Anna’s brother Marcus was a fast driver. He fancied himself a good driver, and perhaps he was, when he wasn’t being reckless. He had a sports-ish car with a sunroof and pop-up headlights, and he wore leather driving gloves – all the better to grip the wheel and play out the fantasy that he could be a racing car driver if he turned his mind to it, practised, put in the effort, had a mentor, and all those other things he would need to have and do to fulfil his dream.
Yet a dream it was, and as such it gave him everything he wanted. It felt good to drive. He and the car as one. What unfettered joy. As if, as a little kid, he’d just known, as he rolled his Hot Wheels across the lino, what bliss was to come.
Around town, though, he’d become frustrated. In thick afternoon traffic he’d zip from lane to lane, flooring it when the lights turned green, feeling a little thrill with that sudden momentum, shifting through gears like a pro, up-up-down-down, to come to a smooth-ish stop at the next set of lights, which always came way too soon.
Marcus loved to go fast out of the car, too. He loved to snowboard, and every winter he would clip his board into the roof racks, jump in his car and head north, excitedly pushing the speed limit, trying to beat his best time to the ski fields. Always on a Friday night, always home on Sunday evening, ready for work again come Monday.
The twisting two-lane tarmac, an ashen night-sky blue, shiny in the wet, dull and nearly not there in the dry, seemed always to be just a metre or so in front of him, appearing under his headlights’ gaze like Morse code. Dash-dash-dash, on and on into the night as if his life was in the almost-here, not like on a weekday where the present dragged on and on like a sluggish, endless now, the one you didn’t want, the one you needed to drive fast to get away from.
Marcus cut corners for the fun of it, not so much tempting fate as believing in divine goodwill and his own imperturbable good fortune. He’d cut off those blind corners so sharply, in direct contrast to the crappy Melbourne commuters he battled at peak hour, them in their boring sedans, feeling the need to steer left to go wide into a right-hand turn. Who did they think they were? Dodgem car drivers without safety bars? Marcus often filled with rage at their ignorant, uncaring manoeuvres.
“Big-bumpered girls,” he called them, as Anna sat beside him in the passenger seat. And she’d feel fury too, because they weren’t always, or even often, female, and for all his good points Marcus did seem to have a sexist streak.
Sometimes Marcus wanted not to move himself out of the way to clear a path for people who couldn’t keep to their own lane. Sometimes he wanted to gun it and shave their duco clean away, popping off a wing mirror while he was at it or peeling off their doors like they were sitting in a tin can. Marcus fancied himself a precision driver. Those crappy drivers should be forced to do defensive driving courses. It’s a wonder they’d got their licences at all.
Marcus assured Anna there was nothing to worry about – he kept his road rage to himself. He would never do anything to jeopardise his right to drive. And if there was one thing he loved more than his vehicle, it was Anna. His little sister.
These are the types of things Marcus would bang on about to Anna as he drove her to school. She’d watch his hands – he’d be wearing those driving gloves even on the school run – and they were never placed at 10 to 2. They were instead: right hand at 12 and left on the gearstick; or both just hanging out at 6.30 until they had their next thing to do.
On the dark, quiet and deserted-ish mountain roads Marcus let himself go. He’d set out straight after work on a Friday evening, anticipating the moment he could vroom in semi-circles up the range like Ayrton Senna, risking everything at every corner and coming out a winner each time.
Car accidents come as a shock, but perhaps Marcus’s wouldn’t have been – had it been his fault. Fatal accidents devastate families regardless of who did what and when. It made Anna question everything – what happened? And mostly: why did it have to? Marcus’s car was hit head on by a truck that strayed into his lane. Anna hated the driver – why couldn’t he keep within his lines? In such circumstances, the bigger vehicle always wins.
Anna went to the truck driver’s trial. Could Marcus have been speeding? It was decided no. Could Brendan, the truckie, have been speeding? It was decided no. Brendan was the kind of driver who always followed the rules. He did not speed, not ever, and he hadn’t tampered with the truck’s speed limiter, as urban legend proposed. His system didn’t have the other kind of speed in it either – there was not a trace of drugs, despite what everyone in Anna’s family had assumed. Because truckies do that, don’t they? Long-haul truck drivers shoot up amphetamines to allow them to stay up longer and drive further in a day. Everyone knew it. Foolhardy doesn’t cut it. This was someone’s life. Stolen. But Brendan had never taken drugs in his life. He was a good driver. His brakes failed coming down that mountain in the rain, on a straight.
In court Brendan’s face was as ashen as that snowy mountain road. His eyes hollow, his shoulders rounded. Anna hadn’t wanted to make eye contact with her brother’s killer, but now she couldn’t look away.
There was no one to blame.