When the Night Comes (11 page)

When I got back from the shop my brother was on the couch. He was in his pajamas and the duvet from his bed was over his legs. Molly, our cat, was sitting on him, but when I came close she jumped off and ran away. Molly didn't like me very much.

I told my brother that I got him some sweets and I held out the bag. I must have been twisting it over and over on the way home because the paper at the top was all grimy and creased and torn. My brother took the bag in his hand. He held it for a while and then he put it down next to him on the couch. I told him there were no licorice things.

“Thanks,” he said.

The next day at school, my teacher, Mr. Peters, said that we didn't have to do the usual timetable and that we could work on anything we wanted. He asked if we would like him to read to us, and we all said yes. It was the best part of the day when Mr. Peters read. He was reading a book that
he had written and it was about some kids who had found a portal through time. I don't remember what it was called or the names of the characters now, but I remember that I was captivated by it then.

I listened to the story—to the words spoken in Mr. Peters's soft, low, rolling voice. I looked out of the window and I watched the sky, watched the clouds moving. I saw my brother's class walk out across the lawn, all of them. The whole class. Most of them were holding hands.

Their teacher was Mrs. Davison and she was tall and had long blond hair and she was very beautiful, I thought. I knew that my brother really loved her. I think all of her students loved her. She looked like a shepherd among her flock. She was like a shepherd—the children gathered around her, gathered close, under one of the old chestnut trees where kids played conkers at recess. And they all sat down. Mrs. Davison had papers in her hands.

Mr. Peters stopped reading. He put the book away but I kept looking out of the window. Even when other kids were busy working on projects, I just sat and looked out of the window. And my brother's class stayed out there under that old chestnut tree all day. They had lunch together, and in the late afternoon they walked back to their classroom with Mrs. Davison leading the way.

They were all still holding hands.

T
he priest called him Tomas, but my brother called him Tom. He was Tom, and they shared a language that was silent to everyone else but them. I would hear them laughing from my room. Little giggles, little stories about things I would never know.

The coffin was small and white and people stood up one by one and laid flowers on top. There were so many flowers that some fell to the floor and were left behind when the coffin was carried out of the church.

My brother sat still and Mum cried and I could feel the cold from the stones below my feet move up my legs. My body was going to sleep—becoming stone like the floor, like the walls. The darkness was getting in.

After the ceremony, my brother stood with some other boys from his class and Tom's mother talked to them. I couldn't hear the words, but her eyes were soft. They seemed to be filled with peace—some kind of love. She touched my brother's curly hair with her hand and smiled. Then she bent down and grabbed him up tightly in her arms. She held him close, my brother's body limp and stiff. Her mouth was moving like she was singing in my brother's ear. Like she was praying. It seemed to go on for a long time. And my brother's body softened, his arms reached up and wrapped around her. He hugged her back.

When she let my brother go, her face was puffy, her eyes half-closed.
She stood up tall and touched my brother's hair one more time, then she turned and walked away.

Mum put us in the car and told us she wouldn't be long. We were in our school uniforms and were meant to go back to school for the afternoon, but I hoped we didn't have to go. It was getting late and it didn't seem right that my brother should have to go to school today.

Well-dressed people in suits and in dresses and hats walked to their cars. I saw the principal of our new school go past. She had a beehive hairdo. She always wore it up like that—in a beehive, like my grandmother did.

“I just feel bad for her,” my brother said.

“Who?” I asked, but he didn't answer. He sat there looking down. The bells of the church rang out in a chord—a simple harmony, over and over.

“I hope we don't have to go back to school,” I said.

My brother shrugged. I saw Mum come out of the church. She wiped her nose on a white tissue then stuffed it back up the sleeve of her cardigan. She always had a tissue up her sleeve in case she needed one.

“I just feel bad for her,” my brother said again, and he looked right at me—right in my eyes. “We're not dead but Tom is and she won't ever see him again.”

The bells of the church kept on ringing.

A
week after the funeral it snowed. I could smell it before I even opened my eyes. Snow, thick and solid in the window box. So much of it that it covered half my bedroom window.

It was really there.

It had begun to fall softly in the darkness the night before, just as bedtime loomed, and Mum told us that it wouldn't last.

“It will melt away and be gone by morning,” she said. “It's nearly summer!”

And it was nearly summer. It was November. A school night.

We stood together on the back deck and felt the snow melt on our skin and dampen our hair. It was so silent. A blanket of silence.

I lay in my bed in the dark and listened. Listened to see if I could hear it falling out there in the night, covering over our car and filling all the stone gutters, dusting the red roses powdery white. I fell asleep trying to listen—willing the snow to fall harder so it would cover up all of the grayness of this place. Until it made these old streets white and clean and new.

School was canceled.

We played out in the street all day with kids we didn't know, kids we had never even met, and West Hobart had never looked so good. So bright.

A man skied down Hill Street. I watched him disappear and I hoped he knew how to stop. There were no cars, no buses. Nothing but kids screaming and running and skidding over, throwing snowballs and hoping that the snow would stay for weeks and weeks.

By that night it was just slush, muddied up and used. And in the morning there were only little pockets of frosted snow left in the deep round gutters, wherever the sun didn't shine.

The magic was gone.

We drove to school the next day wearing our gray uniforms that offered no warmth and my brother was quiet again. Quiet and lost somewhere trying not to think about things.

I could not help him.

MS
Nella Dan

VOYAGE 2, 1986/1987 SEASON

10th November 1986

POSITION:
63° 52.000' S, 119° 55.000' E

CAPTAIN'S NOTE:
Vessel moving through leads in pack ice. Occasional small icebergs. Strong winds expected by 14:00.

We feel
Nella
butt up against the ice, that first big jolt, and Soren calls out, “Mooooose! Mooooose!”

Erik answers the call. He runs at Soren, leaps in the air, and their chests smack together in the usual ritual.
Thud
.
Thud
. “Mooooose!”

I'm scrubbing pans, the lunch shift over. Our one hour a day off.
Nella
lifts up, slides over the ice with a squeal. The pressure of the ship on the ice forms waves underneath and they roll and buck and lash out. We pitch like we are on open water, then steady up—move ahead. Steady. Five knots, slow and steady.

“Time for coffee,” Soren says, and I say, “Okay,” dry my hands, last pan done. I get out our special thermos—chipped and marked and dented on the bottom from being dropped so many times. I open the lid.

Soren tells me that we better get that side of beef out of the freezer before we forget and I nod. I look at him. Both our arms come up at the same time.
One, two, three—
rock, paper, scissors.

Soren always chooses rock first. Every time. I don't know why, but it
makes it easy to beat him. I go paper. He stands there looking at my open hand. Paper.