A Sudden Burst Of Sunshine (1) The sun rose, shining its golden glory over the earth, sifting life from the cold and the darkness, and came to rest on a young man’s face. He opened his eyes, and the rays of the morning caused him to wince slightly, their brilliance too much for his awareness to comprehend upon awakening. He sat up and noticed that his back was wet, in fact drenched with the dew that glistened ethereally under the morning light. He looked around and saw the greenest of all green surrounding him in all directions, as far as he could see. Adjusting his sight to the morning sun, he realised that he had been lying in a grassy ravine, with steep sides resembling bumpy hills. He stood, checking himself up and down, seeing the bruises on his arms and legs, and feeling as if for the first time the pain of more wounds underneath his t-shirt and shorts. The young man wondered briefly where he had come by those bruises, before probing a little deeper into the headspace he was accustomed to, looking for answers to his wounds and his obviously peculiar sleeping arrangement. Finding only a haze of unrelenting possibilities, he looked up at the sun as if searching there for an answer to his lack of understanding. He came up with nothing. Apprehension rising in his throat, he looked closer at his mind, searching in sudden desperation for something, anything that warranted an explanation for his current predicament. Within the confines of his brain he ran yelling for help, asking anyone close by for anything validating his existence. He looked at his surroundings, and decided that to be surrounded completely by formless grass walls was not about to help his situation. His legs hurting from the black and purple marks left by he knew not what, and his head still groggy from his unnerving awakening, the young man lurched up one side of his grassy prison, and quickly reached the summit. There, he found to his dismay that the ravine was surrounded by a field as formless as the place he had awoken in. Not to be dismayed, he started forward, following the sun into the east. It occurred to him as he walked that he could recall nothing of the previous night, but the truly galling prospect was the assurance his mind gave him of remembering nothing, any night, ever. He had amnesia, he realised with a sinking feeling. With the realisation of his condition, the youth went into mental action. He recalled a movie he could not bring to mind that certain questions triggered memories, and so he started on himself; where are you from, what is the name of your Prime Minister? He found that he knew the answers to some very banal and boring questions, and that nearly all of his training at school remained with him. Memories of where or how he obtained such training remained a black hole. One thing, however, made him smile; he remembered his name. “My name is Artea Robertson,” he said aloud. “Arty for short.” Nothing else returned to him, but he consoled himself with the fact that he had awoken with nothing at all, but had just now recalled his own name. Perhaps with time he would get it all back. Arty noted that he was visibly happier and more buoyant with his new knowledge. His bruises were already giving him less trouble, and his pace had quickened to a pleasant stride. His arms were swinging to the walking rhythm too, instead of hanging uselessly at his sides as they had been initially. He wondered where the sun was going to lead him, but worried little about it, knowing that he was at least not going in circles as he might have if he hadn’t chosen to follow his blazing friend in the sky. Another pleasing sight was the scattering of bright yellow flowers through the field where he walked. He stopped a moment to pick one and sniff at it, before discovering its lack of scent and tossing it over his shoulder. Turning inward again, he found that another new slice of information had already found its way to the surface of his consciousness; Arty Robertson was twenty years old, with a tenth year drop-out education, who had left home to seek his fortune. Probing this line of thought further was fruitless, but Arty was happy nonetheless that his self-discovery seemed to be progressing nicely. Returning his attention to his walking, he found that his progress there was also fruitful, as a line of small hills found their way into his path, marking the end of the field. Arty grinned at made for the hills. Something told the youth to expect something over the mounds of earth and grass that he was fast approaching. Snorting slightly at the obviousness of his inner voice, he picked up his pace; hoping that whatever greeted him at the summit of the hillocks was pleasant. Within moments they loomed before him, and he hesitated a moment, his intuition speaking ever so slightly of the possible repercussions of venturing into the unknown. It was only a moment however, and in the next he launched into a run, charging up the grass slopes as if toward buried treasure. Cresting the mounds, he looked down their opposite slopes at his reward. If he was expecting pirate’s loot, Arty was disappointed. Instead, another field similar to the first lay below him, but instead of a blank green expanse he spied row upon row of upturned, and gangly plants in their hundreds thrusting skyward. He knew at once the red bounty they bore was nothing more and nothing less than the humble tomato, sworn by many people as the greatest food on earth, reviled by others. Arty knew he had been a tomato lover since his childhood, and so he set off toward what was quite obviously a tomato farm. Just as he hit the edge of the hills, the young man was forced to leap backwards as a monster roared past him. Collecting his momentarily scattered wits, he saw a tray-back Ute growling its way along an almost indiscernible dirt track toward the tomato field. Sitting in the back he estimated a half-dozen people obscured by the dust thrown up by the farm truck, most likely on their way to a hard day’s work. He decided to ask for directions before they started work to avoid too much trouble, and ran after the Ute. It wasn’t long before the Ute stopped at the edge of the paddock and he caught up with it. The driver, an elderly man with a sun-creased face and blue overalls covering his brown body, stepped out of the vehicle and glared at Arty. “Where the hell were ya, boy?” he spat. “Waited a full half-hour for ya to show, and now here ya’are all covered in bloody bruises and with ya stupid hippie hair flippin’ everywhere. Gawd! Get to work, would ya?” With that, the old farmer stomped off into the field to find whatever it was he was looking for. As Arty stared after him, bewildered, he felt a light tap on his shoulder. Turning, he was faced with the blackest face he had ever seen, but then perhaps it was not so black considering his amnesia; at any rate, the fellow’s face was wrinkled like a prune, the lines curling upward to the sun that had deepened many of them as he smiled. “Got a bit of a beating there eh bro?” the bald aborigine grinned at him toothlessly, his throaty accent forcing Arty to think twice before he understood what the old man had actually said. “Shouldn’t be pickin’ fights in the pub, bro. No good for ya.” Arty stared at the elderly fellow incredulously. Were his bruises so obviously the result of a brawl? Perhaps not, the farmer had known him well enough, or so it seemed. It was equally as probable that this sparkly-eyed old man knew him as well. “You know me?” Arty ventured uncertainly. The grin on the old man’s face split into a good-natured cackle, echoed by the group standing behind him. Arty stared dumbly at the mirthful glint in the man’s eyes, wondering briefly if the happiness he saw within those ancient orbs was entirely honest. “Ya don’t remember old Bruce?” the dark man chortled, slapping his thigh. “Pull the other one bro! Ya really tell a good one don’t ya?” Arty hesitated for a moment, scanning Bruce’s face for any sign of mistrust. He found nothing but pure laughter, the lines of mirth burnt into his face by years of working outdoors. The old fellow certainly didn’t seem to believe that Arty had forgotten his name. The youth guessed that he had shared more than a few one-liners with the wizened creature standing before him, still giggling. He would have to open up to this man. “I can’t remember anything,” he pronounced the words slowly, carefully, ensuring that all around heard what he had to say. “Aw, come off it, brudda!” prune-faced Bruce was unconvinced. In fact, he appeared to believe that he was the subject of a colossal joke perpetrated by the young man facing him. “I can’t remember anything,” Arty repeated thickly, wondering how long it would take Bruce to understand that he was not joking in the slightest. It wouldn’t be long, already the group behind him was murmuring uncertainly. “We got work to do bro,” Bruce frowned uncertainly. “Keep that one, but. It’ll go good at the pub.” “I can’t remember anything,” Arty repeated the words again, sounding to himself stupider than a dullard. “I can’t remember a thing. Nothing.” Bruce regarded him for a moment, looked him up and down. Then he paced a circle around his young counterpart, as if sizing him up for a fight. Stopping where he started, he looked into Arty’s eyes. As he did so, all the mirth left his own dark irises, and his frown deepened, to the apparent displeasure of his wrinkles. Frowning was obviously not a habit that Bruce was accustomed to. Reaching out and squeezing Arty’s cheek, he said “Ya hit some bad luck kid. Ya really don’t remember old Bruce? Bruce the Tomato Buggerer?” Arty grinned involuntarily at that joke, and replied, “Seems like I ought to.” “You damn right!” Bruce snapped playfully. “Best bloke in these parts, is Bruce!” “We’ll have to see about that,” Arty grinned. “Ha!” Old Bruce was laughing again. “Still the same fella though! We’ll catch up quick eh brudda?” “Guess so,” the youth replied, relieved that his first test was over. Bruce spun on his heel with surprising alacrity, and spread his arms wide in an over-dramatization of the situation. “Folks!” he shouted in his croaky, happy voice. “Little Arty’s lost his bloody memory! Betta gets acquainted with him all over again I think!” Arty waved from behind Bruce’s back, grinning foolishly. “Well come on!” the old man croaked loudly. “Crowd round!” Bruce stepped away from where he had been standing and leaned against the utility they had arrived in. Arty found himself surrounded by unfamiliar faces, taking care to note each of them equally as they introduced themselves. The first to step forward was a short, shy man somewhere in his mid-twenties, polite manner and huge grin giving away his Asiatic features to a more exact location; his homeland, Japan. “I am Hiroshi Watanabe,” he announced politely, bowing at Arty formally. His accent was only slightly easier to understand than Bruce’s strange articulations. Hiroshi took Arty’s hand and shook it vigorously, grinning all the while. “It is unfortunate you have no memory. You get it back soon, mate.” Arty giggled inwardly at the Japanese man’s complete mastery of the pronunciation of the word mate, contrasted by such a thick accent on every other word. Still, he was a very friendly fellow, although somewhere in his memory Arty seemed to recall that most Japanese he had met were very polite and friendly. He smiled in return and said, “I’m sure we’ll be good mates.” Hiroshi accepted that, and joined Bruce at the tray-back. “Keiko Hattori,” a second Japanese, this time a young female of similar age to Hiroshi, grinned hugely at him, shaking his hand and bowing, before giggling and running to Bruce. Arty was surprised that any person should be wearing neon tights in a tomato field. Then again, she was evidently a tourist , and tourists of all nationalities had a habit of wearing strange gear in foreign countries. “Um, pleased to meet you,” Arty called out to her. Keiko grinned again and waved energetically. Arty surveyed the remaining three as they decided wordlessly who would be next. In the centre, an already dirt-covered young woman, pouting uncomfortably in the morning sun. To her right, a tall dark-haired individual, scowling purposelessly at Arty, the short bearded man across from him regarding the girl with obvious interest. They all appeared uncomfortable, or at least unenthused, and none appeared immediately willing to publicly declare themselves to the young amnesiac in standing in front of them. Then, as the bearded man flicked his eyes toward Arty, the voice of the farmer broke the silence. “Get to it, ya bunch of slack-jawed yokels!” he hollered at them from halfway across the field. Arty wondered at the logic of the man’s verbal assault, considering the gumboots and overalls he sported so innocently. He didn’t have time to fathom the strangeness of the farmer’s words, however, as Bruce shoved a large white bucket into his arms, muttering, “Betta work, bro. Can’t drink ya pay if ya got no pay to speak of eh?” So time began to move onward again, as Arty moved up the rows of tomato stalks, pulling the ripe from the supple green branches, recalling from somewhere that anything green was to be left alone, including the unripe tomatoes themselves. The sun journeyed lazily across the sky, and Arty found the surreal morning beauty had vanished, replaced with a relentless bath of heat that made him squint and sweat. Particularly when Bruce called lunchtime the midday sun appeared to have transformed into an angry beast, beating the workers with it’s hot rays until they were parched and burnt. Luckily for Arty, Bruce shared both his water supply and his food with the young man during lunch, for which he was extremely grateful, feeling that if the elderly aborigine had not done so he may have simply collapsed into the dusty red earth. “But you’re buyin’ me a tinny on pay-day, eh?” Bruce warned him jokingly. “I’ll buy you a six-pack,” Arty replied gratefully. “Ha!” Bruce laughed. “Not all the same! You were a big tight-wad before, bro!” “I can’t remember that,” said Arty. That sent Bruce into hysterics, and he laughed all the way through the rest of the afternoon. Arty, meanwhile, reacquainted himself with the pain of a day’s picking. His fingers were beginning to sting, reminding him that he normally wore thin gloves for picking, in order to avoid touching the insecticide sprayed by a small plane over the crop before the pickers arrived. It wasn’t long, however, before his back was aching, and the sun was dipping in the west, and he forgot all about the sting. The farmer trudged through the field waving his arms, and Bruce yelled hoarsely that it was time to go. Upon returning to the edge of the field, Arty found another ute beside the first. The farmer greeted the young man who stepped out of it and took a leather bag out of his hands. The small crowd of workers gathered around the farmer, and a short but swift smile graced his face for just a moment. Then he began tossing small yellow packages to each of his pickers, one after another. Arty was the last to catch a package, looking dubiously at it when it found its way into his hands. “What, ya don’t know what ya pay looks like?” the farmer jibed at him. “Crikey, mate, get a freakin’ haircut! All that blonde hair’s clottin’ yer brain!” Everyone laughed, and Bruce said, “Thanks for the pay, Mista Connelly, but Arty won’t need ‘is! He’s got amnesia and he can’t remember how to spend it!” “Too bad for you, Bruce, he’s still keepin’ it!” farmer Connelly laughed this time. “He’s not gonna keep his head if I have anything to say about it,” a gravelly voice snarled out of the little gathering. “Cause I’m gonna take it off.” “What?” surprise caught the group, and they stepped away from the owner of the voice. Staring vehemently at Arty was the short, bearded man he had nearly met that morning. The severe anger in his brown eyes shocked Arty, and he wondered what he had done to infuriate the man so. “Um,” Arty wasn’t sure what to say. “Shut your face!” the man’s wiry muscles contorted with his anger. “ I thought the lads got rid of you! Thought a beating’d be enough to run your hippie butt outta town! But no, here you are, and with bloody amnesia. Christ!” “Look,” Arty started to worry what he had done that head earned him the beating. “I don’t know what I did, but I can’t remember, and I’m really sorry. How can I make it up to you?” “Yeah, calm down, Bob!” Bruce put in. “Stay out of it, Brucie!” bearded Bob snapped at the old man. “You’re a good bloke and I don’t wanna hurt you, so back off alright?” “Look, what have I done?” Arty demanded. “It can’t have been that bad.” “You’re a long-haired turd!” Bob spat. “We told you to leave town. Don’t like your type round here, you get it? Dumped you up on the highway, but no, you wouldn’t listen, you had to come back here and show your ugly face didn’t you?” Without further warning, Bob leapt forward and swung a wide punch at Arty’s face. Arty leaned sideways, and the hard, dirt-caked fist missed him by inches. It was followed by a flurry of successive blows, all of which Arty ducked and weaved away from, surprising himself with his own agility. Bob snarled and kicked; Arty met Bob’s leg with his own shin, and Bob grunted with pain. Still, the older man would not relent, and came again at Arty, the glint of a pocket knife bringing deeper danger to the proceedings. Arty dodged a vicious knife-swipe, and punched Bob’s nose. Blood spilt from the impact of the blow, and Bob yelped with pain, his eyes watering involuntarily. Screaming with rage, he launched knife and body at his young adversary; Arty dodged, landing a slip-hit while Bob was still airborne; Bob yelped again, landing behind Arty with the younger man’s foot in the nape of his neck, his face in the dirt. “Don’t move,” Arty warned him loudly. “I’m going to move away quickly, alright? Then it’s over, okay?” “Okay,” Bob burbled into the earth. Arty jumped away from the prostrate figure, coming to rest a good three paces from his defeated enemy. Bob pushed himself slowly, to his knees, spitting dirt and blood. His face was twisted into a snarl, but he said nothing, concentrating on standing with what little dignity remained to him. “Come on, Bob,” Mister Connelly said gruffly. “Now he didn’t do nothing to ya, and ya settled it man to man. Let’s go home, right?” “Right,” Bob let the snarl fall from his face, and stalked to the utility, clambering over the tailgate with practised ease. “Just get a haircut would ya?” the farmer yelled at Arty. “Can’t ya see what yer stupid hair does to people?” “Sorry,” Arty apologised, staring at the ground. “Right!” hollered Connelly. “In the truck then!” The pickers piled in, Arty carefully seating himself at a distance from Bob. The roar of the motor, coupled with the dust pouring from the rear of the vehicle, soon obscured the field as they sped away from the farm. Bruce explained loudly to Arty that they were returning to their campsite, where all the workers slept while awaiting their next day’s work. He also informed the young man that he had lost his memory in a small town in northern Queensland, Australia, better know to the locals as Bowen. The old man’s articulation of the surrounding area, including a run-in with the police over next-to-nothing at nearby Horseshoe Bay, drew a laugh from the group. The youth decided that Bruce was a very likeable person. However, as Arty scanned the grinning faces, he realised that Bob was still staring at him, malignant viciousness bugging his eyes nearly out of their sockets. “Hey, Bob!” Arty called to him, to which Bob responded with an upraised middle index finger and an even more disturbing stare. “Bob, come on! Can’t we just be mates?” Mateship was too much for Bob. He jumped to his feet, flicking his knife to sharpened attention. Taking a leaping step toward Arty, he swung the little blade downward, missing Arty’s face by a hair’s breadth as the ute hit a pothole. As Bob struggled to regain his balance, the ute encountered a deeper hole in the road, and he was flung from the tray to the gravel behind. “Bloody hell!” Bruce bashed on the rear window of the truck, and farmer Connelly pulled to a halt. When they returned to Bob, the farmer called out that he had a broken leg, and two broken arms. When accused of foul play, Arty sat stunned in the tray-back, unable to defend himself. Bruce spoke for him, however, telling the farmer the truth of the matter. So Mister Connelly didn’t stay at the campsite when they arrived; instead he drove Bob into town, apparently to better medical facilities. He was still cursing the unfortunate effects of long hair on the general populace as he sped out of the campsite, spraying the entire area with dust. “Well, dust for dinner tonight!” Bruce joked. “Shut up, Bruce,” said the tall man who had neither introduced himself nor intervened in any way since the morning. Now, however, he turned to Arty with a grin on his face. “Someone had to give it to that guy. Couldn’t be better than a hippie surfer from the south.” “I don’t get it,” Arty protested in confusion. “What’s his problem? And that farmer? Is my hair that bad?” “You should take a look at it,” the grinner said good-naturedly. “You’re a bit of a pretty boy. Slack-jawed yokels don’t take kindly to that sort of thing.” “I suppose,” Arty replied weakly. “We don’t like that kind of thing round here,” the man imitated a southern American accent with comical precision, and Arty laughed. “I’m Bill, by the way. I’m from the deep south, Melbourne-like ya’ll.” “Arty,” the young man responded, laughing still. “I know,” Bill said, resuming his standard Australian. “Anyhow, you’re welcome to spend some time with us at our fireplace tonight. Oh, and your tent is that little brown pyramid thing on the far side of the campsite; over that way amnesia-boy.” So Arty found his way to the largest fire in the campsite, settling himself beside Bruce as night fell. He wondered aloud why no-one had gone into town to cash their pay checks; the answer was tomorrow. Cigarettes were passed around, Arty assuming this was normal. He seemed to recall however that he normally refused, and so continued to do so. He must have been right, as no-one commented. The talk around the fire he found particularly tiresome, its focus largely the working week, which he quickly gathered was a vast conglomerate of dust, sweat and tomatoes. As he listened further to the inane chatter that came out of the mouths of several people he had not yet met, Arty was overcome with a feeling of morose pointlessness. So he left the fire and walked to his brown tent. Unzipping the front flap, he stepped in, ducking to avoid the low angular roof. Searching blindly in the dark, he discovered a small torch, and switched it on to reveal a meagre store of food and clothing, several blankets and a camp dishes, along with an empty wallet under a pillow. The bewildered young man wondered at his direction in life prior to losing his memory. Seating himself amid his apparent possessions, he looked down at his wallet. It was cheap, with a peculiar picture of a humanized, cola-drinking kangaroo stamped on the side. Light stabbed Arty’s eyes, and a flood of disjointed memories crushed into his mind. Images of beaches, of sandcastles, water, so much water! His hands thrust into pure white sand, the cool of the lower layer contrasting the sun-baked top; singing quietly to himself as birds screeched overhead and giants ran laughing into the waves; palm trees, caravans, the smell of coconut oil, the huge man and woman smiling down at him as they held each other close. Then, more light, and he realised that he was staring into his torch. Clicking it off, he blinked away the afterimages and stepped out of his tent. “What ya doin’ bro?” Bruce’s aged, cracked voice surprised him. The old man had lit a fire close by Arty’s tent, outside his own. “You been in there a long time.” It occurred to Arty that Bruce’s accent and manner of speech seemed to differ depending on the subject, but he let it pass, seating himself in front of the ancient gentleman’s meagre blaze. “I had a memory,” Arty said. “Lost of strange images of beaches and I think maybe my parents.” “Probably right,” commented Bruce. “Don’t worry too much eh?” “What makes you think I’m worrying?” Arty’s reply drew a chuckle from Bruce. “That’s a tough one,” he replied with good-natured sarcasm. “Possibly that look on your face, eh?” “What look?” “This one.” Suddenly Arty was staring into the face of a stranger. A gaunt youth in his early twenties looked at him through the firelight, his near-platinum hair falling to his shoulders with the grace of a waterfall. The wide, blue-green eyes were complimented by a sharp nose and high cheekbones. The thin mouth, characterised by an upturned upper lip, was frowning in disapprovingly, lending an almost frantic look to the entire face. Thin dark eyebrows arched in surprise as Arty realised he was staring at a shaving mirror, incidentally one that reflected a nearly hairless face, only blonde tufts poking out of a rounded chin. Arty regarded the deep, passionate urgency that ogled him from inside the cracked looking glass, held by hands far steadier than the age Arty presumed of their owner. It seemed that Bruce was right, he was a worried-looking young man. He had every right to be, his private voice told him; after all he had just been beaten senseless and had lost his memory. “You seen enough of Arty for one night, brudda,” Bruce told him, withdrawing the mirror and dropping it in his pocket. “But I gotta ask ya. What do ya think of ‘im?” Arty considered the question for a moment before answering, “He looks like a poet. And he looks worried.” “You damn right!” Bruce yelled across the flames at him, before throwing his head back and gazing at the stars.
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Copyright © 2004 T J Rintoull |