Wings

Dear readers.

This is ninety-five percent story and five percent sex. If you're looking for a case of tennis elbow, find more of a flogger.

Trigger warning. References are made to fictional combat casualties resulting from an RPG attack on a plane. Trauma is described briefly.

All rights reserved.

Rollinbones.

~*~

~~~~~~ Wings ~~~~~~

"Oh, they tryna shoot down angels

They tryna pull their wings off

So, they can't fly"

'Can't stop the girl.' By Bebe Rexa.

[Oh man, that's fucked up. I'm so sorry.]

I stare at the text message for a while. Tracey has been one of my friends all the way through high school. She's generally of sober character and I've never known her to use recreational drugs, so the nonsensical message out of the blue is quite disturbing.

[The fuck you on about girl?] I reply.

[Oh god, the news Jax, it's all over the news. Fuck it, I'm on my way over.]

Good, she can fucking explain herself when she gets here. It's Friday afternoon. I'm just home from work and my frazzled mind and tired limbs just can't invest in her random outburst. There are six beers left in the fridge from a party a month or so ago and I take one by its neck and drag it back to the lounge, where I turn on the television and promptly let it fall from my shaking hand to smash on the tiled floor.

"...of Toowoomba businessman and property developer, Mr Peter O'Rielly is confirmed as the Australian pilot killed in the RPG attack. The other victim is believed to be a red-cross volunteer and two remain in critical condition..." There's more. It's on every channel. It can't be real and yet it is.

I see a burning Hercules. Flames billow from the wing and cockpit. The tarmac underneath it burns. Fire crews... Smoke...

"...air force spokesman released a brief statement to media this morning saying that relatives of the deceased persons had been advised earlier in the week at the time of the attack, but footage withheld due to the sensitive nature of..."

"...one Flight Lieutenant Samantha Jane O'Rielly. Formerly of Toowoomba, Queensland and one..."

The room spins and I turn off the television.

Sammy. Angel.

"-xon... Jaxon!" Sound returns and I turn slowly to find Tracey shaking my shoulder and yelling my name. "Jaxon, honey. They didn't tell you? They would have known since... Fucking cunts. Stay there, I'll get a mop."

I don't think I could move anyway. I float in some surreal place where my Angel is dead. Some bizarre world where she's gone.

Tracey hands me another open beer and I stare at it while she cleans and taps at her phone.

"Mrs Waters? Yeah, he's... um just sort of staring. I can stay for a while. Ok good."

Curiosity, or morbid disbelief urges me to turn the television back on. I switch from one channel to the next and know it's real. It's not a cruel joke. My Angel is gone. Grief washes through me. Waves of anger and sadness toss me about like an abandoned liferaft. I always thought we'd get our moment in the sun again one day. "Tiocfaidh ar la." As she would have said. Hoped anyway. But now...

"Okay boy. You turn that trash off now, 'ere la!" Mum is here. I look up at her through my wet eyes and turn off the television again. "Give it, boy. Your thing hey? Your phone."

I fish it from my trousers and hand it over wondering what sort of world doesn't have Sammy in it.

"You put Kathleen on right now, you pompous cock-head." Oh dear. My mother is a lovely quiet Kamilaroi woman. Unless someone messes with her children.

"When is the funeral?"

"No, now listen here. I'm sick of the way yous mob treat my boy like he's not fit to piss on. You've known about this all week and haven't had the common decency to let him know. He found out just now from the bloody television. I know you lost your daughter and I'm bloody sad for you, but you know how he feel about the girl. You know, damn it. So tell me, when is the funeral cause by god we both comin' bitch."

"Thank you. I really am sorry for your loss. She was like my daughter too."

Then she's just standing there staring at me with her hands on her hips like I just walked mud through the house or something.

"Well? You gonna sit there drinking like your father did when anything go to shit, or you gonna get up, take a damn shower and change into some home clothes. You look like shit."

Silently, I just fall into the cadence of home. Just like when I was younger and you just marched along with the rest of the house to the beat of Mum's drum. Tracey stops me on the way to the shower to hug me and kiss me on the cheek.

"Sorry for playing the Mum card. Just worried about you Jax. You call me if you want to talk. Hell, call me if you want to scream and throw things. Jace and I are just a call away."

I nod. She's a lovely friend. So is Jason. It's all so empty though. I feel like I'm in a hollow log. There's light at either end and I don't know where to turn. There's just nothing out there for me.

In the shower I just lean on the wall and let the hot stream wash the salt from my face. It stings with heat but feeling anything is good. I've been numb since I turned on the television. There was always the risk of this. I knew it. Sammy knew it. We didn't speak about it. Hell, we hardly even spoke. Now and then a letter or some facey chat. But it's how things had to be.

I remember.

Like I was standing there all over again.

It was first day of grade two for me at Gabbinbar State School. Mum dropped us all off like any other day. As I walked in the gate, I saw her. A little thing with flaming ringlets to her shoulders. She was sobbing and holding onto a tall woman's legs. She looked just like a little angel with her wild hair and little school dress; the light behind her turning her red locks to a flaming halo.

"Mummy has to go Samantha. Let go now. Don't be a baby."

I stopped close by and looked up at the angry looking woman who scowled back down at my brown eyes and looked haughtily over my brown skin.

"Come on little angel girl." I said quietly and took her hand. "Come on. It's okay here. You'll make lots of friends. I got friends and I'm black even. You're pretty, you'll get heaps of friends. Come on, I'll show you where to go." I told her frightened eyes. She wiped at them and squeezed my hand.

Neither of us saw her mother go, but she was gone in an instant. She cried so hard and held me in a hug so needful that I almost started crying too. Then she did what I would learn she always did.

She wiped her eyes. She stomped her foot, and she said, "Hmmph."

Then she stoically held my hand and kissed my cheek and followed me to her classroom. I helped her put her port away and showed her to the teacher. I thought that was the end of it. But I was wrong.

Every lunch time she sought me out. Every morning from that day on, she waited for me at the gate and held my hand all the way to class.

Now who would hold my hand.

~~<>~~

If you are ever shooting a movie and want to know the best place to film a funeral scene then Toowoomba is your best bet. It can host four seasons in any twenty-four-hour period and in winter like this, it's a perfect funeral setting.

The sky is a bleak grey. It's not really raining, just gusts of sleet. Snow-like shit that melts on you, stinging your skin with icy pricks. The wind is whistling westerlies that threaten to tear the skin from your face and anything else exposed.

And we stand on a lawn and I watch her family from beneath a tree, beside my mother. They all look so sad. So sad, and very well dressed. So sad and ceremonious. So sad and like they've rehearsed it.

A priest says hollow things and we all stare at a hole in the ground. She is not here. This box is empty. My angel girl has flown. I think maybe it's why I needed to come here. I needed to feel the emptiness of this time and place to know her gone.

In my mind I picture one of the last photos she sent me. She is standing beside her plane in her uniform and her face is lit with joy. And then the noise of little gears in the mechanism that lowers the coffin, chases away the memory. I watch as her body is interred, knowing she is flying far away, and this is just another vehicle she's stepped out of.

We form a file of sorts and drop rose petals in on top of the coffin and dutifully, I follow Mum and take up my own handful of sweet-smelling theatre. I catch Mrs O'Rielly's eyes in that moment and she scowls down like she did that first day of school.

I drop my petals down. They spiral like lost hopes and dreams and look like such a pretty mess of wasted gestures.

"You shouldn't be here." She hisses as I pass her on the way back to my sheltering tree. "You put her in that hole. You could have kept her here."

The words sting with the truth I feel in them. I could have kept her here. Perhaps I did put her in that hole. Maybe if I'd just... And my eyes spill down my cheeks. My mother takes my hand and shushes.

"Hush now boy. Show them dignity."

And as I walk away, I see the strangest thing.

A woman sits in a wheelchair near an ambulance. They are parked on the little road that winds near the grave. As I near, I see her hands and legs are wrapped in bandages and her face is wrapped as well. I can see only her eyes on mine. They are blue and sad, and tears fall to soak into her bandages.

She tugs on the nurse's arm and says something. He gently assists her to her feet where she stares hard at me and snaps a crisp salute. My crying eyes watch hers and I nod briefly.

The strange moment passes, and my mother and I leave before the family can take more of their own grief out upon me.

~~<>~~

"And, oh, but she's so brave, though."

I've been angry. I've been sad. I've even tried to just pretend it's not real. There's no-one to bargain with so I've probably missed that step but today I'm standing in our once favourite place doing our once favourite thing, while crying like a fuckwit and eating a ceremonial ice-cream.

The first time I took her on a proper date I brought her here. We were both in high school. Though her parents had taken great care to send her to St Saviours girl's school to keep my filthy brown paws off her, she would still wait patiently each afternoon at the gate for me to ride from Harristown High and walk her home.

But this place, Picnic Point, has... 'had' always been significant to us. We would come and order ice-creams from the little shop and slurp them looking out at the valley far below. It was a scenescape that drew our wildest imaginings and dreams were voiced.

Mum brought us up here the first time. She'd convinced Mrs O'Rielly that we were firm friends and playmates. We were seven and six and it took a bit of work on Mum's behalf to assure the O'Riellys that black people can be trusted with children. We played for hours, even climbed the rocket in the days before they locked it up for safety reasons. Then Mum bought us both ice-creams.

So, by age fifteen, when our friendship had become problematically romantic for the O'Riellys, it was a huge step to take my little angel girl for a 'date'.

Idiots... If they only knew half of what we'd already been up to.

But, first dates. We ate ice-cream and sat on a rock wall swinging our legs like children and holding hands. I sit in that exact same spot now and remember her dreams of flight.

"Look Jax..." She pointed at eagles far overhead. "I wish that I could fly. Imagine how that would feel, so high up over the mountains and looking down all the way to Brisbane."

I took her hand and helped her stand teetering on the rock wall. "Close your eyes, Sammy."

"Stretch your arms out Angel." I told her.

"Can you feel the wind on your wings?"

I held her hips to steady her and watched the sheer bliss in her imagination filled eyes when she turned back to kiss me.

"You give me wings, Jax. You. All the things I'm scared of. You help me soar above them."

My ice-cream is finished. My wrists are sticky with the mess of it. It's summer now. The funeral a long time past. But still I visit moments and places, searching for her in my reveries. Trying to clutch at last little memories like they'll slip away forever if I don't daily grip their balloon strings.

My phone beeps and drags me back to the present.

[Hey wanker. I came over to borrow your lawn mower and there's some chick here looking for you. What do you want me to tell her?]

It's Jason's number and I have no idea who or what he's on about.

[I don't know. She look like a thief or a Jehovah's?]

[Nuh. How would I know?]

So, I ring his phone.

"Hey Jace, just put her on man."

"Hi." A slightly deeper than normal female voice says, "You don't know me. I was a friend of Samantha's. I have some of her things for you."

"Oh. Well okay. Um, you could leave them with Jason. He's a good mate."

"I'd prefer to hand them to you personally. I'd... Um... Like to speak with you."

"Right, well. Um, I can be there in about ah... fifteen, twenty minutes otherwise we could organise a time and place."

"I'll wait. Thank's Jax. Oh. I'm Lara. See you soon."

Weird... but okay. I pick up some wine on the way home. I'm off beer lately. I've been feeling bloated and kind of dad bodied, and I've gone onto reds. So, I pick up two bottles of pretentious pinot noirs and try not to wonder what 'Lara' wants.

She's a pointy looking woman. Tall. Almost my height, with sharp features and a thin pokey body. Her shoulders poke out. Her knees look knobbly and I almost didn't see the scarring. But once I do, I can't not look.

Her clawed hands are battle fields of raised ridges and welts and the left side of her face just makes me sad.

"You were... the funeral? I..." I should try to make full sentences, but the moment denies me speech.

"Lara Pennington." She extends a scarred hand, then quickly draws it back. "And yes. I was at Sammy's funeral. I'm surprised you recognise me. I was pretty well bandaged back then."

"Your eyes, Lara." I smile. They are still burning blue laser things. She blushes briefly.

"May I come in? I have..."

"Of course. I'm sorry. Come in." I open my door for her and follow her into my home.

"I flew with Sammy."

"Oh." I direct her to the lounge, and she drops her backpack on it. "Coffee? Tea?"

"Some water would be nice, Jax."

When I return with a bottle of water from the fridge and two glasses, her eyes follow my hands as I pour and she looks like she's assembling thoughts into speech.

"I was in the plane. My burns. I'm very sorry for your loss."

"Ha. Thanks, but I think everyone is pretty sorry for losing Sammy. Not just me. How did you... Survive?"

"I was checking cargo when it hit. I went forward to try and help the moment I could see and hear..." Then she is crying. "I'm sorry. I... the mental pictures and the smell."

"Can I hug you?"

"Ha. She said you were pretty formal."

I take that as a yes and move to sit beside her with an arm around her shoulders as she gathers thoughts and emotions.

"She loved you." She tells me.

"And I loved her."

"She knew what you did."

"I know."

"She never stopped loving you."

"Me either." I meant that I never stopped loving her not that... you get it.

Her foot taps in a Sammy-like stomp and she assembles herself stiffly. I remove my arm and watch her dig through her bag.

"She kept this beside her bed. All through training. All through deployments." She hands me a picture frame.

"Her senior formal." I smile and see Sammy and I smile back from the frame. "God she was beautiful. That was the night... Oh..."

"She told me about that too." She blushes and grins. "Not many secrets, Sammy and I."

"You must have been close."

"Best friends. With each other all through the academy, then through basic flight. We... she... I don't know how to say."

"More than friends?" I press a little rudely.

She nods.

"Damn. I'm sorry for you then. If you loved her like I did, I'm so sorry."

"I did. It's been..." She hangs her head and wipes tears from the damaged side of her face. "I leak like a sieve these days. I can't imagine how this is for you. Some weird burned chick shows up and cries her Freddy Kruger arse off on your couch. She wanted you to have these."

She scrabbles in her pack and pulls out a small pair of silver wings.

"She always said, 'he broke his heart to give me wings'. Even when we were... close. She still cried sometimes holding your picture. I hated you. I could never own that piece of her."

"Lara. Sammy's gone. We don't need to compete. Love is love. Maybe we can both keep her in our hearts."

"She said that about you, too. That you were like this. I feel like I know you. She spoke about you so much. Like you were some kind of..."

"I need some air. Is it..." She stands and looks out the back so I take her hand and lead her out onto the deck.

"No-one..." She looks at my hand holding hers. "People just don't want to touch me now."

I shrug.

"She didn't die straight away, Jax." There is horror in the blue eyes that look up at me.

"She lived for two days in ICU."

She seems to burst like a dam wall. Her eyes fountain and the military poise drops and she buries herself into my arms and falls apart. Perhaps this is what I needed. A few more pieces of the picture of Sammy's life and someone I can be strong for. In this moment I just hold this stranger and rub her back.

It's only when she pulls away that I realise my own tears and brush at them embarrassedly.

"Sorry Jax." She looks flustered. "Can you just give me a few moments alone please? Hahaha. That's weird coming from a stranger in your own home, but I need to pull myself together."

"Certainly. I'll be inside." She smiles at me a little pathetically and turns away to lean on the railing.

When I return from washing my face and hands, she's sitting on the couch again and looking very military in her posture. I wonder if that was how Sammy looked in the end. I wonder how the Air Force changed her.

"She kept all of your letters. I have them here if you want them. She never replied though. She desperately wanted for you to move on. Find someone to love you. We'd read them together."

"And her medals. Here." She places a bar of service medals and some other shiny things next to the letters.

"What about you, Lara? What do you-"

"Memories Jax. I keep... I keep my memories of her in happy times. Memories you allowed her to make. Her flight suits and helmets. Things like that. These few things were just important to her to give to you. To show you what she achieved."

"Oh." I fumble with the medals, examining them and wondering on their significance.

"I think she wanted to show you it was worth it. Sometimes I think the only reason she kept going was to honour the sacrifice you both made. To make her own broken heart worth the pain. If any of that makes sense."

"Sounds like my angel girl."

"Oh! Look. You'll like this, I think." She taps through her phone then shows me a picture of Sammy in uniform standing beside a plane with her helmet under one arm. On the visor of her helmet is a pink cloth looking thing with the word "Angel" written on it.

"I'll send it to you. What's your phone number."

I hand her my open phone.

"That was Operation Accordian. We flew supplies into regional areas."

"So, you're a pilot too?"

"'Was' a pilot. I'll be medicalled out in a few weeks." The burned side of her face shows a grimace, I think. It's hard to accurately read expressions from this side.

"Not pretty, is it?"