SYD
Kate
tidied the counter, reset the date, mentally braced herself for the day.
Lawyers began to drift in and out, and the first round of starters could be
heard out in the corridor, a loud one, a drunk one, a teen with the usual chip
on his shoulder about it being everyone’s fault but his.
John put
his head in the door, nod and a smile, said he was just checking to see who was
on but Kate knows he’ll do it ten more times during her shift, making sure
she’s okay, his presence alone all that will be needed most times to quell a
belligerent ‘client’. It looked like it was going to be a fairly normal Monday
in the courts.
But today
Kate found herself - waiting. As if waiting for Syd. Who was never coming back.
Syd
could’ve been fifty and he could’ve been seventy. A lifetime of work with
cattle and sheep on dry dusty plains had aged his skin into cracks and crevices
and eroded gullies. His hair was wiry and had probably never actually been
under control, covered with a hat most of his life. His eyebrows and his
earholes sprouted random hair, even his eyelashes were crooked from having hit
a hard life face on. His whole head in fact looked like a magpie’s nest had
been built on top of his tough little frame. His old coat, check shirt, tired
strides that had once been half a suit, all hung off him like his body had
shrivelled inside them just a little since he’d put them on twenty years ago.
He’d been
witness to a fairly brutal murder, but he didn’t seem fazed by it at all
because he didn’t seem to expect anything different from his fellow human
beings. But he kind of adopted Kate and the front office while he waited and
waited for the inexorable wheels of justice.
He tried
to ignore her the first day or two, but she eventually wore him down, gave him
a “Good morning Syd” the same as she did for the security men, the in-and-out
lawyers, the other support staff. He only grunted the first few times, a sound
that said it all, but after a while he seemed to decide that this ‘girlie’
mightn’t be too bad, might have a brain cell or two, and bit by bit he let a
few selected pieces of himself slip.
Everyone
was either ‘sport’ or ‘girlie’, as these seemed to be the only two gender words
he knew. And when he did speak his voice was always over-loud, certainly for a
smallish room, as if he’d honed his talking style out in a thousand acre
paddock, pitched always to catch the attention of the dog.
He lived
in a rented house opposite the crime scene, with what sounded like a life-weary
woman in about her mid thirties, but never touched on the nature of the
relationship, although he did drop once that he had a part aboriginal son who
was always in trouble, but he never offerred any explanation on that either.
Mostly
he’d sit back in the waiting room chair, legs out, arms folded, eyes apparently
shut, but Kate could see the old fox’s eyelids were ajar, just a touch, his
eyeballs constantly moving, taking in the whole come and go around him, and
every now and then when one of the police officers came in for information he’d
stir, and make an abrupt judgement on the world as he saw it -
“There’s
drongos, there’s dingos, and then there’s fucken coppers!”
At first
those that were regularly in and out reacted predictably, scowled their
disapproval, but after a few days of this even they came to have a grudging
respect for the old man.
Kate just
happened to be out on the entrance steps that morning, looking to hurry up a
late arrival, a favour to a young duty solicitor who was already on the wrong
side of the magistrate.
She saw
Syd coming, and was about to go into their small exchange - “G’morning Syd...”
(Grunt) – when he stopped and put out one hand, as if needing to steady
himself, then sort of thumped at his chest and crumpled in a heap, right in
front of her, his eyes and his mouth wide, like he knew.
Kate
yelled “Get an ambulance!” at the nearest passing body and knelt down by the
old man to reassure him, and he grabbed her arm, and his mouth was now working
for air as she hefted him up onto her lap, but his eyes were already beginning
to see the other things, the things only a dying person sees. Kate rocked a
little.
“S’okay
Syd – ambulance is...”, but he was now looking straight up at her.
“Hmm...Mumma...”,
breathing it out, and urgently, “Mumma...”, and Kate rocked some more, leaned
down so only he could hear.
“It’s
alright son... I’m here... I’m here...”
“Mumma...”,
he breathed again, and his grip on her arm relaxed, and just the hint of a
smile came.
“Mumma...”,
he said again, but softly, and his eyes closed, and he let go of his life.
© T. R. Edmonds 2016
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