1
Adam was suddenly awakened by a loud, metallic noise that sounded like train cars coupling together. His eyes opened wide. He was in his bed lying flat on his back. He observed his room sliding out of itself. It was as if there were two identical rooms, one perfectly superimposed over the other, and one room slid away from the other and the walls became transparent. Next, the room he was in began to accelerate. He could see everything outside the room flashing by, faster and faster. Everything became a total blur.
After accelerating to what seemed like infinite speed, it all came to a stop.
Later, after he woke up, he could remember sitting around a large, beautifully-carved, round, wooden table. He could remember Liberty and Ben sitting either side of him, and there was Scott sitting adjacent, to his right, with two tall, blond girls, who looked like twins, sitting either side of him. To the left of Libby sat Zeke, happy and smiling and giving him a thumbs-up signal. Opposite him sat an older couple. He remembered the table being in a large, semicircular room, one side of which was solid glass. He remembered the room being full of flowering plants and palms and a variety of intricate geometric sculptures. Outside the huge, glass wall there was a large, semicircular veranda, which was made of stone with a heavily-carved, low, stone balustrade running around the semicircular perimeter. The veranda seemed to form the opposite half of a big circle with the semicircular room. He could remember lots of colourful flowering vines decorating the veranda. He remembered the house being perched high up on the edge of a soaring precipice. In the distance below, he remembered seeing a deep, wide valley with a serpentine river meandering through the middle of it.
And above all this, high in the sky, he remembered seeing two suns, close to each other, with one sun being slightly smaller than the other.
It felt to him like he spent a fair bit of time there and that he participated in a long, joyful conversation with them, but he couldn’t for the life of him remember what they talked about. He felt a new calmness, though, a new confidence. He somehow felt reassured, but he didn’t know about what. He somehow sensed that his life was going to become much more normal very soon and that everything was going to be all right. He
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felt all these things as he rose out of his bed, sucked in a deep lungful of clean, Stanwell Park air and stepped down to his kitchen to make his morning cup of coffee.
2
The months following Zeke’s disappearance and Doyle’s death strangely felt like what he imagined a post-war peace might feel like. Everything was shattered causing the peace to scream out at him. It seemed to him like everything had built up to a crescendo and then exploded and disintegrated.
Zeke was never found. Adam never contacted anyone about the incident. He’d had enough. In the end he figured that Doyle was probably right about him being shot into outer space.
‘He’s probably still blasting through space at the speed of light squared,’ he thought to himself. He imagined Zeke still sitting in his contraption all bloated in the vacuum of deepest space with his face frozen solid in a bloodcurdling scream.
As more time passed and the bizarre events concerning Doyle and Zeke diluted into distant history, Adam’s life gradually returned to a semblance of normality. At the core of it was his work, which he continued to find exciting and stimulating due to the constant rapid evolution of dental technology. He also derived a great deal of pleasure from seeing his flock of ‘victims’ enjoy perfect dental health. After a while, he cut his hours to working only three and a half days a week. Even though he enjoyed his work, he nonetheless found it taxing. He found a better balance by splitting his week exactly in half. This gave him time to develop new interests, like landscaping around his house and art. He also began to ride a bicycle to work and he learnt how to skate.
3
About two weeks after Doyle was shot, Adam went into his workshop to get a screwdriver. He opened the door and froze in utter astonishment. There, lying on the workbench next to the two-stroke motor of Ben’s jetpack was the prop guard. He couldn’t believe it. How did it get there? The last time he saw it was at Zeke’s place on the night of his disappearance. He picked it up and held it in front of himself, feeling for the lift. It was still there. It was still pushing just like before. It was still a gravity sail. He shook his head with disbelief that he still had the guard. That was it. He decided there and then that he would bolt the guard to the rest of the machine and go skating with it. He also decided to keep the gravitational nature of the guard a total secret from the whole world. He thought to himself as he admired Ben’s beautiful construction, ‘They would come at me like savage
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dogs, like a pack of starving hyenas. They would tear me apart for this wondrous thing.
Nobody is going to have the faintest, not while I’m alive.’
Over the next couple of days, he bolted the guard to the rest of the machine, filled the tank with fuel and tested it. It was beautiful. The small motor had a capacity of 35ccs and it spun the 18/10 pusher-prop at 6100 rpm at full throttle.
Adam bought himself a set of five-wheel skates and began skating every chance he could. When he felt that he had become reasonably proficient, he began to skate with the jetpack. With the machine strapped on his back he could effortlessly cruise around at 50kph. He learnt how to tune his skates so they remained rock stable at any speed and he learnt how to brake from high speed with either foot. Towards the end he even became comfortable ten-wheel drifting through high-speed bends. On some tailwind runs he achieved maximum speeds of over 90kph.
Over time he became conscious of the fact that he was the fastest skater on Earth, especially on a point-to-point, cross-country skate. Racing cyclists were no match for his speed. He trounced them decisively.
An old feeling reawakened within him. It was the awareness of her, his own, unique universe. He felt her presence strongest when he skated in secret, alone, at Tempe velodrome in Sydney. She gave him a feeling there, as he carved up the track, that she had shaped herself into that perfect concrete bowl, in that space, at that time, just for him, just to show him how much she loved him. She gave him a sensation that he was at some kind of trans-dimensional, cosmic crossroads, like a singularity, where all forces merged into harmony and events unfolded in total perfection like a blossoming lotus flower.
4
Nearly six months after Zeke’s disappearance, Adam became acutely aware of the approaching equinox. On the day of the equinox, Tuesday, September 22, 1992, he took a drive past Zeke’s place, which was still empty and showing signs of reverting back to natural bush. He drove on to Doyle’s old house. As he drove by, he saw colourful toys scattered in the front yard and young children playing. He stopped for a while and remembered how he once asked Doyle what life would be like without him around. Well, now he knew. A broad grin appeared on his face as he remembered Doyle’s quip.
It was a beautiful, spring day so he thought he would keep driving. He drove to Rose Bay and sat on the same, harbour-side, park bench he once sat on with Libby. He unbuttoned his shirt in the midday sun, spread his arms out on the backrest and fixed his
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gaze on the glittering harbour in front of him. As he sat there, daydreaming, he noticed the Watson’s Bay ferry round the headland into Rose Bay. He watched it elegantly glide into the bay and dock with the jetty a few hundred yards away over his left shoulder. He remembered Bob and Tommy and wondered if they were on that ferry. He watched it undock and glide out past him. He remembered the magic times watching the ferries with Nancy, from her deck. He smiled to himself when he thought about the way he met Bob.
He remembered the frantic taxi ride through The Cross and the breakfast he had with him at The Fountain Café. He remembered what a deep hole Bob had fallen into. He then remembered Bob’s offer of a ride, in the pilothouse, on any Saturday morning at 6.00am.
5
Adam stepped out of the car-parking station and looked at his watch. It was 5.30am.
He had half an hour to find Bob’s ferry. The morning was calm and chilly. He zipped up his jacket and pulled his cap tighter over his head. The dawn light was just beginning to stream through the misty gaps between the tall buildings. The streets were still bathed in the ghostly light of the streetlights. He stepped across the road into the steel and stone architecture of Circular Quay, already busy with machinelike activity. As a train passed overhead, the whole space filled with a surge of deafening, metallic noise. He walked along the ferry wharves, eventually finding the one to Watson’s Bay. He stepped up to the window and purchased a roundtrip ticket. As he walked out onto the wharf, he marvelled, once again, at the majesty of the Harbour Bridge and the elegance of the Opera House. He heard a voice call out to him,
‘Doc?’
He recognised it immediately as Tommy’s voice.
‘Hey, Doc!’
He looked in the direction of the voice and spotted Tommy on the foredeck of the small ferry that was docked at the wharf. He saw Tommy wave to him and then wave him on aboard. Adam walked up the gangplank and stepped onto the ferry. Within seconds, Tommy was there throwing his arms around him and warmly hugging him. Tommy held him back, with his hands on his shoulders, and eyed him up and down.
‘You’re a sight for sore eyes, Doc. I can’t believe that I’m actually lookin at ya. This’ll make Bob’s day; this’ll really make Bob’s day.’
‘Hey, Tommy, you look great, you look real great.’
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‘Bob’ll be showin up any minute. Mate, how good is it to see ya. There he is, that’s him over there.’
Tommy pointed at a man walking out of the wharf terminal. Adam turned around and spotted Bob walking towards them. He waved. When Bob recognised Adam, he broke into a jog. He ran up the gangplank and threw himself into Adam’s arms. He hugged him, patting his back, saying,
‘Finally, finally, I thought we’d never see you again. What took you so long?’
‘I know, Bob, I know, but you know how life can just take you over sometimes.’
‘Tell me about it, tell me all about it. Come on, let’s go up into the wheelhouse, I’ll make us some hot coffees.’ He turned to Tommy and asked him, ‘We all set, boy?’
‘All set, Cap.’
‘Good. Let’s go and make that coffee then.’
Tommy returned back to his tasks of preparing the ferry for undocking, while Bob shepherded Adam up the old, polished, teak steps into his wheelhouse.
Once inside, he showed Adam his seat and began to fiddle with the controls. He turned a key and Adam could hear the cough of the powerful diesel firing up. The engine quickly settled into a mellow, rumbling idle. Bob checked some gauges, looked at his watch, then picked up a large thermos flask from under a shelf.
‘Tommy gets it filled up for me at the Italian café over the road. Wait till you smell it.’ He unscrewed the top and placed it under Adam’s nose. ‘Eh what? It’s like you’re drinking it just by smelling it.’
‘Wow, that’s nice coffee, Bob.’
Bob grabbed two tin cups from the shelf and put them on the bench. As he poured the coffees he said,
‘This is the best run of the week, hardly any passengers. It’s more like a pleasure cruise … sugar?’
‘One, thanks, Bob.’
‘Unfortunately, I don’t have any milk.’
‘Oh, that’s OK, I prefer it black anyway.’
Bob looked at his watch, leaned over the radio, flipped a switch and spoke,
‘OK, Tommy.’
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He opened the wharf-side door of the tiny wheelhouse and watched Tommy pull up the gangplank and untie the ropes, setting the ferry adrift. Bob eased the throttle lever forward and gently steered the ferry away from the wharf.
The ferry glided out of Circular Quay passing through the cool shadow of the Opera House. Adam marvelled at how its billowing sails were silhouetted in the orange glow of the sunrise. The noise emanating from the Circular Quay complex slowly faded into the distance as they rounded the Opera House forecourt and glided out into the expansive harbour.
‘You know, Bob, there’s a house that we’ll go past, with an old boathouse down near the water in front of it, on the eastern side of Point Piper. It’s got a small deck in front of it. I’ll show it to you when we go by. Years ago, I used to sit on that deck with my best friend at the time, a girl called Nancy, and we used to watch the ferries cruise in and out of Rose Bay, and I can still remember us saying, like it happened yesterday, how the job you got driving one of these ferries was the last job you got before you went to heaven.’
Bob looked at Adam, took a sip of his coffee, smiled and replied,
‘Or it’s the first job they give you when you get there.’
The morning light made the water look like shimmering, liquid gold. There was not a breath of wind and there were still patches of lingering fog in the shaded, deeper parts of the bays. The main sounds that could be heard were the low rumble of the engine, the squawking of the multitude of birdlife and the sound of the spray being made by the bow wave of the sleek ferry as it cut through the morning glass.
The ferry made a close pass by Robbie’s house as it rounded the point of Point Piper.
Adam saw the opulent mansion with the jetty and ramp out in front of it. Then he saw the wooden post against which, he imagined, Nancy hit her head. The house appeared to be locked up as though there was no one living there. As they glided past Nancy’s old place, Adam pointed it out to Bob. He told him a little about Nancy and what a good friend she was. Bob reminisced about the taxi ride.
‘Do you remember that taxi driver?’ They both laughed. ‘You wouldn’t believe it, he did two more mercy dashes for me, pure coincidences, same scenarios, but guess what …’
‘What?
‘He did the other two for nothing, and I found out his name. It’s Mohammed,’ Bob took another sip of his coffee, ‘and he is actually a very nice man with a beautiful family.’
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Bob told Adam that if it hadn’t been for pastor Ted, he and Tommy wouldn’t be where they were. He said that at that time they just let go and put all their faith in the good pastor and did what he told them.
‘And here we are, and in eight years I get to retire on a nice pension.’
‘You’re too young to retire, Bob.’
‘Ahh, don’t let my good looks fool you.’
As the ferry pulled away from the Rose Bay jetty, Adam spotted his park bench on the shore. He thought to himself,
‘There’s one of my sacred sites.’
Bob continued the conversation.
‘I’ve got into caravanning.’
‘Caravanning?’
‘Yeah. I own a nice old EH Holden and a small, old van. It tows like a dream and doesn’t cost me too much in petrol.’
‘Wow, Bob, that sounds like a pretty nice rig.’
‘It really is. I’ve been going on trips during my holidays. It’s been great just to get out of town, out in the wide-open spaces. It gives me a feeling of being as free as a bird.’
‘You know, I can really relate to that feeling. It reminds me of the surfing trips I used to do in my youth.’
‘Well, I’ve been everywhere and I reckon that I’ve found the place where I want to retire.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah. It’s got the prettiest river. It’s the nicest place. Noosa, have you ever heard of it?’
‘Are you kidding? It’s one of the best surfing places in Australia. Everybody’s heard of it.’
‘Well, it’s going to be my final resting place, God willing.’
Adam looked out over the water at the far shore, saying,
‘That is a beautiful dream, Bob.’
‘I’ve seen these little houses in a town called Tewantin. It’s just a few miles up the Noosa River. Something like that, where I can park my car and van in the back and maybe go fishing on the river in a small tinnie.’
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‘You know, Bob, it’s funny that you should mention Noosa. I’ve been going up there, off and on since 1965, surfing.’
‘I wouldn’t know the front of one of them surfboards from the back.’
‘Noosa is a great choice.’
‘Good fishing.’
‘Is that Watson’s Bay over there?’ Adam pointed to a bay in the distance.
‘That’s it. She’s a picture on mornings like this, isn’t she?’
‘Yeah, Bob, … she sure is.’
…….
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