The Glass Mountain (2 page)

2

Mrs Esther Ellis, bored with her day, stares into the mirror. Listens to the noises of the street beyond the little white cottage with its frilly curtains and picket fence. Hears the community bus pull up at stop fourteen, the one she used to catch before they moved the step higher. Mrs Ellis likes to go shopping. She likes to look in the windows, browse about, have a cup of tea at Chinwag, sit on a seat in the square and feed the birds. In a country town you're bound to run into somebody you know.

The sun beams into her small lavender-laced bedroom, and from the trees comes the chirruping of birds, happy in their freedom.

Mrs Ellis stares into the mirror. A little old lady in mauve with grey curls and little round glasses stares back. The problem, Mrs Ellis thinks to herself, is that she doesn't feel old. Not in her head.

She glances at the phone at her bedside. Soon it will ring to check on whether she's resting.

To be resting on such a beautiful day …

Suddenly she goes to her cupboard, gets out her most comfortable shoes and fossicks around for her umbrella. She loves her umbrella. It's in the shape of a sunflower with every spoke a petal. She places it by the door and goes to the phone.

‘… Yes, dear, but I want to get to the bank … I'm feeling quite chirpy … yes, it is a long way and of course I won't walk … I'll get a taxi … and you can pick me up on your way home. I'll be sitting on the seat by the bridge … 4.30? Lovely. Bye, dear.'

It is a long way. Mrs Ellis will need a drink and maybe a biscuit or two. She gets out a bottle, a Sports Ten, like the ones the footballers use, fills it up, pops a couple of ginger nuts into her bag, picks up her umbrella and sets out.

3

The gang swerves west, straight into the setting sun. The young bikie grips the handlebars tighter, his eyes ooze grit, his hands slip on sweat-worn rubber. By his side rides Hambone on his thoroughbred, his king's charger. This machine has handlebars and headlights for burning the heavens, chrome dagger rails for slicing stars. And no front fenders to stop the wind.

The bikes swerve right, left again, then gear down to take the hill. From the back the young bikie watches the formation rise like black migratory birds, predacious and hungry. Before their eyes mirages form, upon their flesh the north wind sears and the falling sun digs deeper.

At last, as they turn south-west, the world comes into focus and they see in the distance the outline of silos and spires. The shapes of a country city.

‘60 ks ahead', the sign reads. 110 becomes 80, 75 …

They ride into town in pairs. Over the railway line, past the station, by factories and farmhouses, schools and churches, along the main street and into the centre where cars idle on corners and shoppers and shopkeepers stand and watch.

The President, riding as he always does in front, swings left into a side street that leads to the camp site. Then everything stops. A police car slides noiselessly past.

Carver, two ahead of the young bikie, half turns. ‘Fuckin' road works up ahead.'

Hambone eases off his helmet, flicks sweat. ‘Jist remember I'm watchin,' he croaks. ‘An' them's Pres's orders.'

The young bikie turns away. Opposite is the post office, next to it the bank, the supermarket, something that looks like a brotherhood shop, a hamburger joint … Along the street mums with prams and kids with dads and office girls and grandpa types stare into the road then proceed with their comings and goings. A little old lady tries to put up an umbrella in the shape of a flower and the wind blows it shut. In the end she gives up. The young bikie knocks out a cigarette and continues to watch. There's the little old girl again, this time coming out of the bank. He watches as she flops down onto a seat, takes a drink from a water bottle, then rummages in her bag. Again she struggles to put her umbrella up.

‘We're movin'.'

Slowly, in low gear, the riders inch along. As the tail enders turn into the side street, again the column stops.

‘Fuckin' hell!'

‘The light's are red.'

‘I can see the fuckin' lights.' Hambone spits. ‘There'll be no fuckin' thing left by the time we fuckin' well get there.'

The young bikie stares into the sweating bulk of the old vet, the grimy jeans with its fat wad of notes sticking out. In his mirror he sees the transport that's loomed behind them for the last few ks dip its lights. He throttles back and the lights dip again. The driver in his lofty cabin looks nice, has a kind face … Lucky he, to roll along the highway, high above the street, above the world to where the air is clean …

They're still not moving. Now's his chance. Now he'll jump out. He would if there was somewhere to dump the bike and the road wasn't clogged up.

From ahead comes the sound of laughter. Ugly laughter, intimate and mean. And how they'd laugh, Carver and them, when they found him, as they would, riding high above the world to where the air is clean …

The roadtrain pulls off and the young bikie goes on studying the street. He sees people gather together friends, parcels and children, clip buggies and bikes to lampposts and hurry into shops. He sees blinds snap closed on windows exposing grog and giftware.

‘They're moving!'

The column edges on then starts to pick up. Ahead, the lights on the small bridge have turned green. Now wheels clickity clack across, hit the gravel and weave up the track to the camp site.

The young bikie, who is now a length behind, is still moving slowly. No faster than the old geeser being yanked along by his dog, or the couple of kids belting the air with cricket bats … And there's the little old girl again walking towards the bridge with, finally, her umbrella up. As the last of the riders swing on to it she's almost level with his bike.

Now Hambone's wheels hit the planks. ‘Move!' he screams over his shoulder, ‘or I'll fuckin' kill ya.'

Then everything happens at once.

The lights are turning orange, Hambone's yelling, gearing down, thundering over the bridge, the young bikie is scrambling to his bike that's lying flat in the middle of the road, a little bundle in mauve is stretched out on the ground, umbrella spokes are waving like porcupines, a bag in the gutter is spilling stuff …

Cars are backing, people are screaming …

He jumps on the starter pedal, whacks into second, crashes into third. The lights are red. Cars skid, weave, back up, as he rips through the gravel … In his ears the judder of blood, of ambulance, police … 100 ks, 130, 160, 200 …

‘Ya fuckin' idiot.'

At the top of the rise the old vet watches …

He watches as the bike slews right, left, right again, hits the rock face …

‘NOM'.

The machine rises briefly in the air like some large nesting bird. Then comes the crash, the mad spinning of wheels.

And silence.

4

The crowds that gather see legs scramble down rock face and hill, arms scrabble through undergrowth, hands lift the fallen tree branch that pins the young body to the ground. Stretcher bearers follow, bleeding.

Now the ambulance, its lights flashing red and blue, takes off and streaks through streets as motionless as paintings.

‘They're coming!' someone calls and throws open the curtain in cubicle one.

At emergency, wheels slide to a halt and in seconds a body on a trolley is raced through glass doors, along the passage, into the cubicle, and, with the flick of four wrists, is lying stretched out on an assessment couch.

Hands set to work …

It's late afternoon when they bring him in. Had it been half an hour earlier he would have been dumped in the passage along with the cardiac arrest. All cubicles are full. A broken femur in one, a dislocated jaw in another, a poisoned gut, a finger hanging off …

‘Bag all of this.' Scissors snip snap as bits of leather, denim, snakes and death's heads fall to the floor. A piece of bone protrudes through skin.

‘Personal belongings, I.D., stash separately.' A young nurse, her hands sticky and red, wipes muck from a card.

Now the helmet is prised off and gauze dabbed at eyes, at mouth … The skin is as pale as paper, ghost white against the darkening lesions that distort a chest, arms, legs. One leg in particular, one shattered leg. The bones, too, stick out, the collar bone, cheek bones. A nurse sees the skull beneath the skin, observes the bloody tangle of black curls, the grease beneath the fingernails. The fingers though are tapered. She turns to an offsider. ‘Look,' she exclaims. ‘Artist's hands.'

‘An artist who bites his nails.' The speaker tosses waste matter into a bin then turns to a man wheeling a trolley.

‘You can take him to x-ray.'

Now there's a moment to examine the contents of the plastic sleeve.

‘Medicare card, an out-of-date social security card —' A pair of hands pass the items on …

‘A licence to drive a motor bike, five dollars in cash, a purse but it's not his — and a photo.'

The photo is of a man and a boy fishing. They're sitting on a rock under a willow tree by a river. ‘It's the boy with his father when he was about six,' someone remarks.

‘How do you know?'

‘The man's got the same hair.'

There's a quietness now. The cubicles are empty and the doctors, nurses, orderlies and patients have gone. The only sound is the whirring of fans and, from somewhere, a low echoing moan. Trolleys are lined up, instruments autoclaved and cotton blankets pulled straight upon sheets.

Now, in the still small calm, Sister Murphy remembers something. The woman who came into the cubicle when they were swabbing the young bikie. She thought she heard the words, ‘It's him', before they led her away. She starts to scribble a note to herself but looks up. The silence is broken. Someone is approaching at a pace.

‘Sister Murphy!' A plump nurse, eyes like dinner plates, is bundling towards her with great speed. ‘Sister, you'd better come to the front desk. There are — people there —'

‘People?'

‘People —'

‘What people?'

‘Tattoed people, Sister … Covered in snakes!'

5

On the top floor of the hospital is the operating room. And it's here as dusk gathers over the dusty town that surgeons scrub up, don masks and gowns, pull on caps and gloves and prepare to cut.

Dusk deepens into night as the minutes become hours and the hours turn on.

They talk as they work. ‘I'm about to attach the plate to where we removed the shattered area of femur …'

‘I'm going to have to saw at this point. The bone has fragmented both here and here …'

The anesthetist wants to know who's watched
The X-Files
, the new Italian movie that everyone is talking about.

‘Blood pressure normal.'

Around and about machines measuring the level of life stutter on.

Four and a half hours later the consulting surgeon flexes his arms, flicks off his cap and pats the young intern on the shoulder. ‘Good work,' he says. And to a nurse, ‘You can start stitching him up.'

The theatre sister cuts pieces of thread. ‘What are his chances?' she asks.

‘Fifty/fifty. It's up to him now.'

It's morning and the new intern's on his way to the hospital. He whistles as he walks. The young bikie's got through the night and is conscious. Everything seems to be going smoothly.

Against the early morning sunlight fine rain has begun to fall. Soon there'll be a rainbow!

The walker whistles, retraces the steps of last night, sees again the mangled mess of flesh made whole, hopes the kid is as keen about living as they were about making sure he would. Does he know how lucky he was? Anthony Hay, Mister Anthony Hay (now retired but likes to keep his hand in) is the best. He'll hardly know he's — you don't use the word ‘handicapped' now, do you? He turns the corner and starts up the hill. The patient was conscious when they brought him in. Didn't register pain, just stared. Good-looking kid in a raggle-taggle gypsy sort of way. Murphy calls him the buccaneer. And he, Christopher Sparrow, has helped save his life.

As he mounts the steps to the entrance he hums a little tune. He can't help it.

‘Lovely day,' he chirrups to the lift-going crowd. As he steps out his pager beeps.

The boy in intensive care is haemorrhaging.

6

In a lace-curtained kitchen in another part of the town, two people are sitting opposite each other. Outside, light rain falls on roses, on a little white picket fence that lines the street.

Between the two a silence has fallen. Then the woman speaks. ‘All you have to do, Jeffrey, is make sure that Richard does the paper work.'

‘He will, most likely.'

‘Just tell him to. He's your brother, for God's sake!' The man at the table is tall and stooped. His is the face you see at railway stations on those who've lost their way.

‘There won't be another opportunity like this.' The woman stops, cradles a mug in her hands, talks to cold tea. ‘They're keeping her in for a day or two. After all, they know her, they've got her history.' She pauses. ‘I saw him too.'

‘Who?'

‘The bikie. He won't make it — not by the looks of him.'

‘That's sad.'

‘They're thugs, Jeffrey, criminals. They rape and steal —'

The man interrupts. ‘What about her bank card and —?'

‘Cancelled.' The speaker leans forward, drops her voice. ‘Jeffrey, listen. You heard what the doctor said. She's got twelve months at the most. I can't cope any more. She won't do this, she won't do that, she doesn't listen. The other day she walked, WALKED, into town. She promised me she'd get a taxi. She lied. I know her and she wouldn't get into a taxi wearing those shoes —'

‘She wants to be independent, Marjorie.'

‘Jeffrey, she's eighty-four!'

‘You wouldn't think so,' replies the man.

His wife drops decibels, softens sound. ‘She's had a good life, better than most, and soon we'll be able to get out of this dump. That's what you want, isn't it?'

‘Yes, dear.'

‘And I'll be able to retire.' Hands slice a wedge from a large cherry pie. ‘Here.'

‘I'm not hungry.'

‘You look peaky. Eat it.' The voice goes on. ‘She'll be better off. If she stays with us she'll be running away again and falling in the street again and probably breaking a leg or a hip or something next time.'

‘I thought the bikie knocked her over.'

‘Jeffrey, I do wish you'd listen when I talk to you.'

The woman drops her head in her hands.

And again between the two a silence falls.