The Far-Back Country

by Kate Lyons

  He almost fell over his father before he saw him. Then froze, legs straddled. Thinking, I’m too late. Then he heard a faint rustle, saw the newspaper on Dad’s chest rise and fall.

  His father lay at an awkward bucking angle in his rocker recliner, his glasses askew. A little pot belly overflowed his stained trousers. Rivers of pigment on his skull. Wasn’t right, seeing him like this. Yet Ray stayed there, balanced between his father’s feet. Remembering everything, noting everything, each hard shaved and peppery bristle. Shoring himself up against this new defencelessness. Firelight stippling things in.

  Dad woke like a lizard. No movement, just tense awareness. Flicker of nerve through skin.

  ‘Oh. Right. You’re here.’ Dad batted his newspaper, stuck out his hand. Like Ray was a plumber who’d dropped by to fix the loo.

  ‘Better late than never. Come far?’

  Ray managed a brief touch of his father’s hand before it snapped away and Dad spun around to glare at the clock. Same old spiky copper one from the homestead kitchen. Same old dinosaur skin on Dad’s hands.

  ‘Gone two. I’ll get the kettle on.’

  He rose so abruptly, Ray had to jump out of the way. Was left stranded next to the recliner while his father rushed toward the kitchen. Just as he used to, always rushing from one job he didn’t want to do toward another one where something would go wrong. But there was something different, some articulation gone awry. An awkward shuffle to his Dad’s walk, a panicky cant to his stride. His legs failing to spring from the thigh as they used to, as if he was always just about to mount a horse.

  ‘Took yer bloody time, I gotta say.’ Dad was yelling above the sound of water drumming into the kettle. ‘Almost gave up. Even tried the cops, or the wife did. Useless though, of course.’ The wife. Not Mam, not Del. Ray peered round the doorway to the little kitchen, afraid of finding some stranger at Mam’s old kidney-shaped table. But there was just Dad, rushing between bench, stove and fridge, as if someone had inserted a key.

  ‘Come far? How’s the car?’

  The teapot was smashed down on the draining board, the knife drawer wrenched out. Cutlery tossed like salad, sugar fell in a shining rain all over the floor. When Ray was a kid, this terrorising of objects was a warning to sneak out one of those doors leading off the verandah. Head down the creek until things had calmed down.

  ‘Dad?’

  His father snorted through a haze of kettle steam.

  ‘Dad? What’s that old bastard got to do with anything? Long gone and good riddance. I woulda let ya know but didn’t know where to find ya.’ Dad was shovelling tea into the teapot now, four, five, six tablespoons, as if it was the big urn at the homestead and he was navvy, doing smoko, except it was just Mam’s little teapot, more china ornament than working object, the one she used to store loose change, old buttons, spare keys.

  ‘Half the town came. Wouldn’t credit it. Pity ya missed it. We could have had a knees-up on the grave.’ Ray stood mesmerised by that shaky relentless spoon. Seven, eight, the pot brimming with leaves by now. His father wheeled round, tea caddy in hand. The old glare in his eyes.

  ‘Bit of a mongrel act, that. Just pissing off. You coulda rung. Dropped us a line at least.’

  Something wrong. Not just the words, which made almost no sense, or the anger, which was par for the course and to be expected after all this time, but the way his father seemed to be addressing someone else, on some other, distant horizon. His whole body cocked toward it, tuned to some agitation going on over Ray’s shoulder, beyond these four walls.

  ‘Yeah. Dad. I’m sorry.’ What else to say? Every word felt unreal, ludicrous, after so long. ‘It’s been a while. I’ll try and explain. Can we go and sit down though? Forget the tea. I’m right.’

  But Dad had locked into his groove again, was sprinting past Ray with the teapot, slamming it down on the lounge-room table, heading back, piling a plate with biscuits, sliced white bread, half a piece of fruitcake. Back to the lounge room, then back to the kitchen, because he forgot the cups. Ray stood and watched, pressed helplessly against the wall. Like his father was in a film that had been speeded up, going faster and faster, and Ray was a painted tree, a cardboard stone.

  ‘Well, come on. Hurry up. Tea’s getting cold.’

  Dazed, Ray walked back to the lounge room, sat down at the table. Dad was pouring, tea bouncing off the cups. A wet ring spread on Mam’s tablecloth. Her old cosy on the old teapot, but Dad had jammed it on with such speed and force, it was all askew, the spout sticking out from where the handle should have gone, the way a little kid will stick its arm through the neck hole of a jumper then just stand there, blinded and helpless. Funny for a grown-up, frightening for a child. The world turned upside down and inside out.

  ‘Dad. It’s me. Ray. I probably look a bit different, eh. It’s been a while. Done a few things since I seen you. Been working, up Queensland, out west. On the mines. Had a few adventures. Got a few stories to tell.’ He was gabbling desperately, trying to snare his father’s attention with some facts. Find some toehold on reality, for himself. Avoid saying what he had to ask. Despite what the funeral man had told him, it hadn’t sunk in, not yet. Seemed unreal as the man before him, piling sugar in his tea, ferrying a Scotch Finger to his mouth with a shaking hand.

  ‘Listen, Dad. I was real sorry to hear about Mam.’ Nothing. His father dunking his biscuit, over and over, until the end fell in. ‘I would have come earlier. Or got in touch. But I only just found out.’

  ‘Here.’ Dad jabbed the plate of fruitcake in Ray’s face. ‘Go on. What ya waiting for? You always loved a bit of sweet.’

  At a loss, Ray took some. The cake was stale. He was trying to wash the lump down with some of the mouth-puckering tea when Dad swore, banged the table, and Ray jumped, spilling tea all down his front.

  ‘Forgot the marg.’ And he was off again.

  Ray sat staring at the tea cosy. Wanting to take it off and fix it, sweep up the crumbs, whisk off Mam’s tablecloth. Set it to soak, before the stain set in. As if in doing these things he could fix all else.

  Instead he got up. Paced, four steps one way, to the kitchen wall, six steps the other, until he hit the living room wall again. Too jittery, he sat down again, in Dad’s rocker recliner this time, something he would never have dared to do in childhood, but it was as far away as he could get from this meal of the past. Too close to the fire. The leather arm of the rocker was all split with heat. Cost a bloody fortune, that chair. Special delivery, all the way from Bathurst. All those levers and headrests and viciously unfolding foot stools, a hundred different ways to sit, none of them right. Dad forever fiddling and banging and swearing at it, his body jumping to contorted angles, which would have been funny in another house, another family. Not theirs. That sense, faint but unmistakeable as the smell of burning rubber, that something was about to break.

  Dad stomped back, without the marg, carrying another plate of cake. Asking about the trip, the traffic, what type of car, did it go OK, while sugaring his tea all over again. Ray sat smoothing the burst leather of his armrest over and over, trying to mend it and failing. Trying to bridge the gap between what he knew and what was coming out of his father’s mouth.

  ‘And what about the car?’ Insistent now, brows lowered, spoon clicking furiously against his cup as he stirred the sugar in.

  ‘Fine. Good. A Landcruiser.’ So hot in there. His shirt was soaked with sweat. Ray wrestled off his suit jacket which he’d put on because the occasion had seemed to demand something. Tea all over his lapel.

  ‘Jap car? You’re joking. Holdens are the go. You taught me that. Remember when I bought that Toyota from that wog up the road? Piece of junk, you said, and you were right. Now your old girl, that’s a car. She got a knock in the engine a while back but I changed the sparks and now she’s right. Good as the day you left.’

  It dawned on him, belatedly. Dad thought he was Eddie, his long-lost older brother. Eddie of the shiny suits and the failed business
es and the flash car, who ran off when Ray was ten, leaving a wife and three kids and a load of gambling debts. Who wrote Dad begging letters over the years, asking for money to invest, money he promised to pay back. Money that should have gone to his family. Money Dad never had.

  ‘Maybe we could take her for a spin later. Down the river road. Like old times.’

  Did he look like Eddie? There used to be a photo on the mantelpiece at Twenty Bends. Same dark blond hair, Eddie’s oiled up in a quiff. Gold signet rings, a gap between his front teeth. Something about the ears. Ray looked down at his hand gripping the armrest. Felt himself shuttling through realities. His fingers seamed with dirt, horny and work ravaged, just like Dad’s. Who thought he was Eddie. Who’d be in his nineties by now, if he was still alive.

  ‘Dad, where’s Urs?’ Surely, despite everything, she hadn’t left her father here on his own. Not like this. ‘Is she around?’

  ‘Oh, her ladyship! Don’t talk to me about her.’ And Dad was up again, gathering plates and cups. ‘Her and her bloody doctors. All those tests. It was tests did her in!’

  Ray sat helplessly while Dad performed the frenzy of a few moments ago, but in reverse. Whisking off Ray’s half-drunk tea, bashing bread and butter plates together, the stain on the tablecloth spreading. The tea cosy wrenched off, used to mop it up.

  ‘Nothing they could do, according to madame,’ Dad yelled from the kitchen, above the sound of water running, into the sink this time. Ray sat sewing chair leather together with his fingers. Mending brokenness, over and over, while the fire crackled and china kittens smirked at him from the top of the TV. A small relief. Urs was in touch. She was alive, at least. He wanted to ask where and how to get hold of her but when he walked into the kitchen, the gas on the stove was flickering, a tea towel smouldering beside it, and Dad was filling the kettle, preparing to start the whole joyless cycle of refreshment again.

  ‘No more tea, Dad. I’ve had enough.’ He took the kettle off him, doused the tea towel under the tap. His father grunted, started swilling things around in the sink.

  ‘Of course she knows best. Always did.’

  ‘Tell me what happened. With Mam. What tests?’

  ‘Oh, don’t ask me. I don’t know anything apparently. She only went downhill once the doctors got their hands on her. All madame’s doing of course. It was all panic stations and let’s call the specialist and never mind what muggins thinks. I told her, I know far more about Delly McCullough than you’ll ever forget.’

  Dad was washing up without scraping plates. Bits of cake floating in the sink. And now he was on about the car again, the trip, the Holden, the traffic. Word soup. Mam gone, Urs somewhere, Eddie back from the dead. The sky gone purple, trees growing upside down.

  ‘Dad, please. Stop,’

  And he did, suddenly, a plate held in mid-air. His eyes fixed somewhere past Ray, toward the front of the house. Ray realised it had always been like this. Ray off to the side. Dad listening to something only he could hear.

  ‘What’s that?’

  Ray could hear nothing but the tick of the copper clock.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Bloody little shit.’

  Dropping the plate with a crash, Dad ran out of the kitchen, his fury giving him the speed of a much younger man.

  ‘Oi! Get out of it. Bugger off!’

  When Ray reached the front room, he found Dad squeezed beneath the bunched-up venetians, rapping furiously on the window. More china kittens, shivering on the sill. The little room was hot, dark, moribund with looming furniture, all that old heavy stuff from the homestead. Oak dressers, mahogany sideboards, the wood clotted with carved lions and scrolling grapes. As Dad knocked at the window, his elbow caught a kitten and it smashed on the fireplace surround.

  ‘Shit. Where’s the key?’

  As Dad rummaged through his trouser pocket, Ray could smell his father. He smelled like Charlie. Dirty clothes, stale tea, old sweat.

  ‘Oi!’ Dad rapped at the window again. ‘Get off my lawn!’

  When Ray got the blind up, he saw Mick had collected all the bottles from the little square of lawn, lined them up along the fence. He was picking up another handful of bluestone from the driveway. Raising his arm, squinting thoughtfully, his tongue stuck out.

  ‘Little mongrel! I’ll show you.’ In the slatted light, Ray saw with horror that his father was undoing his belt. Same old belt, same grooves in it, worn pathway of his days and ways. Still supple though, the buckle thick and ponderous, capable of a whining flick, that tense silence before it buried itself in flesh. The mark it left more shameful than the beating itself. Only way through was to say nothing, do nothing. Be nothing. Bring silence to bear.

  A bottle went flying, gravel pattering against the side of Eddie’s car.

  ‘Oi!’ Dad had picked something up from the mantelpiece, raised his own arm, preparing to throw it, before Ray grabbed his fist. ‘Ray! Do that again, and you won’t know what hit yer. Get inside!’

  And although the belt was still at Dad’s waist and the little figurine in his father’s hand weighed nothing and Dad was only doing violence to the window, still Ray thrilled to it, the power coursing through that old brown muscle. Through his own fingers and up his arm.

  ‘Dad. Stop, OK? Calm down. I’m Ray. I’m here. And it’s all right. The boy’s with me.’

  A horrified look on his father’s face, fleeting visions of drunk barmaids, welfare cheats, little bastards. Like Ray himself.

  ‘I’ll fix it. Don’t worry. Go and sit down.’

  Dad gazed out the window then back at Ray, looking very tired and old.

  By the time Ray went out the back and up the driveway, squeezing himself past the hulk of the Holden, Mick had shied another bottle off the fence.

  ‘And what the fuck did I say?’

  He’d let the dog off as well. It was squatting next to the rosebush, a look of dense concentration on its face.

  ‘They’re just rubbish. What’s the big deal?’

  Ray tightened his grip on Mick’s arm until he dropped the stone. ‘Get inside.’

  Ray picked up the gravel and the dog mess, tied the mutt up to the tap. Going back in, he found Mick at the table, kicking chair rungs. Dad was back in his recliner, batting his newspaper, eyes trained on the boy.

  ‘Dad. This is Mick.’

  ‘Yeah, we done all that. Shouldn’t he be at school?’

  ‘He’s not at school right now. He works with me.’ Ray blocked Mick’s leg mid-kick. Mick, looking sulky, scuffed at the carpet instead.

  ‘I’m starving. When’s lunch?’

  ‘Too late. Past two. You’ll ruin yer tea.’

  Dad shook his newspaper out, disappeared behind it. Too rough, too fast, one corner folded over like a puppy’s ear too big for its head.

  ‘I’ll make you a sandwich. Dad? You want something?’

  ‘Ate already. Anyway, no bread.’

  A relief to have something to do. Checking the fridge, Ray found half a tomato, a heel of cheese. Two eggs in a carton, well out of date. No fresh stuff, nothing in the fruit bowl, a snow drift of crumbs in the bread bin. Dead cockies in the cutlery drawer. He worried about what Dad had been living on. Stale fruitcake and treacle tea. Still a big man, but he’d lost weight and height. The old belt cinched tight, the freckles on his head, and that little pitching scuttle to him when he walked. He remembered an old photo, wintery, golden, a tracery of branches, a big animal, hanging. A big man, casting a long shadow. He shook his head. Scrambled, not poached, if the eggs were old. No butter. Marg would have to do.

  Dad came in just as he was tipping the eggs in the pan. Started rushing around in those eddying circles again. More tea leaves on top of the dregs in the pot, dirty spoons filed back in the drawer. Something building, the old tension in the air. And any dull pride Ray might have had in scrambling the eggs just so, not too wet, not too dry, splash of milk, touch of salt and pepper, no herbs to be had, the ancient shadow of oregano dust in a jar, w
as gone.

  His father was right up next to him suddenly. Voice spitting in his ear.

  ‘Why’d you have to bring him here? I looked after it all, didn’t I? I never told her. Never said a word. I got enough little bastards to cope with. With Ray.’

  What shocked Ray was not the words but the fear in Dad’s voice. He switched the stove off and took his father by the arm. The muscles felt slack as string.

  ‘It’s OK. We’ll get out of your hair soon. I’ll make the tea. You go and sit down.’

  Shaking his head slowly, his father shuffled off again.

  By the time Ray delivered the food, Dad was fast asleep. But his bum must have contacted the remote. The football bellowed out. Ray turned the TV off, putting his fingers to his lips. Mick nodded through a mouthful of egg. Even he seemed to sense the dangerous unreality in the air.

  Starting in the lounge room, then the little bedroom and the kitchen and finally the front room, Ray searched, carefully at first, sliding drawers out slowly, trying not to wake his father. Hearing a loud snore, he worked faster and more carelessly, rifling through piles of old newspapers and paperbacks, faded pizza flyers, ancient bills. Finding only a harvest of dust, cake crumbs and flaked-off skin. In one drawer, there was a year’s supply of TV guides.

  Finally, in a drawer of the hulking upended sideboard in the front room, the thing resting precariously on its mirror, so he had to get down on his belly to wrench it open, he found, amid a mulch of half-used candles, dead batteries, receipts for fertiliser and scribbled recipes for sponge cake in Mam’s wavering hand, a letter which wasn’t a bill, addressed to Dad. Months old, according to the frank.

  He recognised the handwriting straight away. Rounded, solid and plain. A return address on the back, the front pristine except for a ring from a teacup. It hadn’t even been opened. The depths of the old man’s bitterness could still surprise him, even now.