In retrospect, Brad should have stayed to deal with the problem, but he’d become proficient at running away. He’d convinced himself it was the wisest choice to leave. He was good at that too. Darwin had shone bright as a city of refuge even after he had landed and been swallowed by the tropical heat and laconic apathy. He’d heard it was a place where exiles and drifters could gather in safety. Everyone was from somewhere else; each with their own story to tell. He needed such a place, so when a job offer had landed in his inbox, working as an electrician on the Inpex project, it had been an easy decision to go. Who could argue with the logic? His departure was probably a source of relief to some.
The city and its people embraced him, and for a time life was a series of sweet, sweet kisses, but the metaphoric affection of strangers can only sustain a man for so long, and so it was that Brad’s thoughts turned to female company. Initially, he paid for it until he felt brave enough to dip his toes back in the in the perilous waters of dating. Rose had lined him up from the start. He knew that now. Hindsight was a spiteful witch; a sister of the evil seductress, lust. Now he found himself on the run again
From the aft deck of the HMAS Broome, Brad could see his life in written in the sky; past, present, and future, although the latter was shrouded in lazy fog. A Black Kite whirled freely above the teal expanse of Darwin Harbour where on the surface feathery white caps pointed the way to shore. The way back. Back to his Larrakeyah apartment. Back to his life. The direction away from which he was heading. He’d left her there again, but this time he was happy about it. The thought of being away from that toxic bitch for three months made him smile. His pleasure was quickly drowned by the seedy gnawing in his stomach and the thin needle of pain; both the result of her words. Brad didn’t understand what had happened. He didn’t understand why she took the best of him, ground it up like paste and smeared on the bottom of her boots before scuffing them through the Top End’s finest red dirt. Neither did he understand why he had sucked it all up and put his hand out to beg for more.
The Kite was majestic and solitary; master of the air, an apex predator with unmatched speed and agility, as well as a set of sharp talons with matching beak. When it lined up its prey, the prey was toast. Oblivious to the danger, the rat or lizard would suddenly have found itself in the painful vice grip of the Kite being transported a previously unknown speeds to some place where the raptor would eat it. Brad remembered an unusually large number of them flocking to Darwin in the dry of 2018: circling, and diving riding thermal currents created by the city’s high-rise buildings; looking for prey. They often hung around bushfires to snatch grasshoppers and small lizards forced out of hiding by the heat and smoke. Brad had heard that the sneaky buggers had even been known to start fires in particular areas by carrying burning twigs in their beaks and dropping them where they thought they might flush out some food. Like all predators they utilized every aspect of both the environment and their own biology. Rose was undeniably cut from the same cloth as the Black Kite.
Brad considered Solomon, the wisest and richest of ancient Israel’s kings, who had spent his life governing a united and peaceful kingdom and had consequently found himself with too much time on his hands. A self-aware and intensely curious soul, Solomon set himself to discover the meaning of life. His writings in the Book of Ecclesiastes outlined his thoughts and explorations, formulating them into a book of unparalleled wisdom. In Chapter 30 of his book of Proverbs, Solomon recorded the words of a probably mythical man named Agur, the son of Jakeh. As Jakeh in Hebrew means ‘obedience’, it is likely Solomon was referring to himself as the son of obedience.
This Agur wrote the following words in verses eighteen and nineteen. ‘There are three things that are too amazing for me, four things I do not understand: the way of an eagle in the sky, the way of a snake on a rock, the way of a ship on the high seas and the way of a man with a young woman.’
Rose was ten years Brad’s junior and he had been looking for a younger woman to make himself feel good. It was with the intention of proving his masculinity that he pursued young and beautiful women. He could talk all he liked about other factors of attraction and miscellaneous signs of compatibility, but these were disingenuous justifications for predatory behaviour.
The voyage from Darwin had thus far been smooth, the water gently rocking HMAS Broome as it headed into the Arafura Sea. Although rough seas were certain at some point, Brad felt neither fear not anxiety. Joining the Navy had ticked many boxes for Brad, but most importantly he provided an avenue for escape. Out at sea for weeks on end, not able to contact Rose nor wanting to, he had been able to focus on his work and his soul for it was the latter which required considerable healing. In an ocean of bad decisions, Brad had finally chosen a path to freedom and wholeness, but the sharp talons of history relentlessly pulled at him, retarding his progress into liberty. He was leaving again, leaving behind her manipulative and poisonous ways, but he would return as he always did. Like a dog returning to its vomit. Perhaps this time, on this longer mission, he would find the strength to say goodbye.
They’d broken up many times, sometimes at her instigation, sometimes at his, but always found their way back to each other, like moths to a flame. Each time they fluttered back into a mutual orbit they flew closer to the fire, burning off bits of themselves without even realizing it. It was a sick, sick relationship to which they were both addicted.
Brad pictured Rose now, saw her at her best with exhilarating energy and sexual charisma which made men drool. Remembered good times with her. Times when being with her was like being drunk. These happy visions were quickly replaced in his mind with horror at her selfish and self-destructive behaviour. Those times she taunted and tormented him, like the time, not long after his father had been diagnosed with terminal cancer, when she said she didn’t care and hoped he died. All those times when she accused him of running her life, painting herself as the perpetual victim of misogynistic men of which group, he was just another who wanted her body and her money.
During the three tumultuous years of their relationship, Brad had rarely felt at peace, and yet he stayed. He was unfaithful to her as he had been to his wife despite his best efforts at fidelity. When she made him feel worthless, he sought to replenish his ego in the company of other women. Everything he wanted to correct about himself, every sin he wished desperately to atone for, every foolish decision he longed to recant, all the filth he wished to expunge from his heart and his mind; all these things calcified, metastasized like cancer. He blamed Rose, even though he knew he had continually invited her insidious misery into his life.
It didn’t make sense to Brad, even now, as he pondered the way of the eagle, and the ship on the sea. The magnificent Kites. The mighty patrol boat which was carrying him away. The former built by God, the latter by man, but both with a clearly defined purpose: a mission for which they were fully equipped. Even the snake, with no limbs, had all it needed to prosper on the earth. To live without the incessant nag of conscience, stripped by instinct of the need to choose, it ate, slept, reproduced then died, not once ever having to consider its purpose, lament its failures or anxiously wonder about the future.
How many more opportunities would Brad need before he broke the chains of bondage to Rose? How much more time would it take for him to finally end it? Why was to so hard to let go of something so bad? He didn’t understand, despaired in fact, that he ever would, and yet even the tiniest spark of hope could never be extinguished for it was hope, and hope alone which sustained a person through the worst sufferings imaginable.
As the last of Darwin’s towers disappeared from view, Brad was called to duty and thus saved, albeit temporarily, from further debilitating introspection. An electrical fault was causing an intermittent malfunction in the echo sounder, a notoriously fickle piece of equipment found on all the Armidale class patrol boats. Solving electrical riddles was what he was paid for. If only life’s problems were as easy to fix. Brad hoped the fault was a mystery into which he could really sink his teeth because that would mean for a few hours at least there was no room in his head for any other thoughts. As long as he was mentally engaged, and at sea, he could forget the quicksand waiting for him back on shore.
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