The Dragon Raft

by Rory Barnes

  “We want ones we can swing on. They’ve gotta be able to support a guy’s weight. I’m just bringing this one home so Tony can get the dimensions right. It’s a template.”

  “A what?”

  “Template. Tony taught me about templates. They’re like models of the real thing. We’ll get Tony to make the new ones exactly the same, only ten times stronger.

  “Jeeze, Billy,” I said. I couldn’t help laughing. “You’ll still need a leg up. Even if the ring is ten times stronger.”

  “I’m going to grow,” Billy said. “Everybody grows.”

  * * * * * * *

  When we got to St Kilda Billy turned right into Mangrove Street.

  “See you,” I said.

  “Where do you live?” Billy said.

  “Down the end of Whiting Street,” I said.

  “Our house is just down there Billy said. “You don’t need to remember the number. You can tell by all the stuff.”

  “Stuff?”

  “Yeah. Tony’s got heaps of stuff. I’ll show you later.”

  * * * * * * *

  When I got home, Mum was cleaning the place. She always does that when we move into a new house. She cleans it and scrubs it and polishes it and throws out heaps of garbage. Once, when we moved into a house in Mt Gambier, I tried to help her. She didn’t stop me, but she re-did everything I’d already done. First I cleaned the kitchen windows and then, a quarter of an hour later, I walked into the kitchen and found Mum hard at work, cleaning the same windows. I vacuumed the hall, Mum vacuumed the hall. I gave up. The only housework I ever do is tidy my own room occasionally—there’s no point in doing anything else. Dad does the garden. He mows the grass two or three times a week and prunes all the bushes until they are like toothbrushes—hardly a leaf on them. Often the bushes can’t take it, they die. Then Dad pulls them out and smoothes over the dirt and doesn’t plant anything new. Then the landlord complains about the empty garden. Dad says it’s not empty, it’s neat. He tells the landlord it was hopelessly overgrown before.

  Look, I won’t go on, I’m sure you’ve got the picture: Dad’s idea of a garden is a square of grass that’s about as thick as a worn-out carpet with a rotary clothes line in the middle and a border of bare earth. Anyway, Dad wasn’t in the garden, he was sitting in the kitchen reading the paper. I got myself a bowl of cornflakes and sat opposite him. I thought I’d eat up, change my clothes and go exploring—check out St Kilda.

  “How was your new school?” Dad said.

  “OK.”

  “Just OK?”

  “It’s a school, Dad. It’s OK.”

  “Try and make a go of this one, Wal,” Dad said, as if I’d stuffed things up at all my previous schools.

  I haven’t stuffed things up at any of the schools I’ve been to. It’s not me who stuffs things up, it’s Dad. That’s the reason we move around so much. He keeps losing his job. He’s always getting fired. There is no mystery to it, people at work, his workmates, start to get on his nerves, but he doesn’t say anything, he just broods and festers. He broods and festers and then suddenly he snaps. He screams at the boss, or starts a fight with his workmates. So they have to “let him go”. Let him go! What a mad expression. They sack him—simple as that. Then he goes to the pub. Then he comes home and sits in the kitchen in his singlet for a few weeks stewing. He doesn’t curse the mob he’s just been working for, he doesn’t whinge, he’s back in control so he just stews silently. But then we can’t pay the rent, and he suddenly snaps again when the landlord comes round. He screams and shouts. So we get turfed out of home. Then we move somewhere new so Dad can start again “with a clean slate.” That’s Mum’s expression: a clean slate. “Let’s start with a clean slate, Harry, let’s forget the past.” I reckon there’s a limit to the number of times you can clean a slate, I reckon the slate gets worn out.

  Anyway, I finished my cornflakes and had just changed into an old pair of jeans and a hoodie when there was a knock on the door.

  “See who that is,” Mum said without taking her head out of the cupboard she was scrubbing. But I didn’t really need to see who it was, I could guess. I went to the door.

  Billy said, “Tony’s going to do it now.”

  “Do what now?” I said.

  “Make the new rings, of course. Come and watch.”

  “I was thinking of going exploring,” I said.

  “We can do that some other time,” Billy said. “Come and watch Tony welding.”

  I’m not a fool, even I know you can’t watch someone with a welding machine. “I don’t want to go blind,” I said. “I quite like being able to see.”

  “Tony’s got masks,” Billy said. “He’s got stacks of welding masks. Come on, it’s like looking into the sun.”

  “Who’s that?” Mum called from inside the cupboard. Her voice sounded a million miles away.”

  “It’s Billy,” I yelled.

  “Who’s Billy?”

  “My mate,” I shouted without thinking. And then I regretted what I’d said. It didn’t much matter if Mum thought Billy was my mate. But, because I’d said it in front of Billy, he’d think it was true.

  “Wal and I are going to watch my mum’s boyfriend make a coupla basketball rings, Mrs Clarke,” Billy yelled.

  “Make sure you’re back in time for tea, Wal,” Mum called.

  “Come on,” Billy said to me. “We don’t want to miss anything.”

  * * * * * * *

  Billy hadn’t been wrong about Tony having lots of stuff. The house was surrounded by old cars, old boats, bits of washing machines, tractors and motorbikes, weird bits of machinery, worn out tyres, dead televisions and a crazy little dog. When the dog saw us it began to jump up and down like a yo-yo.

  “This is Jumper,” Billy said. “He jumps.”

  “No kidding,” I said.

  “Tony’s in the shed,” Billy said. “This way.”

  We walked round the side of the house, along a narrow path through the stuff. Jumper jumped along in front of us. The shed was at the back of the property. It was big and made of various sorts of tin. The first thing you noticed when you entered was all the gear. There was everything Billy had described to Mr. Groves: all the machines, hacksaws, winches, drill presses etc. But there was also more junk hanging from the ceiling on bits of wire. I don’t reckon Tony had ever thrown anything away in his life.

  And there was the guy himself, standing at a bench with a half completed basketball ring in front of him. He was grinding the ends of the steel with some sort of hand held machine. A great arc of sparks was flying away from the grinder like a firework. The steel ring was thick, you could tell just by looking that it wasn’t going to bend and snap when some kid swung on it.

  To tell the truth, I was half prepared not to like Tony, just because of the way Billy kept going on about what a great guy he was. But as I stood and watched him for a few seconds, I reckoned he just looked friendly and happy. Even the tats on his arms looked friendly. They were strange flowers and mermaids. Nothing as silly as Death before Dishonour, or skulls. The grinder stopped and Tony stepped back from the bench, pushing his safety goggles up onto his forehead.

  “G’day, you guys,” he said.

  “This is Wal,” Billy said. “He’s new.”

  “I’m Tony,” he said. “I’m old.”

  “Not that old,” Billy said.

  “Old enough to know better,” Tony said. “Grab a couple of masks if you want to watch the next bit.” He fixed a clamp with a thick wire running to the welding machine. He turned a knob and the machine began to hum.

  “Here,” Billy said. “Stick this on your head.”

  He handed me a welding mask. I put it on, it was heavy and uncomfortable. Nothing like a bike hat. There were stiff plastic straps that fitted over your skull and dug into your skin. The visor was up, but Billy flipped it down. With the visor down the mask was a bit more comfortable, but I couldn’t see anything, my world had gone black.

  “
OK, you two,” Tony said, “No putting your visors up until I say so.”

  Suddenly there was a crackling sound and the hum of the welding machine changed. The little rectangle of black glass in front of my eyes lit up. I was looking into the heart of the flame. It wasn’t actually like looking into the sun—the light was all green. It was more like looking at something glowing under water. I could have been a deep sea diver. I could see the welding rod that Tony was holding about a millimetre away from the two ends of the ring. The spark was so hot it was melting the rod like a mad candle. The bead of molten weld grew steadily as Tony moved the rod round the join. Suddenly the crackling stopped, the hum changed back to its original sound and I could see nothing but blackness.

  “Right oh,” Tony said. “Visors up.”

  I pushed up my visor and looked at the metal. There was now a black line of hot crusty ash where the two bits of metal met. The ring was complete. Tony picked up a funny little hammer and quickly chipped away the crusty ash. A neat line of new metal held the two ends together.

  “Good one,” Billy said.

  “About average,” Tony said and moved some clamps so that the plate with the bolt holes was at right angles to the hoop. “Right. Visors down and keep em down until I say.”

  I pulled my visor down and again watched the weird green light. I felt I was being shown a secret world, something that was too dazzling for ordinary people. It was like I was being initiated into a secret sect.

  When Tony was halfway through the second hoop, he suddenly said to me, “Want to have a go?”

  “Go at what?” I said.

  “Welding, of course.”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah, go on Wal,” Billy said. “It’s not as hard as it looks. Have a go.”

  “Can you do it?” I said to Billy. I couldn’t imagine Billy doing what Tony had just done.

  “Course I can do it,” Billy said. “But only when Tony is supervising.”

  “Umm...look, I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t think I’m old enough.”

  “You’re no older than me,” Billy said. “I can do it.”

  “What if I stuff it up?”

  “Tony’ll grind it off,” Billy said. “All you can do is leave bits of weld all over the place. The grinder will get rid of them.”

  “Here,” Tony said. “I’ll get you started.”

  Tony came round behind me and placed the clamp with the welding rod in my hand. “The tricky bit,” he said, “is making the first contact. You’ve got to do it blind. You’ve got to have your mask on, but until you get a spark, you can’t see what you’re doing.”

  “So how the hell am I meant to get a spark?”

  “You memorize where everything is,” Tony said. “Then you pull the visor down and just do it. OK, now look at the layout. You want to strike the spark just there.”

  “I don’t know about this,” I said.

  “I’ll help you get going,” Tony said. He pulled my visor down, pulled his own down and took hold of my right wrist. Slowly he moved my right hand forward. Suddenly the spark ignited. I nearly dropped the clamp and its rod. But I didn’t. Tony started to move my hand downwards. I could see the welding rod melting into the metal. Suddenly I was all powerful. I was controlling the centre of the sun. I got to the end of the run and realized that Tony was no longer holding my wrist, he must have let go when I was focused on the job. I pulled the rod away. Everything went black. Tony took the clamp from my hand and said, “OK everyone, visors up.”

  I looked down at my weld. There was crusty ash all over the place. Billy handed me the little hammer and I chipped away. The line of weld wasn’t as neat as Tony’s, but it wasn’t bad. It wasn’t bad at all.

  “That’s the thing, Wal,” Billy said. “You’ve gotta have a go. It’s no good just dreaming about stuff, you’ve gotta do it.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said. But I knew what he meant.

  “We’ll stick some anti-rust on them and then a coupla coats of quick dry enamel,” Tony said. “Then we’ll take them to school and bolt them onto the backboard.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  I heard a car grind to a halt in the road outside. A minute later Billy’s mum showed up in the shed. She was wearing jeans and a leather jacket. I looked at her feet—if she was always giving guys the boot, maybe she wore boots. But she was just wearing sneakers.

  “This is Wal,” Billy said. “This is Tessa my mum.”

  “G’day, Wal,” Billy’s mum said.

  “Hello,” I said.

  Billy’s mum shook my hand like I was some sort of adult or something. “You guys want anything to eat, drink?”

  Billy reckoned we could go a lemonade, so we left Tony spray painting the two hoops and went into the house. I half expected the house to be full of junk like the rest of the place, but it wasn’t, at least the kitchen wasn’t. It was just a nice friendly kitchen with an old television in one corner. The television was off, but there was a radio burbling away in another corner. We sat at the table and drank lemonade and knocked off a few biscuits. Billy’s mum told us about her day in the white goods factory, she was on refrigerators this week. Tony stuck his head in the door.

  “We might as well get these things in place,” Tony said.

  “Now?” Billy said.

  “No time like the present, the enamel can dry on the way there.” Then he turned to Billy’s mum and said, “What about you, Tessa? Wanna shoot a few hoops?”

  “Have we got a ball?”

  “There’s that old soccer ball. It’ll have to do.”

  * * * * * * *

  Five minutes later we were in Tony’s ute heading away from St Kilda, down the long straight road. Tony had one of those utes with a bit of space behind the seats. That’s where me and Billy ended up. Jumper the dog was in the tray bit out the back, barking at everything we passed. There was a step ladder tied to the roof. It caught the wind. Even in the cabin you could hear the wind whistling through the rungs of the ladder. Just to add to the noise Billy’s mum jammed a cassette into the dashboard. She sang along with music—it was some song about a man that done wrong. She stopped singing and turned round. “You like country, Wal?”

  I reckoned she meant country music. “Don’t know much about it,” I said.

  “It’s distilled misery,” Billy said.

  “Tony’s been filling your head with garbage,” Billy’s mum said to him.

  “Tony’s heavy metal,” Billy said to me.

  * * * * * * *

  When we got to school Tony managed to drive the ute through the gate, onto the playground and up to the basketball backboard. The school was deserted but there were four kids at the other end of the court, three boys and a girl. They were shooting at the ring Billy hadn’t destroyed. They stopped their play and came over. They seemed to know it was Billy who’d wrecked the original ring.

  “Back to the scene of the crime, eh Billy?” one of them said.

  “Crime?” Billy said. “I’ve done everybody a service. Tony’s made us proper rings.”

  “Who’s your mate?” another kid said.

  “This is Wal,” Billy said. “He’s a champion welder. Check this weld here, Wal did it.”

  “Far out,” the girl said.

  “This is Sally,” Billy said. “And Nick, Johnno and Carl.”

  I said “Hi” to the kids, although I wasn’t quite sure which name went with which of the guys.

  “OK,” Tony said. “Let’s get these rings up and working.”

  It didn’t take long, with some of us kids standing on the back of the ute and Tony round the other side of the backboard on the ladder.

  * * * * * * *

  “We’d better have a game,” Billy’s mum said. “Me, Wal, Carl and Johnno versus Tony, Billy, Sally and Nick.”

  We played four-a-side for a while. It was a bit of a shambles, but everybody had a real good time. Jumper ran up and down the court, chasing the ball and barking, but for some reason this just made thing
s more fun. Nobody kept the score. At one stage Billy’s mum got the ball, bounced it up to the hoop and effortlessly slam dunked it, grabbing hold of the ring and swinging from it. “Hey, Wal,” she yelled, “Your welding’s a goer. This little baby isn’t going to snap. No way!”

  I looked at her. She was slim and pretty and friendly and having fun. And she was a mother. A parent. I suddenly had a vision of my mum trying to do the same thing: swing from a basketball hoop. It was a mad, crazy vision. Grotesque. Not just because Mum isn’t fit enough, not just because she hasn’t jumped anywhere since she was a kid, but because she never has fun. She never even tries to have fun. Simple as that: I’ve got no-fun parents. To get the horrible vision out of my head I grabbed the ball and dribbled it fast and furiously up to the other ring.

  “Wrong way!” Sally yelled. “That’s our goal.”

  I didn’t care if it was the wrong end of the court. I was going to be the first person to swing from the new ring. Billy’s mum had christened the first ring. I was going to do the second. I reached the post and jumped, putting all my effort into it. The ball fell out of my left hand before I got anywhere near being able to slam dunk it. But I wasn’t worried about the ball, it was grabbing the ring that was important. The fingers of my right hand touched metal. I clutched at it. My grip wasn’t real good, I started to slip. I bought my left hand up and grabbed the other side of the ring. I got it. I swung from the ring, letting my weight take me from side to side like a pendulum. I turned my head. Up at the other end of the court Billy’s mum was still having fun. She did a chin up to the ring and yelled at me, “Yo, Wal!”

  I yelled back, “Yo, Mrs....” But I didn’t know her name.

  “...Tessa,” Billy’s mum called. “My name’s Tessa.” And she dropped gently down to the ground.

  I dropped down too, with a bit of a thud. We played for a few more minutes and then Sally and the boys said they needed to go home. They all said, “See you, Wal,” to me and wandered off, bouncing their ball and laughing at something Johnno said. I’d worked out which one was Johnno, although I still wasn’t sure who was Nick and who was Carl. But I felt good. I was glad I’d met them, and I reckoned they were glad they’d met me.