Tristan Bancks: The Fall

I crutched over to the sofa bed, dog-bone tired and sore all over. The dressing on my leg was caked with mud and a bit of blood. I took a clean dressing from my backpack and peeled off the old bandage. It was pretty messy under there with fresh blood and a clear, yellowy liquid seeping from between the stitches. I prayed that the fall in the yard and all the knocks to my knee hadn’t displaced my staples. Mum had spent thousands on the operation, even after Medicare. She had told me this at least twelve times in the lead-up. I cleaned the knee with a sharp-smelling medical wipe, wrapped my leg the way Tina had taught me in the hospital and stretched the little elastic catch across to secure the bandage.

I put on some fresh shorts and a t-shirt and called Magic, who was still desperately licking and sniffing the floor for pizza crumbs. She toddled towards me. I reached down, put my arm beneath her ample backside, hauled her up onto the bed with a groan and, within seconds, I was tumbling down into sleep.

I had thought about my father every day of my life for as long as I could remember. Sometimes more than once. I wondered where he was. I wondered who he was. I wondered who I was. I knew that I was a Scottish-French-Aboriginal Australian. Whatever that meant. My mum’s side was Scottish and she’d told me that Dad’s was French and Aboriginal a couple of generations back. And I was me. But I felt like my dad held some vital piece of the puzzle and if I could just get to know him, then I could unlock who I was and I’d have all the answers. Or some of them.

I asked Mum about him a lot. He wasn’t a popular topic of conversation, but I couldn’t help myself. If your dad lived two hours away from you and you had never met him, wouldn’t you be curious? At least once a day – when I was in maths or walking home from school – I thought, ‘I wonder what he’s doing now?’

Sometimes, when people have body parts removed, they feel as though the part is still attached. They call it a ‘phantom limb’. Well, my dad had never been part of my family but I still sensed him like a missing body part. It was as though I was born without a left leg and yet, every day, I was surprised that I didn’t have a left leg. The space in my life where he should have been seemed to tingle and itch and sometimes burn.

Reading his articles helped. From fourth grade on, I made sure I got to the bus stop in the mornings with fifteen minutes to spare so that I could cross the road to the newsagency and scour the pages for one of his stories. I would flick and flick through the paper, praying to see the words in bold print at the top of a story: By Harry Garner. Sometimes there was nothing but, when there was, it made my stomach drop. It was cool to see my own name in a newspaper: Garner. I liked that. But it was mostly about seeing my father’s name. It made him real. I loved hearing his voice in the stories, the way he strung words together, the way he looked at the world. I built him up so much in my head that he became magical and mythical.

I wanted to tell Mrs Li, the newsagent, but she was usually glaring at me in a ‘this is not a library’ kind of way. Sometimes the bus would arrive when I was in the middle of a really juicy story and I’d have to finish reading it online at school, but I preferred to read it in print. After I had started one of his articles I would hardly talk to anyone on the bus. I’d stare out the window imagining what was going to happen at the end. He had this way of unravelling a crime like it was fiction – not in a boring way like a normal newspaper story about the Prime Minister or the economy, but in a way that made you need to know what happened next.

Harry covered murders, robbery sprees, prison escapes. His life seemed so much more interesting than mine. Nothing ever happened to me. I lived in the most boring town since the invention of towns, while I imagined my father was living an amazing life in the city: reporting crime, earning lots of money and living in a big house with no one to tell him what to do.

That’s why I started making my comic. I wanted to get down what I thought it must be like for him, and imagine my own future life as a second-generation crime reporter.

I once tried calling him at home on a number I found in my mum’s phone but it rang out ten times. Another time, my mum let me try to call him at work at the Herald . I was so nervous, but I actually got to speak to him. The only time in my life until this week. The call was only short. He was just about to go away and he said he couldn’t meet up with me, but that he’d call when he got back. He didn’t know exactly when he would be back. Probably an overseas assignment, I figured. He couldn’t tell me so it must have been a really big story. When I got off the phone I didn’t want to look at my mother’s face, didn’t want to see her pity or outrage or anything. I just wanted to be alone and to stop the hot sacks of tears beneath my eyes from spilling over.

My dad was busy. I understood. He had an important job. I’d meet him one day. I knew I would. Maybe I’d even live with him sometime. I didn’t mention that plan to Mum. But I knew. One day. And it would be perfect.

I heard a loud bang . And another.

I didn’t know where it was coming from at first. I wasn’t deep enough asleep to be dreaming. I was still diving into the well of it. Bang. Hearing the noise, I tried to slow my fall and, for a moment, I didn’t know which way was up or down. I heard Magic bark for the first time since I’d arrived and I fought my way to the surface. Not such a bad guard dog after all , I thought as my eyes flicked open. I sat up.

Bang . The armchair and coffee table shunted back. I stood, grabbed my crutches and started towards the bathroom to hide as quickly and quietly as I could.

I heard a man grunt as the door was rammed again. It opened a crack and the tip of a hat appeared. The armchair and coffee table inched back across the floor. A head and body squeezed through the narrow gap. I stopped, the tips of my fingers resting on the bathroom doorhandle.

He stood, panting. Short, lopsided – one shoulder lower than the other. Dirty grey hat. Shirt untucked. Scuffed black shoes.

‘What happened?’ he asked.

Tears spat from my eyes. I tried to stop them but couldn’t. I felt so thankful and angry he was home. I crutched across to the door and hugged him, something we had never done before. His body was stiff and I didn’t know if he wanted me to hug him or not but I didn’t care. At the same time, I kind of wanted to scream at him for leaving me alone. But he must have had a good reason or he wouldn’t have left me. Surely. If it was Mum I’d have yelled at her without a second thought, but it’s easier to be angry at people you know.

He smelt like alcohol, which was strange because he said he hadn’t had anything to drink in nearly a year.

Magic ran over to us, skidding on the kitchen lino. Harry broke the hug and scruffed her neck, checking out the wreckage in the apartment. ‘What happened?’ he repeated.

‘Where were you?’ I asked, wiping tears away. ‘You said you were going for milk.’

He shuffled inside, shoved the door closed and looked around at the chair and table rammed up against the door, the deadlock lying on the floor. I noticed him sway a little and he rested a hand on the bench to steady himself. He was Captain Haddock in Tintin after too many whiskies.

‘Somebody broke in,’ I told him.

‘What?’ He squinted as though I was speaking another language. He looked crumpled and grey and old. He was older than any other kid’s father in my class. Old enough to be my grandfather, really. Mum had warned me but I had still been surprised when I first saw him in the flesh. The little square photo they used for his feature articles in the Herald must have been taken in about 1992.