This is a story.
It is just a story.
It begins with a man,
a husband,
a father.
Born in a time too young to fight in the Pacific.
So he trained for his country in National Service.
And then, when he tried to enlist,
was told he was now too old for Vietnam.
So he worked hard and raised a large family.
Gave back to his country.
Was concerned about the state of his nation.
And the world.
Saw men land on the moon.
Campaigned against the war that wasn't our war.
Tried to make sense of all the meaningless deaths.
He made a decision.
As child number five was announced,
he also made it known,that he had accepted a commission to serve in Saigon.
Not to fight.
But to do his bit requisitioning and selling off equipment.
His wife wept and they hardly spoke.
He had to go.
The children were growing.
There were too many for her to raise by herself.
It was best not to tell them he was leaving.
So they made boarding school seem like an adventure.
The oldest three were to go.
The youngest to remain with Mum.
Too young to send away.
She waited for her next child to be born.
She pleaded with him to stay until then.
He said he would try.
He left nine days before the birth.
His wife was truly all alone.
He had said brief goodbyes to the older children
as they were driven far away to their new schools.
He cried silent tears.
And did nothing.
The boy who loved his dad waved as the car drove off.
It was the day before he turned twelve.
He was told they'd see each other again at Christmas.
The son believed the lie.
Boarding school was a hard life.
They made you forget your family.
The priests cared more for enrolments than broken hearts.
The boy waited in the summer heat to go back home.
They never came.
He ate a cold Christmas dinner alone in the kitchen with the cook.
They allowed him to open just one present.
It was next year's uniform.
He wrote to his parents, pleading for them to come and get him.
To return him home to his family.
The priests never sent the letters.
They simply rang to say he was quite settled now.
And that he desired to stay on at school,
considering the circumstances.
The mother, tired and alone with two young babies,
blindly agreed.
The boy was left there for nearly two years.
The father never saw action.
But he was around something just as horrific.
The aftermath of war.
The dead, the wounded, the maimed.
He saw bodies in the streets,
and corruption at every level.
They worked him hard.
In that stinking heat.
Too hard.
Then he broke.
They sent him to Darwin,
too sick to travel further.
His wife was flown up to see him.
No one else.
She saw a wild man, not her husband.
He asked for a divorce.
She refused his pleas.
"You'll be right luv." she said hopefully,
"Just come back to us".
But they sent her home.
Alone.
He endured their treatment and he rested.
The Australian air revived him.
He played the recovery game.
He knew it all too well.
It's easy to ace the psych test.
Especially when you play cards with the doctor.
He was back on home soil,
but his mind was trapped in the war.
He pleaded with them to let him return.
He had to finish the work he was doing over there.
He petitioned those above him.
He claimed his knowledge and expertise was needed.
He applied once more to send him back to the mess.
And they did.
He dug in deep during those eighteen months.
Built up walls in his mind and soul.
Fathered a child with a local girl,
to save her from poverty.
He never stopped.
He cleaned up the mess his government had made.
He covered up for them and made it go away.
To cope, he turned himself off.
He went cold.
And did his job,
until he could give no more.
It was then that they sent him home.
He came back to his house with a new suit and haircut.
He arrived unannounced.
He was there at the kitchen table when his wife came home.
He saw his baby son he had never met.
He ignored the toddler beside her.
He ate a sandwich,
and went to bed for two weeks.
No words.
No visitors.
No talking.
No life in his eyes.
The army came to see him.
It was only then he arose from his bed.
He was given a cheque and they left.
His work there was finished
and he was now officially unemployed.
All that was left was to start over.
The boy was never told of his father's return.
They kept him there at that school for three months more.
The priests felt they knew what was best.
"He's happy!" they told the parents.
"He wants to finish off the term."
They believed it.
Then one day a car pulled up.
The mother had come to collect him.
He was the last to come home.
The older girls were already back.
They had returned six weeks earlier.
He was told not to make too much noise.
Dad was resting.
The boy saw his father in the yard.
The yard they had joyfully mowed together.
It was their place.
His dad was sitting under the lemon tree.
Drinking.
The lawn was unkept. Long and wild.
He didn't look up when his son approached.
The boy was confused.
They just stayed there.
"You've gotten taller." he eventually spoke.
The boy didn't recognize this voice.
There was no strength or love in it.
Not like he remembered.
The boy ran back to the house,
to his room,
and cried.
It was a new life.
For all of them.
A new man they had to call 'Dad'.
"Things will be better now!" the mother told them.
"He just needs a bit of time."
He hardly spoke to them.
He wasn't really there.
A year went by.
The man had started a new career.
Something to make his mark.
He seemed to regain some of his old self.
Some.
But now, this job was all consuming.
He worked long, late hours.
Making money was his passion and compulsion.
He made enough money for them all.
That should have made it alright.
He spent his days dictating and managing and making powerful decisions.
And his nights were mostly for drinking.
He wore a grubby groove in the corner of the kitchen cabinets,
where he stood for hours slowly draining a bottle of scotch.
Every night.
The boy stumbled upon a rifle hidden in a box.
He carefully folded it back in the blanket.
And never told a soul what he had found.
The discovery however gripped him with fear,
especially in the night,
each time he heard the sound of that wardrobe slowly opening.
The night before every Anzac Day the father would disappear.
The rifle was taken too.
He'd come back a few days later,
unshaven and hung over.
Nothing was ever said.
They were never allowed to ask where he went.
But noticed the peace those three days brought them.
As the years went by,
they all began to wish he wouldn't keep returning.
Time now moved with jagged edges and empty living.
The children began to grow and leave, one by one.
The boy was now a young man.
He had to get out.
He needed to leave it all behind.
The father knew his son was going.
But instead of stopping him,
he casually asked for his house keys.
"You won't be needing them now".
The boy/man left.
They wouldn't speak for another seven years.
.
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