Nice Shootin' Cowboy

by Anson Cameron

  Soon the piss-wet possum has him feeling good enough to ask stupid questions. He asks me who would win if a bear and a wolf had a fight. I tell him it depends. I answer all his stupid questions like this. Try as he might he can’t understand what ‘it depends’ means, so he shuts up bamboozled.

  The mozzies have found Shorter’s nose-holes in the fly-wire and they keep me awake. And the cicadas do, too. And out on the highway the truck’s brakes don’t help. They moan long, low and eerie as they slow to turn onto the bridge across the Goulburn. I used to think they were whales sighing up out of the river in the dark. I told my brother and he still thinks it. That’s his way, once you put an idea into his puny skull you have to beat it out with a cricket bat. I’ve been trying to straighten him out about Santa all year. And taken a lot of time and got in a lot of trouble doing it, too. Because, who else is going to drum the adult truth into him? But he still sticks by the fat fraud and his stunted helpers. And on the brake noises, he’s only got as far as admitting that, maybe, the whales aren’t in the river, maybe they are moving along the highway on the backs of trucks, being carted somewhere to some zoo, to some Marine World. But they’re still whales. No doubt about it. Just listen.

  When I listen now I hear the thought of Dad in the wobble-boots makes the sobs muffle into my brother’s pillow again. Even a wolf and bear brawl can’t keep that away. But what with the mosquitoes and cicadas and trucks, I can’t sleep anyway, so I won’t drop my six-foot-brother-bomb off the wardrobe onto him yet.

  This is the first night in a few that Dad’s been out to the pub. He goes out because of what I call the Vet Man — but only to myself now. Because the only time I ever said it out loud was one day when we were having a barbecue and Shorter had been sneaking drinks out of people’s glasses because I had forgotten to fill his water bowl again. At first it was funny when he started to wobble but then he started to throw up yellow stringy liquid and choke on the strings of it and Mister Davis said that he had drunk too much for a pure bred Jack Russell to drink and we should take him to the vet. So I piped up and said that the vet man couldn’t help, that Dad went away to the vet man and it made him drink more than anyone else in the town.

  Dad backhand cartwheeled me through the garden furniture and through a lot of stars into the clothes-line. And when they got me out of the tangle of chairs and stars and into the bathroom there he was over me, crying and saying he was so, so, so, sorry. Mum wiping blood out of my ear and saying he would be.

  But I knew Dad knew that a fourth grader who always topped his English class didn’t mix up his words like that. He had caught me being smart-arsed and running jokes from his trouble. So now, if we have to speak about it, I call it ‘Vietnam’ like everyone else. And I’m on my toes when I do. But to myself I still say Vet Man, because I thought the joke was good.

  When I ask why Vietnam makes him drink, Mum says he gets the wobble-boots on for the same reason my brother needs a story told to him when he’s scared at night trying to get to sleep. Bullshit, I say. And when my brother needs a story told at night I tell him a radical creepy one. One that’s set in the middle of a sunny day, so there’s no chance of darkness. And one that might have several of the Brady Bunch making appearances and plenty of his other favourite things to keep him happy and off guard so he never sees the axe man in the hat at the end of it that I always put there. The axe man just jumps out in a sentence like: ‘And when Cindy bent over to pat the dog it became night and an axe man in a big hat came out from behind the hedge and whopped her head off and the dog clamped onto one ear and took off hell-for-leather down the street.’ Then I blubber a few head-skidding-on-bitumen noises between my lips, and my brother ends up scareder than ever and usually making a break for Mum.

  Well, so does Dad when he drinks the whisky. It starts out telling him a bright story … but before he knows it it’s grey morning and the axe man’s out from behind the hedge. So bullshit to that idea. Why do they want the stories and why do they want the whisky when they know how the stories and know how the whisky will turn out?

  If I run my fingers soft enough over my belly and up over my tits a few times I can bring up that spooky feeling in myself. My skin goosebumps and a shiver hangs just short of happening. It’s not a cold shiver, it’s a lonely shiver … just poised. It feels like I’m the only person left in the town. The only human being alive. I listen hard for people-sounds, but there are none. So I call Shorter up onto my bed. He does about fifteen circles before he drops into the place he is searching for at my feet.

  ‘He’s not allowed up there.’ My brother is still alive.

  ‘There’s no one left,’ I say. ‘There’s only you and me. Who you going to tell?’ He weighs this up a while.

  ‘Would Mum let me in their bed, then?’ he asks.

  ‘She’s dead, too. You want to sleep with a dead woman?’

  He makes his run. Even though he knows we’re not allowed in their bed he makes his run. He’s made this chicken-run at their bed many-a-time lately and been brought back slapped.

  We haven’t been allowed in their bed since the night-fights started. Since Dad started to fling his arms, with his rings gouging holes in the walls by the bedhead as he fights and screams his dreams down. A kid could get knocked for a six or cold in that bed. I don’t even want to go there now.

  But they did have their good side for a while, his night-fights. They gave me the inside running on the old man. I used to read the gouges and scrapes that he left in the ‘walls and they let me know what kind of mood he would be in next day.

  I’d mark all the gouges in the walls around the bed. I’d put a fly-speck pencil-stab in each one, so you could only see it if you looked close. Every day I’d sneak in when they were having breakfast downstairs and fly-speck the fresh gouges. If, any morning, all the gouges had my little specks in them, and I didn’t have to speck any fresh ones, I’d know he’d had a fight-free night. And that was the day to ask about a skateboard, or camping with the Brittens … or ask about whatever it was I needed.

  Marking the gouges worked for a while, and got me a lot of things I needed. Then they suddenly lost their magic. I started getting some razor-sharp knockbacks that couldn’t have come out of a fight-free night. I couldn’t work it out. The walls said it’d been a fight-free night. Somehow they’d stopped giving me the inside running on when Dad was wound tightest.

  When I found out what had happened I was way, way down on my brother, because he cost me any chance of a bike with gears this Christmas. It turned out he had been creeping into their bedroom before me with my pencil and fly-specking the gouges. Thinking it just a game, maybe. So Dad could throw his arms and fight and gouge the walls all night, and be taut as the chain of a stick-goaded dog next day. But I wouldn’t know, because all the fresh gouge holes were marked with my fly-speck … by my little brother. And I’d think Dad had slept like a civilian, so I’d make my move. And bang … no bike, no school excursion, and stop your endless bloody begging.

  A low trick for my brother to pull, if it was a trick. I don’t know if someone who can’t even remember which direction to run when he belts a cricket ball has such a sabotage in him. Maybe he was just copying me like he sometimes does. But I had to suppose he meant me the worst by covering up Dad’s nightmares. So he dined with Shorter for sabotaging my system.

  Me holding his arm up his back. Him ears deep in a chipped enamel bowl, nibbling on a can-shaped tower of lamb and kidney, with Shorter up close trying to bark him out of there, but soon wolfing in from the other side before it was all gone, and cleaning my brother’s face when it was.

  Her creaks see-saw along the hall and the door opens. She carries the run-to-Mummy champion to bed, and breaks his hold and puts him in. I hear her kiss him. A loud, official, see-you-in-the-morning smack. She comes over to my bed.

  ‘He’s got enough on his mind without you killing everyone. Do you hear me?’ I don’t say anything, but Shorter groans. She snatches him up and takes him ov
er and drops him on my brother’s bed. He’s still circling when her creaks have gone.

  I think about whistling Shorter back to my bed. But if he’s too sleepy he won’t come, and it’ll look as if he likes my brother better. So I let him drop.

  Usually there’s a scream of tyres that wakes us wide-eyed, waiting for the bang. But tonight there’s just the bang, jerking us awake. A bang that sends a shock through miles of bush and douses all the cicadas, and runs a set of squeals through the pigs in Stuart’s meat-works over on the boulevard, waiting for morning, to be fractioned into cling-wrapped fractions.

  My brother comes over and gets kneeling on my bed next to me and looks out the window, a thing I don’t usually allow. But this is a rare treat. This is awesome.

  We look into the dark, across to the highway where some drowsy bloke has missed the bend before the bridge and run up against a redgum. We’re wanting his car to star-burst yellow, to show us him. Flames mean maybe a bushfire and fire-engines and a night full of real hullabaloo to go with the police and ambulances and tow-trucks. A fire will top this thing off.

  We watch. But there’s no light out there anywhere. We hear the sirens start up in town and the flashing cars soon arrive. Only the cops and the ambulance. So the guy mustn’t have been smoking or something, because his car doesn’t flare up. We are out of luck for a real spectacle.

  It’s cool now and we start to get sleepy without the fire to liven up the emergency people. The flashing blue and red lights off through the bush can’t hold us long after the thrill of the bang has run out of us. And now the emergency people are there we know there’s no chance of hearing any of those screams that sometimes trickle up out of a wreck and prickle our skin.

  My brother asks me if we will get a fire. I tell him it depends. He doesn’t like the sound of those odds so he goes back to bed. So do I.

  What doesn’t wake us in the morning is a wobble-boots brawl. The first thing we hear is Sunday voices. It’s only Friday. On the street outside my window, low, sorry voices like our minister prefers. The morning is only grey so far. My brother gets on my bed again, taking his damn liberties among these unorthodox events.

  Out in the road is a police car and two police and Uncle Will and Aunty Kath. They’ve got Mum surrounded. Scared to close in on her, but not wanting to move away. She’s in her dressing gown, arms up, palms out. Warding them off. Untouchable. Turning so she can face them all. She knows they’re coming, and she looks set to fight them off.

  Aunty Kath makes a lunge at her and grinds Mum’s face into her neck and Mum gives in, and Uncle Will wraps them both in his hug and rocks them. He starts crying, of all things. And him a publican. I hear him say, ‘Bullshit, Maddy. We’re coming with you.’ Even his swearing is in what would probably be his Sunday voice if he ever turned up at church.

  He unlocks the hug and leads them to the police car, where a cop has opened the door. I’m not afraid for Mum. I see she’s in charge, not the cops. They’re shamefaced, like she’s caught them trying to blow a safe and is taking them in. They don’t even have the guts to squeal their wheels as they pull away.

  ‘Where’s Mum going?’ my brother asks.

  ‘It depends,’ I tell him. And this time it probably does.

  The creaks see-saw slowly along the hall toward us. Gran opens the door. The meat of her is saggier than usual in a blue-flowered frock. Like she’s dressed fast and hasn’t had time to put on all her underwear. She’s got no tights on, that’s plain. I can see a mess of blue veins on her legs from here. But her back is straight and her head is eyes-front high, like she’s trying to balance a book on her white bun. Her face has the same hell-bent-for-balance look. Suddenly, I know what she’s trying to balance. My brother doesn’t. He’s gaping at her. He’s amazed. He thought we were safe from old ladies this early in the day.

  She comes over to my bed and sits down and puts my brother in her lap. She takes hold of my hand, which I’m not sure I like, with her not wearing all her underwear. She puts her other hand up under my brother’s chin to close his mouth. I see she gives his mouth a nearly accidental stroke with her fingers when she does it. Nearly accidental affection is all he’ll take from her.

  ‘Did you know your father was my boy once?’ she whispers. ‘My boy. And John’s boy. No bigger than you.’

  His face stays as blank as her hand left it. Mine breaks wide.

  Santa, the whales on the highway … and Dad. Dad, Santa, and the whales on the highway. These are the things I have to set my brother straight on. There’s no one else here can drum the adult truth into his puny skull.

  RED CORDIAL

  FIVE OF us are drinking in the red sand of the Fortes-cue River. It’s early summer and the river is long underground. Only its red gums and its ghost gums reaching the water with their roots stretched taut and seventy-feet deep by thirst. The river is a thousand-mile meander of shade. Shade being what the Pilbara has instead of water.

  Lucky Johnson is sitting against a white trunk of gum. Porous Gates is sitting on the esky. I’m lying elbow-propped in the sand. Dad is forced to sit in the armchair Lucky bought for him at a garage sale this morning and hauled out here in the back of his ute and unloaded saying, ‘Sit down, Lucky. It’s maximum comfort for you now.’ Dad, angry about his new rank, but recognising it, sits in the chair. Adrian sits near him holding his stubby and looking down, on the edge of tears as he has been for the week since Doctor Jencks told Dad his chronic indigestion was cancer of the oesophagus. All of us are drinking beer except Dad, who can only swallow for survival now, not pleasure.

  My usual method of getting connected with Dad is through beer. Has been for years. Now he can’t drink our lines of communication are cut.

  We’ve collected wood and lit a fire and are waiting for the women to arrive with salads and kids. From the middle distance comes the call of a peaceful dove. Middle distance being the peaceful dove’s only known habitat. That ghostly bell always a mile away just back of the crows.

  Porous is asking questions. ‘Now, Adrian, what was the most important tool used in the opening up of this country? You can answer this, Jack.’

  Adrian looks up. Blinks. ‘The axe,’ he says.

  ‘The axe. The axe,’ says Porous. ‘No, it was not the axe. Not a bad guess, though. Jack?’

  I take a drink. I’m starting to feel the beer. ‘I like the axe,’ I say.

  ‘Well, it’s not the bloody axe.’

  ‘The esky,’ says Lucky.

  ‘No good,’ says Porous. ‘Look out there at three o’clock on the horizon.’ He points.

  ‘A windmill?’ I ask.

  ‘Of course a windmill,’ says Porous. ‘Water above all other things.’

  ‘It’s not even a tool,’ I say.

  ‘Most important one,’ he says. And he throws his arm around at the horizon. ‘How many axes do you see out there?’ he asks as if point proven. And he stands and opens the esky and takes out four more stubbies and passes them around and we take their tops off and drink, all commenting how cold and good the beer is. Goading our father, and friend, with our enjoyment. Knowing his love of beer.

  ‘You bastards,’ he says. ‘You dirty bastards. If I get through this I’m going to tie you up to these trees here and I’ll drink bottle after bottle of it in front of you. All frosted with cold. Until you’re pleading with me from thirst and sobriety. And the only drink I’ll give you is red fucking cordial.’ Red cordial being the most juvenile and offensive drink he can think of.

  He makes the joke. But he makes it straight-faced with no hint of a laugh, and I realise then laughter is the first faculty lost. That I’ll never hear his laugh again. Which means three weeks ago when Abbott and Costello were in Alaska in a Friday night movie and we’d opened our fourth bottle and Costello stuck his fork into his whale steak and got squirted in the eyes with whale-juice and then he swapped his whale-steak for Abbott’s whale-steak and Abbott stuck his fork into it and it squirted right across the igloo and stil
l got Costello in the eyes with whale-juice and I laughed and when my laugh ended and I heard the hissing air of Dad stifling any sort of big laugh that would work the muscles in his diaphragm and neck … then that was the end of his laughing. That hiss that was trying not to be a laugh. And now he doesn’t have to try and not laugh. His ability to laugh just isn’t there any more.

  We laugh at his red cordial joke. Porous raises his stubby and says, ‘Until such times,’ and has a drink.

  ‘Frank,’ says Lucky, ‘If you get through this I’ll drink your red cordial.’

  ‘Lucky,’ says Dad, ‘You mustn’t like my chances much.’

  Dad then moves the conversation into the past by asking do Porous and Lucky remember that thylacine they saw up in the Victorian Alps in a clearing when they were sitting there having a breather and taking a nip of vodka in the winter of fifty something … when they all used to live back east? How it came out of the mist? How it stopped and stared straight at them before trotting off through the mountain ash into extinction? And we trotted off into years of being called crackpots and loons. A tiger. Wasn’t that a day?

  Reminiscence is the only conversation he can hold now. It’s that or silence. The present has turned ugly and doesn’t interest him. The future just isn’t, He wants to get back romping with the dogs of his boyhood.

  So we dredge up the beautiful moments of his past. We reminisce fast and furious about good times and gone people and disappeared species of native fish that you had to be cunning to catch but which tasted specially sweet. Sweeter than anything you’ll catch today, you young blokes, they tell Adrian and me.

  The whole conversation is a chore and a drain on me. Trying to work out what to bring in and what to leave out. Trying to hark back to his good times without bringing in any of life’s shit. At one stage I ask Dad does he remember when we were kids and Mum went away unexpectedly for a couple of weeks and every meal he cooked for us, breakfast, lunch and dinner was charcoal-grilled off the barbecue.