Eastbrook
Whitney McIntosh
Wheelers Hill, VIC
I received a new appointment today.
It fostered a startling chilling sensation down my spine. This chill soon climbed the nerves of my neck to my forehead, making me giddy with feeling. This does not happen often.
I had become ‘sick and tired’ of my work from all of my posts in this past decade. I had most recently been allotted to work at the train tracks, the female prison, and a ‘bikie’ gang hideout. The gang hideout had been, by far, the worst. I believe it was the ghastly tattoos that had affected my poor soul. I had much preferred counting the amount of times the trains had been late through West Hampshire station each day. I had not the courage to reconcile myself with the barbed wire, gruesome snakes wrapped around knives and the curly lettered names dripping down the stretched and toughened sun-tanned skins of the middle-aged bikie ‘heroes’. But more than that, the entire way of life got to me. The general state of grimacing, the bristled chins, the worn out shins. It invited a morose temperament to life’s proceedings, one which I impartially deemed unnecessary and cumbersome to everyday joys. Not that my days are filled with ‘everyday’ joys; I am not one to speak.
Today, however, I was given the pleasure of new sights and fresh voices at my new post. I was submerged in a plethora of varying tones and a harmony of rhythms, emerging with the redolence of times past. Here in the ceilings collect whispery quavering voices and deep experienced baritones, which intermingle and rearrange themselves into pleasant conversations. Here, there is singing.
My new location is at 151 Wintershire Avenue, Eastbrook, in a monumental faculty of such sweet charms, ‘Eastbrook Old Folks Home’. There are 72 residents, aged 70 to 95, all of whom are searching for any care and love that this harsh and unforgiving world can spare. The lawns here are green and wide, bordered by broken brown gravel roads travelling in and out of the buildings, and a discreet river that wanders through the trees in silent contemplation of nature’s unity and fortitude. The residents are parked with deliberation in deck chairs and wheelchairs and couches throughout the open airy rooms of the Home, armed with newspapers and crosswords to satiate the thirsts of many an hour of the day. I meander through the rows of old men and women, the trenches of washed up veterans battling on, sans reprieve. Their voices lift up together, attempting to make the day, today, a little more bearable and last just a little longer.
The inner rooms are starved of the residents who so fill these walls in the winter; it is summer now. Fatuous sunrays illuminate the residents’ translucent skins, which are tracked with bluish streams of oxygenated vessels pumping towards their hearts. Yet it must be that the hulls of these floating capsules are cracked and worn, because the breath of these mortals seems too often raspy and broken to merit true breathing. Moreover, it is through their tissue paper like skins that I can see the infestation of germs and diseases that have spread like ants on a carcass, like melting butter on bread. They are all infected. From life, I guess? What can one do when one’s fleshes are such transitory packages? They are not made to last.
I enjoy the residents’ eccentricities, their mannerisms, the intricacies of each being. What I do not enjoy is the conformity; the rows of chairs that stretch from the entrances of the buildings around their sides like a desolate watch guard. I abhor the nature of the monotony here, it is harsh and arrhythmic. It is the elderly man walking to Room 201 each day to see that Jessie no longer sleeps in that bed, she is gone. It is the harsh coughing of Eric in Room 140 that makes me wince and plead for no more, no more. Yet what is worse is the way that each one of them greets the day with greeting cards and warm smiles on Sunday mornings, glancing out of their frosted or sun-stained windows with perplexed half smiles which wander off into the garden outdoors. There is such longing, such resignation and such courage coalesced into a great scam of tiredness.
It was only in Room 18 that I found someone I thought I could attempt to understand. Ed Yorrick was plain and in plaid and his smile was unlike the broken ones of all the other rooms. The divaricating manner of his conversation was pleasant and unexpected, while his excited manner of tapping the toes of his polished brown leather shoes on the linoleum floors made me smile and wonder. He was a beginner.
Ed had been here for five months. In that time he had proposed to a young single staffer who vehemently pronounced that he quite enjoyed Ed’s company, but could not date residents; planted tulips in six separate locations on the lemon scented lawns; successfully petitioned for bananas to be sliced and served in the cafeteria; and had begun to ‘go out’ with a happily rotund and slightly unaware man, Bert.
Bert was the oblivious sort, one whose eyes were often glazed, yet remained bright with his eternally welcoming smile. This was contrasted by short episodes of absolute lucidity, which increased in frequency as Bert spent more time with Ed. Through his eyes, you could see his whole self awakening in his physical capsule, the wrinkled jumpsuit of his body. These moments were reminders; inside the dark crevices of his mind remained a fading wisdom and experience that would soon be lost.
Bert had begun to wear plaid too, just like Ed. The two of them often walked along the winding stream together, hand in hand, plaid with plaid, smiling with the summer breeze. Neither Ed nor Bert had ever considered what love another man could bring, until the deaths of their wives, and until they found each other. Ed had spent his entire life ‘knowing’ one truth to find another truth so much brighter, like the evening stars in the blackness. What had they been but wasted years, washed up times on a shore of empty love.
I spent the night in the vacant hallways, in a more vigorous fashion than I had spent the day. I snuck around in a conspiratorial manner, wishing for company, while loving the silence and calmness of such corridors. I searched around, found forgotten crevices and stairwells, looked at photos tacked to walls and studied the secret hiding places of diaries and mementos of each resident. The tap tap of shoes on the linoleum floor was such that it could give any mortal ‘goose bumps’ a hundred times over. Suddenly, I felt a whoosh of cool air, strangely out of place on the warm summer’s night. For a moment I revered in a sort of wistful ignorance, playing at a naiveté I no longer owned. ‘What might that be?’ Yet soon, inevitably, I turned to face the wind, and I turned to face my duties, which I would never deny nor attempt to escape. It was inevitable. Another had fallen to the throes of incapacity, to irretrievable stillness, and I needed to take them home.
It was not Ed today, nor Bert. It was Marie. It was not a relief that it was not Ed, as I knew that it would be soon, like the deaths of all people. Marie was 84, with wispy white hair that floated in the breeze like it was alive and searching, like seaweed floating at the bottom of an ocean floor. She smelt like cinnamon and damp wool. Her translucent skin glowed, and I could see the infestation that had slowly worn down her capacity for life. She was not made for the trenches, not made for this mighty fortress of silence and audacious resilience. Her papery skin was soft to touch, and through it I could feel the weight of 84 years of memories, of friendship, of fighting, of past loves. She looked peaceful and tender, and beautiful.
And so I took Marie in the same manner that I do each and every time. It is a formal ceremony for me, it is sacred, and I enact my duty in the most upright way. I pronounced, as I wrapped my cool arms around her, ‘It is I, Death, and it’s time to come home.’ She rested in my arms, peaceful, and silent, smiling with closed eyes; and I thus took her to her Maker, whoever that may be.
Ed: I had to read this twice as I had misunderstood it first time around, but the clues are all there when you know what to look for! I really enjoyed the clever way that death has been personified, but as something/someone with respect, care and love, rather than as a malicious, evil being delighting in their work. I also enjoyed the use of language, and the way this story did not go anywhere near the plot lines I was expecting – always a lovely surprise.
Sunday 19 May 2013
A Sustainable Dream
Heather Jensen
Deloraine, TAS
Kayla took her coffee to the veranda and sat back in the old rocking chair, looking out as she did to survey the landscape. The scene before her was one she had imagined so often: lush gardens; trees laden with fruit; vines, canes and bushes overloaded with berries; a forest of colour as vegetables grew to abundance. Tiny blue wrens and robins with their bright red breast flew from tree to tree; wattle birds fed on the cyclamen and higher above a flock of black cockatoos screeched their way across the sky. Beyond towered the mountains, their colour ever changing with the seasons and the light.
The beauty of it all still caught Kayla, the realisation of a life’s dream. She had worked so hard to have her own slice of heaven; juggling two jobs while James was raised by his teachers during the day and her parents most other times. She had thought she would never make it, until her father passed her the newspaper one morning, a bright red circle highlighting a rundown old farmhouse. She had fallen in love with the place on sight and the price was within her grasp. A small mortgage was all she needed to become the new owner of Tier View Farm. A mortgage – and the job to pay it.
Tier View Farm was three hours’ drive from the city, a short ten minute drive to the nearest town. Kayla despaired finding work until she stumbled across the local school and learnt they had need of a librarian. Two days a week gave her the income to finance the loan and support her son. The school gave her the means to follow her dream. Her dream gave her so much more. She found a deep satisfaction from the knowledge she could finally be the mother her son needed and wanted, and not someone who simply kissed his forehead before rushing out to the next money earner.
She sipped her coffee, closing her eyes as she pushed off the ground to set the chair on its rhythmic sway, enjoying the sun’s rays warming her face. Could life get any better? She smiled at the distant rumble of the bus, the shouts of the children. Moments later came the sound of James’s feet crunching along the gravel path followed by the click of the front door.
‘Home!’ he called.
‘Here!’
He emerged onto the veranda, his school bag most likely dumped by the door.
‘Mr. Jones wanted me to give you this.’ He passed her a letter. Turning to go back into the house he paused. ‘There’s rumours the school is closing.’
‘Who said that?’ Kayla frowned.
James shrugged. ‘Some kids at school.’
Kayla opened the letter. It was brief, requiring her to come in earlier the following day. ‘I doubt it, James.’ She put the letter away, dismissing the moment of fear James’ words had introduced.
‘How was school?’
‘Good.’
‘What did you do?’
‘Not much.’
‘Any homework?’
‘No.’ At fourteen James’ conversational skills were typical of many his age and Kayla had long since given up trying to coax more out of him.
‘Don’t forget to empty your school bag and change out of your uniform,’ she called as he headed to his room, ready for another afternoon of video games. Kayla sat back and sighed. Despite her neglectful upbringing James had turned out to be a good kid. He helped her with scarcely a grumble, and he worked hard around the property. She’d been surprised when he said he loved it too. Growing up a city kid she expected he would hate living in the country but the lifestyle came naturally to him, and he’d grown strong and healthy in the year since their move.