This Excellent Machine

by Stephen Orr

  Pop was confused, again. ‘What would Harry think?’

  ‘I don’t know. I didn’t do anything, Doug.’

  ‘I tell you, John, if you start up again I’ll make sure he knows. Then it’s out the front door.’

  There was a figure in the doorway, then Anne’s voice. ‘What’s wrong, Doug?’

  Pop tried a few words, but they didn’t work. ‘I’s just seein’ … about all that business.’

  Now, maybe, she looked at John. He said, ‘I think Doug’s a bit confused.’

  ‘You okay, Doug?’ she asked.

  ‘Just a bit shocked,’ he managed. ‘When I saw them coppers in me shed.’

  ‘That was nothing,’ she said. ‘They come and hada look around and I made them a cuppa, and they were happy. This mate of his, this Alan, he’s still muckin’ up. But John’s stayin’ clear of him, aren’t yer?’

  And he agreed with her. But only for Pop’s sake. He said, ‘Thanks, Mum, I can handle it.’

  ‘I only thought—’

  ‘Thanks!’

  But still, she said, ‘Gary’s nearly out of the shower. Wanna come in for a beer?’

  ‘No!’ John shouted. ‘Go away.’

  So she must’ve gone in.

  ‘That’s no way to talk to yer mum,’ Pop said.

  I tapped Curtis’s shoulder and we ran across the lawn, back over the fence, to the six o’clock news.

  As we sat waiting for Pop, Curtis said, ‘I wouldn’t be so sure.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Alan. He came over the other day when Dad was out, and John told me to keep my mouth shut.’ He was digging his heel into our old Berber. Maybe he’d decided the cards were right.

  ‘She found it and hid it,’ Pop said.

  I stopped in front of the dehydrated meals: curry chicken, stroganoff, bushman’s stew (whatever that was). ‘Coupla these?’

  ‘Chuck ’em in.’

  One of each, and we continued. A billy, lightweight pots and pans. ‘Couldn’t we take ’em from the kitchen?’

  ‘Then your mother’d know.’ He tapped his nose. ‘Anyway, weeks passed, and I said, I want it back.’

  ‘You couldn’t find it?’

  ‘Na. She was good at hiding things, your nan. After she died, we found six hundred quid under the wardrobe. I’d been gettin’ me socks outa there for years.’

  Then we discussed tents. I convinced him we’d need one. He wanted dome, I said hiking. He said touring, I suggested a tarp, strung between trees, but he said Null-ar-bor. So we decided to hold off. He reckoned Gary might have one, but he couldn’t ask him yet, because Anne’d probably get it out of him and she’d tell Mum and that’d be the end of everything.

  ‘I demanded it back. I said, You give it to me or I’ll go, then she laughed. I can still remember her laughing.’

  We stopped to consider self-inflatable, air, foam, sleeping bags, or swags. Pop insisted on the latter, but I argued cost, seeing how we were only going to use them for a few nights, perhaps a week. He said, ‘You’re gonna be tired, and you need a decent sleep.’

  ‘What you gonna do with them, after?’

  ‘After we’ll be rich, won’t we?’

  I didn’t want to say it. I deposited them in the trolley with the mozzie candles and torch batteries.

  ‘She still wouldn’t hand it over. Said she’d chucked it. I tipped out the rubbish and started searching and she appeared and I said, Come on. Then she was on her knees helping.’

  Gas bottle and a portable stove. I said, ‘How we gonna get this lot in the Datsun?’

  ‘You’d be surprised what you can get in a Datsun.’

  Lantern, and mantles.

  ‘She’s goin’ through old chicken carcasses and yoghurt and …’ He stopped to remember, barely suppressing a smile. ‘I found it, held it up and said, You coulda saved us both a lotta trouble. I wiped it clean, dried it and found the spot, in the shed, where I knew she’d never look—women never do—in a toolbox.’

  We made our way to the checkout, our trolley overflowing with camping goods. Pop said, ‘This’ll do for now.’

  We paid and made our way to the car. I said, ‘You’ll never get it all in,’ and he said, ‘Faith, child.’

  He filled the back seat, the boot, passenger floor well, parcel shelf. But we were still a swag short. ‘See,’ I said. ‘And this isn’t everything.’

  ‘Yes, but we’ll repack it, and there won’t be any boxes.’

  You couldn’t argue. He forced the final swag in, compressing the rest as it groaned and crushed, but yielded. Then he slammed the door and said, ‘See, plenty of room.’

  He pulled out of the car park, onto the road, without looking. Someone let us have it, of course, and I said, ‘Maybe I could practise?’

  ‘Not with a car full of gear.’

  He changed lanes without indicating. ‘Shouldn’t you use your blinker?’ I asked.

  ‘What d’you reckon about John?’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘Reckon he’s up to something?’

  ‘I dunno.’

  He slowed, indicated and turned right. The camping mountain shifted. ‘I reckon he’s come good. It’s the job, see. Given him something to look forward to.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘What’s that mean?’

  ‘It’s hard to believe …’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  ‘Well, maybe you’re right.’

  It was a long, straight stretch. Nothing much could go wrong.

  ‘You gotta have a bita faith, don’t you?’ Pop said. ‘I coulda just given up on that map, but I’m not gonna. And you wait, I’ll be proved right.’

  ‘I hope.’

  He gave me his doubtful look. ‘But you don’t reckon?’

  ‘Look!’ I called. He’d drifted across the road, and braked, but not soon enough. He knocked the back tyre of a bike and a boy went flying across the nature strip, onto the footpath.

  ‘Fuck!’ he said. ‘You distracted me.’

  Me? But I didn’t say a word.

  He pulled over, hobbled back and asked, ‘You alright?’

  The boy was already up, brushing himself off, examining a skinned knee. ‘You just about killed me.’

  ‘I did not.’

  ‘I was on the side. Couldn’ta been further.’

  ‘I know,’ Pop said. He took his wallet, found a twenty and handed it to him. ‘Tell yer mum I’m sorry.’

  The boy’s eyes lit up, and he felt the paper, smelt it, and shoved it in his pocket. ‘Thanks, mister.’ Then he was on his bike, and gone.

  ‘I reckon I oughta drive,’ I said.

  Pop watched the traffic, then said, ‘Okay. But just cos you need the practice.’

  I stuck the plates to the window and we set off. The old girl purred, or popped, and slid along the road, ignoring the Commodores and Falcons roaring past. ‘You really reckon she’ll go that far?’ I asked.

  ‘Easy. Don’t forget, I fit new suspension. She can take a loada weight.’

  ‘But four cylinders?’

  ‘Don’t worry. Me and Nan drove to Sydney in a 510 sedan. You remember that one?’

  ‘Sort of.’ Although I didn’t. He’d never mentioned a 510.

  ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘they’re long roads, and you get tired, so you gotta share the driving. I’ll be relying on you, Clem.’

  He stared at the dehydrated food on the floor. I knew what he was thinking: If we’d ever go, or whether all these props were more of the same: an expedition into imagination.

  ‘It all keeps going, doesn’t it?’ he said.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘It keeps going.’

  Maybe he meant the Datsun, but I suspected not. Maybe his body (he reckoned he had a decent ticker, and he’d make it to ninety, like his mum and dad).

  ‘What does?’ I asked.

  ‘Even if …’ Then he said, ‘I can’t wait for that first night sleepin’ out under the stars. I can just smell the gras
s, can’t you?’

  ‘Definitely.’

  ‘And billy tea. That’s the best of all. So hot you can’t drink it. With the stars, millions of them, taking the heat.’

  I didn’t need to say anything.

  ‘It’ll be great, Clem. You wait.’ He looked out the window. ‘Later, when I’m … bad, you gotta make sure yer mother puts me somewhere.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘A nursing home. I don’t want yers thinking I should be at home, if all of youse have gotta spend yer time lookin’ after me. You gotta get on with things, Clem.’

  I stopped at a light. ‘You’ll be okay, Pop.’

  ‘I’d be happy in a little room somewhere, maybe with the telly in the corner, watchin’ Burgo. That’d do me, Clem.’

  I turned into 31 and braked hard. Ernie and Fi-Fi stood in front of the car. I wound down the window, popped my head out and said, ‘Sorry, Ernie.’ I wondered if he was heading back from the Windsor, but he wasn’t pissed, so he couldn’t have been. He came to my window and said, ‘How’s the driving going?’

  ‘Good.’

  He looked across. ‘How are yer, Doug?’

  ‘I’m alright. Just about squashed yer dog.’

  ‘She’s okay. Better without them cats, isn’t it?’

  ‘I guess.’

  Ernie looked in the back seat. ‘What, you goin’ camping?’

  ‘No,’ Pop shot back. ‘It’s nothin’, right? Nothin’.’

  Ernie shrugged. ‘Lotta nothin’.’

  ‘It’s for a mate.’

  ‘Reckon it’d be nice to go camping, if anyone’s goin’.’

  ‘No one’s goin’.’

  ‘Good-o.’ And he pulled at Fi-Fi, and retreated.

  ‘Prick of a man,’ Pop said. ‘Go on, get in, before your mother gets home.’

  I backed the car up to the shed, and helped Pop unload our stash onto the shelves he’d cleared especially. Then we covered the lot with tarps and piled carburettors and exhaust pipes and bags of fertiliser on top of it all.

  Then he stood back and said, ‘Not a word.’

  ‘Not a word,’ I repeated.

  We left the shed and, this time, he locked the door.

  Despite not having been to the races for years, Pop seemed more concerned about the dollar coin. ‘How the hell are you meant to hold on to it?’ A note was real, reliable, big; a coin was small, annoying, easily lost under Don’s freezer. He placed the coins in his pocket. ‘Enough to pull yer pants down.’

  Mum laughed. ‘I can just see ’em down round yer ankles.’

  Everything was changing, too quickly. The national anthem—a disgrace, Pop had said, the first time he’d heard it, sitting watching the news. Girt by sea. ‘What the fuck’s that mean?’

  ‘Surrounded by sea,’ I’d explained.

  ‘Stupid. Everyone likes a bit of a sing-song for the Queen.’

  On and on. Green and gold, who made them our national colours? Bob Hawke? A piss-head for Prime Minister. At least Lanark Avenue stayed the same. Everyone too poor to move out.

  ‘Latin Hero,’ he said.

  Mum studied the form. ‘Six dollars a win. What about Lustre Man? Cahill’s a good jockey, isn’t he?’

  ‘No. Latin Hero. Chondra, perhaps. Six-fifty a win, two-twenty a place. What do you think?’

  ‘Your money.’

  So he took the form, and studied it.

  I watched the jockeys getting ready, saddling their horses, mounting, prancing about. I, and we, hadn’t been to the races for years. Pop had hinted, but Mum had always been too busy. Then, ‘What d’you say we go tomorrow, Dad?’

  ‘Y’ reckon?’

  ‘You want to?’

  ‘I guess so.’

  Which was his way of saying absolutely. The races had been a habit, but Nan had broken him of that, too. He’d had a part-share in a horse (Tonto’s Pride, the photo still hanging in his room beside Skeffington), but it’d broken a leg. He often told me about it: him and a mate watching from the grandstand, the fall, the sheet, the little pop of the rifle, and all his racing dreams finished.

  The gate opened and the horses were led out. Pop had itchy fingers and a pocket full of coins. He said to Mum, ‘Ten bucks, what d’you reckon?’

  ‘It’s up to you.’

  Because that’s why she’d brought him: for the memories (of losing, even). He turned to me and said, ‘Carn.’

  We walked past old men in tweedy jackets, club ties and braces, yellow-tipped fingers and glowing rollies. Wives, of course, studying the hatched, matched, dispatched, and celebrity photos, before taking up their knitting. A few kids, but most of them were in the compound, running around the betting ring, picking up handfuls of stubs and throwing them at each other.

  Pop stood in front of Clarry Grimshaw and studied the odds.

  ‘If you win, you could save us the trip north,’ I said.

  ‘Save us? But you wanna go, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘But yer right, a bita cash would come in useful. We could buy a Commodore. V8. Be there in no time.’ But he stuck to the ponies. ‘Right, what’d I say?’

  ‘Latin Hero.’

  He got Grimshaw’s attention, and gave him fifty dollars, for a place.

  ‘Fifty?’ I said.

  ‘You watch. He won’t win, but he’s solid.’

  He led me to the bar: two schooners and a can of Coke. For the first time, he used dollar coins. As we headed back he said, ‘Was a time there’d be two thousand men here. Now, look, five hundred, perhaps. And the spirit’s gone out of the place.’

  ‘More for people to do these days.’

  ‘Less. Just more of it. That’s the way of the world. And don’t tell yer mother I put fifty bucks on her. Can you imagine? Say it was five, ten.’

  He didn’t wait for me to agree, because he knew I would. Bonis omnia bona. It’d been years since he’d come to the races, and he’d done a shitload of good. So, now he’d cash in his ticket. That’s how it felt. And there was proof: Jen’s cards. She’d sat him down the previous evening, cleared his sahasrara chakra and selected the Sun (optimism), Magician (talent) and, of course, Wheel of Fortune (destiny). Put together, this could only mean one thing.

  We returned and Mum said she didn’t want a schooner, she’d never liked beer, you know that, Dad, so he said, Clem can have it, and she said, He’s too young, and he said, What, a few months? He handed it to me and waited for me to drink it. Mum just gave me her don’t-you-dare look.

  ‘Stuckey,’ Pop said.

  ‘Who?’ Mum asked.

  ‘Stuckey, the Bishop, he owned racehorses, dozens of them. Then they made him bishop and people were saying he should sell them. But he wouldn’t. Every Sunday he’d get up and talk about the evils of money … but he had his own stable.’

  I smelt it, tasted it, but Mum glared at me. It wouldn’t be my first. Me and Curtis, up the cubby house with a couple from Gary’s beer fridge. Nice and cold, with a smoke, and a shot of Anne’s brandy from a jar.

  Pop wasn’t finished with the Catholics. ‘He had prostitutes.’

  ‘He did not,’ Mum said.

  ‘He did. His cook told the newspapers. She always saw them there. Some nights two at a time.’

  It seemed like a decent story. When it came to Catholics, and the truth, you had to forgive him. I lifted the glass and Mum said, ‘Don’t you dare.’

  Pop said, ‘Let him go.’

  ‘We don’t need an alcoholic in the family.’

  Pop finished his; took mine. ‘You can’t baby them, Fay.’

  The horses waited for the starter. Lights, and they were off. Latin Hero sprinted, broke free, and within a few seconds had two lengths on Enduro.

  ‘Go, you beautiful thing,’ Pop said. The beer was spilling and Mum took it and drank it, looking at me as if to say, If this is what it takes.

  Latin Hero was three lengths ahead, two, one, then back in the pack, but then surged, broke free again. Pop said, ‘Se
e, what did I tell you?’

  Mum leaned over and asked, ‘How much did he put on it?’

  ‘Ten bucks.’

  Cheers, and feet on the old floorboards. ‘Beautiful!’ Pop called, before sitting and saying, ‘I still got it.’

  ‘It didn’t win,’ Mum said.

  ‘I backed it for a place.’ And he was off, down the steps, after his money.

  Mum just smiled, content.

  ‘Good idea,’ I said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘To bring him.’

  ‘Yes.’ She folded her arms, like it was a job well done. ‘He used to bring me when I was a kid. I’d just hang around the stables all day imagining I was Elizabeth Taylor.’

  ‘Would he win?’

  ‘Na. He always had his dreams, and dramas. But nothin’ real.’

  The map, that’s real, isn’t it?, I wanted to say.

  ‘Then he’d come with …’

  Dad. I knew.

  ‘With Ernie. For all the stuff he goes on about, he’s happy to gamble.’

  ‘Val said you got rid of Dad.’

  She sat staring at nothing. ‘I didn’t get rid of him.’ She drank the beer Pop had left. ‘There’s only so much you should put up with. But he wasn’t a bad man, Clem. I won’t have you thinkin’ that. Val didn’t say that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He was just easily led.’

  The horses came back to the mounting yard.

  ‘He was still your father. Some just stick around longer than others. Look at Val, and Sid. One minute he was there …’

  ‘When was the last time you heard from him?’

  But I was intruding, and she wasn’t willing. ‘Just don’t tell Jen. She likes things the way they are.’

  I liked the races. If life was a backwards-walking chicken, and only you could see it, then you had to prove your faith. Hand over the cash, wait for your beastie to come good, and if it didn’t, continue to believe that tomorrow it would. I loved the smell of cheap cologne and talc and the way they made perfume out of body odour. The men, who hadn’t shaved since Friday morning, with gold garters on their shirt sleeves. And polished shoes, because the races were like church, and you had to look the part. The voices and placings and crappy music and some kid calling out for Simon to tell Mum that Dad was gonna be late, and the way you could hear and feel the horses’ weight through the earth, into the grandstand.