There are those tiny almost imperceptible moments, barely at the edge of awareness, upon which the whole world turns.
If it hadn’t been one of those days, full of delays and miniature frustrations about things not going exactly as Liam wanted – the fight the night before with Sian, which unsettled their daughter, like it always did, getting them up three times in the night – then things might have been different. If he hadn’t had the broken sleep and the sixth, strong cup of coffee that day, making his edge just that little bit more edgy, then he wouldn’t have been so close. He would have felt the twinge in his gut, sensed the barely noticeable pressure change minutely disfiguring the rear wheel of the car in front. He would have been paying more attention to the road rather than flicking his eyes to check the notifications on his phone, because his ex from high school had been uploading old school pictures to Facebook recently.
If all those things hadn’t have happened, then maybe he would have reacted in time to the blowout. The car in front seemed to dip and bite into the road before spinning out, so that the drivers faced each other from behind airbags in a macabre steel waltz. No airbag for his passenger seat though.
And if he hadn’t let her sit up front because he felt guilty at snapping at her after school, while rushing to get ready for ballet, and she wanted her daddy to help her, not because she needed it, but because she was only six and that’s how she’d say sorry to her daddy when she didn’t understand why he was grumpy and shouty with her.
The other car’s rear end swung around like and sledge hammer taking her little life with a scream her mother would dwarf. And then neither of his girls could look at Liam anymore. Even if Sian could forgive him for whatever wasn’t legally a crime, he looked like her – same eyes, same mannerisms, same temper. Then Sian was caught in a loop – seeing her in him, in the image of him clung to her little white coffin box, and his brother, usually so absent from their lives, remembered what it was to kick a football together, and listen to Smiths’ records while playing Sensible Soccer on the computer for hours with his little brother. And he pulled him off under the arms, holding up all his broken pieces – a jigsaw man with bits missing.
They fought over the house, not because either of them could stand to be with all those memories – it’s not sadness or violence that haunts; happiness is far more terrifying when it’s gone – no, they fought because it was the only way to think about something else and anger was a cuckold for grief.
They’d been playing unhappy roles for years and had forgotten who they were, lost in another person who wasn’t there anymore. Work felt pointless; booze felt numb, so Liam shacked up with Jack Daniels for a year and puked his heart out until he lost his job. His boss felt sympathy and got him a severance package he didn’t deserve.
With nothing left he travelled until one night he found himself in a stadium in Bangkok with a couple of other lost wanderers. Liam watched the small boxers of Muay Thai, with gloved hands punch and kick, and knee and elbow each other. It looked like the second most painful thing in the world, and in another of those imperceptible moments he decided the first most painful thing needed a partner.
The heat was pain. The humidity was pain. The fatigue was pain. But it was also rhythm, like the inevitable turning of the world. The metronome of the skipping rope. The feet shuffling miles in the morning run. The whack of pads and the bag. The repetitions of combinations, punches and kicks, knees and elbows. The battles in a neck-clinch against the ropes that lashed lessons on thighs and back. Over and over, until like a chanted prayer, the devotee dissolved into the chant to be absolved. Sweat washing away pain.
Liam was backstage after losing to a Swede who outweighed him by twenty pounds. A cut across his eyebrow wept for him, needing nine stiches. But he was here and not clung to her little coffin box. Seb, his Dutch friend from the gym, laughed and slapped Liam on the back and pointed to the new German girl. She’d covered her eyes his whole fight, while he took his beating and gave a little back. She smiled at him and he smiled back.
But in that tiny imperceptible moment, he had felt the twinge in his stomach, the prickle on his neck, and eased off the accelerator. For once they hadn’t fought last night and he had slept well. He still shouted at his daughter and then let her ride up front, but when the tire blew and the car dug in and spun, he broke hard and even had the presence, and time, to flick his eyes to his mirror, not his phone, and swerve into the clear space on the other side of the road.
They came to a halt and he checked his daughter, she was fine… she was fine. In the other car they were okay too.
And then on they went to ballet and to the roles they’d been playing unhappily for years.
# # #
Daniel Soule. Once Dan was an academic but the sentences proved too long and the words too obscure. Northern Ireland is where he now lives. But he was born in England and raised in Byron’s home town, which the bard hated but Dan does not. They named every other road after Byron. As yet no roads are named after Dan but several children are. He tries write the kind of stories he wants to read and aims for readers to want to turn the page. Dan’s work has featured in the Incubator, Storgy and the horror magazine Devolution Z.
Read more here: http://Facebook author page: https://www.facebook.com/WriterDanielSoule/
Photo credit: Larry D. Thacker www.larrydthacker.com
