The Crossing

Ernie Rijs

Description

Tim is nearing the end of his final year of secondary school and all he wants is for it to finish. Against his better judgement he agrees to the Principal's request for him to "buddy up" with Gabriel, a refugee from South Sudan. Two months and it'll be done, he tells himself. But when both Tim and Gabriel's father each make one simple, but momentous decision, they are propelled in directions they never imagined they'd go. Murph doesn't get it, Cat is shocked and angry, and Gabriel is in a coma. Tim must re-evaluate his relationships with his mother and estranged father and ultimately decide if he's got everything all wrong, and if there's any coming back.

Sujets

• Univers ado
• Fiction ado
• Fiction Ado
• Boys
• Men
• Young Adult Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Brolga Publishing
• Date de parution: 01 décembre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780645586442
• Langue: English

Extrait

To my parents, Johannes Petrus Rijs and Helena Louisa van Oyen. You gave me a strong creative foundation and the desire to do something worthwhile with my life.

Published by Brolga Publishing Pty Ltd
ABN 46 063 962 443
PO Box 452
Torquay Victoria 3228
Australia
email: [e-mail]
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without prior permission from the publisher.
Copyright © 2022 Ernie Rijs
National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication data
Ernie Rijs, author.
ISBN: 978-0-6455864-4-2

Printed in Australia
Cover design and typeset by WorkingType Studio

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Life will arrive when you use what you have been given. Death will take you when you do not live what you learn. Your desire must be stronger than water, the wide water you must cross, the water which separates you from your destiny.
— The Ferryman
PROLOGUE
H e sits by himself at one end of the couch in the lounge room. He looks at the visitors like passers-by in a shopping mall, there because they have to be, jobs to do, money to spend, people to meet, coffee to drink, small talk to remember to use. He is numb and alive at the same time and he doesn’t understand that. He is caught in a time-warp or something like that, he thinks. He can’t say much, as if his memory for words has suddenly deserted him and he knows that he sounds like a fool. Or, at least, if not a fool, certainly a little kid, the little boy he actually is.
He takes a drink from the glass of Coke his mother has just put on the table for him, under that lead-light lamp his father, in a moment of generosity or guilt, had bought for her. He likes that lamp (he doesn’t like that much about his father) because it gives a soft, welcoming light when it’s on. It’s not on today. Not like the candles in the church. They were all on. All four of them. Around that coffin that seemed so ridiculously small for a coffin. The coffins in films are never that small. He senses himself sniff as if it is someone else but he knows it’s him, so he gets off that couch in his own lounge room and goes to the kitchen. He yanks a tissue out of the box on the bench near the microwave and walks back to his seat. This is a path he has walked very often, but not like today. Today the world is an undiscovered country and he don’t have a map and his Global Positioning System hasn’t yet arrived.
‘Thanks,’ he says, and ‘I’m okay’ and ‘No, I’m Tim, not Ben.’
He is wearing his jeans and a new shirt (his mother likes him to look good) and his old Reeboks (they’re still ok and they’re comfortable). Zoe’s bike was new because it was her birthday last week and his mother and father had surprised her. She was so happy. He remembers her face, all shiny and round, straight black hair in a plait hanging over her shoulder, brown eyes alive and alight. But it’s like a photograph that appears suddenly and then slowly begins to fade, like a reverse Polaroid. Why is he thinking of Polaroid? He worries that he might forget her (her giggle when he tickled her) because it still feels like she’s there, in the house, just about to run around the passage door and jump up next to him. But she doesn’t, and he actually knows that she won’t, but why Polaroid? Of course, he knows the answer to that, too. His mother has an old Polaroid camera and she took photos of him with it when he was little. Tim the Polaroid Boy. Invisible one minute, here the next. That’s what his mum said. He thought she meant Ben but he knows that’s not right. Nothing’s right today. Everything’s wrong.
‘You alright, Tim?’ asks his aunt Geraldine. ‘Would you like me to sit with you? Your mother said I should come in and sit with you if you want. When my Barry died, I thought I’d never get through it. And you’re still so young. I know you and Zoe were like best friends and it must be so hard for you to understand. You want me to sit with you?’ She sits next to him, all fresh and Red Door and neat.
‘It’s okay, auntie Gerry.’ He knows that he has to say something, anything, to get her to leave. ‘I have to help Ben.’
He gets up quickly and walks past her and out into the double garage. He thinks she doesn’t like being there. Her face registers some sort of scowl. He sees his older brother there with his father. They are setting up the tables with food and utensils. He can almost smell the anger and distrust between them and he is afraid to intrude because he will inevitably be drawn into their silent war. But it is either this or spend the next half-an-hour with his aunt.
‘There you are. Grab the plastic cups out of the box and put them on the table.’
He does as he is told. He notices Ben’s red eyes and the stubble on his face. He knows this is not like him.
‘Hi Ben.’
‘Hey, Tim.’
That is all he says to him. He hopes for more but there is nothing. He finishes his task. His father pushes past Ben as if he wasn’t there, or if he was just an inconvenience.
‘Dad, please…’
‘Don’t start. Don’t you bloody dare start.’ His father walks to the last of the bags of ice, savagely rips it open and dumps it into the old bath over the drinks. ‘It wasn’t your fault. Your mother … your mother should have known better. We agreed. She could only ride that bike if one of us was there. Well, I wasn’t, and she was.’ He is bent over the bath, two straight arms supporting him on its edge. Tim sees that Ben wants to say more.
‘But you know Zoe. She …’
‘I said, don’t fucking start!’
He hears those words, those verbal missiles that spit from his father’s mouth. He remembers the way his brother looked when he had to be pulled away from his sister lying on the street, the heart-crushing sound of his mother’s screams and how cold and close and clammy the air around him became when he sat in the hospital, waiting.
He doesn’t want to stay there so he walks around the corner of the garage and into the back yard. He stops only when he reaches the fence and looks out over the grass and through the trees to the walking track.
Why didn’t you go there? Why? Everything would’ve been okay. You should have gone over there. Why didn’t you ask mum?
She can’t answer that question because his sister isn’t there to answer it for him. She isn’t there. He knows why but he doesn’t know why. She rode her new bike out onto the road and a woman in a big, dark green car didn’t stop in time. Because she was on her mobile phone. Because something else was more important than his sister.
‘I should have stopped her.’ He hears his brother and he feels him next to him. He is alive but something in him is dead, or at least dying. ‘I should have told her to come back.’
‘But mum –’
‘Don’t blame mum. Don’t you dare. Dad blames her but it wasn’t her fault. I was there. I saw Zoe go. I should have stopped her.’
He can’t find anything to say because he’s only ten and his brother seems very sure of himself. And he knows that he was there too, that he saw.
‘He shouldn’t have hit her,’ says his brother through grinding teeth.
He knows this to be true, no matter what happened, but he doesn’t have anything to say except: ‘Yeah.’
‘I suppose we better get back.’ He puts an arm around Tim’s thin shoulder and they walk back to the house. More people are arriving. He sees the priest from the church talking to his mother. She’s crying. He hugs her. Then she pulls away and nods her head. He pats her hand, and she sniffs back the tears and blows into her tissue. She looks so lonely to him. His ten-year-old heart goes out to her and he walks towards her, shrugging out of Ben’s arm. He sees his father and stops. He’s bringing a man and a woman along with him and his mother’s face suddenly changes. He knows that she will tell little lies and his father will tell little lies and all the while his little sister Zoe is lying in the ground in a small, white coffin in the now quiet cemetery, her life silenced by the chatter of another mother.
PART 1
1
T he right word was miserable. It was a miserable Monday morning in September. He was worried because he’d upset his mother. He’d discovered a volcano of anger exploding inside him and some of the lava leaked out. This leakage felt prickly and miserable.
‘I don’t care what you think, mum. He should be here. I’m his son,’ he had shouted at her. ‘He has a responsibility. He’s the one who wanted me to be responsible about how I spend my life. Where’s that famous responsibility now?’
‘Tim, you know he’d come if he could. He has a new partner and she’s important,’ his mother had carefully replied. Too careful, in his opinion.
‘I’m important. He didn’t come for my eighteenth even though he had plenty of warning.’ He had looked at her then and couldn’t keep it in any longer. ‘You were supposed to be important. He’s an arsehole,’ he had shouted again as he stormed out of the house to walk to school.
He hated the conflict with her about his father. She always excused him. He was nothing but a shithead and didn’t really care about either of them. His new partner was more important than him. He wasn’t going to be around for his graduation. That was it. End of story.
And now, to make matters worse, it began to rain. Lightly at first so Tim thought he would make it to shelter before he got soaked. A few steps from the school gate the heavens opened on a sudden gust of swirling spring wind and he got very wet as he sprinted across the yard to the Senior Common Room.
‘Mr Darmody was looking for you.’ He turned in the direction of the voice and smiled. He liked Catherine. Uncomplicated. Straightforward.
‘What did he want?’ He rubbed the moisture out of his curly, dark hair.
‘Dunno. I saw him when I dropped off the money for my Grad ticket. Just