4play opened the bag of magic mushrooms. He and Happy examined them, trying to suss out if they’d picked the genuine articles. There were all these checks: right colour, right cap, right shape. Their stalks were meant to go blue-vein or something when picked. If you got it wrong and picked a deadly toadstool, you could die. Filter had refused to pick the mushrooms with 4play, apparently, to show him what to look for. He didn’t want the ‘responsibility’.
‘Yeah, no, they’re right,’ said Happy.
It was night and we were in that park with the kiddies’ fort – a touch 4play had stolen from Filter.
We chewed down the mushrooms, and started walking. Walking would pump the blood through our systems and bring on the trip faster, according to 4play. Filter had always warned about forcing the feeling.
‘Sammy D,’ smiled 4play, ‘Mr L L Filtrated water, Monsieur H2O to go, on the rocks with his cock’s sock unmatched, says your sideways snatch can bust some mad rhymes?’
Mad rhymes? What was he talking about? Where were we going?
My world was unhinging, 4play’s impinging. We trod the bitumen path, green grass leaning over the edges like the front rows of a mosh pit onto a stage. Maybe this was a bad idea.
‘So watcha gonna teach us?’ shouted 4play. ‘Can you reach us? Tell us about your crumbed sausage sex on the beaches, the beats, the heat, the snap, the thaw. Come on, yo! I can smell that liverwurst breath, ’cause you been suckin’ on the dick of death!’
‘Large it up, dawg,’ laughed Happy.
They were talking about me, weren’t they?
And the pace, the race? Why were we walking so fast, our fleet-footed hooves flinting fire? A thousand coconut castanets. Or was it the cicadas, disguised as leaves in the trees beside us?
‘Man, Filter said you had some mad rhymes, but you’re mad wak. Happy, give him a few more toadstools.’
‘No, I …’
‘And another, yo.’
I stuffed them down.
‘Happy, start your beatbox.’
The trees were at my knees, the path river-wide. Hurtling, hurrying forward. Whoosh-whoosh, the wind.
‘Don’t you know it!’ said 4play. ‘He’s all hush. You gotta own it, Sam!’
Needed to get home. Tried to break my steam-engine legs, the endless rotations. A lilo hand grabbed me, coupling me in front.
‘Hello, ah no, don’t you go. Come back to the community where you got immunity. Let’s hear your rub-a-dub-dub, back scrubber.’
Back scrubber?
‘Filter reckons you can rhyme more lyrical than the spiritual Mr Me. But I don’t see it, no.’
Feet spinning. Locked between the two.
‘My chin tastes funny,’ laughed Happy, licking his chin.
Carried up the bank, getting to an intersection, stopped at the crossing.
Had that car been waiting too long at the lights? It had, hadn’t it? Oh God, maybe they were onto us. Don’t panic, Sam, don’t. They don’t. 4play and Happy seem snappy. Don’t let on. Don’t. A panic of you (in you) could beset a panic of them and you – don’t.
Surely the lights had changed ten times already, and still the car waiting? It was onto us, they were onto us. How many? I counted ten faces too many, all looking out that car’s windows.
Did Joe go too fast or did he mean to crash? Put away your stash.
I scream, they scream, we all scream for – I scream!
‘Yo, honky! Wazzup?’ asked 4play, the human road hazard sign in his fluoro yellow. His yellow peril. Reaching out with lollypop hand, dragging me across the zebra steam-rolled flat, Happy flat-chat behind us, the city lights flashed red-green, red-green. Only a quarter of the way across the road, the green-man intersection to go.
It must be green, that light, by now, and still the car waiting? They were onto us. No, wait! Moving, gaining speed, disappearing, gone.
‘Come on, niggas, let’s cross.’
But now, what’s this?
Watch those fence palings, each a sentry box. And now that boom gate, a Checkpoint Charlie. See that man with the machine gun, rat-a-tat-tat? 4play jamming a twenty-cent coin in the boom arm. Ring ring ring, slow train, colour of dust for fingerprints. Not mine, oh not mine. Don’t let that rail blow.
‘You’ll kill them!’
Why’d we drop that chair out the train window? Where’d it fall?
‘Where what?’ asked Happy. Where had his eyebrows flown?
Wiping the boom arm of my prints. Boom arm? Wait, this no high-wall, barbwire, border crossing. No, that, Sam, that’s the railway crossing. And that? That is the wind’s hissing, between and off afar. It’s okay, okay? Man with the machine gun is just a signal box with a circle head.
Must be dead.
‘Quick,’ yelled 4play.
Ducking down an alley, ‘The pigs!’ squealed Happy.
The pigs, oink, oink? Sirens sidling past streets like parents past doors, looking in to wish you asleep. Me, 4play, Happy crouched down and overshadowed in the eaves. The factory walls in permanent high-falls.
‘Wow the constabulary with your vocabulary, Sammy D,’ said 4play.
‘Pardon?’
‘I said, even Jesus got a hard-on.’
‘Pardon?’
‘Yeah, seeing what your ma done!’
4play and Happy standing up now, the sirens faded. Me still foetus-scared, balled up on pavement.
This wasn’t that high-tide poetry of the first time, with Zane and Filter, feeling the moment momentous, packed with meaning, but that last time with them, pulling hand guns on lovers innocent, indiscriminate bullying. Where had the poetry gone, gone to?
They were laughing about me, weren’t they? Tried to wipe my face. Where’s my hand? I moved my hand, I’m sure, but it hasn’t moved …? Paralysed! Oh my God. No, there it goes. Time delay? The whole world stopped? Or just me, falling behind in the past? Can see 4play, Happy, steps ahead, but put on pause, shimmering.
And someone else? The third who walks beside them. Get up, Sam. Follow. Who’s that someone else?
Me …?
Seeing … me, externally!
Richmond Industrial area, that’s where we are. Smell the hops. ‘Carlton United’ ushers the way. Okay, so I know where I am, but where am I? Still outside myself. Pizza tossing views, 4play, Happy, back, side, profile, front. All at once. Too much, too much! Multiple flipping realities. Somewhere, something eats. Possum in the garbage. Sound so loud, can’t hear the others. Possum so far away but sound so loud.
Get back to your body, Sam. Don’t fall behind.
My eyes about my ankles, my ankles at my waist.
Can’t feel my body, can’t feel, keep that boy walking, pull that puppet string persona. Looking down a black tunnel of myself, seeing Happy a little circle at the end.
‘You there?’ he asks.
‘Keep … keep … keep talking. Say normal … say.’
And he talks, but it’s as mad as me.
So afraid. Get through that tunnel. Almost at my nose, a pink/black line – like when you go cross-eyed. Nearly there. It’s okay, okay? Keep looking at 4play, looking at the tree, Happy at the ready.
Where are we now? A park. A park where?
Forgetting, forgetting, oh God, already. Where am I? Where? There am I, there. Two steps behind myself, out of body. You can make it back to yourself, Sam.
How does the foggy universe of atoms …
How does …
Become the tangible world of things and people?
Lost in light. Dissipating.
Get through it, Sam, get through this, don’t miss …
Miss what? Just keep walking.
Don’t lose 4play and Happy, don’t. Out of the park, in the city. Pedestrians are there, their streams forward and back. Can see where they’ve been and are, and were. Did Joe swerve? Miss, Sam, miss them. Stay in the present.
Keep walking behind 4play, Happy. Keep them in sight.
Back in alleys, the dark, not much easier.
‘Can we sit, please, sit?’
‘My head feels funny,’ said Happy. ‘Oh look, your ears are falling off. Lulla-lulla-la.’
It’s not funny. This ain’t funny, this.
Get that seat to solidify before sitting on it, Sam. Everything peeling away. Doily shadows on walls, the plaster, bricks, the whole world transparent. Seeing to the horizon in every direction, seeing through people, houses, trees!
Choking visually.
Help, help, help!
‘Man, everything’s dripping,’ said 4play. We were all going mad, were we? We were. Grabbing Happy.
‘We’re in trouble?’
‘Trouble double! No man, this is cool!’
Cool? Coolly dooly. They were okay.
‘This is mad clean,’ said 4play.
They were okay, just me, then, me. My nose in focus then … then …
Back inside myself! There I am – no, here I am – with … With who?
Couch-dancing on the seat, 4play and Happy dancing, before me, I must ask: ‘Um, excuse me, but … but how do I know you?’
‘You shitting me?’ cried 4play.
‘How do I know you two?’
‘Uh oh,’ smiled Happy, ‘don’t do this to me. You’re spinning me out.’
‘No, please, how do I know you?’
‘This must be that mad shit Filter said you hang on people,’ said 4play.
‘Filter? How do I … know him …? Who knows who of you two?’
‘Who knows who? We know you!’ they laughed, Acca Dacca-style.
But still the questions. How do I know you two? Who do I know you through? What do I know that’s true? What do I know?
Who am I?
Who am I!
I don’t even know that. No, this isn’t happening. Think it through. Who am I? Begins with … No, no, no, sounds like … like … tram. Can I remember? I was born, that much … And one time – four, I think it was – discarding my floaties, I jumped in a pool, sinking all the way to the bottom and as the water filled my lungs, I felt myself forgetting before I had much to remember. How peaceful it was. I can’t believe how peaceful it was. But this time, peddling the water, cycling the waves, chopped up with surf, not wanting to drown eternally, I was yanked up, Dirk my brother, a first slap of baby breath bringing me to the norm. ‘Hey, hey, can you hear me …?’
Yes, can you hear me (prompting him) …?
‘Sam!’
Oh, thank God.
My name is Sam. Sam the man on hand at hand, the man is Sam.
Going down an escalator, metal monsters screaming past. We’re in the underground now, Sam. Hang in there. Happy scabbing money for chips. Reaching in pockets. Shaking the machine. Packet of Doritos.
Happy and I munching them down. For some reason, 4play not eating. He and Happy sharing looks, with 4play shaking his head. After, hearing him ask Happy, ‘You can get Hep B from sharing saliva with them, can’t you?’ That meant me, didn’t it? Did it? Hid it – had I hid it? That I knew knew. That I knew that they knew that I knew what they did? Had I kept it hid?
Getting on the train, swaying in at a million pounds.
This is the world.
What world?
This is the world that God built. Who built? He built. And these are the men who cry in the night
– Because they are lorn
Who cry in the night
– From dark to dawn
Who love and hate
– With equal scorn
Yes these are the men that,
armed to the hilt,
destroy the world
that God built.
What built? He built. Who? Was He listening, listening to my thoughts? Get out of my head! Telling the girl on the train, it wasn’t fair, didn’t she know it was rude to listen in to other people’s thoughts? Her getting up and moving away. 4play, Happy laughing. When will this stop? Her huddling by the doors. When will I think straight again? When?
Then …? 4play, Happy, dragging me off the train.
‘Filter reckons you got mad rhyming style,’ said 4play. ‘But you’re just fronting like you’re all that. But me? My style’s like butta. It’s so good I gotta spread it round. You ain’t jack shit.’
‘You dissing him?’ said Happy.
‘Shak his world,’ said 4play to Happy. ‘Boo-yakka,’ he yelled at me. ‘Give the cunt chop chop, yuk yuk. That guy’s a lick. Oi, flosser? You think you’re so dope, but you’re a no-hope, fuckin’ joke!’
I recoiled.
‘Ha! Sook.’
‘4play, man!’ said Happy, putting a hand on his mate’s lilo. 4play shook it off.
‘Happy, there’s a difference between a surfer and a surfie.’
Up the ramp, outside again, feet so sore. No longer night. Cold porridge clouds. The day in segments. Morning. The sun was comeuppance.
‘You okay, man?’ asked Happy, reaching to light a cigarette, 4play reaching to bum one off him.
‘I was … it was hard,’ I tried to say.
‘You seemed fine.’
‘It was … I’m okay.’
And I tried to walk away. Happy nudged 4play.
‘Yo!’ shouted 4play. ‘Big ups to my man, Sammy D. That guy gets nuff rezpect. He’s fresh. Got mad style. Dope. Made.’
He gripped my hand. I untangled it.
‘Increase the peace,’ called Happy behind me.
Got away. Hadn’t let on. Finding a supermarket. In the supermarket. What for? What am I doing? Here for … Heretofore I’d been here to … Which aisle? Noodles, sauces, pickles. Shopping to shop. What is that music? Why does it sing so softly, Softly, Baby Powder, Fabulon? Can’t take that can. Can’t take the second last can-can, tinned-soup, spaghetti. Who’s the one left gonna dance with? How’s he gonna cope? Can’t take the last, man. Can’t, shan’t, won’t, varmint.
Doggone it, darn it. Which aisle? So many. Getting escorted out, don’t shout.
‘Should we call the cops?’ a big man’s saying, Brilliantine swells piled mile high on that impossible head.
Am I dead?
‘I’m okay – okay.’
Them sparring, me hooking back the light. Them against the sun, two broad boats, sailing on.
Sitting on the concrete, something real. Feel it, Sam, it’s real. Baked so hot, so hard, it must be real. It must be, mustn’t it?
And I knew the black-backed reality of the thing.
And I knew its sound and I knew its ring.
That it was real and that I was alive.
That if time was infinite then none could be dead longer than another.
That the great-great grandson would be dead as long as his great-great-grandmother.
That is, if time were infinite.
Getting up, hitting a bin. Clink.
‘Twenty cents for your empty bottles.’
That is, if there were an infinite number of bottles – and there were – if there were an infinite number of bottles hanging on the wall, an infinite number of bottles hanging on the wall, and one such bottle should accidentally fall, then there’d be an infinite number of bottles still hanging on the wall.
Getting back to the flat. Bottles of this. Cellared memory number ten. A good year, that, that year Dad pulled him from under the house, the feral kitten, black and brown like a wooden cupboard with half the paint stripped back. The mother shot dead. The other kittens drowned in a bucket, him too if I hadn’t cried out.
‘Your brothers aren’t blubbin’,’ he said.
‘Give it to him, Neil.’
Dad looked at Mum, Mum at Dad. Dad kneeled down, kitten held by the scruff of the neck. Me taking it in my arms. Dad standing. Kitten clawing my arms and biting me. Blood starting out on my hand. A yelp, from me. Dad turning round, stepping forward, frowning, picking up the bucket. Me stepping back, him reaching for the kitten, it biting harder. My hand hurting, having to let the hurt out, but this time with a yap like I was happy.
‘It’s not a pup,’ said Dad, and he put the bucket back down. I breathed out. My palm was wet. Little streams of red welled up between my fingers. I pressed them close together to stop the flow, worried Dad could see but he turned round and emptied the bucket out over by the dam. My brothers went off after him, picking up sticks for something to poke with. I put my hand over the kitten’s eyes at that. Mum saw and smiled. When I took my hand away, the kitten had a little red mask. That got me laughing, for real that time.
A little red mask?
A little red bath? A little pink?
I got the blade out of my razor.
Zorro was a great kitten and a better cat. That’s the way I’d wanted it with me. All right now, but nicer later. Somehow it had all gone awry. Why?
Yet …?
Yet Zorro was the best you could get.
Used to be a real terror, but. Hardly ever purred. You had to pat and pat and pat him before there was even a chance of getting a sound out of ’im. And then it would come, usually by scratching under his chin: that bit where the jaw meets in a triangle, right up – oh well, you know. You’d pat and pat and pat and then this little growl. So soft, it was. Like trying to hear your own heart beating. But it was there. You’d win and you’d feel so happy.
And then guess what he would do? This Zorro? He’d have had enough so he’d just scratch you. Or bite. That was it. That was his way of telling you, ‘Thanks again, Sam, but don’t push it.’
Later, Dad would see all the red dots and dashes on my arm and tell me to give the cat a good belting next time it happened. I know my brothers did, but it didn’t go back to them much after that. Anyhow, I didn’t reckon I wanted to follow after them. Being youngest, you’ve got to set out on your own. No, I had a better way. I’d take Zorro up to the cubby house and talk it out with him. How it wasn’t so nice. How we could be the best of friends, Zorro and me, Defenders of Justice. Anyways, I thought of those dots and dashes on my arm as Zorro’s way of communicatin’ something. Morse code for cats, if you like. So I’d read away – for hours. It said all this stuff about what he’d get up to – mostly at night, it was. Used to just sleep in the day. But boy, what nights he’d have! Going down by the creek, exploring in the caves, climbing the trees and scratching at the sliver of moon like it was the lighted rim of a manhole onto the sky.
Zorro.
Geez, I loved that cat. He did his own thing. Never needed anyone.
Or so I thought. ’Cause Zorro was a different kitten a year later. Well, he was a cat now. It didn’t happen all at once but so slow it was hard to notice; but he changed. He used to sit up with me on the couch, when I was watching the telly or something. He’d sit on the armchair, a yellow thing if I recollect right, and with him being mostly black and all, he looked like one of those Egyptian cats. Bast, I think. Some sort of god, anyway, but regal as all hell. There he’d sit – didn’t matter how uncomfortable (he could be bridging two armchairs with a Grand Canyon gap between them), and still he’d look like you couldn’t ruffle him in a million years. He was the king, cool as could be.
Even Mum and Dad took a liking to him in the end. They used to call out, ‘Zorro, Zorro, here pussy.’
Here pussy? That wasn’t how you talked to Zorro! You couldn’t expect anything out of him if you spoke like that. What you had to do was, was totally ignore the terror. Not even look his way. Never say a word. And then, you’d be getting into the TV, there he was – on your lap!
And that’s how he’d changed. He no longer bit or scratched when you patted him. Gone was the Morse code for cats.
But then, just when things seemed done, they undid.
Because there were lumps in Zorro’s stomach.
‘Yes,’ said Mum, ‘I’m afraid so. This is probably the beginning of the end, Sam. It’s hard coming into this world and it’s hard going out of it.’
Mum made an appointment for the vet’s at five, the last one for the day. It was ten at the time. That gave me seven hours minus travel to spend with Zorro.
I gave Zorro all his drugs at once. It pepped him up no end. He was on a high.
It was 10:30 am. Had obviously been a long night for Jen and Tash, who still weren’t in. An even longer night for me. I headed out of the house and looked for the swankest eatery I could find on Lygon Street.
Knew I’d get a hiding – stealing those chicken wings from the fridge for Zorro. But it was worth it, worth it for Zorro. He had his appetite back for the first time. Only ate half of what he used to, but he damn near purred doing it.
12 midday. Tiramisu. Love that dessert. Figured I’d splash out on a meal. Couldn’t afford it but what would it matter? I worked out my ideal order and pretty much got most of it. It was early for lunch but I could stretch it.
I took Zorro to his favourite spot. He was a funny cat ’cause he would go for walks with you, but at a distance. I tried to put him on the lead one time but he clawed into the ground and I gave up. If he wanted to walk behind, that was okay. You’d stop for him to catch up, but he’d just stop as well, those ten or more metres back. The whole boogieman in the park thing.
2:30. Not much time. I paid my bill, over-tipping. I tried to think what would be my favourite place. I reckoned it would be the same spot as Zorro’s but since I was about a million miles from where I grew up it’d have to be in the city somewhere. Finally I opted for the top of the Manchester Unity building. Love that place. The bit I like best isn’t the view so much as the air-conditioner thing. Unit, I guess. It’s this round can-like thing with another round-can-like thing on top, separated by stilts. It’s wonderfully green and the whole bottom of the second can drips all over and down into the coffee-filter-type thing on the bottom one. Pretty futuristic. A legionnaires hell, probably, but a bit special.
Zorro’s favourite place was this gum with just two branches shaped like the legs of an athlete doing a cartwheel. You could see all the red/brown scratches in the blue/white bark. I helped him up and he pricked it more than ripped.
3pm. I looked over the side of the building but it fell away onto the street. And already it was pretty busy with the pre-5-o’clock crowd, the school kids buying milkshakes at Maccas, and the suits getting in some beers before home-time TV.
4pm. Sitting in the living room as Mum laid out a rug in the back of the car, Zorro in my lap. The drugs wearing off. I gave him that pat he liked. Up under the chin, but ever so gentle.
4:10pm. Home again. Jen and Tash still out. Good.
4:15pm. Carrying Zorro out to the car wrapped in his favourite blanket. The car taking off. Mum avoiding every pothole, going slow over each bump. I wanted to read to Zorro but I didn’t have a book.
4:40pm. Sun almost dead. Turned on just the lamps in my room and looked about for my favourite book, To Kill a Mockingbird. Couldn’t read all of it. There wasn’t time.
So I just looked at the cover. I love the cover: orange, with a kid’s picture of a bird and black titles. Joe and me liked those best. Books without pictures on the front, I mean, unless they’re picture books of course and that’s different. Don’t ask me why. Just ’cause. Anyhow, this had a good cover. Bare, you see. Some aren’t, and that’s bad. The ones with ‘artists’ impressions’ – we don’t like those. I had a copy of Bridge to Terabithia with the cover ripped off ’cause it was all wrong. Gave me the irrits. The forest, Jess, Leslie – it wasn’t them. Somehow, if you draw one of these people in books, they’re less alive, not more so. Can’t say why, exactly. I guess … Well, once something’s made flesh it’s mortal. Christ, I’m glad I never slung that crap at Joe. He’d think he had a chance with me. Now take Joe, while we’re onto him. If ever they publish this malarkey, I’m gonna tell them not to put any pictures on the cover. Not even Joe. Might sell the damn thing but no, forget it. You’ve probably got your own idea of how we shape up and that’s enough. That’s better. Well, for me anyhow.
4:45. Coming into the town. Getting to the vet’s.
4:50. Putting down To Kill a Mockingbird. Not much time.
4:55. The vet letting out a lady with her lame dog. The vet saying to me, ‘We can just take him for you.’
I held Zorro closer. ‘Mum, I want to be there.’ Mum nodding. Us both going in.
4:56. Lifting the blade off the bathroom sink.
4:57. Lifting Zorro onto the bench, still in his rug. The vet shaving his leg, putting in the cannulas.
4:58. The bath almost full.
4:59. The vet flicking the needle. Mum asking if I wanted to leave. ‘No, I have to be there, right to the end.’
‘Okay, Sam.’
5:00. The needle going in. Zorro sagging into my arms. I wanted so much for me to be the last thing he saw, but his head twisted up to the ceiling and white.
5:00. One slash and pain. Searing red pain.
All pain.
Dead.
For a long time there was just blackness.
Then a voice, mum’s voice, reading To Kill a Mockingbird.
When she finished the last page, I asked her what happened next.
‘What do you mean?’ she asked back.
‘Mum, what happens to Scout an’ Jem an’ Boo an’ all the rest of ’em? I reckon Scout just had to’ve become a lawyer. Well, did she?’
Mum put down the book and got up.
‘It’s just a story. Nothing happened afterwards.’
And it was like she’d killed them.
Was I still asleep? Above I heard a herd of horses.
And all those castanets going clickety-clop. I wanted to shoo the horses off the roof, but Dad said it wouldn’t be right. All that red-righteous clay, clinkering to pieces, mum wouldn’t be happy. Better clear your head, Sam, said Dad. I can do something about it then. If they’re the facts … Fact is … What?
‘Hello, hello?’
Someone slapping my arm.
‘Hello, hello. Can you hear us? Tell us your name.’
Someone slapping my face.
‘Your name?’
‘Zorro.’
Dead grass like straws. I was walking in the grass back on the farm, but an adult now. Jen walked up to me, counter-clockwise to the current. Here was someone from my present drop-parachuted to a pozzie in my past.
‘Sam,’ she said, ‘95% of how people see you, is how you see yourself. So it’s in your hands. How do you see you?’
I’ve been a … (but my lips weren’t moving).
‘Who do you see?’
I’ve been a baggage handful. (But I couldn’t mouth a word.)
Jen smiled sweetly and laughed, but gently, stepped over to third-slip position and was gone.
Zane on the scene now. Zane! Couldn’t imagine him being sporty but he even had the gloves on – wicketkeeping. ‘Sammy, darling, I hate to break it to you like this, but living is fighting. At the end of the day, there’s no choice but to cope.’
‘I’ve been a …’
‘Yes, Sammy?’
‘I’ve been a baggage handful.’
Suddenly he too was gone. The oval was earth-wide, the pitch pitched passed grief. Arny at the other end now! I asked him what was happening. It was getting too scary.
‘You stepped back on your stumps, Sam. It is still Sam’s Sam …?’
‘Arny,’ I tried to tell him, ‘if I had known what you had known …’ but fumbled straightaway. I tried again. ‘Arny, if you had been … I mean, if we had seen …’
‘Sam’s Sam,’ laughed Arny, tut-tutting.
I tried for the last time. ‘Arny, if I had known what you had known, there and then …’
‘Where and when, Sam?’ laughed Arny. ‘Every day’s today.’
And he was away, gone too far down the pitch to see. I was at his end and Filter at mine, bat in hand.
‘What you doing, Samster? Stepping back on your own stumps, mate. You had to go through this, Sam. Someone can say to you, some oldie can say to you, don’t expect too much, mate. Now you know the sense of it, you can see what he means, but it’s all brain, right? You’ve got to expect a hell of a lot of things first, thinking things are your right, just ’cause you’re you and all, and get a million disappointments in the process. And then you think back to that oldie, and what he said, and for the first time it’s real to you, ’cause you’ve lived through it, and you think why couldn’t you bloody well have shown me that then and there and saved me a lot of bovver? But of course he couldn’t. He knew that himself, but he was trying, mate.’
The whole Pip and Estella thing.
Where was Joe in this line-up? I wanted to see him, for him to answer a few questions. Was he down by the boundary line? Off the field for a moment?
Another noise, someone behind me. Tubby bringing out drinks. ‘Man, this shit ain’t right. They’ve called the third umpire.’
Tubby had a hand to his neck, as if caressing a gunshot wound; he was nervous.
The third umpire? So was I.
‘Man, this is fucked up. They’re replaying it every way. Back and forth. Fast forward, rewind, slow-motion. When are they going to make a bloody decision?’
‘What’s happened?’ I asked Tubby, but my voice was so shaky it came out a slur.
‘Man, they’re saying you stepped back on your own stumps.’
My stomach heaved upwards through a tube.
Tubby was looking at the replay. Again and again.
A sound was building in my ears, loud, unbearable.
I heard a siren, then I saw a green light.
They’d reached their verdict.
Not out.
Somewhere down near the botanicals, there was a siren. An ambulance siren. Like a noise sticking out in the night. A siren with me in it.
As I lay in the stretcher, the ambo sitting next to me kept looking out the back window, but he knew I was coming to, pretty groggily. I kept trying to hook his eye but he kept turning away. I wanted to say something and all. I knew I’d put a lot of people out. I’d wanted to not put people out anymore. And here I was, twice the nuisance I used to be. So I was pretty grateful and all, if not for the actual rescue, then at least for the thought.
‘Can’t even get this right,’ I said, opting for humour.
The ambo finally looked at me then quickly to the two guys in front. They were busy with the road. The ambo leaned over me and whispered.
‘You’re too bloody right about that, mate,’ he said. ‘You know where I should be right now?’
I couldn’t say anything. He went on.
‘Saving the life of someone actually in need.’
And I kind of wanted to die, for the second time that night.
‘Man, I’m so guilty over you. What you go and do that for?’ asked Filter when he and Zane visited the hospital.
‘No more pills for you, Sammy,’ said Zane, slapping down the other side of the bed.
‘Too right,’ added Filter, slapping my thigh for good measure. ‘You, my son, you’ve got talent, with a capital T. Gold capped at that. Now, you know what I’m up to when I say, Filter here is having a bat, but you, my boy, you’re doing the real thing, whipping the willow.’
Zane smiled at me, but I had to take Filter up on his claim. I hadn’t told him about my form slump. I’d only told him about my previous batting prowess. The good, never the bad.
‘You’ve never even seen me play,’ I countered.
‘Hey, bitch, I don’t need to.’ And Filter got up to walk to the window.
‘Sammy, darling,’ said Zane, ‘I know I give boys the impression I can live without them, but it’s just a front. I’ve taken up niceness. Hang in there, sista, ’cause you’re one of the tough ones!’
Zane got up and puffed my pillows for me. Filter was staring out the window.
‘We heard about your friend Joe,’ said Filter. ‘Was it that or the drugs that made you … made you go over the edge, Sam?’
I’d been avoiding thinking about Joe ever since I heard of his death. Actually, even earlier, when we parted for the last time. I didn’t know the answer but I could see Filter and Zane needed to. They had their own issues of conscience. If my behaviour was due to the latter reason, drugs, how much were they responsible?
‘I don’t know,’ I answered as truthfully as I could. ‘Both, neither.’
This seemed to ease Filter’s mind. Zane’s, too, from the way he breathed out long and hard.
‘Hey, saw a top piece of graff, Sam,’ laughed Filter. ‘Know what it said? “Don’t take drugs … eventually.” Ha!’
When his belly stopped wobbling, I asked Filter why he’d dissociated himself from me and Zane. It was pretty hard the way he’d turned his back on me.
‘Getting off drugs isn’t just about not taking them, Sam. It’s getting away from the atmosphere. And you were just too much fun to trip with.’
Was that a good enough excuse? I looked down at the white bed sheet and thought about the company I’d been keeping lately. After me, 4play, Happy & Co. threw that seat out of the moving train into the Yarra below, I spent the next few days at Jen’s library trawling through every newspaper article I could, just to make sure it hadn’t hit anyone. The private school kids row along that river.
There were no reported injuries.
I was worried ’cause I remembered a story from a few years before about a couple of kids, not even teenagers, dropping stones off a highway overpass. One stone smashed a small hole through a car windscreen, hitting the male driver in the chest and stopping his heart.
We do a lot of stupid things when we’re young. Most of us get away with them.
‘Sam?’
I looked up from the white bed sheet. Zane and Filter were staring at me. When I explained I was thinking about those kids on the highway overpass, Filter left the ward for a moment, saying he was getting a drink. Zane got up. I joined him by the window, feeling the stitches pull on my wrists when I rested my hands on the sill. It was like I was wearing a long-sleeved shirt when I wasn’t. Filter ambled back in.
‘Mate, that was a fookin’ wakeup call.’
He threw his rusted screwdriver in the bin.
Filter had been dealing for a long time. He’d once had to resuscitate a customer he’d sold heroin to. Perhaps there were a few smashed windscreens in his life.
Several days later, I was discharged from hospital. Jen and Tash made me as welcome as possible, cooking and washing clothes for me till I was doing it for myself. But, despite it all, there was still the thought of Joe. I couldn’t very well go up country and drop in on his grave – I didn’t even know for sure that he was buried, although that was more likely than cremation – so one time I visited a spot we used to hang out: the park. The play equipment was sooty with night, but I could see easily enough that Joe wasn’t on top of the slide. With nowhere I could put a face to the force, I looked up at the starless sky and attached a stamp. Maybe the postcard would return to sender, but it was sent nonetheless. It read: I hope it was an accident, Joe. But either way, if there’s someplace you go when you go, I hope you’re at peace.
The scars on my wrists meant I was forced to get even more trendy: Jen and Tash bought me bracelets and things – ‘till you don’t need them at all, Sam.’ With the stitches out, the skin still pulled a bit, and I was told it would till it stretched enough to stop stretching.
I went to the bank and withdrew just about my last reserves of cash. I left the money on the coffee table in the lounge room, saying I’d found it – it must’ve been Tash’s that went missing. Jen and Tash didn’t quiz me over it, but just took it.
That afternoon, I went to The Union, which is a pub. With Zane leaving, I’d have to get used to going to gay venues on my own. At least till I found a new buddy. Tell you what, if you can pull it off and not look too self-conscious, in some ways it’s better. Guess Zane and I did look like a long-term couple out to find some three-way action. This way, I was advertising my availability with less confusion. It was an older set. No dancing, just guys sitting at high tables on their high stools. I ordered a beer at the bar. While it was being poured, this guy with ears like butterflies batting for a raise, and eyes a baffled-blue, watched me, smiling. He was sitting chatting with a woman who looked like she’d just come from work, hubcap shoulders.
As I went past their table, beer in hand, the woman spoke to me.
‘Hello handsome,’ she laughed, then turned to her friend. ‘Time I went. Hey, you don’t want to come, do you?’ she asked, turning her attention back to me. ‘I won’t tell anyone you’re gay in the morning.’
I think I blushed.
She gave the man a kiss and hug, telling him to drop by next time he was in Melbourne, and was gone.
The man introduced himself.
‘Maddy – short for Madison. Don’t ask.’
We shook hands.
‘All right,’ he explained, ‘I was born in New York – 39th Street. Not even near Madison Square Gardens.’
‘Sam,’ I said.
He told me I looked like a Sam. He said he’d never looked like a Madison.
‘You look like a Maddy, though.’
We chatted a bit more. Turned out he was living in the Top End. He was down in Melbourne for a bit of business. I told him I wouldn’t mind travelling north myself one day – maybe beginning with Sydney.
‘I should give you the name of a few good places in Sydney I go when I’m feeling naughty. I went to one spot and there were all these guys with their shirts off. I thought, hello, this is the place for me.’
That seemed strange, talking about scoring other guys when I thought, hey, aren’t you trying to score me?
‘I’ve been trying to get in some Me time down here. Oh, I’d just like some sun so much. To lie on the beach naked all day.’
Melbourne was hardly the place.
He asked if I wanted to come back to his hotel room.
‘I … I don’t do this … much,’ I said. ‘I mean, it seems a bit sordid.’
He chuckled.
‘One night stands can be good. If you both know it’s one night. It can be just this giving moment between strangers and then they’re gone. I’ve only had one night where I didn’t feel comfortable.’
Poking me in the ribs: ‘So where do you go when you get horny? I can’t imagine you at a beat. You’d be so cute hiding in the bushes! Last time in Melbourne I met this guy I had this very raunchy time with at Wet & Slippery. We get together sometimes when I’m down but it’s getting a bit safe. His idea of sex is slapping his dick against my chest.’
‘Oh, that’s not my idea,’ I said boldly, and was surprised by it. I was feeling powerfully attracted to him.
‘What I wonder is, where do hetties’ – (I raised an eyebrow) – ‘heterosexual males go to get their kicks? They don’t have their clubs like us. Prostitutes, I suppose.’
Was the whole monogamy thing just a straight convention? Did it have to be that way? How many guys had open relationships like Jussy and Dorian? Or ‘parallel-processed’ like Zane? It was hard to know what to think.
‘Have you ever thought about going to a prostitute?’ Maddy added. ‘You don’t really need to as a gay male.’
We went to his hotel room and kissed. I was feeling that echidna in my stomach again, but this time it was readjusting for warmth, not bristling its back. It was rubbing its tummy inside of mine.
‘Is it all right if we don’t do anything?’ I asked.
‘Sure,’ he said. And because he said sure, I wanted to do everything. Holding each other afterwards, feeling where we’d been, I thought how our bodies had simply fitted together.
‘Cuddleslut,’ he said, as I moved closer into his chest, then started nibbling.
‘Uh oh, not again!’
I looked up into his eyes.
‘Oh, look at that look of yours! So mischievous. Such cute little eyes. You and your rushed sex, how about more in the morning?’
And he held me tighter to him.
‘It’s so nice holding you,’ he crooned. ‘Your arms wrap nicely round me. Someone the same height, not have to stoop to kiss or arch your neck!’
We took a little duck bath. In the morning he made me a drink with his portable juicer and bread with plenty of jam. He got my number then asked if I wanted to hang out with him late in the day when he’d finished his business.
‘Where are you going for your date?’ asked Jen.
‘We’re going swimming.’ A bit of a pause. ‘That’s okay, isn’t it?’
‘Sammy, darling,’ said Zane, ‘that’s what you call an action date. Plenty of time to go to the pictures later. When you’ve nothing left to talk about.’
Always the cynic. I could see Jen thought so too. Zane was over at the house, and he and Jen were writing letters together. I was the interruption. Seemed pretty weird that they should be writing letters together but then I recognised the symbol on the letterheads.
‘Amnesty International.’
‘Sammy darling,’ sighed Zane, ‘I flatter myself that I have beautiful handwriting.’
Beautiful handwriting! That Zane was a mystery. Maybe he was onto the key to personal happiness. Thinking outside yourself. Guess that’s a pretty selfish way of looking at it, really.
Ha, I make myself laugh.
You know what book I take after most? Or books I should say? Anything by Tolstoy. He’s always got characters in them talking about the answer to life, and mostly that answer’s to work. To ‘busy oneself’.
But then what if your work’s boring?
The video job was boring. At least to me. I’d started my shifts again. Even though Filter had his new job, he’d somehow managed to cover for me while I was in hospital so I’d have a job to return to.
Dad rang the store.
‘Just wanted to wish you good luck for the last two weeks of the year.’
It took me a minute to work out what he was referring to. Cricket! I didn’t have the heart to tell him I’d been kicked off the team. The last update I gave him was that I wasn’t getting out for ducks anymore, but I wasn’t making many runs either, which was itself a lie. This time round, I spun the same spiel.
‘A bit of a Yallop,’ he said. ‘You’ve probably progressed further than you think, Sam. You and I, we’re similar. Lots of little victories. Late starters. But we win big in the end.’
I wondered if there wasn’t something Dad was getting at that I was missing. I remembered being at the top of the hill with Arny, and wanting to get the moment desperately, understand its significance at the time, but I didn’t till too late. When I was actually playing cricket, the last thing I wanted to do was talk about it.
‘I’ll try my best, Dad,’ I said, and that made it worse.
I rang Maddy from the hotel reception.
‘Oh, it’s so lovely to hear your voice. Which one are you again? The hairy midget? No, wrong match.’
Maddy and I found that we were both pretty good at holding our breaths. We timed ourselves in the hotel pool.
‘I nearly panicked today,’ said Maddy after I’d come up for breath. ‘This is the second day I’ve seen you in a row! What does it mean? I like the term special friends. Is that okay with you?’
I nodded, the water still dripping off my eyelids.
We showered, got changed, went to dinner and up to his room.
‘These young people who like to wear their jeans round their arses so you can see their y-fronts,’ he said, putting his hands down my trousers, ‘I don’t know.’
In the morning, Maddy rolled over and mussed my hair.
‘Hey, you look so cute when you smile. I don’t know what’s going on in your head. How are those two lesbians of yours?’
Jen and Tash were about the only people from my life I’d mentioned to Maddy. They seemed to need the least explanation. Besides, it was good not having a history.
‘They’re very up and down,’ I said, snuggling into him.
‘Fighting is good. It can be painful at the time but it can sort a lot out. You’ll find out when you’ve got a boyfriend.’
I sat up.
‘When I’ve got…?’
I got out of bed, searching for my clothes. Maddy sat up slowly.
‘Sam, I’m going back to Darwin tomorrow.’
‘Life just doesn’t live up to dream, does it?’ I blurted, trying unsuccessfully to get even one sock on. ‘It’s pointless! There aren’t angels and unicorns. There aren’t even vampires and devils,’ I added, thinking of Joe’s conception of a hell of fire and fiends.
Maddy was looking sideways at these last few comments. I condensed my thoughts to my original point: ‘Life’s meaningless!’
Maddy chuckled, unfurling his legs from rumpled sheets.
‘Life is meaningless!’ he roared. ‘What about that brilliant headjob you gave me this morning? You didn’t have to do that.’
‘Yeah, the memory still chokes me up.’
Maddy got out of bed, walked over and pinched my cheek.
‘Sam, I bet you’re the sort of person who kicks a one-night stand out of bed the moment you come?’
I thought back to that guy I’d taken home after my failure with Jussy. Yes, I had tossed him out straightaway. Compared to me, Maddy was a consummate romantic.
‘So, are you going to throw me out?’ I asked.
Maddy smiled.
‘I haven’t come yet.’
Things seemed to be getting better, I was getting closer.
‘That’s assuming there is any place to get to, Sammy darling.’
No, that was Zane talking. I was. Getting closer, I mean.
So.
Arny. The right book but read too early.
Luke. The wrong book I wanted desperately to be the right one. (Like misinterpreting The Prince as a Buddhist text.)
Jussy. The wrong book, time, everything.
Maddy. The wrong book but the right time.
And Joe?
Poor Joe was dead.
Toco Productions 