Chapter 7 – The Woodpecker

It seems natural here that when I flap my arms quite hard I achieve an ungainly type of upward lift, reminiscent of the awkward way a chicken may fly just long enough to almost clear a fence before crashing back down to earth in a cloud of feathers. I recall quite some time ago I used to be able to effortlessly swoop about, so high the land would look like something in Google earth and I would get scared before falling back to earth. I’d often have trouble finding my way back to the place I took off from, which was almost always the farm in Valla where I spent perhaps five years of my life between the ages 13 and 18. My memory of back then is very poor but I’m almost certain I couldn’t fly and so that means that this is a dream, not an unpleasant one, I can fly in all my good dreams- albeit in a rather ungainly chicken-like manner.

Another recurring motif in my dreams is planes crashing, I don’t recall if this occurred prior to 9/11 (which would have occurred around the time I was leaving Valla), but the sound of engines whining overhead in a dream will soon be followed by a large plane emerging over the trees and then arcing into the ground, usually into a paddock on the farm at Valla.

That isn’t happening in this dream though, and since I know it’s a dream I know I only have a few seconds before my mind wakes me up and there’s something distant telling me that I’m going to wish it hadn’t.

In this dream a gun is pushed into my back as I’m being shoved into a small walk in freezer, there’s ice sludge on the floor, I can’t feel my feet and for some reason there’s a woodpecker in the freezer tapping away at a frozen box and every time he taps there’s a resounding thud in my head.

The dream is giving way to reality, I seem to be upside down, in a car- the seatbelt digging painfully into my back, with my pants on my head and John from work standing outside my window and for a moment the reality seems distinctly less real than the dream.

Then I notice the headache and things become very painfully real. I’m in my car for some reason, it’s very cold, the windows are iced over with small water droplets and I can indeed see John from work outside the window, tapping, as he sees that I’m awake he moves away.

I flip over and so does my stomach as I grope for the door handle, my pants falling off my head, I remember something now- how apparently most of the heat escapes your body from your head, so I should put my pants on my head. Why I would have been not only thinking such nonsense but believing and acting upon it may have something to do with the empty cans spilling out with me from the back seat of the car and into my work’s parking lot. Before I have time to recall anything else I’m hunched over the drain grate in the middle of the car park feeling that acidy vomit that comes from too much booze and not enough food forcing its way up my throat, out my mouth and down the drain, filling up my sinuses as it goes.

I’m starting to wish I’d stayed in the freezer with the woodpecker.

I glance, slowly, still down on my hands and knees, around the car park. Once it stops spinning I see that there’s almost no cars, it’s very early, earlier than I’ve ever been in to work for sure, normally I show up sometime around midday, not even the boss is in yet, John must be getting an early start.

There’s a faint memory rising out of the sludge, the Harbour Bridge? I was driving over it, very late and very slow… it seemed to take me about 30 minutes to get across it. It’s a big bridge sure, but why did it take so long? My car, something was wrong with my car, it was overheating.

What was I doing crossing the Sydney Harbour Bridge last night on a work night? It’s a fair way out of my way… I turn as I stand up and see my car, the car park starts spinning again as I crash to my knees and miss the drain entirely this time, not that I was paying attention because when I’d turned I’d seen my car.

And I’d remembered.