A Pair of Lost Socks

Up ahead a silver tipper truck with dog-trailer laden with soil slowly climbed a winding bend, and Heather planted her foot, indicating and moving to the overtaking lane, hauling past with ease. Max noted the truck was a newish Kenworth, looking polished with its massive chrome grill and exhaust stacks gleaming, well maintained despite the dirt around the tipper body.

He smiled, because Heather didn't slow, but rather she delighted in driving fast, every bit her father's daughter, passing a sedan and four-wheel drive too before the overtaking lane petered out. "If only there were a cop around when you need one."

She smiled, he saw, keeping her eyes on the road. "They'd never catch me."

"Not in the shit-boxes you're all driving nowadays, unlike when highway patrol only drove Aussie V-eights, right?"

Chuckling, she said, "We received some new vehicles recently, even a couple of Subies, which are better than the old just-Holden-together and Found-On-Rubbish-Dumps. But as you know it's a big no no to enter a pursuit and give chase. Though, rules don't stop the highway patrol guys chasing people for the littlest things, so they can tick infringements off their lists like someone with OCD."

"And to make their quota."

"Which we all do," she said, giving him a quick cheeky grin before watching the road again. Max smiled again, watching the road himself. Later Heather asked, "Are you nervous, Dad?"

"Yeah, bloody holdin' on to me seat with grim death the way you take these bends."

She chuckled at his quip. "Learnt from the best. But you know what I'm talking about..."

"Yeah," he chuckled, "Near shittin' meself."

"Pfft, as if."

He shook his head, smiled a grim smile, and said, "Not quite nervous, but you know how it is with ya mother."

"I know, Dad, that's why I asked."

"She'll be aloof, as usual. She'll welcome me, then tolerate me, but probably avoid me as much as possible."

"You'll avoid her too, it'll be like two wild cats circling around one another, eyeing each other off but unsure, neither approaching the other..."

He sighed. "Yeah, thanks...and I'll be on her territory this time."

"She did say yes to you staying."

"She did..."

I wonder why?

This question mulled around his mind for the rest of the drive, the narrow road winding along the river before crossing over near where it met the ocean at a once very-familiar sea-side town, then heading north. This was definitely Yvonne's territory, and Max recalled the first time he'd contacted her, a couple of days after she'd left her number on his Torana's windscreen. Never one to feel nervous around girls, he'd found making his initial phone call to Yvonne easy, but after a chat and her acceptance of a date, he'd felt butterflies in his stomach and couldn't pin down why.

Then he was hooked, because after their first date where he'd driven Yvonne further up the coast for a picnic by the beach, he'd reluctantly dropped her home with a chaste peck on the lips, because she'd made it clear there'd be no more than a peck, and he'd driven back to Hobart wanting nothing more than to see her again. Which is how things remained, and soon after their relationship turned serious in a way he'd not previously experienced or wanted, but with Yvonne it was all he wanted, and he'd eventually asked her to live with him, then later asking her to marry him too, knowing he wanted spend his life with no other.

"Here we are," Heather said, slowing and turning off the Highway onto the gravel drive, shattering Max's reverie. "You've been silent for the last little bit. It's gonna be okay, Dad."

He grunted, the car taking the long gravel drive up a slight hill, to a copse of both native evergreen trees and introduced deciduous species with some of their leaves starting to turn yellow, where in the centre stood a boxy green cottage with a flat roof sloping to the south, several small high-set windows on this western side, and a stainless steel flue pipe sticking up from the eastern side, emitting a wisp of smoke.

A small blue Suzuki Jimny four-wheel drive sat near the door at the end. To the right of the trees, further down the hill and south of the cottage, was a large grey steel-panelled shed with two cream roller doors and smaller regular door facing the north.

"You're up there and I'm down there," Max said, nodding to the shed.

"You'll like it, it's roomy compared to the cottage. And you'll have King for company."

At the sound of his name, King stuck his head between the two front seats from where he'd sat in the rear for the journey, and Max gave him a pat and said, "It'll be you and me, cobber."

Heather pulled up next to the little four-wheel drive, climbed out, letting King bound out too, and then helped her Father.

Max lifted his prosthetic out the door and said, "Ah, nice to stretch my leg."

Heather smiled, handing him his walking stick, and then she heard her mother's familiar voice, "Hey, Kingy, down boy, down...good boy...such a good boy, yeah, you love this don't you..."

"Hey, Mum," Heather called out.

"Hi, sweetheart," she replied, warmly, then with less warmth but still civility, she said, "Max, how are you?"

Max looked to Yvonne who was crouched down in jeans and white blouse, still scratching King behind the ears. Her blond hair was similar to her natural colour of years before, but not entirely so, falling and cut stylishly at shoulder length, the tips of her ears elfishly sticking through her strands that didn't appear quite so silky as they once did. She still looked young, and his eyes met hers, big and green and beautiful, his heart skipping a beat or three.

"Hello, Vonnie," he said, smiling uncontrollably, nervous as all get out. "I'm doin' fine. How are you?"

Yvonne smirked, her lips forming a little heart. "You sound like a robot, Max. But I must say you're looking a whole bunch better than when I saw you last year. You even shaved this time!"

"Can't go 'round looking like a slob, can I?"

She opened her mouth as if to say something, then didn't, but smiled. "How about I put the kettle on while you two sort your things out?"

"Sound's great, Mum," Heather said, opening the boot and removing two rolling suitcases.

"Here, let me help you, love," Max said, moving towards her.

"I got it, Dad," she said with a smile, lifting the two bags with ease. "I'm pregnant, not fragile."

"No one ever mistook you as fragile, love," Max chuckled, shrugging his shoulders. "And I'm still capable of lifting my own suitcase."

They walked onto the timber decking which was at ground level on this western side of the house, leading to the side door through which Yvonne entered, walking past it to the main deck on the eastern side of the house which was raised approximately one metre from the ground, the terrain slopping away to the east. A gap in the trees acted like a window to view the ocean half a kilometre or so beyond, presently under grey skies, and from where a moderate breeze gusted, rustling leaves and swaying branches.

Heather tied King up on his long leash, and whispered, "Sorry, fella, but remember last time when you chased Jamieson and Mum was mad? Well, she hasn't forgotten. But you get to sleep over in the shed with Dad. We even packed your bed!"

King gave Heather his undivided attention, his head cocked to the side and mouth firmly shut. He accepted her explanation, then looked to the wall of glazed concertina doors where Yvonne opened one and said, "What'd'ya know, two Coughlans wandering about in short sleeves despite a chill in the air. Nothing changes with you two."

Max smiled but said nothing, noting how Yvonne's jeans hugged her tall skinny legs, moulding around her bum exactly like when she was much younger. He followed his daughter, who shared a similar figure to her mother's, but with more muscle, into the warm cottage where a fire blazed in the slow combustion stove. "Cozy."

Yvonne poured hot water from a kettle into three cups, each with teabag tabs dangling over their rims. "You haven't visited here before."

"You never invited me."

"I suppose you have a point, but I never thought you'd come."

Max sat at the circular timber table, adjacent to Heather, observing Yvonne, thinking how relatively young she looked even now at fifty-five, noting how a few wrinkles were forming, but not as much as everyone he still knew at their age beginning to show the ravages of time in some way or another.

You look beautiful, he thought.

Something furry rubbed against his leg and he looked down at the light orange tabby cat with white splotches on its face, tail in the air, gracefully curling at the end, then flicking straight. The cat, he knew, was Jamieson, but they'd never met before. Jamieson took a liking to Max's leg for a good minute or two, and was purring, before he moved on to the doors where he sat on his haunches, staring out at King, who stood and came forth and found the end of his leash before reaching the doors, barking a couple of times, then whining.

The two animals began a staring contest, and Max ignored them, looking around the room, examining several canvas paintings on the walls, some unframed, bright colours depicting the forest or flowers or seaside, one showing five human shadows silhouetted on beach sand, two tall on the outside and three shorter in the centre, plus the shadow of a dog, with a sea-star and shell in focus in the foreground.

Max knew these shadows, a dark heaviness entering his heart.

"You okay, Dad?" Heather asked, placing a cup of tea in front of him. He hadn't even noticed her stand to fetch the tea.

"I'm fine," he grunted.

"Here, Max," Yvonne said, placing a plate of Delta Cream biscuits in the centre of the table, "This will help."

"Ta, love," he said, years and years of habit returning in a flash as if years and years of emptiness hadn't intervened.

Yvonne smiled and said nothing for a while, sitting at the table. She looked to Heather and eventually said, "I think you two should lay low for a bit. I heard on the radio the whole country's supposed to quarantine at home. Some are calling it lockdown, and people all over are calling for everyone else to stay home too. Locals mightn't like a few unfamiliar faces about. Already a bit of talk about the town."

"Yeah," Heather nodded, "We heard on the radio."

"So it's more serious than a bad flu strain then?"

"Definitely more serious than the flu, Mum," Heather said before lifting the tea to her mouth and taking a sip.

Yvonne watched her daughter for a moment, then said, "I'm glad Mum and Dad are safe in their new house further up the coast. So far away from the world up there."

Heather looked as if she might respond, Max expecting her to give her mother the same talk she'd given him, about not being far from the world anymore, but she remained silent. Max said nothing either, listening to Yvonne and Heather chat, but they didn't include him and he didn't contribute. He picked up a biscuit and ate it while the two women mostly talked of the virus and the possibility of having to stay for an extended period.

"You stay as long as you need, because you don't want to expose your baby to anything," Yvonne said. Then she turned to Max. "You're welcome to stay too, Maxie. I know my shed's not your preferred option of accommodation, but the bed is comfortable and there's a fire, plus a toilet and shower too. Might take a while for the hot water to come through, but you're a Coughlan and if I recall correctly, you've never felt the cold in yer life."

She said the last part with a smile and Max smiled back awkwardly, and Yvonne added, "Cat got your tongue, Max?"

She made him smile, a genuine smile, and he nodded, telling her, "You know how I've lost me special gift of the gab."

"I'm sure you haven't lost it, you're just on standby."

Max shrugged, thinking, You're right, Vonnie. Looks like I'm stuck in standby mode forever...

"I'm fine, Von," he said. "Thanks for takin' us in. I hope they sort this disease thing out so we can be out of your hair as soon as possible."

"Taking you in? We're family, Max. Death do us part and all the other things we said, and we even made this one here." She pointed to Heather, whose face contorted slightly with a cringe.

"Mum, settle."

Yvonne laughed, and Max said to Heather, "Ya Mum's gone a bit loopy since she's become a hermit." But he winked at Yvonne too, and even Heather chuckled.

After a while Heather showed her father and King the shed, which was like an extra-large double garage with a polished concrete slab-floor upon which a ride-on mower sat, and a potter's wheel and kiln were in the rear corner beside a bench running the entire length of the back wall. There was a door in the right-hand-wall, and Heather led Max there to a room with a queen bed in the centre and pot-bellied stove in the corner with a stack of logs beside it and kindling too. Heather pointed to another door off to the side. "Toilet and shower in there."

After a brief chat, Heather left, and Max sat on the bed, King coming up and placing his head on Max's good leg, Max giving him a pat, King's tail wagging like crazy despite the rest of his calm demeanour.

"Well, cobber, we seem to have entered some sort of twilight zone."

~0~

Like Heather predicted, Max and Yvonne skirted around one another. Not so much avoiding each other, where Max joined Heather and Yvonne for meals, but he did his own thing most of the time, while Yvonne did her things.

Heather went for walks around the property with King, did yoga and other exercises, read books and drank cups of tea or water on her mother's deck. Yvonne painted and made sculptures in her spare time, occasionally coming to the shed to make pottery and little figurine animals, selling the occasional artwork online, but most weekdays she drove to town where she worked behind the counter at the post office, her job still considered essential.

And Max did what he'd done all his life; if there was nothing to do he fidgeted, looking for things needing attention, even if they didn't. Over by the bottom fence he found a eucalypt likely damaged in a summer's storm, its trunk split halfway up, dropping a giant branch thicker than a big man, leaving a jagged scar torn halfway down one side of the tree. The fat log lay on the ground, its few remaining leaves brown, the rest fallen off, so Max searched out and found a chainsaw in the shed, plus a heavy duty log-splitter and axe, and began cutting firewood.

"What are you doing, Dad?" Heather said when she came to investigate all the sawing and chopping, King at her side wagging his tail. "Mum has a hydraulic log-splitter now. You don't need to do all this work."

"Exercise, love," he said, enjoying the feeling of wielding chainsaws and swinging an axe like he'd done countless times in his younger days, even ignoring the pain of his previous injury and age.

He began hauling the fire-sized logs up the hill in a barrow, straining because of his prosthetic, King joining him for company. When they weren't hauling timber, they walked several times around the four acre yard's boundary fence. Max pulled weeds in Yvonne's native garden beds, and from her rose garden and small orchard of apples, pears and cherries. He found a paperbark tree with a low branch he could reach with a little jump, testing it for his weight and did a chin-up, then two more, straining at the end.

"I used to do fifty of these almost every training session," he said to King, who sat and looked at him with head cocked to one side.

~0~

"Boo!" Yvonne said, and Max jumped up where he sat on a log, his shirt off and sweat pouring off him. "You don't need to cut anymore firewood, Max."

"I enjoy it, it's no trouble."

"Still can't sit still for more than a few seconds, can you?"

"I was sittin' still when ya scared me just now."

"Resting for five seconds doesn't count."

"You were watching me," Max said, leaning on the axe handle.

Yvonne smiled. "It's not Heather cutting all this firewood and carting it up the hill, and it's not King either."

"It's me exercise for the day."

"Like the pull-ups you do on the tree over there. It's almost like the olden days, always working out." She glanced at his body. "And you look like you've been working out."

"I sometimes go kayaking and swimming with Heather and Tim. And the tree makes a decent substitute for a pull-up bar I s'pose."

"It's doing you good. Much better than rotting away in the tiny flat you were living in, smoking and drinking your life away." She gave a sympathetic smile, and when he didn't say anything, she asked, "How would you like to go to town tomorrow?"

He cocked his head, caught off guard. "Thought we weren't allowed in town. This lockdown thing is getting' pretty serious. I was listening to the radio earlier and they said no unnecessary trips from our houses. And the Scottish sounding doctor tellin' us all the doom and gloom."

"It's Heather's birthday on Friday and I have nothing planned and was wondering if you wanted to get a few things with me so we can make her day special. It's an essential trip to the shops."

Max nodded with a slight grunt.

"Speak to me, Max," Yvonne said.

"Um, sure, what'd'ya wanna talk about?"

She looked at him, eyebrows raised, head cocked. "Is there anything you want to talk about?"

Max smiled, thinking. "Um, how about, I like your place."

Yvonne laughed. "What has happened to your way with words?"

"I never had a way with words. You're the wordsmith in the family."

"Oh, you had a way with words back in the day," she said with a cheeky grin.

"I guess I never shut up back then."

"You said it, not me. But no, you spoke the right amount at all the right times." When he grunted a reply, she said, "See, what'd I tell you?"

Max smiled then chuckled. "Vonnie, I'll come in to town with ya tomorrow, and maybe I'll be a better talker then."

"You best be."

"So much pressure."

Yvonne smiled. "No pressure, Max. Just be yourself...your old-self, for once."

~0~

A strange feeling came over Max, who sat in the Suzuki's passenger seat with Yvonne driving.

We haven't travelled alone in a car together since 2006...

2006, the year Yvonne walked out on him.

Or more correctly, he knew, he'd pushed her away.

I guess I was a sad sack of shit back then, he thought, never once blaming Yvonne.

Of course he didn't say anything, and Yvonne drove with her eyes fixed on the road, and she asked, "What do you think we should do for Heather's birthday?"

Max stopped thinking about his marriage breakdown and said, "What were you thinking?"

"Maybe a cake, which is about as far as I thought. What do you reckon?"

"Cake's good." Then he thought some more. "How about a barbecue on your deck? Could be a picnic of sorts?"

"Now you're thinking."

"Most thinking I've done in a while, eh, Vonnie," he said with a chuckle.

"Never said that, Max. Never, ever, ever."

"Yeah...well...I did."

"Which goes to show you've been thinking!"

"I've thought about things over the years..."

"You and me both..."

They were silent again as Yvonne indicated right and pulled off the highway into the little fishing village where she'd grown up. Max looked out at the somewhat deserted streets, though, when they pulled up at curb out-front of the shops, an old man and woman looked in their direction, staring for a long moment. Yvonne waved and they waved back, but Max became overcome with the self-consciousness of an outsider in a tiny town, and said, "So you think it'll be okay for me to be here?"

"No one will say a thing, and if they do, you're with me."

"No one's likely to know me around these parts anymore, so won't I get you into trouble?"