THE ONE PERFECT DAY
(from “Myths, Sins, & Cosmic Machinery”)
She could hear her own heartbeat, felt as though her spirit was about to take wings and sail away, and for the next twenty-five years Bronnie Pritchard will hold close to her the simple completeness of this day, and believe it to be quite probably the most perfect one she had ever lived.
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Out the front of the tearooms, Hurst was sweeping his front porch, and he stopped, taking in the two of them as they coasted down out of The Glen and onto the bridge, where they paused, right at the end, front wheel actually on the very edge of the main road bitumen. For a moment the bike’s engine seemed to be the only thing alive in the world, as everything else waited.
The old man shook his head, just the smallest amount, and with what might have been a rueful smile, the way some people do when they say ‘I told you so’.
The lad had an ear turned to the girl, and made no sign he was doing anything other than waiting, waiting for her to speak. But then he moved a hand back, patted the girl’s jeans leg, then squeezed it, just above the knee.
“Which way Bronnie?”, he was surely asking, but they wouldn’t have stopped just for that. They were feeling the moment, the moment of – leaving.
He saw her nudge her whole body into his back.
“I don’t actually care – wherever...”, she’d be saying, and the young bloke blipped the engine, slipped it into gear, and girl, boy, bike, together like one thing, one completely free thing, headed out, and he returned to his sweeping.
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It was a singularly alive day, and the two of them seemed to take the entire world on the fly, their wings outstretched on its utter brightness as it streamed past them, blessing Bronnie Pritchard with the understanding of the many things Robbie had told her, about the true nature of freedom.
For the whole of the morning they simply followed the front wheel, like a pair of gypsies, out through Mt Pleasant and the vineyards of the Barossa Valley, and down onto the open country of the Murray plains. Here the long straight roads gave Robbie the chance to open up the bike, do speeds that made Bronnie’s heart thump, adrenalin-charged from the exhilaration of going faster than she had ever been in her life, hair loose and streaming out behind her, and with just enough ignorance of limits to blur her sense of what might be dangerous, where the point of fear should begin. And their eyes streamed from a wind that whipped away the words between them, making Robbie turn his head, and Bronnie to put her chin on his shoulder, joining them together at the cheek.
Under a benign sun in a sky streaked with high cloud, they toured the almond groves of Willunga, crossed the scarp, and wound through the southern dairy country, then followed the coast road by Victor Harbor and Port Elliott, on through the big gums and grapevines of Langhorne Creek, and about midday pulled into Wellington on the willowed banks of the Murray.
They climbed off stiff and bright-eyed, with Bronnie’s spirit so high a childlike joy got away from her, a burst of spontaneous emotion that in no way could be contained. She hugged Robbie right there on the road outside the shop.
“Rrrrrrr – that was...”, but she couldn’t even go close to finding the words, and pulled away, feeling just a little embarrassed at her own outburst. Robbie grinned, a big happy boyish grin, pulled her to him briefly, and kissed her on the forehead, and she knew instantly just how well he understood.
With Cokes and salad rolls and Cherry Ripes in hand, they wandered down to the lawns at the ferry crossing, where the water runs grey and lazy at this widest point of the river, just before it opens out into Lake Alexandrina. Here a longish queue of cars waited, with boats and caravans attached, circled by skirmishes of impatient school holiday kids. And scattered along the edges of the road and across the grass, parents thankful for the break lolled about to the soft lop lop sound of the river-wash in the willows, and the ever-busy waterfowl peek!-peek!-ing among the gentle eddies.
Robbie spread his leather jacket on the lawn and, elbows propped and shoulders touching, they lazed and munched contentedly, watching the pelicans sea-planing in for skim landings out on the diamond-studded water. Others waddled up the concrete apron of the punt ramp, studied them, speculated on handouts, moved on, while overhead the massive river redgums, as aloof and as detached as nobility, made the slightest of acknowledgements to the light and fluky breezes. All about was a truly soul-softening kind of a day.
Lunch finished, Bronnie collected their wrappings and bottles and took them to the rubbish bin, and when she returned he sat up, patted the ground between his knees, raised his eyebrows. For a few seconds she hesitated, their eyes locked, instinctively knowing. Knowing this was the moment. The moment things change.
She eased down between his legs, sat with her back to him, and Robbie gently pulled her in closer and put his chin on her shoulder, mouth close to her ear, which he kissed with a tenderness that surprised her. It was as if a whole new Robbie was present, and she pressed herself into him, held his arms tight with both of hers, nuzzled like a new born calf.
“You can do that again if you like”, she murmured, so he did, several times, as those around them made knowing and sidelong glances, small boys with a smirk, early-teen girls painful with envy, husbands and wives with nostalgia.
Bronnie Pritchard and Robbie Sutch held each other with that exquisite mix of generosity and lust and spiritual immersion, and as it has always been at that eternal boy-meets-girl portal, as kisses and light touches went on flowering between them, the world quickly ceased to exist, and all was perfection, and neither breathed lest the spell be broken and allow the everyday to once more take over their lives.
For this was their universal moment, the one that all true lovers enter into, once and once only, yet always attended by that small agony, the one that comes from wanting to speak, to say, but there being no words ... all there can be is a touch of fingers on the cheek ... and already the utopian door is closing ... and the new game is afoot.
© T. R. Edmonds 2016
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