Wait at Shelley's Bluff

The air was so clear this afternoon that I was sure I could see the fields of New Zealand in the distance, and I could hear the baas of the sheep echoing over the Pacific, rolling over the waves of white foam just to tumble clumsily through my window. Of course, I don’t really think my hearing is so superhuman, but I like to say so when I’m with Johnathan, who complains that he’s closer to the water and can’t hear shit. I tell Johnathan that his bedroom is on the wrong side of the house and that there aren’t any silly walls obstructing my hearing. “You’ve just got to be one with the ocean, embrace the scales, wear that clam bra, and go live your best life” I texted him just now, “Shut Up” was the reply; charming.

I kept the banter going as I sat at my kitchen island, staring out the bay windows onto Gordon’s Bay with the shining sand and the glittering water and the clouds. God, the clouds. They’re like renaissance paintings. I stare out windows constantly, in the car, at home, at school; my favourite is in the reflection of people’s eyes when they take different colours, especially Johnathan’s, beautiful blue eyes, god they’re amazing.

“Hey, reply”

“Sorry”

Regaining my flimsy focus I scroll up to see what he sent to me before.

“I'm free right now, do you want to go up to the graves tonight?”

Johnathan never asks. I love the graves, especially on a day like this when the headstones have been shined (I always wonder by who) and they reflect the blue sky behind me as I study the names and try to decipher the lives of the people resting six feet under me. Were they happy? Did they even think that mattered? Were they a thinker? A worker? Who were they and what place did they have? How did they affect things?

“Did you read it?”

“Yeah, I’d love to go”

“Okay, I’ll meet you on the road outside. I’ll take my mum’s but there’s stuff in the front seat and the belt is broken. Can you sit in the back?”

“I can take it. It’s just a little drive down. Stopping at L. Byron’s caf?”

“Yeah sure. I’ll get ready now. See ya.”

“Byeee.”

After a few minutes of hopping around to get my socks on (they say “Ringmaster of the Shitshow” on them. A friend got them for me at Christmas) and finding the armholes of my flannel I busted out through the fly screen door and stood on the road. A yellow car drove by. “Spotto,” I whisper under my breath, Johnathan’s gonna love the punch coming his way.

The garage door across from me opened slowly, a hand heaving it up from the bottom, and I saw Johnathan get into his mum’s beaten up Toyota Corolla. I could just smell the left behind McDonald’s and Hungry Jacks’ wraps pilfering around on the floor, the resolve in my mind to not rest my feet in the sludge of ice coke collecting on the right backside seat grew ever stronger as he reversed cautiously out onto his driveway. He had just got his P’s this month; I gave him a phony tree sniffing thing when he got it. I still saw it hanging on the mirror.

He rolled up in front of me and pushed open the passenger door, it was stuck from the outside, and I instantly saw and contemplated all the stuff wrong with the passenger seat, the tears in the leather, the stained mat, the gum stuck to the dashboard, sometimes I don’t envy the Hirsch house. “You getting in?”

I punched him lightly on the shoulder, he understood, and said, “of course! Have I told you how much I admire your cleanliness regime? You’re the real Marie Kondo, start making money on that chop chop!” I chuckled as I sank into the seat. At least if you closed your eyes it was comfortable, if you didn’t move an inch.

Johnathan chuckled too; it was nice. I hope he likes the graves today; I don’t like dragging him usually so I’m so excited to be dragged up there instead today. It's nice up there.

We rolled up the road in relative silence, although Johnathan let me play some Beatles on the way there. I like the Beatles. I played ‘For the Benefit of Mr. Kite!’. I love it, it’s a weird song and I just love weird things. When I tell Johnathan that he smirks and does an impression of me, like I’m that girl that says, “I’m not like other girls!” and I guess that’s fair, but I like the weirder stuff so whatever.

We parked right up in front of the café and I rushed in for our usual order. I got my ice chocolate and got Johnathan his espresso, he says he needs the energy, like a hippie twerp. I exchanged some conversation with my favourite barista. He’s an Italian man, a first-generation Australian, he spoke pretty good English but faltered sometimes, it was fine though since I was doing Italian on Duolingo so we could both get the gist of what we were both saying if I contributed enough. We talked about the weather, I told him about the clouds, and I said it looked like Michelangelo had painted the sky today; he gave a big-bellied laugh and said I’d only told him that because he’s Italian, and that I’d say it was a Monet if I was talking to a Frenchman, maybe.

I left afterward with both an iced coffee and an espresso mustache, we share and I’m impatient or at least he tells me, and I meet with Johnathan on the curb, hand him the rest of his beverage and we head up the path to the cemetery sitting up on the hill.

It is Halloween today, technically. I mean, the day or even the late afternoon of Halloween is never as iconic as the night, you get the rare obstinate kid who refuses to take off his costume before their parent unleashes them, but you don’t feel the chaos that you do at night with the armies of children rushing down each street, charging for glory and treasure. Regardless, the day allowed me to make so many cringy Halloween jokes about the cemetery.

“They’re coming to get you, Johnny!”

He had a pretty good comeback.

“I want Elizabeth's brains! Only the smallest brains for me! The diet zombie!”

I laughed hysterically as he pretended to munch on my head, searching for any brain he can find hiding in my numbskull. He even made me spill my coffee and kept going, the nerve on that zombie.

We reached the graves up on top of Clovelly and as we went through the glittering lot, we came upon The Tomb. It housed the corpse of this one guy who changed his name to Patroclus near the end and then asked to be buried at the top height of the hill in the cemetery; honestly, he’s a local legend, what a drama queen! I wish I could be like that, maybe I can after I go.

We reached the top of the hill and saw that the gate was open; a rare opportunity, and so I pushed Johnathan in as quick as I could and jumped in after him, almost scoring a piggyback but Johnathan was just able to dodge my wily attempt.

We crept in and saw some pieces of construction paper hanging from the stone walls of the tomb next to the candles (which Patroclus requested remain lit constantly, honestly!). I was sniggering a little at it all, at this maintenance in a tomb, when a shadow played over us, and I turned and saw the man behind us at the entrance. Standing still against the backdrop of the fleeting afternoon sky, as night was coming.

I froze and stared at him, I felt like throwing up, I don’t want to remember this today, I don’t want to think about this today, fuck you the man, fuck you. I wanted to say that but I couldn’t move, and the bile collected in my mouth and my fists clenched as I gaped at him. He stared at me from the entrance, his stance wide, his smile wider, prick. My eyes darted to my left, to Johnathan against a blue square of construction paper hanging from the corner of the wall, his muscles tensed, his espresso dripping out of its cup lying on the floor. I looked back and saw that his mouth was moving, I thought he might have been talking at first and that my ears had just ruptured or something, but no, he was mimicking. He was moulding his face as if he was being punched in the mouth, then he dramatically shot his chin up in the air like he was being uppercutted, then he crawled onto the floor and pretended to be kicked in the gut. I felt my stomach where he was reacting, it ached.

Then he became a silhouette, and I noticed the wind was howling like a banshee past the man and down into the tomb, it blew out the candles. The clouds, as well, that were so pretty before were now black and heavy, they looked like they were falling under all the weight the sky placed on them, like they were in pain. Even through it all, the strange darkness and howling, I saw his shadow in the entrance, flashed sometimes by the brightness of the lightning, playing out the torture.

Then Johnathan, who I barely had time to register moving, rushed up and sucker-punched him, for real. He looked shocked before he tumbled down the hill, away from the entrance to the tomb. I went back up and saw what had happened to him, he’d rolled down and hit his head on a big, granite grave. I walked down to him and Johnathan followed, the name Patrick was on the grave, I read, and the man’s blood rolled down the back of Patrick’s headstone. He was bleeding from behind, the liquid falling like a powerful waterfall down the back of the grave he leaned on.

I looked at Johnathan and saw he was crying. I stared at him, holding his hands to his eyes, his knuckles bruised.

“I saw the mark over your eye and the bruises on your face when we facetimed a while ago. You’d just come back from the bar I know and so I went back there, and I saw this shithead bragging about it. How he wouldn’t let some “tranny” in his bar, he said some awful things.”

He hesitated. His eyes moving away to the horizon.

“I’m sure you know them. I didn’t hit him then; I left and went home and I called you and asked again how your night went, why couldn’t you tell me?”

Tears were trickling down slowly now, passing by my flaring nostrils and down onto the man’s boots, blending with the rain now beating down on both our heads.

“It happens, I didn’t want to worry you and I can deal with it.”

He turned to me, a look of sorrow playing on his sad face. He looked crestfallen, like I had betrayed him. He thought for a moment before going past whatever concern was running around his mind.

“I didn’t know he was going to be here, I just got mad.”

He stared at the man as he flinched lightly on the grass. Like a fish flopping on the sand, rolling, like the man did, in the ground and messing itself all up, dirtying itself in the rain and grass.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry…”

He kept apologising as I looked around. There was no one around. I stared at Johnathan, at the man, at the water and the clouds, and I began to wail. My voice beating against the rain and wind, persistent against the onslaught of the sound and water, but altogether a small cry in a falling ocean of tears. Johnathan had turned quiet and was staring at me.

“I’m sorry.”

I just wailed, I just cried. I crumpled onto the grass and fell between the knees of the man and fell onto his body. I wrestled against myself on his caved-in chest, backing it against the granite.

“I know him too. He walks around here a lot, I heard he was transferring to our school.”

He looked towards him, and me falling back and forth on his body.

“I’m sorry.”