Great Expectations by Charles Dickens is another of my favourite books. All through it, the main character, Pip, expects great things for himself. Things he has no right to expect. But he goes on believing they’ll come his way anyway. Like this girl, Estella. She’s a real beauty, but also an ice queen. Yet Pip goes on liking her, even though she would be no good for him.
Eventually Pip comes to realise that he’ll be happy not expecting great things but enjoying the ordinary. And that’s a neat and satisfying way to end the book only, unfortunately, it doesn’t end there. Pip actually does get the girl! He marries Estella! Doesn’t that muffle the moral message? Don’t expect anything but you still might get what you want anyway?
In the edition Joe owned, there’s another ending in the appendices. Pip simply sees Estella riding past in a carriage, knowing he won’t have her but having some peace anyway. I like that ending better. I think Dickens got it right there. It’s not so nice an ending, maybe, but truer. And you hate to think a book’s lied to you.
For the next two weeks after the incident with the hoons, I hung out with Tubby and the others from the cricketing club. As well as making a second attempt at socialising with them, I was also trying to find form. Joe didn’t return.
Itching for another ‘outing’, I tried getting onto Filter but the call kept going straight to Message Bank. Rang Zane a few times but he was too busy to trip because he’d just started some ‘night class’ and, besides, Filter was apparently his only source of pills anyway. Yeah, right.
As for Tubby and the others as a possible source of illicit substances, they hadn’t progressed beyond beer.
One morning I woke up to find that Joe had rung my mobile at three in the morning. I must’ve slept right through it. He hadn’t left a message but hung up. Joe sure as hell wouldn’t prove to be a supplier but I knew I should see what his aborted call was about.
I dropped by his house. When no one answered, I pushed my way through the torn flyscreen and walked into his room. Joe looked up from where he was lying on his bed.
‘Where have you been?’ he asked, and started crying.
God he cried. The whole waterworks. Kept saying the same two things. How he couldn’t make anything work. And how he really thought it would this time. I kept asking, what couldn’t he make work, although I had a good idea. It was pretty awkward me just standing there, trying to find a spot to sit amidst the mess, him sitting on the bed. What did he really think would work this time? Then he told me: he and Kelly.
Kelly had left.
I didn’t feel the least bit cocky. No I-told-you-so’s and all that. All I did was … well, I tried to hug him but he moved so far to the edge of the bed, it made it funny so I gave up.
I knocked over some stuff, trying to sit on the floor. A towel breezed off a brightly-coloured box. Joe almost did himself an injury grabbing for it. And it was this, I reckon, more than any intentional meanness, which made me lunge for the box myself.
‘ “Staying on the Straight Path”,’ I read off the lid. ‘ “Retail Price only $199.95” – Joe, you can’t afford that!’
‘It was reduced.’
I didn’t know what to say. So I said the thing I’d armed myself with as a weapon for jolting Joe out of his rut.
‘Me, Jen and Tash are hitting the town tonight. Do you wanna come?’
Joe peeped from behind his fringe of yellow hair.
‘Where?’
It was a bar, expensive, with lots of port red on the walls, stainless steel in the fittings, and the tiniest bit of gold-embossing on the trims. Classy, I suppose. Cool? I couldn’t say.
There was a tiny detail I’d omitted about the evening. It was actually the cricket crowd, with Jen and Tash thrown in. I’d worried about mixing friendship groups before (once I’d made friendship groups I could worry about mixing!) and here was the test. Surprising that Tash had come, considering her hatred of ‘breeders’, but perhaps this would be the test of hers and Jen’s relationship. Secretly, I hoped so. I didn’t think Tash was good for Jen. They still seemed to not talk to each other as often as they talked.
Tubby and Beth were celebrating.
They had reason to.
‘Man, these days you don’t ask your future father-in-law if you can marry his daughter,’ shouted Tubby, ‘you ask your mates!’
Laughter all round. The consensus among the guys was that Beth was ‘a bit of all right’, which meant hot.
‘For a woman,’ I retorted.
‘Man, you’re wrong!’ shouted Tubby.
Silence followed. Tubby could handle jokes at his own expense, just not about his girlfriend. Not that Beth seemed the least bit offended.
Jen got the scene off pause.
‘Now, Sam, you’d have to admit Tubby’s pretty hot too.’ Long pause. ‘For a man!’
That got everyone laughing. Guys, girls, Tubby, everyone. Finally, I’d turned up to his and Beth’s fire with my own kindling: friends I’d made myself and was proud of. The night eased in. Only problem was the fawn-coloured leather boxes we had to sit on – trendy I suppose – but no backrest. Jen was still managing to sit up straight; she was enjoying herself. Tash not so much. But she was holding up her end, unfortunately.
Joe seemed okay. A few of the blokes were encouraging him to come back to the club. Especially Dizzy, who reckoned Tubby, as an opener, wasn’t much chop.
At one point I saw Joe lean over to Jen, whispering: ‘You’re not worried about what these guys think?’
Jen answered Joe at normal volume.
‘Joe, when you tell people you’re gay, suddenly they’re the ones watching what they say.’
Joe sat back and pondered that one. So did I. I felt mean about not asking Tubby and Beth to that party Jen and I had all those months back. Worried if they were the right sort of people, if they’d fit in. People can take care of themselves.
The night wasn’t as exciting as those trips with Zane and Filter, but cosier somehow. Perhaps my life could still read like a book – without the drugs.
‘Joe, I hear you’re a Christian,’ said Tash.
I half got up, worried Tash was going to have a go at Joe. What Tash said next I never expected.
‘I’m a Christian myself.’
Joe looked a bit stunned and Jen turned immediately from the scrum of guys she’d been talking to about ‘tips for their ladies’.
‘Tash, my dearest, I hate to break it to you, but the only person you worship is yourself.’
‘That’s exactly right, dear,’ answered Tash before turning to Joe again. ‘Because God’s about love, my friend. And the hardest person to love is yourself. So start there.’
I’d underestimated Tash. There and then, I promised myself never to try to break up her and Jen ever again. They were suited to each other. Besides, maybe there wasn’t such a thing as the perfect couple. Just people who could make it work.
Tubby summed up the evening.
‘It’s that feeling, man. You know that pissy feeling, like everyone’s close and all. People aren’t so bad.’
So now it was with Joe that I had a couple of weeks hanging out. Sometimes, we’d meet at the train station, leaning against the fence and feeling the wire making soccer ball patterns on our backs. On the train, I’d tell him my stories and he’d tell me his, which weren’t his, but from the Bible. I asked about the parables once. What the use of them was. Why they didn’t just say their morals up front.
‘If you put your message in a story, Sam, people will remember it better.’ And we stared out the window at all the houses and factories with their backs to us.
We bowled to each other in the nets, examining our bats afterwards to see how many times they’d been kissed by the ball with lips of seam.
Then we’d rest in the park, him one bench, me the other. I fidgeted but Joe lay still as a pond, picked out in stars.
After one such outing with Joe, I went home to find an envelope under my door. It was from Jen and Tash. They were nowhere in the house. I opened up the envelope, smiled, then closed it again.
Joe and I were standing on the edge of a swimming pool, our bare feet slip-glazed by the hot tiles, psyching ourselves up to dive in. Lydia was floating in the middle on her bright yellow lilo. It was her parent’s place, and they were away.
‘Oh, Joe, nearly forgot,’ I said and retrieved the envelope from my bag. Lydia looked up from her book.
Joe finished reading the envelope’s contents, an invite from Jen and Tash for their New Year’s Eve party, 2000.
‘I’m invited?’
‘Yes,’ I assured him. He looked at the invite again.
‘It’s got a theme, this party?’
‘Yeah, spiritual.’
‘Spiritual?’
‘Yeah, easy for you,’ I joked, ‘but not for me. I told Jen that. She’s asking a lot.’
‘I don’t think I’ve got anything spiritual,’ said Joe, alloying a foot blue.
‘Rubbish!’ I laughed, ‘don’t you have that cross round your neck? I bet you have. What’s that chain there?’
I flicked a chain of silver that hugged his neck. Joe stepped back a space, and lifted the chain from beneath his white T-shirt. There was no cross on it. Nothing.
‘Oh no,’ said Joe, grabbing at the empty chain, ‘I’m naked.’
I fairly howled at that. Rolled round on the ground and everything. I couldn’t help it. When I got up and wiped the tears from my eyes, I saw Joe had a grin.
‘You meant that?’ I asked, prodding him.
Joe nodded.
‘Geez, Joe, you made a joke!’
I could’ve hugged him. A joke, and about religion too. He was easing up. Joe would be okay.
Lydia looked up from her floating bed.
‘What’s this party?’ she asked under her raised sunglasses.
‘It’s not for a while,’ I said, but I could see that didn’t satisfy her. Joe nudged me.
‘Oh yeah, Lydia,’ I added, ‘I forgot to tell you, you’re invited.’
Lydia lowered her sunglasses and went back to her book. She probably wouldn’t even come. But this way, she’d not be coming to a party she was invited to. To Lydia, that made all the difference.
New Year’s Eve 2000 … Made me think back to last New Year’s Eve with Arny and the cricketers. A whole world gone by. I didn’t think I’d remember that New Year’s at the time but I did. Something told me I was going to equally remember this one.
Joe had his shirt off and was taking forever to get into the water by way of the shallow end.
I took a faster approach.
‘Don’t you know it’s unsafe to dive-bomb a pool?’ yelled Lydia after I’d come up for air. The foam must’ve made a pretty little ruff round my neck.
‘Dive-bomb?’ I complained, still gasping with the shock of the cold. ‘That, Lydia, was a dive.’
Lydia made a show of flicking the water-pellets off the cover of her book.
‘We obviously have vastly different definitions for words,’ she huffed.
I pedalled the water to my right so I could look past her. Joe was at the other end, still trying to get his balls under. It wasn’t that cold. I had to amuse myself while I waited. One thing I like to do is hold my breath. I’ve nearly made it to the three-minute mark a few times. So I tried the underside of the water again. Once you were in, the pool was actually pretty warm. Not surprising, really: it was a thirty-degree day.
There I was, in the lotus position, sinking further down with each word bubble I uttered. Lines snaked along the bottom, curving upwards at the walls. The ceiling was a foil of crispy light, except for that one big yellow rectangle, Lydia’s lilo.
I thought of Lydia Hamilton floating on her bed of air, floating in a pool of water with the ice taken off but still nicely chilled. Altogether a not so taffeta-and-tied-up-with-a-bow affair as all that, but with the sun in the sky above, pouting its crimson collagen lips, what was ol’ Lydia doing?
Reading Proust!
And not just Proust either, but the annotated version.
An idea came to me. On resurfacing, I slapped over to Lydia’s floating bed and asked, ‘Hey, Lydia, why don’t you do a dive-bomb?’
Lydia shook the Proust as if the two were incompatible.
Plish-plash. Joe had finally gotten himself in, but was keeping his hair dry. We paddled round a bit but then Lydia asked when I was going to give Joe his present. Joe looked at me. It was his birthday today, and I had got him a present but I’d planned to give it to him when the two of us were alone. Seeing that was now pointless, I splashed to the side, grabbed my bag and pulled out his gift.
‘You haven’t even wrapped it,’ sneered Lydia, pulling herself hand over hand up the side of the pool to be next to Joe and me. She’d finally closed Proust on her bookmark – a fifty-dollar note!
Joe took his gift from my hands.
‘Thanks, Sam,’ he said, pulling out all the different bits on the pocketknife: screwdriver, saw, magnifying glass, tweezers.
‘See, Joe, adventurers like us need an all-purpose knife, especially if we’re to Huck Finn up the Murray sometime. You know how we were planning?’
‘Geez, thanks, Sam.’
Lydia was leaning on Joe’s shoulders, looking at the knife.
‘Huckleberry Finn?’ she snorted. ‘You like these Boys’ Own Adventure books, don’t you, Sam?’
I didn’t know what to say. Lydia couldn’t stop herself.
‘To Kill a Mockingbird, Wuthering Heights, Great Expectations – where did you get these favourite books of yours? Off a Year Twelve English syllabus?’
Maybe the pocketknife wasn’t such a good present. Probably pretty juvenile. Maybe if we were still kids. Guess I wascaught up in those books I liked. Was Joe happy with the knife? I kept looking at that thick volume in Lydia’s hands.
‘Well, Lydia, what did you get Joe?’ I asked.
Lydia held up the Proust.
‘He … er … said I could read it first,’ she explained.
Joe smiled at me before getting out of the pool, gently drying the knife, and putting it in his jeans pocket where it wouldn’t get wet. Then he grabbed a ball before hopping back into the blue.
We started throwing the ball the length of the pool, me at the deep end, he in the shallows, but when it hit Lydia, she ordered us to get out. We didn’t just get out of the pool, but off that property altogether, and headed to Joe’s place. Sauntering down the road, Joe stopped at a concrete fence cast to look like wood palings and painted green.
‘That other night, Sam, with Tubby, Beth, your flatmate Jen, her girlfriend, Tash … well, you’ve got great friends,’ said Joe. ‘I’ll never have friends like that.’
‘Sure you will, Joe. They’re your friends too, now,’ I replied and started us walking again.
But were they? My parents unsuccessfully pushing me into my brothers’ friendship groups made me think friends were non-transferable. But maybe that wasn’t always true. I met Zane through Jen, and Filter through Zane.
Joe’s mobile beeped. It was an SMS from Kelly. She was at the pool with Lydia and the two were wondering where the ‘heck’ we were.
‘They are my friends,’ said Joe, showing me the text message.
I tried to get moving but Joe wouldn’t have it. His legs had taken root.
‘Hey, they’re not so bad, Joe. Give ’em time.’
‘You’ve made it, Sam. I won’t make it like you.’
I didn’t know what to say. Any of us can make it, whatever that means.
‘Joe …’ I faltered, ‘you say I’ve got great friends …’
Joe finally looked up.
‘Well, you’re one of them.’
We arrived at the open flyscreen to Joe’s house. But we weren’t headed inside. Standing in the driveway, we both looked pointedly at his car.
‘Should we go back?’ asked Joe.
The next day we took a longer drive. Not back to Lydia’s parents’ pool but to Joe’s parents’ house in the country. Joe drove like I wank: at about a million miles an hour. He’d picked this day to come out to his parents.
The Melbourne buildings became blocks of blue in the distance. Moth wing city – there was a face in it – danger!
Were we just another drive-by indifference? There I was, the passenger, looking round for yesterday’s smile.
‘Slow down, Joe,’ I yelled. The car was arguing with each turn, Joe was throwing it around so much. We’d done the Sydney Road stretch and were now on the Hume Highway proper. Joe was determined to get to his folks’ before nightfall – but truth was, we’d left it late.
I was getting pretty scared. Joe had his teeth set. Lockjaw pose – not quite holding the line on some of the bends.
He nearly lost it in the gravel on one of them and I grabbed the door handle with my fingers, somehow tasting its metal in my mouth. When Joe took another bend and I felt the car fishtail, I gripped harder. Joe just managed to get the wheels straight. On a downhill stretch, we overtook yet another truck. I didn’t know what to do. I thought maybe a joke would work.
‘Okay, Joe,’ I said, ‘you’ve got heaven to go to. This life is it for me. I’m mortal.’
Luckily Joe laughed.
Then slowed down.
And went at speed.
‘Hey, Joe’ I said to him, ‘we don’t have to do this now. There’s no hurry.’
Joe stared ahead, squinting into the sun. I tried another tack: Huck Finn. We’d both read it so he’d be up to speed.
‘It can’t be like Huck Finn,’ I told him.
‘What?’
Joe glanced across at me.
I’d been thinking about how Huck did the right thing and all. By not turning Jim in. Jim, the slave who’s done a runner, and hooked thumbs with Mr Finn on the Mississippi. Huck’s thinking over the whole thing, ruminating pretty hard. He thinks not dobbing in a runaway slave is pretty bad but he resists all the same. He says ‘All right, then, I’ll go to hell … It was awful thoughts and awful words, but they was said.’ I’d been thinking about this a lot. And this is what I came up with. Huck does the right thing, yeah, but he does the right thing thinking he’s doing the wrong thing. So, in a way, he doesn’t change. I mean, he never actually believes that what he does is right. He just accepts his lack of racism as a bad habit he won’t grow out of because he was brought up for sin anyway. I reckon it’s pretty hard to unlearn something. It’s pretty damn hard to change, I mean really change yourself.
I don’t ever want to do the right thing thinking it’s the wrong thing. Or the opposite: doing the wrong thing thinking it’s right. But it’s hard, I know it. Sometimes you just don’t know what to do, and unless you want to be a spectator all your life, you’ve got to do something, even if it is back-handed and across court.
‘Tell ’em when you’re ready, Joe. I don’t reckon you’ve quite told yourself yet.’
Joe turned his eyes back to the road, which was pretty wise considering we were approaching a bend, and pressed the accelerator that bit harder.
I knew to shut up.
His parents’ house was brick-venereal, that gingerbread brown, veranda all round, a few trees dotted about, the land one big flat plain of grass and grass munchers – sheep (I could go on). The smell was grassy. We popped our boots off on the veranda. Inside, the smell was talcum. The carpet you could wear round your shoulders, it went that deep.
His parents’ car wasn’t in the garage. Yet more delay.
There was a note on the fridge: ‘Joe, we’re at Nanna’s.’
It wasn’t signed. Joe said his nanna’s meant half an hour more’s drive. We jumped back in the car. We arrived in twenty minutes with Joe’s driving, walked up the steps and knocked. It was about six-thirty. No answer but the door was open. I was halfway in when this voice says, ‘Give us a scratch!’
‘What?’
I looked about.
‘Give us a scratch.’
Well, I’ll be blowed; it was a cocky, sitting in its cage. It did this little clown thing, side to side, before jumping onto the grille and using its beak as a third hand. I was a bit scared of it at first, I’ll have to say. I don’t know, birds can be a bit strange, but Joe popped it out of its cage. He said you had to let it come to you. It sidestepped along Joe’s arm and onto mine. I felt all ticklish and nervous.
‘Pat it,’ said Joe, and I did. It didn’t feel quite how I thought it would. I found a magpie when I was a kid, which was as soft as powder, but then it hadn’t been long in the world. This bird, the cockatoo, was definitely mature, maybe as old as Joe or I. It was soft, yeah, but there were the feather stalks – or whatever you call them – underneath. Just the texture of the thing told you you had to be ever so gentle.
‘Give us a scratch.’
Every time I stopped patting it, it would grab one of my fingers with its claw and put it back under its wing. When you took your fingers away, they were covered in this fine, white, greasy powder. It kept turning its head horse-sideways to look at me with its oyster eye. Joe told me its name was Long John Silver. So-o-o, I wasn’t the only one weaned on Boys’ Own Adventures!
I looked about the place. There was a thermometer on the wall, in Fahrenheit. A revolving iron chair with a twelve-inch TV backrest by the phone. A number 4 shag carpet you could scrunch your toes in. Paintings of woolsheds. And an aerial photo of Joe’s farm, looking like a huge dug-up lawn. The whole place smelled of yellow soap and beeswax.
Then the folks called out. They were in the tiny back courtyard. Joe didn’t even introduce me to his parents. He was such a dag. All he said was, ‘This is my mum and dad.’
I was going to say hello Mum, hello Dad, but thankfully I didn’t.
‘So what are your names?’ I asked instead.
‘What?’ asked Joe’s father. He was pretty gruff in the way he said it. It quite unnerved me.
‘Well, um,’ I tried again, ‘so I’ve got something to call you by. Fred, Bill, Jennifer –’
‘Sam!’ Joe was prodding me.
‘What, Joe?’
Long John flurried to my other shoulder, his head mohawked yellow. Joe’s parents were staring, mouths slightly open.
‘You know my surname,’ whispered Joe.
Of course I knew Joe’s surname. It was Wilson. Joe Wilson.
Aaaah. Stupid me.
‘Mr and Mrs Wilson,’ I said, and shook their hands. Mr Wilson’s grip was a case of force incommensurate to the need. Mrs Wilson just looked at my hand for a bit then lightly held it. The four of us stood there, stupidly. Over the back fence, I could see the shaded willow flats edging onto the Murray. It was nearly dark. Finally, Mrs Wilson said we should all go into the lounge.
Joe’s nanna was already there. She smelt like a long-lived pine tree growing near a beach. I wasn’t introduced to her properly either. So I figured she was another Mrs Wilson.
‘Hello,’ she answered to my hello, lifting a hand for a shake.
I hadn’t even bothered to offer my hand this time. When I did, the cocky leapt off my shoulder to perch on my fingers.
‘Joe, get that cocky off,’ said Mr Wilson.
‘No, Mr Wilson, he’s okay.’
‘Well, if he starts annoying you …’
‘Sure.’
Joe’s nanna shook the bird’s wing instead. She was wearing pink tracky-dacks with an unmatching aqua top. Her hair was a fancy mess of curls like some people go to the trouble of putting on presents. Colour: blue.
Joe’s birthday rites were observed next. He showed his parents the knife I’d given him. They looked at it queerly, Mr Wilson muttering something about how it was time Joe grew up. Geez, it really wasn’t a wise gift. Joe then got a present from his parents. It was a book on creationism.
Mr Wilson took a seat, the only high-backed one in the room. The rest of us were consigned to the low-slung woolly couches. Joe’s dad was a pretty handsome bloke, I had to admit, but he’d dried out a fair bit in the sun. His arms and neck were an iron red. His hair was all tangled, maybe from wearing a hat most of the time.
‘You doing anything with that science degree, Joe?’
‘Joe’s a great batsman,’ I said. ‘Just needs to get better at playing the shorter ball.’
Mr Wilson looked at me.
‘Turn on the TV,’ he said to Joe. ‘The news should just be starting.’
And once the TV was on, it didn’t go off the whole time I was there. The volume was up pretty loud and no one turned it down. There were a few videos on top of the TV: a couple of biblical tales; several National Geographic nature documentaries; and one or two soft-serve classics that wouldn’t offend even the pope.
‘Hey, Mum,’ said Mr Wilson.
‘Yes,’ said Joe’s nanna.
‘On TV.’
‘Yes.’
‘That singer you like.’
‘Who?’
‘Used to be married to what’s-his-name.’
‘Oh yes, yes, they say he wasn’t nice to her. What’s her name?’
Long pause.
‘Madonna,’ said Joe.
An even longer pause.
‘What was her husband’s name?’ asked Mr Wilson.
No one knew the answer to that one, so there was another bout of silence. Mr Wilson didn’t even look away from the TV for his next statement.
‘Joe,’ he said, ‘that book I’ve given you. Goes into just how wrong evolutionists are. You should give it to Sam after.’
I nearly jumped. Mr Wilson turned to me.
‘In it, you read about these people saying Earth’s six billion years old. What rot!’
Oh no! Mr Wilson must’ve thought I was a Christian too. I guess it was an obvious assumption. I didn’t know what to say. All I could do was nod stupidly. He went on.
‘They say fossils take millions of years to grow! I can make coal like that. Just burn a log.’
‘Um, Dad …’ interrupted Joe.
‘What, son?’
‘Um, Sam’s not – ’
Mr Wilson turned his head on hearing some clanging in the kitchen.
‘Joe, help your mother with the serving up.’
‘Oh, I can,’ I nearly shouted, jumping from my seat.
‘Sit down,’ commanded Mr Wilson, ‘you’re the guest.’
‘No, that’s fine, Mr Wilson. You two must want to catch up.’ And I was out of there.
I walked into the kitchen. Mrs Wilson didn’t say anything but kept on cooking. So I took the time to have a better look at her. She was pretty attractive, too. Had to be, to pop out a kid like Joe. But she was so done over country-style it was hard to tell. Almost had a she-mullet.
‘Want some help?’ I asked, and she got me to help her carry the food out to the table. Long John played with the hair about my ears.
Mr Wilson sat at the head of the table, then peeled the tablecloth back to check out the grain.
‘Look at that table, Mary,’ he said to his wife, ‘isn’t she a beauty!’
‘Yes, Frank, it’s lovely,’ said Mary.
So those were their names: Frank and Mary. I put down the mutton casserole, then sat down myself.
‘Get that bird off your friend,’ said Frank.
I said I would myself and took it to its cage. Joe came after me to help. It was like trying to get a blackberry vine off your clothes.
‘Good cocky, good cocky, good cocky,’ the bird kept screeching.
Between us, Joe and I managed to get it back in the cage. Immediately, it jumped onto the bars.
‘Good cocky?’ it actually seemed to ask, not just parrot, wondering at its change in fortunes.
‘Can it fly?’ I asked.
‘Dad regularly clips its wings.’
Joe and I moseyed down to the living room.
‘We should get a table like that for our living room,’ Frank was saying. ‘Where’d you get this from, Mum?’ and Frank ran his tree-root hands along the table’s similarly grained surface.
Mary was helping Nanna into her seat. Once settled, Nanna turned to Frank.
‘My brother Wal made that,’ she said.
‘Knew it!’ shouted Frank, giving the table’s polished top a knock, as if to prove it were wood. ‘Handcrafted. Hear that, Mary? We’d never find anything like that, would we? Not a hope. It’s all machine-made these days.’
‘Pieces of eight,’ squawked the cocky from the other room.
‘Shut up, bird!’ yelled Frank.
Long John muttered a dirty streak under his breath. At least I reckon it was all swear words. It was a low-volume wireless sound, half-tuned between stations. Hiss crrks shlllrks.
‘Where does that bird learn to swear?’ asked Frank.
Joe’s nanna very slowly and deliberately tucked her napkin into her top. Maybe she was the spark in the family!
‘You don’t use this table much, do you, Mum?’ asked Frank.
Mary brought in the last item of food, sliced white bread, and sat down. With the cook seated, the condiments sprinkled or poured, I grabbed my fork and nearly had a bit of mutton in my mouth when Joe gave me a kick that made me wish I had shin-guards on.
‘Joe!’ I screamed.
‘Shhh!’
And Frank bowed his head after giving me one long, dirty look.
‘For what we are about to receive,’ he bellowed, ‘may the Lord God make us truly thankful. Amen.’
‘Amen.’
Christ! ‘Amen.’ I’d never said grace before in my life! It didn’t make sense. I’d seen Mary making the meal myself. If it had been pheasant off the range, maybe …
Frank shot me another look once he’d opened his eyes again. It wasn’t a good look. Worse than the first. It was like I’d betrayed him, pretended to be on his side about all that creation stuff then showed my true heathen colours. It was a very dark look. The one he shot Joe wasn’t much better. Letting his father step in it!
I waited till he’d buttered his boiled mash before I buttered mine. Mary had scraped the butter into little scalloped twirls.
‘So you didn’t meet Joe through church?’ asked Frank, fixing his X-ray eyes on his mutton, laser-beaming it into tenderness. But the question could only have been directed at me.
‘No, um, through cricket.’
‘Land ahoy, land ahoy.’
‘Shut up, bird!’ yelled Frank.
The cocky swore another blue streak. At least, that was my fancy. Frank and Mary blinked at Joe’s nanna. She just kept rearranging her plate. I could see Joe holding his giggles under water. Frank observed it, too.
‘You got a girlfriend, Sam?’ he asked me, after turning his eyes away from his son.
‘Well, no, you see, I’m – ’
Joe jumped in. ‘No, he doesn’t.’
The rest of the meal was pretty much eaten in silence. I noticed Joe’s nanna didn’t eat at all. She just kept pushing her food around. The potato was made to herd the beans. Joe hardly ate either. Perhaps a third of his meal. I couldn’t imagine what would happen if he came out to his parents now, between main course and sweets. This place and Joe coming out – the two seemed about as disparate as a greasy carburettor placed on a red leather settee. Frank watched Joe playing with his meal.
‘You going to finish that?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ said Joe.
‘It’s getting cold.’
‘I’ll finish it.’
‘Don’t get cheeky with me, son.’
Joe dutifully shovelled in the rest of his tucker. Afterwards (what felt like a week later), Joe and I volunteered to help wash up. I’d never been so keen to do a chore. Mary washed, we dried. Frank and Nanna stayed in the lounge where Nanna retired to her couch and Frank to his high-backed chair.
Mary’s pink-gloved hands churned the bore-water-filled sink like a butter press. She addressed Joe’s reflection in the window in front of her.
‘Joseph,’ she began. (Joseph! Of course, a Biblical name. It never clicked before.) ‘Mrs Drew’s daughter’s comin’ up Tuesday.’
‘Mum.’
‘You couldn’t stay till then?’
‘Mum.’
‘You and Jess got on well at Sunday school, remember. She’s in the Christian choir now.’
‘Mum.’
‘How’s that Bible studies class of Shane’s? Must be lots of nice girls you can talk to. No use just looking good.’
Joe said nothing. I continued to dry the plates. Joe was putting them away now. Mary pulled out the plug. The water spiralled in on itself like a snail’s shell, leaving a trail of soapsuds. Once Mary shook her hands of foam, she turned round to Joe.
‘Joseph, weren’t there any girls you liked at Sunday class?’
Joe hung the last pot on its hook.
‘Lyn Chan was nice.’
‘Her!’ cried Mrs Wilson. ‘Ye-es, nice of course … but you’d think she’d do something about those eyes.’
‘Mum!’
‘So she can see better.’
‘Mum!’
We walked back into the lounge. Frank was ear-bashing Nanna.
‘Mum,’ he was saying to her, ‘it’s gonna cost me a fair penny to take that table off your hands. Hobson’s gonna want at least a slab to display that table in his antiques shop. You don’t think you could see your way to footing the bill, do you? I’ll pay the petrol.’
‘My brother Wal made that table before he died,’ said Nanna.
Frank turned to Joe when he realised we were back in the room. ‘Hey, leg it on home, would you, son, and grab the trailer. Bring a few ropes. Clear out some space for Nanna, would you.’
Joe and I about-turned. Mary asked if we could wait. She and Frank would be going to bed soon and, besides, it wasn’t every day she had her son home. Frank looked at his wife before nodding at us. We sat down again. Home Improvement was playing on TV. Mary disappeared into the kitchen to heat the jug.
‘Sean Penn!’ screamed Frank.
I nearly jumped for fright.
‘What?’ asked Joe.
‘That was her husband’s name,’ said Frank. ‘Madonna’s.’
‘Oh, yes, yes,’ said Joe’s nanna.
‘Joe, been selected for the state side yet?’ asked Frank. ‘All that money you have to spend before you make money.’
Mary called from the kitchen to ask what people wanted. We gave our orders.
‘Do you want a cup of tea, Mum?’ asked Frank. When Joe’s nanna didn’t answer – she was sitting nearest the TV and, even then, was still cupping an ear – Frank turned to Joe.
‘Ask your Nanna if she wants a cup of tea.’
‘I will,’ I said, and jumped up. Anything to keep busy.
‘Would you like a cup of tea, Mrs Wilson?’ I asked.
‘You’ll have to speak up,’ said Frank.
‘Would you like a cup of tea, Mrs Wilson?’
‘She’s deaf.’
‘Mrs Wilson, would you – ’
‘Louder!’
‘WOULD YOU LIKE A CUP OF TEA?’
Deadly, horrible silence. Mary had even run in from the kitchen. Joe was hiding his face in shock. Frank stared at me the way a farmer would a blowfly infestation. ‘That’s not very nice,’ he said slowly, ‘to yell at an old lady.’
‘I’m sorry … I just …’
‘You’ve got to get in front of her. So she can read your lips as well. Right round, right round. That’s it.’
‘Give us a kiss,’ screamed the cocky.
Frank’s face spasmed into a smile.
‘Yes, please,’ said Joe’s nanna to me, ‘that would be lovely.’
Five minutes later and Joe’s nanna got her tea. The rest of us were served coffee. Instant. I don’t know why Mary insisted we stay the extra half-hour ’cause all we did was watch TV. After a bit, Frank got Joe to help him carry the table outside to the shed so Joe and I wouldn’t wake up the house when we came back for it with the trailer. I offered to help, but Frank told me to sit down, saying I was the guest.
When they were gone, I jumped up for a leak. Mary pointed the way. The dunny was outside. I couldn’t piss straight away, I was so tensed up. I forced myself to relax, breathe in, all that. Finally! But then halfway through I had to stop. There was a noise, right outside the toilet window. It was Joe and Frank.
‘Now son, who’s this Sam? Dresses like a bit of a poonce.’
‘Dad.’
Silence. I realised I was holding my breath. Come on, come on, speak! I needed to let out the air. Think of yourself under water, Sam, in the pool. You can make that three-minute mark.
‘Carson said he’d get you an apprenticeship at Tarrant Estate anytime,’ said Frank.
‘Dad.’
I breathed out under Frank’s following words.
‘Put that degree to use. Wine-making is a science. It’s all about chemical reactions.’
‘Dad.’
I breathed in again.
‘Here’s his number. Give him a call.’
‘Dad.’
‘I’m not dictating your life, Joseph. You’ve got to stand on your own two feet.’
Another pause. I held my breath again.
‘Hey, did you get that money I sent you?’ asked Frank.
Joe’s head must’ve wilted at the neck.
‘Ye-es.’
‘Your mother and I will need looking after.’
The conversation must’ve been finished with a look because next thing I heard was Joe walking back inside. It was definitely his walk, haphazard, unsure. I wanted to flush the toilet but I wasn’t sure where Frank was. Maybe he was still standing at the window. Then the worst possible thing happened. Joe started calling me from the house. Then his Mum yelled that I was in the toilet. My position given away! Joe would be out in a second. There was nothing for it. ‘Coming!’ I yelled, and flushed the toilet. When I stepped out, there was Frank, standing directly in front of the dunny door, staring at me. I stared back a second before rushing inside. I wanted to get in before Joe waltzed out.
Frank now had another reason to hate me, for being an eavesdropper. This was squaring up to be one of the worst social occasions of my life, and I’d chalked up quite a few of those. I ran back into the lounge and sat on the two-seater next to Joe. Nanna was in her own chair, next to mine. Frank and Mary were absent. That made my stomach swill a bit: they were probably discussing me. Quite out of the blue, Nanna started speaking.
‘They’re pulling out all the old trees now. By the Murray. Oh well. All those nice willows. The young people want to put new ones in; Australian. Oh well, got to move with the times.’
I liked Joe’s nanna. I really did.
‘Can’t complain,’ she went on. ‘Ye-es, it was a hard life. But a good life. We didn’t have all the mod cons you kids have. But we had a good time.’ To Joe: ‘Your father was always running about, fixing things. The lawns were always mowed. A good kid, really. No, all told, it was a good life.
‘Yes, I suppose we had fun,’ she added. Joe smiled at me. I wanted to take his hand. Nanna crackled on.
‘You didn’t really get a say in those days. I worked at Mrs Carew’s dressmaking shop. Oh, but I didn’t mind. We didn’t have the choices you kids have. Oh, I suppose it was easier in a way. If you and Joe want to play cricket then …’
Nanna let her words trail off; Frank and Mary had walked in. I quickly changed the topic of Nanna’s monologue.
‘What was the thing you really liked to do, Mrs Wilson?’
Nanna gave me a look like she had never been asked that question before in her life. I put it to her again.
‘What was the thing you liked above everything else? That if you could’ve earnt a living off it, that’s what you would’ve done and only done?’
I could see Frank and Mary glancing away from the TV. Joe was leaning closer to me to hear Nanna over the ads. She was silent a long time, the whole duration of the ads, which, as we know, is a lifetime.
‘Sewing, I guess. Craft things. Used to make the boys all their clothes. Jumpers, sweaters, even their school uniform.’
‘They were never quite right,’ cut in Frank. ‘The shorts with those purple trims. I got a hard time.’
‘So they were different, Mrs Wilson?’ I nearly yelled, excited by the thought of that look. ‘Did you want to go into fashion?’
‘You’ll have to speak up.’
I nearly told Frank where to go, but stopped myself with nary a centimetre to the precipice.
‘Mrs Wilson, did you want to design clothes?’ I asked.
‘Me …?’ suddenly Nanna exploded laughing, but then she put her hand up to her mouth straight away. The idea was a fuse. She turned to look at Joe quite impulsively.
‘You’re not changing that shirt, Joe, are you? Wouldn’t want to throw that out. Could take a few more holes yet!’
Joe examined his dressed-down dagginess then had a squiz at my upmarket chic. I was glad I hadn’t ‘gone undercover for the occasion’. That, after the Jussy interlude, I’d accepted the clothes Jen helped me choose.
‘Why don’t you two go out, have fun,’ said Nanna. ‘Here you go,’ and she tried to palm me off twenty bucks from a purse in her lap. I kept saying no but she just let the note fall to the floor. I felt pretty bad taking it but I did in the end. Frank slightly shook his head at that.
‘Show my grandson a good time,’ said Nanna.
Joe and I got up, with Joe saying it was time to get the trailer.
‘Well, it was a hard life, but a good life,’ said Nanna as we helped her up. She was retiring to bed. ‘Good thing I’ll be in the ground, soon.’
Mary’s head nearly came off.
‘Don’t you mean in heaven, Mum?’ she asked.
Nanna wiped the sides of her mouth with her silk handkerchief. ‘Heaven …? Oh, that.’
They freeze-dried. Joe, Frank and Mary. Nanna shook my hand, then went over to Joe and kissed him good night. She walked through the space that the table, only half an hour before, had occupied. When she’d half-vanished through the door, Frank called out.
‘See, Mum,’ he said, ‘you don’t go hitting your leg on that table any more.’
Nanna regarded her son a second before slowly turning away and pulling the door shut behind her.
Frank and Mary went to bed straight after. Joe and I got ready to go, but as we passed Long John in his cage, he jumped forward.
‘Weigh anchor?’ he squawked.
I asked Joe if we could take him on our mission. We did. We got the trailer. It was half an hour there, half an hour back.
Long-John sat on the dash the whole time, head forward, clipped wings outstretched like he was flying.
When we got back, I had to put him in his cage. ‘That’s the longest he’s been out,’ said Joe.
When I took him to the cage he ran right up my arm and behind my neck. Joe had to un-thorn his toes at the back of my shirt. He screeched when we put him inside. I mean, really screeched. Piercing stuff, like your eardrums were going a whole drum solo.
It was an awful, awful sound.
The next morning Joe went to wake up his nanna; she was sleeping in very late. A quarter of an hour later he walked out of her room, red-eyed, and told us she was dead. I remembered the night before how she’d just shifted her meal around on her plate. Nobody said anything straight away. It was the sort of quiet where the background noise gets its short-lived moment front of screen, and you remember fridges hum, and clocks tick. Mary rang the GP. Frank went to the shed to ‘check’ the knots we tied on the ropes holding the table. When he came back, his lip was trembling.
‘I don’t believe it,’ he said.
‘Don’t believe what?’ said Mary, a little spooked with a corpse in the house.
‘Mum … she’s … she’s made a great big bloody scratch right down the centre of that table!’
Mary rushed to the shed to see. Frank followed.
Joe and I were left alone. He smiled.
I knew then that the pocketknife I’d given Joe was a good present.
Joe and I started out on the road to Melbourne, the land opening up under the disappearing mist like a cold lasagne stripped of its cling-wrap covering. He pulled up at his local train station.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked.
‘I wasn’t visiting, Sam,’ said Joe. ‘I’m staying.’
‘You can’t go back,’ I told him.
As Filter would say, once you wake up to this world, there’s no going back to sleep. Joe got out of the car and went round to the boot to get my bag. There was nothing I could do but also get out.
He insisted on carrying my bag till we got inside the station. He then checked out the time of the next train and looked at his watch.
‘I thought it ran later,’ he said, looking disappointed.
I don’t know why he was disappointed. If I was going to be packed on the train, I didn’t want to wait for it. Joe handed me my bag. I leant it against my legs – it wasn’t worth sitting down. Joe shuffled about on his toes, obviously with something further on his mind. Eventually he got it out.
‘Arny will be back soon,’ he said.
It came from nowhere and it was the first time Joe had mentioned Arny since inviting me to that ice-skating rink. The next thing he said was even more out of the blue.
‘He’s “the one”, isn’t he, Sam?’
It was my turn to shuffle. I didn’t know that I believed in ‘the one’. My bag fell over and I picked it up. ‘The one’ would be nice, sure, if it was real. But was it? Even though I’d put Arny out of my head, I guess I still secretly hoped.
‘Yes,’ I eventually said. ‘He’s “the one”.’
‘For you?’ asked Joe. The answer was so obviously yes that I didn’t bother responding. Joe said a few more strange things, things I didn’t really hear at the time, or know how to take in. An announcement was made over the PA: the train was arriving. Joe stopped and looked up the track. There it was.
It wasn’t what I wanted to ask – it was probably the least important question – but I asked it anyway.
‘What about the cricket?’
‘You’re the natural, Sam.’
Joe could see my mind working overtime to state my case more cogently. The train pulled up with a hiss and a screech. The other people waiting got on board.
‘Just till my parents get over the shock of losing Nanna,’ he justified himself.
I also embarked.
‘Say hello to Long John for me,’ I said. ‘Let him out of his cage now and then.’
The doors closed. Joe stood watching for as long as I could see him. Maybe even longer.
Back in Melbourne, I tried ringing Filter. No answer. Same with Zane. I couldn’t even intercept Filter at the video store when he was leaving the morning shift and I was arriving for the afternoon shift; the boss was there instead. He told me that Filter had unexpectedly quit.
‘Strangely,’ he added, ‘when I deleted his details on the computer this morning, I realised he quit exactly five years to the day when he started with me.’
That night, I holed up in my room. I was feeling edgy – I couldn’t say why. I was angry with Joe, I guess. He was giving up, staying in a place where he couldn’t be himself. And that conversation at the train station – was he saying goodbye?
I got out for a golden duck in cricket. My form slump looked like it had set in. Tubby asked me about Joe when he was driving me home. For some reason, an Adam’s apple formed in my throat, and water pricked my eyes. I turned sharply to the window on my side, and wound it down so the wind would dry my face. Tubby didn’t pursue the subject.
A fortnight passed, time where nothing went right: my game, my friendships. Dizzy cornered me in the nets at training and told me he’d decided he liked me because I wasn’t camp.
I told Tubby that when he drove me home.
‘Man, maybe the real reason he now likes you is because of your form slump.’
I wondered why I ever wanted to be accepted by the likes of Dizzy.
‘Sorry, Sam, but you know what I’m like: “Tubby, telling it like it is”.’
‘I wouldn’t want you any other way, Tubs,’ I choked.
Walking to my room, Jen intercepted me in the corridor.
‘Sam, a girl’s been ringing you.’
‘A girl?’
‘Her name’s Lydia.’
Jen passed me a piece of paper with a number on it.
‘Thanks, I know the number,’ I said.
Lydia insisted we go out for dinner. We met at this little Thai place. It was very nice. Authentic. An Authentic Thai waitress ran over.
‘You friend of Mr Filter, yes?’
My chopsticks missed my mouth, daubing my chin. Filter. This is where he’d taken me one time. That time. On the whole beginning, the waking up, the …
‘You his friend, yes?’
Lydia was looking at me.
‘You tell Mr Filter shame, he not been here a long time.’
I nodded. It was a shame. The waitress left.
‘Joe’s dead,’ said Lydia.
‘What …? What …?’
‘He’s dead.’
‘Dead? How?’
‘He was driving to work, the vineyard – you know how fast he drives – and …’ Lydia put a handkerchief to her eyes. ‘This food really is spicy.’
I saw her words as crystals. They’d grown halfway across the table. I couldn’t speak my side of the bridge.
I called over the waitress.
‘Um, please, where’s your toilet?’ I asked and, because she looked tornadoes at that, I had to add, ‘Sorry, I’ve forgotten.’
‘I knew you Mr Filter’s friend! Up the hall.’
Even though I was alone in the bathroom, I still had bashful bladder. Did I need a slash? Or a minute alone? What had Lydia said?
Joe – driving to work – the winery – crashed? Yes, that’s what she’d said. He was dead. Why did he do it? Driving fast all the time – what was the point in that? The idiot! Things were going well for him. Until he went back to the folks, that is.
I hadn’t needed a slash after all, just time to take this in. I tried to leave the bathroom. Dishwashing detergents, scrubs, a mop – must’ve opened the cupboard door. Turning round, I couldn’t see another. That was the only door in the room! That echidna bunched up. Calm down, Sam, calm down. I circled the room. Okay, not another door. I looked at the window. Not even a cat could crawl through it. Right, open the door again: cupboard. Maybe it has a fallback. I went to move a few items but my fully extended arms were still gripping air! How was that possible? Then I realised: the cupboard was set a metre and a half back from the door. The corridor to the toilet doglegged. I hadn’t noticed the cupboard to my left coming in. What was wrong with me?
I rejoined Lydia.
‘When’s the funeral?’ I asked.
‘Last week – ’
‘Last week?’ I yelled. ‘Why wasn’t I – ?’
‘Sam!’ shouted Lydia. ‘I only just found out what happened to him myself.’
Lydia explained.
‘Yesterday I rang Joe’s parents wanting to get onto Joe about his bond for the house. I’m going back to my parents myself, you see, and … and well naturally I wanted Joe to have his money back. He’d told me he didn’t want it till I got another flatmate, but … but I couldn’t find one.’
Poor Lydia. She and Joe had been a good unit. They could put up with each other.
‘You know,’ said Lydia, ‘when I passed his room this morning, I imagined I could hear him reading To Kill a Mockingbird to you. I’m … I’m sorry I made fun of your tastes in books.’
‘That’s okay, Lydia,’ I said, ‘I’m sorry, too.’
She reached across for my hand.
I let her take it.
But the truth was, I didn’t believe her. Joe dead? I knew what I needed, and it wasn’t Thai. It would fill this sudden, yawning chasm that had opened inside me. It would make me feel good.
I rang Zane at work. He seemed surprised. ‘Sammy, never at work.’
‘All right, but I can’t get onto you at home,’ I said and was about to hang up.
‘Wait,’ he whispered. ‘Let’s go out tonight. Pit. Ten-thirty, me casa[1].’
Me casa? The few brief times he’d caught up with me lately, he sure was peppering his talk with foreign words. Now I know this shows my ignorance, but I can’t speak any language apart from my own. If I’m reading and the author drops in a sentence in French or a quote in Latin, it’s like this real intimate conversation I’ve been having with them is interrupted when they turn to whisper to a friend behind a hand. Guess that shows my insecurity and I should bloody well just look up the meanings.
Filter was there, spread out in Zane’s airport lounge. Zane was on the hash, sucking it through his metal pipe. Filter was chopping up the bar with his pocketknife, one hand bandaged, oddly. Nice-looking pocketknife, though: useful appliances. I’d never really taken note of his pocketknife before. Or had I? Where had I got the idea to give one to Joe?
Joe dead?
When I squeezed between Zane and Filter on the couch, they told me they’d run out of hash.
I picked up the pipe. There was a little dotch. I flicked out the burnt bits with a matchstick. On the carpet I saw a few filings of hash, but I couldn’t pick them up with my fingers. Then I saw something to the purpose: the tweezers in Filter’s pocketknife.
I got down on the carpet, my eye a microscope, and saved every filigree of hash I could. When I rose up over the coffee table, Zane and Filter were staring at me.
‘What?’ I asked.
A few more shavings of hash in the wood grain – the plastic toothpick from the pocketknife saw to the digging out of those. I’d get a good draw at least.
Zane got up and put on some Stereolab. This was more like it. Beautiful.
I lit the few curls of brown and sucked till my cheeks caved in. Zane and Filter were staring at me. I wheezed out. Not a scent of smoke. I’d swallowed the whole bellows full. The room shifted several degrees to the right. For the first time since the end of the Luke episode, the rush wasn’t pleasant, but dislocating. Zane grabbed my unsteady hand. Filter pulled me back onto the couch.
Maybe a hallucinogen wasn’t the answer. I needed a euphoric plug. I asked Filter to flip us an E. An E would supercharge the night, like old times.
‘I’ll square you up later,’ I assured him.
Filter didn’t answer straight off.
‘It’s a fookin’ journey, these drugs, Sam,’ he said at last. ‘It’s not a journey everyone can take. You’re looking at the world, so many ways, most people don’t wanna know about.’
‘Just an E, Filter?’ I said. ‘I’m ready for that high again.’
Zane looked at Filter. Filter looked down at his large hands then at me.
‘Mate, the other day me and 4play were pill-popping.’
4play was Filter’s supplier.
‘Without me?’
‘You were at cricket, mate. You stick to that. We’re the clock-radio controlled automatons, wired up weekdays to turn into weekend warriors. Not you. Now, what happens, right, the first one doesn’t kick in. So, what we do? 4play’s a supplier, so he’s got two more. Well, he gets his kicks up, but I’m still being cock-teased by the soft-cock. So, what I do? Spend my last bucks on a third. Mates rates and all, but that 4play’s still filching me. Anyways, 4play’s spastic dancing and I’m in a turmoil, getting the vibration but no buzz. I’ve gotta have anything – Valium, Temazepam – to knock me out, but 4play doesn’t have any concussion grenades, only high explosives. So where’d that leave me on the battlefield? In a pay phone, calling every number on my mobile (no credit left) for a housewife drug.’
‘Did you score?’
‘For fook’s sake, Sam! Me fookin’ mother digits are in me mobile. I was so fookin’ wired, I still don’t know if I called her.’
Filter raised a bandaged hand.
‘But I do know this, mate: I wasn’t asking down the line; I was fookin’ screaming.’
I asked about the hand. He’d cut it smashing the glass. Filter sure had a dark side. Witness the Greenpeace guy whose teeth he wanted to smash.
Zane told me Filter might lose movement in his hand.
‘Being a musician, it’s vital that Filter – ’
But Filter cut Zane off, telling him to hush. There was a dark look between those two, now. Great, wherever I went, I was trouble.
It’s so hard to get on top of your game, and I’m not just talking cricket. I mean life. You work out how you’re gonna play it, you take the crease, the first few overs are easy, but then the opposition goes and changes tactics! Walking home with Zane from The Pit that night, that night when we’d resolved to enjoy ourselves, and actually did – well, that felt like the start, the start of a mature Sam, a Sam who was finally getting good at life. And here I was, not even a couple of months later, being kept back a year for failing to make the mark.
We wrapped up the night; it wasn’t going anywhere.
A whole week passed before Zane, Filter and I reunited, this time at Filter’s apartment. In the meantime, I’m embarrassed to say, I got in the habit of getting drunk with Dizzy and some of the other cricketers I didn’t like so much. Well, what choice had I? Zane and Filter were becoming real stay-at-homes. The TV would be on next. After a lot of whinging on my part, Filter weeded out some weed for me, which I stuffed into the end of a crumpled cigarette.
Someone buzzed the downstairs door. Turned out to be 4play. When he got up to the room, he and Filter did some complicated handshake. Started off like a shake but you slid your hand back, gripped then punched. He gave me a nod. Filter introduced him to me, then to Zane. So those two hadn’t met before? Their nod was brief.
4play looked round for a seat but there wasn’t one. Zane and I always had to clear away Filter’s junk to get a seat. So 4play stood, his clothes making swishing noises. He was wearing a yellow parka and looked like a lilo. He had a chain round his neck and rings prominent as knuckle dusters on his fingers. Filter inquired after a piece 4play had resurrected that day (don’t think that’s the right lingo, but anyway).
‘They’ve got some mad loops happening, man. That stuff is the shit. Amuck, Aura and Assist were doin’ all this freestylin’ and stuff, man. It was so cool. Man, you should’ve seen their groupies. They had joyform tits.’
Zane shook his head.
Filter asked 4play if he’d scored.
‘Nah, man, these bitches were skanky as. You needed three condoms on apiece just to fuck the bitches.’
‘Pencil dick,’ uttered Zane from the corner.
4play swivelled his baseball cap veranda-backwards, scoping Zane in the half-light. Zane hadn’t liked Jussy pretty much on sight either. Maybe I should take note this time.
‘Yeah, those mother-fucking bitches want 4play bad, man. So what’s up with my nigger-bitch, Filter? When you coming Westside again? I gotta come Eastside to dope you up. No money?’ asked 4play when Filter remained unmoved. ‘What about some bling bling? Nice watch.’
Filter exploded.
‘You want me watch, wigga? My fookin’ mother gave me that watch!’ he shouted, waving his bandaged hand.
4play backed off. Filter proceeded to explain that he wasn’t in the ‘buying and selling’ business anymore. That raised eyebrows from everyone and a few voiced objections from myself. I saw 4play took good notice of those.
‘Yeah, well, mah homes, gotta get back to my bitches. They want 4play bad.’
‘Yeah, but I bet they wish you’d get down to the fookin’!’
And with that, 4play left.
Zane asked Filter to elaborate. Seemed Filter was venturing into telemarketing. A five-days-a-week, nine-to-five occupation. A former career of selling drugs was the perfect résumé.
I couldn’t understand Filter. He was the one who told me that once you wake up to the world, there’s no going back to sleep. Yet, here he was, in comatosia. He’d done what he’d dissed all his same-age friends for doing: trading the homey spine for the corporate carapace.
Filter stood up and took off his jacket.
‘You don’t get it, do you, Sammy? Reason we had a fookin’ good time, mate, was ’cause it’s rare. Do that every day, mate, I seen it, it’s not pretty. It’s not fun then. You’ve got to do it, then let it go.’
‘You’re the one telling me to stay interested,’ I yelled, ‘Well, how the fuck do I stay interested now?’
‘How do you stay interested, Sam? How da fuck would I know? I’m bored.’
‘Sam,’ interjected Zane. ‘Rules to stop yourself from becoming a pedestrian: soon as you get into a routine, change it.’
‘Keep interested, mate,’ added Filter tersely. ‘But other ways.’
He softened almost immediately, like Brie in the microwave, and leaned over, grabbing my elbow.
‘We’ve been living a week in a moment, Sam. We’ve got to cut back to a day a day.’
A day a day? The very thought made me feel kind of stuck, the way I‘d feel at tram-stops, waiting for the next one to come but knowing where it would be going anyway. But what about those moments? Everything momentous, packed with meaning.
‘Sammy, darling, there is a flipside to drugs,’ put in Zane.
‘Yeah, like fucking what?’
Filter and Zane were silent. Eventually Zane answered me.
‘Uncontrollable mood swings.’
Uncontrollable …? My hands waved for my attention. The bone had worn through white at the knuckles. So I was agitated. Why? I was angry. Very angry. And I knew why.
Joe.
The anger coloured every other emotion. I stubbed out my impromptu joint in a beer bottle top. It was only tobacco left anyway.
Walking home alone, I thought back to that parting at the train station. He’d asked about Arny – whether he was ‘the one’.
He’d also said something I couldn’t process at the time.
‘If I’d found “the one” in Melbourne, Sam, I could go back. That would give me the courage. Arny’s lucky. I haven’t found my Sam.’
I stopped, two houses from my front door, a sword falling through my centre. No, it wasn’t fair to put to me what I didn’t realise at the time was an ultimatum. I wasn’t going to be anyone’s reason for living … or not. It wasn’t fair – I didn’t believe in ‘the one’ – and I hated him.
I rang Filter, leaving a message on his mobile about that months-old promise to accompany him to the gym. It was about the tenth message I’d left without reply. So much for that resolution. I buzzed Zane next, at work. I could hear the rustle of his hand cupping the mouthpiece.
‘Sammy, I only gave you this number for emergencies.’
‘What’s the story with corporate Filter?’ I asked.
‘I guess he wants a steady job.’
Zane sounded so different when he was at work. Neutral tone.
‘What about his music?’ I asked.
‘He’s made his decision.’
Zane obviously didn’t want this to be a long conversation.
‘Dinner?’ I said, hopeful. I needed to get out of the house.
‘No.’
‘No?’
The real Zane came back.
‘Sammy, darling, it’s Spanish class tonight.’
Silence.
‘Tell you what, I’ll meet you at The Pit afterwards. Hablo a menudo de Vd.[2]
Whatever. I hung up.
On the way, I ran into 4play, still dressed as a human lifeboat.
‘What’s the story with Filter?’ he asked. ‘I called his digits. “Hi, you’ve rung Timothy Bain at LectraVision.” Timothy Bain!’
I’d heard the same message myself when trying to get onto so-called ‘Filter’. The truth is always plainer.
‘You chasin’?’ asked 4play.
I told him drugs had stopped having the desired effect on me.
‘Maybe you need to up the dosage,’ said 4Play.
Matter, though generally distributed throughout the cosmos …
Objects fighting for space.
Can you hear me? LIFT OFF. Counting down now. Your decision?
You decide. Your decision? You decide. Counting down now.
FIVE, FOUR, THREE – counting down – ONE, IGNITION –
Blast!
It wasn’t kicking in.
Zane eyed me carefully.
We were at the The Pit, Pulse Night For Men, standing at the railing, looking down at the rice cooker. There was this one, long, slim piece of picturesque youth bopping about with a girl.
‘You like that one, Sammy?’ asked Zane.
‘Him!’ I laughed. ‘Oh God no. He’s just come out and that girl he’s dancing with – she’s his supportive sister. He’s all in the flush of excitement – he thinks he’s over the one and only hurdle in his life – coming out. Give him a while. He’ll be bitter and twisted. He still thinks being gay is exciting.’
Zane laughed. ‘I am your father.’
We both played up to that. I can do a pretty good Darth Vader voice, and what with Zane breathing heavily, it kept us going for a few secs, but then it kind of wheezed away. We just watched the lights and dancing. I popped my second pill. Zane frowned. Then spoke.
‘The gay world isn’t holding much for me any more, Sammy. Oh, when I was young and gorgeous. But now I’m a fat bitch. And taking boys home – who can be bothered? It just means messy sheets and no sleep. What will I do when I’m too old for the clubs?’
I suddenly got frightened. I remembered that time we’d made an effort, and how everyone had been attracted to us.
‘We’re not slipping backwards, are we, Zane?’
Zane pushed himself away from the railing into a standing position.
‘Sammy, we’re like a dog that’s been de-sexed. It still tries to rut the bitch called Life, but it just isn’t getting the same pleasure out of it. Taking drugs in the park, those nights here at The Pit, when we worked to make it work … well, time to find the newer something to do, Sammy.’
No, not yet. I wasn’t ready to say goodbye. What was taking so long with that first pill? The forty-five minutes were well and truly up.
‘Life isn’t very literary,’ I whinged.
‘You shouldn’t read so much, Sammy. Pocos libros hay que le sean útiles[3].
‘What’s with all the French?’ I asked him.
‘Spanish.’
‘Well, Spanish then. Are you planning on …?’
Zane’s guilty smile was answer enough.
That’s why he was doing the Spanish classes.
Started hanging out with 4play after that. Had to, with Zane and Filter turning adult overnight. Smoked dope, popped pills, got up to mischief. Broke into the Nylex tower. When I say ‘broke in’, I mean we climbed a fence and hurdled through a window, nothing smashed or jimmied. I got to the very top, looking out over the neon sign. Kind of poetic; or would’ve been if it wasn’t for 4play and his wiggas below, talking their ‘gangsta rap’. Could’ve kept going back, except Happy – one of 4play’s space-monkeys, that’s what he called his ‘crew’ – smashed some of the brewery piping on the way down. Next night, the spaces in the steps you swung under were already welded over.
It was adrenalin-etched so far as its illegality, but not profound. All action, no subtext. The life of books? A grunge novel, maybe.
Next night, we hooked up at Richmond Station. The 7 o’clock Flinders Street hauled in, a spitfire spray down the tracks: the result of 4play’s starter-caps taped to the rails (4play had bummed the starter-caps off Filter – he no longer needed them, apparently). The bangs washed the commuters the other side of the platform. With the cops and MetGestapo on-scene and occupied, our gang caught the train going the opposite direction, to Prahran. Never seen a more efficient demolition squad, like a nest of termites in a block of wood. First, two of them prized the doors open; another ripped the top off a Coke can and shoved it under one of the doors, preventing them from closing. Next, a blade withdrawn and the rubber cut out of a window. The glass sucked in, a plastic bag over a face. Then the glass swallowed whole, leaving the mouth of night gasping. 4play ordered me, his mate Happy and another space-monkey to take a corner each of a seat. We rocked it till it broke, and started carrying it. Then I saw where to.
‘Hey, wait …’
Too late, it was out the window.
That night, 4play offered me a new drug. At least it was new to me. But I’d seen the face of someone who well and truly knew it: Kev, Cinder’s boyfriend, all those months back.
‘Wanna try some horse, Sam?’
Back at the oval in the morning, we played another match. A duck. My fourth in a row. I was setting records, just all the wrong ones. Tubby left me at my locker. I glanced round at a poster that caught my attention. It was moving! Calming down, I saw it wasn’t a poster; it was the window, and the coach was motioning me to come outside.
He took me to the stands, the ones where the wooden planks on the seat are each painted a different colour. Scrolling colour bars on a dodgy set.
‘Not getting enough sleep there, Big Feller?’ asked the coach, his sausage dog limbs tiny at the joints.
I cocked my head.
‘You’ve got more rings under your eyes than I have in my bathtub.’
I’d say he only noticed my eyes ’cause I’d drawn attention to them myself. There was a strand of hair I kept pulling at.
The coach leaned forward.
‘I’m going to have to let you go, Sam.’
Go? I leant back an equal distance to that which he’d leant in. Going would probably mean having to go back home. I didn’t have the job at the library any more and my boss at the video store was hinting at doing my shifts to cut back on wages. Going home would mean starting again. All over. Finding another escape route.
‘One more chance?’ I asked, still pulling at that strand of damn hair.
The coach stood up, scoped me a second longer, and walked away.
The hair over my eye wasn’t a hair at all but the shadow of a power cord looping from the speaker in the stand to a pole ten metres away. Hallucinations when not on drugs?
At home, Tash and Jen confronted me about some money that had gone missing. Tash had put it on the table as her contribution for the water bill. I shrugged and went into my room.
Sitting on my mattress, I looked at the lone needle mark on my arm. I’d watched 4play cut open the plastic that contained the syringe, so I was safe there.
And I remembered back to when I’d asked Filter about heroin. It wasn’t long after that night we’d seen the drag queen. And it wasn’t long after I’d asked about heroin, that he and Zane started dissociating themselves from me. Maybe that was why.
It was at Filter’s, the three of us smoking hash.
‘Filter, if E gives you such a high, what must horse be like?’
Filter sat up on his bed.
‘Horse?’ he laughed. ‘Ha, he’s even got the lingo?’ he said to Zane. He then turned back to me again. ‘Mate, wot you talking about horse for? You don’t wanna know the ho’ slow.’
‘Have you known slow?’
He started to rap to the theme, hitting his drums.
‘Have I known the ho’ slow? In my veins like water in drains, collecting, pooling, suspecting? The needle tip, the love of it? Oh god yes, the ultimate slut to get you in the rut. As soon as she’s yours, you’re her whore. That very street corner you’ve bought her on, you’ll meet, you’re gone. Nothing else matters. Nothing at all. And you’ll lie because she’s the only truth. O God, I wanted her. I wanted her, to be with her – her, I wanted. To be us, us two, together, forever, then dead together. Dead. I wanted to be fed then fled. I wanted to be her, and her me, but each of us surprising, a mystery. I wanted her to know me at my best and the rest? – the rest, shed. I wanted, wanted, more than I wanted, to want, to wonder, to know the ho’ slow.’
He stopped beating his drums.
‘Thank god for soft-serve drugs to part-fill the hole. If I had to be completely clean, I’d go mad with this scene.’
And he toked his metal pipe. Zane was staring at me worriedly from his dark corner.
‘Sammy, darling, I wish I’d never introduced you to drugs.’
Filter exhaled, his face turning serious and angry. He turned from Zane to me, worry also on his face.
‘Mate, what you talking about the ho’ slow for? Humans – we’re not meant to feel that good. Ever.’
[1] Spanish, my house.
[2] Spanish: I often speak of you.
[3] Spanish: There are few books which are of use to you.
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