So Much to Learn (38 page)

"Look, do you
know what happened on the day of the crash?"

This made me
rock back and look up at him in surprise because the events of that
day had always been very murky to me and I attributed some of the
murkiness to deliberate blocking of information by Matt.

I remembered clearly what
I
had been doing that day. It had been term holidays
and Simone and I had gone to the creek reserve which stretched down
the entire length of Bridunna. It had been an unusually warm day
for the season and we had stretched out along the bank with some
friends and gossiped to our little 12 year olds hearts’ content. We
had been there a couple of hours when suddenly a police car and the
community ambulance and fire engine had raced past, sirens blaring.
Simone and I had looked at each other in alarm, knowing that in the
direction the cavalcade was heading there were only three
properties- my family’s, the Smith's, and the Whitby's. We had
scrambled up the bank and started pelting down the road after the
emergency vehicles and I remember thinking over and over again
'Please don't let it be mine, please don't let it be mine, please
don't let it be mine…' Clearly I hadn't been able to form a
coherent sentence, even in my brain, but I knew what I had
meant.

Simone and I
had run about half a kilometre when I had seen my dad's Ute driving
up the road towards us. I had almost cried at seeing him so
obviously unhurt but when he'd jumped out and pulled Simone and me
into a big hug I had felt like throwing up as I knew that something
had to be very wrong. My dad had bundled us into the truck and
driven us home, refusing to answer any of our questions and taking
the back way which told me that whatever had happened had taken
place on the main road linking the properties to the rest of the
town.

At home, Mum
was on the telephone, tears dripping down her face and this had
scared me more than anything as you don't get much tougher than my
mum. Simone and I had huddled together on the couch as my parents
bustled about making more calls and talking in hushed voices, but
eventually, I hadn't been able to take any more and I had shouted
at them to tell me what was going on. It was then that my parents
had sat down and told us that there had been an accident and that
Jack's mum and brother had been killed. Lizzie was in a critical
condition but still alive and had been airlifted to the city.

Mr Whitby had
gone in the aero-ambulance with his daughter, but Jack, who had
been the first to discover the accident, had gone with Matt to the
police station to wait there. That was where the majority of phone
calls were coming from.

After that Mum,
Dad, Simone and I had sat silently on the couch waiting.
Occasionally Mum made a cup of tea, but she didn't drink it and, by
late afternoon when news finally came through, there was a line up
of mugs with tea in various stages of tepid sitting on the table in
front of us.

The news wasn't
good. Lizzie hadn't made it and, on receiving this news, Matt and
Jack had run off and no-one knew where they had disappeared to.
This was extremely worrying as, in our small community, everybody
always knew everybody else's business and for two of the town's
golden boys to be missing without any clues to their whereabouts
was extraordinary.

As dusk had
fallen Simone had gone home and so only Mum, Dad and I were there
when, at about 7:30 Matt and Jack had staggered into the house
looking like they had been fighting. Both of them were covered in
dust and smears of blood and their clothes were torn.

Remembering
this I looked up at Matt with a furrowed brow.

"You went
missing," I said slowly, "and when you came back you looked like
you'd been fighting."

Matt nodded,
his sandy hair falling down and casting his face in shadow. "Yeah,
it was the only way I could get him to come home with me. But what
I meant was did you know what happened that day before the
accident?"

I shook my head
hauling myself up onto the fence beside my brother, hoping that the
thick denim of my jeans would prevent me getting any splinters in
uncomfortable places.

"There was a
big delivery of hay for the horses that day and Jack and I were
hauling bales from the truck into the shed," Matt said, his face
turned from me as he toyed with a twig. "We hadn't been at it for
very long when we heard Jack's parents screaming at each other." He
grimaced. "Not exactly unusual considering the two of them, but
Lizzie and Paul were firing gumnuts with Alex at a target they'd
set up down the driveway and we didn't want them to hear so-" Matt
threw the twig aside and stared unseeingly at the Whitby house, a
pained smile twisting the corners of his mouth, "- we started
singing random songs at the top of our lungs. Probably traumatised
the poor kids more than hearing their parents…"

He trailed off
and I felt a little lump rise in my throat at the image of a 14
year old Jack pushing aside his own pain and trying to save his
brother and sister from it. Matt seemed to understand what I was
feeling as he nodded again.

"Yeah, it was
pretty much like that. Anyway, about half an hour later we were
just taking a break and Mrs Whitby stormed out of the house with a
suitcase. She was screaming like a nutter and we could tell that
she was drunk again. Mr Whitby came out onto the veranda and
shouted some pretty bad things at her, I remember he spat at her
and I got so angry at him." Matt's smile turned almost rueful. "I
thought then that the day couldn't get much worse, talk about
jinxing it."

I stared at the
house, filled with hatred for the man who was inside probably at
this very moment cutting down Jack like he had cut down his
wife.

"The twins had
come running up as she'd come out of the house and we went over
too," Matt continued in a low, steady voice. "Mrs Whitby grabbed
Paul and Lizzie and shoved them into the car and then told Jack at
to get in as well. He said no, that she was drunk and shouldn't be
driving and she went nuts at him too, saying that he was just like
his father and that if he was going to be like that then she didn't
want him as a son anyway, stuff like that."

I sucked in an
astonished breath and stared at my brother unbelievingly. "She said
that?" I asked, amazed and then choked with anger as he nodded that
she had. "Why would anyone say that to their kid?"

"She was pretty
out of it," Matt said before holding up his hands as if in
surrender when I rounded on him angrily. "I'm not saying what she
did wasn't completely off, but by then I reckon she was so angry
and drunk she would have lashed out at anybody, Jack just happened
to be there."

I shifted
slightly on the fence fully aware of how easy it was to unload on
Jack, having done so myself, although never as badly as that. I saw
that Matt was gearing himself up to continue and I thought
fleetingly that this conversation was probably the most I'd ever
heard him say on any subject other than footy.

"Anyway, while
Jack was distracting his mum I was trying to get the twins to get
out of the car. I don't know what was wrong with them, they were
too scared or stunned or something but they wouldn't budge so I had
to reach into the backseat and try to get them out myself. I'd just
managed to unbuckle Paul when Jack's mum saw what I was doing and
went feral at me too. Before I could get either of the kids out Mrs
Whitby drove off, Paul was basically hanging out the door and Jack
and I were shouting at him to jump but he wouldn't leave
Lizzie."

He stopped and
I realised that he hadn't chosen to fall silent but rather he was
too choked up too continue. I sat stunned for a moment processing
what he had told me and reeling at my own inadequacies in
comforting my brother. There seemed to be nothing to say although I
tried desperately to formulate something appropriate. In the end
just blurted out, "Oh Matt!"

"Don't 'Oh
Matt' me," he said gruffly, as always acting as if he was allergic
to emotion, "I didn't tell you about all this before precisely
because I didn't want you to get stupid about it. It's not like I
sit around every day thinking about what happened, it's just every
once in a while that I stop and think how different things could
have been if I'd just managed to get the twins out." Pulling the
hair out of his face he shrugged grimly at me, "Oldest cliché in
the book, right? 'If only' and all that."

"Clichés are
clichés for reasons I suppose," I answered, wondering how I'd
managed to live with the two guys for years and not pick up that
there was more to the story than the accident. It was like every
time I felt that I was getting to know what Jack was all about I
discovered that there was something else which kept him separate
from me, something that I just could never understand. I was
beginning to realise as well that maybe he had been right all along
in shielding me from his grief, maybe I wasn't prepared to face
it.

It wasn't the
best time to have an epiphany so I shoved my thoughts aside to
concentrate once more on Matt who had managed to push past the lump
in his throat and keep talking.

"So she drove
off, nearly skittling Alex who was still on the driveway, and I was
shouting at Jack that we had to tell his dad that she’d taken the
twins, but he ignored me and set off down the driveway after
them."

"On foot?" I
asked in astonishment.

"On foot," he
confirmed. "He wasn't thinking straight," he added as if I hadn't
gathered that from what he'd told me. "So I went inside and told
his dad and the next thing I know we're barrelling down the road in
his Ute and he's swearing non-stop under his breath. Seriously, I
was a 14 year old boy and he said things that day that I'd never
heard before, pretty out there stuff."

"We could've
only gone, what, a couple of hundred metres or so, when we saw huge
gouges in the gravel on Devil's elbow and I knew immediately that
the car had skidded off the road and down into the creek. I mean,
Devil's elbow is bad enough to drive sober, but drunk?" Matt shook
his head at the thought then sighed. "Jack was already there, down
in the creek bed pulling at one of the backdoors. After that it's
kind of muddled, I remember that there was no water in the creek
but that the mud was like quicksand, that we were all shouting at
each other and that I called an ambulance but that's it."

He stopped
again and I became aware of a wetness on my cheeks. It was a shock
to me to realise that I was crying as I had suffered none of the
usual side-effects such as a swollen face or chest tearing sobs
that I usually got. Maybe it was like when you hurt yourself really
badly but really quickly and, instead of crying, your eyes simply
fill with tears at the shock of it all. I was sure that, same as
when you do hurt yourself, the proper crying would come later.

Thinking about
where we were in the day's events I supplied, "And then you were
taken to wait at the police station." I knew at least this part of
the story.

"Yeah," Matt
agreed, "we were there until we found out Lizzie hadn't made it and
Jack bolted."

I wiped at my
face, knowing but not caring that I was smearing dirt from the
fence across my cheeks. "What did you do?"

Matt shrugged
once more. "Chased him, caught him, fought him, what else was I
supposed to do?"

We fell silent
then and simply stared at the house waiting for Jack to come out
again, after all, there didn't seem to be a hell of a lot left to
say.

In the end we
didn't have to wait too long. It was only a few minutes after Matt
had stopped talking that the door that led onto the veranda banged
loudly and Jack stormed across the yard and took off across one of
the paddocks.

I jumped off
the fence, brushed myself down and went to follow him but Matt
called me back sharply.

"Where do you
think you're going?" He said, not having moved a centimetre as Jack
had emerged.

"We've got to
go and see if he's alright!" I exclaimed, gesturing towards Jack's
rapidly diminishing figure.

"Not yet we
don't," Matt said firmly and, when I looked at him mutinously he
shook his head firmly, "I've been doing this for longer than you,
trust me, we wait."

I sighed but
came back to the fence and leant against it, bowing to his superior
knowledge on the touchy subject of the 20th of September.

We waited what
I think must have been about 15 minutes before Matt landed beside
me on the ground and jerked his head to indicate that we should
follow Jack. He was, of course, nowhere to be seen by this time but
Matt seemed to know exactly where we were going and marched off
confidently, with me trotting in his wake.

We cut through
three paddocks and then jumped a final fence to emerge out on the
road directly opposite Devil's elbow. I suppose, in hindsight, I
should have realised where we were headed but I hadn't really been
thinking and our destination surprised me momentarily.

I didn't see
Jack at first as my eyes were immediately drawn to the reinforced
safety barrier which had been erected after the accident to try and
prevent anyone else crashing down into the creek below. It was
usually a dull, grey colour but today it was festooned with what
must have been hundreds of flowers and cards placed there
presumably by the town members. I saw Matt's mouth curl in disgust
at this display and then he said quietly, "This town loves a
tragedy," before vaulting over the safety barrier and making his
way down the creek bank to where, I finally saw, Jack was sitting
on a fallen tree trunk. I slid down after my brother and then stood
for a moment looking at the pair of them.

Matt had put a
strong hand on Jack's shoulder and Jack had reached up and gripped
it tightly, his knuckles turning white in stark relief against his
tanned skin. My gaze travelled higher and I saw then why we had
waited back at the property. Jack, my strong, brave Jack, had
obviously been crying, his eyes were red and watery, and I knew
that there was no way he would have wanted either of us to be there
to see it.