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Another jogger, a woman. He moved passed her, beckoning the parents. “I’ve got it.”
“After this hot water, not vinegar.”
He knew that. Vinegar was for deadly box and Irukandji jellyfish, stopping their tentacles releasing venom. He gave the woman a nod and copped a sting across his arm as the kid squirmed. He carried her back into the sea, the two adults holding on to each other, following.
He showed them how to wash the tentacles off, but got stung himself a couple of times. The little girl never stopped screaming and he didn’t blame her. Bastard bluebottles bit like a whip and stayed with you like an electric current made of shimmering knifepoints.
When the family was tentacle-free, but still reeling from the pain, he led them to the public changing rooms where there was hot water, lucky that the council rangers hadn’t yet locked the facility for the night.
He washed his own stings while the family stood in hot water showers. Then he took his t-shirt off and soaked it in hot water and told the mum to hold it over the child’s face to bring the stinging down.
Twenty minutes of hot water treatment later, they were still scarred in red stripes, but the panic of the pain had passed. Back on the beach they exchanged names more formally and he waved off any hint of obligation. Anyone would’ve helped them, another person almost had. It was nothing. And just random luck he knew enough of their language to be useful.
He left them and continued on his run. The tide was coming in. By morning the beach would be fringed by bluebottle blisters and plenty more people would get stung. The lifesavers would be here to manage it, but he’d come and lend a hand too. Only fair. There was so much to make up for and this was nothing.
If he could, he’d take the tentacles of every bluebottle that washed up, wrap them around his body, and revel in the pain to stop anyone else getting hurt, especially kids.
It would be the right thing. But it was also impossible. He could be stung a million times and not fix all the hurt he’d caused. He could be stung to within an inch of a heart attack from shock and it wouldn’t be enough to make up for what he’d done.
Nothing ever would.
He looked at the angry red welts on his arm and chest. They’d fade to nothing. You’d never know he’d been stung. And that was the problem. Guilt should leave a mark so decent people would know to stay away from you. Instead it soaked through your skin and only stained where you could hide it.
He finished his jog, his stretches and a meditation, and on the way home ran into Scully. A swarm of Irukandji jellyfish would be more welcoming.
“Playing the hero, Joker.”
He bent to pat Mulder. The best thing about Scully was his fox terrier.
Scully grunted, but that was his default, along with his incongruously cheerful, underfed, dirty Santa Claus look. “No one is going to give you a medal.”
“Don’t need that.”
“Go back to where you belong, you fuckin’ idiot.” Scully walked on, but Mulder gave him a look that said I’d take more pats if you’d care to give them until Scully’s gruff, “Mully,” sent him off after his master.
At home, he prepared and barbequed a fish he’d caught earlier that day. He had two juicy peaches for dessert and only one was bruised.
It was a fine warm night after a scorcher of a day and he knew he’d find it hard to sleep. He knew he’d dream. The kid’s screaming was still in his ears; the sound of injustice, an undeserved anguish, a bitter tutorial for innocence in the ways of the world.
He’d dream about hopeless shouting, about heads turned and silences that were more upsetting than all the noise. About protocols and practices that were evil, criminal but entirely legal. About letters that came in the mail with nooses and bullets and blades.
It was better to stay awake than go to that place again. He’d worked so hard to leave it behind. Shed everything he’d loved to pay the price. So instead of sleep he read; through the night and into sweltering heat of the apricot dawn. A favourite. A classic. A well-worn friend. Through the injustice and into the clarity of a clean new day.
It was more than he deserved.
And then she came, and she was too.
He was standing in the sun trying to understand how the night could so easily become a host for his terror, smothering him to a crouch, when the day was so fresh and perfect and he could stand tall again. He sipped coffee. He’d need more than the one cup he was allowed today. It was still early but the beach was already waking. The regulars, the locals, taking ownership. He’d go down when the tourists, the daytrippers, arrived and earn his keep.
Sometimes they came under the railing; occasionally his camp was raided, not that there was anything of value to take except his books and his torch. He was on his third torch. The books, old, grubby and torn, they never touched. One time someone wanted to interview him for a film. Women never came. They had more sense. But she came.
He heard her first. Talking to herself, or maybe to God. It was a shock to realise she was talking to him, calling him.
She wore Skins and a t-shirt, runners on her feet. She had a shiny brown ponytail and she was smiling at him. She was the woman from the beach last night—hot water, not vinegar—and she was looking at him as if he knew the secret to an eternally happy life.
3: Unlikely
Foley wasn’t making the same mistake as yesterday. She’d ruined a suit, given herself a case of sunburn that still glowed through makeup, and had to slink back to the office, gaffer tape her pants back together and admit to Gabriella that she’d failed.
