This Excellent Machine

by Stephen Orr

  3/vi/79 LC put his fist through a wall. Pulled out his hand, continued feeding the birds.

  I’d got a lot of use out of my telescope since my ninth birthday. It was only a Kmart number but it did the job. I don’t think I’d ever looked at a star, but that was okay.

  5/ix/80 LC falls within the imbecile range (20—49).

  I’d sticky-taped the key to the front cover. Borderline deficiency (70—80); moron (50—69); with possible characteristics of each group. For example, ‘idiot’ (below 20): stooped walk, inability to form full sentences, tendency to follow organised sport.

  This wasn’t me talking. It was encyclopedic. I was just trying to understand.

  LC. (Terman’s). Approximately 95 (normal or average intelligence). Which makes his case intriguing. Is he aware of his own behaviour? Or is it the grog?

  It could’ve been. I watched as he came out with a beer and sat on his front porch. He drank, looked across the road and in my window. Shit! I moved the telescope and peered through the curtain. His head didn’t move. Wendy came out, handed him a plate, and went back in. He started eating and his eyes moved east.

  ‘Tea.’ Jen stood in the doorway. ‘You still perving on people?’

  ‘It’s not perving.’

  But she was already down the hall, at the table. ‘Mum, he’s watching people again.’

  I followed. ‘Mr Champness is shouting at Wendy.’

  ‘None of your business,’ Jen said.

  ‘Didn’t ask you, and next time, knock.’

  Pop was sitting at the table reading, the broadsheet spread over sliced bread and a half-drunk schooner. ‘Not in the mood for you two prattling.’

  ‘Tell him, Pop. It’s illegal, isn’t it, watching people through that thing.’

  He wouldn’t be drawn. There was old news to be consumed; stale bread. Last night’s rewarmed roast.

  Mum came in, put the plates down and said to her dad, ‘Not at the table.’ She said it every day, and he read it every day, before putting it away. That was the pattern: break rule, apologise, do it again.

  There was nothing worse than re-warmed roast. The meat turned to leather, the vegetables to small, explosive devices that rolled across your plate. Mum said, ‘How would you feel if someone was looking in your window, Clem?’

  ‘Exactly,’ Jen, added.

  ‘I’m not lookin’ in anyone’s window.’ I tackled the ball-bearing peas. ‘I’s just watchin’ what’s goin’ on. He was right in her face again, and she just stood there.’

  No reply.

  ‘It’s not right, is it?’

  ‘At least they’re minding their own business,’ Jen said.

  Mum had already accepted the Champnesses’ situation. She wasn’t so sure about me. ‘You could see people getting changed.’

  ‘Yuck!’ Jen said.

  ‘I don’t look at that. I can’t see in—’

  ‘How would you feel?’ Jen continued. ‘Pullin’ on yer dacks and you look out—’

  ‘I didn’t ask you.’

  ‘I’m just sayin’,’ Mum said. ‘People are entitled to their privacy.’

  A few years ago, Mum had found my notebook of suburban observations, studied it, asked me why I was so interested, and I’d told her it was scientific. But she wasn’t happy with that; it wasn’t quite right for a twelve-year-old.

  Pop was chewing, his teeth clunking. Old meat took a bit of work when your falsies didn’t fit.

  ‘How is it?’ Mum asked.

  ‘Good.’

  That was it. All food was good. If someone’d gone to the trouble of cooking it, that’s what you said, no matter how awful it was.

  Mum was curious. ‘He hit her?’

  ‘Pushed her.’

  She took a moment to chew this over. ‘It’s a pity.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Cos they’re Catholics. They’ll put up with anything. Pope won’t let them …’ She trailed off. There was no point getting Pop started on the Pope.

  He said, ‘If she’s stupid enough to stay with him.’

  ‘It’s not that simple,’ Mum argued.

  ‘It is.’ As he worked on a slippery potato.

  ‘Where would she go?’

  ‘There are places. Shelters.’

  ‘Not at her age.’

  Pop gave her one of his are-you-stupid looks.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothin’.’ Conversation never went the way you wanted.

  ‘I asked her once,’ Mum said, as a sort of excuse for doing nothing. ‘Remember, Dad?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And she wouldn’t talk to me for months after. Then one day she was at the door with eggs, and it was all forgotten. So I never dared again.’

  All this presented as proof of the importance of suburban autonomy. Every man and woman to his or her own quarter acre.

  ‘Who else you been lookin’ at?’ Jen asked.

  ‘Enough!’ Pop growled. He stared at his granddaughter. ‘He’s not hurtin’ no one.’

  She was a small dog, deciding whether to bite his ankle or lick his hand.

  Mum said, ‘Eat yer tea.’

  Plates were cleaned, mostly. Pop mopped his gravy with bread; licked his fingers. With the food eaten, he returned to his paper. ‘Just lookin’ at the price of new cars.’

  Mum started clearing the dishes. ‘We can’t afford a new car.’

  ‘Cheaper than fixin’ that thing.’

  ‘Well,’ she sang, from the kitchen, ‘that’s why we got you.’

  ‘Comes a point.’

  And returned. ‘It’s that clapped out, is it?’

  ‘Wouldn’t get nothin’ for it, so Clem could have it.’

  ‘What about me?’ Jen asked.

  ‘You get the bus.’

  The end of the Datsun? What was Pop thinking? It could be made to keep going. Forever, if need be. There was a fella round the corner with an old Buick that still purred. And Datsuns were better than Buicks, surely. They were excellent machines. Thrown together in an afternoon, admittedly, but thought out, so they’d last. Bowed wheels? So what? On Terman’s scale, genius or near genius (140 and over). What were Holdens? Dullness (80—90). It’d be like selling your own child. What was he saying? ‘I can look after it, Pop.’

  He burped, and covered his mouth when it was too late. ‘We’ll see.’

  Backyards are a map of life. As kids, we wander aimlessly, and everything’s so big. We jump off the roof of the tool shed, and because our ankles are strong, our legs supple, we just roll, then climb up and do it again. A few years later we’re too busy with what if?, the side door to the shed, to Datsunland, shotgun reloads and MP-40s (after watching another episode of Combat). The fence, the border with other countries, inner worlds collapsing under the weight of Mrs Donnellan’s weeds. Dogshit songlines to be followed, dead grass where Pop always parked cars, leaving engine blocks, piles of tyres and pipes that shouldn’t be thrown out because you never know when they’ll come in handy.

  Maps, and hikes through wattle jungles that were only an hour, or afternoon, but were all hours, and every afternoon. Trails that lingered, although they were overgrown with experience, bitterness, an unemployed indifference that was always calling, Back, back, remember how there was a tiger here?

  I was still there, putting the old pool ladder over the back fence, climbing into the lane behind Frontline Ford, around the corner and out onto North East Road. I went into Don’s fish shop. Don-the-Greek, Pop called him, because if you were a wog you needed to be reminded, and we had to remember. Wogs didn’t live in Gleneagles. It was likely (Pop had said) Don lived in Croydon, and commuted to his hot little shop along the road of many Kingswoods. Not that we didn’t have any ethnics. A girl called Alice Wong, who lived with a hundred other Wongs in a brick house on Dictionary Road.

  ‘Hi,’ I said.

  Don didn’t acknowledge me; never had. A childhood of empty bottles, five-cent refunds, so if you got ten you could afford a bag of mixed lolli
es. So, he’d probably worked out I was never going to make him rich. The Australasian Post for Nan, when she was alive. Walking home with a handful of Gold Coast meter maids in too-small bikinis and cowboy hats. ‘Minimum chips, please.’

  He gave me a minimum chips look (has-it-all-come-to-this?). Eighty cents’ worth, as the Dukes tumbled inside a telly perched on top of the fridge.

  I sat and waited. More Posts, Wheels, and a view of an empty fish tank that had never seen water. A good idea, I suppose, when he opened. A great white moment. But getting around to things, that was the problem. Filling it, buying the fish, and how was that going to boost profits? All people wanted was flesh, and chips, and maybe a hint of the exotic with a pineapple fritter. For me, a potato fritter. That was value for money.

  Don shook his basket and watched the chips fry, waiting for the perfect shade of brown. The other hand on his hip. A urine-coloured apron and shirt open to his breastbone, revealing a proper Mediterranean rug and a gold Christopher. Nine o’clock shadow and gold fillings. Which is why I loved to sit and watch Don cook my chips.

  I stood, examined the lollies, the teeth especially, and the pre-packed bags that were full of the crap no one wanted. Me and Jen, circa 1978. Mixed lollies, please? No, I like the raspberries. (Don’s growl): Full a raspberries. (Jen): I don’t like jubes.

  ‘Pretty warm, eh?’ I said.

  Don didn’t turn. ‘Hot.’

  I sat on the front step, eating. Don had returned to the paper, and the little bits of batter that had been frying all day. When I finished I returned to the lane, the pool ladder, and the yard. Got over, pulled the ladder back and headed in. Mum’d say, Where you been? I’d have to lie. Another Peter Parker moment.

  ‘Oi!’

  I looked around.

  ‘Here!’

  There was Curtis, peering through the gal, a sheet you could lift back, climb through, into another world. France, or Senegal, perhaps. People with a different language. Unfamiliar clothes on familiar lines. Same weeds, but other trees, and tomatoes that had been trained.

  I climbed through into next door. ‘Whatcher doin’?’

  But I could see the cigarette in his hand. Sterling 25s: good value. I always paid half. He took one out of the box, lit it off his and handed it to me. We sat behind a mound of dirt and settled in with our smokes. One of the great pleasures of life. The peppermints rattling in the bottom of the box, although I guessed Mum would smell it.

  ‘Where y’ been?’ he asked.

  ‘Don’s.’

  He stubbed out one, and lit another. ‘I wouldn’t eat his food.’

  ‘Why?’

  And he explained how Don stepped out the back of his shop, went into a little toilet, pissed, re-holstered and walked back in without so much as attempting to wash his hands.

  ‘So?’

  ‘And you eat his stuff?’

  ‘It’s deep fried. That’d kill anything.’

  But Curtis wasn’t so sure. Wog piss was strong piss. Given, you wouldn’t taste it in the rancid oil, but those bugs (he insisted) can live in the vents of volcanoes, so I’m sure they can cope with Don-the-Greek’s chip fryer.

  ‘You been spying on him?’ I asked.

  He gave me is surely-not look. ‘At least I don’t catalogue the whole street for ASIO … y’ dirty little perve.’

  ‘At least I don’t watch people takin’ a piss.’

  ‘He doesn’t shut the door. I was sittin’ here smokin’ and I heard the stream.’

  ‘The stream?’

  ‘Yes. Strong, golden, deep-fried. Going on for several minutes (that man must have an extraordinary bladder). As he fumbles his appendage, collecting billions of Escherichia. Oh, and havin’ a bit of a pick at the same time.’

  ‘You’re so full of shit.’

  ‘That too. The door ajar, but you can see. Flush. No attempt at a wash. Then in comes Clem Whelan. Minimum chips, mister. You, are, such, a sucker.’

  ‘You are full of shit.’

  We continued smoking with due diligence.

  Curtis said, ‘You can buy the next pack.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He’s getting suspicious. Asked how old I was.’

  ‘Yeah, but you look older than me.’

  Although I didn’t think he did. Neither of us had turned seventeen. I’d started shaving in Year Nine, but he’d taken another twelve months. ‘He knows my Mum. If I buy them …’

  ‘Bullshit he knows your mum.’

  ‘He does. She goes in there for Pop’s smokes.’

  Curtis wasn’t sure. He guessed the old guy in the deli didn’t really care how old he was. Sixteen was as good an age as any to get started. His mum came out the back door. We ducked, lowered our cigarettes, and he said, ‘Ssh!’

  We watched as she unpegged the washing, looked around, called, ‘Curtis!’ then went back in, mumbling (loud enough to hear), ‘Little shit.’

  The Burrells were blood neighbours: Curtis, who I’d travelled, tumbled and struggled through school with; his brother, John, who’d melted into the ether of juvenile delinquent homes, always returning like a bad smell before stealing something else, welcoming the paddy van (again) and disappearing for another three or six months; Anne and Gary, who seemed the whitest of white-bread parents, starchy, medium-sliced, obsessed with the fate of their two irregularly shaped sons. Children as loaves that hadn’t cooked in the middle, or had risen into un-sellable rhombi, or burned on the bottom.

  Curtis, with his sharp teeth and little knob-ended nose, sucked obsessively on the last few millimetres of fag. ‘Your Pop’s gettin’ bad.’

  I still had half a cigarette. ‘How’s that?’

  ‘I walked past him yesterday and said hello and he just looked at me.’

  I stopped to think, to study the streaky sky, full of everything I knew about Pop. ‘He just takes a bit of reminding.’

  Curtis sat up, put out his smoke and said, ‘I told him who I was. Curtis. Curtis Burrell, from next door, and he said: You don’t have to tell me, I know who you are, Curtis.’

  ‘You just gotta keep reminding him.’ Knowing this wasn’t really the case. Via Mum, via the doctor, who’d told her the circuits were crumbling and you had to get ready to deal with the fact: he was leaving us. ‘Something’s gonna get all of us,’ I said. ‘Like you, with the smokes.’

  ‘So what? You get a good fifty years, that’s enough. I have no intention of sitting in some home pissing and shitting myself and … forgetting.’

  ‘You may not have a lot of say in it.’

  ‘That’s why you gotta keep smokin’ a lot of these.’ And he grabbed my smoke and inhaled. I reclaimed it. ‘It’s a pity,’ I said. ‘It’s gonna be interesting when he …’

  Curtis was watching me, thinking. ‘You’ll have to put a lock on the door.’

  But this wasn’t him being mean. It was just Curtis. It had always been his way. At age nine he’d decided he’d had enough of childhood. He got up one day, went out for breakfast and said, Good morning, Anne, Gary.

  Two open mouths.

  How are you both?

  According to him, his mum had said, Anne?

  That okay? We’ve gotta move on. I can’t watch The Hulk forever.

  Although he was having his own Hulk moment. Bruce Banner caught in the gamma radiation of early adolescence, and childhood. An alter ego filling with air, stretching, straining at the joints, ready to explode in a glumph of green.

  Then, he’d told me, he’d told them he’d packed his toys in boxes and sealed them, and would they mind driving them to Vinnies? He’d had enough of all that. They needn’t worry about toys any more. Just books. Is that okay with you, Gary?

  Gary had said, Where the hell is this coming from?

  He’d said, I thought you’d be glad. I’m tired of Uncle Harry too—all that how are you matey crap. What’s the point? I’m ready, you’re ready. I’ve given Clem my comics. I think he’ll take a while, if you know what I mean.

  All of
this was, and is, apocryphal, of course, but it makes for a good story. He’d seen the world, and decided that childhood was a con. Children were kept childish because adults felt guilty about forcing them to grow up too soon, although that’s what they really wanted. So, a game was played. An education that should’ve taken eight years was spread out over twelve. Gainful employment was denied. Mummy, Daddy, I want an Evel Knievel was invoked, and the whole dreadful process drawn out. But it needn’t be the way. What do you reckon, Anne?

  Apparently his dad had hit him so hard he’d gone flying, but I don’t think anyone would believe that. I suspect he saw it somewhere on telly, or a movie. In the same way childhood and adulthood blurred, so did fantasy and reality. There was never a line. Just oil in water. Like his brother with his hand on a pack of fags while the deli guy was in the back room.

  Curtis smiled, and I knew it meant trouble. ‘I got some good stuff,’ he whispered.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well.’

  He half-ran, crouching, across the yard. I followed. There was a watchtower cubby house, built on stilts, and we climbed the metal steps and went inside. This had always been our refuge. A sort of Colditz unescaped; a fifteen-foot meat locker full of all the wrong things. There was a hole in the floor, and a fireman’s pole, and when you had to go in for tea you’d slide down. On the day of his premature graduation into adulthood Clem had asked his parents (apparently) if it could be dismantled. It would just be an uncomfortable reminder. A week later, of course, we were back inside, planning the invasion of the Greater Reich, laid out below in shades of gun-grey and eucalyptus. From up here (there was a window looking out in each direction) I could see our backyard, into the shed, Pop busy inside; across the road, Les Champness asleep on his porch; the roof of Don’s shop.

  Curtis lifted a floorboard, produced a packet of smokes, opened it and said, ‘Can’t say a word.’

  ‘Go on.’

  A tightly rolled smoke. But I knew what it was.

  ‘Where’d you get it?’

  ‘John’s. There were a few in his drawer.’ He smelled it, offered it to me for a sniff. ‘Shall we?’

  It couldn’t hurt. He lit it, inhaled, and offered it.