‘They ain’t no ordinary bats,’ he went on. ‘Metres wide so you can see their shadows on the ground when they fly across the sun. But that’s not why they’re a problem, is it Mag?
‘It’s just a story kids.’
‘They’re a problem ‘cos they attack people. Sometimes, when you think life’s goin’ along okay, a giant bat’ll swoop in from above. If ya lucky, their claws’ll just scratch the surface, make ya bleed a bit. But then...’ he stopped himself. Something about the way Maggie was staring at him, her eyes like seeds, made him pause. Maggie. She always knew, didn’t she? Lame old Uncle Si. Just looking for kicks. Confined to his wheelchair, bitter at the world for all its wrongs and half-drunk before getting out of bed most days. Sad story, but she wasn’t going to stand by and let him scare her kids witless with horror tales, give them nightmares for the rest of their childhood. And this, he reckoned, was a big mistake. Horror was important. A bit of gore was good for the precious young. Prepares the soul for what’s ahead. Maggie had them wound up in wool so thick, they didn’t know how it felt to graze the skin off their knees.
‘But what happened with the bats, Simón?’
‘There weren’t any bats, Michael. Simon’s only kidding.’
‘He is not,’ said Ann-Maria.
Maggie walked across the deck now and stood over him; through slantwise beams of light she stood tall like always. He looked into her face from his wheelchair, a dog to the eyes of its master; would this be the day it copped a boot?
‘What’s the prob, Mag?’
‘I’ve told you before. You come over here and scare these kids to hell and back. I won’t have it.’
He rubbed his jaw. It made a rough, tired sound. Pretty soon she’d kick him out. If he moved on to pterodactyls, how they dove into lives without warning, she’d set him rolling down the hill. May as well leave now of his own accord, before it got all bleak and that.
‘I didn’t believe it either, kids,’ he said, over by the back gate. ‘Giant bats in town? Animals so big they could pluck ya from the park like birds nick shit from a clothesline?’
He undid his shirt.
‘Just one thing.’
He ran a finger over the worm, thick and raised and violet, that snaked along his ribs, around to his back and down his spine.
‘How’d I get these scars then, eh? If not from giant bats?’
He went straight to the RSL, chuckling. That should learn the little angels. Trussed up in silk ropes, fed on milk and honey. That should show ‘em how it really is. He ambled up from his chair to a high stool, cursing to himself. Then he ordered a beer, drank it quickly, and ordered another. The only bloke in the Club.
‘Wanna go easy on that schooner, Si?’
He looked at Wally, whom he’d known for years. ‘Come off it, champ.’
‘We’ve been told not to serve you, mate. Before five p.m.’
‘Alright,’ he said, though both men knew he meant the opposite.
A silence followed. The fans overhead hassled the air. Wal cleaned glasses. The big, meaty balding goof stood around in his tattered shirt and made glasses filthy with what looked like a towel.
‘Whaddaya reckon about this,’ he said at last. He drank his beer in quick sips. ‘My sister’s kids aren’t allowed to hear a bit of blackness if it’ll set one strand of their hair outta place.’
Wal nodded, vaguely attentive. ‘A different world these days, mate.’
‘When I was younger, I used to suss things, ya know? Go out there and see what’s what.’
‘You were a crazy bugger.’
‘I was bloody alive.’
‘You were a mad dog, mate.’
‘And I’d still be alive…’
He let his thoughts trail off in quiet. He was frowning in that way that made his whole face crease. He felt an itch on his knee. That phantom itch he often got when he was drinking. He scratched it.
‘All I’m sayin’ is,’ he said, ‘she can’t pad those kids forever. Sooner or later the world’ll get in. And when it does, they won’t know what hit ‘em.’
But Wal had already left the bar, headed out back to the storeroom there. He stayed on his stool for the next half-hour, muttering to himself. Then he got back into his wheelchair, went to the front TAB and played a bit of Keno with his pension money. He lost then played the dogs and won a third of the cash he’d lost back. Then he lost that on the trots.
Later, through the bistro windows, he looked out across the suburbs. The rooftops glinting in the evening sun. The sounds of trucks and motorbikes roaring in the night. His mouth had that burnt taste it got whenever he was pissed. He grinned. Frowned. Closed his eyes. Inside his head, the children played under gentle sprinklers.
He ordered a steak and barely touched it. He gazed out the windows by his little table. It was eight o’clock. Nine. Soon, he was back in his flat, on his cracked back, in his stinking bed. He didn’t want to fall asleep. He wasn’t pissed enough tonight. If he closed his eyes, those beasts with wings would swoop down through his roof and dive inside his soul. He felt the same old feeling. He heard it coming like a gust of wind, whistling through a window.
‘Maggie,’ he said, into his phone.
His sister sighed. ‘It’s late, Si.’
‘I know it is.’
She sighed again. She was getting out of bed, quiet as she could, so as not to wake her Phil. She was going downstairs to the kitchen. He always pictured her doing that. When he rang late, he saw her go, as if to his salvation, through the dark hallways of the night. His sister, Mag.
‘Okay, Si,’ she said. ‘I can talk now.’
His sister.
‘Okay, Si. You’re alright. Yes, yes, you’re safe, Si. Okay. Tell me that. Tell me all about it, Si, and I’ll let you know if I think it too.’
Cactus
Let me tell you what happened to my friend, Lyle Kent, after he returned from overseas. It’s a crazy story with a few twists, and a little turn. Let me tell you what happened.
He’d been surfing in Brazil for three months, way up north near Salvador, and needed a place to hole up in Sydney, just until he found his feet again. He went on a flat-share website, spotted a cheap room in a share house in Redfern. I didn’t know until three weeks later, after he called me one night in a panic, that the ad had shown three pictures. One of the room for rent. One of the shared bathroom, and one of the other housemates, a couple, wearing only their underwear, embracing and staring into the camera. To anyone with half a scone, this third pic would’ve tripped the alarm. Lyle glazed over it without a thought. He was like that. Brazil, for example. He didn’t go to festive Rio, or sunny Floripa. He went to a murder capital. He wasn’t the kind of guy to register warnings. He’d have liked to, I’m sure, but he didn’t have a good memory. Nor did he know how to process, properly, information on the net. Once he’d sent me a link to a site stating scientists had discovered that we are all aliens and wrote, ‘Did you know about this?!’No irony intended. He was a good bloke, a top bloke, but brainy, he was not.
Anyway, he’d survived Brazil, three months by himself, with God knew what stories already half-forgotten in his head, and managed to score himself the room in Redfern. Short-term basis. Just while he got back into work. He was a brickie’s labourer. Sometimes he detailed cars.
I was sitting in my empty apartment in Newtown (Sarah had left me again and, again, had taken all our furniture) when he called.
‘Lyle,’ I said, surprised to see his name pop up on my phone. ‘How was Brazil?’
‘Yeah good mate,’ he said, his voice quick. It made me think he wasn’t calling for a chat. ‘Do you still have ya car?’
Ten minutes later I drove over to Pitt Street through the sparse nine p.m. traffic. July air sped cold and dry through a slice of open window. As much as I tried not to, I kept thinking about what Sarah had said the night before, as she dragged the last of her stuff down the hall. She laughed in that sad, forced way people do when they’re distra
ught. ‘And to think. I actually believed you’d change. Har har.’
Lyle was waiting on the corner when I pulled up. He had his arms folded, a cig in his mouth, not using his hands; smoke dragoned around his face in coils, the cherry burning with every suck. I wound down my window and waved at him. He bent forward and peered across the road, as if to make sure it was me. I smiled. ‘Get in.’
I could tell the moment he sat down he was agitated. He’d always been a mover, one of those knee-bouncing types whose muscles twitch, even when relaxed. Now, his whole body vibrated.
‘You alright?’ I said, pulling out from the curb. I hadn’t seen him in six months. ‘You shaved your head.’
He looked through the windscreen, clenching his teeth. ‘Just drive,’ is all he said.
We wound through the cramped streets of Darlington, tree-lined and lit by fancy terraces, not talking. Lyle ground his jaw beside me.
We’d met ten years before, on a rugby pitch for colts. He was the worst player in the league. Everyone knew it. He played so badly so consistently that if your team lost by a large margin, you were said to have had a Lyle Kent. Despite his size, he couldn’t tackle. He threw his shoulder into your ankles every time. Often, his head would smash into the field. We were playing for different clubs, me Norths, he Easts, when one day he knocked himself out on my knees. I had to tear his mouth guard out and grab his tongue so he didn’t swallow it. He clenched his jaw around my fingers. After the game he came up to me. ‘You saved me life,’ he said, looking at my chin (Lyle never looked you in the eye). ‘I owe you a jug.’ I told him it was no problem and said a jug’d be alright. He bought me jugs all night! What a bloke, I thought, and from then on we were mates.
We were mates, though not with much consistency. Lyle only replied to one in five texts, always at least a day late. Sometimes he’d arrange to meet you and not show up. This happened more often than not. You got used to it though. You forgave him too. Because you knew he didn’t mean it; in Lyle, there weren’t ill-meaning bones. For this reason, and a few others not related to him at all (reasons I lay at Sarah’s feet) I was happy to hear his voice when he called me and asked me to pick him up from Redfern.
We drove in silence, him gazing forwards at the road, me glancing at him every other second, waiting for a word. Finally, he offered one. ‘Pub.’
‘What?’ I said. I’d spent the last week battling Sarah. A language person, every thought came out in reams of words. Lyle’s monosyllabic bent, while refreshing, had me a little cock-eyed. ‘You wanna go to the pub for a beer, Lyle?’
I took his wordless teeth-gnashing as a yes.
‘Go and get that table over there,’ I said, nodding to the back corner of The Courthouse. ‘I’ll get us a jug.’
I watched him do as I told. His impressive back worked beneath his black hoodie like he had wings under there.
At this point I had no idea that he’d even joined a share house. He could’ve flown in that morning from Salvador, for all I knew, and as I waited at the bar that’s basically what I thought. A girl came and took my order. Pallid and gaunt, with an arts student’s air of bitter languor. She reminded me of Sarah. I gave her the greasiest look I could muster, then picked up the jug and two schooners and made my way out to Lyle.
He was smoking another cigarette, sitting at an empty bench. The whole courtyard was empty, but for a couple in the opposite corner, and a group of three blokes at the bench beside theirs. I sat down across from him, poured out two beers.
‘How’s life?’ I said.
He sucked on his cigarette.
‘Sarah legged it again. Last night. Pulled the pin and bailed.’
He didn’t seem to hear this.
‘How was Brazil?’
It was Lyle, so I didn’t expect much. The odd nod, shake, grunt, would’ve squared up the convo nicely. Tonight, though, he just stared into space, his eyes wide and strangely clear, as though behind his muteness swarmed important thoughts.
I reached out and took one of his cigarettes. It was chilly. Because it was Monday night, the staff hadn’t lit the gas heaters. The wind rattled the dried old bones of a gum tree above us. I pulled hard on the dart in my hand, gazing at the ground beside our table, thinking, again, about Sarah. I’d kept telling her I didn’t know where she was coming from. ‘You aren’t making sense,’ was the way I’d put it, which sent her into a rage. ‘You aren’t being very clear, Sare.’
I’d just been promoted at work. I now ran a division of Freeman’s Financial Planning Co. Sarah worked in research at Sydney Uni – anthropology – and despised the modern system. I was part of the problem, she’d maintained in fairly good humour from the start of our relationship. But now, I’d become entrenched. I wouldn’t be getting out. A fine mind like mine wasted on squeezing old peoples’ super. What about what really mattered? The truth was, I didn’t care about amending the world. I was here for another, what, fifty years? Do the maths Sare. It’s not enough time to make a dent.
‘You gonna tell me what’s up?’ I said to Lyle; I ashed my cig. ‘Cos it ain’t exactly Friday night.’
He looked at me. Well, at my mouth. He sunk what was left in his glass then poured himself another one.
Finally, after what seemed an age, he said: ‘You heard of Gum Tree, yeah?’
His lips were shining from the beer. His shaved head shone beneath the outdoor orange lights.
‘It’s that website you use to buy stuff, get a room, you know...’
‘I’ve heard of it,’ I said. Anyone else I’d have pulled up for their obviousness. But this was Lyle here.
‘Well,’ he said – he seemed on the verge of a great release, his vibrations had stopped and he looked up to the right, which he did whenever he was thinking hard. He sucked in a lungful of smoke, then exhaled. ‘I go on it last month, yeah? I’m back a day and a half and already off mum’s joint with her fuckwit bloke. So I find a room in a share house,’ he said. ‘On Pitt Street,’ he said. ‘Terrace. Two storey. My own room.’
I nodded. I said, ‘Keep going Lyle.’
‘This was,’ he looked down and counted silently on his fingers, ‘three weeks ago.’
‘When did you shave your head?’ I asked.
‘It happened in this fuckin’ house,’ he said, bending forward across the table then snapping back upright. ‘Me whole body! I’m telling you what happened, Clint. This fuckin’ house, mate. I had to get outta there.’
‘Slow down,’ I said, taken aback by his sudden verbosity. I hadn’t heard him talk this much in… I’d never heard him talk this much.
‘It’s a couple,’ he said, taking out yet another cig and lighting it. ‘Fucked up shit, Clint.’
‘Hang on,’ I said. ‘Mate. Calm down. You’re in a share house in Redfern?’
He nodded as he drew on his smoke.
‘And you’re living with what? A couple?’
He nodded, his lips pursed. I waited for him to exhale, but he didn’t. We looked at each other for a long moment. Then, cig still in mouth, he pulled up his hoodie to reveal his bare stomach. Across his eight-pack snaked a thick, fresh wound, red and vascular. There wasn’t a hair in sight.
‘What is that?’ I asked, leaning across the table.
‘They did it,’ he said, and I swear his bottom lip trembled like a kid’s does when holding back a cry. The smoke finally escaped from his mouth.
I still had no idea what he was on about. I was starting to feel tired and, frankly, fed up. He pulled his jumper back down, smarting a little, then got his phone out of his pocket. His tongue poked through his lips as he swiped to what he wanted to show me.
‘Here,’ he said, handing me the phone. ‘That’s them.’
I took his Samsung and looked at the screen. On it, in their underwear, holding each other tightly and gazing, it seemed, directly at me, was the couple, early thirties at a guess, ghost-white and very skinny.
‘What the hell?’ I said.
I looked at Lyle. He was st
aring down his nose at the phone in my hand, his head held back, as though at any minute the couple might explode out of it.
‘Fucked up shit,’ he whispered.
That night, Lyle stayed at mine. Sarah had taken the couches and arm chairs and even the ensemble base, leaving me a mattress on the floor. Lyle was happy to sleep on the boards. ‘As long as I don’t have to go back there.’
We spread out some sheets and blankets in the hallway – Lyle wanted to be close to walls – and said good night. I got down onto the mattress in my room and thought about what he’d told me.
Turns out Alvin Kowalski, a psychologist, and his wife, Ellen, a PhD student, had seduced Lyle (his word) over the course of his first week in their house.
‘They seduced me, Clint,’ he’d said, as we got started on our second jug. ‘I didn’t know it was happening at the time, they were always telling me I looked heaps fit and she would giggle when she saw me in my towel. But I didn’t think much of it, you know? Why would I?’
He had made a fair point. He had a brilliant physique. At thirty, he’d grown so used to people looking at it in awe, the attention of giggling women no longer registered. It was when she first grabbed his bum in the kitchen that things took a turn for the surreal. Not the fact that she’d done that, but that Alvin, sitting at the bench, had watched on with a smile. I sat there mute as he carried on with the story. Every now and then he mixed up his words and stopped. Whenever he did, I reached over the table, ashed my cig and very calmly said, ‘It’s okay, Lyle. Go on, mate.’
The next morning, I awoke to the smell of food. He’d gone down to King Street and bought us each a thumper. Egg and bacon rolls. Fruit salad. An array of pastries.
‘Woulda cooked the eggs meself,’ he said. ‘But there’s no frypan.’
I mumbled something about Sarah having had an attachment to her utensils.
No Neat Endings Page 6
