Sons Search Chapter I

A young man on a search for a friend who is officially missing is thrust into circumstances which bring to mind their first meeting ten years earlier and the wonde relationship of his boyhood

Remember I am sending you out like lambs among wolves, carry no purse, no haversack, no sandals, greet no one along the way. When you go into a household say peace be with you, if a man of peace lives there your greeting will be upon it, if not your greeting will come back to you.

Matthew 10. vs10-12

 

 

SEARCHING FOR JONAS MACARTHUR       (WORKING TITLE)

 

 

 

Chapter One

 

 

MISSING PERSONS

 

Would anyone knowing the whereabouts of Mr. Jonas Walter Macarthur, a truck driver formerly of Pendle Hill, now believed to be living on the far north coast of NSW please contact Robinson and Davis Solicitors, 776 Pitt   St Sydney

 

Roger folded his newspaper cut out and put it into the back pocket of his jeans. Someone else was looking for Jonas. A person or persons prepared to go to the trouble and expense of hiring solicitors placing advertisements and probably hiring private detectives.

This old piece of crumpled newspaper was comforting proof that the disappearance of Jonas Macarthur was troubling to others as well as himself.

He needed to make more of an effort to find and speak to the author of his innocuous little notice. It invoked many questions for which he would love even an outside chance of an answer. This person, or more likely persons, may have learned things about Jonas’ recent movements than he did not know. Was the mention of North coastal NSW a mere guess or did they have a better idea where he was than him?

He hesitated, he procrastinated. In his heart he knew he wouldn’t be contacting them. This person? These people, whoever they were, would learn nothing from him. There was something going on, something hidden between the lines of the add that he did not like. Why did they want to find Jonas? Public efforts such as this to contact an individual  often pointed to some good fortune, an inheritance, a loved one n estranged loved one who is seeking reunion, but unfortunately the language, gave no clues to this  and all in all was far too foreboding. How he would have loved to see phrases like `will hear good news’ or `will learn something to his advantage’.

He continued walking up the Great western Highway, towards the western Sydney suburb of Pendle Hill, his home. He still called it home in his thoughts, although he had no good reason to. There was no point in returning `home’. Returning to his father, a father who never cared for him, who always preferred his brother Gary. Gary had been a talented sportsman and a better scholar. Gary had been the good son, the son he could be proud of. Well he could keep Gary. And he was only returning to his father now on the off chance he might have learned something more on Jonas’ whereabouts. It was a visit that was all, for the sake of a friend he did not wish to know more of Gary’s Rugby League career, and it was too late to hope Graham might start being a father to him now. Gary was his son and they deserved each other.

He took the notice out of his pocket and read it once more, then returned it. If he pulled it out many more times it would shred into a mass of  paper fibres, already it was it was barely readable .

He knew, as the people who placed the add must also know, that they were running out of time in which to find Jonas. His father, was a detective, and he’d told him that even after the first week, the chances that a missing person will be found are reduced dramatically, six months and the likelihood they’ll ever be found is next to nothing. “Generally such people are only found if they have been hiding and for whatever reason they themselves decide to come forward.”

 He had to find his friend before these strangers did. He had to be the one to find his best friend. He owed it to Jonas to find him, to save him from whatever trouble he was in.

“Bee-eeeep!” A sharp shrieking horn sung out as a monster thirty tonne truck roared past him beeping its horn the noise, the pitch so loud it stung Rogers ears. The force of he wind it disturbed nearly knocking him into the raised step of the footpath. He shuddered losing the train of his previous thoughts struck by how he been so oblivious to his pungent surroundings as he walked west along the edge of the busy six lane Great Western Highway at dusk in the afternoon peek traffic period.

It brakes shrieked. `He’s going to hit the Ford Laser in front!’ Roger yelled.

Thankfully  the huge Kenworth semi-trailer swerved into the middle lane causing several cars to break but missing  the small  car that had stopped in front of him.

Roger walked faster, he felt his heart pounding faster inside him.”Stop you b*****d damn you! Do you want to kill somebody” If he had the decency to stop he’d give him a piece of his mind. He wanted to read the licence number of that semi trailer, but by the time he had collected himself the truck was far away.

Yet while he cursed the driver he knew he should have been back on the grassy footpath area away from the road and the Laser should not have pulled up so quickly!

`Calm down Roger!’  He reprimanded himself.  What good would it do if by some miracle he did stop? What would you say to him? He’s not Jonas.

Déjà vu. Damn déjà vu! He stared into the high volume service garage immediately at his left but this was even more eerie as it was not the unfamiliar masquerading as the familiar it was the familiar as randomly governed by mere chance as the unfamiliar. The place was the same the happenings were eerily the same time. Perhaps that truck had been meant to kill him but some force out there in the infinite beyond, some saintly spirit had saved him. No he didn’t believe in stuff like that. He didn’t believe in astrology or voodoo.

Ten years before his stars every last atom of his cosmic dust must have aligned to exactly the same position as now. In 1980 when another huge Kenworth truck had thundered past him almost knocking him over on this road no more than twenty metres from   where he now stood.

Back then it had been one of the few high volume self serve petrol stations in existence. He recalled how as a schoolboy of ten he’d been trying to count the number of cars going through each pump, or picking out say a falcon ute as it drove from the station and trying to recall the pump it had filled at, in short simply occupying himself as boys do. He also recalled how he’d felt then as he’d walked the same busy highway towards his family towards his home, then as now feeling he’d be unwanted there, an outcast.

             He hadn’t been running away from home. Definitely not! All he’d been doing was walking in the direction of his home. He’d walked for a couple of hours since school had finished in the direction of his home. Meticulously passing through every park, every convenience store, every service station, dragging a which he could do in twenty minutes  out into a two hours. What was the point of going home? His father would ask him about the class test. He would tell him his teacher had told him he needed to work much harder, and failed him. He would ask him if he went to training with the Local Rugby League team. Roger hoped he could find the strength to admit he hadn’t.

His father would threaten to take the strap to his backside His father often threatened beatings which didn’t come. But he would yell and scream at him. And maybe lock him in his room. He couldn’t face this, he had to find some way of avoiding  his father tonight, there had to be some chance the old man was not home, or at least some way some hope  he could sneak into his bedroom without being seen.

He walked along the edge of the road just outside the garage now as he’d done back then. The traffic the same chaotic peak hour rush had hardly changed in the ten years; cars sped like maniacs in a vain effort to get in front of the car next to them as if the entire road system were a grand prix circuit. Nothing had changed in ten years and he found himself staring up ahead half expecting to see the big truck that had passed him only as few minutes before parked beside the road a short way ahead.

As soon as he broke into a jog he stopped again, stopped as if his feet had suddenly been cemented to the ground and he could not move because this was the spot where ten years back the Kenworth that had roared by him. The same scene that had played out again only a few minutes earlier.

 

                                 ****

Back then though unlike now the driver had stopped.  

“B*****d. What were you trying to do, kill me!” Roger then a feeble ten year old schoolboy had screamed into the ether but instead of seeing the offending truck disappearing over the next hill he was shocked and frightened when it manouvred to a stop, only sixty metres or so in front of him.

He got himself off the road and back on the footpath quickly. And walked with his head to the left determined not to look at the truck or its driver. He was wary of every step he took, he was walking as fast as he could yet each step seemed to take an eternity; he was aware of every stone, every grain of dirt that under his shoes, anything to take his attention away from the truck.

He walked past it, yards past before he turned round and walked back, the driver had stopped to see him to reprimand him and he probably deserved it, there was no escape. He lifted his head and glanced upwards, to the cabin.

“That was a stupid thing to do wasn’t it son.”

The driver looked big, strong and muscular, the driver was Jonas but he was not angry as Roger had feared. Although his expression was stern, his face seemed friendly in a natural he seemed to be beckoning Roger and while he had thought of running away  he now wanted to climb the ladder and hop into the cabin with him.

“Well!”

Er sorry sir yes. It was stupid of me to walk on the road. I was naughty and I could have been killed.”

“Hey I’m not your mother kid. Just yes will do.”  He paused. Roger wanted to say something back to him, but what? It was easier, and far more sensible, to walk calmly and briskly away.

But his shoulders slumped as he began to walk, he dragged his feet like he had nowhere worthwhile to go .The demeanour he did not want when intending to convey to the driver he was confident and wanted nothing to do with strangers.

The driver started his engine and turned his eyes back to the busy highway, the beam his lights over the highway to the north west almost a constant stream and it was a few minutes before the truck could join it. Roger, had walked some distance before once again it was roaring past him, he shuddered but was relieved momentarily that he was thundering away from him. Until? S**t! He exclaimed to himself that damn driver was stopping again.  He was frightened  He looked for a side street. He could run away and the driver would not be able to alight quickly enough to find and pursue him. But in his heart he wanted the driver to catch him, he wanted to get inside that truck and be taken somewhere away from here . He already liked and trusted him.

“Get in. I’m taking you home.” He surprised Roger as he again stood alongside the cabin.

“I don’t think I should. My mother told me never to accept lifts with strangers.”

“Your mother sounds a wise woman. Okay go on your way then, good luck my boy. ”

And with this he immediately trusted this driver. He made his way up to the cabin before he could take off again. He’d ask him to take him to his father, at the least it was better than walking.. Or could he dare to hope this driver might take him somewhere else!.

“You were running away from home, weren’t you ?” The driver snapped as soon as he was in the cabin.

“There was no one at home when I arrived from school. I went for a walk and now I’m on my way home again.”

“Good that’s where I’m taking you”

“Well when ya get there my father probably won’t be home anyway.” Roger was bitter and was suddenly fighting back tears.

“Hey” He stopped the truck and put his arms gently round Roger. “Hey you’re not with your father at the moment, You’re in my truck, here with me. I have to take you home. But I give you my word I will look after you.

Roger smiled. He did more than smile,  happiness radiated out from him, lighting the boy up  inside as his new friend hugged him an extra warm hug before starting the truck again.

“My name’s Jonas.”

“I’m Roger.”

He fell in love immediately with the man but also with his truck, with the big Kenworth. He loved its power as it thundered along the road, in charge of all and everything that might fall under the huge shadow it cast. He loved how he sat up so high in the cabin. So high the world was under him and he was a king upon a throne; you could look down on all those tiny cars rushing everywhere like the toys in his bedroom. It was a long distance from down there on the road to up here in the cabin. And up here was his domain, he was in charge.

Until now Roger had never felt in charge of anything, now he was in charge of the whole world, below him. It belonged to him. He’d never before comprehended how people could say the world belongs to you, the world is your oyster and you are in control of your owned life. Suddenly with this truck driver he’d just met and didn’t know, with Jonas he was in a new world where everything really was possible and you could have everything you wanted where he could always be happy.

“Well where do we go?” Jonas smiled.

“Oh sorry, right at the next set of lights. Then left at the second street, then left again at the third after that” Roger liked hearing himself give ut these directions confidently. He vaguely recalled his mom directing an uncle long ago when he very small. He could not remember his father giving directions or talking to him much at all for that matter.

“I cannot go down here, It’s too narrow for the truck.” Jonas said as they reached the third street. Roger was frightened his new friend would just drive off. He’d walked alone from school to the garage and was easy at the thought of stilling having more than a mile to go before he would have to confront his father and Gary, now he did not want to walk alone the length of his street. He wanted Jonas to be with him when he confronted his father.

But now Jonas was more distant. He hesitated before coming down from the cabin, a stranger he’d met only five minutes ago who might just drive off into the sunset, the way he’d been headed when he stopped on the roadside. In the truck he’d created a wonderful new world down here he was just another bloke standing beside him. Moments ago he would have driven to the ends of the earth to be with him and to permanently escape his father. Now he did not know whether he’d be prepared to walk fifty meters with him, fifty meters to his home.

“Well hurry up which way are we goin’ boy?” Jonas asked.

“We’re almost there.”

They walked to his house and in a matter of seconds were ringing the doorbell. No answer. Jonas insisted he ring it again to make sure.

“Don’t worry you can go.” He wished he could have said something to make him stay. “My father will be home soon.” And he did not want his father coming home to a strange man.

Jonas smiled at him as he rubbed a hand through his hair. “I’m sure he will be too son. With a son as good as you I’m sure he cares about you and maybe more than you give him credit for. "

  As Jonas walked off a little hesitatingly back to his truck, Roger could think of nothing at all apart from what a big man he was.` As big and wide as the  door to the cabin of his truck.’ And he recalled him standing there for only a moment in front of him. In that moment he’d wondered how he could possibly manoeuver himself through that cabin door. He ‘d watched and it had not been a problem. Just an easy walk up a small ladder for him as he ad his truck became somehow one big and powerful object together, man operating machine sure, but also went beyond mere mechanics and movement to become a spiritual as well as a mechanical object