Wright Left

by Peter Marks

  Whack. A swift rabbit killer to the rear portion of an unguarded neck interrupted Wright’s discourse. Screaming curses Fionna left, slamming the door behind her to continue her search elsewhere.

  Yeah, nice to see you too he grumbled remembering he’d locked the door. Then remembered Fionna was amazing with a hairpin. Deadly with a palm.

  And getting more an more like Jenny with every blow.

  Nathan swatted some circling insects from the page and continued.

  “.. mind you, this toilet turn around wasn’t the first indication of my Uncle Max’s blossoming stupidity; just the first really grotesque evidence of it.

  Up until then every-one had been too convinced of his genius to notice the idiot lurking within. The idiot savant, brilliant at removing his remnants in the right place at the right time, suddenly, irrevocably, showed his true colours. Shit brown. Shitting had been his only true talent and now even that went ashtray when, on his tenth birthday, his genius died and left an idiot to blow out the candles. A dumb was founded. Then floundered.

  From that day on Max and his talents were history.

  He reformed by becoming attached to the seat of his pants, not the seat of the dunny. Only one thing would from that day forth come between Max and his pants. Shit.

  Nothing would ever come between Max and his ears. Not even shit.

  From then on in Max and his moronity were as inseparable as a politician is from honour. Or honesty. For a couple of years after the back-side flip his relatives remained pleasant toward him. They excused or ignored much of his peculiar behaviour, put it down to the exuberance of youth (a suitably moronic diagnosis) until the evidence became overwhelming and all charitable impulses short circuited. Then, the only charity they wanted to subscribe to was one they could donate little Max to. However, they never found one for no-one wanted poor Max. Not even charity.

  Max was unperturbed by all this. On escaping puberty, he failed to discover what came next so promptly returned. The years went by, Max stayed put. He wouldn’t evolve or mature so his facilities revolted. They were more adventurous than their flabby pink cocoon so one day they just packed their bags and deserted him (having, they later claimed, given him a fair trial and here it must be said in their defence that any time spent with Max was a trial - and more circus than fair).

  A faculty meeting had been held and, in a unanimous vote of no confidence, it was decided that Stagnant Max was unfit to continue as governing body. They were sick of being unemployed. They wanted to work and Max wouldn’t allow it so they demanded their rights. And left.

  His faculties simply caught the first train out.

  (Incidentally, had this desertion not been pointed out to the dullard it’s doubtful he’d have ever noticed the loss. Such, sadly, had been his underwhelming use of them so they headed west in search of greener pastures and some grey matter).

  But the desertion did spur him to action. On hearing such disconcerting news he did what any idiot would do. He went east. He searched for weeks but there was no sign of his refugee facilities and foot sore and dispirited and more vacant than seemed possible, he gave up. Headed for the bush and oblivion.

  Max was tired of the insults and weary of his fame, shitty as it was, so off he went in search of somewhere, anywhere, any town or mine shaft where his fame wouldn’t precede him; somewhere his childhood penchant for neat craps and sanitary etiquette wouldn’t inspire the awe, or ridicule, that had dogged him ever since he could remember (probably two minutes previous knowing Uncle Max’s powers of retention). So he hunted for somewhere he could escape his crappy childhood, some place he could forget his shit spangled past, a cabin or a burrow where he could leave all that shit where it belonged. Behind him. (Which is where most of it adhered anyway...)

  Max (in common with myself, and he and I are as common as you’ll ever meet) had never cared much for humanity...”

  ________________

  Nathan stopped there, suddenly feeling guilty for seeming so unconcerned with Ali’s disappearance. He adored the kid but refused to coddle or restrict her, choosing instead to let her take responsibility for herself. She was more capable than Wright was in Nathan’s opinion. Her handicap was blindness. Nathan’s was Wright. None of this meant he cared, or worried less, he just hid his misgivings more professionally than the others.

  Nathan sped to the door and heard the tap, tap of a cane on the lino in the bathroom and smiled in relief. Heard Fionna haranguing her sister but Ali was too drunk to care. Wright poked his head out the door and told Fionna to stop picking on the pissed. Then smartly ducked back to safety when a hurtling tube of tooth paste came spearing toward him.

  God, Jenny must be giving her lessons Wright smirked.

  ________________

  The sun was going down, finger shafts of dull light stroked the interior, patterns of the coming night painted the air. as Nathan trudged back to the desk after going downstairs to see what was for dinner. Nathan Stew Jenny told him so Nathan told Jenny to go sit on a spit and rotate over a slow fire.

  And then ran like crazy.

  On the desk the lamp, a one eyed snake, hovered above the typewriter. He turned its one good eye into a torch to compensate for the growing gloom.

  Back to waffling. Almost. More heavy breathing.

  Fionna was peering over his shoulder. She’d read some of his epic and pronounced Wright was anal obsessive before storming from the room.

  Anal depressive Nathan corrected and began again.

  “....never cared much for people or propriety so left the city to its citizens, his habits to the medical journals and his fame to posterity. Max was convinced he’d be better off away from it all, away from them all.

  This was without a doubt the smartest piece of reasoning my Uncle ever accomplished. Occasionally, sporadically, he was eerily intelligent for one so dumb.

  Life, according to this sage (as told by Aunt Beryl to an interested me years later) was easier if you didn’t join in. Refuse the draft Max had said.

  ‘Better to avoid it,’ he’d advised sternly. And he was right, now dead right. Now dead Uncle Max Wright.

  ‘Lousy game life,’ he’d lament. ‘Easier if you don’t play. If you don’t play, you don’t lose..’ He’d say in gruff tones to any-one who was shorter, and therefore less likely to belt him, at the bar in the pub after a hard day’s indolence.

  Max would give his sermons mounted on a bar stool waving in the strong breeze of alcohol air lecturing to anyone who was deaf or simply too drunk to move.

  And who knows, he may be right? Was anyway according to his mates at the pub. Yeah, Mad Max Wright, they’d slur between sips and laugh at their witty response.

  Sadly, predicably, like most of Max’s theories, this theory of non-involvement was flawed. As I see it, by not playing, though the chances of losing are infinitesimal, one also minimises, or rather completely destroys any chance of winning.

  And no hope even of an honourable draw.

  Apparently this argument never occurred to him. Probably because it never occurred to him, winning that is. The paradox also never occurred to him which was not surprising as Max’s idea of a paradox was this:

  According to my idiot Uncle a paradox was a colourful native bird, a motley collection of pink/white feathers that screamed blue murder from atop lonely telegraph lines. A pest city folks caged as pets. And country folks shot.

  Such was Uncle Max’s grasp of anything cerebral.”

  ________________

  There was a shriek from downstairs telling Fionna, Ali, Martin and Ceil that dinner was served. It was followed by second shriek advising Nathan that if he wanted to eat he’d better try McDonald’s or the Pizza Shop or eating his words which Jenny knew were indigestible anyway.

  His wafflings made every-one else ill so why shouldn’t he suffer. From fool poisoning.

  ________________

  “... Such was Uncle Max’s profound lack of ach
ievement in any field (or paddock with a stray sheep or Doris, the town tart) that Max was disowned. Struck from the family tree.

  Max was the black sheep (as were many of his girlfriends but that’s another story...) In his youth, before his faculties deserted him, Max, like all young people had dreams (most as wet as a Melbourne Sunday).

  He dreamt of a glowing future. He wanted to be rich and successful and adored by all. And finally famous for something other than abluting. Max was to be sadly disappointed. In fact Max was to be stupendously disappointing.

  Max was pathetic. His existence, his intellect, his future was amply illustrated by his pathetic attempts in Form Two. Three years of pathetic attempting where he became an honours student in the appalling. His third consecutive distinguished failure to achieve any grade higher than 17 (Macrame 1&2) proved to be his last, at least within the confines of the education system, and packing meagre belongings, he packed his comics and headed for the bush in a futile attempt to escape himself.

  Impossible said every-one.

  Rubbish said Max for the word impossible meant nothing to him - no word over three letters ever did. Even his name had been shortened for his benefit. Maxwell became Max. The ‘Well’ was dropped (which under the circumstances wasn’t surprising for the idiot certainly wasn’t).”

  ________________

  Some compassionate soul seemed to have slipped Nathan some food through the door. Nathan, hungry enough to eat Kelly, and desperately praying for the opportunity, sprang from the chair and raced to the door.

  ‘Bloody funny Jenny!’ Wright snorted on discover what was there. It wasn’t food. On the plate there was a copy of Grey’s Anatomy and a box of matches. The book had a note protruding from it suggesting Wright find the choicest cuts of himself and barbecue his bits.

  A day later, through the post, sitting at her desk at work, Jenny received a letter containing Wright’s roasted offering.

  Her leotards (or rather the ashes there-of).

  ________________

  ‘.. Now out in the outback, nurtured by nature and beset by flies, my dear crazy Uncle settled happily into a more relaxed environment. The birds sang (so he shot them) the sun shone (so he avoided it) and the women were sinful (and avoided him like the plague). Country life.

  The years turned to decades, became days of tranquillised tranquillity as Max transformed into a human Valium. Not much happened, not much wanted to. He went for his bar exams and passed - out basically under the pool table.

  As the constantly stooped question mark in the corner of the long bar at the local hotel, Max would study an ever emptying pot of ice cold lager pissed as a fart and drunk as a skunk (smelling like a combination of the two). Full as a boot, relaxed as a used propalactic, he studied hard to become an alcoholic.

  It was one exam Max would pass with flying colours.

  His only wish, as he sat drinking to other’s health was s to die happy. It was the only wish God would ever grant him. He’d die merry, happily pickled, car doors: ajar.

  With Max’s record it should come as no great surprise that he was introduced to wish fulfilment and sobriety earlier than necessary when one evening, due to a volatile mix of gross stupidity, chronic indecision and twenty pots of long gone lager the man collided with death in the form of the 7.15 from Warragul

  Now the survival rates of idiots is more than likely no worse than most, but my Uncle Max’s demise sure throws a question mark over the proposition. His brain was dead and his body would follow.

  His neurones had been neutered years ago, and Max, being persistent if not bright, had not wasted a minute of the time. He’d spent his hours honing his skill, patiently fertilising, perennially cultivating his potent idiocy. Never once did it dawn on the man with no brains that drinking, then driving, was dumb.

  And dangerous.

  And didn’t mix. but by then the combination had already killed him so it was a dead subject. As would be Max.

  The tale of the dick-head’s doom goes like this:

  (Or rather Uncle Max went like this).

  It was one fine summer day, a typically hot, tortuously dry Australian summer’s day.

  It was early February, late in the afternoon. Crowds of pollen rode the updraught searching the thirsty desolate countryside for anyone with an allergy while the sun, a blowtorch of white fire squatted intense, large and menacing over the foothills silently overseeing its scorched earth policy.

  Everywhere, buzzing formations of winged avengers scoured the cracked patchwork for blood that walked, worked or drove. Max for instance.

  The blue was unblemished, the sky lurked barren and shimmering beyond a vacant horizon. It was the day after the twelfth and unlucky for some, especially for one, one Maxwell C. Wright for on that day, February Thirteenth, 1968. Max was about to meet his maker and his maker wasn’t exactly relishing the prospect.

  It had been a particularly dry summer, the fields of the valley looked like a cast off mud pack, all waterless and wasted. On this particular day, after the usual afternoon binge, four hours of solid bingeing at the bar of “Decimated Kidney Hotel,” the time had come. The hopeless half-wit’s time had arrived, and it was time to go, time grab the chooks and get to the market

  Fermented fluids pulsed through straw veins. He was heady and decisive, decidedly drunk, when he clambered into his car, an aging Holden Ute which had served him so well for so long...”

  ________________

  Hot breath again only this was more familiar. This time it was a stranger he’d half expected never to see again. It was Kelly.

  ‘Hi, I thought you weren’t speaking to me,’ he said, glad to see her, searching her asphalt features for some indication of mood or intent.

  Then searched her shoulder blades as they left the room. She said nothing. Obviously deaf and dumb. He thought. Christ, he pondered, this place is becoming more and more like a home for the handicapped.

  Women, who can guess what makes ‘em tick?

  Can’t live with ‘em, can’t truly despair until you’re without ‘em Wright lamented.

  ________________

  “...retardedly, Max realised he’d gotten in the wrong side of the Ute, so, with a grunt, he ejected his geography from that side and tried for the other. Being an idiot, the obvious never occurred to him. By simply sliding over the front seat to the other side didn’t occur to him, so he staggered out into the heat again and circumnavigated the volcanic duco.

  Like a pissed pin ball, he bounced around the Ute on his way to the driver’s side, colliding as he went with the baked panels which had turned to toaster under the summer sun. 2000 points later, small sections of his flesh cremated by the Ute as he’d staggered past her flanks, Max, burnt but anaesthetised, finally reached the promised land.

  Reaching the other side, he found the door and clambered in. Or tried to. Thud, groan, the pickled pin ball almost knocked himself out on the closed door (a comatose state of non movement which, in retrospect, would have been the smartest move he’d ever make).

  The dope had been to drunk to see the door. Or open it if he had.

  Cretins have a deserved reputation for their stupidity, perhaps its the thickness of their skulls. My Uncle Max was a cretin, he was as thick as they came so was certainly no exception to the rule so resilient and unperturbed he picked himself off the ash earth and retaliated to the rejection by giving the car door a hefty kick, losing his footing in the attack and immediately dropping like a bum in a bath back to the red soil.

  Bemused, his rough, weathered face smiling the smile of a sun struck lizard, he studied his mangled toes, remembered he’d forgotten his boots. Saw that his toes were naked and his feet crumpled.

  Thank god I’m pissed, he slur-thought. Lurching upright, gingerly he approached the avenging door. Five minutes later he signed a treaty with the door and made his way in. Ten minutes later had, by a slow process of inebriated elimination, discovered the appropriate ho
llow for his key.

  The V-8 kicked over, fired into pulsing action and Max and his chooks, sunburnt in the back, were off. Off into the sunset (or where the sun would set had he been around to see it). So this turkey set about driving the chickens to a place one step removed from the dinner table; the market. It was 300 miles away and so he’d get there before the place shut he drove like a man possessed (which Max was; was possessed by the demon drink).

  He spent most of the trip avoiding strange obstacles which loitered on the road, swerving first to one side, then the other to avoid stray rainbow kangaroo’s or parked pink elephants only the drunk could see. So Max saw ‘em. Every noon-existent one of ‘em.

  The pale blue ute thundered on. The road was dusty and narrow, vast red clouds of vaporous dust pursued Max and his load as he rolled over the drylands.

  Occasionally, Max met with real obstacles, genuine crater sized potholes in the road the depth and geostructure of the Grand Canyon which sent the drunk and his chooks rocketing skyward with a jolt.

  Or with a jerk in the chooks opinion for Max was as highly regarded by them as he was by the rest of humanity. These poor feathered fugitives, sun-stroked and fearful, were wedged in wire cages in the back of the Ute. squawking collective displeasure at every bump, each maniacal swerve. It was no place for coward’s but these beasts had little choice - being chickens.

  One of the few characteristics Max shared with the bulk of humanity was that he enjoyed company. However, unlike most of us, Max wasn’t choosy, didn’t seem to care who or what shared his seat.

  According to him, a bantam rooster was more entertaining than a chorus of dancing girls. And also took up less room so was therefore preferable. Besides girls spoke sense (according to Max which shows just how much of an idiot he was).

  As his mother tongue was foul, he naturally stuck with those who’d best comprehend him so it was the chooks who were stuck with him. And if it weren’t chooks, it would be cows, or dingo’s, or pigs (in which case he would have gotten along swimmingly with some of my friends).