by Michael Hyde
First published 2000 by The Vulgar Press,
PO Box 68, Carlton North, Victoria 3054.
Copyright © Michael Hyde 2000
All rights reserved. This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of study, research, criticism, review, or as otherwise permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Enquiries should be made to the publisher.
National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication entry
Hyde, Michael, 1945-.
Max: a novel
ISBN 0 9577352 1 9.(pbk)
I. Title.
A823.3
Typesetting and design by Vulgar Enterprises of North Carlton.
Digital edition prepared by
Port Campbell Press
www.portcampbellpress.com.au
ISBN 9781742981581 (ePub)
1
A WEEK AGO LOU HAD BEEN ALIVE. Alive and kicking. Heart beating, brain ticking, lungs pumping, body working. Everything fitting into everything else, like the rhythmic swing of Max’s body paddling, the blade of the paddle reaching out and pulling through the water, his kayak slipping through the mist.
Lou’s parents had chosen a small chapel in St.Kilda, miles from anywhere. Well, miles away from his home and from his friends, which is probably why they picked it. Max’s dad drove him to the chapel to see Lou’s body laid out, because he thought it would help. Max wasn’t sure what would or wouldn’t help, so he went along with the idea.
He sat down next to the coffin and there Lou was. Not sleeping. Well and truly dead. His long face shone like mother of pearl through the make-up. He had a suit on. A suit!? Max had never seen Lou in a suit. ‘Must have been his poor mum’s idea’, thought Max. ‘Her one chance to create her dream son.’
Max reached out and touched Lou’s forehead, touched the ring with Lou’s graffiti tag engraved on the silver band. The fingers were the colour of creamy plastic, like the little army men scattered over Woody’s bedroom floor. Lou’s skin felt like lukewarm clay. Not clammy, not icy; just a place where warmth used to be.
In the silent chapel, late-afternoon light shone through stained glass windows. Rows of empty pews sat on polished boards. And except for a faint smell of incense and candle wax, the chapel smelt cold.
Max wanted to talk to his dead friend. He wanted Lou to sit up and chat to him the way they had always done. He wanted Lou to talk about factory walls, about spray cans, about girls. Max would have been happy even if Lou didn’t feel like talking, if only Lou could open his eyes just one more time and say goodbye.
‘Oh mate, if I could press a button or say some magic that would bring you back, I would. If I could’ve helped you, made your life better... but it wasn’t that bad was it? Bad enough for you to go... to go and do what you did? I’ll tell you something. It might have been bad for you but it’s shithouse for me at the moment. And look at those hands of yours. Bloody artist’s hands... at least they used to be. Now look at ’em, bloody useless!’ Max stood up. The scrape of the chair echoed in the chapel. He could feel his body beginning to shake. ‘Fuck you, mate. What were you thinking of? Did you give a shit about any of us? About how it would make me feel?’ Max wanted to grab hold of Lou and shake the living crap out of him. Instead, he found himself staring hard at Lou’s face, searching for the smallest sign of life and willing him to return.
But the more Max stared, the more he realised that Lou wasn’t there – that Lou’s body was no more than a husk, a place where his spirit once used to be. For death was more than an absence of pulse and a brain clacking away – it was also an absence of spirit. Max knew that not a skerrick of Lou remained there in that shiny mahogany box. For Max at that moment, all that remained was memories.
Max got in the car. His father was listening to music.
‘I’ll turn it off if you like?’
Max shook his head.
‘Ready to go? Want to go somewhere? Or have you had enough?’ Max’s father looked closely at his son and then turned and stared out the window. ‘Chapels can be pretty cold places sometimes, can’t they Max? Was it OK in there? Did you say goodbye?’
Max played with his cap in his hands. ‘ Not really. It’s like he’s not here at all... I mean, I know he’s not but... You know what I wanted to do? What I intended to do? I just wanted to give him a hug, say goodbye. But I couldn’t... not because he was cold or anything... it’s just that it wasn’t him.’
2
MAX GRABBED HIS CANVAS SATCHEL and headed out the door. ‘Won’t be long. Just going out for a walk. Back in an hour or so.’
The night was like a black hole. Wind rattled up from the river, shaking the wheelie bins and scattering rubbish. Max walked quickly with the wind at his back buffeting the bag full of cans. Leaves had begun to gather in the deep gutters. Rats from the river scurried along makeshift tunnels of rotting leaves.
‘Eat up boys. Better get big and strong before one of your own mob eats you.’
Max threw a rock at the base of an old plane tree, making a possum leap in the air and race up into the green darkness.
Max often wondered what his father thought he did on these late night roamings. Knock over service stations? Steal womens’ knickers off clotheslines? Meet girls and roll with them down on the chilly banks of the river? Dave probably knew. It wasn’t too difficult to guess when the bottom of his wardrobe looked like an ad for Berger paints.
‘Funny. He never says anything about it. Never asks one question. Don’t think he even approves... well, I know he doesn’t. Heard him one day, with a mate.’
Of course, Dave did know but he didn’t think about it much. If Max came home too late, then he’d say something. But usually the telly was on and there was little talk at that hour.
Max turned off the main road and walked towards the railway line. The crossing bells were clanging. He stood with his hands on the white railings and felt the rumble of the train in the earth as it gathered speed out of the station, heading for the bridge over the creek.
The train threw its light and thunder into the night and as it passed, Max smelt electricity and dust in the air. The light from the carriages flashed on his face, his eyes held by the wheels spinning along the line.
Then there was only gusts of wind and the scraping of a loose sheet of corrugated iron.
He watched the light of the last carriage disappear, then looked across the tracks to the vast cement wall alongside the line. Three dimensional slabs of paint covered most of the surface. Murals of wonder on canvases of stone and mortar. Pieces of graffiti.
Blue faces with eyes like blowflies stared vacantly. Streaks of aqua ran down to a flared and menacing nose. Small grey gremlins sat on shoulders, whispering into bulbous ears. Orange flames licked around a jumble of words painted yellow and violet.
At the end of this urban gallery was a real showpiece – black and red snakes with white paint daubed along their bodies, heads reared back, ready to strike into a tangle of words. Along the bottom the Big Dipper spewed from a decaying head.
Max picked his way through the onion grass and the dead thistles, till he reached the spot where he and Lou had stood a short time ago, a long time ago.
‘This cost us eighty bucks, mate. Thought the least I could do was finish it. Make it the masterpiece we wanted it to be.’
He started with purple – royal purple, so dark it melted to black. A black that held you. Layers of paint sprayed up against the wall, the spray moving sweetly and quickly, forming shapes, letting loose clouds of colour that finally became an ‘L’.
Max stopped to look. Stopped to listen. In this game it paid to stay alert. The end of the wall was next to a dead end street, packed with grimy terraced cottages and factory buildi
ngs. Over it all a neon streetlight flickered.
He looked back up at his work. ‘Well Lou, this piece is no throw-up, no quick tag on a window.’ Max stood there next to the line, absent-mindedly shaking his can. The noise of the marble rattled off the factory wall. He zipped up his padded flannel jacket.
‘Just a bit more to do.’
He began again, feeling confident, the can warming up in his hand. On the left of the painting was a sloping ‘U’, which disappeared into fields of green. As he painted, the ‘U’ began to seem like Lou smiling. Smiling? That would have been rare. Lou had a sense of humour and he could tell a good joke, but a smile or a laugh hardly ever broke the surface.
Max had seen Lou smile, though. Because Lou smiled when he was painting. When he was a writer, with cans of many colours, Lou would beam.
The spray cans needed shaking every few seconds now and Max wondered how long he’d been out. That was the beauty of being a writer. You were so focussed that every part, every molecule of you fitted together perfectly. And time didn’t seem to matter.
‘We’re spray can warriors, Lou. Spray can writers – The best. People are going to marvel at this. Trundling to work on the train, feeling grey, mouths to feed, wives and husbands to hate and there, one minute from the station, a great fucking masterpiece.’
Max was surprised by his own words, echoing down the ratty little street. If he wasn’t careful, somebody would hear him, maybe ring the cops. And then he’d be up shit creek. If he was caught by the cops, it’d be no laughing matter. Caught on the night he was finishing his and Lou’s last piece ... Lou would think that was a bit uncool.
Something touched his face. A lukewarm breeze coming up from the gully. He could hear the faint trickling of the creek under the bridge. He stared at Lou’s name on the wall and wondered if he should write RIP. What did that mean anyway? Ripped? Ripped off? Rotting... rotting in purgatory? Half way between heaven and hell? And if heaven was ‘up’ and hell was ‘down there’ did that make earth purgatory? Was he in a half way house, and Lou somewhere else?
He tossed a can into a bush. ‘Geez, Lou. We’re not writers any more. Not writers together, anyway. This is the last one we can really call ours – our piece.’
He moved back to his work, touching up the top edge of his dead friend’s name. The purple letters folded into a mass of colours. The street light cast moving shadows that gave the piece a life of its own. Purple pulsed in the night like a beating heart as Max stood back to look at the letters of Lou’s name. He found an empty tin drum, upended it and climbed onto this makeshift platform, ready to add the final touches to the piece.
Holding his can in the air, he was Michaelangelo in a grimy Sistine Chapel. As he sprayed, the colours surrounding Lou’s name seemed to move in and out of the wall. Purple ooze towards him, looping like a wave ready to ride. Max felt himself float, felt the swell beneath him, gathering him in the power of its curl, till he reached the point where it was no longer possible to drop off the back into the throbbing sea behind.
The wave bent its body and the writer was away on his journey. Edging forward, he moved in front of the tunnel of water and skimmed his fingers along its glassy curve. The purple spray from the wave enveloped him, while the letters sang to him like sirens.
Max sprayed. He was possessed, floating and swirling in front of the wall. In the barrel of the wave he swept the can over and into Lou’s name. In the depth of that bleak night Max saw Lou’s eyes staring out at his mate, a melancholy gaze that asked for nothing but to be complete.
‘I was your friend, Lou. I was your mate. You’re supposed to talk to y’mates. You know – talk to them. Not pretend that everything’s OK – she’ll be jake mate. Why the hell... What the hell were you doing?! Saying nothing. Did you say anything?? Did you say something I missed? I know you had worries – maybe even big worries but not so bad that you had to walk away from us and leave a bloody gaping hole in our life. My life’s got a great fucking hole, Lou. I’m down here on a night that looks like a banshee and you’re-not-here! I know you’re looking at me, mate, and maybe from where you are, I’m freaking about nothing. But I don’t just want your eyes, mate. I want you. Not a place where you used to be.’
Lost in his dream, Max didn’t hear the crunch of the car rolling down the street. Torchlights searched their way in the darkness. Criss-crossing beams tried to find their quarry.
Max lay in a ditch of scotch thistles. He could hear the mutter of two railway cops, debating whether to walk up the tracks. He closed his mouth to silence the noise of his pounding blood. Raising himself on his elbows, he could just make out the two men in suits, flicking their torch lights along the wall.
The cops moved towards his hiding place. At the same time the crossing bells began to clang. He could feel the rumble of the coming train in his body, and he prayed that the cops would turn back.
The train pulled out of the station, past the bells and the red flashing lights. Distracted by noise and glare, the cops switched off their torches. Max saw his chance. Crouching low, he bounded across the track in front of the train. The driver blared his horn as a black shape rolled into the bushes on the other side.
Max jumped up and ran towards the bridge. Too late. The silhouette of the train flashed past, forcing him to scurry to the shadow of a tree. With the light from the street behind them, Max could see the two men, one as fat as his Uncle Sid, the other round-shouldered and thin faced.
‘Abbott and Costello’, thought Max.
‘What’s this?’ The ferret faced cop flicked his light up at the piece on the wall.
‘What’s what?’
‘There. Up there. Right at the top. Long way up – on the left. See the letters. Wet as a baby’s arse. He must still be around.’
‘What’s it say?’ Fatman asked, crunching over the thistles and dry grass to take a closer look.
Max could just make out his work. Forgetting the danger for a minute, he admired the flow of his strokes, the deep purple of Lou’s name.
But the cops weren’t focussing on the night’s work. Their torches were trained on the bare wall next to it.
‘Jesus, Frank, it’s a long way up. How’d he get up there? He’d have to have a ladder somewhere – hidden maybe.’
There was a clank as one of them stumbled over the fallen metal drum. Fatman cursed.
‘Here it is, Frank. Here’s his ladder,’ he cried, raising the barrel like a trophy.
‘Think again, moron. Have a look at that writing. Must be fifteen foot up.’
‘Well, what’d he do? Float? And where is the little bastard? Must be close by.’
He waved his torch aimlessly at the scrub on the other side of the track. Max pressed close to the tree, his cheek against the bark.
‘What’s it say, anyway?’ asked Fatman.
Torch beams slid up the wall past the purple of Lou’s name and came to rest on two clear lines of words, beautifully painted, outside the borders of the main piece.
You should have talked to me
I’m supposed to be your friend
‘What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?’
‘It means the kid who wrote it must be around here somewhere’, said Frank. ‘Look! It’s dripping. The paint’s dripping.’
‘It’s a fucking long way up, Frank. Let’s go. The little arsehole’s probably at home by now.’
Max found himself standing up, his eyes held by Frank’s light on the wall, drawn by words he did not recognise.
‘You should have talked to me’, he said. ‘I’m supposed to be your friend.’
‘What’s that?! Who’s there?’ Frank’s torch beam whipped around.
‘There’s the bastard, Frank’, shouted Fatman, rushing towards the line.
The light held Max like a rabbit. For a second. For a minute. For an hour. Then he was off, scrambling and falling, pounding his way towards the one-track bridge. Fatman bayed like a hound while Frank jogged along behind, laughing and whoopi
ng Fatman on, turning Max into their prize.
The bridge stretched out across the gully, fifty feet above the creek below. Max hit the bridge, Fatman lumbering and cursing behind him, both of them with adrenalin surging through their bodies. One desperate to escape, the other to capture. Sharp stones cut into Max’s runners, making him stumble just as he began to pull ahead. Fatman lunged at him and Frank, some way behind, bellowed, ‘That’s it, mate. You got him now. Hold him until I get there!’
Max was scrabbling on all fours, stones slipping underneath him. He could hear Fatman’s laboured breathing. It was all over. If he didn’t do something, he was gone.
He stumbled to his feet, with the cop still at his heels, puffing short bursts of hot air into the cold. Max didn’t know how the rock came to be in his hand. But he was holding a piece of rock the size of a grenade.
The big cop was gaining on him again. Max could feel fear pulling at his legs, weighing his body down. He faltered, turned and flung the rock in the direction of Fatman.
A howl came out of the darkness, like the noise of a cat with its back legs broken.
‘Jesus H Christ!’ Fatman cried. ‘Jesus, you little arsehole. C’m here, you little prick! I’ll get you, mate, and then we’ll give you a hiding.’
Frank had picked up pace, but Fatman was running again, shrugging off Frank and his words, charging along the track like a wounded bull elephant. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Max had hoped that the rock would give him time. Time to reach the end of the bridge, dive through the wire fence and sprint over the soccer field and across the highway.
But the rock had only spurred Fatman on. And now there was an even greater danger.
Two eyes flashed at him from the opposite end of the bridge.
‘Train’, screamed Frank. He spun on his heels and raced back to the safety of the scrub.
But Max ran at the oncoming train. Ran faster. Ran straight at the thundering metal giant as it reached the start of the bridge.
Max thought he could do it. In some mad part of his brain he thought he could beat both the train and Fatman. If he could keep on running, he might just do it. But the train continued to bear down on him and his chances were getting slimmer. Max tried to think as hard as his body was working, which was no small feat with a big bastard behind him and an even bigger one in front. The light from the train blinded him, its horn bellowed like a wild beast. And incredibly, Fatman was gaining on him. He had to get out of there. He had to stop playing chicken with this train. As Max stumbled for what seemed like the hundredth time, he thought for a moment of giving up and jumping off the bridge. Then he saw his real chance and went for it.
