This morning I decided I should probably wash the gear I was wearing when I walked in on the first day, cos it was hard sweaty yakka, you know. So I collect all the scungy clothes and head to where I thought the machine would be to throw them in (I didn’t have any washing powder so I thought dishwashing liquid would be okay—same idea, right?) and get this: there is no machine. Nowhere. So I’m like, what the hell am I meant to do? And you know, finally it dawns on me like an unbelievably bad fart that I have to wash the gear by hand. By hand. Like some old granny in the fifties! Bloody Dad, I bet he knew there wasn’t a machine and had a good old laugh to himself about it. Yeah, well, ha bloody ha, Dad, is all I can say.
To top it off, and to gross you out, the dunny is ... a real dunny: about 20 metres away from the house in a cranky old wooden hut with cobwebs and probably a very bad smell that I wouldn’t know about because I haven’t breathed in there yet. Gloriously flush-free. Lovely long-drop—don’t shine the torch down there if you go in at night, eh?!
So, Bells, take care and say hi to my mates—should take all of two seconds. I miss you. Write whenever you want—I’ll be going into town every week, so you can send your weekly box of letters and pressies care of the post office.
In my dreams, right?!
Joel xxx
PS: Anyone been to see Craggs? Or Sull, the poor f***er? I get a sick feeling when I think about him that night, Bel.
PPS: Miss you, Belly. Miss your belly.
PPPS: It’s extremely boring down here.
PPPPS: Instant noodles for dinner tonight. Thai flavour. Am collecting the empty packets—let’s see how many I can get through, hey?! There’s no recycling out here in feral woop-woop, so what else am I gunna do with the plastic—shove it down my pants?
8
Breakfast used to consist of Weetbix, a handful of Nutri-Grain and a good slopping of yoghurt. Now it’s toasted stale bread (mould scraped off) with a smearing of rock-hard butter (never again—it’s margarine all the way from now on) and a smudge of Vegemite over the top. I’ve done the maths: four Weetbix a day would be twenty-eight a week—that’s more than a family-size box each week! That’d fill my entire pack, man. No, I just can’t justify it, as bloody Dad would say. Dreaming of a decent brekky makes me think of the special petit déjeuner class we had for French last term, complete with croissants and hot chocolate. Aargh. Aargh.
‘Le petit déjeuner,’ said Miss Marpassant, our French teacher. It was meant to be a bit of a slack period, but she had all the time in the world to nail my pronunciation, it seemed.
‘Le p-petit dé—... Le petit d—,’ I tried to repeat.
‘ Le pe–tit–dé–jeu–ner,’ she said again, enunciating it in clear, separate syllables.
Behind me, someone snorted.
Oh, this fucking stammer.
‘Joel.’ She locked on to me.
‘Le pe-petit d-d-dé—,’ I tried again.
Miss Marpassant didn’t avert her eyes from mine. She stayed with me, and together, eventually, we said, ‘Le petit déjeuner,’ to a spattering of relieved snickers and muffled pig-snorting around the room. I leaned back into my chair. I wasn’t that embarrassed, to be honest. I reckoned the others were more embarrassed about it than I was. I couldn’t have given a fuck. I didn’t look at any of them, just kept my eyes pinned on Miss Marpassant as she headed back to the whiteboard.
There was this point where I knew I’d changed. I mean, I looked back and I could see that somewhere along the line I’d got rough, like my edges had exploded, a blown retread on a dirt road. But I can’t pinpoint when it happened, or why. It’s not as though I come from a home where my old man beat me up and my mother’s an alcoholic or I was fostered out eighteen times and one of my foster fathers interfered with me or anything. My folks are pretty average—you know, bloody annoying, but all right. We can have a laugh and stuff, so I figure that’s a good sign. Okay, Mum and Dad are divorced, but that’s no big deal; she and the old man couldn’t live together anymore—I get that. Mum and I see each other most school holidays and she doesn’t hate Dad, so things are fairly mellow on that front. Scott, her boyfriend, is a total jammer, but that’s her problem.
The stammering thing started when she and Dad split up, but I was seven, so to me it seems as though I’ve always talked this way. Mainly it just keeps me a bit quieter at school, cos I don’t want to start saying something that I can’t finish. French is hard, but I don’t want to have to give it up. Words that start with d or p or t are particularly excruciating, and in French almost all of the words start with d or p or t.
Even in normal conversation I often have to change words mid-sentence when I realise the one I’m about to use is going to come out sounding like a misfiring engine, so I think up other words that mean the same thing. Maybe that’s why I do pretty well in English, cos I’ve had to stock up with all those substitute words.
The worst thing about it, though, is that I’ve always been a bit of a joker and you can’t pull off jokes when you stammer—you kind of lose the whole rhythm—so somewhere back there I said sayonara to cracking funnies too.
The folks brought me up to be polite and all that, and I was. I mean, I am. But I’m also different now, and I don’t know if that’s because I really have changed, or if it’s just because I started doing different things and so I think I’ve changed. I mean, how do you know who you really are? You can be different every other day of the week, I reckon. I can do well at school and talk to old Grandma Higgins next door while she’s watering her roses, so I’m a polite young man, right? But I also break into joints and rip them off so I’m a little shit, right? A delinquent. But how can I be both? That’s what I want to know. And not only how, but what the hell does that make me? A polite little delinquent shit?
End of Year 8 Report for Joel Strattan
Mr Tomasich
Joel is a solid, meticulous student, whose effort has shone through this year, particularly in Study of Society and Environment (SOSE) and English. His attention to detail and thoroughness does him great credit. With that approach, Joel should be able to improve on his grades in Maths. Well done, Joel, and good luck in Year 9.
End of Year 10 Report for Joel Strattan [Provisional]
Ms Andrews
Joel needs to focus on his strengths in order to lift his slipping grades in English and Maths. He has a great deal of potential to achieve academically, should he choose to. Joel has not submitted some of his final work in Maths and SOSE at the time of writing this report, bringing his overall results down. If he wishes to go through to Year 12, Joel will need to put much more effort in next year.
End of Year 11 Report for Joel Strattan?
Submitted on the letterhead of the Police Department of Western Australia...
9
After a few nights I hear these noises outside the shack. I figure it’s just a possum or something (not a thirsty possum, I hope), but it goes on for a long time, kind of scratching and groaning, and I manage to spook myself out over it. A torch would be handy—if only I’d thought to bring one. Surprisingly, I don’t have bionic vision. I get up eventually and peer out the door at the bushes and say, Anyone there, loud and aggro, like I’m not worried at all. Of course, there’s no answer because nothing is there, apart from my imagination and a few night critters. Still, I might look around for an old fencepost or a plank of wood to have handy, just in case. What would I do if a bunch of bogans decided to drop by for a visit?
Today, I find a tiny bottle of oil and a dustpan and brush and stare at the louvres. I mean, louvres, out here, when it’s minus five at night. Drafts slice into the cabin like long, cold knives, waking you from sleep. I have to wrap a jumper around my head at night to keep my face warm, for fuck’s sake. My nose feels as though it’s in the early stages of frostbite. I haven’t felt warm in ages.
Dear Dad, I think. Who the hell designed this joint? The Crapp Brothers?
I start by brushing the cobwebs away, getting all the dus
t and leaves out from between the glass slats. I rub a cloth over the lever, and squirt oil deep into the mechanism, then force it up and down, open and closed, open and closed, until gradually the rust and dirt give way to the oil and the windows start to smoooooooth themselves open and shushh shut really, really snugly. That’s my aim: the tightest, closest, most draft-free fit possible.
I go from room to room, oiling each one. Some are just rooted, no matter what I do, but others start to shut like a dream.
Dear Dad, I think. Just call me Mr Fixit. No Job Too Small. No House Too Crap. Think: hut in Antarctica with louvres for windows; a house with no washing machine. Think: a house infested with rats and you’ll know where I’m coming from. A cold, dirty, ratty kind of place.
Might need to visit that swimming hole you mentioned. And listen, can you send me some music, cos I can’t hack the silence much longer. Radio National does not count. Listening to geriatrics drone on about how they need the council to install speed humps in their street to slow down the hooligans just makes me wanna frisbee the thing out the door into the nearest tree trunk. It’ll have to be tapes because there’s no newer technology in here than that—which you know. But, oh, I should be grateful, I think. I should, seriously. I bet Craggs hasn’t got anything except his cell-mate to listen to. They told him not to bother taking his iPod; apparently, music and television are privileges you have to earn when you’re inside.
I’m hungry, so head to the kitchen for The Ritual of the Noodle. I pour water in the small saucepan, set it on high. I don’t break the noodles—no, no, no. They go in undisturbed. I let them soften, then fork them loose and cook them a bit longer. Then I add the sachets. The extra chilli powder usually ends up in the bin.
Food calms me down. Makes me feel better, even if only for a little while. But now I’ve eaten almost everything. I need to stock up. The problem will be carrying it home. Even if I keep to the light stuff, it’s still 17 kilometres on foot through the bush. Christ.
The walk to the road with my empty backpack is fine. No problems at all. I figure that section is about 10 k’s or so, and you go through some really funky patches of forest. You also pass through some areas that have been cleared big-time; they’re like footy ovals in the middle of the Amazon. Huge deadzones. N–o–t–h–i–n–g is living there. It’s almost as though someone’s tried to keep it hidden by clearing where no one normally goes, as if having it out of the way makes it better.
I’m sitting on the side of the road having a drink and giving my legs a rest when a ute approaches from the south. The guy pulls over, even though I keep my head down.
‘Where you heading?’
Err. Mind your own business? ‘Town.’
‘What, Nallerup?’
That rings a bell with what Dad said. ‘Yeah. Is that the nearest?’
‘Yeah, mate, it is. It’s the only. Hop in.’
I’m not normally into hitching but somehow it seems different out in the country, especially when you’ve still got a few dozen kilometres to go. The guy seems okay. There’s no sawn-off on the back seat or anything, put it that way. I’m stoked, actually.
‘You live down this way?’ I say.
‘Yeah, gotta farm not so far away.’
The trees thin out as we get closer to town. The guy’s got his car radio on and it’s joy to my ears, even if he is playing eighties shite.
‘You new to these parts?’ he says, changing gears as he takes a corner wide.
‘Me? Yeah, kind of.’
‘Where you staying?’
‘Uh, me old man’s got a shack in the bush back there.’
He swings his head my way, eyebrows raised. ‘You kidding? The old Strattan place? Not far from the Bibbulmun?’
I nod. ‘That’s the one.’
‘There hasn’t been anyone there for years.’
‘My folks don’t go there often.’
‘And you’re out there on your own?’
Christ. Do I really want this guy to know everything about me? ‘Well, yeah, for a bit.’
He doesn’t say anything to that, but he looks at me like he reckons it’s pretty strange.
Eventually, we get to a couple of shops bordering a main street. ‘Here y’are, then.’
I look around, confused. This is it? This is the town? All of it? I find it hard to move. Then he kills the engine, which sort of answers my questions, like, full fucking stop.
‘Right.’ I grab my bag and breathe out. ‘Thanks a lot for the lift.’
‘Any time, mate. It’s a long way from that place. You wanna have good legs for that hike.’
I nod. Yeah. A long way. For this.
I look around. It takes two seconds to take in this whole joint. I look around again. There’s no fucking post office.
Okay. O-kay.
Dad: you fucker.
Take a breath or ten. There’s a general store that looks about as big as the deli we go to for milk and papers and stuff at home—that must be where Dad has that account he told me about. There’s a real estate agent (as if!), some hippie aromatherapy join-theashram shop, and an Elders store that sells tractor parts and food for cows. That is, there’s no supermarket, no post office, no pub, no bank. In fact, there’s probably more choice for cows here than for people, and that would be because no one in their right mind would choose to live here. In my view.
I get it, Dad, I get it. This is all part of it, all part of this test, or lesson, or whatever the hell you call it. This is: drop Joel in the middle of nowhere and see if he can make his way out alive. Like one of those army training camps you see on TV where there’s always one guy at the back whose knees are giving way and he’s about to spew and pass out and the whole show’s about whether or not he can hack it to the end. His best mate’s usually jogging up the front somewhere like he’s taking the dog for a walk, grinning at the chicks as he goes by.
I hoick my backpack up on my shoulder and trudge over to the shop.
You fucker, Dad.
10
‘Can you smell anything?’
Bella was moving around the room.
I could smell something, but I wasn’t sure what. ‘Mm ... something lemony—citronella or something? Mozzie coils?’
‘Mozzie coils!’ she laughed. ‘What is this, a barbie with your olds?’
‘Well, sorry, but it’s bloody hard with your sarong wound around my head. I feel like I’ve got a turban on my face.’
‘You were close. With the lemon.’
The bed gave slightly as she sat down next to me. ‘Sandalwood and lemongrass,’ she said, close to my ear, and I smelled only one thing then, her smell, the smell of her body as she untied the sarong and let me see.
Candles everywhere. Tealights. Around the perimeter of the room. It was amazing. Pretty. Really, really pretty.
It was our last night together. Dad had given me special permission to go out, for this only.
I looked at her. Her reds were soft, or was that just the light? She seemed to let them fall across her cheeks.
Beautiful, I wanted to say.
Sitting there, I began to feel very weird, very ... disconnected, as if I was looking at this scene from a distance, somehow. What the fuck had I been doing the last couple of years? I went dizzy, then clammy: woozy-headed.
Bella’s face was intense, close to me. ‘It’s okay,’ she said, but it sounded like she was talking to me from another room. I couldn’t figure out where she was.
When the feeling lifted, when I could, I tried hard to shake it away.
She rubbed a hand up and down my back. ‘You okay?’
No! No, I’m not, I wanted to say, as desperate as I felt, but I reeled it in, right back in tight.
‘Yeah,’ I breathed out. ‘Yes.’
It was our last night together.
When I could, I kissed her, as gently as I knew how. And that was the last time I saw her.
I almost thought I was gunna have to camp overnight in the forest on the way ba
ck this arvo, but I had no tent or sleeping-bag with me so I slogged on until I finally got in just on dark. It would have been a lot later but I realised I didn’t have a torch or any warm clothes, so I cranked up the pace in the last few k’s till I was nearly running. Then I thought I was lost cos I couldn’t see the path and kept on thinking, The shack should be around here—right here somewhere. It wasn’t, not for ages. Anyway, I am absolutely buggered, 100 per cent rooted, utterly knackered. I must have bought 10 kilos of instant noodles at that crappy little shop—cleaned em out. Hope they order more for next week, otherwise I’m up shit creek. I got some bread, too, but how you put that in a backpack without it turning into something else is beyond me right now. So I’m carrying it by its neck, in my hand. I swap hands a lot. It’s fucking annoying. And it cost $3.50. A Pepsi Max— one can —set me back two bucks! You can buy a whole carton for about ten bucks, for god’s sake. It’s such a total rip-off but there’s no way I can haul a whole carton back to the shack. If I want a hit of Pepsi from time to time, I’m just going to have to suck up the cost and not think about it.
‘That’s $34.50, thank you,’ the woman behind the counter said after she’d rung it all up. There was no scanner or anything, just one of those old-style tills and I had to stand there while she keyed in all the prices.
90 Packets of Instant Noodles Page 3
