Ishmael and the Return of the Dungongs

by Michael Gerard Bauer

  ‘That’s OK. I’m … glad you came. I wasn’t sure if you would … you know, after …’

  She looked at me and just nodded to show she understood what I was talking about. I knew it wouldn’t do any good, but I couldn’t stop the words from leaving my mouth.

  ‘Kelly … I’m sorry, I really am. What I did … that was … stupid … Wrong.’

  Then she asked the question that I’d already asked myself a million times. ‘So … why did you do it?’

  ‘I … I don’t know.’

  But I did know and when I saw the hurt hiding in her eyes, I knew that whatever happened I needed to tell her the truth, no matter how much it scared me. I was just like Uncle Ray. I was tired of safe. Sick of it. ‘I just … I just wanted to know … if you … liked me or not.’

  Kelly tilted her head slightly as if she hadn’t understood.

  ‘I wasn’t reading it all … really … I just wanted to know what you wrote about me … So I’d know if you liked me or not.’

  ‘If you wanted to know that … why couldn’t you just ask me?’

  There was no way I could explain to someone like Kelly Faulkner how impossible that was for someone like me, so I just shook my head.

  There was a long silence and then I heard her step closer, followed by the sound of a zip and a shuffle of pages.

  ‘Here.’

  When I looked up she was holding her diary out to me. It was open.

  ‘No … I don’t want …’

  ‘Go on. You said you wanted to know what I wrote about you. Well here it is. It’s all right – I want you to read it.’

  I took the diary from her. It was open at the same page I had started to read that day at her house.

  ISHMAEL

  I always thought Ishmael was a nice guy especially after what he did for Marty – though I must admit, some pretty weird things seem to happen to him – eg Sally’s pool! But now that I’ve got to know him a bit better, I think that he’s …

  I glanced up as Kelly then turned the page.

  … really nice and funny and the kind of boy you can trust.

  All of a sudden I felt like one of those dissected toads in the science lab – sliced open and pinned to a board. If Mr Guthrie was right and one day the words would find me, I was praying it would be now. But my words must have lost their compass and marched off a cliff somewhere.

  It was Kelly who spoke first. ‘And I found … this … in the diary.’

  She handed a small slip of paper to me.

  The words ‘Hot or what!’ screamed up at me. I couldn’t believe it. It was back! It should have been dead and buried long ago, but every time I thought I’d pounded down the last spadeful of soil on its grave, it shoved its hands up through the dirt and came for me again. It was possessed! It was unstoppable! Maybe Mr Guthrie was right all along. Maybe Razza’s poem really was ‘rigid with rigor mortis’ and that’s why you could never kill it-because it was already dead! Yes, that was it. The horrible truth hit me as I stared at the paper in my hands and the words seemed to crawl off the page like a swarm of shiny black beetles. It was poetry’s answer to The Mummy – and now it was after Kelly!

  Luckily a soft voice eventually hooked me back to something approaching reality. ‘Is it … Did you … write it?’

  It was like being accused of emptying my bladder in the pool all over again.

  ‘No … No way … You don’t think … No, it’s not mine … That’s all Razza’s work … He gave it to me … He was just trying to help … I … I had it in my hand when … It must’ve got caught inside by mistake … but I didn’t write it … Really … I would never write something like that about you … I wouldn’t … No way … I just wouldn’t.’

  Kelly held up a hand like she was stopping traffic and gave a little grimace. ‘It’s all right. I believe you. I believe you.’

  ‘I would never write something like that about you – not ever,’ I said again, just to make certain.

  Kelly nodded thoughtfully and I was pretty sure I’d convinced her that Razza’s poem had nothing to do with me, but then a doubt flickered across her face. The movement of her head slowly ground to a halt. She frowned and squinted at me through one eye. ‘You’d never write something like that about me? So … what are you saying? That you … don’t think I’m hot?’

  Wild thoughts erupted in my head like a flock of startled birds. I frantically tried to catch some of them. ‘Well, yes … but … no … Well, not no … I mean, of course you’re … You know … but not like that … Well you are … but it’s just … you’re … You’re …’

  I looked up quickly. I thought I saw a smile hiding on Kelly’s face, but I must have been mistaken. I tried one last time to say something that didn’t sound like I was a baboon with an anvil for a tongue stud.

  ‘You’re … You’re everything that poem says … More … You really are, I mean it … A lot more … It’s just … I don’t know … I just think … that that’s the least of what you are.’

  What? Did that come out right? Did it even make sense? Had I just insulted Kelly Faulkner? I forced myself to look up. She was gazing at me as if she couldn’t believe what she had just heard. This was bad. I wondered if Kelly had a right hook like Barry Bagsley’s. It didn’t look like I would have to wait long to find out.

  She took another step closer. I braced myself. Then she spoke in a whisper. ‘That’s probably …’

  Oh no-here it comes.

  Circle the most appropriate response:

  ‘That’s probably …

  (a) the most offensive

  (b) the most childish

  (c) the stupidest

  (d) the creepiest

  … thing anyone has ever said to me.’

  Kelly paused as if she was making her choice. Then she continued. ‘… The most …’

  Somebody save me! Where’s the cavalry when you need them? Where’s the Man of Steel? Hey, now would be a great time for an earthquake to hit or that volcano to blow. Anyone for an alien invasion? If someone’s out there – come on down! Please, give me something – anything! I want my knight in shining armour!

  ‘Hey, Kel. Whatcha doing? I got the drinks.’

  Over by the doorway Brad was holding up two plastic cups. Thank you, Captain America! You just saved my life!

  ‘Ishmael-didn’t see you there. How’re you going? Thanks for the tickets. Can’t wait to hear your dad’s band. Hey, you coming in, Kel? They’re about to start up again.’

  For some reason Kelly seemed a little confused. ‘Oh … right … Sorry. Just give us a second, OK? Won’t be long.’

  Brad shrugged and wandered back inside.

  Kelly waited till he was gone then turned back to me. ‘Well … I um … I have to go … You know …’

  I did know. Brad was waiting.

  ‘Are you coming in?’

  ‘No … I think I’ll just hang around here till Dad’s on.’

  ‘OK, but don’t forget you still owe Sally a dance sometime.’

  Kelly turned and drifted towards the gym as if she didn’t really want to get there. She was almost at the entrance before I became aware of the velvety feel of the book in my hands.

  ‘Kelly,’ I called, holding up the diary, ‘you forgot this.’

  I took it over to her and she looked at it for a few seconds before she spoke. ‘Could you do me a favour?’ she said. ‘This … can be a bit of a pain … You know, carrying it around and trying to dance and everything. So … if you’re staying out here anyway … maybe you could … mind it for me? Just for a little while-just until you come in?’

  Kelly Faulkner held me captive in her crystal eyes.

  ‘Yeah … Yeah, of course … But … are you sure?’

  ‘I’m sure,’ she said.

  I took the diary back and grasped it tightly with both hands.

  ‘I’ll take good care of it … I promise.’

  Kelly nodded. ‘I know you will,’ was all she said.

 
44.

  TWENTY YEARS IN THE MAKING

  When kelly left, I sat back down and looked at the diary in my hands. It contained all of her secret thoughts and her most private moments, and I knew that if I sat there for the rest of my life I would never look inside.

  I turned over to the back cover and, with my finger, wrote my initials above Kelly’s in the soft red suede and traced the outline of a heart around them both. Then I moved my hand slowly across the surface and swept it all away.

  I was still sitting there listening to the music and thinking about Kelly Faulkner when a flash of light beyond the roof of the gym caught my eye. A few seconds later a murmur of thunder crept in from the distance. It sounded like we might be in for a storm. I hoped not. It would spoil the night a bit.

  Of course I could always blame Kelly, I thought – her father was the weatherman after all. Poor Kelly. I wondered if anyone ever thanked her when the weather was good. Probably not. It was a tough gig being the daughter of a weatherman.

  And that’s what I was thinking about when some words found me at last. They may not have been Shakespeare or even Zorzotto, but they were me … and they were true. So I used the little thin pen from the spine of Kelly’s diary and the space on the back of Razza’s poem, and I wrote them down.

  I’d only just finished when a howl of whistles and cheers spilled from the gym as the lights dimmed. Quickly sliding the sheet back into Kelly’s diary I moved inside where a mass of people were surging towards the stage. Then a voice blared over the PA and everyone from St Daniel’s instinctively froze in fear.

  It was Mr Barker, but this time we had nothing to worry about. ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, it’s been twenty years too long, but tonight, live on stage, St Daniel’s College, in association with 8 Triple N, is proud to present … the triumphant return of the Dugongs!’

  Then the lights blazed on and the crowd erupted as Dad, Uncle Ray and Leo stood arm-in-arm on stage while a huge banner by Ms Lagilla’s art class of a guitar-playing dugong was unfurled behind them.

  After that Dad introduced each of the band members. When it was Razza’s turn he said, ‘And making a surprise special guest appearance for one night only, on drums, Orazio “The Razzman” Zorzotto!’ The crowd whooped and clapped as Razza climbed up on to his stool and raised his arms in the air like Rocky Balboa-except I don’t remember Rocky ever wearing a Pi-Man T-shirt with the sleeves cut out.

  Then Dad’s voice boomed around the hall. ‘This concert is for Billy.’

  Razza nodded to the rest of the band and pounded out four thudding beats to signal the start of ‘Collision course’. In front of him Leo and Uncle Ray kicked in with a wail of guitars and Dad grabbed the mike in both hands and let out a scream that sounded like it had been twenty years in the making.

  All around me the crowd bounced and throbbed to Razza’s thumping beat, and even though I knew that somewhere among all those gyrating bodies Kelly Faulkner was with someone else, just at that moment it didn’t seem important. All that mattered was that Razza was attacking the drums as if he was Bruce Lee, Uncle Ray and Leo were prowling around the stage with smiles as wide as their guitars and Dad was singing his lungs out and leaping about like some crazy kid. It was enough to make you feel like laughing and cheering and pumping your fists into the air all at the same time. And that’s exactly what I did.

  In the words of the Razzman, it was time to ‘par-taaaay’. And why not? The Dugongs had finally returned, and they’d brought my father with them.

  Track 9:

  The very best of everything

  There were times when the walls came down

  Times when the bells rang out

  Times when the cavalry came through.

  There were times when we read the signs

  Times when we held the line

  And the very best of everything was you.

  From The Dugongs: Returned & Remastered

  Music & lyrics: R. Leseur

  45.

  THE TOP TEN

  The Top Ten things I’ll always remember about the Dugongs’ Twenty Year Reunion Concert:

  1. Dancing with Sally Nofke after she dragged me up to join the others and told me that I had to take my punishment with a smile … which I did.

  2. Hearing the Dugongs play their first song in front of a live audience for twenty years and being deafened by the roar that followed.

  3. Every song after that.

  4. Sally dancing with Bill and thinking it was like watching a beautiful dark moon orbiting an enormous smile.

  5. Prue laughing hysterically as Scobie performed his own unique style of dancing, which consisted of absolutely no movement at all except for some random shoulder hunching and an occasional wiggle of the hips.

  6. My mum crying and pressing her fingers against her lips like she was praying when Dad sat alone on stage with an acoustic guitar and sang a new song dedicated to Billy Mangan called ‘Memory sea’ and me knowing who I would go to if I ever needed help with a poem.

  7. Razza looking horrified when he spotted his mother and Mr Barker dancing together and how quickly he changed when he saw how happy she looked.

  8. The ten-minute encore performance of ‘Dead Toad Society blues’ that Razza had cranked up to warp speed until Uncle Ray and Leo exchanged a wink and boosted it up even further and continued to power it along while Dad ran into the crowd and pulled Mum and Mr Barker and Mrs Zorzotto up on stage as backing singers to blast out the chorus, which had the entire audience dancing and bouncing around like a giant beast until it all came to a dramatic end when Razza thrashed out an insane, head-banging drum solo, then made a final desperate lunge at a cymbal which shattered his drumstick and sent him tumbling from his stool and crashing to the stage.

  9. The band taking their final bows with everyone throwing streamers and waving glo sticks and going crazy and Uncle Ray calling Razza over and yanking his arm into the air like he was world champion while behind them Mrs Zorzotto whooped and cheered and bounced up and down, jabbing Mr Barker in the ribs with her elbow until he grimaced as if he couldn’t believe what he was about to do, then raised his hands above his head, clapped them together and gave Razza the thumbs up.

  10. Dad standing up on stage waving to everyone and laughing and joking with the band and hugging Mum and spinning her round so that her feet twirled above the floor.

  Yes, they were definitely my concert highlights all right. But the night wasn’t over yet, and there were other highlights still to come.

  One of them would be the highlight of my entire year.

  46.

  THE WEATHERMAN’S DAUGHTER

  The Return of the Dugongs concert turned out to be one of the most successful events ever held at St Daniel’s Boys College.

  Apart from the healthy ticket sales, the Parents and Friends did a roaring trade on the food and drink stalls, the car park was all profit and the Return of the Dugongs commemorative T-shirts sold out, with orders for over a hundred more. I even passed a group of girls all wearing Pi-Men T-shirts and going on about the ‘hot drummer’.

  The Dugongs themselves couldn’t have asked for a better response. Some club owners had come along to check them out, and after the concert there were offers for more gigs next year, and a man from a record company talked about a remastering of the original album. When Dad asked him if he would like to meet ‘our manager’, Mr Barker did that smiling thing again. But he wasn’t alone.

  There were a lot of smiles being shared around me that night – Prue and Scobie, Mum and Dad, Mr Barker and Mrs Zorzotto and, of course, Sally and Razza – that is, until I turned around and found that they had mysteriously disappeared. They weren’t the only ones. Kelly and Brad also seemed to have vanished somewhere. I really didn’t want to think about that. So with Dad and the band still surrounded by a crush of well-wishers and autograph hunters, I decided to escape to the playground.

  Outside, there were still lots of people standing around talking excitedly, packing up
gear or threading their way down to the car park. Over by one of the stalls I spotted Miss Tarango. She was wearing a Return of the Dugongs T-shirt tied in a knot at the side. She was with Mr Guthrie. They were struggling to carry a long rolled-up canvas tarpaulin, but every time they tried to pick it up it sagged in the middle and then Miss would laugh so much that she would lose all her strength and drop it. Eventually, after a few attempts, she seemed to go weak at the knees and just sat on the tarp wiping tears from her eyes and holding her stomach. Mr Guthrie just stared at her and shook his head. I knew what he was thinking. That it just wasn’t possible to write a poem to match Miss Tarango.

  I thought for a moment about giving them a hand with the tarpaulin, but I figured they didn’t really need me, so I made for my old spot by the retaining wall. The only problem was, when I got there, I found someone had beaten me to it.

  A pair of eyes like soft, blue diamonds looked up at me.

  ‘Hey, Ishmael.’

  ‘Kelly …’

  She smiled. ‘Sorry, I guess I stole your place, didn’t I?’

  ‘No problem. It’s yours.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Then there was one of those awkward silences that seemed to stalk me wherever I go. Luckily a question saved me. ‘How come …’

  ‘I’m out here on my lonesome? Well, it seems it’s my night for being abandoned,’ Kelly said with an exaggerated sigh. ‘First, my best friend runs off somewhere with this mad drummer and then my … then Brad … starts talking footy with his mates. What’s a girl to do?’

  We smiled at each other. I racked my brains to think of something else to say to keep the conversation going, but the ‘awkward silence’ stalker had cornered me again. Kelly looked at the bag that was on her lap and began picking at the beads.

  ‘I really enjoyed the concert,’ she said. ‘Your dad is pretty cool.’

  ‘Yeah … I guess he gets it from me.’

  She giggled. I wished there was some way I could do that for a living – make Kelly Faulkner laugh.