A Bell Rings

February, 2022

In sailing lore, the ringing of a bell of its own accord signals death. 

A bell rings and a ship is lost at sea; a fisherman’s myth.

But he comes back on an old yellow paddleboard that’s floating by the overturned fishing boat.

The boat groans and then just disappears like a diving whale, taking a crate of lobsters and his favourite jacket and then it’s just him, the centre of a huge radius and a speck on every other radius. 

He bobs there a while, unsure what to think. His heart is racing, but his mind is flashing memories of kindergarten when they laid on their backs for a nap after lunch, and then a picture of his Dad chasing a rooster around in an NRL jersey. He’s not even sure that ever happened, but there it is in front of his eyes as the big bubble of air comes up from the ocean, the last burp of his fishing boat. 

He remembers what’s at home, and then what’s not. His Dad is gone, the Bears footy club folded, and he remembers that when he wakes up from a nap at home there’s no one there. 

He can slip off the board and sink to the bottom of the ocean and that’s that. Or he can live. 

He thinks of a few things half done – he owes his brother a bit on the boat still, and he’d been looking forward to a beer this afternoon. He can’t think of anything else.

So he starts back, one arm in front of the other, again, again. 

He lands on the same boat ramp he left from. It’s impossible, but there he is with his shirt wrapped around his head and his yellow board, and it’s impossible, but there he is. 

His keys are on the tyre. He undoes the trailer and leaves it there. 

That week everyone seems to be handing him water bottles or blankets, even though it’s January and 35 degrees. 

They call to check in and offer help but mostly just want to ask questions. They’re looking for some profanity or profession, but there’s an emptiness in him like when you’re surrounded by ocean and you can see land on the horizon but you can’t name the colour or the place, and are they buildings or mountains, and who’s in them and what day is it, so can anything mean anything if you can’t place it? 

He has nothing to say except that, but he can’t begin to explain it. He tells them there was water everywhere and he just kept paddling, so they stop asking after him after a little while.

At home he sleeps and drinks tea and sleeps and he rubs his arms. His hands shake in the mornings, he has nothing to do with them now.

It rains for weeks, the air is warm and wet. He’s had enough of water and he waits in his emptiness for it to stop. The grass is overgrown, the shrub by the letterbox droops with the weight of rain. There are moments of sun between the rain and he sees the plants move and grow. Do they fight or thrive? Are they surviving or opportunistic? He’s not sure who could tell him, so he just dreams on them, rubs his arms.

They are his allies, he sees; there is no emptiness or inaction in them, there is obstruction and movement. He wants for it, but can’t reach it from inside. He shuffles from window to window in the house to see them from different angles, touching his hand against the glass and then eventually laying down on his back. He watchs the faint foggy outline of his hand and head on the window.

After weeks of rain he has run out of food and leaves the house for the supermarket. 

His hands are shaking, making the shopping basket swing – strangely in time to the country music in the store.

In the grocery section he starts tapping his fingers on an iceberg lettuce and smiles, calmer. 

“That’s the dead guy!” says a kid’s pointed finger in the can aisle. 

He grabs a can of tomatoes and throws it on the ground. It’s more of a thud than he thinks, and they all jump – him, the boy and his mum – then all stare at the tomato on the floor.

Again, again. He’s got tomato pulp on his shoes and the cans are spinning around on the ground. The kid’s mum is covering his eyes with her hands like it’s some kind of aberration. 

They rush him out of there so fast that they don’t charge him for the groceries. He’s still holding the half-full swinging basket and a can of tomatoes when he gets in the car. 

Driving home he runs out of fuel a few hundred metres from the petrol station and he has to push his car the rest of the way, running forward to steer it through the window. He feels all of the weight of it, every step, again, again, and he’s not sure what he’s pushing for, now.

For fuel? To get home, for what? At least there’s no one at home. 

He’s filling the car when a lady comes out holding a pot plant and a bottle of chocolate milk.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

“What?”

“For, you know, the boat.”

“I haven’t thought about the boat,” he says. It’s the first conversation he’s had in weeks.

“You know what I mean, well, nevermind, sorry,” she says and is not sure what else to say. He’s looking at the pot plant she’s bought. He’s still holding the can of tomatoes, for some reason, his other hand on the fuel pump. 

She’s still standing there. She gives him the pot plant.

“Will you have this? Please, sorry. I don’t know why I keep saying sorry, sorry.” 

She shakes her head at herself and turns away with her hand up to stop making it worse, while his fuel pump clicks over, full, the can of tomatoes tucked under his arm and the pot plant in his other hand. 

It’s a green palm with purple painted tips.

At home he puts it on the ground and lays next to it. It’s the only plant inside, protected from the rain. It speaks to him in its patience and silence. Keep going, it says. 

The day passes and the ceiling above him darkens, envelops him on the floor. He’s drawn downward into the floor, remembers that feeling of wanting to sink, but he feels more buoyant this time.

He moves to bed and puts the plant on the windowsill.

The streetlight by the window flicks up sharp jungle patterns on his ceiling like he’s laying under the plant itself. No stars and clouds there and he goes to sleep smiling at that.

He wakes feeling more rested, his arms less heavy and a thought stuck in his fingers. From bed he’s been watching one of those sappy plants with massive leaves by the fence. The rain has weighed it down and it’s falling everywhere, maybe finally giving up. 

He’s outside and cutting a branch. Inside he puts it in an old wine bottle filled with water and wipes dirt off the leaves with his shirt.  

Soon, he is drunk in creation. In days his house is overcome and dusty with succulent cuttings in old wine bottles and mugs. The rain stops and now his yard is peppered with gumtree shoots. He’s sprouting seeds on the windowsill; the kitchen first, then every windowsill in egg cartons and scrunched up bits of cardboard. There’s a hole by the backdoor where he hacks at the soil with a soup ladle.

He’s taken to the park, now – nothing can stop him building. At night he digs up patches of grass and plants penny leaf gums and banksias. The council are confused and the neighbours want to call the police, but don’t – a bell rings and a ship is lost at sea, but he’s come back when he shouldn’t have – that’s not how the myth is meant to go. Leave him.

There’s a world in those eyes, painting his view with green and red leaves, so that he might never see the horizon again. His mind races and questions, to never be in emptiness again. He speaks back to them now.

Why do we laugh? Who has been born this very second? And this second. And this second. Is there a colour we can’t see? How old is that tree? What is my impact on the world if I step on this fallen gumleaf, and then, and then? Who has stood on this very spot? And this spot. And this spot.

Rest. He sits on his own at the pub. 

They whisper behind him – he paddled 100km, I heard. Nah, it was 200 they reckon. He stares at his beer in the corner, a world in that look. They don’t look that way when he’s there, won’t sit there when he’s not. He’s the one that came back that they don’t know what to do with, even though he never said or did much before, anyway.

He dreams of forests, lines of pines that point every way – always paths to somewhere, always moving forward somewhere. The sunlight is broken up, the forest a shield and in the way of something, everything; trees in every direction and he feels warm. The leaves applaud, slow clapping against each other; he can’t hear that hum of the ocean.

On the paddleboard his arms had stung, raw with salt burn and exhaustion. They don’t stop now, paddling at the earth, torn and blistered again from the shovel. He can build a world in that earth.

The gutters on his house are falling down with the weight of the ivy and earth he’s stuffed in there.

Then there’s dill shooting from the broken concrete at the bus stop in town.

He’s put a magnolia in an old barrel drum outside the Chinese restaurant.

His neighbour wakes to a crop of flannel flowers in her front yard.

He vandalises the school one weekend, dragging sacks of wildflower seeds around the dirt yard. They sprout between rollup wrappers and footy games, his crime breaking the earth in slow silence.

In each there is something growing in its own way – moving upward and forward towards horizons and skies with steps and shoots, one in front of the other, again, again. Each battling emptiness in just their being and in their longing.

He is alive, fighting, thriving. 

by Sparrokei