Metal Fish, Falling Snow

by Cath Moore

  I used to brush Mum’s hair forever, just because I could. Start at the top and slide through like butter, that brush would. Being white is easy. You don’t have to pretend to be anything else. I pull extra hard on knots at the back of my head. It hurts, so I do it again.

  ‘I don’t care which direction they run in, you eat those eggs.’

  Sitting at the cafe across from the pub I slit them like a qualified surgeon. Lucky I have compliant yolks ’cause I’m not eating anything that travels south and Pat has no jurisdiction to make me. Mum said sometimes living with me and Pat was like being stuck between two mules and she even drew a little cartoon of her getting squished between two big donkey bums with her eyes popping out of her head. Well, I’m fed up with Pat and his bossing me about.

  ‘I’ve got lots of secrets in here,’ I say, rummaging around in my backpack.

  ‘Good on ya, mate.’

  ‘Smart-arse.’

  ‘Watchyamouth.’

  ‘Watch ya nose.’

  Even though it wasn’t a special occasion and I don’t like things around my neck, I put on Mum’s air loom necklace. Then I pull out my special fork and wave it back and forth to show Pat I mean business. He’s rummaging round in his mind for something to say, but he’s left it too late for a comeback. The waitress says Pat’s card hasn’t gone through. He has to pay in coins like the grey brigade on pension day. A five-cent piece falls off the table and spins round. I bet tails but it goes between the floorboards so I’ll never find out if I’m right.

  Reckon I was ’cause when we shove our bags in the car there are still no clouds in the sky. Pat is mumbling to himself and keeps checking both sides of his wallet like he’d missed some money first time round. You can’t just wish money into existence because then everyone would have some and the currency would devaluate. Detonate. Evaporate.

  Pat doesn’t put anything away because he has holes in his pockets; money just slips straight through. I told Mum she should just sew up the inside of his pockets like lady pants from Kmart, but she said that wouldn’t help. Now Pat’s just staring at me, or Mum’s necklace to be precise. His eyes don’t blink not even once until I snap my fingers right in his face like he’s been hypnotised.

  ‘Wakey wakey.’

  He bends down to tie his shoelace even though it’s already in a double knot. Sneaks a glance across the road. That’s where his eyes find what they’re looking for.

  The pawnshop is a toy store for grown-ups. In this one I find a fox head with a long tail attached that you wrap around your neck for warmth. I reckon it’s from the 1930s when everyone was depressed and had no money to buy a proper coat so they had to use animals instead. Then I put on an eye patch with faded green velvet on the outside and ‘ahoy’ written in red glitter. I also find a Viking hat that has two horns, one on each side. It was made out of plastic because you can’t conquer with a heavy head. There’s music playing from somewhere and a guy singing about ‘takin’ my baby back home again’. If I could find some dance shoes my outfit would be complete. You don’t see many jazz-tapping, depressed pirate Vikings. Pat’s talking to the guy at the front about his watch.

  ‘It’s worth at least five hundred bucks.’

  ‘I’ll give you seventy.’

  Pat scoffs at the man like it’s highway robbery, but nods anyway. I think his dad gave it to him before he got lots of dust in his lungs from building houses and had to carry a tank of air round with him all day. The man was just lending Pat some time; he’d get the watch on the way home again. Or so he said. The man behind the counter nodded at me and said I could keep the Viking helmet. Can you believe it?! Free history! Pat just looked at me, smiled.

  ‘You are one lucky kid.’

  Even though it was my fault we’d lost all the money sometimes it felt like we were on the same team. Maybe we’d run out of angry or maybe we were just tired of staring down the same neverending road. By the time Wanteegi rolled around we were silent partners. Like old married couples who know what the other is thinking. Pat would put his hand out just before I reached for the Minties. I’d play a Johnny Farnham song in my head and he’d start singing it. It was like this lady who lived in New York with a parrot. One day she was just thinking to herself about going for a walk and at the very same time her parrot—who was in another room—squawked out ‘Better take a jacket!’ Or Bobby the tortoise-shell cat who was left behind when his owners moved so he walked across the entire country until one Tuesday the owner opens the door and Bobby jumps onto the couch like he’s just been out for bit of fresh air.

  ‘Where do you hear all this stuff?’

  ‘I keep my senses on. You never know when you’re gonna be smacked in the head with a good story.’

  We haven’t seen anything living on land or in the air for miles but right at that moment, two big splats of bird poo land square in the middle of the windscreen. Pat tries to get them off with the wipers but there’s no water left in them so the poo smears everywhere and we can’t see a thing.

  Screech to a halt. The only liquid in the car is a half-empty bottle of Coke so we pour it over the windscreen and wipe it off with tissues. I look at Pat and we start laughing our heads off. Laughing is emotional medicine; some people in China stand in a circle and giggle together. Leaning against the bonnet we’re suddenly thinking the same thing again—Mum would have loved this.

  When you forget you’re grieving, laughter is a guilty treat. Soon enough Pat packs his smile away in its box. Can’t tell what, but there’s something else he’s feeling guilty about too.

  Wanteegi, now that’s a strange place. So much dust it bleeds out the soles of people’s skin leaving red footprints all over town. The men are tall and skinny and the women short and fat—like some kind of genetic rule. The kids? They were just plain weird—caught somewhere between the short and tall of their folks. Nothing much grows here on account of the dust, so people only eat veggies from a tin with steak done one of three ways. Rare, rarer and still beating. Worse still, I reckon all that tin-can metal has been seeping into their brains, tampering with neurons. At the Watering Hole Hotel the barmaid plonks a lemonade down in front of me. Gritty eyes and fidgety lips. Hair last washed a couple of weeks ago.

  ‘We run out of them plastic monkeys.’

  Which was okay by me. ‘There’s too much plastic in the world and it’s choking the seals. Sometimes they wash up on the beach wearing the necklace of death,’ I say.

  ‘We ain’t nowhere near the sea. So don’t you worry about that.’ She has a rotten tooth up front and her fingertips are stained yellow. Pat comes over and points at the pokies.

  ‘How long they been here?’

  ‘Few weeks.’

  ‘Which one’s put out the most?’

  ‘You gonna take number four out for Chinese or somethink?’

  She pulls up her bra strap up and starts stacking glasses. Pat smiles at her but not in a nice way. He heads over to Ted the publican whose real name is Edward but no one calls him that except his mother and she is dead too. I check the cardboard-cutout man is in optimal viewing position. Even though he had eyes, he couldn’t really see so I get a green pencil from my backpack and poke looking holes through—now I’m incognito. By the look on Ted’s face, Pat had stuffed something up again but this time it couldn’t be my fault. I hadn’t touched his phone since I got on that bus with all the Yankee grannies.

  ‘But I ordered 370 of the lager. You’ll have to take it back.’

  ‘That’s 40 cents off a unit, off your package rate if—’

  ‘Who’s drinking that here? Couldn’t give it away.’

  Ted does a double take and squints in my direction.

  Cover blown, abort mission.

  Pat storms over and talks real quiet like he’s telling me a secret, except he’s real mad. That’s what adults do when they want to shout but have to show some restraint.

  ‘Go outside and pretend you’re a statue. One that doesn’t move.’

  T
hat didn’t make any sense, but I stop myself from saying so and finish my lemonade. The barmaid pays no attention. Margie would have called her a floosie shantoosie. But I felt sorry for her. Somehow I knew that inside her lungs something was growing. One day she’d go to the hospital for her hacking cough and never leave.

  13 Broken bottles

  Out the back of the pub I hear a ratbag boy jeering, and even before I turn the corner I know he’s a prime example of Wanteegi’s genetic misfits. Squished nose, freckled face, squinty eyes and a front lip curled up on the right like he got nipped by a fishhook. Old-man knobbly knees and untied shoelaces. Ripped T-shirt and ears so full of dirt you could grow potatoes. There are three of them and this Mr Freckle-face is in charge. His brother wears a permanent scowl on account of his forehead that juts out like a cliff edge. The last one is a hanger-onna. They call him Dagbum and he can’t be much more than four. He just stares at me and keeps playing with his willy like he needs to go to the toilet.

  Freckle-face tells Scowler to put all these glass bottles up on the wooden fence posts so he can shoot them down with a slingshot. He isn’t very good. Heaps of stones just zoom past. Then one hits the middle bottle and it explodes. I watch as all the pieces shatter into tiny glass diamonds. For a moment it looks like a crystal ball floating in mid-air and it’s beautiful. But a split second later those pieces are falling. The bottle can never be fixed and made useful again and that is the same as not being alive. I run over and count all the pieces of glass. There are sixty-eight, which makes me sad because that is a whole number and it very much wasn’t. Then Freckle-face tells me to rack off, that I shouldn’t be there. I tell him what I think about this disgraceful waste but he just laughs and says they were meant to be broken so I can piss off now and let him get back to it. I’m scared all right, but my feet sink a little deeper into the dirt. Some things are worth holding your ground for.

  Freckle-face starts up with the slingshot again and another bottle explodes right near my head. A shard of glass actually goes into my hair. I found it that night in the shower when it pricked my finger. He aims another one at me but it goes straight past and hits a rabbit that was running away. It’s motion less. I saw that one other time with a myna bird. He was hopping up and down on a brick wall at school then just fell off. Died in the one moment I’d been watching him. Does the rabbit feel that split second when life and death run into each other?

  I crouch next to it, perfectly soft and warm. I’m dizzy and I close my eyes, but then I’m back in the tree and Mum’s falling forever.

  Which world am I in; is this real? Am I a real girl?

  There’s a volcano stirring inside and my blackness is rising to the surface, too late to stop it. I run over to the bottles and smash every single one. Slam them into each other until there’s a giant puddle of glittering glass, a mirage of sparkling splinters. Nothing pretty about it. Nothing at all.

  Before I can do anything else Freckle-face whispers in Scowler’s ear. He comes running over and pulls my hair so hard I fall over backwards. Kicks me in the guts and I curl into myself like an echidna. Then everything’s dark. But I hear Freckle-face egging him on.

  ‘Harder!’

  Scowler doesn’t say anything and I think maybe he’s thought better of it. But then there’s a boot in my back and my spine’s burning. Again and again. I peek through my fingers and look up at him. His face is blank but tears are running down his cheeks. The little one comes over and stares at me.

  ‘Dirty.’

  He wasn’t talking about the muck in my hair or the dust choking me in the throat. But I am not the colour he thinks I am. I am not black. I’m invisible, like water. Freckle-face comes over and spits in my eyes.

  ‘Piss off, you ugly cunt.’

  That word cuts right through me and out the other side. Pierces my chest and lets all the air out. I’m suffocating and want the ground to take me now.

  ‘Fuck off, the lotta-ya!’

  Pat marches over arms flapping and feet pounding. Before they know what’s what he’s yanking them off me and up into the air. Freckle-face falls to the ground, but he’s not afraid.

  ‘She broke all the bottles!’

  ‘And what were you doing, then? Fuck off! GAWN!’

  They scramble to their feet and around the back of the pub, cut across the laneway opposite and behind a row of houses. As the dust settles Pat looks down and I’m sure he’s about to throw me through the air too.

  ‘You gonna crawl into a ball every time ya get in trouble?’

  ‘It was running, just running, that’s all.’ I point to the dead rabbit on the ground.

  ‘I’m not always gonna be here, right?’

  Before I can ask where else he’ll be, Pat curls my hands into fists. Puts his own up and jiggles round like a boxer, motions me forward, but I’m too sore to move so I stay put. He takes one of my fists and hits his chest with it. Nods and eggs me on but I’m not playing this game. So he hits me gently on the shoulder. Just mucking around but takes me by surprise and I stumble back.

  ‘People will hurt you if you let them. And you won’t understand it, but they’ll do it anyway.’

  I’m a lover not a fighter, so I don’t retaliate. Pat gives up and walks away. (Mum says that’s what men do best.) I crouch down next to the rabbit and stroke his fur. He shouldn’t be alone, being freshly dead, so I put him in my backpack. Suddenly I’m angry that not one single thing will change. Those boys will be back breaking and killing tomorrow and I can’t do anything about it except let my fury off the leash right now. I run up to Pat and whap him on the back. Never saw it coming so he falls to the ground and I’m punching him in the chest: 1, 2, 1, 2. Then we’re rolling around in the dirt like animals and it feels good just to think with my hands. When we’ve got nothing more to give I get to my feet. Pat reaches out and I pull him up.

  Taking a grown man down’s not something to brag about so when we’re back in the car I put a lid on my smile and buckle up. Pat, on the other hand, is beaming from ear to ear as he reverses the car out, arm stretched over the back of my seat.

  ‘You gotta good hook. Could make a career outta that,’ says Pat.

  ‘Lady fighters are down-and-out dogs,’ I say back.

  ‘Says who?’

  So I tell Pat about the lady politician who wanted to ban women in the ring because it wasn’t proper letting their female bits get bruised and battered about. It mucked up the cycles of femininity she said.

  Pat goes all red in the face and doesn’t know where to look. ‘Well, yeah, okay. All I know is you got a crackin’ uppercut on ya.’

  I watch as a skinny-fat family push their little three-legged terrier in a pram down the street.

  So long, Weirdsville. Thanks for the punch in the guts.

  14 178 little specks

  ‘Where’ya puttin’ it all? You’re skinny as a rake.’

  ‘I have a fast metamorphosis.’

  ‘Righto.’

  That night we got to Gummagi, which has a pub but not one Pat has anything to do with, so he let me get ribs as a special treat. Pat didn’t really touch his honey prawns and to be honest I don’t blame him. They were covered in pink gunky sauce, and anyways, where did they find prawns out here in the middle of the bush? I reckon they’re golden-syrup yabbies but I don’t tell Pat in case he kicks up a stink. So it’s only when I get napkins for my sticky fingers that I see Pat looking at me. Shifts his prawns round on the plate like dodgem cars banging into one another.

  ‘Your Mum...did she ever say anything about me?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘You know…about the future…feelings…’

  The waitress comes over with another beer for Pat. ‘How is everything?’

  I look at Pat’s fluorescent prawns. ‘Bit bright don’t you think?’

  She glances at the ceiling, then turns to Pat like he’s my translator.

  ‘Lights don’t go down ’til seven.’

  Some people pretend they
can’t see me. But invisibility like that doesn’t make me feel good. She takes my plate without asking. There was all this sauce I’d saved for the end, but I can’t call out because suddenly Pat’s choking on one of those yabbies. Eyes bulging he leans across the table just in case it crawls back out on its own. I jump up and whack him on the back like I think you’re supposed to. All I can hear is the sound of other people’s cutlery clinking on their plates as they stop eating and watch like gagging is a spectator sport. Then I remember it’s the Heinrich movement I’m supposed to be doing. I wrap my arms around his middle and yank hard. The prawn pops out and back onto his plate.

  Pat downs his beer in one go then clears his throat like a tyre skidding on gravel.

  ‘I think we’ll have the bill.’

  At 3.27 am I wake up from another nightmare. Cockroaches, hundreds of them trying to eat my eyes out so I can’t find the boat. Mum’s calling my name but now I’m blind it makes no difference. That purple-eyed eagle flies down and tries to eat the cockroaches but its claws end up scratching my face and I wake myself up before the blood comes pouring out of my eyes.

  Part of the dreaming world is still here. I can feel the bugs all over my body and the eagle flapping at the window. I call out to Pat but he’s not there so I grab my backpack and run downstairs. In the pub bistro the clocks have stopped hours ago and people are wandering through time fast or slow as they please. Pat’s at the pokies in the gaming room. Though his eyes are half shut he offers a dozy smile. I try to tell him there’s a plague in the bedroom but he waves me quiet.

  ‘It’s systemic—systematic, Dylan. You have to believe in the system!’

  He giggles, then looks at me like he’s only just realised I’m there. ‘They’ll sing to you,’ he whispers.

  The machines don’t care who’s feeding them. There’s a gadget inside that’ll play a song no matter who hits the button. Flashing lights glow through my fingertips. I tell him about the dream but he just agrees that cockroaches could be a real bugger and next time maybe I should wear an eye mask when I go to bed so they can’t get me. I needed him to say it would be okay and that I could go back to sleep and my eyes would not see the same thing, but he just gave me some money for the jukebox and told me to go cheer myself up.