This Excellent Machine
Page 47
Then he said, ‘It’s good to see you. You know, kids come and go, and you never see them again, but you always remember.’
‘All the stuff me and Curtis did?’
‘Too right. You, with your hand in the cookie jar.’
‘Shit … you remember?’
‘I do.’
‘I’s hoping …’
‘I knew you’d come good, and you have, eh?’
He told a couple of boys to stop arguing, but didn’t seem too concerned about the game, falling apart.
‘I was shitting myself,’ I said. ‘All the way across the yard, and when you stopped and said …’
He smiled, and held my shoulder for a moment. ‘Do this long enough, you can tell. But I always wondered why you did it.’
I said, ‘Maybe I wanted to know what it felt like.’
‘There’s nothin’ better. Middle of a sunny day. Green grass. Sherrin’s pumped up, and we’re alive, eh, Clem?’
‘Yeah.’
He looked at his kids, and took a deep breath.
‘Wouldn’t be dead for quids, I reckon.’
‘No.’ As I saw Curtis, fighting for the ball.
‘Carn,’ Mr Gottl said, pulling me towards the oval. Me, the shit-kicker, the weed, the hater-of-sport. But the little kids welcomed me, and I let them tackle me, and pretended to fall and knock my head on the sprinkler, and Mr Gottl joined in, and it was like it had been, and always would be, amen.
I headed home, smelling the viburnum, and feeling happy. That was the most important thing of all: viburnum. The smell I’d smelt trying to get the footy, or throwing pine cones at Jen on the way home, or riding with Curtis to Woolies, the edge of the city, our world, the universe, perhaps. Like a tumble dryer, full of colours: Curtis, burning down the art room; David, noticing a tremor in his hand; Pop, losing his teeth when he spoke at his daughter’s wedding; Ossie, handing me another book; Curtis, reciting Canto II. Everything. Socks and jocks and the lemon tree in the Rosies’ yard, sprouting; Wendy opening her door to a stranger, embracing him, showing him what she’d been knitting; her and Les packing up and leaving to start a new life (all of those birds) in Harry’s shack; Providence, the father of a miraculous litter of twelve; Val, living forever, or at least long enough to know her boys would be okay; me, sitting on a bronze lion, holding Pop’s pound note, lighting it, watching it burn, and telling Vicky it was something I’d promised to do for him, years before; Me and Pop, sitting on a reef of gold, Pop saying, See … and you thought I was nutty.
I headed home, past everything I’d ever known. I guessed the future would be just as uncertain as the present, and past, but that didn’t matter. All these people, these strange, rough-edged people, would always be with me. I’d think of them every day, and talk to them, and they’d give me advice and tell me to stop worrying about nothing, and Pop would say, Just do your best, Clemmy, and if they’re not happy with that, fuck ’em.
I realised that’s all I needed to know: fuck ’em.
I approached the door but heard a spanner drop. And whistling. So I walked down the drive, passed through the gate and into the shed.
Pop was in his overalls, bent over the Jag, removing a manifold.
He didn’t even look up. He knew I was there.
‘You’re gonna have to get out the imperial spanners,’ he said.
I waited.
He looked up. ‘Come on then.’
I found them in the cupboard, in the box he’d kept his map in. I took them to him, and said, ‘What size?’
‘Half inch.’
And we began.
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