Reconciliation

I watch the gum leaves dance, bouncing back and forth on their stringy branches, with no rhythm or direction as the midday wind increases thorough the mouth of the rocky gorge that stands ominously high above the steady creek bed.

The wind, carried from the snowy mountain ranges above, bites at my cheeks with an ice-cold intensity. I feel it straight through my jeans onto my legs, but my torso and chest are kept warm from the heavy layers and jacket I have on. I draw the hood of my jacket up over my knit beanie, tucking the long strands of my dark hair away with thick gloves fingers and pulling the zipper up to my chin. Listening to the wind bellowing on my back and howling past my ears as I turn to face upstream, watching the water make it way towards and past me. A chill goes down my spine as I investigate the bare, surrounding hills instinctively.

A dusty single cab ute with an aluminium tray bounces and lurches over rocks and rabbit holes towards me. I don’t turn my body to face it, my back remains facing the force of the wind, but I watch it cautiously over my left shoulder. Maybe they haven’t seen me and will pass by. The ute parks on a small incline looking down towards the creek bed, an older man with grey hair that dances around his head in the breeze, softer away from the gorge channel, gets out of the driver’s side and pulls a cap tightly over his head, studying me. He doesn’t move away from the open driver’s door, my gaze redirects to the windscreen. Even from this distance of fifteen meters I can see the faint outline of a shot gun on the dash. He remains standing by the ute, looking over the open car door, only one hand on the frame. I figure his other is ready to reach for the shotgun.

What feels like a long-time passes. He shielded by the ute door, looking down at me in the creek bed. I unturning, my gaze not moving from his over my left shoulder.

‘For goodness sakes’ I mumble as I uncross my arms to fall by my side as I look up the creek momentarily before shoving my gloved hands into my jacket pockets and march up the eroded creek banks, over large craters of washed-out soil and fallen down fence post onto the river flats below the sloping hills. I stand there, chest rising and falling from the climb, looking at him from the ten meters between us now. He has readjusted himself since my hike out of the creek bed and I can no longer see the shotgun on the dash. Instead, I see the sun bouncing off the iron barrel down by his leg, visible under the car door he remains shielded behind.

Go on. I think to myself. Do it. Frowning up at him from the river flat I stand on. FUCKING SHOOT ME. My posture remains upright, hands shoved in pockets, still.

Frustrated, self-preservation not in the equation, I quickly whip my right hand from my pocket and rip the hood and beanie from my head. In the same time the he had positioned the barrel of his rifle onto the car door frame, looking down the scope of it at me. I could feel my hair being lifted from the hood of my jacket by the howling wind, long dark strands dancing across my face and out behind me, joining in on the unorganised dance of the gum leaves. Only I was not a stringy branch. I stood grounded against the wind, bellowing past me up the creek, bouncing off the grey and blue rocks from the cliff face beyond the riverbed, framing my steely expression dramatically.

The old man looked up over his scope at me, then back down into it again. I could feel him studying my face, the way my dark brows dauntingly framed by glaring eyes, the firm set of my jaw highlighting its acuity, my thick dark hair framing my features. His jaw dropped slightly before he tucked the shotgun back onto the dash and pulled a jacket over his woollen sweater as he strode on the decline away from his ute towards me.

There was a short interaction between us. The usual as of lately, since I had driven to my father’s place in the snowy mountains.

‘Must be Hartley Coulson’s daughter?’ he says. I smile, slightly, and nod.

They all detail the same script, these conversations. They introduce themselves, a name I don’t plan on remembering. They give their condolences for my loss, I thank them. They make a comment on how grown I am, I smile and shrug my shoulders. Then make a comment on the changes to the countryside that I hadn’t seen over the decades. They say how much of a shock it was, his passing. I agree with them.

Eventually, he leaves. A concerned neighbour thinking I was up to no good and snooping around the place. These lands are mainly inhibited by self-isolated veterans, unable to leave their suspicious tendencies at the war front. My father was one of them. The old ute lurches its way back over the rolling hills from which it came.

I stand now on the incline where his ute was parked, under a few sparse gum trees. It sheltered from the howling wind, just a soft bustling breeze plays at my strands of hair as I tuck them down my back under the jacket and reposition my beanie and hood securely on either side of my face. I sit down with a thud on the long dry tusik grass, crossing my legs under myself and leaning back against the smooth pink, grey and cream coloured gum tree trunk. Looking down onto the creek bed and the cliff face beyond it, my vision traveling downstream to the channel created by the formation of rocky cliffs on either side of the creek, to the top where the grass began to regrow, my head turning to look past my right shoulder to see the red dirt road winding its way from my position on the river flats and sloping hills, through steep inclines, to the sheds imbedded it the dense bush. I look back at the creek in front of me. My mind busy with a memory from every part of this placed, mixed with the enigma of his recent death and past conversations we had, a long time ago now. I closed my eyes tightly, a ragged breath coming from my chest. I let it out as a strangled cry that grew in force to a roar that echoing off the surrounding hills before quickly being carried away by the wind that had increased with my emotion. I stood up, fists bunched by my sides, and roared again at my surrounds. Eyes wild I picked up rocks and hurled them down at the creek bed, my mind replaying memory after memory in my mind. Stop it. I cried out aggressively as I held my head in between my hands and looked down, facing my back to the creek. STOP. IT.

Stillness surrounded me as I crouched it the grass: face on my knees, hands covering my ears. I stayed there for some time, protected by the elements, no ice wind biting at my cheeks, no wild wind whistling by my ears. Just stillness.

I think, more clearly now. A slow procession of thoughts. The voicemails left on my phone a month ago intended for my father, a specialist appointment. Dialling his number for the first time in five years, leaving him a voicemail. ‘Dad, I’m worried, let me help you.’

The neighbours telling me they’ve seen him, and he looks fine, busy cutting firewood. ‘Don’t tell him I’ve been checking up on him, he hasn’t spoken to me in years, and you’ll get an earful for talking to me.’

Another voicemail intended for him, from a palliative care nurse. Deciding I would drive the twelve hours to turn up on his doorstep, see if he talks to me or not. Three days before my departure, I get a call. ‘It’s your father, he’s passed away, five days ago. I don’t know the details. You need to call this number.’ Steady hands writing down a number. Looking at the piece of paper. Nothing, I didn’t feel anything at all.

The memories continue to process through my mind. His dramatic disowning of me five years ago when he demanded I show him the respect a father deserves. The words I had spat at him, detailing that I had raised myself after he stepped out and mum had left shortly afterwards. That I don’t owe either of them respect when I’m not shown it myself. The slamming of the phone on his end. The end of our relationship.

Older memories now coming to me. The years before that after I had turned eighteen and we had spent time together, listening to him ranting comically about politics and retelling the same story repeatedly.

Those good years is what breaks my heart to think of now.

How hard he had tried to be a positive inclusion in my life, how hard it was for him.

To keep his anger in check, and his manipulative tendencies that I could see right through since before I could talk.

Our adult relationship had been such a delicate balance, evidently unsustainable.

The memories before that. The years in family court, the sharp look in his eyes as I caught a glimpse of him striding down the courthouse hallway after the hearing. The last time I saw him for ten years. The urge for my eight-year-old self to run after him, my dad. Stopped by the weight of what had happened to my older sister. The tug-a-war between my chest and my head, the actual pain I had felt in my body from it.

The weekends spent at his before that. The way he could make me giggle until my stomach muscles ached by telling a story with comical expressions and voices. The way he had picked me up above the water at the creek when a loose reed tangled in my toes and made me squeal. The way he had comically taken the weed to the creek bank and stomped on it dramatically. The games of checkers played by candlelight, learning more about life then a board game. When to sacrifice, in order to gain. The drills; navigation, shooting, interrogation. The unhinged anger. The running into the bush. Little legs stumbling over fallen branches. Hiding in a hollow tree trunk. Silence. No tremor or whimper. He had trained me well, perhaps to protect myself from him. I’ll never know now.

And now this beautiful, intelligent, aggressive, vindictive, haunted, stubborn, proud man is gone.

I think of what I should have had in a father. Accountability and presence at the very least.

I think of the man he was.

Simply, just not capable of parenting. I feel my chest ease, I hadn’t realised it was clenched. I bring my head up to the diming winter light across the valley, soft rays of the last daylight in streams dancing across the hills through misty clouds forming overhead.

‘It wasn’t me’ I say softly with a tremor in my lips and lump in my throat, looking at the pushed over tusik grass in front of me intently, reaching out and taking a strand from the earth to pull through my gloved fingers.

I had spent my life yearning for a family around me. A family of presence, to be forced to share meals with. A family of intention, to chastise me for my grads or attendance at school. A family of grit, and integrity, and responsibility, and standards.

All these years I had blamed myself for not having that, that I wasn’t good enough for him to stick around. Nor my mother.

‘But it wasn’t me’ I say slowly, lifting the strand of grass to my lips. Feeling the tickle it made, twitching my nose in response, and lifting my head to see the entwined colours of the gum tree before me again. Pink, grey and cream.

I had realised that cold windy day, knelt in the dry tusik grasses that it was never mine to lose. I had never had it. And neither had he.

And now with him gone from the world, no longer bound by the gravity of this earth.

The pressure upon us both is relived.