Wings

Catching me glancing over, she smiles and pats my leg. "Thanks for this. Thanks for everything. I know why she loved you now."

Then we drive silently.

One day not long after I first got my licence, I borrowed dad's ute to take Sammy for ice-cream up on the range. It was a hot day just like this and I can remember her joy. She wound down the window and let the breeze play with her hair and smiled and sang happy nonsense noises like she did sometimes. Then she held her hand out the window and used her palm like a wing, lifting and lowering her arm.

Just like Lara is right now.

~~<>~~

"Just like a tornado"

Work is dull. I'm doing a service that the apprentice could be, it's that slow today. Changing oil, doing a safety check and such. Bread and butter work for a third-generation mechanic. That was another thing that had never been good enough for the O'Riellys.

They saw black skin. They saw grease monkeys. They didn't see that Grandad had been one of the first indigenous business owners in town. They didn't see that he earned his mechanical qualifications by working hard out bush on cattle stations to save money to travel to England where he apprenticed at a Bentley dealership.

They didn't see his business prowess passed on to his son and hopefully a bit rubbed off on me. I must be doing something right because after Dad passed it was left to me to run the place. And with five employees, I needed to do it well despite my young age. Mum had no interest or ability with books.

But still... Black mechanics... Not good enough for my angel girl.

Mum surprises me by dropping in now and then. She loves the atmosphere of men and tools and cars. Often, she remarks how it reminds her of Dad. How she remembers little moments. I guess she finds reminders here like I find reminders of Sammy at Picnic Point.

Today she hands me sandwiches she's brought from home for us all; a big platter of curried egg and lettuce on white bread. Then she leans up and kisses my cheek and leaves.

In the moment Mum kisses me, I'm reminded how Lara shuffled weirdly at the base when I dropped her off.

"Jaxon?" She looked so serious.

"Lara?" I monkeyed her tone.

She laughed and said, "It's silly. I probably don't need to ask. But can I give you a kiss on the cheek."

I laughed at her in reply and she slapped my arm.

She leaned her burned face close to mine and kissed my cheek. It was a little warm wet peck and just lovely. Pointy.

She blushed so deeply. "Thank you, Jax. For talking. For last night, today and for that." She rubbed at my cheek. "No one likes the burned lady getting that close."

"I think the burned lady worries too much. I'll see you around Lara. Call sometime for no reason hey?"

"I will."

"What are you grinning at dickhead?" Laughs Toby. "You get some last night?"

"Fuck off." I grumble at him and stuff a sandwich in my mouth.

"You did so, you daft cunt. He's blushing. Look." Toby nudges Mick.

"Leave him alone you pair of poofters." Kaitlyn says. "At least someone's getting lucky."

They all have a bit of a giggle and my mobile rings. I pick it up and take two of Mum's sandwiches into my office.

"Gidday, Water's Mechanical."

"I've got nothing to tell you." I recognise Lara's voice.

"Hey Lara. It's been ah...

"Two weeks. Would have called to chat sooner, but it's been hectic."

"You must be finished up now hey?"

"Silly old civilian again. Feels kinda weird not getting up at five and staying up late watching silly shows on Netflix."

"Working yet, love?"

"It's been pretty rough. Interviews are... god. Still at Mum and Dads."

"How are the blind dates going?"

She laughs that tinkling laugh of hers, "Two so far. And neither was blind enough to get past my scars."

"Shallow fools."

"Oh well, still got good old bob."

"Is he a mate?"

"Haha. Battery operated boyfriend. He doesn't mind the scars."

"Oh. Overshare, Lara."

"Just fucking with you, Jax. What have you been up to?"

"Work, sleep, eat, you know."

"Ha. All work and no play make Jax a dull boy."

"Dullest of the dull."

"Anyway, you said call for no reason, so I did."

"How are you doing, Lara?" I ask half seriously.

"Hmm... Still sad. Sometimes I forget to be and then something will remind me. The smell of petrol. Burned toast. This was supposed to be a happy call."

"I'm still happy. I like talking to you. We can be honest and still be happy. I took myself to Tabletop last weekend. Sammy and I used to picnic up there sometimes. It's a long hike but a beautiful spot. It was the first time I went to one of our places and was happy. I could see her dancing in the breeze up there. You're not the only sappy fool."

"Ha. That's just it. You get it. No one gets it. Oh..."

"What?"

"It's a bit cheeky to ask but I need to shift some furniture into my new unit. I invested my pay out into a block of units and I'm-"

"I know someone with a ute, and he'd be happy to help, if you can wait till the weekend."

"You're too much, Jax. Dad's got a little truck, but I can't drive still and have trouble with heavier things."

"How much stuff do you have?"

"A shipping container at Mum and Dads. It's about half full of odds and ends. There's a big fridge and a washing machine are probably the heaviest."

"No problems and hey, I'll need an address."

"I'll text it in a minute."

"You sound good, Lara."

"I'm... moving on a little, Jax. I can't stay sad... It hurts to let go though."

"I know. Me too."

"Alright, well this was supposed to be happy and for no reason and now it got serious and I'm asking favours. I'll have to make it up to you."

"One of those little pointy kisses on the cheek this weekend will do, pretty Lara."

"I'll pay for your fuel."

Click. She hung up so I look at my phone and then place it on the desk. There are three faces at the window. Cheeky buggers. Mick makes a humping mime and Toby gives me a thumbs up. I'm blushing again. It's hard to see but my brown skin burns with it.

~~<>~~

Saturday morning arrives and I'm sitting drinking my coffee wondering where in the hell Tumbulgum Road is. Maps shows me a little marker and I get directions, knowing once I thumb the bike up, I'll ignore them anyway. It's not light outside yet and the Toowoomba air is crisp as I pack some things into a backpack.

I sling it over the back of Veronica. Veronica is my V-max. She's black with big shiny induction rams and all the curves you'd like to find on a woman. I bought this bike from Jason when he and Tracey were trying to scratch together a house deposit. He jokes about buying it back, but I know he only really relinquished it because it frightened the fuck out of him.

Two hundred horsepower will do that to a person.

I haven't ridden the v-max since Sammy died. It was always my connection to how she must feel when she flies. 'Flew'... How she felt... The speed, the grace, the power and the breeze. I felt sometimes like I could reach out through the wind and touch her hand thousands of miles away wherever she was.

If you ride a motorcycle you will know that maps is a wonderful way to find the shortest way from point a to point b but it also shows you a lot of very squiggly lines that are where you should actually go. I've plotted a route down through Killarney and Woodenbong over the border ranges and into Murwillumbah. If I get going shortly, I'll be there by about ten.

Veronica growls like a dirty girl on prom night. She rasps her v-four noise into my little cul-de-sac and as quietly as possible I leave my neighbours all sleeping in their beds and head south down Ruthven Street wondering 'where' and 'why' I'm going. It's the same way I felt when I went over to Sammy's house that day years ago.

I'd been over a few days before. She'd finished year twelve and her grades were solid. Mine were never great. I was guaranteed an apprenticeship with Dad, so I took what I wanted from school. But Sammy... She was so driven. To get through the selection process for the Air Force she needed good passes in maths two, physics and english and a good tertiary entrance rating. A good 'OP'.

Her parents wanted her to go to uni in Toowoomba. To study nursing or teaching or something. They patronisingly entertained her dreams of flight, confident that she wouldn't achieve the scores required or the physical requirements.

She had something to show me, she'd explained. Could I come over?

I ran. She'd been showing me some very nice things indeed for a while now and I thought her request was innuendo. When I arrived, she handed me acceptance letters for a teaching degree in Toowoomba.

"Are you happy for me Jax? I got in. We can be together, and I can study here." Her smile was genuine, and I was happy for me. I wondered about the Air Force though. Perhaps that didn't work out.

"What about flying?"

"Meh... I haven't heard back after the last lot of testing. Maybe I didn't get through."

Her mother called out then. Something about the washing.

"Be right back, Jax." She kissed me and left. I sat down on her bed and looked about her room. It contained so much of her. Trophies, pictures.... Clothes. I laughed looking at the 'floordrobe' as she called it. Underwear and discarded clothing piled beside her bed.

There was a scrumpled letter.

I picked it up. I knew I shouldn't. It was probably private. But I did. I saw the Air Force logos and flattened it on my thigh to read it and my heart broke.

She'd gotten in.

She had been accepted.

All of her dreams... Right here in my hand. Scrumpled up and thrown under her bed and I knew just for me. She was taking teaching just to stay here with me. A selfish part of me had always hoped she'd stay. Hoped that she'd not quite meet selection criteria.

When I looked up, she was standing in the doorway frowning. "You found it."

I just nodded.

"Well it doesn't matter. I won't go. You can't make me, no one can."

"But flying, Sammy. Your thing. Forever."

"Well I won't go. I don't want to be away from you." She was crying and sometimes I wonder if she knew that I would do it.

"Sammy. I'm sorry. I've met someone else." It was a lie. I've never loved anyone as much as I loved her. "You don't know her. I met her through work. I was going to tell you-"

"Get out! Get out now!" She screamed and I left. The last thing I saw of her was her broken-hearted face slamming the door behind me.

My heart filled with cold rocks and my feet carried me heavily home. I told Mum and she broke with me. Her tears and mine flowed with pain.

It was a year before I saw my angel girl again. I'd finished my apprenticeship and was working for Dad. She just wandered straight into the workshop looking beautiful and happy as ever and punched me so hard in the stomach that I went to my knees.

Then she knelt down in front of me and cradled my face in her hands and kissed me.

"I know what you did. I hate you for it, but thankyou. Now take me home and fuck me."

So, I did. Dad threw me keys and laughed. "Go on boy, you heard the girl."

We didn't leave the bedroom for two whole days, unless to eat or use the bathroom. She told me all about the academy and her enthusiasm lit her up like a neon sign. Any guilt I had about lying to her vanished. I'd done the right thing.

She was riding me with her head thrown back and her arms stretched out like that day on the wall when she started cumming on me. "I would have been content with dreams, Jax and having you like this. This is as close to flying as I would have needed. But thank you."

Then she lay on my chest and cried while I softened inside her. She made me promise before she left to go back, that I would try and move on.

"Find someone to love you, Jax. Make sure she loves you like I would if I could stay."

I just nodded. I couldn't let those words leave my mouth. Instead I used hers, "Tiochfaidh ar la." Tomorrow is ours.

And this many years later I ride my Veronica into a tomorrow without her.

~~<>~~

Her father is a funny looking man. I guess he's where she gets her 'pointiness' from. He's got to be six foot three or four and is as thin as a rake. His nose is like a broad headed arrow. It's something that an eagle would be glad to call a beak. And all his lines are hard and pointy.

Her mother is a smaller lady. Quite well round, and hugs like my mum.

"Thank you for helping today, Jax. We've heard a lot about you over the years."

Beside her across the dinner table Lara rolls her eyes, "Muuuum."

"Little Sammy made you out to be much larger." Erik says.

"God, I'm so sorry Jax. Can you guys just 'not'?" She admonishes her parents who grin and chuckle at her chagrin.

"And a few months ago. I don't know what you did to missy here, but she came home from visiting you a changed girl. No more moping and crying. Well not as much anyway."

"We um, just talked. It was good. It brought Sammy back for a little while. It felt nice to know someone shared my sense of loss." I tell them quietly; a little embarrassed for how 'well' I've felt since then too.

"Yes well. Thanks for helping with that junk. I don't know how someone who hasn't been home for ten years can accumulate so much stuff." Eric tells me.

"Oh... Um. Lara..." I touch my lip and smile.

"God... Stupid face." She says and wipes the dribbled sauce from her burned side. "So. We have a spare room. It locks from the inside and the bed is comfortable. If I remember those are the requirements?"

Her silly grin stretches her scarring tightly.

"No, it doesn't. There's no... what are you on about, child?" Her mother admonishes.

We share a glance and she explains, "When I visited him with Samantha's things he made quite sure to tell me the spare room locked from the inside so I felt secure."

"A smart man would have put the lock on the outside." Her father suggests, "He's more likely to need protection from you."

"Dad!"

"Eric!"

"What? I've seen the way you look at him. Puppy dog eyes and smiles."

"Eric. Shut up or go to your study." Elaine tells him.

I've never seen a burn victim blush before. Her good side reddens and her scarred side goes pale on the ridges and deep red in the valleys between scars. It's beautiful and horrible at once.

We finish dinner in polite conversation about Lara's job hunting, her new block of units and my motorcycle. Eric likes the look of it but has never ridden. Elaine makes me promise to take her around the block on it.

"Sammy never mentioned it." Lara tells me.

"No, only got it a couple of years ago. She was over in the desert somewhere. It's kind of silly but it was... nevermind."

I shake my head and Lara protests. "You have to now."

"Well, it felt like a connection to her. When I rode it, the wind... and I felt like I was flying with her. Silly."

As Lara and I stack dishes, she leans close and kisses my cheek. This time without asking nervous permission.

"I think that was the bargain wasn't it?" She smiles.

"Paid in full." I wink at her. "The new unit looks nice."

"Thanks. It was a bit of a risk putting all my payout into it as a deposit, but the other units should pay the mortgage and give me a small income. My hands are still- Fuck."

The dish smashes to the floor from her hands.

"Fucking useless. Fucking claws." She is crying as she hunts for a broom. I take it from her and tell her to sit.

"Just sit. Stop. It's okay to let people help." She's angry looking, I think. Her frown and the set of her lips and her blue eyes crinkling suggest it, but she sits and taps her foot. Angrily, she watches me pick up the broken pieces and put them in the bin. I sweep smaller pieces into a dustpan and when I am done, she is positively glaring at me.

"I wasn't like Sammy. I had to work really hard. High school was really hard. I had tutors and then the academy. So much study. The only thing that got me through was sheer determination. Will power. And now look at me. I can't even stack a dishwasher. It kills me."

Nodding, I take her hands and hold them in mine. My fingers smooth along the scar tissue and I examine them closely.

"The tendons are fused. Some move a little. Some not at all. And the joints are damaged. The synovial membranes are damaged and the cartilage burned... They're so ugly. I dreamed one day that Sammy would put a ring on one of them." She's crying and snatches them away from me.

"You see ugly. I see bravery. I see hands that reached out through fire. I see a trophy to carry. These show how you love." I take one hand back and kiss the tops of her fingers. "I see someone who would burn for those she loves."

"And I see a dickhead who let the love of his life escape! I see the person I could never replace! I see some noble fuckwit who has no idea how to go after what he wants and claim it! God, she loved you... I was always her fucking consolation prize. I fucking hate you!" Her voice still works remarkably well. Her shrill tone and venomous words draw her parents to the doorway and I acknowledge them with a nod.

She's gone in an instant. Just a wake of disturbed air left where she'd been standing.

"Girls got her mother's lungs alright." Eric laughs.

Elaine slaps his shoulder, "Pig. She'll be alright Jaxon. This is an almost daily occurrence. She carries so much anger still. She holds it down deep inside until it just erupts. She'll be down at the old windmill."

"If you're brave enough to follow her, take a beer or two." Eric tells me. "I wouldn't. I'd take a jigger and the four ten."

"I might just take a beer and sit a while on the veranda. Things that run usually don't want chasing."

"Smart lad." Eric hands me two beers and I wander out to sit on their long veranda. He follows me and takes up position a few feet away in the cool night air.

"Here. Mossies are brutal." He hands me some Bushman mosquito cream and I sparingly smear a few lines on me. "I think you're some kinda last link for her, boy. That's the only way I can understand it. I know Sammy told her to get them things to ya, but I don't know why she still..."

"A bit the same from my end too, Eric. When she talks to me of Sammy's life, she's back beside us for a while."

"Well, don't mind me, but I think she's kinda... Got a... Need... to hold on to you. You settle her somehow too, boy. Just don't play with her heart. She's broken. And her face. She hates how she looks. It would be easy for a bad person to take advantage of that."

"Hmm. I guess." I drink my beer. I don't know what else to do. I think I'm getting some kind of fatherly talk, but I hadn't even considered romantic feelings. I just have this connection. She holds memories of someone I loved and they feed me. Fill a void. Stop a leak in my soul. And there it is. "Loved." I started using past tense for her in my mind.

What am I really doing here? Sammy is gone. This is her lover's parent's home. The girl she loved and lived with is working through her grief somewhere near the old windmill that I can see from where I sit. What are my motivations?

Because if I'm just here to milk Lara for connection to a ghost then I'm a hurtful human. And there it is. I like her.

I see her. The things that Sammy doubtless saw in her. The wit. The drive. The fire of her. I see her.

"Eric. It might be dumb, but I reckon she might like a little of that bug cream."

He hands me the tube of insect repellent and I wander off down the stairs and onto the track that leads toward the windmill. I have no idea where I am going, so I'm grateful when I hear her deep voice say, "Over here black hands. Oh shit... That... haha. Black hands are grease guys. Maintenance people who get their hands dirty. Not, you know. Aboriginal people. I was trying to make a mechanic joke."