Unknown

Just a lead-in I banged up one day - sort of seguing into a story of alienation and social dislocation - allegory for the modern man....

UNKNOWN - first draft

 

 

A golden sun shone down on a Winter’s day, giving the lie to the season, and causing Eden to look for all the world like a place of magic - something that indeed it was - but not on those cold, grey, windy days that raged down from the snow-heavy Snowies to the West - or up from the deepest depths of the icy Great Southern Ocean with its link to Antarctica, and the home of Great Whites, fishermen, and abalone.  And abalone divers, some of that last legitimate and some not.

 

The robber abalone divers found it hard - as they were scooped up in the net themselves with a boot-load of poached abalone bound for the restaurant markets of Sydney and Melbourne - to understand how this could be at 3am on a cold Winter’s morning when even the witches who danced naked on Imlay Mountain - or so the legends went - were asleep near a warm fire.  They just didn’t know - or ever seem to learn - what many of the locals knew - that the Min Min lights of Eden were, in fact, surveillance drones at 73,000 feet - with eyes that could see in the dark and see so well that a number plate was a clear as day - and an abalone poacher was easy meat.

 

They found a different kind of food in the cells - for a very long stretch, and sometimes the living abalone taken back from their car boots found a new lease on life by being returned to their native sea.  Sometimes not.

 

This was the kind of day that drew the tourists - and one such family - classic Dad, Mum and two tots - the latter of about eight and six - were happily wandering through the ancient graveyard - a graveyard with stones so old that numbers were often indecipherable - and which often stretched way back to nearly the time of the First Fleet.   From 1843 - 169 years - a drop in the ocean of time that consumed men and women as quickly as that same beautiful sea that could turn so hungry without notice and still not be penalised for it.

 

Lovely green grass, beautiful clear Winter weather, and a sparkling blue ocean - what more could a pair of kids want as they wandered through the halls of stone and wooden crosses and monuments that declared that somewhere " someone had once cared?

 

“Dad”, a yell from the boy, “look what’s here!”

 

His father, startled for a moment at the urgent call, but recognizing the timbre of it as being not a call to danger " nevertheless hurried to his young son’s side.

 

The boy stood, looking at a row - or a near row since they were hardly in order or in one group together - of simple white crosses, each bearing the single inscription:-

 

UNKNOWN

 

 

 

“Daddy " who is Unknown?  Is he dead?”

 

“It’s not a person, Ted - it’s just a title they put there when they don’t know who is lying underneath the cross.  Nobody knows who’s under here for sure so they call them ‘Unknown’.  It’s usually drowned sailors recovered from the sea, who nobody knows anything about.  There used to be a lot of ships and boats here or passing by - whaling and all that - and sometimes their ships would sink, and somebody would find them later, and bury them here. ”

 

The boy looked thoughtfully at the crosses for a few moments, then at the clear and beautiful sky, and then at the crystal and glittering sea in its majestic and clean greenish blue.

 

“But Dad - how could ships sink on the water here?  It’s so nice!”

 

“Well, Teddy”, said his dad after a moment of thought, looking at the bright and beautiful sky, and giving his son a hug against a sudden chill, a common event in Eden in Winter,

 

“Not all days are like this one”.

 

*     *     *

Reviews

[ICU]

Good reading, The Grappler. It's wonderful how facts can be cobbled together to make a very interesting story.