Cicadas

Take a look at him. The wayward child. Sitting on the bus station bench, blank face. Headphones on, drumming his fingers. He’s listening to music at a real loud volume. Like, at a “distract you from your shame and pain so you don’t have to think about them” kind of volume. That’s what he’s doing, for sure, I know him. As if he can drown them out. As if he can drown out what he’s done. 

But let’s not get into that. Old wounds. Your brother travels all this way to see you, you try to make it a nice visit, not a brawl. 

So I stop staring and jog down the stairs to him and we’re reunited. I give him an enthusiastic hug, because I’m the forgiving type. He returns a half-squeeze, one uncertain arm hanging like it’s been tranquilised. Whatever.

“Mason,” I say, looking him over. Heavy, taciturn eyes. Shaved face, smooth as eucalyptus bark. Hair a blaze of black flame. Strong — just like me.  

“Your hair is long now,” I say. 

“Tom. And yours is short.”  

“Maybe people can tell us apart for once.” I run a hand over my cropped head.

We look at each other for a while, like a dog and a seal who want to be friends, searching for a common language. Eventually I say, “I need coffee and breakfast. Come on.”

Bus station cafe fare suits me fine. Mason watches me hungrily eat and we do small talk. Is he working? Yes, in some office job. Is Adda, his wife, well? Getting there. I look thin; am I eating enough? Trying to. Doing my program? Yeah. 

There’s a funny thing when we go to pay. “I’m seeing double,” laughs the kid behind the counter, rubbing his eyes. 

“We’re actually the same person.” I put my arm around Mason’s shoulder, pointing between our faces. “Only I’m the good part and he’s the evil part.” We all laugh. Actually, Mason doesn’t laugh; he just stares at the counter. 

Mason pays. Probably makes him feel good. Maybe every little gesture adds to the penance piggy bank. 

Outside the station there’s that moment where we wonder what to do, and that’s when Mason decides to say, for some reason, “Tom, I need to talk to you about Nan.” He heaves it out like he’s been holding his breath or something. 

But my mind is elsewhere. “I really want some fresh air. Let’s walk out to the river bridge.”

He looks as if I suggested Buckingham Palace and says, “Well…when do you have to be back?” 

“Not ‘til three.” 

He looks down at his nice shirt and pants. 

“Come on, you’ll be fine.” I stride away. 

It doesn’t take long until towering eucalyptus replace the town’s ageing buildings. The air smells wet and hot and it rings with the deafening drone of cicadas. 

We follow the old railway line. Prickly weeds devour its edges and spill across the tracks. I step along the rotting sleepers, jumping the occasional gaps, just like Mason and me, twenty years ago. We’d play here on long summer evenings after school, collecting interesting rocks or chasing lizards, then run home in the twilight, greeted by the smell of baking fish and finger limes. What have you little magpies found today, eh? The voice of Nan, hands on hips, a tough iron bark, commander of the kitchen. 

Nan, who Mason betrayed. 

“Adda might come and visit you too, but first we need to talk.” Mason’s voice is almost inaudible in the pulsing music of the cicadas. 

“Look at these cicada shells,” I call, poking at the dry skins still clinging to a trunk, their former owners long since escaped. “Imagine if people shed their skins like this. We’d leave behind these dry statues of ourselves, scattered around the place. And maybe someone would come along and find your abandoned shell, maybe they’d want it, and they could take it and wear it, because it’d be better than the one they already have.”

“Creeps me out. You’d never know who was who.” Mason brushes his hand across several shells and they crumble. “I like how they break through this old armour and fly away, all new and fresh.” 

The bridge is strong and steel, built for coal trains that died decades ago. Mason looks over the parapet to the swollen, muddy river, maybe ten metres below, then stops next to me, his nice shirt soaked in sweat. 

I climb up onto the parapet and begin walking along it carefully. 

“Remember we used to do this?” 

“We were stupid kids. Don’t do that now, Tom, come down.” Mason follows on the ground beside me, arms held like a spotter. 

I stretch my arms like a tightrope walker and speed up. 

“You know,” I say, “with all of our twins stuff — like how we’d pretend to be each other, like how I did those exams for you and you did my driving test—” 

“Other way ‘round.” 

“— With all that, I used to wonder sometimes, if I fell off this bridge and died, would you actually die as well?” 

“Well, I might die inside from sadness, but not from anything else.” 

“Don’t you feel there’s something magical connecting us, like, if one of us does something significant, somewhere the other is doing it too? You know, when my horse or dog would win I’d always think of you. I’d think that somewhere you would be feeling that same elation, like I’d given you something special.” 

“Well, that’s one of those things we’ve never agreed on.”

I look past my toes at the river, my head spinning for a moment. “Can you believe we jumped in from here once?” 

“No, I jumped in, you chickened out.” Mason looks a bit guilty when he makes this claim — which is a lie, by the way, I did jump in, I remember it clearly — but he also seems emboldened and he continues, “OK Tom, can you come down, we need to talk about Nan.” 

I sit down on the parapet. “Ok fine. Talk about it. Are you going to say you’re sorry?”

He stares. “Me? For what?” 

He should know for what. All Nan wanted was for us to stay together. We owed that stoic woman the respect. But there wasn’t enough in this town for Mason. Nan would always talk about it. My littlest magpie left the nest. And: How could you do this to me? Each time I could see her shrink and crumble a bit. Until she finally died. 

“For leaving us. For what that did to Nan.” 

Mason looks like he’s been slapped in the face. A couple of ravens fly over, lamenting.

Then there was the funeral. I remember it clearly. The dark and drizzle. The few of us that cared for Nan stand like murky, black ghosts in the rain. I don’t mind the rain, it feels right somehow, and it hides my tears as the coffin descends into the earth. I’m not watching the coffin though. I’m staring right at that void where there is no murky ghost, nobody, only rain. It’s the gap where Mason should be standing. I hate that gap. 

I feel the words rise, propelled by the hatred. “That’s what killed her. You left and the sadness killed her.” 

Mason is like a kettle that finally boiled. 

“You…” He points a shaking finger at me, stammering. “You, with your reinventions and your…impersonations. You hide inside this…cocoon of delusions. Listen to me.

“That night I came down, Nan called me — she couldn’t call you because you were the problem — and I came straight away. The house was all dark. Things were strewn around. Nan was lying there on the floor. She looked like she was discarded trash, all crumpled. It was horrible. ‘Who would do such a thing?’ I thought.” 

He’s babbling lies, so I stand and walk along the parapet again. 

“No, you listen and understand for once.” Mason’s voice quivers and his eyes flash. He’s following me, pacing next to me, pointing. “Nan just kept saying, ‘How could he do this to me?’ Her drawers were still all messed up from where you rifled through them. What did you do with her things? Tom? Sell them? Then lose it all again? Look where it’s got you. 

“I put Nan to bed but she never recovered. I bet you’ve never seen Nan cry before. Well, she sobbed through the night, ‘my own flesh and blood!’ It was that next morning she had the stroke. You broke her heart and it killed her. Hey, stop looking away, Tom. You need to say it. Acceptance is the first step, you know that. We need to hear that you’re sorry, Tom. Or we can’t be a family.” 

“No, I was here looking after her—” 

“I looked after her, not you. Do you even know about the bank? Or about her hip?” Mason shakes his head and puffs like he’s blowing out a candle. “We’re not little twins playing pranks. You can’t pretend that you’re me, Tom. What I’ve done belongs to me, and what you’ve done—” 

That’s the last thing I hear Mason say, because that’s when I fall off the bridge.

I’m falling as slow as a leaf. It’s peaceful. Look up there at Mason’s stupid, shrinking face, staring over the parapet, mouth still flapping.

I notice something else falling too. No, not falling, flying. Following me. It’s a swirling gyre of cicadas in glinting metallic armour. There must be thousands. They’re like a galaxy of stars. Only they drone, and the drone sounds like a million voices, speaking the words of a lifetime, all the truths and illusions. My ears ring. I’d prefer to reach the water below. But the swarm stretches like a celestial hand and catches me. 

Tiny legs and claws lift me. I brush them off, but they are relentless. They carry me to the horrible place. It’s silent. 

There I am in the dark corridor. Nan blocks my way. She’s about to say the worst words and I have to listen. Please, Tom, don’t do this to me. And she cries. But I ignore her and shove her aside, opening the drawers. 

I still haven’t reached the water.  

Now I see again that dark, drizzly day. The black statues, the coffin descending. There’s that gap in the family lineup, the void. And…there’s Mason, standing beside it. Head lowered, eyes closed, like he’s making a wish. His tears mingle with the rain. 

Mason’s there, but where am I? 

There I am, watching from the hillside far above the cemetery, amongst the trees. Bottle in hand, throat burning, shirt muddy and bloody. Alone. I’m still feeling that boiling rage. But the rage is not for Mason. It’s for… me. 

The cicadas lay me in the water. A fading light glows through their iridescent wings as they depart. Then, beautiful darkness.  

My head aches but I’m not dead. When I open my eyes, I’m with Mason on the bank, both of us drenched, his arms are wrapped around me. Both arms this time.

“Jesus, brother. I thought that was two of us dead in a year. Why’d you do that?”

I say: “I’m sorry.” 

We walk back to town leaving wet footprints on the railway sleepers. The trees are quiet. Mason asks twenty times if I’m alright and I tell him I am. That’s all he says.

At the bus station, Mason says, “So, when can you next get another day?”

“Once every fourteen days if it’s to see close family.” 

In my pocket I have an intact cicada shell and I put it into Mason’s hand. “Here you go. Take it back.” 

He studies it. “Someone else’s shell you wore, or old armour you don’t need?”

“Both.” 

We look at each other for a while. Eventually, Mason says, “You look after yourself. Call us. Think about what I said.” He puts a hand on my shoulder. I nod. He leaves.

I walk out the front, where the corrections officer waits. He doesn’t look away from his phone as he unlocks the back then climbs into the driver’s seat. 

Take a look at me. Sitting there alone in the prison transport van, blank face. Headphones off, fingernails digging into my thighs. It’s so utterly quiet. I feel naked. I feel fresh and new.

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