by Stephen Orr
‘Pop in there?’
‘No.’
‘We’ve been looking for him. He’s wandered off.’
I followed her down the road, to Mum, standing in front of our place, arms crossed, crying. I said, ‘When’s the last time you saw him?’
‘He’s never wandered off, has he?’
‘He’s prob’ly down the shops buying smokes.’
‘I told him, not by yourself.’
Curtis had followed me, and Anne and John. They stood waiting. It was the old John, the neighbourhood John. He said, ‘Is he okay crossing roads?’
Mum didn’t know what to say.
‘I’ll go round the block, make sure he’s not wandering there, eh?’ He was off, running, and Anne watched him go, half-hopeful.
I suggested we call the police but Mum wouldn’t have a bar of it. ‘Maybe he wanted to buy some parts?’
By now, Peter and Val had come out, and Ron stuck his head over his fence and called, ‘Everything okay?’
‘Pop’s wandered off,’ Jen replied, but he just said, ‘Let me know if I can help,’ before disappearing down his drive.
‘I drove right around but I couldn’t find him,’ Jen said. ‘I checked the shops, Don’s, the car yard.’ She turned to me. Usually she’d never seek my advice, after all, apparently I was an idiot. But now, she sensed I might know.
I took a deep breath. ‘Mrs Burrell, Curtis, could you look … east?’
‘Righto,’ Anne replied. She walked off, stopped, returned for her son, and they got in her car and drove off.
Meanwhile, I told Mum and Jen to drive the length of North East Road, and Val and Peter to look down everyone’s drive, in backyards, sheds, anywhere he might’ve wandered. ‘Thirty minutes,’ I said. ‘We meet back. If there’s no sign we’ll have to call the police.’
Mum and Jen climbed into the Datsun and drove off and Val headed across the road and knocked on Les’s door. Peter stood behind her, looking back at me, thumbs up, like he knew something I didn’t.
I tried our place first. ‘Pop, you here?’ I searched his room, noticed his glasses on the dresser, his smokes beside his bed. From room to room, the toilet, bathroom, shed, even behind the incinerator. ‘Pop?’
For a moment it was like he’d already gone. The place seemed empty without him. Silent. Somewhere, I thought. Somewhere …
Yes, perhaps? I ran down the drive, along Lanark II and III, across the mound, and stopped in front of Gleneagles Primary. ‘Pop?’
I went in. A hundred square metres of asphalt, and a dozen four-square courts. The lunch shed, set out with the same budget pews we’d been made to sit on to drink our government milk before being allowed to play. I turned, and there, in the shadows, Pop, busy with a stick of yellow chalk. I approached him and said, ‘Everyone’s looking for you.’
He studied me: the body, the face, but not me. Then he leaned over, and continued drawing outlines on the concrete.
‘You gotta tell people where you’re going, Pop.’
He stood. ‘Can’t do that, can I? Then they’d know.’ He held up his map, and indicated the cross, and the word: Lasseter.
It wasn’t the first time. A year ago, he’d come into my room one morning and said, ‘Come on.’
‘What?’
‘I’ll show you how we’re gonna do it.’
He’d waited as I got dressed, then led me outside, opened the map, showed me the first leg of the journey and said, ‘What’s it say?’
I’d looked. ‘Six hundred and seventy-three.’
‘Which direction?’
‘West.’
So he’d used a compass to find west and we’d set off, down Lanark Avenue, Pop counting each step. 671, 672, 673 … We’d stopped in front of the primary school. Then he’d showed me the map again. ‘What now?’
‘Seventy one east.’
He’d found east, started walking, and counting. 68, 69, 70, 71 … We’d stopped again. The map, again. I’d said, ‘North, twenty-one kilometres.’
Compass. Turn. March. Stop. We were in the milk shed. I’d said, ‘What now?’
He’d indicated. ‘See here, a few valleys, a river, this seems to be a path.’
‘This is Lasseter’s Reef?’
He couldn’t see that I couldn’t see. ‘This is how we’ll do it. We have to practise. See, that’s where this fella in the pub went wrong. He didn’t prepare.’
Then, he’d taken out a piece of chalk and started drawing the topographical features from the map onto the ground. I’d waited, and watched, wondering how any of this might help.
As I wondered now, watching him do it all again.
‘Val and Peter and Anne and John are all looking.’
He just kept working. ‘John’s home, eh?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Good-o. We can go in a minute. When we’re sure.’
‘And Mum and Jen are driving round. Mum’s gonna be crook at you.’
‘She’ll be okay. But you mustn’t tell her, Clem. She’ll put a stop to all this.’ He held my arm, and fixed my stare. ‘Promise?’
‘I promise. But we better go, cos if we’re not back Mum’ll call the police.’
He was drawing what could’ve been a mountain, although the gold was in a desert. ‘She won’t call the police. She’s not that stupid.’
There was nothing to do but wait. I sat down and said, ‘That all to scale, Pop?’
‘Bloody oath.’ He held up the map. ‘Here, seven kilometres east.’ And he took seven steps, to make sure.
‘You scared the shit out of us. We thought you were lying dead on a road somewhere.’
‘I’m not that far gone.’ He drew a yellow cross in the middle of the floor. Stood back, smiled and said, ‘There she is.’
Happy, he sat down beside me. ‘You think it’s there, Clem?’
‘I reckon.’
‘Not just saying that?’
‘No, of course not. But you gotta tell us when you go off. You know, with your forgetfulness.’
‘Don’t worry about me.’ He was surveying his sketch. ‘I don’t need a map, I got it memorised. But we’ll keep it so we can give it to a museum after we find the gold.’ Then he turned away, staring out across the oval. ‘It’s important you believe, Clem. Nan never did. She thought I was an idiot.’
I waited. Same story, but it had to come.
‘That night I went home and showed her, and she laughed at me. I said bugger you, I’m goin’, and she said, No, you’re not, you got work in the morning. And next week. Next year. And she kept me at it, Clem. Like whatever I wanted didn’t matter.’
He waited.
‘Always another day, Clem. That’s what they say to you, these women. She’d look at me and then at Fay, crawling round on the ground, and say, You go, you lose your job, who’s gonna pay the bills?’
He was studying every chalk mark. Every footstep he’d delayed, every mile he’d talked himself out of.
‘I remember once, I packed the car and said, That’s it, and she said, Good-o, you go, but there won’t be no coming back. I got in the car, and started it, and she stood watching me.’
He’d never told me this bit before.
‘And then I switched off the engine, and she went in … and I wonder, I wonder, Clem, what would’ve happened if I’d driven off.’
‘She would’ve had you back, Pop.’
‘You reckon?’
‘Of course.’
‘I might’ve found it, and we might’ve moved to New York, lived the high life.’
I almost laughed. ‘New York? Maybe you woulda bought a Roller, Pop?’
‘Yeah.’
He stood, turned on all six taps in the water trough, and waited for the overflow to wash away his map. ‘Can’t have anyone knowin’.’
We transferred our best sketches onto transparencies, took a few projectors outside and connected them with extension cords. Soon we had outlines on the wall. Most people had chosen one or two, but Nick had agree
d to let me have three. I’d shown him my sketches, and he’d loved them. Mr Glasson, rear view, big arse wobbling as he fitted someone’s car seat. Mr Champness standing Zen-like with outstretched finger with finches. And finally, mower and me, surveying the yard, as a stray cocked its leg on mine. Piddle, too. Small drops soaking my socks. Nick had laughed and said, ‘We’ve gotta have this one.’
Lesson three: Tuesday 9 February. We stood drawing our final images on the art room wall. Curtis, a duck he’d traced from M (for Mallard); the girls, Boy George and the Thompson Twins (although I’d told them they’d date). There was a boy called Matthew, a Catholic whose parents couldn’t afford St Luke’s, and he was tackling St Paul on the road to Damascus, although it looked more like North East Road. And, finally, Lars with some sort of moonscape.
Despite the heat, it was the best lesson ever (not that there was much competition). Nick stood back, supervising, suggesting, smoking. He indicated Mr Glasson and said, ‘Do you think he might recognise himself?’
‘Not a chance.’ Although I’d given up on Mr Fantastic, I’d retained a comic sensibility, and the Glasson cleft was its own Grand Canyon, the cheeks their own subcontinents. ‘Faces are overrated.’
‘How’s that?’
‘A nose, mouth, eyes—you know what you’re getting. But as for the arse …’
‘And what’s the story with the bird man?’
‘Across the road. He has an aviary, and spends hours watching them. I thought this could suggest he’s talking to them.’
Mr Champness was Fantastic too. Oversized belly, so he looked like an inner tube; big nose and bulb eyes; more hair, so he couldn’t complain.
Nick examined my final sketch. ‘Why’s it pissing on you?’
‘That’s good luck.’
‘How?’
I’d painted DOG on the side of the mongrel. I showed Nick how the word reflected on the 120Y parked in the drive. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘It’s a religious painting?’
Pencils on timber; Nick waited, hid his smoke as another teacher walked past.
Curtis was getting braver. He’d elected Nick a minor saint. He had that book, too, stolen from the school library. When we were in Year Eight (some time after his conversion to Adulthood) he’d started sticking saints on his wall. Every day a new one appeared, cut out of The Lives of Saints. Saint Scholastica, Our Lady of Lourdes. By May he’d covered half a wall. Anne had protested, but Gary had said, Let him go. John had called him a freak, and defaced Saints Fabian and Agnes before losing interest. But Curtis was unperturbed. Every day: snip, snip, Clag, smooth, and the appropriate prayer. I’d asked him why. He’d said, They musta done something right. I’d said, But you don’t believe in God. He’d said, The saints were human. So instead of Status Quo, Curtis had Timothy and Titus. This phase had lasted until September, when he’d seen a documentary about Darwin and stolen a copy of Origin of Species and, a few days later, asked Gary if he could get some paint from the shed.
Curtis turned to Nick and asked, ‘Who are your favourite teachers?’
Nick was only so stupid. ‘They’re all pretty decent.’
‘What about Mr Moore?’
‘What about him?’
‘He got sent here from another school. Mum read about it in the paper.’
We all waited. Even saints didn’t kill themselves on purpose.
‘I heard he got drunk, and there was this Year Twelve …’
‘Righto, let’s stick to the art,’ Nick said.
‘And she got pregnant.’
‘No!’ Nick said, turning on him.
Silence. Curtis knew what he’d done, and it was bad. Nick knew what he was trying to do, and looked disappointed. ‘Whatever Mr Moore did’s his business.’
I finished my sketch and asked for paint. Nick inspected it, and agreed. I went inside, squeezed a tub of skin colour, found a brush and returned. Curtis, apparently, was making amends. ‘Day was departing and dusk drew on …’
‘He’s remembered all of Canto II,’ I said. ‘Believes it will give him some sort of intellectual—’
‘Fuck off, Whelan.’
I started painting Mr Glasson’s arse.
Nick said, ‘This kid reckoned he got her pregnant, but he didn’t.’
We all waited.
‘See, that’s the thing, Curtis. You believe everything you read.’
‘I don’t.’
‘There was a hearing. She’d never liked him, and she’d set out to get him. But Mr Moore, he’s the nicest—’
Miss White appeared from behind the change rooms. Maybe she’d been hiding, listening, although she often patrolled during lessons. ‘He is nice, isn’t he, Mr Andrews?’ she said.
He tried his best. ‘Yes.’
Regardless, she stood back and studied the sketches. ‘It was nice of Mr Meadows to agree.’
‘It was.’ More a he-hasn’t-actually-agreed reply.
‘It’ll add to the … amenity.’
‘I hope.’
Then she came closer, stood behind me, with her arms crossed. ‘What’s this?’
‘Rear view.’
‘Of?’
‘This man, he’s fitting a car seat.’
She took a moment. ‘That’s a funny thing to paint.’
‘I told them to do what they know,’ Nick said.
She moved along, content with Mr Champness. But then she saw the dog and the urine. ‘This one’s a bit off.’
I explained the God—dog reference but she wasn’t interested. ‘I’m trying to hint at a spiritual life. You know, God’s always watching out for us, even when we mow the lawn.’
She studied me like I was stupid, or taking the piss. ‘That’s your belief?’
‘Yes.’ I guessed I could invoke Sunday school if necessary. Then I noticed a small crucifix around her neck. ‘My family … we’re Baptist.’
‘I am not Aeneas, and I am not Paul!’ Curtis said.
‘Sorry?’ asked Miss White.
‘Who thinks me fit? Not others. And not I.’
I glared at him. He always chose his moment.
Miss White turned to Nick and said, ‘Can I have a word?’
They walked around the corner, and we listened. Curtis moved closer, hushed us, and stood listening. A minute, more, and none of us spoke. Then he sprinted back, and Nick returned. He sat on one of the tables, took out a smoke and lit it.
‘Everything okay?’ Curtis asked.
After school, Mum was waiting, and I drove home. ‘Another few weeks and you can do the test,’ she said.
I didn’t reply. It was my way of saying perhaps.
‘Then you can drive Pop around.’
‘Great, that’s why I’m getting my licence?’
‘One of the reasons.’
We pulled onto the main road and someone had to slow so he tooted me, and I gave him the finger. Mum said, ‘Do that and they’ll fail you.’
‘He sped up.’
Of course, if she saw Dad in me, this was further proof of a bad attitude. Maybe he’d done the same thing, taking his unhappy life onto the road every day, abusing a world of agreed-upon rules and common sense. ‘I’m busy with school,’ I said.
‘I don’t see you doing much homework.’
‘I do.’
‘Still, you need to get yer licence.’
I slowed, indicated, and drove around the back streets. There were a couple of kids playing, and apparently I was going too fast, and she said, ‘If you knock one of them over …’
‘I’m not gonna knock anyone over.’
‘You won’t listen to anything anyone … just like yer …’
I glanced at her.
‘Eyes on the road!’
‘Like who?’ I pulled into a driveway, practised a three-point turn, and continued. ‘Like Dad … how?’
‘Gotta have the last word on everything.’
‘I wasn’t gonna knock over—’
‘It’s not the point.’
This was
usually where the conversation stopped. Where she’d guess she’d given away enough. Occasionally it’d be, He was an angry man, and I’d say, How? And she’d say, Always saw the bad in everything, and everyone. You couldn’t live with it, Clem, believe me. And I’d say, He mustn’t have been that bad.
‘Just cos I’m a bit slack at driving.’
‘Careful … school crossing.’
I slowed, but it wasn’t slow enough. Then I said, ‘What sorta car did he have?’
She gave me the idiot look. ‘Who?’
‘Dad. When you met him. What did he drive?’
‘What’s it matter?’
‘I don’t know much about him.’
‘Trust me, it’s best that way.’
‘How?’
‘Enough.’
‘But I only asked what sorta car he drove.’
I could see her head gently shaking. ‘That’s not what you asked at all.’
‘It is.’
And what she didn’t say: car, life, behaviour—you want it all, don’t you? ‘An EH Holden.’
‘And didn’t you say he rode a motorbike?’
She turned. ‘What’s the sudden interest?’
‘Well, if you told me stuff, if you hadn’t thrown away all the …’ I stopped. I guessed it’d come back to bite me.
‘Don’t talk about what you don’t understand.’
‘But why did you throw away the pictures?’
‘Head home!’
I slowed, turned and did as I was told. ‘I think it’s a reasonable question. He was my father.’
‘You never hear Jen asking.’
‘That’s her problem. You say you don’t wanna talk about him, but I can only assume—’
‘You can’t assume anything! You weren’t there. You don’t know.’
Time to stop. We’d been here before. Now she would become irrational, sulk, refuse to talk to me, offer one syllable responses or ignore me all together. ‘Sorry.’
‘He never owned a motorbike.’
‘That’s all I wanted to know.’
‘That’s not all you wanted to know, is it?’
She had a point. But you couldn’t blame me for trying. ‘There’s a photo of him in Mrs Donnellan’s.’
‘Well, there you go—now you know.’
‘It’s not much to go on.’
Silence, as we cruised the main road.
