Rocks in the Belly

by Jon Bauer

  I pause midway through passing her the joint, waiting.

  ‘Don’t you hate small towns,’ she says, excited by the information she has that I don’t. ‘My mum taught you! When you were at Wilson’s. Remember Mrs Stevens?’ She takes in my facial expression, reassured now of her facts, and beaming at the small worldness of this moment.

  I nod at the carpet. ‘I wasn’t there long. Not even a school year.’

  ‘But you told me a different first name, or did you change it?’ She sits forward but I lean away. ‘She didn’t tell me much. Just about the fostering and an accident. It sounds tragic. Your mum seems like she was amazing.’

  ‘Is amazing.’

  ‘Yes, sorry. Mum was sad to hear she was ill. She sends her best.’

  ‘Right.’

  My eyes are stuck to that patch of carpet, even as Patricia risks coming in close again, wrapping herself around me, my body stiff but her hands lifting each of my arms and arranging them on her in the shape of a hug.

  ‘Come on,’ she says. ‘I come in peace, sexy.’

  I get off the couch, away from her disgusting sympathy.

  ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ she says, knees right up now, her chin planted on top.

  ‘What!’ But I know what and I don’t want it happening either. Yet here I am doing it — a car sliding on ice, all its brakes on but skidding slowly, inevitably …

  ‘Don’t plead ignorance,’ she says.

  ‘Why don’t you tell me since you already know everything about me.’

  ‘Forget it.’ She’s firing up now, flush-faced and hurt. ‘Fob someone else off with your fake name and your depressing anecdotes about a job you don’t even have anymore.’

  I go to take a petulant drag but the joint’s gone out and her anger breaks into laughter, me too but only for a moment, my heart pumping the levity away.

  ‘Come on,’ she says, softening. ‘Or can you only stand it when it’s straight sex — me Tarzan, you Jane. Then you can cope alright.’ She tries to infect me with a laugh but gets left out in the open with it because I’m staring at that face of hers and imagining telling someone like her about someone like me.

  I pick up my phone and jacket. ‘You’re right, Trish. Forget it. I take it all back, ok. All of it.’

  She stands up, sensing an opening. ‘What? What do you want to take back?’

  But I’ve realised this is hunting season for her. She’s the one in charge. I’m the wild horse in the paddock, she’s holding the head collar.

  And I’m bolting, her voice calling after me but I’m out into the night, her front door slamming behind me and pretty soon I’m fifty metres from her house with wet socks, cold feet and a gone-out joint. Panting in the middle of this pathetic little park, watching her door. Feeling four foot six. Afraid she’ll come, terrified she won’t — the same worldwide conflict between the unbearable heat of intimacy and the cold of isolation. As if there’s nothing in my solar system but a choice between Mercury or Pluto.

  Leeks or broccoli.

  I walk towards a bench at the park’s edge, near a path — the night quiet. My chest going up and down, my arms wrapped around myself, giving myself the hug I should have given her.

  Out in the cold again, an idiot with goosebumps.

  I take a seat on the park bench, listening to the distant interruption of sirens. I’m not the only one with an emergency then.

  Down the way an old man is wandering along the path, through the puddles of light at the feet of the lampposts, his dog just ahead of him, its claws making little clicking sounds on the pavement, pausing at each post to sniff and maybe pee.

  When the old man nears I ask him for a match and he pats his pockets, his eyes rheumy in the orange streetlight, a sad look to him but also that fearlessness old men can have. Like they’re too old for violence to find them now.

  ‘Just taking Rocket here for our constitutional,’ he says, still patting pockets. His border collie looks back and wags its tail, wanting to go on but having reached that unwritten distance he likes to be from his master — trotting about with his tail in the air and his bum looking at me. Quite a happy sight really, I decide.

  ‘Rocket,’ I say, trying on the name.

  ‘Yep, he’s a one,’ the man says, love coming off him. ‘If I don’t take him out his wet nose gets me up in the middle of the night. Little bugger.’

  He finds his pouch of tobacco, opens it and digs out the lighter, hands it over and I light the joint, thank him, hold his lighter back out to him. He doesn’t take it, doesn’t notice, so I stand here with it in my hand, blowing my smoke away from him. He has his pouch under his armpit while he gathers a cigarette together in expert fashion, then spits a little tobacco from his tongue after he’s licked the gum and rolled it, just like that.

  ‘You’ll catch yer death out here,’ he says, nodding at my socks. His work done, he gathers up his accoutrements and puts them in his pocket.

  ‘Argument with the missus,’ I say, rolling my eyes, inviting him into a gentle conspiracy against women.

  ‘Ah, the fairer sex.’

  He’s patting his pockets again, frowning, a hand coming out with his pouch of tobacco. He looks inside it, puts it away, patting again, eyes upwards to help his hands feel.

  I hand him the lighter and he chuckles to himself, lights his rollie and returns the lighter.

  ‘Thank you,’ he says.

  ‘It’s yours.’

  ‘Oh, I couldn’t. Very kind and all that but I have my own. Somewhere.’ He pats at his pockets again.

  ‘No seriously, it’s yours.’

  ‘Oh, yes!’ He laughs louder than old people usually do, he really laughs. ‘The slippery slope. You know, ageing. Taking my chances buying green bananas nowadays.’

  I laugh along for him. ‘You’re not that old.’ I glance at Patricia’s front door, take a drag of joint, bouncing a little on my legs, trying to warm myself.

  He stands up straight, as if for a photo. ‘How old?’

  ‘I’m not playing that game.’

  ‘Go on, I can take it. How old?’

  Rocket barks at us and the man shooshes him.

  ‘You guess my age first, then. That’s fair.’

  ‘Oh,’ he says.

  ‘Exactly. It’s an awful game.’ I take another pull of smoke and so does he, looking at me, something else in him shining out suddenly.

  ‘No, bugger you,’ he says. ‘I’ll guess your age. Just hold on, let me get my bearings. Gets harder to tell as you age. People are having sex at about twelve these days, looks like.’ He steps back, straightening out his big, thick coat. ‘You gonna give me a spell on that wacky baccy then or what?’

  I look at the smile on his face, at the wolf sitting in there beneath those folds of skin — that disguise. The young soul still in there underneath all that old age. I grin at him. ‘You sure you can handle it, old man? I don’t want to be holding your hair while you throw up.’

  ‘What hair.’

  ‘Fair point.’ I hand him the joint and he gives me his rollie to guard, the end all brown from soaked-in saliva. He takes a puff and looks at the workmanship, appreciating the difference. Then his eyes are on me and I try to meet his gaze, my attention flicking repeatedly to that front door.

  ‘You’re about twenty-five I’d say, pretty boy. Though you’ve still got a lot of growing up to do for a man. I’d been married three years by then. You married?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘How did I fare?’ he says and takes another pull of smoke.

  ‘Close. I’m twenty-eight. What makes you say I’ve got growing up to do?’

  ‘You’re not married.’

  ‘Not everyone has to do that. It’s old hat.’

  ‘Well, you’re not living your life are you then, unless you give it away. Everything’s a lot easier once you stop focusing on your own stuff. It’s never-ending you know, that stuff.’ He hands me the joint, takes back his cigarette. ‘Thanks for that. ROCKET!’<
br />
  I look round as the dog comes bounding from a garden, tongue out. He jumps up at his owner then turns and does the same to me. I stroke him behind the ears, feeling the man watching.

  Maybe if I got a dog. Dogs are good company.

  ‘He likes you,’ he says. ‘Animals can spot souls, you know. Like children can. I always say to myself — Reg, I say, if he’s alright with Rocket then he’s alright with me.’

  Reg.

  I bend and let Rocket’s tongue lick my neck and then it’s wet and warm and right inside my ear, my mouth opening, eyes squinting shut. I straighten again, wiping off the wet. ‘It’s impossible to think about anything while a dog’s licking your ear. Someone should patent a machine.’

  ‘True,’ he says. ‘You married to that reefer?’

  I take a drag then hand it over again, our interaction seeming imminently at an end and yet we’re both still standing here, waiting for something — hoping for some truth.

  ‘I look like a good soul then, to you?’ I say, my gaze alighting on him briefly.

  He breathes out the smoke, inspecting the remnants of joint, rearranging it between his fingers for better purchase. ‘You do,’ he says, resolutely — takes another puff, exhales. ‘So, how old am I? Go on.’ And again, he pumps himself up for a team photo.

  ‘Doesn’t it all become much of a muchness after seventy?’

  ‘Bugger off. Who says I’m a day over sixty!’

  He erupts into a gale of laughter which threatens at all times to descend into rampant asthma — the phlegm rattling in him.

  Once he recovers he stands up again, waiting, drops the joint on the grass and scuffs it out. I’m circling, giving him the once-over.

  I subtract a few years, for safety. ‘Sixty-eight.’ He absorbs it, smiles in a way that isn’t readable as satisfaction or disappointment. ‘I guess when you get up to those numbers a few years under is no great compliment, is it,’ I say, giving him a grin.

  ‘Pretty close,’ he says. ‘Pre-tty close. You got any more of that wacky stuff?’ His eyes are even more bloodshot now, shining in the streetlight.

  ‘I have.’

  ‘Shall we?’ he says, looking over at the bench — a little somewhere for sleep-starved mums to bring their prams in the early morning. Or for teenagers to fumble at love in the twilight. Men to smoke behind their wife’s back at night. Or phone their mistresses.

  I’m rolling us a joint and feeling the beginnings of a smile. We’re sitting here without expectation, just strangers striking up a moment with some weed. I could hug him.

  ‘So what you and your lady argue about, if you don’t mind my asking?’

  ‘Long story.’

  Rocket grumbles as he lies down at Reg’s feet, his head alert and perky, his ears picking up things we can’t.

  ‘Well, if that’s code for mind your own business, that’s fine. Otherwise’ — he looks at me — ‘I’ve got time.’

  I busy myself with the joint. A door slams across the park and I glance up but there’s no sign of her.

  ‘Hear about the old chemical plant?’ he says.

  ‘No?’

  ‘Caught fire. It’s burning now. Just awful. National TV.’

  And at that, a sharp bubble rises up through my middle and out. ‘My mum’s dying.’

  He straightens. I’m not looking at him but I turn away while he’s gazing into the middle distance.

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ he says, really soft and steady. ‘What of? If you don’t mind.’

  ‘Cancer.’

  ‘Oh, that bastard. I’m sorry to hear it, son.’

  ‘Well, you know.’ I lick the joint.

  ‘How old is she?’

  And I have to think about it, working back based on landmarks in my life. ‘Sixty-two.’ I hand him the joint so he can have the honour of going first.

  He looks at me, doesn’t take the joint, turns away and stares at nothing in the middle distance. ‘After you, son. After you.’

  Son.

  ‘What’s your mum’s name?’

  ‘Mary.’

  ‘Reg,’ he says, and shakes my hand.

  ‘Michael.’ The same lie I told Patricia, not that it worked. Reg smiles, looking away again, speaking to me now from the middle distance. ‘Where does she have the cancer? Or is it too painful? We can chat about the weather. I can talk about nothing till the cows come home. You learn that at my age, once there’s enough you can’t talk about. There’s too much that happens to you once you get to seventy-four to not get good at skirting round.’

  ‘Seventy-four? Wouldn’t have guessed it, Reg,’ and I give him a smile but he’s waiting for my answer. ‘Brain cancer. Knocked out her speech. She has the most aggressive cancer there is, apparently. Lucky us.’

  He sucks air in over false teeth then tut-tuts them. ‘And is your father still with us?’

  ‘Heart attack.’

  And at that Reg sags a bit. ‘How old was he?’

  Old people always ask that, I realise. Anything happens, they want to know how old the person was, as if to ameliorate their own fears that it could be them. Everyone always makes it about themselves.

  ‘He’d be approaching your age now if he’d lived. Sixty-four. Died seven years ago. He was sat there one morning before work and he said to my mum, you look nice. She went upstairs for the dirty washing, came back a minute or two later, and he was dead. He was a comfort eater — fat as a small house by then. I left for Canada after he died. I’d had enough. Not bad for last words though are they — you look nice.’

  ‘Sixty-four.’ He breathes out some smoke, a hint of a cough tickling him but he holds it in.

  ‘Bet you’re glad you bumped into me, eh, Reg.’

  He smiles a wan smile. ‘Only the good die young.’

  ‘I should live forever then.’

  We share a quiet, clouds drifting over.

  ‘So why are you and your lady arguing? You’ve been through a lot.’

  ‘You can’t really call it an argument. I dunno. I’ve not known her long.’ I stay staring off towards her door, my hand coming up with the joint for him to take.

  ‘You got brothers or sisters?’

  ‘No. Just me now. I had a brother that died a few years back. Robert. But I’m a foster child, so it kind of doesn’t matter. I mean …’ I sigh. ‘I mean Robert was a foster child. I was —’ Rocket takes up barking and Reg is gazing at me, his eyes full of salty water, although that could be his age.

  He’s staring into me and it’s like looking at Time — all folds of skin and age and sun spots — two glinting blue specks shining out. All that experience but he’s just as confused as me. The eyes have it. Seventy-four years. All those moments, and he’s sitting here near the end of his run but still as dumbfounded by it all as I am.

  In fact he’s more hopeful than me that everything’s going to be alright. And it isn’t. It isn’t going to be alright. It’s all wrong. He’s going to die. Alone perhaps. He’s alone now probably. Nothing left but these walks and some nice smokes, he won’t enjoy them all, or even all of one of them. He just has a few of those fettered little moments to look forward to where life flaps its wings for a second and things feel alright. Those moments when you get that blink of ok-ness.

  Like that hug from Mum yesterday. Like Reg here, taking an interest — showing kindness. Like walking across this park in a minute and knocking on Patricia’s door until she lets me in, in every way. Then going home and reaching out to Mum.

  ‘You got some help, son? Who’s looking after your mum?’

  This is all life is then, these small ok moments. And maybe a life can be measured by how many there are. So that if we fall to suicide or alcohol or violence or bitterness, it’s because we fell into one of those gaps in between the ok moments.

  Which must be where that eight-year-old me fell.

  For some reason, seeing this seventy-four-year-old man as lost as me isn’t scary. It stands me up. ‘Nobody is, Reg. I should pr
obably get back.’ I hold out my hand to shake his, Rocket barking again, the sound echoing in the dark. I’m shaking Reg’s hand with both of mine because the thing is, if he’s seventy-four and doesn’t have the answers, there aren’t any. Which means my answers are as good as any. Any map is good enough when you’re lost. Besides, my map is all I’ve got.

  I walk away but he calls after me, standing there stuttering because he knows there’s more he needs but he doesn’t know what it is or how to go about getting it.

  ‘Hey,’ he says, that fluttering doubt in the back of his tobaccostained throat. ‘Will you let me know if you need anything. Perhaps I could help. Or, heaven forbid, pay my respects at least, when … You know.’

  I turn from the warm glow of Patricia’s lit window, as if going to her will be dying a happy death, or I’m an alien about to walk back up into the light of the spaceship — fly away from this earthly confusion.

  ‘Haven’t you been to enough funerals, Reg?’

  But I regret saying that because it changes his face. I’ve caused another small stain of sadness to spread in him. I regret that stain and walk towards him. He stands a bit straighter at the look on my face, when he sees what’s coming.

  I wrap myself around him and he’s all juddering and thin like a sparrow. I can feel his brittleness — seventy-four years have eaten him down to this featherweight presence. Life could blow him away. One more tragedy, one more insult. He smells of burnt cooking oil and cigarettes, and I can feel that miniscule vibration in him, like he’s quartz and you could set your watch by his melancholy.

  But it’s Dad I’m hugging.

  Then I leave him there recovering. I’m walking away shoeless across the park but stop and call out, ‘It’ll be St Margaret’s when it happens, Reg.’

  He lifts a hand to acknowledge me, Rocket skittering ahead of him, his tail up, transmitting information back to Planet Dog.

  I can already feel that Patricia hug coming, but I get to her door and the picture is leant against the railings outside, one of my shoes on the top step, the other flung down here on the pavement, over on its side.

  I knock anyway, not my bravest of knocks.

  After a long silence I nod at the closed door, put one shoe on, then head down the steps and put on the other, leaving the picture behind, in case.