Free Homecoming by Adib Khan

commitments.
    Besides, he had to tackle his own demons first and expunge them. They both needed more time and healing space. It was a consoling thought. Probably Nora had similar reservations.
    He remained silent, quickening his steps to catch up with her. They stopped at a point where there were no fishermen to be seen and the beach began to curve south. Noisy seagulls whirled overhead. Picking up pieces of broken seashells, he hurled them into the water. He had a yearning to run away and begin again without guilt or uncertainties. Re-invent the past and grow into adulthood and beyond in stages of predictable development. No twists or turns. The passage of time without surprises. Hold the same job, live in the same suburb and grow old without the affliction of troubled memories, excuses and self-recrimination.
    He took off his shoes and socks, rolled up the bottoms of his trousers and stepped into the sea. He waddled forward until the water touched his knees. It would be simple enough to keep remembering and walk from the warm bleached sand into the turquoise sea. Once, in a faraway place, Martin had allowed the dark vagaries of human behaviour to assert a perverse claim on an innocent life, without even a feeble protest. But all of that could be obliterated within moments. He closed his eyes, feeling dizzy.
    He heard Nora calling him and took another step forward. But then there was the image of a brown-haired boy, his teenaged son. What would he say years from then? My old man didn’t care. He walked away from life. I never really had a father. As if Frank knew everything. As ever, the old man managed to dodge his obligations. He didn’t know what it meant to be a responsible human being.
    ‘Is it very cold?’ Nora didn’t wait for a reply. Kicking off her shoes she waded in, swinging her arms in an attempt to hold her balance. She grabbed his arm. A large wave hissed up and crashed against their legs.
    ‘Look at the colours!’ Nora pointed to the mixture of grey, pink and gold splattered on the horizon.
    Martin had vivid recollections of the ominous transition in Vietnam between the chaotic norm of daytime and the darkness. There was a slice of time that felt out of context. He was always apprehensive of what it might unleash. An orange sun smoked behind the haze of dusk, sinking slowly under its own weight into the distant hills.
    ‘It’s the angry eye of an ancient god, you know,’ Colin would tell anyone willing to listen. ‘It has seen enoughhuman foolishness for the day and feels that it’s appropriate to leave the world in blackness.’ The others looked at him in disbelief. ‘Oh yeah? Good one, Col. Keep living in your fantasies until a bullet gets you between the eyes.’
    Dusk was the time of insects, the time for dope or for alertness. Their yearnings were basic: the mundane, or the calm, or the sharp-edged.
    The routine of a civilian’s working week was now a mirage of luxury. Any one of them would gladly have settled for an uneventful existence, the rhythm of suburbia. Martin longed for the winter months when football fanaticism gripped Melbourne. In the swill hour at the pub on Fridays after work there had never been the slightest urge to talk about anything other than the Saturday footy. As the rain pelted down outside, the beer and conversation flowed with good nature and generosity. After the pubs closed, they gathered in someone’s house or flat in a state of inebriated carelessness.
    At dusk in Vietnam, when the odd jet fighter furrowed across the sky on its way to base, Martin had the absurd vision of being on board, holding a gun against the back of the pilot’s head, ordering him to turn the aircraft around and get the hell out of the country.
    Water splashed up his legs and Nora jabbed him on the arm. ‘Time to come back, dreamer.’
    Startled, Martin reacted clumsily. ‘I…Sorry! I was just thinking.’
    ‘About what?’
    ‘Choices in life. About how often we make,