The Secret Art of Forgetting
WARNING: This post is about a motorcycle fatality that occurred in March 2007 in Western Australia. If you think you may know this person, or have lost someone under similar circumstances, I ask that you give this entry a miss and I'll catch up with ya in my next post.
It’s been three months. I almost didn’t remember at all. But at the bore pump tonight the wail of an approaching siren reminded me. It was sense memory. I suddenly felt as though I had eaten a handful of chaff.
Twelve weeks ago, a speeding motorcyclist lost control on the bend at the bottom of the day paddocks and came through a fence. It happened really fast. Really, really fast. Faster than thinking Oh no. It took less time than that.
I remember hearing the strain of the bike’s engine long before I saw it. I looked up across the paddocks to the road and thought: this guy is about to break the land speed record for zero to fucking ASSHAT. And then it happened. The front of the bike got a wobble and by the time I’d got started on the Oh part of Oh no he was airborne. There was no braking, no wiping off any speed. Just the post and rail and then the four strand at about 180kph. It sounded like Thor himself clapped.
Couldn’t have been more than a few seconds but it felt like minutes, years, eons. Species evolved and became extinct in the time it took me to start running, to fish my mobile out of my pocket and dial 000. And my IQ dropped about 50 clicks .
Operator: ‘What’s the nature of your emergency?’
Me: ‘Everyone, send everyone, the bike’s all over and the guy’s on the ground and the paddock’s on fire.’
Operator: ‘Where are you, ma’am?
Me: [draws a complete fucking blank] …..
When I pulled it together and stuttered out the crossroads, I couldn’t remember the suburb. The one I was standing in. The suburb I spend half my freaking existence in.
Cringe. STUPID FUCKING cringecringecringecringecringe.
‘Where are we?’ I shouted frantically to D as I slipped through the fence, hot on the heels of her husband and his fire extinguisher.
The guy was dead. It wasn’t a question of is-he-or-isn’t-he. He had lost a leg at the hip and his helmet had come off, so….Hell, he’d been going REALLY fast. For what it was worth, it looked like it had been quick. The bike had disintegrated. It was scattered across a flaming hundred metre stretch of ryegrass like a meteor strike.
The emergency services took less than four minutes to get to us. It felt like forty.
There are a lot of things that still bug me about it. The invasive little still-frames that pop up out of nowhere when seriously, could it be any further from my mind?? The boot still perfectly laced on that leg. His wallet in the grass. The horse rug we used to cover him when the cars started pulling up at the roadside with small faces pressed against backseat windows. I wonder what happened to that rug, and then I wonder what sort of person wonders about that? It bugs me that it was his birthday. What kind of cosmic shit had this guy stepped in? I wish some things could be unseen. And for his family, I wish some things could be undone. It came at an awful price for a lot of people, that momentary recklessness.
I shouted at C that day, too. I didn’t mean to. When I noticed him standing a ways back, I flipped. I just needed to get his 10 year old ass the hell away from seeing any of that. I sent him back up to the house and his mother with a few new expletives to add to his repertoire. His face was a startled accusation of hurt and betrayal. Where he had needed reassurance and comfort, I had rounded on him like an animal. No amount of hair ruffling and ‘kiddo’s can undo it.
For the first couple of months, his family came to the spot at the base of the paddock every week. I’d see them down there and it’d make my heart pound in my throat. They don’t come any more, and I’m glad because it means I think about it less. It’s fading, like it’s supposed to. Like everything is supposed to.
It’s all designed that way for a reason. So I’m just waitin’ on the wheel.
Happy Birthday II
I catch sight of them down there
as I come out of the stables.
Near the roadside, a man and a woman
silhouetted by the dipping sun.
I freeze.The urgency of the
running hose in my hand
forgotten. As she leaves
an agistor says: ‘That hose is on.
Is that his family?’
‘How should I know?’ I say too harshly
and immediately apologise
to her departing back. She lifts a
forgiving hand and is gone.
While the world leaks orange and red
down the back of the grey horizon
I am carved from stone beside the rusting trailer -
a garden fountain, an empty voyeur -
fixed to the same earth where seven days ago
I had traversed this ground at a dead run.
The ryegrass where they now stand
in flames around a broken man.
As if she reads my mind, I see
her hand goes to her mouth. She folds
into his embrace. They stand.
A Monument of Despair,
his cheek against the crown of her head.
They cling to each other as if the
very soil seeks to fracture their pale alliance.
The 10 acres between us are suddenly
not enough. I turn blindly.
An unwelcome intruder,
Death’s witness
lingering unseen like a distant wraith
in the shadows of their shattered lives
to oversee her aftermath.
The pooling of water at my feet
returns me to my newly precious world.
I head for the bore to turn it off,
waiting on the passage of the coming sunsets
to undo all of this.