by Nick Earls
‘One day, just one day, could we talk these things through before we do them?’
He sucks air down his oesophagus and lets out a big burp. ‘Excellent start, my friend,’ he says. ‘All the personality of my grade-ten maths teacher.’
‘Thanks.’
Frank and plans. Oil and water. They don’t mix.
‘Frank’s nervous on boats,’ I find myself telling the others as he roams the deck like a naughty chimp, clowning around and trying to bum lollies from kids—something that works for him, since he charms several of their mothers in a very temporary way.
Zel watches, but tries not to. I try to distract Sophie by asking open-ended questions about media studies. I manage to make it sound like a job interview. She gives me a look that says, ‘Is it any wonder your girlfriends move out of town?’
We chug up river, past the malt smells from the biscuit factory and towards the setting sun and the bat colonies. A man with a beard and khaki ranger-type clothes comes up to the small podium and blows into the microphone a couple of times. He welcomes us, and tells us he thinks we’re ‘in for a good one tonight’. He starts giving us khaki ranger-type background information on the bats, and interrupts himself excitedly with a ‘Hey kids’ to report the first sighting, a lone bat flapping through the indigo sky above. The adults on the boat ‘Ooh’ and ‘Aah’ to start manufacturing a mood, pointing so that the children don’t miss it.
‘Is there something I’m not getting here?’ I say to Sophie.
‘Looks like a bat to me.’
‘As in, the kind of things that fly over this city all the time, take bites out of your pawpaws, fry themselves on power lines and leave brown unremovable shit on your car?’
‘Keep reminding yourself it’s for charity. I’m sure Mum’ll buy you a drink if you want one.’ She sucks at the straw in her Coke. ‘She’s giving me money to be here tonight. That’s how much she knows I like these things.’
Frank turns up again, just as I’m wondering if I’m the only one of us who’s here in an amateur capacity. ‘Philby, I think I missed the first bat.’
‘I’m sure there’ll be more.’
‘Hey, why don’t we go to the bar? That’s a rule now. You miss a bat, you go to the bar. But you can come and help me, mate.’ On the short walk there he half sobers up, and he says,’ How do you reckon we’re doing?’
‘Baffling. No one could have any idea what’s going on.’
‘Good.’
‘Now, I’m guessing you’ll be buying me a drink with that hooker money of yours, since I didn’t bring supplies in my sock, and there’d be something very wrong happening if I was the only person who ended up going home out of pocket.’
‘Hey, that Mister Serious thing? You don’t have to do it when it’s just the two of us, okay?’
‘What? You can’t think I want to be here. What’s happening with our lives? We could be at the Underground, striking out with a series of maybe half-interesting girls. It’s Friday night. And this is a charity bat cruise. Kids and old people. It’s not where I want my life to be.’
‘All right,’ he says, as if I could be about to get boring. ‘I’ll get you your drink then. Jeez you hate paying for stuff, don’t you?’
He orders a white wine for me and two Cokes for himself, and he scuttles off to the side to add a large dash of rum. If a wave came along now and rocked the boat and rolled him over the edge, it’s quite possible I wouldn’t say a word.
The ranger person is now talking about habitats, then diet, then breeding cycles. The kids are looking up at the sky, getting restless. They’ve been promised bats, and surely that means more than just an occasional one flapping overhead.
We pass Saint Lucia and the uni campus, where the brightly lit tennis courts stand out from everything else and the grand sandstone buildings are indistinct in the growing dark. I think I hear music drifting down from the Rec Club or the Refec on the breeze, but I might be imagining it.
No, it’s there. Bass and drums, guitar chords firing off, vocals turning into something indistinct as they overcrowd the room they’re in and make their way out through all the open doors, clattering off among the sandstone walls. A live band—Ups and Downs, the Riptides, someone else yet to leave this place completely and try their luck in a place where there might be luck.
‘Now we’re getting to the business end of the trip,’ our narrator says, and the trees grow dense and the band noise ebbs away. ‘Long Pocket and Indooroopilly Island will be coming up ahead on the right. And that’s when I can promise you bats, kids.’
A bat cruise. There are bands out there tonight with the slimmest chance of making it, bars, dance floors, lives going on and I’m just a passenger, here to keep the peace, to stop a lie from stumbling on a bat cruise. Frank owes me for this, and Zel does too.
‘Now, here’s what we’re going to do. First, what did I say fruit bats ate?’ There’s silence. No one told the kids the presentation was interactive. ‘Right,’ he says, though I’m sure No one’s cared enough to say a thing. ‘It’s got to be fruit, hasn’t it? So are we ready to have some fun? Okay. I’d like you to take a look at the cage at the stern of the boat—that’s the back end, kids. Here’s what we do. And don’t worry, the bats are ready for it. They’ll come to the party and they’ll be on their best behaviour. What we’re going to get you to do is all crawl through that little opening into the cage. And the bats’ll come and sit on the top of the cage, and you can poke the fruit up through the cage to them. And don’t worry. They might snatch, but they won’t scratch. It’s only the fruit they’ll want for tea. We only have the cage because they get a bit excited and they’d be everywhere if we didn’t have it. Okay, so let’s have the kids to the back, shall we? Tell ’em it’s okay, mums. This is the bit we’re all here for.’
The children don’t move. No one wants to be first in the cage. Some of them fight not to be pushed forward, despite stern parental talk of the ‘you were the one who wanted to come’ variety.
‘Bugger this,’ Frank says. ‘I haven’t come all this way not to play with the bats.’
‘Kids. He said kids.’
‘Have I been behaving like a grown-up? Anyway, look at them. Look how scared they are. Mum takes you up the river at nightfall and throws you in a cage up the back of the boat. Do they look happy with that idea? Nuh. Leave it to Uncle Frankie.’
He strides down to the cage, sticks his head in and takes a look around.
‘And we’d strongly recommend that the parents hold back at this point,’ the ranger says, ‘and that we only have children in the cage.’
Frank pulls his head out of the cage and shrugs his shoulders as if to say, ‘well, where are they then?’ He pats the top of the cage like someone who’s gone out for bats a thousand times, he looks at some nearby children and he smiles and nods. He goes over to them and crouches down, talking and pointing to the buckets of fruit and up at the sky. They start nodding too. One of them takes his hand. Frank leads six children, pied-piper-like, to the cage. He squeezes his way in first and sits in the back corner. The children follow, and so do a couple of others who were standing near them, then more from different parts of the boat until the cage is full.
Frank, it could be said, has saved the bat cruise.
‘And now,’ the ranger says, ‘if we could have that gentleman out of there . . .’
But there’s a murmur of disapproval from the passengers, particularly the parents. Frank’s the big man on bat deck tonight, and the authorities can’t touch him. He leans a hand out of the side of the cage and subtly shows the ranger the finger. There’s a quiet cheer from anyone who notices.
The river bank to the right is now dark. The crew passes the fruit buckets into the cage.
‘Look closely at the trees,’ the ranger says, ‘and what do you see?’
And the answer, finally, is bats. Nothing but bats. Against the almost-dark sky, the bats are waking, unfolding like umbrellas picked up by the wind and lif
ting from the trees. Bats in their thousands, thousands upon thousands, blowing in waves from the trees, like litter.
The boat swings around, the engines cut out. And there’s a whir of slapping leather in the air, a strange musty sour smell, the sound of the last of our bow waves lapping invisibly against the darkened river bank, bats sweeping by above between us and the moon.
‘Ready, kids,’ the ranger says. ‘Here they come.’
The first bat drops onto the cage, and the second is just behind it. They look as though they’re sniffing, smelling out the cut, open fruit. The children duck down. Frank lifts a big piece of pawpaw out of a bucket and posts it up through the cage. A bat takes it and starts slurping at one end. The kids laugh. There are four bats now, then five, then seven, then the cage is covered with bats. Squealing bats above squealing children, all involved sounding as though they couldn’t be having a better time as the feeding turns into a frenzy.
New bats arrive and fight with the old bats for position, and the children pass fruit up with both hands until it starts to run out.
‘And now,’ the ranger says, ‘we’re about to discover something else about bats. Remember how I said their diet was fruit? Well this makes their bowels very loose. And a good feed of fruit triggers something—and it’s a thing they share with humans—called a gastro-colic reflex.’
Frank looks up at me over the busy bodies of the bat-feeding children, alarm on his face.
‘And that gastro-colic reflex means . . .’
A bat shits, and it splashes from the side of the cage.
‘Oops, there we go. They aren’t even waiting for their cue tonight.’ Another shit, this time in the cage and a child squeals, louder than before. ‘Everybody out. They’re going early on us. Let’s get you out of there.’
Another bat shits, and another. The kids stampede, Frank gets trampled. Worse, he gets stuck. Drunk and panicking, he snags his shirt on the cage. The kids escape, but he’s there to stay. And the top of the cage is black with loaded bats, shitting on Frank, splattering loose brown bat shit across his pale shirt and through his hair, and all he can do is go to ground, hide his face, and moan.
‘And that’s why,’ the ranger continues, ‘we actively discourage adults from going in the cage.’
There’s spontaneous applause. Frank has unwittingly engineered a far greater highlight than he expected. The bats shit themselves hollow and squawk and screech and, one by one, lift off and fly. Franks shrugs his shoulders, basted with bat shit, and finally disentangles himself. In years to come, when the children tell this story, they’ll never quite be sure whether he was just a man who didn’t know boundaries or a hired clown.
*
In the car on the way to Sunnybank Hills, Frank’s hair is scrubbed and spiky and he’s wearing a spare khaki ranger shirt, but he still smells strongly of fruit that’s passed through a bat.
‘At least,’ I tell him, ‘you’ve finally turned the expression “boring as bat shit” on its head.’
‘You were supposed to stop me, weren’t you? Wasn’t that the plan?’
‘Oh, right, so it’s my fault? No, the glory’s all yours. You saved it, Uncle Frankie. Those kids weren’t going in there without you.’
‘And you’ve got to admit it worked. It certainly took the attention away from . . . other matters.’
‘And I wasn’t making a lot of headway with conversation, so someone had to do the job.’
‘Thanks. Thanks, anyway. I didn’t think you’d do it.’
‘Do what?’
‘Get involved.’
‘I don’t want to get involved. The only part of the night I was happy with was when the bats shitted on you. I want it to stop, but that’s up to you. You and her. I think it’s totally wrong. You know I do, and I don’t really enjoy being part of the deceit. But I’m not going to blow it out into the open, am I? That’s not up to me, either.’
‘Look . . .’
‘Don’t give me that shit about needs. I don’t really care about yours at the moment. I’m thinking more about Ron’s—and I don’t even particularly like Ron—and Sophie’s. And don’t say anything about Sophie. And don’t tell me there’s nothing left between Ron and Zel, because that’s just wrong. And where did you get that lie about genitalia?’
‘What do you mean?’ It sounds like he’s smiling, but we’re on the freeway and I don’t want to look away from the cars in front of us.
‘That bullshit line about Vietnam. I mentioned it to Sophie and . . .’
‘I didn’t think you’d be repeating it to anybody. You idiot.’ He laughs, but out of amazement more than anything.
‘It was in context. And it’s sorted out. I put it down to rumours from the Mowers people, plus his glass eye and his limp. I said the story going round was that he’d sustained multiple injuries in combat. Your name never came up. Is there anything else I should know about? Anything else you’ve made up that I shouldn’t be dropping into conversation?’
‘No, I think that’s it. You just caught me by surprise on Monday, that’s all. When the Zel stuff came out, you kind of went for me and I had to do something to hold you back. Anyway, I think there is something going on. I did wonder if it was to do with Vietnam, honestly, but I’ve never talked about it with her. It’s not the kind of question you can ask.’
‘Don’t you see how risky this is? Don’t you see how bad this is all going to get if you don’t stop it?’
‘Yeah, thanks Mum.’
‘Great. You totally earn your place in the kids’ cage right now, don’t you?’
I didn’t think it’d come to this, sitting in the car on the way back to Frank’s, saying that and then saying nothing. But I didn’t think he’d do this kind of thing, as though the consequences don’t count. His judgment’s never great, but usually it’s only him who comes to harm. But, more than that, I’ve no idea what he’s getting out of it. It’s Zel Todd, after all. I know that’s not the issue, but . . .
Frank and I began life in different worlds, and it’s only chance that brought us to the same uni course at the same time. There are still issues that come along and make us look as different as two people could be, and I still don’t often pick them. As far as I’m concerned—to add it up using some Frank Green maths—I couldn’t find Zel Todd appealing if she were a single millionaire who came with a booklet of pizza vouchers and a carton of Staminade. But in Frank’s eyes she’s practically majestic. Mature and corporate and connected, cruising the gatherings of the ladies who lunch, and interested in him. Zel Todd dazzles him, and it’s not just all that gold. So she makes the decisions, and Frank was left with no moral boundary to cross.
I spend the night on the sofa again—the same sofa I slept on nearly three weeks ago in my post-Paradise pants. I can hear Frank snoring through the wall, but at least there are no sounds yet resembling ‘Eye of the Tiger’.
A car drives round the bend in the road, and its lights come in and glint from the collector plates. I’ve got a life ban for being caught, while employed, in the later stages of a sexual act on a floating nightclub. In the right company, there’s nothing about me that would enhance my credibility more than that. But I could really do without it.
I try to get comfortable, but it’s not that kind of sofa. Whatever position you settle for on this thing, your arms don’t stop being in the way.
*
A steel ladder clangs against a tree in the front yard, and it’s barely light.
It’s Vanessa. She sees me when I look out through the sliding doors, and she waves. I put my shoes on and I go outside.
‘What kind of seven o’clock do you call this then, Missy?’ I say to her in my best Big Artie voice.
‘That’s for under the house. This is in the yard. Sounds like I get off on a technicality.’
‘You might need some help, though. If you’re about to start climbing, you should get someone to hold that ladder for you.’
‘Okay. How about you?’
&nb
sp; ‘Good choice. But first you have to tell me what’s up there.’
‘Nothing yet, but . . .’ She signals for me to follow, and leads me under the house. ‘Tah dah,’ she says, making the quietest fanfare possible so as not to wake anyone above. ‘The bird house. What do you reckon?’
‘It’s, well . . . it’s amazing, actually.’
It’s the Green house in miniature, but precisely the house in miniature, other than the enlarged front-door space to let the birds in. She’s made guttering and painted on windows and a corrugated iron roof. There’s even a butterfly hairclip next to the door, and it’s been painted to match the real thing as well.
‘I’d know that place anywhere,’ I tell her. ‘I can’t believe what you’ve done with it.’
‘Take a look inside,’ she says, with the tone of someone who quietly knows that the best is yet to come.
On the internal walls, she’s painted collector plates in miniature—a rabbit, a squirrel, the Princess of Wales in her Lady Di days. Rows of plates on each wall, with brown lines running along under them, like shelves.
‘I had to use the tiniest brush, hey? And the little tins of paint you get for model planes. It’s not that hard to make a bird house, but you don’t see a lot of people kitting the inside out properly, do you?’
‘Ness, it’s like a Fabergé egg.’
‘Yep.’ She looks pleased, but puzzled. ‘Except it’s a bird house. I thought they were perfume or make-up. Fabergé . . .’
‘Different Fabergé. Years ago. Very artistic. Fabergé eggs are pretty amazing. Collectibles in the multi-million-dollar range. What I meant was you’ve taken something small and simple, and turned it into something different by giving it an amazing amount of detail. This is art, this bird house.’
‘Bullshit. You’re kidding me.’
‘No, really.’
‘Hah. Art.’ A smile stifles itself on her irregular teeth. ‘Do you want to help me get it up the tree then, let the birds take a look at it?’
