Calypso Summer

by Jared Thomas

‘No worries,’ I said.

  ‘So what are your intentions?’ Vic asked, all serious and pokerfaced. Then he smiled and said, ‘Only joking cuz, what you want to do?’

  ‘Well like I’ve told some of you … one day my boss said he wanted some Aboriginal plants for his bath oils and lotions and that. I couldn’t believe it when he said he’d give me three thousand dollars and money to you mob if we helped him out.’ Clare squeezed my hand.

  ‘That’s shitloads of money,’ said Mel.

  ‘So when my boss Gary told me what he was after, I spoke to Mum, because I thought she knew lots about bush tucker and that. I mean she used to always be talking about it, but she wouldn’t tell me nothing, she just told me to come and speak with you mob.’

  ‘See, told yas he just wanted to get this stuff and make some quick cash.’ Vic said, agitated.

  ‘Nah, not at all, I was really happy to meet all you mob. That’s the best thing …’

  ‘Don’t worry about him … shut up Vic,’ Mel butted in. ‘He’s only messing with you, Calypso.’

  ‘The thing is,’ Bruce jumped in, ‘if we give you just a little bit of the plants, your boss will be able to make the biggest mobs of stuff from it. You see, you just extract the substance by boiling it up and then you can make a concentrate.’

  ‘Well it’s up to you fellas how much you give him,’ I said.

  ‘And if your boss likes what we give him, where to from there?’ Bruce asked.

  ‘Well for a start, whatever profits Gary makes, they need to be shared with everyone.’

  ‘Fifty-fifty?’ Vic said.

  ‘Whatever! I don’t mind. I mean, only a year ago I was broke. I didn’t have no job, nothing …’ I glanced at Clare.

  ‘Thanks cuz.’ Vic was smiling.

  ‘If things work out with my boss I hope that we can all be involved in growing the plants and harvesting them, making like a bit of a business.’

  ‘Oh, there will be no worries with growing the plants,’ said Aunty Janet before everyone cracked up. ‘But this Gary fella, we’ll have to talk with him you know, before anything happens.’

  When everyone stopped laughing Bruce said, ‘I don’t know if your boss can make much money for us selling these things but we have to look after the property and make some money too.’

  ‘Yeah, we don’t want sheep fucking it up,’ Vic protested.

  Everyone shook their heads in agreement with Vic, even the two old uncles, Edward and Joseph. I was confused. I thought Vic was in favour of running sheep on the property.

  Then Bruce said, ‘I spoke with a doctor at work about making products out of our plants and he said we need to get a chemist to pinpoint what is in the plants that make them work, what they call the active ingredient.’

  ‘Why we need to do that? The old people have always known they work,’ Aunty Janet said.

  ‘It’s not to prove they work Mum, we know that,’ said Bruce, ‘It’s so we can patent what we’re making, so others can’t start making it too and cutting us out.’

  ‘True,’ said Vic. ‘Most medicines in chemist shops all around the world come from Indigenous medicines ’ey, but we never get credit or bunda from them.’

  ‘I understand what you’re saying,’ I said. Gary is always talking about what’s in the powders and stuff we sell … what makes them work and where they come from … and I don’t want anyone getting ripped off.’

  ‘We’ve got our lawyer onto it,’ said Bruce. ‘But until he helps us to organise a scientist and the patent, we can only show you the plants. We can’t tell you their names or anything.’

  ‘And if your boss wants to try these things out, I gotta be there to show him and talk with him,’ said Uncle Ray.

  ‘This stuff is real secret,’ Vic warned.

  ‘Of course,’ I said.

  ‘Same here, I won’t say a thing,’ Clare said, getting carried away with the business talk.

  ‘Just show Calypso the plants and things,’ Uncle Ray growled. Mel, Vic and Bruce poured the contents of the bags onto the table. There were three different types of plants along with four containers of liquid that looked like cooking oil.

  ‘They all work?’ I asked, thinking there would only be one type of plant.

  ‘They all do different things, dear,’ Aunty Janet said. ‘Some make water kind of bubble like fizzy drink, one relaxes you and smells nice.’ She rubbed some leaves between her fingers and held them to her nose.

  ‘Even make you horny too,’ said Vic before we all cracked up, even Aunty Janet.

  ‘And one releases all of these minerals that cleans your skin and makes you float in the water. You can even make toothpaste out of that one Vic is holding there,’ said Mel. ‘Lots of different things you can do with all of them really.’

  ‘When you mix them all together they’re proper good for you, Calypso,’ said Uncle Ray. ‘See, we cooked them all up in big pots and extracted their oil and things, that’s what is in the bottles there, see? Sometimes we even mix it with emu and kangaroo fat to make them go further.’

  I looked at the bottles full of the stuff on the kitchen bench and then took one of them from the centre of the table and held it up to my eyes to check out its consistency.

  ‘This Gary fella is probably best to try the oils just as they are,’ said Aunty Janet. ‘I’ll show you how to make it like that one day.’

  There was silence for a while as I took the different plant samples in my hand and examined them, smelling them and rubbing them on my skin.

  ‘What’s wrong, Calypso?’ Aunty Janet asked.

  ‘Nothing. Everything is fine,’ I said. But really I was worrying about Gary, worrying that he wasn’t just all talk, that he really knew how to make a go of things. ‘Are these plants hard to grow?’ I asked and everyone pissed themselves laughing. Vic and Mel had tears rolling down their faces. When they all calmed down a bit, Bruce said, ‘Come outside cuz and have a look.’

  Clare and I followed Vic, Mel and Bruce through the back door of Aunty Janet’s house and into the yard. As soon as we were walking across the dusty yard Mel said, ‘There’s one of the plants there see, just growing like weeds.’

  Clare and I looked down and tiptoed around the plants, careful not to damage them.

  ‘Yeah, but look over the fence here,’ said Bruce, waving Clare and me toward him enthusiastically with a huge smile on his face.

  I rested my arms on top of the corrugated iron sheets of Aunty Janet’s fence to have a look and I couldn’t believe what I saw. There was an entire paddock that stretched for miles full of two types of the plants they’d shown me. Just like Mel reckoned, they were growing like weeds.

  ‘Deadly,’ was all I could say.

  ‘It’s everywhere,’ Clare whispered before she put her arm around my waist.

  ‘If we can make this stuff work, we’re sitting on a gold mine, you realise, Calypso?’ said Bruce.

  ‘I reckon,’ I said, my excitement rising.

  ‘And the other plant you showed us, where’s that?’ Clare asked.

  ‘Oh there’s plenty of that too,’ said Vic enthusiastically. ‘It grows everywhere up near the hills. It’d grow like wild fire if we tried to harvest it.’

  ‘It grows like wild fire anyway,’ said Vic.

  I just stood there in disbelief looking over the paddocks as Uncle Ray, Bruce and Vic talked about plans for meeting with Gary and presenting the oils. I couldn’t wait to put our plans in motion.

  °°°

  When we got out of Aunty Janet’s drive we just cracked with excitement. Clare rubbed my leg like it was some kind of lucky charm. ‘You’re really going to do it, Calypso!’ she said.

  ‘We’re all gunna do it!’ I said laughing and punching the air. ‘All of us, the whole mob!’

  ‘So when you going to call Gary?’

  ‘I’ll wait and tell him first thing in the morning, bright and early.’

  ‘He’ll be pretty happy, hey?’

  ‘But what if the ch
emist can’t find the active ingredients, what if that don’t work out?’ I said.

  ‘That will be easy for them, they do it all the time,’ Clare said adjusting her rear-view mirror. ‘It’s like the shampoo we sell, companies are always getting chemists to say what’s in it. Shampoo is just made out of plants and things too. Imagine if we made shampoo out of some of those plants? You could you know, they smelt pretty good.’

  ‘We could call it Calypso’s Curls.’

  ‘You call them curls?’ Clare said, pulling at one of my dreads. Then she turned on the cricket. The West Indies were doing pretty well and we were happy as Larry.

  When we reached the outskirts of the city, all the city lights spread out like sparks shooting from a bonfire into the night sky. I thought about how hot things were with Clare in her bedroom on Christmas day. I wanted to ask her to stay the night. I wanted to feel her beneath me, to wake up beside her. We’d been seeing each other for long enough, and I’d fallen for her big-time. I watched Clare’s mouth as she sang along to the radio and then traced her shoulders with my eyes, and her arms, all the way along to her hands resting on the steering wheel.

  Clare turned to me and placed her hand on my leg. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing, why?’

  ‘You’ve just been quiet for a while, that’s all.’

  ‘Alright,’ I said but as we got closer to my suburb, I could feel my skin getting all hot and prickly. I was real nervous. My mouth was getting real dry too. I grabbed my bottle of water and had a swig.

  When Clare turned into my street she said, ‘You’ll have to call me straight after you speak with Gary, okay?’

  ‘Course,’ I said.

  ‘I’m sure he’ll be happy with the plan,’ Clare assured me.

  ‘We’ll see,’ I said as Clare pulled into my driveway.

  When Clare pulled up we sat in silence for a tick until she said, ‘I hate it when I have to say goodbye.’ I didn’t say anything. I just leaned over and kissed her full on. Clare wrapped her hands around my neck and I pulled her towards me. When I kissed her neck I whispered, ‘Do you want to stay the night?’ Clare kissed me again and I took that as a ‘yes’. But then she drew back and said, ‘I’d love to but I can’t, not tonight.’

  ‘I don’t want to be rushing things,’ I said all cool.

  ‘You’re not rushing me at all. It’s just not right time tonight, not the right time of the … you know ... month.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, understanding and feeling a bit shame.

  ‘It’s a bummer, I know,’ Clare just said with a smile like it was all cool.

  I kissed Clare on the forehead and told her, ‘Well I’ll dream of you then.’ I held her for a while, running my hand across her beautiful face before I jumped out of the car and walked around to give her one last kiss.

  ‘Remember, call me straight after you’ve talked to Gary.’

  I started walking up my stairs and then stopped to watch Clare reverse out of the drive. The ‘Resident Parking Only’ sign written in bold red and positioned in the centre of my block of flats annoyed me.

  When I reached the top of the steps I could see a neighbour peering through her curtains. When she realised I had spotted her, the curtain snapped back into place. ‘Nosey old bugger,’ I thought, ‘Get a life.’

  °°°

  I sat out the front of Mystic Dolphin bright and early reading up on the one-day game and waiting for Gary to rock up. It was suspected that the West Indian wicketkeeper Devon Thomas had broken a finger in the test match but he’d been cleared for the one-day game. I was pretty happy about that and sitting there reading and watching all of the fitness enthusiasts pass by. When Gary rocked up, he looked like shit and was drinking a cup of takeaway coffee. ‘Looks like you had a good Christmas,’ I asked.

  ‘Nah, hate Christmas,’ he said. ‘It’s good for sales but. Why are you here so early?’

  ‘To tell you the good news.’

  ‘Your family keen?’ he asked as he unlocked the shop door.

  ‘Yeah, they’ve got some stuff they want to show you.’

  ‘What is it, soap or something?’ he asked sparking up.

  ‘Bath and massage oil, it bubbles and fizzes … smells good and even makes you horny too they reckon.’

  ‘Sounds bloody great! When can I have a squiz?’ Gary asked as he opened the French doors.

  ‘Well Uncle Ray wants to come and show them to you. He lives up Port Germein way.’

  ‘Right,’ said Gary.

  ‘Probably best to meet him on a weekend.’

  ‘How about New Year’s Day? Shop will be closed and I’ll bloody well need a pick up.’

  ‘I could ask.’

  Gary told me later that he’d borrow a portable spa bath from a mate, and set it up in the store to try the stuff out. He reckoned we could keep the spa in the shop for a while and put the bath oil in it during the week to give people a sneak preview. I had to tell him that we weren’t rushing into things and that my family just wanted to show him. He also told me that he might need to get someone else to check out the bath and massage oil with him, someone with a bit more expertise. I told him I had to speak with Uncle Ray and the mob first.

  Like clockwork Gary took off to Estia’s Café at lunch. I was glad because I wanted to call Clare.

  ‘What did he say?’ she asked as soon as she picked up her phone.

  ‘Can you come down?’ I said.

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘It’s all good. I’ll explain when you get here.’

  ‘I’ll be down once I’ve finished with this client.’

  Clare looked hot when she came into the shop. There weren’t any customers around and she gave me the wickedest little kiss before pushing me away and asking, ‘So what did he say?’

  I explained how Gary was going to get the spa from his friend, how he wanted this other person to check out the stuff with him on New Year’s Day and how I’d have to check things out with Uncle Ray first.

  ‘Uncle Ray will be alright with it,’ she said. ‘Your family are onto it. But we’ll have to take it pretty easy on New Year’s Eve.’

  ‘Well I was hoping you’d come back to my place after the cricket.’

  ‘Course. But only for a little while.’

  ‘It’ll take more than a little while,’ I told her.

  Clare laughed and said, ‘Good. But then I want you to come with me to Mum and Dad’s for a party. We’ve got plenty to celebrate, Calypso,’ she said before we kissed again.

  ‘You want to go for a swim after work or what?’ I asked, keen to see her in those bathers again.

  ‘Gotta work late you know, with New Year’s coming up and all.’

  ‘No worries,’ I said. ‘Well, you know where to find me.’

  ‘We’ll have some time to ourselves soon, I promise,’ she said when a customer came in and she had to get back to work.

  When Gary came back into the shop, he pulled out his wallet and winked at me. ‘I’ve got your Christmas bonus mate.’ He came over to the counter and handed over three hundred bucks. I didn’t know how much to expect but three hundred was alright. It would help to pay a few bills. There were plenty more notes in his wallet too. Made me wonder why he didn’t just hand over some cash a few days before Christmas like he said he would.

  First day back at work after Christmas and I couldn’t wait to get my arse out of the place because Gary was going on about what we should call the products we were going to create. Dreamtime this, Dreamtime that, he reckoned. Did my mob have any lingo names we could use? I changed into some board shorts in the storeroom and cut it straight to the jetty. I asked a bloke hanging out with his kids if he could keep an eye on my bag, walked straight into the water, fell back into it and then just let myself float. The ocean was glassy, warm and salty and had me floating like a piece of foam. I just hung there looking around at the people on the beach, the reflection of the water beneath the jetty and the seagulls flying around. I shut my e
yes and let myself relax.

  Life was sweet. Gary was still being a bit of a wanker but at least he was trying. I knew that any day now I’d be going at it with Clare. The only thing I had left to do was to call Uncle Ray and let him know about the update to the plans.

  18

  We caught the bus from Henley Beach Road to the cricket. Clare said it would avoid parking hassles and we’d be able to make a quick getaway after the game. A lot of other people had the same idea. The bus was packed with people in their Australian cricket shirts. There were old fellas listening to the pre-game commentary on their radios. I was wearing my new West Indies one-day international shirt and red, green and gold tam pulled down over my dreads, with some of them jutting out the back. I knew that people were staring at me but it was alright.

  One old fella turned to us and asked me, ‘Do you reckon your blokes will bat or bowl if you win the toss?’

  In my best Jamaican accent I told them, ‘Veerasammy Permaul will send dem in to bat first mahn, for dare to be some type of competishon. I could tell that Clare was just about to crack up but I kept spinning the old fella a yarn. ‘It would be marder for Australia to bat first. Our bowling is tap natch mahn. De will have little opportunity of makin any ruhns. It will be gayme over very early.’

  ‘Yep, I think you’re right, or else it might be a short day at the cricket,’ the old fella said and then placed his earphones back in his ears.

  When we entered Adelaide Oval through the Victor Richardson Gates a little girl came up to me and said, ‘Can I touch your hair?’ I bent down and said, ‘De tek a long time to grow yu nuh,’ as she carefully pressed one of my dreads. The little girl’s mum spotted her daughter and walked over. She took the girl by the hand and said, ‘Leave the man alone.’ I smiled at the woman and tried to tell her it was okay but she dragged her daughter away before I got to speak with her.

  ‘I thought you had another girlfriend for a while there,’ Clare said and then a pack of blokes started taking the piss calling out ‘Calypso, Calypso, Calypso.’ They came up to us holding their beers and slapped me on the back. ‘You should be playing out there today mate,’ one of them said almost yelling. Another fella leaned in close and said, ‘Hey Calypso, you know where I can get some ganja?’