John Bowman's Cave Read online

  John Bowman's Cave

  Erron Adams

  Copyright © 2018 Erron Adams

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Published by Bright Stream Publishing

  ISBN 978-0-9876285-1-0

  e-book formatting by bookow.com

  Dedication

  For VX3001

  Table of Contents

  Part I Fall

  Chapter 1 - Dream Sequence

  Chapter 2 - The Ring Of Return

  Chapter 3 - Taken In

  Part II Homecoming

  Chapter 4 - Landing

  Chapter 5 - Knock And Enter

  Part III Wilderness

  Chapter 6 - Caylen

  Chapter 7 - A World Made Whole

  Chapter 8 - Rescue

  Chapter 9 - Burnt Pines

  Chapter 10 - Ambush

  Chapter 11 - Release

  Chapter 12 - Passing The Reins

  Part IV Citadel

  Chapter 13 - A Hippy Went Hunting

  Chapter 14 - Grealding

  Chapter 15 - The Dragonspine

  Chapter 16 - The Centre Of The Story

  Chapter 17 - A Trap Set

  Chapter 18 - Rout

  Chapter 19 - A Deal Made

  Chapter 20 - Two Dreams

  Part V Tide And Moon

  Chapter 21 - An Abandoned Orchard

  Chapter 22 - An Offer Declined

  Chapter 23 - Liberation

  Chapter 24 - A World Of Water, A Face Of Light

  Chapter 25 - Circling The Moon

  Part VI Fall

  Chapter 26 - The Stars So Near

  Chapter 27 - The Scattering

  Part VII Homecoming

  Chapter 28 - Snowblind

  Chapter 29 - The Ring Of Return

  Part I

  Fall

  If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.

  - William Blake

  Chapter 1

  Dream Sequence

  His wife had been gone two days when John set out to find her. They'd fought, and sulked, in their usual fashion. Bumping about opposite ends of the house, each waiting for the other to approach with a conciliatory cup of coffee. Neither had.

  “There’s your clothes”, had been the last thing she’d said to him, flinging the basket of unfolded washing on the bed. And then she’d gone out, slamming the door. He hated her for that; it had such an air of finality, of brutal decision to it.

  He went into the living room once more, as if she might have crept back while he skulked elsewhere. He scanned every flat surface for a note or some other sign but found nothing. The mantelpiece still held its silly bric-a-brac, reminders he’d never really looked at since they’d been placed there. Until now. He flinched at the sight of the laughing couple side by side in the wedding photo. A Hippy wedding. Him in red velvet flares, she just starting to push out the front of her floral caftan.

  The last time she'd worn that, they’d just moved here to his hometown, to escape the city, to ‘grow their own food’, to live the Bohemian artist life, him writing while she painted and drew. It was raining so she took an umbrella, hitched the long skirt up and went out wearing waterproof boots to kill the snails that were attacking her parsley seedlings. Screlch screlch her boots came down in their juicy-crunch judgement. “Eat my parsley will you! Not likely!”

  He stood under the verandah smiling, his arms crossed, and teased her. “Psycho witch! What kind of a Buddhist are you?” For one moment she looked up at him as though he was an outsized snail. Then she gestured off into the night, “There’s acres of grass out there. Let them eat that, these are MINE!”

  He laughed. “Oh well, it’s Justice then!”

  “Yes. MY parsley, MY justice.” She poked her tongue at him and resumed the parsley patch cleansing.

  He shook his head. The city girl with New Age ideals sure had a mean streak. He wondered if she'd always responded to injustice with this kind of fervour. "Well, just remember to send 'em on with a prayer," he laughed. He shook his head again and went inside.

  They’d had good days here at first. Everything had fallen into place. The garden grew well enough, eventually, and though neither of them was going to set the art world on fire they were able to console themselves that fame didn’t matter. In between Family Plans, they went for walks beside the spring-fed creeks, spooking trout that arrowed away through the shallows. “Let’s play hidey” she’d say in her curious child-woman manner, and then she’d jump into the bush and go running, pausing for just the moment it took to blow him a kiss before she bounded away behind foliage.

  It was an idyll that ended abruptly with pains in the night, and with John, still groggy from the evening's drinking, asking Are you alright? Do you need a doctor? But she was stoic, and a hippy purist; she called for the midwife who was out partying. Later, the pains eased; she stoked herself with aspirin and they went back to bed.

  The sound of her sobbing at the bottom of the stairs woke him. He staggered down to her through the chaos of blood. Why, of all the terrifying minutes that followed, could he only recall the towels? The towels for a headrest and the towels stuffed between her legs. Them and the manic phone call. The long wail growing towards them through the bruised morning. The wail of the dead child in her, that they would now never hear.

  Then came the long times of wounding silence. The things unstated and unspeakable that filled their raw days end to end. The months, years spent stitching back what was salvageable. Of learning to speak, and touch, and just be with one another again.

  It got better over time, scarred up well. But always, things progressed on tenterhooks, both knowing the slightest upset would provoke a fight. And when they fought, the silence returned in all its power as though they'd simply woken from an easy dream into the grind of everyday endurance. A period of some hours followed during which their world held its breath and waited for hard feelings to soften into the kindness of a proffered coffee. Each accepted this paralysis; there was nothing to be done. It seemed the price humans paid for their inability to mend death.

  So when they'd fought this time he’d resisted the urge to run after her. He’d moped and thought how really pissed off she must be, to leave without even a parting shot. But he hadn't acted, at first. It was always better to wait on things to work themselves out, was what he'd learnt.

  The television flickered silently as he entered the room and snatched up the remote control. He went to thumb the red off button but couldn't bring himself to do it. Leave a candle in the window, she could come back at any time, he thought and flung the remote back down. Then he stalked out, leaving the boxed heads mouthing their mute lines.

  ***

  He went into town in the old truck used for fishing trips, she having taken the red sedan.

  He looked for her in all the places she liked most: the library, the plant nursery, the bookstores, the crappy hippy café they usually went to for coffee; but she wasn't there.

  He went into the newsagent's and fumbled with the local rag, playing for time while he thought how to ask innocent questions about his wife. The owner was busy with another customer, an oldtimer who wanted to yak. It gave John breathing space. He scanned the front page. His
mind was too full and fast to take in anything but the title and its sub-header weather report. Dyall's Ford Sentinel, the Voice of Small Town Australia, it unblushingly proclaimed. Total Fire Ban Today! Fine at first, hot Northerly later with possible storms. Top 42 C.

  Finally the old fellow ran out of steam and left. John made his way to the counter with the newspaper in one hand while he dug in his pocket for change with the other. He went to tender money and question together but the proprietor’s eagerness cut him off.

  “G’day John, how you been?” the man asked. Not waiting for an answer, he pointed at the paper John held. “Seen that? Whaddya think? Country’s turning to shit, I reckon!”

  John’s eyes drifted to the headlines. “Police Arrest Murder Suspect. More Feared Missing.”

  The owner went on. “They haven't named him yet. Apparently he’s a local bloke from out Dunstone way. None of the girls are from around here, thank God. So far as we know.” He looked around to be sure the shop was empty, then leant conspiratorially closer. “The bastard slashes their throats, poor kids. Hope they give the prick a taste of his own medicine!”

  John looked up from the paper and through the man speaking to him. At any other time he’d have mumbled assent and left as quickly as small-town manners allowed. But his chest was shaking with a force that made soft speech impossible; he threw the coins down and fled.

  Outside he slowed to a walk. His footfall imposed some sort of cyclic order on the shaking and he tried to match his breathing to that. His ears rang with the horror playing in his mind, all the way to the car. Once inside he sat there long panicked minutes, hands gripping the steering wheel, going nowhere. Eventually he drove home, pushing the thought aside, replacing it with the weak affirmation she was only hiding out somewhere, making him pay.

  ***

  He rang around.

  “Hi, Paul.”

  “John! What are you up to mate?”

  “Well, I’m looking for Caylen actually.”

  "Yeah? Oh, well, haven't seen her myself. You alright?"

  "Yeah, yeah, sure." John took a deep breath. "Look, we ah, we had a fight. You know. So if she shows, give me a call straight away, huh?"

  "Yeah, 'course I will mate! No worries. Anything I can do?"

  "No. Thanks. Just that."

  It was a conversation repeated several times throughout the day as he lucked on friends who happened to be home when he phoned. He left no messages with those who weren't.

  The worst was calling his wife's folks. John never hit it off with either parent. The mother routinely referred to him as a layabout or dropkick, though never to his face. The father grunted when he was in a good mood, but more often, when 'the kids' came to visit he slumped in the old armchair's depression of faded roses, pulled his lips in over his teeth and made harsh sucking sounds as though deciding something of great but private import.

  John shrugged. What did he expect? He was, after all, the spoiler who'd removed their daughter to 'some god-awful hole in the bush'. He picked up the handpiece and dialled. Her mother answered. He decided to get it over with.

  "It's me, John. Caylen's gone missing. We had a row."

  For long seconds there was a crackling over the line, and nothing else. Then John heard the sound of the mouthpiece being covered and a muffled conversation. A moment later his father-in-law came on.

  "What the hell's this about?"

  "Caylen and I had a fight. She went out. I hoped she'd gone to you."

  "Well, she hasn't." There was a moment's pause, then the father resumed. "Have you tried Marilyn?"

  John made a face at the mouthpiece. Marilyn was Caylen’s best friend. As if he wouldn’t have called her. "Yeah, yeah. No luck."

  He crawled away from the conversation as best he could, promising to let them know as soon as he heard something. Then he rang around the list of friends again, starting with those who hadn't answered the first time. When he came to the end of the list he put the phone down and punched the wall once, barking his knuckles on the rough adobe.

  The summer afternoon's light that filled the house deepened to bronze while he sat there thinking, waiting for a return call. He guessed it was a couple of hours later when he stood up, found his car keys and went out again, leaving the front door wide open and a hastily-picked bunch of garden flowers lying on the threshold.

  He drove out to some of Caylen's friends who'd opted to go phoneless in the New Age. This didn't turn up any sign of her either. To make matters worse, the friends advised him to do the one thing he'd been dreading: go to the police. He didn't want to face the fact it had come to that. But it had, so he numbly nodded yes and drove back into town.

  It was night now, and the streets were mostly deserted. Still, he pulled up at the first stop sign on the crest just before the road dropped down towards the shopping centre. Just as well, he thought, as a fully loaded log truck thundered past, throwing up a fine spray of the day's sleet from the road. Hit that and it's all over. One misjudgment, a mind temporarily blanked from the job, and you'd be so much mash of squish and twisted metal.

  Just as well.

  He drove down the gravel drive to the house and his gut clenched. Caylen's parents were there. Her mother stayed in under the verandah. Her father came out and nodded to John.

  "Found her?"

  "No. I… What are you doing here?"

  "Wha..? You idiot! What I'm doing here is trying to find out what you've done with our daughter!"

  "I haven't done anything with her, damn it all! I told you, she left."

  For a moment Caylen’s father looked as if he’d hit John. But it passed, and the older man half turned towards the house. He pointed at the flowers in the still-open doorway. “You leave those?” He asked.

  John looked at the scrappy bouquet. He winced inwardly at the idea of his Welcome Back gesture being misinterpreted as a memorial “Yeah. ’case she came back.”

  His father-in-law looked scornful. “You’re a sorry excuse for a man, y’know that?”

  “Yeah, well, it takes one to know one.” John spat back and went into the house, slamming the door after him.

  He expected them to put up more of a fight, but they dithered outside a few minutes, quietly conferring, then left. He came out when they’d gone.

  Now what? he wondered. The problem was, he just didn't know how to act in such a situation. Maybe it was a lack of fathering; he'd read that somewhere. Both his parents were dead, the father of war wounds, the mother gone early to cancer. And if the decision to act was hard enough, knowing how to act was something else again.

  In fact, faced with the options of action or shrinking from it, he'd invariably chosen inertia. A good soldier never looks behind and Don't break cover under the enemy’s nose, were things his returned-soldier dad had said. His father's paranoia had kept the boy safe inside the father's borders. His father's face had contorted with the effort of scrunching all the world's evils into a ball. The ball got stored some place called 'don't do that', a place the boy couldn't go, a place no one in his right mind would. His mother had trailed the broken man about the house, picking up the pieces of old battle as they broke off. Eventually the boy took on most of the man’s demeanour. The good soldier had learnt to always face forward, and so could the boy. A whole war's learning had come home to roost in him.

  But as the boy pushed out a man's shape, he came to feel life herded him willy-nilly. He thought of himself as a speck God idly shovelled about with his omnipotent but uncaring fingernail. The only conceivable action in this passionless play was compliance. Silently he went where prodded; to protest would betray his presence. Don't break cover, boy; he'd learnt it well.

  And now the invoice for all that silence had arrived. The only other human to ever truly enter his domain had gone. Now he knew with the certainty of the condemned, that he should have somehow spoken out while she was still here. And in the same thought knew he never could.

  No doubt about it though, action was what a
man did; he'd observed that. Stone hard and taciturn were the men he'd grown up with in that timber town. Men whose blank faces could convey so much with just a flicker; faces that held down every passion to a tremor. Men whose mouths ate and obeyed, and daily worked around a handful of diffident formalities. And that left John. He couldn't feel, and his thinking got him nowhere. Distasteful as it might be, the only option left was action.

  But how to act was the problem. How to break through the numb shell that coffined him and find Caylen. What, exactly, could he do? It was too late to go to the cops, a small police station like that of Dyall’s Ford would be closed for the night. Leave it to the morning, nothing else for it, he thought.

  So he took the truck and drove, as he always did when problems couldn’t be figured out by keeping still. On the way he picked up a six-pack from the Farmer’s Arms. It sat beside him on the bench seat; a newly opened pack of cigarettes slid about on the dashboard. As he drove he sipped and sucked a different, more satisfying numbness deep inside.

  The night was warm and the beer soon became cloying. Even so, he stayed out as long as he could, not wanting to go home and re-encounter Caylen’s parents. Finally, he bit the bullet and drove back. In his half-drunken state he stormed through the stop sign intersection and just brushed the slipstream of a speeding log truck.

  The truck's horn matched the truck. Loud and long and solid as the black night it punched out of and melted back into, impelled by the stripped trees' weight.

  He pulled up fifty yards beyond the intersection and looked to see if the truck came back. It didn't.

  How in Hell did I miss that? he thought.

  Rapid clicking noises swung his focus back in time to see a shattering wave pass over the windscreen. A chill clamped his chest. He saw himself enter the intersection again and this time the truck came through the passenger door, flinging the car through the air like a toy. The whole universe came to John, replaying its own birth in the swirl and tumbling, the rolling thunder and the low hissing after.