Spoiler
A/N: This is part of a series of short stories I am writing with a common theme, What happens when we fall in love
What Becomes of the Reluctant Hero
‘Mr Boyes?’
‘Sorry, can you repeat the question?’
‘Do you consider yourself a hero?’
Sitting before a bouquet of microphones, the square-jawed man cleared his raspy throat. He leaned in close and eyed the exit sign at the back of the hall. Then, he turned his head and faced the corporal general, staring intently.
‘I don’t have anything else to say.’
He quickly stood, and then the others at the table did the same. In lock-step, all but one of the men turned and walked to the exit behind the speaker’s table. The cameras’ click came on like midsummer crickets.
The only remaining man approached the bouquet.
‘Thanks everybody, that’s all we have time for today.’
It had taken only four questions to spook the reclusive veteran. The interviews were getting shorter. The crowded room had waited over an hour, they were briefed on the rules. Not one of the four questions asked was about his art, the reason he was here. Art doesn’t sell magazines, art doesn’t win viewers. They still waited, expectant, mouth-watering like dogs baited by, then denied, a bloody steak. Nik Boyes didn’t possess the words to sate the hunger. He wondered if anybody did.
There were more of them outside, as he left the building; the camera flashes barely pierced the dark car windows. He ignored the swarm. The driver dropped the pedal, and the car moved quickly with the support trucks at either end.
Nik's fingers locked and his hands sat on his belt buckle. He looked down, looked in. His dark eyes washed with indifference. A silent gaze, a quiet mind.
‘That went well, Nik,’ the general said in monotone.
He nodded; it was a token lie, of course. His eyes fixed on his hands, jaw locked.
When the car door pulled open, he lifted himself from his seat, took his case from the boot, then moved through the automatic doors. Two men in dark suits and dark sunglasses tailed him to check-in, then to the departures lounge. They shook his hand and fared him well.
***
He reached through the window and paid the airport parking for the overnight stay. The old diesel Chevy took a heavy foot to get it moving along and by the time he got home, it was getting dark. The air was thin up there in the mountains and the mutts’ yelps echoed as he pulled up beside the lonely hilltop shack.
He pushed through the door with his suitcase under arm. He entered, leaving the gripping chill for a blazing milieu.
His wife sat, it had only been five years since their wedding day. She had lost her gloss, her skin was drab, eyes trapped in dark rings. Her gaze was exhausted, almost desperate. Piled cotton was nestled on her arms, and at the centre was a pink face. It was creased not with age, but surplus skin, waiting to be filled.
‘Those bloody dogs Nik, and that truck.’
‘I’m sorry Jodie.’
‘She’s only just fallen asleep and you arrive with that riot.’
He walked to the dark bedroom and dropped his case in the corner. He sat on the edge of the bed and looked out of the window at the whitecaps. Fingers locked, hands over his belt.
One piece of his work adorned the bedroom wall, not unlike any of his others; it was the symbol of wonder. A black question mark on white canvas, identical to the ones selling for thousands, not because of what it was but because of whose signature was set in the corner. Jodie must have figured it to be art, that’s why she had hung it in here.
The cheque for his latest was on its way to his mother, along with the fee for the interview. And, here he sat in the dark, staring at another one.
She came in crying and closed the door gently behind her. Then swiftly, her palm came across his cheek with a sharp pang.
‘Why, Nik?’ She was sobbing now, and her hands shaking. ‘Why?’
‘I don’t know what you want from me.’
‘I want you to care, I want you to kiss me and your daughter. You went on duty and come back the same Nik and we were happy, but lately you have changed, you don’t care.’ Her sobs came in heaves and her tiny frame was like a splinter, trembling against the wind.
His eyes still wandered over the work.
‘Your mother is sick, waiting for you to go see her, why don’t you go? You don’t care Nik.’ She wanted him to hurt. She wanted him to feel something. Sweat started on her back bone and her shaking arms were capped with white fists. This wasn’t going the way she had planned. She was always going to leave, but not like this, she was going to be indignant, unmoved. She slapped him again, and his face barely flinched.
‘I’m leaving Nik, my brother is coming to get me tonight. He will be here soon.’
Nik lifted himself from the bed. He moved through the kitchen to the lounge. He didn’t have much here, he had dogs and horses. But his awards were polished under glass in museums, and his paint belonged to the people he despised, the critics, who had no idea. All he had was here in his arms, a pile of cotton, skin, blood and bone. He delicately placed his lips on her forehead. He could hear draws slamming; a suitcase was piled and zipped tight then dragged in before him.
‘Oh- now you care, we’re out the door and suddenly you care,’ she said storming about the kitchen piling bottles and nibs into a plastic bag. ‘Yes finally you act normal and why now? Because you know you have nothing without us. Well it’s too late Nik, it was always too late.’
He didn’t feel the venom this time; she had always spat when things were hard, but she was never quite this bitter. He thought about how they were before his last tour, before his mother’s diagnosis, we never fought. And now, while the storm cracked, they didn’t fight, not him.
Gently he moved his daughter back and forth in his arms. He watched her; she was lost in the solace of dream. She would never know.
Light beams swung through the windows as a car turned up the driveway. Her brother wouldn’t knock; he wouldn’t even use the horn. He knew that, her brother was respectful. And as far as he knew, the famed Nik Boyes was a dangerous trained killer. Before her brother arrived, he knew he wouldn’t knock.
Jodie lugged the case outside with the bottles and nibs. She came back and marched at him. Still shaking. She forked her arms under the baby and pulled, but he wasn’t ready to say good-bye. She pulled harder.
‘Let go,’ she growled through her teeth. ‘You’re hurting her!’
Nik squeezed, then Jodie pulled hard. She might have torn the baby in half to take her. Moving one hand from beneath his daughter, he pressed it against his wife’s chest, shoving hard and standing in one motion. She hit the hard wood, like wet sand on concrete. Nik rocked his daughter in his arms again, as she stirred, teasing consciousness. He kissed her forehead and a single tear silently surfaced in each of his eyes.
‘You animal!’ she screamed, climbing to her feet. She slapped him hard again and Nik held his daughter out.
‘Good bye, Daddy loves you.’
She clutched the baby to her shoulder. Suddenly, the room filled with the baby’s siren, mouth open, eyes wide, she protested.
The gravel moved under hard spinning wheels. Then they gripped and the black Ford was gone, descending through the hills.
Nik Boyes took the kitchen torch and made his way to the shed, across the paddock behind the home. The cold pang stung every piece of unclothed skin. In the shed, he set a dusty canvas against his handmade easel. He uncapped the red paint and sprayed a dollop into the tin pallet.
There under flashlight, without considering what he was doing, he took the brush and moved it across the canvas with long languid strokes.
