Line Disruption

The speakers above prophesied of delays and cancellations with the authority of a god. The announcement was for a different train line but Roger still took it as an omen. Panicked, he dumped the contents of his backpack on the platform, searched the debris, and found his trusty notebook. He lost some sketches to the winds of a passing train and triple-checked his notes. This was the right platform at the right time, but there was no train.

A delay of any kind threatened to ruin the trip. This was the first time Roger had seen his son, Zac, in two years, and he needed everything to go right. But Roger’s brother was picking them up at Bairnsdale, and if he had to wait even ten minutes then he’d greet them with legendary scorn. 

He was known to go days without talking, longer without eating. It would likely take him the entire trip just to calm down, and by then Zac would be desperate to escape and never return. But Roger’s brother had the car, the boat, and the fishing business, so what could Roger do? He imagined then what the boy would think, his father failing to stand up to his irate uncle.  

The train had likely changed platforms, so they jogged outside the station to the bay of screens. The entire way Roger urged Zac to hurry, but the boy just shuffled. When they arrived, the two short men gazed up at the wall of departure times, as office workers heading to lunch flowed around them like blood around a blockage. Roger’s eyes darted from screen to screen. He never left time to comprehend what he saw.  

“Can you see Barns-dale anywhere, Kid?” he asked. 

Zac wiped his nose on the neck of his t-shirt. He searched for Bairnsdale on the tongue of his left shoe. Roger glanced at the boy, silent, and briefly recalled his conversation with Sharon - the one where he begged to take Zac fishing. 

Roger was in his backyard smoking a dart. He has no mobile so the landline was out the window. Sharon insisted the boy didn’t like fishing, so Roger cupped the phone to his bare chest and threw the ashtray into the bushes. He’s never been fishing, was Roger’s calm reply. Sharon then asked if Roger was even sure his brother would take them. Roger smashed the phone on the receiver. But he had no leverage, no authority, no legal claim to his own kin, so he called back. 

“I know my own son,” he pleaded, “and he’ll like fishing if he tries it… Sharon, please.”

Unfortunately, Bairnsdale was not listed on the screens. For a moment, Roger had no idea what to do. He stood still, thinking, staring at the boy’s blue hair and earrings. Zac was taller and heavier than him now, which came as a surprise, as did all the other changes which had escaped his attention through the numerous - though brief - Zoom calls. What else was different? In fact, what else was the same?

“All part of the fun, ey, Kid,” said Roger. 

Zac’s black fingernail hid up his nose. He seemed unwilling to lift his feet, unable to smile. 

“How about you wait here,” continued Roger, “and I’ll ask the help desk?” 

The boy nodded. 

“I’ll find our bloody train, ha-ha,” said Roger. “Then it’s fishing time.” 

As Roger queued at the help desk, the sketches that earlier escaped his backpack drifted onto the Docklands Highway and struck a woman’s windscreen. She swerved and nearly collided with a truck. The sketches were of parallel lines, and the woman wondered if they were a warning sign of impending doom, but people like Roger don’t really need signs. They have their history.  

“And how can I help you today?” asked the V/Line employee. 

“How are ya? I’m trying to figure out which platform the Barns-dale train is on.” 

“I’m sorry, I haven’t heard of ‘Barns-dale.’ Do you mean Bairnsdale?” 

The eyeglasses threatened to jump off the tip of her nose. “Well?” she added. 

“Yes, Bairnsdale… sorry.” 

“As I told those people over there, you should have checked the V/Line website; we are operating a reduced schedule because of track works.” 

Roger didn’t quite understand. 

“The train to ‘Barns-dale’ is in four-ish hours. But we’re not exactly sure, so check the screens in three.” 

Four hours meant they’d arrive in Bairnsdale well after dinner. By then his brother would be steaming. He hated being dragged off the couch when he had a full belly. On the train, Roger would also have to fork out for a full meal to stop Zac going hungry, which he hadn’t budgeted for, and when he called Sharon from his brother’s, she would likely not believe what had happened and demand regular updates all weekend. Roger imagined being out on the boat. He’s borrowing Zac’s phone to call his ex each hour. Zac’s sad eyes are on him, glistening, rather than the water. 

“Okay, well, thanks for your help. You have a good one,” he said to the V/Line employee. 

Roger’s left hand started to do that shaking thing that happens when he’s stressed. He’d travelled from Mildura to take Zac fishing in Bairnsdale. He’d spent the week before at the pub workshopping what to say with the fellas who, ten pints in, would still listen. His notebook now had pages of dot points, topics he’d hoped to broach with his son. But he knew the second he told Zac about the delay the boy would call his mother. Roger would wait with him until the same train that brought Zac here took him home… home. 

The trip was all but over, and maybe he wouldn’t get another chance, not that he deserved one - by his own admission. So, defeated, he trudged back to the television bay. That way he could at least delay breaking the news.

Zac was sitting on his backpack. Behind him, a group of teenage girls were giggling, eating chips and considering wagging the rest of the day. Zac paid them no attention. Instead, he stared at the concrete before him, where once a brave ant made a treacherous journey among falling boots the size of meteors. He felt the earth shake. He imagined being some place that didn’t exist. 

While Zac daydreamed, a man approached from the Spencer Street direction. He had a briefcase in one hand, a latte in the other, and his phone was wedged between his ear and his shoulder. He failed to see the boy on the ground.

“I told her, ‘past performance is not indicative of future results,’'' he said.

Then he crashed into Zac and hit the concrete with a thud. The coffee exploded on the man’s trousers as the briefcase slid in Roger’s direction. Zac, who was hit from behind, came alive. He scrambled for his drawing book, which had escaped from his unzipped bag, and returned it to safety.  Then he sat holding his neck. 

Roger began handing over the briefcase. The man thanked Roger and gestured to the boy. 

“What a fucking retard, ey?” he said. 

Roger had a habit of immediately agreeing with strangers. But on this occasion he caught the impulse, and refused to release the briefcase.

“What are you doing?” asked the man. 

 “That’s my son,” he said. 

“Well, tell your son not to sit in the middle of a walkway.”

“You could have watched where you were going.” 

The man yanked his bag free. 

“I’m just saying, he could have been seriously hurt.” 

The man wiped the coffee off his pants. “Jesus, I can see why your boy is the way he is.” 

The station buzzed with a million sounds. The sounds of memories that only matter because of their number, their volume. People remember catching the train, but not each trip. They remember noise, but not each sound. The pattering of feet, the city traffic, the screeching trains, the inane conversations, the announcements. It’s all there but everyone is busy, so no one noticed Roger. 

No one noticed him thrust his shaking hands towards the man’s chest. 

There was a lifetime’s worth of anger to be unloaded, and Roger was the type to be sorry it was dumped on one person. But he didn’t need to be sorry, because the larger man caught his wrists as they approached, and tripped Roger with a shiny boot. Roger stumbled before falling backwards onto the concrete. His head hit the ground. His bucket hat peeled off like an opened can of beans, and the handline in his backpack escaped and left a trail all the way back to the vLine help desk. 

Roger tried to climb, but the man drove his boot down on Roger’s chest. 

“I want an apology,” said the man.  

Roger glanced at Zac. His eyes were clamped open. The image of his pathetic old man, limbs wriggling under false lights, seared into his brain like a family brand, a fallen crest, an inheritance.  

“I said, ‘I want an apology.’” 

Roger had no choice, never did. “Alright. I’m sorry,” he muttered.   

“Don’t look at him. Look at me. Say it again.”

“I’m sorry.”

The man’s mobile had landed near a vending machine. He released the boot from Roger’s chest, waltzed to the phone, and continued the conversation with his colleague. 

Roger watched him skip away and then climbed to his feet. He put his weight through his right arm because his left was hurt in the scuffle. There was a steel bench nearby, and he gestured to Zac to sit down. Roger felt the seat’s cold steel on the back of his knees and copied his son’s broken gaze. What a shame nothing works out. 

“The train’s not for four hours, Kid,” he said.

“Okay,” said Zac. 

“Do you want to call your mum and get picked up?” 

The boy reached into his bag and Roger felt tears rise. But then the kid retrieved his drawing book and a loose pen, and opened to a blank page. 

“Nah,” he said. “It’s fine, Dad.”

Soon a thick, blue line took shape on the paper, connecting one side of the page to the other. It was the line Roger always drew, and as Zac went back and forth, it became more ingrained, undeniable, irreversible. 

“You sure?” asked Roger.

“Never.” 

Roger put his unhurt arm around Zac, and that’s where they sat for the next four hours, both men bruised and defeated. He was accustomed to his own failings. But it saddened him to hear Zac talk that way, and part of him wanted the boy to leave, to return to his mother’s. 

Maybe most can’t understand why, but many can, and some understand too well. 

But Roger, that doubtful and anxious man, was missing some important facts - facts that would likely have lifted his spirits. First, the next train would come, and on time. Second, Sharon wouldn’t be nearly as annoyed as he feared, and there would be no hourly updates demanded. Third, his brother, who was yet to leave home, would not feel put out at all. They had caught him on a good day. Fourth, the next day they would catch seven fish (three flathead, three trevally, one snapper). Last, and most important, this trip with his dad and uncle would be the best weekend of Zac’s childhood. In twenty, thirty years, he’d still look back, down the long bank of his own memory, and smile. He’d smile the same way he did on the water. And the second Roger caught that smile would signify the end of a long, dark period in his life - a disruption in the line. 

But Roger couldn’t know these things ahead of time. So until then he had to sit still, in pain and in fear. And in silence, he asked the universe whether his son would ever be happy. The voice of God above replied, not yet, but soon, we promise, and we are deeply sorry for the delay.    

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