The Well IV

IV

The street looked like it had so many other times. People gathered in little bands at their front gates watching the scene unfold. Children stood hanging onto their mothers night gowns under the orange glow of the street lights. They stood in their crumpled pyjamas, their hair matted by the unconscious impressions made by the hills and valleys of sleeps landscape. The night air was still very warm. The night seemed to ache with the weight of it. The street lights burned the atmosphere with their glowing eyes, pressing everything down into the black bitumen. Balls of frantic insects hovered in little erratic juries beneath each unblinking bulb, presiding over the scene.

A light went on in a front room. A dog barked. It was not unusual. And many of the neighbours were not surprised when they emerged from their darkened doorways onto their warm lawns, to see the red and blue lights careening across the blank faces of the otherwize silent homes. What was surprising, was that among the enquiries they made of each other, not one of the neighbours reported to any of the others having heard any shouting or banging. The street had been strangely silent.

A policeman was standing at the edge of his patrol car, saying something into a radio on his shoulder. Sitting on the curb, behind the patrol car, hidden from the curious eyes of the neighbours, sat two women. One consoling the other, whose loud sobbing and crying could be heard up and down the street. It rose up into the still warm night air. Being swallowed by the compassion of nights silence, somewhere up amongst the invisible flying insects and the stars. They knew of this woman, though not many of them knew her name. They had seen her many times, in circumstances not unlike these, being led away from the house with blood soaked hair or trembling hands, by a policeman, while a bare chested man in grease stained jeans screamed obscenitiies at her from the back of a patrol car. Yes, they had seen these things before, but only from behind the blinds in the darkened windows of their loungerooms. They were more curious than shocked. An this led most of them to emerge from the saftey of their houses. "Muss be bad this time?" Muttered one of the nieghbours.

the front of the house stood like a sarcophagus, washed in a sickly yellow by the street lights. All the front blinds were drawn, and no light could be seen anywhere inside the house. There were Ambulance officers and police standing in serious posture, regarding the front of the house. An ambulance stood at the curb aswell, its barn doors flung wide. The onlookers scattered at various points up and down the street, craned their necks and whispered comforting words in the ears of small children. When they saw the porch light finally go on, and the front door open wide, they muttered in each others ears. Two ambulance officers wheeled a gurney through the open door and down the curve of concrete path to the gate. The hairy gorilla arm of a man fell over the side of the stretcher, and one of the officers had to poke it back in under the blue plastic sheet that covered the anonnymous form of a head, its nose and mouth in profile under the lights of the police cars and ambulance. The wailing of the woman sitting on the curb became louder and more shrill against the grating sound of the police radios and walkie talkies. The sound of the Ambulance doors slamming shut, once the body had been hoisted inside, seemed to slice through the confusion and uncertainty with a thick and thudding finality.