Resolution
The bus seemed to take forever, getting there. The long hours and heat lulled Madeleine into an uneasy doze within which memories beaded and trickled; like the moisture tracing its way down her back, the undersides of her legs. Mostly the memories were of Richard—the little brother who took so long to grow. Mother had said he wasn’t robust like her, it was a miracle he was here at all. He was different, she said, and Madeleine must be understanding. It wasn’t until he started school, though, much later than other children, that she realised others perceived Richard to be different in an ugly sense.
A flock of excited children were circling in the middle of the playground, pointing and laughing. She eased herself between bodies, nearer to the middle of the circle where Richard stood, bewildered. His stick legs shuffled anxiously, his mouth open in a loose, uncertain grin. She called and as he turned to her he tripped over his own feet and fell heavily. A large sheet of paper was pinned to his back. LOONEY, it read, I am a LOONEY!
Three or four children she recognised capered about, fingers contorting their features into gross caricatures of the mentally ill. “‘Looney!”’ They chanted as the other children screamed with laughter. “‘Looney!”’
Madeleine had flown at the ringleaders, kicking, scratching and punching; so incensed that although a few slaps and punches were thrown at her in retaliation, she didn’t feel them land. The children scattered, some feigning indignation, some quietly slinking away.
When it was over and she was trying to repair the worst of the damage to her face and clothes, Richard had helped her up. “‘You got blood, Lina,”’ using her family name, “‘on your dress. When I’m big, I buy you a new one?”’ Earnestly, his brow furrowed in concern.
At last the bus was following the river, and she recognised the shape of hills, turns in the road. Madeleine eased the tension around her shoulders, used her fingers to rake her hair back from her face and shrugged off the memories. Ready for whatever lay ahead.
The town looked unchanged from a distance; a long scarf of indiscriminate pinpricks spilling along the flanks of the hills and down onto the flat. As the bus drew closer, however, Madeleine could see that shops along the main street were boarded up, slumping in defeat. Car parts in a backyard provided a roost for chickens, toys lay scattered under a falling-down fence; everywhere the detritus of neglect was confronting. Closure of the mine had been a death knell for the town, just as she’d started secondary school. People had been forced to uproot, and the town’s heart was slowly but surely extinguished. Five years later Madeleine also left, and contact with Richard became more difficult. Although she phoned every Sunday he was sometimes difficult to understand and she was often frustrated by the awkwardness of their conversations, his insistence on looping back to the past, to things she’d heard many times before. His letters, when they came, were brief; couched sparsely and written in a child-like, painstakingly careful hand.
Dear Lina
The weather is good today. The sun is shining. I went for a long walk. I will come and see you some day.
Love, Richard x
He never had, though.
As she’d requested, the bus dropped her outside the local police station where, she hoped, the community constable was expecting her. Freshly painted, the station stood in stark contrast to the air of neglect weighing the rest of the town. Tim Perkins proved to be helpful and friendly, apologising for being the bearer of such news.
“‘It’s good to meet you at last,”’ he offered as he carried steaming mugs of tea from the little kitchenette. “‘Richard spoke of you often. Always fondly. He missed you, but you know how he was about travelling anywhere.”’
There was no intimation that this was intended as a reprimand, but Madeleine nevertheless cringed inwardly. Her visits had been infrequent and always brief, even when their mother was alive. There was an awkward silence for a moment, broken by his addressing her frankly. “‘I am very sorry,”’ he began. “‘I’ve known Richard a long time now, and always liked him. Most folks round here did.”’
She swallowed hard in an attempt to dislodge the lump in her throat, her eyes pricking.
Something outside the window appeared to take his attention. “‘You must see some changes here,”’ he mused, “‘most of the folks you knew will have gone, I suppose.”’ Madeleine coughed, and fussed at the creases in her skirt.
“‘I don’t know anyone here now.”’ She stopped, feeling the weight of his concern but unable to respond to what was, after all, a rhetorical statement. “‘I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be rude, but this has been a huge shock.”’
Tim coloured and sprang to his feet. “‘Of course. That’s so thoughtless of me, of course you must be exhausted.”’ He picked up her small brown suitcase. “‘We can chat more on the drive to Richard’s house if you want—I’m happy to take you.”’
It was either that or a two mile walk.
The dirt road from the town hugged the river and they caught glimpses of it shining through the screen of willows along its banks. Madeline felt its pull as strongly as ever, the swift green artery that had anchored their childhood as surely as it traced the outline of their land. It had provided and beguiled, but they’d never been in any doubt of its power and of how unpredictable it could be.
It wasn’t until they were nearly at the old turnoff that Tim spoke.
“‘Richard’s pretty much kept himself to himself over the last couple of years; since your mother passed on, I suppose. With those he knew moving away and the composition of some of those moving in, well, he didn’t seem to have friends any more, not really. There’s a fair bit of ignorance around. Or folks are afraid, perhaps, of difference.”’
“‘Oh yes—apparently there’s even a rumour that intellectual disability is catching,”’ she retorted acidly.
“‘You always get a few. There were those who stuck up for him, though, especially when they got to know him.”’
“‘Sorry,”’ she sighed, “‘it’s not your fault.”’
He shrugged. “‘Understandable. Over this past year I felt Richard had withdrawn, become quite distant. Not unfriendly, just absent. He used to have a reasonable amount of contact with people through his odd-job work, but with so many leaving the town that started to dry up; the contacts as well as the work. Did you know he had to go on a benefit not so long ago?”’
Madeleine looked at him, troubled. “‘He didn’t tell me. He would have hated that.”’
“‘I imagine so.”’
They sat quietly for a moment until Madeleine noticed that some thought or memory had urged a small smile to his lips.
“‘What is it?”’
“‘You knew he’d bought a bike.”’
“‘Yes. He phoned to tell me, ages ago now. He was so proud of it.”’
“‘The day he bought it he came in especially to show me.”’ That quiet smile touched his lips again. “‘As far as I know he never rode it, though. He walked it into town every Tuesday to buy a few groceries, then he’d walk it all the way home again.”’ There was a hint of amusement in his voice that belied the poignancy of his words. “‘Guess he didn’t want to wear it out.”’
At the divide in the road, Tim turned to the right, down a narrower road that clung even more tightly to the riverbank. A short way on, a wooden gate blocked further access and he indicated this was as far as he could take the car. She wound down the window as Tim killed the motor. Willows shuffled and whispered only a few yards away.
“‘I’m guessing you won’t have been to the house before.”’
She shook her head, shamed by the memory of disappointed silence whenever she had called to say she was sorry but that she couldn’t come visit, not this time. Suffocating the conflict inside her and sidestepping the painful truth, which was that although she meant to visit more regularly, wanted to visit, something else too often got in the way.
Tim was thoughtful as he eased his shoulders forward, then back, his expression grave. “‘Look,”’ he said carefully, “‘there’s never going to be an easy time to tell you this, but there was an incident a few days ago. Between you and me I’m pretty sure it was a misunderstanding.”’ He moistened his lips and fixed his gaze on the steering wheel. “‘Apparently Richard was walking home from town, walking with his bike, when he came across a young girl—not much more than a kid, fishing. Just back there.”’ He pointed back the way they’d come.
Something tensed, tightened across Madeleine’s chest.
“‘According to the girl, he stopped at the top of the bank. He didn’t say anything, just stood there staring at her for several minutes. She was frightened, yelled at him to leave her alone, but he didn’t move. She said she tried to run past him to the road, but he reached out as if to grab her. She was hysterical by this time.”’ He sighed. “‘You can imagine the fuss it caused. Her parents haven’t been here long so they don’t know Richard at all. They came into the station demanding that I lock him up—I’m sure you can guess the things they said.”’
“‘What did Richard say?”’
“‘He was very agitated, understandably. Essentially he agreed that what the girl had said was true, although he insisted he hadn’t meant to scare her. He only wanted to assure her that he didn’t mean her any harm, but he wasn’t quick enough; by that time she wouldn’t stop screaming. No one else was around, so there are no witnesses.”’
“‘He wouldn’t hurt a fly,”’ she said grimly. “‘He would never hurt anything, he doesn’t have it in him.”’
At Richard’s house it was as if he had perhaps gone for a walk and would soon return. Madeleine felt oddly comforted by this, realising that she had feared she would find nothing of him there. That all trace of him would have vanished with his physical absence. Instead, he was everywhere. Her mother’s old table, dinged and scarred, stood in the kitchen with the same two battered dining chairs she remembered. Richard’s bed was neatly made, the tartan blanket she’d sent for his birthday one year folded across the end. A couple of National Geographic magazines, well thumbed, sat on the bedside table. Kindling sat on the freshly swept hearth and everything was painfully neat and clean. Richard’s reliance on order and routine had enabled him to function without panic, allowed him comfort in the familiar. Three framed photographs hung on the wall—of her, their mother and their father. An old-style soda siphon stood in pride of place on the bench. A glass of the fizzy water had been the only treat Richard allowed himself, once a week on a Sunday evening. His oilskin jacket and trousers hung neatly in the narrow porch with his slippers underneath, side by side, ready to slip on. In the living area, two boards supported by bricks served as a bookcase behind the one easy chair. Years of National Geographic and other magazines were stacked along the shelf and she remembered how much he’d loved books with photographs about the moon and Mars, space travel, about wildlife in Africa and in Antarctica.
“‘I’m dumb, Lina, aren’t I?”’ he’d appealed to her without warning one night, his brow furrowed.
She thought for a moment, hoping the right words would come. “‘Richard, you’re not dumb. Dumb people don’t care about others, and they can’t see good in people like you do. You’re the least dumb person I know.”’
His expression had cleared and he had grinned delightedly. She had hardly dared hope it was enough, but he’d seemed reassured by what she’d said, and so it had been left.
That night the bacon and eggs she’d found in Richard’s refrigerator sat uncomfortably in her stomach. She wished she’d simply opened a can of soup instead. It had begun to rain earlier, a soft insistent fall that she knew would quickly soak through the inadequate woollen jacket she had brought. Just before dark she threw Richard’s oilskin around her shoulders and set off around the garden, hoping a walk would help her digestion. She could feel the river’s huge presence nearby, swift and silent beyond the willows at the end of the garden.
After, she found some old family photograph albums in a bottom drawer and spent hours trawling through them, finding images she had long forgotten. It was close to midnight when she’d found a poem she recognised, inside the back cover of the last album. It had originally been a sentence but years ago she had transposed it to verse. The words were Richard’s.
Autumn is Cold
And Warm
With Red Trees
And Grass Made of Ice
The sudden sweep of memory was raw and vivid.
Two small figures, a boy and a girl. The boy smaller with thin awkward legs protruding from his shorts. Breath pluming into the icy air. Burning cheeks and blue hands and feet numb as frozen turf inside clumpy black gumboots. School bus forgotten in the white crusted magic of crunchy grass and glass potholes.
“‘Lina…Lina, look!”’
Richard bending to the bottom of a wooden fencepost. Grass tufted tall at the base, stiffly gleaming, oddly still inside a perfectly formed capsule of ice. He placed both hands around it, bent and pulled. The long grass trembled as it was freed, and in his hands was a perfectly sculpted image. Oh! They were entranced by its brilliance and perfection. Then, “‘We’re late. Come on!”’ She cried and ran, turning to see him place the crystal form carefully at the base of the post.
In the afternoon when they returned, though, it had gone, extinguished without a trace.
That night sleep eluded her. The only chair had bony wooden arms and she was troubled by a recurring image of the crystal grass, along with fragments of other childhood memories. At last, though, she tumbled into a deep and dreamless void until daylight crept around the edges of the curtains. The rain had stopped and the urge to walk along the riverbank once more was compelling, this time to the top of the loop around what had been their farm. Here the willows faltered and the bank flattened abruptly to a stretch of sand where herons picked their way delicately along the tide line, just as when they were children.
Somewhere here a fisherman had found Richard’s gumboots, well above the tide line, standing neatly side by side. A single set of footprints tracked steadily from the boots to the water’s edge.
The morning was calm and the river lay very still, an unruffled skein of turquoise silk flowing serenely out to sea.
Rowan Bishop lives in Wanaka with her husband, Russell, and their wire hair fox terrier, Louie. Wanaka lies at the other end of the Clutha river from where Rowan was born and grew up on a dairy farm. For many years she was a History and English teacher and from this base branched out into writing, including short stories, newspaper columns, magazine articles, six cookbooks, and a memoir about her family’s responses to her husband’s terminal cancer diagnosis (it turned out not to be terminal after all).