Chapter 13: Life on the most unexpected scale

In the days before she left the valley for the city, Margie left me the pages of the meticulous chronicle she had kept of the history of our hidden valley, burying them at my feet- a grand monument to the people who transformed the landscape to eek out there lives in its loam. From its pages I discovered the story of my death and the effects of it on my family and the community. I think the best way of telling you the story is to start from the beginning, from where I left off. And for the most part I will rely on the voice of my sister. She was the one that was there, so she is the best one to tell it.

Dad was up on the hill, as he was every day, helping Mr Monroe clear his land. All of the men did this, moving from one property to the next while we waited for the crops to grow. Those of us not of age spent our days learning to read and write and helping our mother around the house- doing chores and staying out of the way.

One morning Albert and Henry disappeared. Mum and I couldn’t find them anywhere. Not even by Cooee-ing. Before they went missing I had been sure they were up to mischief. That something was going on. I often wonder, to the point of convincing myself it’s true, that I somehow knew what they were planning. But I am sure that I was just being an over-suspicious kid. Still there is something that nags at my mind. That if Mum had listened to me, or if I had been more adamant, things would have turned out differently. Or even that I should have watched over them more closely, or been more of a ‘good’ big sister. I know I shouldn’t blame myself, but I can’t shake the feeling that I am in some way responsible. Then again, everyone else in the community, Ma and Dad included, probably feel that they are the ones responsible, too. Especially poor Albert.

Anyway, it turns out that Albert and Henry had wandered off into the bush trying to reach the men who were working there. Dad says that the first he knew of it was seeing Henry standing there, in the bush, right beneath where the tree was falling. As far as I know, Dad was the only one to see him.

Mr Enfield and Mr Monroe were running away from the tree they had just felled, while the rest were milling around talking or eating lunch by the fire. Dad doesn’t know why he looked up when he did. He’d witnessed a hundred or more falling trees over the previous months. But he did look. He says the image of Henry standing there is burned into his mind, and that now, almost a decade later, he still wakes in the night to dreams in which his son is standing there beneath the falling tree.

Dad let out a shout- Mr Craig likens it to a curdling, cracking scream- heard way above the sound of the crashing tree. The men looked at him, standing there like a statue, staring towards the fallen eucalypt. He recoiled from the shock and charged off into the bush, shouting Henry’s name to the wind. Mr Craig says that the rest of them look around at each other confused. They thought Dad had lost his mind. They had seen him engrossed by the soap trees on the first journey in here, and that impression of Dad had stuck with them. To them it seemed like it would only be a matter of time before he lost his mind out here in the middle of nowhere.

They followed him, more curious than concerned. Dad was trying to lift a thick bough through sheer force of will. One by one they saw the small, thin frame pinned under the bough. With mouths open in horror they lent their shoulders, their chests, their legs to the effort, heaving at the monumental bough with all of their might to lift the mere inches required for Henry to be dragged clear.

No one noticed Albert until Henry was pulled clear. Only his head was visible above the log he had been hiding behind. He had turned white and his arms hung limp, in shock. Mr Craig doesn’t know how Albert’s legs were holding him upright. He came over slowly, tentatively. Mr Elliot intercepted him and prevented him from seeing the worst, but even now Albert cannot speak about what he saw. It’s as though those few moments have been completely erased from his memory.

Everyone there knew straight away that there was no chance of saving Henry’s life. Dad cradled and rocked him in his arms as he wept, and the men slumped against fallen tree trunks, holding their hats, holding their faces in their hands, or just staring off into the distance. As Dad kneeled in the dirt cradling his son the men came one by one to pay their condolences with a soft hand on the shoulder, before dispersing to pack away their equipment and prepare the cart, leaving him there to spend those final moments with his son in peace.

When the time came they huddled around my father, offering their sympathy and taking Henry’s body and placing it on top of a layer of shirts they had spread out over the deck of the cart. They made their way down the well-worn path towards the creek in silence. Mr Elliot held onto Albert as Dad held fast to Henry’s shoulder.

Back at the house, Ma and I had searched for the boys in all the usual places around the house. I heard the creak of the axles of the convoy before I could see it. I called Mum and we walked up the track towards the noise.

As they emerged from the bush, something about their demeanour told Ma what had happened. She dropped the apron from her hand into the mud and sprinted towards the bleak procession. I had never before seen her run, and I’m sure I’ve never seen her run since. It was a physical expression borne of fear and anguish. A mother’s intuition told her the worst; she already knew the outcome.

I cantered behind, still confused. I must have known something wasn’t right from her extreme reactions and the ashen faces appearing out of the undergrowth, however my child’s mind didn’t yet realise the full extent of this event.

The horses and carts stopped as Mum neared. The sad eyes of the men set upon my mother and they watched in mournful silence as she hurried past. No one said a word, but tears stung even the severest face.

She started sobbing. Great suffocating sobs escaped her throat, but she didn’t slow down. She collapsed against the wheel of the cart. Dad was huddled over the benign shape of their son. His eyes to meet those of his wife and they shared a moment laden with all of the misery in the world. Dad lowered Henry into Mum’s shaking arms, stepped down from the dray and held her tight. The broken heart of the world passed between their bodies as they cried; together, yet further apart than they had ever been before. They were their own universes of sorrow lamenting their cursed lot.

Mr Elliot lowered Albert from his horse and sent him towards me. Albert’s face was white and slippery streaks outlined his cheeks. He ran to me and buried his head in my armpit. I held him under my arm as I watched at our parents. It was at that moment I became aware of the world, and learned exactly what pain is.

Henry’s body was laid out on the table in preparation for its last rites. His wounds were cleaned-, the water stained forever red in the bucket- and his body clothed in his Sunday best. Once the adults had finished hiding his wounds as best they could, Albert and I were paraded past to pay our final respects. Albert, silent, placed his palm to Henry’s forehead in a simple act of grief and horror. Tears erupted around the room and Albert hid his in the crook of his arm, turning into the lap of our mother beside him. Something in Albert had broken and he would never be the same. I whispered my goodbye still numb with shock before rushing quickly out of the suffocating air of the room.

The whole community staged a silent vigil in their homes giving us time as a family to grieve. In bed Dad drank the tears of his wife and pleaded with the almighty that this act might soothe their pain and return the world to how it had been. The soft sobs of his wife coiled alongside him must have burned his heart to ashes. He must have felt powerless to soothe her broken heart.

So that is how I died.

But I was not buried in the anonymity of the cemetery in town, but on the slope of the ridge above the house in a humble mound overlooking the valley.

Albert was apparently the one to suggest a tree as a tombstone. He reasoned that as it was the death of a tree that took my life along with it, so it should be a tree that should find a new life in me and become my memorial. My resurrection. So, a week after my body was returned to the earth, my family took a morning off to traverse the ridge to the gully beyond to select a suitable memorial.

Amongst the grove of patina-skinned Karri, with the sickly sweet scent of Boronia saturating their pores, they retreated into their own worlds. With heads bowed and minds reflective they scoured the muddy floor in search of the perfect specimen.

            Mum called out through the undergrowth. She was obscured behind mossy logs and creepers. At her feet stood, unassumingly, a tender seedling. It was exposed, vulnerable in the heavy grey clay, on the fringe of an animal path along the foot of the gully. It appeared as though one errant footfall would put paid to its fight for survival. It trembled softly with the weight of eight feet sinking slowly into its mud as hey all craned in for a better look.

            With a decisive grunt Dad plunged the shovel into the grey clay. He repeated this ritual on each side of the sapling to loosen the hold of the earth before lifting it free from its bed. He placed it in a bucket and the four of them sidled back up the ridge lost in their own worlds. The usual incessant banter and nonsense was suppressed. Even Margie and Albert reached a truce in their sibling bickering.

            Dad placed the bucket alongside the mound that harboured my remains and etched out a divot directly above my heart. Gently he fondled the stem and leaves being careful not to damage its delicate frame. He wiped mud from its feet and lowered it into the earth. Together they all knelt and gently tamped the cool earth. Their fingers caressed the course dirt, burying their hands and turning the loam over in wonder. They wondered how they had never noticed its potency. Some mystic life-forced flowed through it. It gave life on the most unexpected scale. It connected us together, the tie that binds, the glue that holds.

            In their own time they rose to their feet and wiped the grit from their palms and from under their nails, embarrassed by the cloying spirituality of their actions. They stood in stoic silence as if waiting for some unforeseen magic to occur. Then as if ashamed by its failure, turned and sat on the semi-hollow husk of a log at the perimeter of the clearing.