Callum Ross-Rowland

We’re alone in the small tin shed, waiting for time to pass. Dad speaks of his late older brother, who he visited early this morning. He sat by his brother’s bedside in the hospice far from home, holding his hand, letting him know it was okay to go. His breathing was a slight wheeze that expelled the crunches of failing lungs. Dad mimics the sound.
‘Will you tell her?’ I ask.
He scoffs and then drags his cigarette. ‘It’s a little difficult when she thinks I’m him.’
I laugh too.
The skin dips under my father’s eyes, his bushy eyebrows covering the tops of his eyelids. The light above us flickers occasionally, casting shadows that hollow our faces. I look around the room as we take turns lighting a new cigarette. I try to find something else to talk about, but he wants to discuss his brother’s death. He just doesn’t know how.
‘Fucked, isn’t it?’ he says.
‘Yeah,’ I say.
He fiddles with tools on his makeshift workbench, an old fold-out ping-pong table.
‘I’m scared of being next,’ he says.
I find comfort in my father’s humanity. This marker of grief has made time stand still. In this comfort, I allow time to sew and weave my thoughts, which settles my shoulders. I sit back in the chair as I watch my father grieve his brother. I hear his thoughts as if he speaks them, and we are suspended in this small tin shed.
After some time, I return to the house and lie in bed with my partner. She asks how I feel about it all, but I don’t have an answer. I don’t share my father’s sadness, but I am sad for him. She holds me; I am unsure of what the numbness means.
I think about losing my brothers, but the pain doesn’t feel the same. I think about losing my father or mother. Dinner is tasteless tonight.
The security light flickers for an hour before I get up. Its white and blue light illuminates the backyard and fence, where I watch Dad reattach a spring to the gate he had made. I stand by the kitchen sink, looking out the window. He is quiet in his frustration.
There is something deeply intimate about sharing these moments with my father. He knows I am there, watching as he struggles with the same spring on the gate he has been fixing for a year. The spring breaks, and he replaces it, time and time again. The spring holds enough tension to resist my father’s strength. His fragile hands shake the closer he gets. It is both agonising and beautiful to watch him alleviate his pain. It slams back and hits the shed it is attached to. He places his head on it, his features lost to the deep darkness surrounding him. I wonder if he is scared.
The following morning, I walk to the tin shed. The gate swings shut behind me. The security lights turn on as I walk past. He hasn’t left since last night. It reeks of cigarettes and sweat. The sun is harsh upon my skin, attaching itself to my black clothes.
He slumps in a chair with his head to the side. His snoring is quite loud, echoing in this small space. The fan rotates slowly, grinding as it swings side to side—the shed torts and creaks from the heat as the tin walls pang from the exterior. The kookaburra I photographed yesterday now sits in a tree above us, laughing. I wipe the bead of sweat from my eyebrow and move to his chair, kicking its side.
An empty glass falls from the bench as he stirs. He gasps for air mid-snore and stares at me in shock. The neckline of his singlet is caked in cigarette ash.
‘What is it?’ he asks.
‘We’re leaving soon,’ I say.
‘Is your mother on the way?’
‘How would I know.’
He grabs his phone and calls her, fumbling the touch screen and squinting to find her name. I light a cigarette and walk outside. The phone call lasts only a moment, as she tells him she is too sick to come, and he says he understands. Nobody likes funerals.
O
On the other side of the house, I suddenly hear, ‘Callum!’ He’s calling my name.
It is strange for him to call out when he usually comes knocking on the dividing door. I walk into his side of the house, stepping over a large dog that isn’t his. I make my way past stacked dishes on a long kitchen counter, where I find him hunched over it. His breathing is shallow.
‘Are you okay?’ I ask.
A moment passes before he answers.
‘I don’t know.’
His fragile hands grip the counter, blood pooling at the tips of his fingers. His eyes bulge as he struggles to take another breath.
It isn’t long before the ambulance arrives, where he is taken to spend a night in hospital. He calls the following day to tell me he is okay. His voice breaks occasionally as he speaks about the black mass they found. He thinks it is unfair.
O
I have wondered whether my father has ever believed he is beautiful. Does he hide this behind his dark eyes and the raw wounds he has inherited from his father? I think he has stopped looking in mirrors, fearing what time has made him realise. He continues to refuse he is sick, or maybe he is accustomed to it.
I hear him cry, as he did when he placed his hand atop the coffin before it was taken away. He is scared, as all his other siblings are, of being the last one. They hold onto each other, sharing in this dread of being alone. They have never loved one another as they do now.
Author: Callum Ross-Rowland (he/him) is a Meanjin (Brisbane)-based creative writing student at QUT. He was the 2023 Literary Salon’s Photographer with his recent Diploma in Photo Imaging from Billy Blue (Torrens). He was recently shortlisted for Photographer of the Year in the Animal and Nature category and regularly photographs for Artful Heads magazine, where he captures portraits of artists from different mediums. Find him on Instagram @alrightatart.
Artist: Callum Ross-Rowland
Edited by: E.L. Maloney and Elly LaRoche