I Am the Messenger

Like words being typed across his face.

Punched in.

Black on white.

Yes, it all makes sense.

The pathetic car.

The obsessive watchfulness and abhorrent vigilance with money.

Even his argumentative disposition, to use an even more Wuthering Heights kind of phrase. Marv is suffering, completely alone, and he uses all of those things to sweep the guilt from his stomach every day.

"I want to give the kid something, you know? When it's older."

"You don't know if it's a he or a she?"

"No."

He pulls an old slice of notepad from his wallet. When he unfolds it, I can tell the address that's written there has been traced over several times to never fade.

17 Cabramatta Road, Auburn.

"Some of her friends," Marv speaks blankly. "When the family just disappeared, I went to her friends and begged them to tell me where she went. God, it was pitiful. I was crying on Sarah Bishop's front doorstep, for Christ's sake." The words seem to echo now, out of his mouth, which appears motionless. Almost numb. "Man, that girl Suzanne. That sweet Suzanne." He spits out a sarcastic laugh. "Cha--her old man was such a stern bastard--but she snuck out a few nights a week, an hour before dawn, and we'd go out to this old field where a man used to grow corn." He almost smiles now. "We had a blanket and we'd go there and have it a few nights a week.... She was so brilliant, Ed." He looks directly at me because if he's going to tell someone, he wants to do it right. "She tasted so good." The smile hangs on desperately. "Sometimes we'd push our luck and stay till the sun came up...."

"It sounds beautiful, Marv."

I've spoken those words to the windscreen--I can't believe Marv and I are talking like this. Usually we argue to show our friendship.

"The orange sky," Marv continues, "the wet grass--and I always remember the warmth of her. Inside her and on her skin...."

I imagine it well, but Marv murders it instantly with one savage breath.

"Then one day the house was emptied. I went to the field, but it was just me and the corn."

The girl got pregnant.

Not unusual in these parts, but obviously not condoned by the Boyds.

The family left town.

Nothing was ever said, and the Boyds were never really missed. People always come and go through here. If they make money, they move somewhere better. If they struggle, they move somewhere equally as shitty to try their luck somewhere else.

"I guess," Marv says later, "her old man was ashamed of having a sixteen-year-old girl of his getting stitched up, especially by someone like me. I guess he was right to be stern...."

At this point, I have no idea what to say.

"They left town," he tells me. "Barely a word was spoken." Now he looks over. I feel his eyes on my face. "And I've been living with it for three years."

/> Not anymore, I think, but I can't be sure.

It feels more like wayward hope or desperation.

He's calmer now, but he sits stiffly in his seat. An hour goes past. I wait. I ask.

"Have you been to that address?"

He stiffens further. "No. I've tried, but I can't." He resumes telling the story. "About a week after that day at the Bishop place, Sarah came to where I was working. She hands me the note and says, 'I promised not to tell anyone--especially you--but I just don't think it's right.' Then she says, 'But you be careful, Marv. Suzie's old man says he'll kill you if you so much as set foot near her again.' And she left." A blankness blankets his face. "It was raining that day, I remember. Small sheets of rain."