Into Disintegrate

By J.R Smythe

BILLY STOUT'S BEAUTIFUL WIFE HAS BEEN TURNED INTO A TREE BUT THAT'S THE LEAST OF HIS PROBLEMS...

People in the country town of Water have been tiptoeing around him for too long, afraid of setting off his fiery temper.

When Billy becomes involved in the case of a missing teenager, his path becomes tangled with the whims of the town'

• Language: English
• Publisher: Shawline Publishing Group
• Release date: Jun 25, 2024
• ISBN: 9781923171008

J.R Smythe

J.R Smythe was born and raised in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney. He has been writing since a young age and has been an avid reader of classic literature for just as long. He is a keen cricketer and a lifelong supporter of the Parramatta Eels, hoping to one day see a premiership in his lifetime.

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Into Disintegrate © 2024 J.R Smythe

All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval syst ems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Printed in Australia

Cover and internal design by Shawline Publishing Group Pty Ltd

First printing: June 2024

Shawline Publishing Group Pty Ltd

www.shawlinepublishing.com.au

Paperback ISBN 978-1-9231-0193-7

eBook ISBN 978-1-9231-7100-8

Hardback ISBN 978-1-9231-7111-4

Distributed by Shawline Distribution and Lightning Source Global

Shawline Publishing Group acknowledges the traditional owners of the land and pays respects to Elders, past, present and future.

For Lisa.

Thanks for always believing.

1. Deforestation

A year has passed since my wife was turned into a tree. Want to know what’s worse? I don’t get a damn sniff of sympathy from anyone about it anymore. I mean, sure, when it first happened, I got plenty of cards, I got all the condolences that I could want, if they’re what you’re supposed to get. Now the best I get out of anyone is, ‘Gee, that’s too bad, Bill.’ It has only been a year, for God’s sake, the wound is still fresh! At least bring me over some meals I could freeze. What luck; the whole thing is a rot, I tell you. There’s no such thing as damned empathy anymore, no such thing as sympathy neither. None of the pathies mean anything, except maybe apathy, but that never really meant anything in the first place.

All that aside, then they expect me to explain this to my son? What am I supposed to say to the kid? ‘I’m terribly sorry, boy, your mother has been turned into a tree and that’s about all there is to it. At least you’ll get some damn fine shade this summer.’ Really? I think that would go down like a fat load of bricks. It’ll scar the poor boy, you know? I don’t want him growing up afraid to step on a stick or going for a damn bushwalk. I’d rather him just forget the whole thing ever happened, not forget her completely, mind you, just forget the stupid way she went out. I tell you, it would’ve been so much easier if she’d just got cancer and died like a normal person. No, that wasn’t her style; she always had to be a pain in the ass.

I loved her a lot, don’t get me wrong, but, Jesus Christ, she was a pain, throwing shade on me for the slightest little inconsistencies, like leaving the kid at the zoo, for example. It happened one time. One time! Not even for an hour, and I never lived it down. Of course he was fine, they have cages at that place for a reason. When I found him, he was sitting on a bench eating choc-mint ice-cream. I’m not even sure how the little bugger got it. I didn’t hear the end of that one for months afterwards.

I know I come across like a cranky bastard. I suppose I’m just bitter about what happened, but who wouldn’t be? Like I said, it has been a year since it happened and people tip-toe around the subject with me. What? Do they think I’ve forgotten her? Do they think if they don’t go near the subject it’ll slip my mind? When a thing like this happens, initially, there’s no avoiding it – it’s an elephant that’ll smash apart any conversation. I couldn’t go five minutes without someone bringing it up. I honestly felt it was magnetic, like any topic would inevitably get sucked back down to this fat elephant’s gravitational pull and shatter to pieces on its wrinkled grey hide. A year on and I have the opposite problem, everyone pretends like the whole thing never happened. They shy away and sip their drinks and shut their mouths if the conversation moves even slightly in that direction. Suddenly, cloud formations become fascinating or all eyes turn to the ground, deciding to inspect the gradient on a sloped lawn rather than acknowledge what everyone’s thinking.

The other week I was at the pub with a few mates from cricket and the word deforestation slipped out of the conversation like some unheralded taboo. I’ve never seen a group of men go so quiet so quickly. It’s like the damn word was jinxed or something, like whoever said it was going to get cut down by the axe of a drunken woodcutter.

‘What’s with the sudden silence?!’ I demanded at the table, trying to keep the mood light and all that. A lot of my time was spent pretending not to notice sudden sombre mood shifts.

‘I’m sorry, Bill, that was awful insensitive of me to go and mention a thing like that.’ That coming from my old friend Colchis. I tell you, if I’d had a machine gun, I would’ve machine-gunned the lot of them, starting with that idiot Colchis and his stumpy little sausage fingers.

‘No need to bite your tongue on account of me, fellas! How about I get the next round?’ I’ve always found that no matter how low the mood gets in a pub, a group shout is like an electric shot to the proverbial rectum. I know I said I wanted some sympathy, but do I need to get it at the cost of becoming some kind of leper? Besides, a round of drinks isn’t cheap. If anything, they’re the ones who should have been shouting me a beer.

Colchis is the one who brought me the card when it first happened. On the front was cursive writing in a gilded gold spray, reading: ‘Condolences for your loss’. Inside, he’d written a quote from some old book that I hadn’t read and don’t care about. I’ve forgotten what it said and I didn’t bother to read it. I’d have to find the card if you wanted to know. I think it’s in the bin. I’d found the whole card misleading anyway. I hadn’t lost her, in fact, I knew exactly where she was. I walk past her every day when I leave the house.

The house is the other thing: of course I thought about selling it, but the boy likes it a lot and I couldn’t just up and leave her like that. What if the next owners decided that the side veranda needs to come out a couple of metres and have her cleared off the lawn? I sleep on my left side with the curtains open; she’s the first thing I see when I wake in the morning. The boy sleeps in there with me most nights, he doesn’t like sleeping alone, and to be honest with you, neither do I. Three bedrooms and only one gets used now. If I was smart, I’d downsize, but I’m not claiming to be smart.

I got rid of the old queen-size bed not long after it happened and replaced it with two singles. Sometimes, on windy nights we can hear her out there and he’ll come over and slide in next to me. I don’t mind, and again, I don’t blame the kid, although he’ll shake like a leaf until he falls back to sleep.

***

‘How’s the kid going?’ Colchis asked me, still at the pub.

‘The kid’s fine, he’s better than me most of the time.’ I said this because it was true. Without Daphne, I used to get manic about things and she always pulled me back down to earth. She was the most grounded person I ever met. The kid is the same. I find it a strange quality in someone so young. He’s always ready to calm me down. I swear his head is so level you could play snooker on top of it. He’s like her in that way and that’s fine with me, I couldn’t imagine putting up with a child too much like me.

‘How is she? Have you had any more… incidents?’ Even my old mate Colchis was a bastard like that, tip-toeing around in conversation, like he was afraid of breaking something. Ever heard of the phrase ‘walking on egg shells’? By ‘incidents’ he was referring to the stint of vandalism that went on for about a week. Some teenagers from over by the mountain heard about what happened and started daring each other to come into my yard, like it was some kind of haunted house. First I found out about it was the next morning, when I noticed something carved into the trunk on my way past. They carved some rubbish, right on in there. I was properly cranky about it, as you could probably imagine.

I stayed up the next few nights and tried to catch them in the act, but I always fell asleep before they’d come. I ended up enlisting the kid’s help. I got him to stay up with me and we kept each other awake. Finally, I saw one of the little buggers creeping in and I bolted out the house after him with bare feet. He ran back around the corner on the next street, I caught him, but any others with him must have got away. I jumped on him and damned near broke the lad’s arm off. I was furious but I regretted it right away. I called an ambulance and sat there with him until they came. Not a bad kid, all things said and done. He’s planning on studying architecture at university next year. Even took me breaking his arm with good grace.

When the ambulance arrived, he told them that he’d fallen into the gutter because the streetlight was out and that I’d come to help. The paramedics questioned me about the bloodstain on the gutter but that was from where I’d cut my foot in the chase. They patched my foot up for me before heading off and telling me not to leave the house without shoes. Like I was going to listen to that pair.

‘Did you get them?’ the boy asked me when I returned to the house.

‘Yeah, I got one,’ I replied, taking him back up the stairs.

‘Is your foot okay?’

‘Yeah, cut it on some glass.’

That was all he said about that. Good kid, knows when to keep his mouth shut.

Unlike Colchis, who followed his question about the ‘incident’ with another one about ‘how I’m going’. Look, I appreciate the concern but I’m just fine, and if I wasn’t, what’s a question like that supposed to do to make me feel any better, anyway? He’s got a good heart though, Colchis, so I can forgive him for asking so many stupid questions all the time. There are a lot of people like that, feeling like they gotta fill the air with nonsense questions.

‘Work’s gone down the dunny,’ I replied to his stupid question with an equally stupid answer. ‘I’d be surprised if I could save up ten bucks by Christmas, but it’s good to be out on the pitch again, even if I can’t score a run to save my life.’

‘That’s good, Billy’ he said, laying a hand on my shoulder. ‘It’s really good to have you back.’

He’s a good bloke, Colchis.

2. Relocation

It was nearing time for me to leave and get back to the kid when a few of the fellas from the opposing team erupted into the pub. They’d been well into the sauce since before our match had even finished. I was more than ready to head home at this point, not being a big drinker myself. I said goodbye to Colchis and the rest of the team.

I was almost at the door when one of the fellas from the opposition stopped me and said, ‘Well batted today mate.’

I knew right away that he was playing funny buggers with me, because like he, and everyone else in the room knew, I’d gotten a duck that day. The rest of his cronies were half smiling, dopey grins of anticipation, ready for a blow up. Word about my temper must have been getting around. Couldn’t tell you how, gossip paints a nasty picture sometimes.

‘It happens to the best of us,’ I said, like an absolute wuss. I’m not one for confrontation, not because I don’t enjoy it, I just avoid it because I’m likely to take it too far more often than not, so, in this situation, I was ready to let him have his quip and leave then and there.

‘Looks like you really know your way around a piece of willow.’

Wait a minute, I thought, and froze mid-step. Was this bastard making fun of me? Like specifically me? Bad enough when you give a guy a send-off when he’s out, worse still, when you’re at him about it, hours later in the pub, but did he really just cross the line like I think he did?

‘You were so familiar with that piece of wood I thought the two of you were married.’

In situations like that, I’ve got to stay cool, I was ready to blow my top and really let this shithead have it, but I mean, I’ve got the kid to think about. He can’t have one parent rooted to a jail cell and the other one rooted to the front yard. I ignored the bastard and walked on home.

On the way back I got to thinking that maybe this whole thing with society had turned a corner. I mean, six months ago no one would dare say a thing like that to a fella in my position, no one’s that cruel. A year on though, and things have changed, sure people tip-toe around me but the fact that I’ve also become the butt of a few jokes, that’s telling me I’m at the next level in this thing. Take a win where you can get one or you’ll end up losing more than just your sanity, is what Daphne used to say whenever I’d go getting riled up about something.

The next morning, I heard the guy got what was coming anyway. After I’d left, Colchis went over there and knocked out three of his back molars. He’s a good guy Colchis, it was unnecessary, but I’m not going to whinge, another win to add to the collection.

‘Bad luck about the duck today,’ the kid said when I walked through the door. ‘At least it means you won’t be sore and tired.’ It’s like I was saying, sometimes he’s so much like her, it’s like it never happened.

***

Colchis is a good guy sure, but I tell you what, however good he is, he’s only a fraction of his old lady. This woman has no vices, I’m certain of it, she’s as tall as a bar stool and a dozen times less likely to be sat on. She keeps poor old Colchis in line, that’s for sure. The condolence card I mentioned earlier, she was behind that. No way that pork chop would have thought to get me something unless he was acting under her orders. She’s also the genius behind the frozen meals I had after it first happened, I mean, I can’t cook for peanuts and neither could Daphne, so having genuinely wholesome, home-cooked meals in the house was nothing short of a domestic miracle, it also kept me and the kid from starving to death, or contracting scurvy, whichever comes first.

She minds the kid on Saturday afternoons when Colchis and I are off throwing balls at each other. That’s whose door I’d walked through when the kid touched a sore point by mentioning my duck. Whenever Conny (that’s the old lady) minds the kid for me, she lends him out her two assistants, and does he ever make use of them. The younger one could be five or six and the older girl’s definitely seven. I only know this because she announced it to me last week. Me not remembering or caring about ages was another thing that Daphne was perpetually shitty about. I’d walk into the Colchis residence of a Saturday evening and find that the kid has the assistants packed into a cardboard box, or he’ll have them in the kitchen making God only knows what kind of dessert. Conny leaves him free reign of them whenever he’s around, I’m sure it’s because she feels sorry for him.

‘Where’s the old lady?’ I asked the kid as I walked through the door, ignoring his condolences about my ill-fated match.

‘She’s out in the back room.’ I walked past him, noting the fact that the older assistant was drawing surprisingly accurate cartoon organs on the younger one’s stomach.

I found her where the kid said she’d be.

She’d already heard me coming in and called out, ‘Bad luck today, Billy. I heard about the duck.’ How fast does bad news travel around this bloody town. The way things were going, I’ll end up getting condolence letters commiserating my lack of runs.

‘It’s fine, I don’t care anyway,’ I replied, sitting at the table.

‘Did you really throw your bat at the umpire?’

Of course I didn’t throw my bat at the umpire, I didn’t know where she’d heard that ridiculous piece of fiction. ‘No I didn’t, I’m not that stupid, and how does everyone know about the duck already?’

‘Can I do you a cuppa?’ I’ve always said this of a good person, they always know when to offer a cup of tea. We sat down at the little table, not saying much. I’m good like that with certain people, I don’t mind shutting my mouth and enjoying good company. Sometimes Daphne and I wouldn’t speak for the whole afternoon and then she’d lean over and flick a grape at my head, just to let me know she was still there.

The windy nights are the worst. I think it’s the sound of the leaves rustling that freaks the kid out. He’ll calm down eventually, when we lie together. He won’t say much about it, he’ll just fall back to sleep, but it’s not a real sleep and it won’t come until the wind settles down. A real sleep is when you know everything is as it should be in the world. I was never much chop at calming people down. If someone goes into overload, I get silly. I’ll either get way too worked up and turn it into a crusade or I’ll start making inappropriate jokes, I walk a thin line between justice and irreverence and it’s not much help to anyone, especially a little kid. Without her, I couldn’t afford to be like that, I had to play to my strengths, but I’ll get to that in just a bit.

I’d gotten three quarters through my tea before the old lady broke the silence. ‘I’ve got to tell you something and you’re not going to like it.’ I sighed and gulped down the rest of my tea, I was pretty sure that I knew what was coming. ‘We’re moving away Billy.’

I leaned back on the little wooden chair and closed my eyes. This explained why Colchis had been acting strangely, of course that sausage-fingered bastard would make the old lady break the news to me.

‘He likes it here you know.’ I meant the kid, she knew who I meant.

‘I know Bill… I know.’ Not meeting my eye.

‘Where?’

‘Japan.’

‘Fuck me.’

‘That’s the way it’s gotta be, Billy. You can’t stay in the same place your whole life, you just can’t, this town… the people around here. Given enough time, it all becomes corrosive. Routine, it’s like a leaky battery that eats you up from the inside, you blink and you’ve lost ten years. Colchis feels the same way. We’re just tired. Tired all the time. I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t tired to be honest with you. I don’t know if that’s just what getting old is, but hell Bill, we’ve got to try something.’

I was angry of course, but I had no right to be and it fizzled out, quickly as it appeared, anger is like that, unsustainable.

‘Have you told the assistants yet?’ I asked.

‘Nah, that was the deal. I told Colchis that I’d tell you if he told the assistants. I’ll end up breaking it to them as well, you know how Colchis is.’

‘He’s an ostrich, that’s what he is, always sitting around with his fat head in the sand.’

‘Will you come and visit?’ she asked, finally looking up from her tea.

‘Probably not,’ I said honestly. I knew what she was thinking: Daphne’s not going anywhere, so what’s the point staying here? But she knows I’d never leave Water, can’t tell you why and I couldn’t tell the old lady if she asked, but I knew I wouldn’t leave. We sat together for another ten minutes listening to the kid berate the poor assistants about something. We’d miss them, that’s for sure. They can’t stay here on account of me and the kid though, I wouldn’t let them if they tried.

The banging of the front door disturbed the quiet. Colchis looked as though he’d had a few beers since I last saw him, he entered the back room somewhat uncertainly and stood at the doorway. First he looked at me, then at the old lady, then back to me. He walked over to an empty teacup, ready with a teabag in it, the old lady had foretold his wants. He approached it with both hands stretched in front of him.

‘Evening, Christopher,’ the old lady said to him as he walked past.

‘Evening, Constance,’ Colchis replied looking like he was trying incredibly hard to act normally. The old lady and I watched in vague amusement as he stared intently at the kettle as it boiled. His face must have got too close to the rising steam as he suddenly yanked his head away and bashed it on the cupboard above. He continued the normal human being act until the old lady spared him.

‘I’ve told him already, if that’s what you’re worried about.’

Colchis immediately spun around and looked at me. ‘You’ll visit us won’t you Billy?’ he asked in earnest, slurring his words slightly.

‘Sure.’ I’m usually an honest guy, but I know when to call it. Lies like this aren’t even lies to be honest, they’re just unspoken truths. Colchis knows I won’t come but he’s happy to hear this. They both feel guilty I’d say, it’s because they’re decent people, the bad ones never feel guilty. He smiled and came over to the table, leaving a half-made tea on the bench.

‘I knew you’d understand Billy,’ he said, laying a hand on my shoulder.

‘How do you make that much mess making a cuppa?’ I asked him as he turned around to his brewing. The old lady was shaking her head.

‘He threw his bat at the umpire today,’ Colchis said to the old lady as though I wasn’t there.

‘I did not!’ I snapped back at him.

‘Yes, you did.’

‘I threw it and it happened to go in his direction.’

‘It almost hit him.’

‘No, it didn’t.’

‘You’ll get a ban for that.’

‘No, I won’t.’

‘Leave him alone will you Christopher,’ the old lady said as I was getting up to go. ‘Take it easy will you please Bill?’

‘Yeah Billy, make sure you let the kid down easy,’ Colchis added.

***

That night, as the kid and I were walking home, I started coughing. I couldn’t tell you where I’d got it, but I could hardly get a word in response to the kid as he prattled on about the work he’d had the assistants doing that afternoon. I was hardly listening anyway. We walked past the spot where I’d broke that lad’s arm and had to sit down in the gutter while I coughed my guts up. The kid began firmly patting my back, and surprisingly it helped, helped quite a lot. In a few minutes I was able to get it under control and I stood back up.

‘Come on, let’s go,’ I said to him as I started to walk off. The kid stayed put and I noticed he had his head slumped. He’d been so cheerful just a minute ago. Then, he cried. The kid rarely cried, even when he was a baby, I think I heard him cry maybe, three times? People didn’t believe us when we’d tell them. He didn’t cry when I left him at the zoo. Hell, he hardly cried when that whole business with her happened. But God was he crying now, it was pouring forth in waves of sobs. I didn’t know what to do, this alarmed me. So I sat back down next to him and started whacking him on the back, the same as what he’d just done for me.

‘They’re going,’ he finally managed to get out between sobs.

‘Who’s going, kid?’ I asked him.

‘The assistants.’

‘Oh… yeah, I heard.’

‘They overheard Mr and Mrs Colchis fighting on the phone about telling you. They told me just before you came.’

‘Sometimes it’s like that, kid.’

‘People leave?’

‘Yeah, people leave.’

‘Do they ever come back?’

‘Sometimes they come back.’

‘Will they come back?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Can we visit them?’

‘Sure,’ I replied. This time, I wasn’t