by Michael Hyde
Max was lost in the bush. He was starving hungry and wandering around in circles, searching for food. A large blackbird flew among the trees and finally landed on a branch near him, cocking its head to one side. It flew off again and returned, dropping a morsel of food at Max’s feet, which he grabbed and gobbled up. The bird went to fly off again but Max called after it saying, ‘Don’t leave me, don’t leave me. Where will I find food? How will I survive?’ The bird wheeled and then flew past him and off into the sky. But at the last moment Max saw its face. They were Nick’s eyes and the bird was grinning.
Max woke with a jolt. Warm early afternoon sun made him feel hot and sticky. He could do without dreams like that. He blinked his eyes and yawned, lazily gazing out at the flash of trees and white lines.
‘Well, haven’t you had a lovely long sleep? We’re nearly at Bairnsdale.’
Max sat up. ‘Where are we?’ He felt like a man who had been shanghaied and found himself on a tramp steamer, somewhere in the middle of the ocean.
‘Fifteen minutes from Bairnsdale. You’ve been asleep for hours. At least you didn’t have to listen to my prattle.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
‘Good heavens, no need for that. Caught up on my reading.’
‘What are you reading?’
She shyly showed Max the cover. ‘A shoulder to lean on. It’s pretty trashy – but I enjoy them.’ She looked down at the book in her lap. ‘Keeps me company, I suppose.’ As the bus rolled into a service station carpark, they said their goodbyes. ‘Hope you enjoy the visit with your mother. Weather shouldn’t be too bad. Nice to meet you.’
The last Max saw of her was her back disappearing into a rusted-out Kingswood, her son dumping her luggage into the boot. He only caught a glimpse of the son – unshaven and crumpled, a look of bewilderment and exhaustion on his face. Probably in need of his mother’s cooking.
‘Mother’s cooking...’ Max wondered if he was in for a never-ending line of old hippie dishes: lentil soup, tofu cacciatore, soy burgers. He laughed to himself and spread out, rested his forehead on the window glass, watching Bairnsdale pass from sight. Somewhere a grown man cried in his mother’s arms in a kitchen that was used to warmth and perhaps would be warm once again.
‘She wasn’t a bad old stick,’ thought Max. ‘Helping her son out like that. And those names, didn’t she love them?’ The bus passed the sign saying, ‘Thanks for visiting Bairnsdale’.
‘Bairnsdale’ – what kind of a name was that? And what did ‘bairn’ mean, at any rate? Didn’t it mean ‘baby’? And ‘dale’? – wasn’t that a small green valley?
What a picture, thought Max! Bairnsdale – a small green valley full of chortling little babies. Now, Dave would like that. Sometimes he went on a bit about helping women give birth but his job seemed to give him real joy. Dave reckoned it kept him in touch with life’s mysteries. Babies and birth and all that. Was that reason enough to keep going? Max wondered.
The brakes of the bus let out a wheeze. And there was his mother. Meg – dark hair pulled back, going a touch grey, with wisps hanging untidily down her face. Big straw sun hat, pants, boots, flannel shirt and a hippie vest covered with rainbows, tarot signs and a couple of embroidered names, including his and Woody’s. Like she still carried them around.
‘Oh, Maxie. How wonderful to see you, to have you here!’ She embraced her eldest as though she could still feel him in her womb.
People cry in their mothers’ arms. That’s a fact. And Max, on this occasion, was no exception. ‘Oh, Mum. Oh, Jesus, I’m sorry. I think I stuffed up a bit,’ and he wept into his mother’s jacket.
She held him close to her breast. ‘It’s OK, it’s OK, Max. Lots of us stuff up. Your father and I have stuffed up a few times too. Come on, I’ll take you home – get some old hippie tucker into you.’ She laughed. ‘I know how much you love it!’
Meg’s ute followed the winding road home. An abandoned wooden trestle railway bridge ran next to the road until it disappeared into a line of trees. Blackened fingers of burnt gums pointed to the pale blue skies strewn with plumes of white cloud. Clumps of lime-green foliage wrapped themselves around branches, reminding Max of the arm-length gloves worn in summer months by the Vietnamese women in Wellington Street. Reminding him of Mai.
Hurtling gullies of ferns and trees ran off to the left, full of mist billowing between hills and black-topped mountains. Trees on either side of the road leant towards each other, forming a tunnel of gathering gloom until at last they emerged from the forest and daylight revealed the seaside country town of Brown’s Beach.
The broad inlet stretched out in every direction, enjoying a full tide and plenty of fish. Currents roamed lazily around its shores and tides lapped on hidden pebbly beaches. Mountain ranges lay to the north, while in the east sandy coastal dunes hid large freshwater lakes. Small creeks ran into the bush, petering out in dark, brackish waterholes. A sea eagle perched high in the branches of a native oak, looking for a meal of trevally to fill its belly.
As they approached the town, Meg crunched back down through the gears. ‘Not a lot of work here, Max. I hang on to both of my jobs. I like them actually. And I’d rather work. But they gave me a week off while you’re here. Sometimes small town bosses can be like that.’
Meg shot a quick look at her son.
‘Y’know Max, this... these things you’ve been getting up to. Dave’s told me all about it but I have to say, it’s worried me sick. Should I be?’
Max shifted in his seat and stared straight ahead.
‘Well?’ his mother asked.
‘Please Mum... don’t go on about it. I just got here!’
It was five o’clock when they pulled up. Finches with red helmets and beaks hopped in and out of grevillea bushes in the frontyard, looking like little gossips.
Meg’s house was a weathered cedar kit home with steep roofs and piles of wood stacked on the verandah. It was small, with just one bedroom for Meg and an attic bedroom above the lounge for Max and Woody whenever they happened to visit. On cold nights the heat from the potbelly stove would rise, making the boys feel snug.
‘I’ve got a surprise for you,’ Meg said. ‘I’ve cooked roast chicken and done the potatoes the way you like them – well, the way you used to like them.’
‘I still like ’em,’ smiled Max.
‘Good. And don’t expect steak while you’re here. I can come at chicken and fish but red meat’s not on the menu. Still, you won’t go hungry.’
‘Even cabbages scream when they’re pulled out of the ground, y’know, Mum.’
‘Yes, yes. I’ve heard that one. Now go and get settled.
And if you’ve got any porn magazines, don’t let me see them – and don’t let my friends see them either!’
‘What – they’d drive you out of town?’
‘Hardly. I’m sure quite a few blokes around here would have their own libraries.’
After tea, Meg played some of his and her old favourites. ‘Can’t listen to Cat Stevens any more, Max. Ever since he became a fanatic. Never trust a person with blazing eyes. They end up doing what they reckon they’re against.’
Late that night, just before Max was about to go to bed, his mother leant forward and put her hands on his knees. ‘So, are you going to tell me?’
He looked into the fire and watched violet flames lick around the red coals.
‘I’d like to know, Max. It would stop me from worrying. I know I avoid a lot of things but...’
Without taking his eyes off the winking coals and embers, he began to talk. The words spilled out fast as the river flowed. Outside, autumn leaves fell as Max spoke of yellow train lights in the dead of night, tunnels of madness and purple spray, waterfalls and Mai. And poor dead Lou.
But there was still a stopper, a cork in his throat that would not, could not budge. He didn’t tell his mother about the words that had seemed to come from nowhere, painted high on factory walls and tall school buildings. How could he e
xplain when he himself, barely had the thoughts or words to do so?
In the attic that night, with his mother snoring away in her little house, Max pulled out the book Janet Turner had given him. One verse caught his attention:
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
He folded his hands behind his head and looked at the near-full icy moon that sent ripples of light through the triangular window of the attic. Lou should’ve read this poem, thought Max. He shouldn’t have gone gently into the night. He should’ve raged against the dying of the light. Instead, all he did was pack his bags and check out.
Max rolled over, took out Lou’s writing and read it again, wishing he could do one more piece with his mate. ‘That must’ve been one of the few things you ever handed in, Lou. I’m sorry I can’t show it to anybody else but for the time being, it’s mine.’
The moon drifted into the attic. He had almost forgot-ten that night in the carpark with Lou but now dreams of blue, black and yellow flooded his mind, as the moon tugged at the oceans and king tides began to run on the beaches and into the inlet. And Max felt the anger he had held onto for so long begin to subside.
20
THAT MORNING AFTER HE CRAWLED out of bed, Meg made coffee and sat down with Max. ‘Tonight’s the full moon. A few of us always celebrate it. We have a party. On the beach usually. D’you want to come? It’s fun – but you don’t have to.’
She smiled at Max, who grinned skeptically.
‘I know what you think of your mother’s hippy nonsense. It isn’t, you know. I mean, it’s not nonsense. And it’s not really hippy anymore, just alternative. God, I hate that word. I don’t know, it’s just people working things out, living a life that means something to them.’
‘It’s OK, Mum. I’ll come. Might as well do the whole tourist trip.’
Meg gently clipped him over the back of his head.
The ute pulled up under the shadow of the ti-trees. Waves boomed on the sand. Six bodies jumped out of the ute. Another car pulled up and then another. With their head-lights turned off, the moonlight blazed on the beach.
Max wandered away and watched his mother traipse over the sand, chatting, laughing, running with her friends as they headed towards the massive tide surging along the shore.
Two fishermen were casting lines over the back wave, searching for the snapping salmon. Max plonked himself in the shadow of an outcrop of brown rocks. The sights before him made him feel like he was at the movies, front row, the best seats in the house.
Bob, the local drunk, rolled from group to group, from person to person. He was a squat man who prided himself on an impeccably trimmed beard that didn’t match his bedraggled clothes. He stumbled around in the sand, occasionally falling into the shallows.
A man in shorts yelled at him. ‘For god’s sake, watch yourself, Bob! None of us are gonna jump into that tide tonight, just to save you. Don’t want it to be your last full moon party, do you mate?!’
For some reason, Bob decided this was the most amusing thing he had ever heard. He rushed off to various revellers, grinning like a man in a fever, repeating the words, ‘Don’t want it to be your last, do you, mate? Don’t want it to be your last, do you, mate?’ Most people ignored him and began to chant and beat on drums. When Bob received his twentieth rebuff, he decided to sing along by clinking two empty bottles together and drowning out the delicate sound of tiny cymbals. Until Meg firmly took the bottles out of Bob’s hands.
‘That’s right, Bob. You don’t want it to be your last, so go over there and lie down. We won’t forget you at the end of the night.’
‘I know, I know. But Meg. Meg! Do you love me, Meg?’ Bob’s voice was beginning to whine. ‘Me and you Meg. You know I’ve always loved ya. What about it, Meg? I’ll stop drinking. I will. Promise.’ His babble slipped away into sleep as Meg placed a coat over him.
Max had seen Bob down the street the day before, wandering aimlessly and erratically along the road.
‘What’s he on?’ he’d asked Meg.
‘Alcohol, as far as I know.’
‘Is he always like that?’
‘Got worse about eighteen months ago, when his father died. Didn’t hardly know his father. Before he got like this, he was... nice.’ She looked at Max. ‘I went out with him once. I think he had a bit of a crush on me.’
Max covered his eyes with his hands. ‘Mum, I don’t think I want to know this.’
She pushed him playfully. ‘You’re absolutely right. We mums – we’re just sexless. Not a romantic soul in our bodies.’
Thundering blue waves pounded the beach, water scampered over the sand, while tormented currents ran along the channel and into the vast inlet. Beyond the reach of the licking silver tide, a fire snapped and cracked as the chanting continued. People drifted off into the night, dancing and swaying to the moon. Phosphorescence sparkled at the edge of the surf. The two fishermen packed up and went home, the lunar festivities not to their liking.
A woman wearing a diaphanous floral dress began to sway. She stood in soggy sand with her feet slowly disappearing and began to sing like a diva. As she sang she peeled off her clothes and tossed them into the sea, while a man, naked to the waist with an eagle tattooed on his shoulder, pranced around her, spouting poetry from a book that he read from the light of the new moon.
Max stepped out from the shadows. His mother was with the chanters, dancing and bopping on the spot, her eyes closed, smiling a wonderful smile.
Further down the beach, at the mouth of the inlet, a younger woman danced naked. Her arms swayed to and fro, her skin like cream and her breasts like opals in the moonlight. She swirled and leapt, arching back and over, her feet leaving soft imprints in the sand.
Meg and her friends raised a wooden chalice to the moon and drank to the health of the goddess while Max watched the other goddess who danced at the edge of the inlet.
‘Come and join us.’ A woman called Heather took him by the hand as they picked up a chant that took off over the spray caps and out into the ocean depths. A man in the group, shaven head, old T-shirt and shorts, began to shake, rattle and roll, moving his hands around people’s bodies. He worked at a feverish pace as they let him stroke and pummel their psyches, knead and shape their auras.
‘So that’s what Dad used to laugh about when he said, ‘“Let me stroke your aura, Dora”.’
Max laughed as he collapsed onto the sand. The smell of the burning ti-tree intoxicated him, the cosiness of the fire held him in its arms. Around him, the naked dancing girl still whirled and sprang, the opera singer still wailed her song, Bob snored on the sand, the chalice moved from hand to hand, a few joints blew and Max grinned at his mum. He leant over and whispered in her ear, ‘This is as good a place as any to go mad.’
21
NEXT MORNING, HE BLINKED his eyes and looked out the window. A blackbird warbled in a tree. He stretched like a cat and felt, from the top of his head to the tips of his toes, as light as an autumn leaf and as strong as an ant. It was a great day for paddling.
The sun shone as Max and his mum paddled up the Blue Dog River, the name reminding Max of the woman on the bus. As it moved through the water the lapping noise of the old sea kayak gave them both a sense of peace.
‘Haven’t done this since your dad and me split up. I must be mad. This is wonderful – how could I forget?’
They followed a channel that led through thickets of rattling bamboo. On the river flats, black cows stared at them as they passed, the grass still crisp and lime green from the early morning frost. Around a bend, a flock of black swans rose as one, their awkward slim necks stuck out in front like a compass, water dripping from their airborne bodies.
The sea kayak seemed heavy to Max but once they picked up speed, paddling became effortless. ‘They don’t turn too easy. A bit like a lumbering elephant,’ he said to his mother.
/>
Meg began to pant as she searched for a rhythm. ‘There’s a way of doing it. I’ve watched them in the sea and in the inlet. But don’t ask me. You can check it out with Matt, the guy who lent us this. Says you can use his single sea kayak if you want to go off on your own. Your mother’s a bit rusty.’ Then she added. ‘As long as you don’t go trying to kill yourself again. Like heading out to sea or something.’
The kayak swished through the glassy water.
‘You know, Mum, this is one of my clearest memories of you and Dad together.’
‘Yes,’ said Meg. ‘That part was good, no doubt about it. But the rest – well...’
They were about a kilometre upstream by now. The sound of the ocean whispered over the trees and the river began to narrow, the banks covered in coarse waist-high grass, a perfect home for long red-bellied black snakes. Dead logs lay submerged in the clear brown water, like crocodiles with their snouts exposed. The locals called it ‘Little Africa’.
A sandbank jutted out into the river, reminding Max of Nick and his island. Max half-hoped that he might see him again but in his heart he knew that would never happen. He had as much hope of seeing Lou alive again. He was annoyed with Nick for deserting him like Lou had. But in the back of his mind he knew what Nick was on about. Nick was there when Max really needed him but he couldn’t – and wouldn’t – be there to save him all the time. The old man wasn’t a guardian angel.
‘Let’s pull in here, Max, over there,’ Meg called. ‘I need a rest and a bite to eat. I brought us some cookies.’
Max looked across at the other side of the river. A densely wooded hill ran steeply down to the water. Small rivulets bounced and gurgled their way down the slopes, whip birds cracked in the box gums while swallows flitted in and out of the small wattles that grew near the edge.
He munched on a cookie and wondered about Mai. Where was she? What was she doing? Had any other guys tried their luck? More importantly, had she discouraged them?
