Crossing the Rubicon

Damon Pascoe had always been a confident, thoughtful child, and now that he was 15 he was happy in ‘the now’. He could see the path ahead would probably be enjoyable as he morphed into adulthood, but he felt no urge to rush there. Reflecting, he acknowledged his near-past with satisfaction.  He loved school because of the academic challenges. He had an affinity with subjects which related to the real world.  Physics with its founding core of ‘for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction’ was his absolute favourite, but Calculus and Algebra were also enjoyed because they too involved solving puzzles. Cracking any maths-based homework was done with relish.  His inquisitive nature leant itself to liking history, learning about the past, whilst Geography brought dreams of the future. To him school was the font of all knowledge, and a place to be treasured.

Socially accomplished, Damon also enjoyed the collegiality and fun of team sports, being very good at rugby and cricket.  Not quite good enough to be touted for the local academies, he recognised that even with hard work and total dedication, he was unlikely to be a professional sportsman.  “Better than a journeyman!” he liked to think of himself, always being one of the first picked, and with many MVP awards on the high shelf at home.  The grown-up state didn’t seem to promise as much fun, even when factoring in the so-called adult pleasures of the opposite sex and easy access to booze.  He doubted that any vocation would enable the quantum of pleasurable activities he currently enjoyed both within and outside of school hours.

It was probably the effects of three stubbies of beer that gave cause to the results of March 7^th  2014. Not that Damon was drunk, but it was asserted later that the alcohol influenced the decision to make ‘one-more-pass’.  Damon and his mates Alan and Joe had resurrected an old 1970s Suzuki RM 250 moto-cross race bike, which they had down on Whitakers Beach, playing as teenage boys do, on that autumn afternoon of infamy. The sun was going down on a perfect day … the beach was deserted, the bike running well, a small crew had a BBQ fired up and a few bottles were being uncapped.

Damon had always found ‘wheelies’ easy to do, even before he had access to a motorised two-wheeler. “Its just physics!” he would tell the others, “Bounce the front, then give her a fistful of throttle.  That’ll bring her up on the back wheel, then just control it on the point of balance, with the throttle and foot brake.  If she starts to drop … more throttle.  If she starts to go over the back … a touch of brake!  It is Newton’s Third!  The forwards’ rotational forces of the drive chain on the rear sprocket cause the chassis to try and rotate backwards and upwards.  All we do is keep the forces balanced!”

Damon was the only one of his crew that could competently hold a wheelie and cross the beach fully from the East Carpark to the lagoon, at speeds up to 95 – 100 kph. Running parallel to the sea’s edge and the overlooking dunes, it was seemingly harmless, albeit noisy fun. Damon’s rationale for still doing strops along the beach as the sun set and the sausages sizzled, was that he’d paid for the 10 litre container of high-octane fuel and he felt doing a few last runs was only fair.  The excitement was also adrenaline-fuelled and semi-addictive.  Up on the back wheel Damon was king.  ‘Damon the Demon’ was the catch-cry from the crew.  Of course on a competition bike with no lights and the front wheel pawing at the night sky, there was no clear frontwards vision. There was just youthful bravery and the nerve of a young conquistador.

It was almost fully dark when from the Golf Club entry through the sand dunes came three towel-clad girls.  Sarah Mason, Briony Fisher and Grace Phillips could see the glow of the fire on the beach where the boys were, 200 m away … but they wouldn’t be joining them.  All three were 17 and about to go off to university in different cities.  They’d been known as the Queen Bees at Doble High.  Grace was Dux, Sarah Top Girl, and Briony won the ‘Most Likely to Succeed’ award, also known as the personality prize. Grace and Sarah jokingly razzed Briony about being the girl ‘most likely to score big!’  Tonight was their culmination of thirteen years of schooling. They had vowed that on their last night together they would skinny dip at Whitakers Beach.  

“Rule Number One … No squealing!”

After a mutual fist bump, all three girls dropped their towels.  Grace couldn’t remember ever being naked outside before. A frisson of excitement swept over her. This moment of derring-do brought on a gust of empowerment and she started to run across the 50 m of hard-packed sand.  Not caring what bounced or jiggled, this was a transitional peak between adolescence and womanhood.  She was ready, and ran like the wind, her focus on the inky black sea.

Why Damon did that one last run, no one seemed to recall.  It was clearly too dark to see what he was doing … he was just riding from memory.  His only recollection later was a sudden jolt and shortly after, total darkness. It seemed that at the last second Grace had ducked to avoid the gargantuan, mosquito-sounding ‘monster’ that was suddenly upon her.  Her skull impacted directly on the crankcase of the flying RM, immediately causing an imbalance to the near-vertical speeding bike.  Newton (and Damon) could have pontificated at large about the reactions resulting from this intersection of the two forces. With the front wheel knocked askew, the forward motion of the bike and rider was no longer linear, causing a cartwheel across the beach with Damon still holding on to the handlebars. The flinging action of the cartwheel caused the expected injuries upon impact.  Damon’s scapular fractured, as did his humerus. Not wearing a helmet probably contributed to the severe concussion caused by his head being hit by the steering head triple clamp and then the landing mass of the bike broke his pelvis. Two fractured ribs seemed to be just peripheral collateral damage to round out the package. Damon knew none of this. He awoke in hospital, heavily sedated.

Grace’s injuries were simple.  The 100 kph impact of the crankcase to her skull caused a massive injury, which was probably not survivable, but the whiplash action caused her neck to snap and she was deceased by the time her traumatised friends got to her.

The resulting fallout was predictable, with the community rightly outraged.  Their latest, brightest shining star had needlessly been taken from them, by a drunken delinquent non-entity.  There was much baying for blood.  The Phillips clan were generations-old locals, well-respected and admired. They were part of every facet of the town’s being. Damon and his mum Maisy were seen as ‘blow-ins’, arriving in the area only three years previously.  Maisy was meek, mousey and a bit fragile.  She supported everything Damon was involved in, but always was a just worker-bee, never putting her head above the ramparts, never offering an opinion or a suggestion.  Their back story was never told nor sought.

Damon awoke in the regional hospital to find his nightmare was real and all encompassing. A policeman was stationed at the foot of his bed and with little ado tersely charged him with culpable manslaughter. He remained on station after doing so. “For your safety, son” he remarked without a hint of warmth in his voice. The medical staff were similarly frosty in their interactions.  They indicated that his recovery would be slow but full functionality would eventuate. Damon sensed that they wished it was not so.  Maisy spent most of her non-working hours at his bedside but was seldom dry-eyed.  Her frailty of spirit was being challenged out in the community.  She’d been spat at, sworn at, and told to “F…off out of the area.”  She’d been called a “Murdering bitch” and their house was vandalised.  She was targeted because people couldn’t get at Damon whilst he was in hospital.  Her car had all four tyres slashed. A flaming paper bag of dog shit was left on the step and the doorbell rang.  Damon had been her emotional crutch for the five years since the passing of her husband Bill. Now she had no one, and the weight of getting through each day seemed almost to crush her.  The collective vitriol aimed at her and her spawn was overwhelming. Damon’s guilty plea did nothing to assuage the anger. Blood-letting was needed. The community-at-large wanted the punishment to match the crime.

Maisie had no gripe with the town’s beatification of Grace Phillips and she had no defence to offer with regards to her own boy’s actions.  She did feel as a mother that she had to put it right … but this was something she couldn’t put right. Succour was not possible, nor was it sought by Damon.  He sank into a slough of despond, becoming almost non-verbal, his only utterances being one-word answers to questions. Even Dick Evans, his favourite teacher and house master could evoke little response.  There was no option of going back to school when his body mended. Feelings ran too high for that. Justice had to be done and seen to be done.  During the eight weeks of hospital rehabilitation, special hearings were arranged, and Damon was duly sentenced to three years residential care, at what his mother called ‘a borstal’ in Rolleston near Christchurch.

Damon never went home, he was spirited away to a purgatorial life of near-hell.  The schooling was not at a level that would even be considered adequate, not that Damon cared any more.  His feeling of guilt never lessened, and nights were uniformly sleepless and nightmare-filled.  During the first year Maisie managed a visit each month, but Damon sensed a portent of sorrow a few months into year two.  Maisie’s wafer-thin veneer of cheerfulness was clearly waning and it didn’t really surprise Damon when he was called into the office of the pastoral care worker, and handed a letter from her, with the sad news that she had taken her own life the night before.  The message just said ‘Sorry my love, I just can’t do it anymore.’

Damon felt he deserved this added grief and was only sorry that he lacked the resolve and means to follow her.  The winding-up of Maisie’s estate was done with Damon ‘in absentia’, and the resulting news that $12,334.77 had been deposited into an escrow account for him, barely registered in his consciousness.

Five months later, ironically with time off for good behaviour, on a drizzly Wednesday morning, Damon was released with one carry-bag and a free ride into Christchurch. With only a vague idea of what to do next, he walked around the downtown, just happy to be able to do so. Passing the office of the Department of Internal Affairs, gave him pause to think. He was nearly 18 yet had no adult ‘trappings’.  He had no driver’s licence, he had no passport, not even a real bank account of his own. “I don’t want my old identity though!” he mused. “I’ll take mum’s surname and my middle name!” he continued, opening the door and walking in to this alien adults’ world.  Barely an hour on, he was walking out with a copy of his birth certificate and the new knowledge that his mother had not actually married his father, and that his birth certificate was not in the name of Pascoe but Beamish.  Damon Arthur Beamish.  Hence forth he would be Arthur Beamish, and legitimately so.

A travel agency next to the DIA, with some difficulty, and after a long call to Maisie’s lawyer, issued a ticket for travel to the Chatham Islands on the following Tuesday.  Arthur used his waiting time efficiently.  He bought some clothes from a Salvation Army shop, a tablet computer, a cell phone and set up a personal bank account with the ANZ … because research showed that there was a branch in Waitangi.  By night he slept in a hostel for the needy and by day he walked and walked, and sat and fed the birds in the Botanical Gardens.

Waitangi was as Arthur pictured from an assignment done in Year 11.  He also had vague memories from his father’s tales of the ‘glory days’ when he had been a cray fisherman out there.

Stepping hesitantly into the offices of ‘Southern Ocean Crustaceans’, Arthur asked the matronly woman pecking away at a keyboard, for the Employment Manager.

“We don’t have one as such and there are no jobs, in case you are asking!”

“My name is Arthur Beamish, and I have a job offer for you. My dad used to work here years ago and I want to too.  I will offer myself as an intern for two months … and after that, if there’s a job, I’ll stay … and if there’s not, then I’ll move on.  You don’t pay me.  I pay to learn, by working for free.  It is a win/win.”

This was the most Arthur had spoken at any time in the last three years. Jane Burrowes just happened to be married to the skipper of one of the trawlers and she was quite taken by the approach of the serious young man standing before her.

“What is your dad’s name, and when did he work here?”

“He’s dead now, and I don’t use his name anyway.  It was ages ago, and I’d rather not talk about it!”

“Where are you staying?”  Jane sensed that Arthur was probably running from something but somehow she liked his aura, she told her husband Wyn later that night.

“I’ll get board once I have got the job.”

And so it was that Arthur became a deckhand on the Tangaroa and a boarder with the Burrowes family, living in a small sleep-out.  With his ability to understand cause-and-effect’ and all of Newton’s laws, there was no opting out after two months. Wyn felt that Arthur should have been an engineer, as clearly his understanding and aptitude suited that discipline.  Whilst Arthur was easy to instruct and talk to … he never said much and never smiled or laughed.  Occasionally, on still nights that the Chathams only rarely throw up, Jane heard the nightmares that still visited Arthur.

For Arthur, even when the months passed into years, the night sweats and terrifying visions never seemed to lessen. In some ways they got worse, because he knew that he hadn’t actually seen Grace Phillips that night, yet often in some dreams he would see her vividly naked before him, laughing as she set off on her run to the sea.

As soon as Arthur had signed on with SOC, as everyone called the fishing operation, he’d sent an anonymous donation to Phillips Accountancy, which he knew to be run by Grace’s uncle.  This was for $5,000 and every subsequent month he would forward most of his earnings.  He needed no more than he needed, was his rationale, and he knew he’d never be at ease with comfort or pleasure.  He’d been responsible for the deaths of two lovely souls and salvation shouldn’t be easy.

Within five years Arthur was running the small fleet of trawlers that SOC based in Waitangi.  He still ran on nervous energy, never replacing the daytime expenditure with nocturnal somnolence. There was no levity in his life and he still dreaded every night and the deserved remembrances.  It was now eight years since that March 7^th and time for Wyn and Jane to retire to the mainland.

“Look son, we’re selling up but we’ve bought a quota in North West Australia and we’d like you to take Tangaroa up there for a couple of seasons doing pearls.  We’ll come over every winter and tally up.  There’s a dive team of Filipinos due to start on August 1^st.  Are you up for it?”

Arthur now looked upon the Burrowes as his family and would never say no to them knowing that they instinctively understood his need for privacy and solitude.

The years in Port Hedland and Broome were good ones, the work was hard but rewarding financially.  The Filipinos were excellent workers, respectful and eager to toil. They called him El triste – ˆ the Silent One’, but never judged.  There were a couple of women in his life during this period, but the night-sweats, tremors and bad dreams were not conducive to a relationship.

Arthur got through the decade anniversary with no more than the usual trauma.  He’d reaped what he had sewn, so expected no more in life.

“Damon!  It is you, isn’t it?” a voice called to him as he was about to enter Matso’s Bar in Broome. A doppelganger from his dreams stood before him.  Young, blonde and clearly a Phillips.

“We’ve been looking for you!  Mum wants you home, to walk with her in peace.  She’s not well and says that it is time.”  There wasn’t an ounce of  friendliness in the voice or across the visage of the interlocutor. “I’ve hated you all this time with the whole fabric of my being!”

“So have I” whispered Arthur.

“I’m Nina … and we don’t have much time.”  She offered her hand and Arthur tentatively touched the out-stretched offering of peace, not fully grasping it, but not rejecting it either.

“I don’t think I can.”

“Don’t worry … your blood money is paying for it.  Mum has kept every penny for this moment.  Meet me here tomorrow at Midday with your bags and passport.  The plane leaves at One.”

Next morning Arthur woke with a start, initially unaware of where he was, nor what had happened.  Unbelievably, he had slept through the night.  His bedding was not saturated like it normally was.  His last memory was putting down his book and turning off the light.  Seemingly, there’d been no dreams, no shakes or shivers.  He’d slept the sleep of the innocent.

At Midday Arthur and Nina faced each other in the cool interior of Matsos.  Arthur reached out his hand and Nina noted that this time his grip fully engaged, their palms covering each other.  Tears ran down her cheek and she stepped forward.

“Mum said that you’d probably need a hug … and it had to be a proper one, with our hearts touching … to share the healing, and to begin the journey back to life!”

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