The Old Man

As I say, shadows are what I remember. One’s that stretch up walls, curl through trees, and move without people. I don’t remember people. Not really. Just shadows.

I’ve always preferred a candle to the electric light.

The dark seems to arrive early these days- like an invitation to stop the day, sit out here, stare at where the lamp post used to be, and remember. Not do. Never do. Just sit. Ask questions I can’t answer. And think if this isn’t just one more night on the slide to darkness.

It seems so long ago. It is. But out here, on the balcony, with the smell of decaying plaster and rusting railings, it’s like… It’s like it’s about to happen, like I can stop it if I see the right people, if I see him and warn him.

I always went to bed early. Sleep used to come easy. Now I always sense an urgent need to sit out here and stare at the lamppost. Most nights I wake with a dew heavy shirt- or a cold sweat- and I see him.

I relish the cold night air as it whips off the sea. It’s like a punishment, a flagellation of shivers. In this old wooden chair my shirt always pulls away and exposes a small patch of skin that allows a chill to run my back and tense my neck until it stiffens. It always leaves me with a stiff neck and I know that I missed it, I didn’t warn him and he is dead.

I never can see his eyes, or his body, or even his face. It’s his mouth, and only the small corner of it, just the edge of his lips as they purse and whiten and tremble and relax and then finally slump open. And I swear, I saw his last breath escape and disappear just into the cold night air.

The cops wouldn’t listen. They just kept telling me to hurry up, get to the point. But I wasn’t sure.

I loved the night. Now it’s difficult and plagued and distracted and goes unseen. I wake and wish I would remember something. But it’s as if I wasn’t there, like I didn’t see anything, like I am useless and old and all that they tell me.

I think Steel took it the hardest. We used to sit out here, after a week of ropes and sails, and play gin rummy. But never again.

The area grew up that night. The village was left behind. From then on it was always going to join Sydney. It didn’t have a choice. No other way of thinking about it, no other way of framing it. Murders like that don’t happen in villages. Whatever peace came after, it would always arrive with the baggage of that night.

The village grew up around me. I’ve watched the beach sand disappear from between the houses, the sand edged roads become guttered, the trees cleared and replanted and matured. I’ve watched them all move on, watch the city rise like a tide and suppress this coastal village.

Only Ted is left, the only one who didn’t run. Oh, and Dal, but he was never one of us, and he just sits up there in the old Tanner place and asks his own questions.

So that leaves Ted and I. We sit out on my yacht and let the bob and spray count our lives away. One day closer to real peace. We never talk about it. But it invades our silence. It’s the topic on the end of our tongues that never comes out. It’s behind our frustrations when the fish don’t bite.

As I say, it’s the night, and me alone with it, and the struggle to stay awake and allow enough time to think and reason and understand why. But I never understand why. Just exhaustion, one day blurring into the next, and a future caught in the net of the past.

And I don’t care about the other man who was murdered. I never saw him. He is with the village, but not with me. It is only James that stays with me, an unwelcome not invited guest that won’t leave.

If only I could imagine it different. Then there would be peace. My family don’t visit anymore. Tired of hearing the same old story I suspect. A story they can’t change. A story I can’t change. A story I can’t let go. A story I’m taking with me.