Bad things happen to good people all the time.
"Hey Fletch the letch!"
"Bridge the midge! How was school, chicken."
"Bit a weenie." She rolled her big blue teenage eyes. "Oh my god... Drama much? Got a beer?"
My favourite human slumped indelicately into the squatter's chair on the porch and kicked her shoes off to rub her feet.
I grabbed a beer for me and a coke for her and settled into the other chair to watch the neighbour's kids make a mess of the street on their way home from school with their loud voices and happy splashy life pollution.
"Thanks, Fletch. What a fucking day." She sighed and cracked her can open dramatically. "Parent-teacher interviews. The step-Chad even took a day off to come and flex like he gives a fuck. The Karen was en pointe though. Damn, she disassembled that beeyatch teacher like a queen!"
In her mother's defence, her name actually was Karen, and she was one of the sweetest women you could wish for. I knew her most of my life. Karen was my babysitter growing up. She was a gentle older sister figure to me. Probably ten years older. She was lovely to me but sometimes I wish she was kinder to herself.
So, my little mate Bridget and I drank two or three 'beers' while we waited for 'the Karen' to get home from work like we did most afternoons. They lived next door. Karen had Bridget when she was about seventeen. I don't remember the details. I was thoroughly involved in a traumatic high school experience at the time.
Then I became little Bridgie's babysitter, I guess.
I was right next door. Old enough to be quasi-responsible. And Karen trusted me. It helped that I was madly in love with the tiny goblin she'd hatched. Bridget was a massive waste of time. My other friends were playing Nintendo and hanging out at the café with the arcade machines, but I was water fighting with a precocious five-year-old.
Or riding my motorcycle.
They were my two great loves. Bridget, a small person who thought I was some kind of Marvel superhero and my YZ80H.
Karen... She was kinda my wrist monkey. I mean I had old magazines that I stole from Dad's collection and a few real doozies that one of my friends got when he went to New South Wales. You could buy X-rated stuff in the newsagents down there back then. Not in Queensland though.
But Karen... She fuelled all my teenage fantasies.
Her parents had a pool and back then she cooled off every afternoon with a dip and then lay out in the sun, while over the fence at my place, things rose in temperature in direct proportion. Karen was short. Maybe five-five. But she packed a lot into that five-five. I developed severe cases of tennis elbow on those afternoons.
It was just silly teenage crush kind of stuff. Karen had this thing for bad boys and tough guys. Time and time again I saw her heart broken and I wondered why she never learned. Blind Freddy could see that the type of men she was attracted to were users.
"I still miss Aunty." Bridget sighs in the chair beside me. "Will you take me out to the cemetery this weekend please, Fletch? I want to take her some flowers."
"Sure Midge. We'll make it a picnic, eh?"
"Have a beer with Don, too." She smiled far away. "I better get home, Fletch."
She patted my leg as she stood, then leaned in to kiss me quickly on the lips like she has done since she was a baby. My eyes follow her down the path to her pushbike and I'm sure it is the same way proud fathers or big brothers would watch her. For all the homelife drama, she was a well-rounded little lady. Kind and intuitive. I loved her.
As I watched her push her bike next door, I was saddened by how quickly she'd grown up. She looked now like a taller version of her mother when she was seventeen. Mum and Dad would have been proud of her too.
She was here that day. I was one year into my apprenticeship, so probably eighteen still. Karen had a date with some footballer and asked if I could babysit. She paid me fifty bucks a night even when I tried to refuse. The money was welcome, my apprentice paycheque barely covered tools repayments. Bridget was seven or so. Still small enough for sleepovers, so we'd made ourselves a couch cushion bed on the loungeroom floor and settled in for a Disney marathon and pizza.
Mum and Dad had a church function in Wallumbilla that night that I was glad babysitting let me miss.
I'd fallen asleep and was startled by a knock at the door. Bridget was still wide awake and got up to open the door to the police.
I really can't tell you the words they used. They were lost in the winds of grief.
Something about cattle on the road.
I was glad for Bridget's easy tears and screams of anguish. They let me invest my own emotions in caring for her. Over the next few months, it became more real for me as I navigated legals and finances.
Karen was helpful.
She is probably the only person who ever saw me cry. Wrapping me in her beautiful arms she held me like she had when I was a young boy, and she was fixing gravel rash or whatever dumb thing I'd done to myself.
"Shh, Fletch. Bad things happen to good people all the time. You can't fight this. It won't go away. It's part of you. Part of us. Those of us who knew them. Don't you ever be tough to me. You cry, you hear. Bridget and I are your family too. You're not alone."
I felt alone though.
There were echoes of them in the corners of the house. Memories of them in furniture, sometimes I would turn around to tell them something and suddenly remember they were gone. vIt took a long time for that to sink in.
The big old house felt so damn empty.
I operated on autopilot for most of that year. Work kept me busy. Karen had me over for dinner every other weekend so she could mother me a little I think and keep an eye on self-care and organisation. She taught me how to budget and shop, and reminded me of things like getting a haircut and shaving. Even her best friend Molly used to drop by and do mini house inspections that let her fold clothes or tidy or somehow just mother me a bit too.
Bridget helped me too. She was where I put all the love that I used to have for Mum and Dad. She was who I cared for to keep myself relevant. There was no such thing as counselling back then, although the pastor from the church visited to talk now and then.
It would have been Mum's birthday this weekend. I'd forgotten but little Bridgie never forgets them. I didn't like thinking about it much. That was six years ago now, and I've mostly put my life back together around the hole they left. So, I spent the rest of the afternoon getting tools from the shed into the ute. A line trimmer to clean up around their headstones. Cleaning supplies to brighten up the lettering. T he old picnic basket that Mum kept in the back of Dad's panelvan. It followed me back up to the house when I was done.
Dad loved that damn car. He bought it second-hand as a young man. He was working as an automotive electrician and a mate bought a new minibus and sold him his old panelvan. There is not an original thing about it. Over the years, Dad swapped the two-five-three baby-eight for a three-twenty-seven Chev from a mate's drag car. He replaced the floor shift four-speed manual for a turbo four hundred auto and the diff is from a wrecked Monaro he picked up; a Salisbury ten bolt.
