuckles. He begins to rock back and forth on his heels, smoking, looking around. He apologises again about Andy. ‘I’ve told her,’ he says, ‘y’ave t’say no. Not just for our sake, but for the kid’s sake too, the little shit.’ 

I tell him I can refund his final night if their trip’s ruined, if he'd rather go home. 

‘Nah,’ he says. ‘I need this, darlin’. Was good t’see the old place… Y’know what me dad said t’me the last time I was there? He said, “Son, when I get as bad as y’ma, take us out t’the back paddock an’ shoot us.” He reckoned I’d drop ‘em like a pair of crook mongrels! That was his plan, silly old bugger… In the end, I found ‘em the best nursin’ home I could, an’ I’ve spent ten years livin’ in a slum, scroungin’ money t’pay for it all. An’ for what? They wouldn’t ‘ave known the difference if I’d shot ‘em out t’space.’ 

Pete’s face twists into itself. He shakes his head roughly, as if shaking out a cramp. He drops his cigarette butt onto the gravel and grinds it under his bare heel. Carefully, painfully, he leans down, picks it up and puts it in his shorts’ pocket. Hands shaking, he lights up another. 

‘Ten years gone. Just like that!’ He clicks his fingers. ‘An’ then, just when I finally put ‘em both t’rest, thinkin’ the worst is over, me daughter goes an’...’ His eyes flood. He looks away. Pretends to cough. Rubs his free hand over his face. Takes a drag.

When he turns back, he’s smiling up a big puff of blue smoke. ‘Y’know, me and me brothers used t’run wild out here. They used t’call me Dr Doolittle not only ‘cos ma complained I did too little on the farm,’ he laughs, ‘but ‘cos I was always bringin’ animals home. Baby Maggies an’ Kookas fallen outa their nests. Koalas fallen outa their trees. Stray dogs an’ wanderin’ lambs. I used t’check dead roos on the road, too, an’ if I found a joey I’d take ‘im home an’ make a sling an’ carry ‘im around, lookin’ after ‘im, like I was his mum. But then… I dunno, luv. Y’start growin’ up. Y’get chucked int’a big school in town—a bloody jungle—an’ y’start screwin’ everythin’ up... Got outta there real quick. Went t’the city. Started makin' money, chasin’ girls. Got meself a woman an’ three kids. I was stoked. Thought I was king of the Goddamn world. Started gettin’ cocky, an’ greedy, an’ reckless. Got meself eight years inside! Served me right, too, after what I did.’

He raises his eyebrows, as if he’s asked me a question.

What else can I do but nod?

‘When I got out, I tried t’fix everythin’. Y’know, it’s taken me fifty-five bloody years t’learn that y’can’t fix some things, luv. An’ y’can’t always stop things breakin’. An’ there’s some stuff y’just gotta accept, ‘specially the worst stuff… At least  me boys grewup  alright. Decent men. That’s somethin’, eh? An’ now I’ve got Andy, too.’ 

Again, he drops his cigarette butt to the ground, screws it under his heel, leans down and

picks it up. ‘I been sittin’ out there,’ he says, jabbing the dead butt at the cabin, ‘wonderin’ if I can get back here. Get back t’when… t’where things were better. Simple, y’know?

I nod, but his words are returning me to when I started stripping my life down to the barest bones possible, believing that simple is the same as easy, the same as good. Should I warn him? Should I tell him how I didn’t understand, then, that the mess of my life—the mess that I was running from—was exactly and only what anchored me to this world?

That night, a dry storm blasts in from the north. I sit out on the veranda until long after midnight, hypnotised by the impossible ghostly dance of the moonlit Mountain Ashes as they sway from side to side like blades of grass. Though it frightens me sometimes, I love this place. So what if it does not, cannot, love me back?

In the morning, it’s cool. The birds and bugs and animals have resurrected themselves and are busy going about their business. I wander around the windblown cutting, checking for damage. Everything seems fine. When I look down the hill, I see that Pete’s ute is gone. I see, too, that the huge suspended branch of yesterday is now lying on the driveway. As I walk towards it, I notice tyre marks pressed into the dry yellow grass where Pete has driven around it. I grab the branch with both hands and tug it with all my strength. It doesn’t budge an inch. 

I clean the cabin, grateful that Pete has left it in good order. I begin by taking out the garbage and sorting it into recycling and compost and landfill. There are crushed beer cans and coke cans and an empty bottle of rum. There are empty casks of spring water and an empty carton of juice. There are potato chip wrappers and egg shells and half a bag of salad. There are empty tins of ham and a chunk of seeded bread. There are piles of bloodied tissues and a used-up blister-pack of codeine. There’s an unopened jar of vitamins, too. Mixed up in all of this, of course, are countless cigarette butts and ash. 

Even if we hadn't met whilst he was here, I’d have guessed from all that Pete’s discarded, that the devils and the angels have made a home in him. Even if we hadn’t talked, I’d have seen, as I cleaned, the crossroads he’s stuck at.

As I remove all traces of Pete from the cabin, I search for traces of Andy, but there’s nothing. Just the memory of her warm voice on the phone—luv, hun—and the image of her red car minisculed by the towering gums as she drove back the way she’d come. 

In the afternoon, I trudge up to the shed for the chainsaw. As I cut the branch into logs, I picture Pete standing right where the sawdust is piling up at my feet. Perhaps he believed he was safe when he stood here yesterday. Perhaps, if only for a moment, he believed that his great weight and height and rough-hewn edges made him indestructible. Or perhaps he knew the danger but stood here anyway, just daring Fate to teach him another hard lesson, daring it like a man with nothing left to lose.