I stared out the car window and let the backdrop of passing dead grass and trees blend with the whim of my imagination. It was late in the evening and the wide spread of the LED bar lit the on-coming trees crowded at the edges of the highway. They were half-trees whose branches were mangled at the centre of their thin trunks so that the light of the car flashing against them made them seem like silhouettes of the human form. I let the absurd picture continue to play out in front of me as if it were the truth. Behind the veil of my boredom, watching this autonomous imagery, I reasoned with myself that old towns like these were pervaded by their own memories and it should come as no surprise that its dead men might be reflected inside these trees, guarding the entrance to their dying home. We were here ungraciously with no intention of staying long, tomorrow we would take her and leave and as the trees passed us on the road I could see that they knew. They withheld her jealously from us who were out of towners with no understanding of the place and I sensed the regard they held for the fact that we were her family; to them it meant very little.

I stared at the trees and allowed that for the time being it could all be real. By now I could see the men in these forms vividly and further along the road they edged closer to the bitumen. Their course of growth inclined them away from the road and it seemed as though they were running towards us with so much haste that their leaves had caught in the drag of the wind but still they came on. I admired their loyalty to the town but had to question if it wasn’t a delusion; this town was dying and so was she, we had every right to come and take her. I said to myself that Death must have made these old men just as senile as her.

The trees were just trees obviously. We came into town and passed the sign that welcomed us. It was council issued, construction green with high-vis edges in case you weren’t able to read it. There were no street lamps but if anyone here was going anywhere after six o’clock it was to the pub and I could imagine that by now they knew how to get there in the dark. Even we remembered the way. We stepped out of the car and the air held a tang that smelt like spices in a hot kitchen molested by some sedimentary chemical; it was repulsive yet appetizing and the duality was disturbing. I imagined the smell would be yellow if it was anything, the same dim yellow of the weak bulbs that ran around the edges of the car park and all the other car parks, taverns and motels far enough removed from anywhere considered remotely urban. I saw a girl walk across the lot and into the kitchen. She was young and very attractive under the glow like something straight out of a noir illustration whose romance was stolen by our true locale. Being this late it must have been close finishing time and there was a spring in her step telling us she couldn’t wait to get home. I couldn’t understand what she was doing here so young and why was she not at least miserable in the meantime. Didn’t she know this place was dying? I came to discover that none of them seemed to know, certainly not the kindly clerk who gave us the keys. I imagined enlightening them.

I was set on pitying the place and it seemed to want to give me every reason to. In our room we finally laid down and there was a blackout. I thought Wow, just wow. I slow clapped in my head. I waited for the room to heat up, no air-conditioning and three of us in there, it was bound to become heated in the intimate way that only a room full of people can and it did. On his bed my Uncle said This fucking place and we didn’t say anything, we testified by staying silent and letting it hang there and sharpen as it went on to become the last thing any of us said for the night.

When the morning came I figured Well at least it’s morning. We showered one by one and afterwards made our way over to her. She was senile and forgot most of what she had said ten minutes ago but not all of it; she could be deceivingly lucid at times. I didn’t trust myself not to start shouting at her with inflections at the end of every sentence like a hopeless patron speaking with a foreign waiter so I resolved not to patronise her in anyway. I sat with her on the veranda and I couldn’t get over what had been invading my every thought since we arrived so I asked her Nan, does this place still feel the same to you? I can hardly imagine all these old buildings ever functioning, the whole place comes from a time that doesn’t even seem real to me (I rubbed my fingers and thumb together to show her what I meant), but you must see an entirely different town. She told me that she loved the place but what she really hated was the new post office, it charged one dollar for stamps nowadays and the problem was that around Christmas time a lot of old people liked to draft say fifty cards for family and friends and they just didn’t have that sort of money. I just agreed with her. I looked at her and the town. They fit, I imagined that she could be the town manifest; it was only her a little older than she was. But I was just thinking up fake-cryptic ideas to try and figure out why the whole place seemed so… I rubbed my fingers and thumb together like I had before.

I had felt so smug in the face of those angry ghosts inside the trees and at the hotel I started to feel sorry, for the town and myself for having to be here, but all I could feel now was dread. The place recalled me over and over to when I was sixteen, for the first time consuming a chemical drug and being helpless in the face of the milestone existential crisis. That chemical imbalance I suffered along with the acute understanding of my own insignificance lasted for weeks and had by now become an almost fond memory, wrestled and reasoned with through logic and acceptance. But that town, devoid of substance, undid all my work and years later left me stranded again in hopeless Limbo. I thought The whole place is stretched. Fragments of the earth the town stood on were all shifting looking for something else elsewhere. The place was being drawn and quartered. You could see it in the road, what I figured were once small cracks in the bitumen were now fissures that ran deeper than just in the tar. Everywhere else it was more subtle but it was always pulling and the pub and old Nan’s house grew further apart while the town more and more became just an idea; a slow retrograde caused by shifting dirt.

Her state decayed quickly over that day, her mind was eroding slowly and we arrived for her own good and triggered a landslide. She watched us put them all in boxes, all of her possessions. Then they went. To charity and to the dump and mostly to family members who were reluctant to take any more than they needed and who I suspected would later dispose of it all one way or another anyway. Still though, her own good and if not hers than ours.  She either came to terms with leaving or realized that it was happening anyway. We took her to the cemetery to say her goodbyes. It was hot there; on the horizon we saw heat waves. The dirt was a pale orange and the flies were in the thousands. Our steps made the sound of crunching gravel underfoot. If you got over the frantic swatting and learned to accept your fate you could co-exist with the flies; which we did while we gathered in the distance mostly just yarning with acquainted relatives but keeping an eye on her as well. She touched the graves of her husband and son and ran her hand along the stone. I watched her hand tense and understood that she was trying to grasp the slab as though it were a hand she once held and squeezed tenderly to convey her silent apology. When she eventually wept we were all unmoved. I pretended it was the first time I’d heard her say You know when you live in a town for so long and finally have to leave, you start to feel as though you’re leaving a part of yourself behind. She said that it wasn’t fair. I wanted to say Nan, fair doesn’t exist and you of all people should know that. But she already realized this a long time ago and only just forgotten it, telling her now and leaving her to struggle with the concept all over again would only see her die more miserably than if she was searching somewhere for fair.

There were more farewells but these to the living, she wept at each of these as well. Her final goodbye, her best friend, a massive thing bound to a mobility scooter. We looked for each other, us in the car and her on the scooter, we crossed town one way and she went the other. The old flow of traffic was disjointed, the town had been pulled apart and I began to realize that we were circling single sections of the place, somehow being corralled by invisible borders where between each part of the town there was only emptiness. She found us eventually. Nan left the car and wept a final time. From the scooter the woman asked me to make sure that I kept in contact with her and I couldn’t understand why she would ask that or if she truly expected that I would. I mentioned this quietly to my Brother, not to be unkind but I didn’t even know this woman. He said Don’t you realize that this isn’t the last time we’re going to be here?