Sweetness and Light

by Liam Pieper

  He came up into the roar of the world; gasping, his lungs in his ears; the crowd still cheering their own champions who, he now saw, were even further behind him than he’d guessed, the closest thrashing a breathless freestyle a full half-lap down the pool.

  He had smashed them, just like his dad had told him he would. He wiped the water from his face with one hand, looked for Dad among the cheering spectators, found him underneath the shaded kiosk marquee. He staggered under the meaty back slaps of congratulations from the other dads, all stood in a cluster, drinking sly tallies from crumpled paper bags. Dad beamed, raised a salute towards him with his beer, and Connor’s heart swelled with pride. The intense, focused numbness that filled him before every race melted away.

  He was out of the pool before the others had even finished. Dripping, rubbing gooseflesh from his arms, he padded over to where Dad had already retrieved a can of ice-cold Coke to thrust into his hands like a medal.

  Every morning, before school, Dad bought him a can of Coke as he drove Connor to training. By the time they arrived at the swimming centre, first through the door as it opened at 6 am, the sugar was sparkling inside him, urging him through the turnstiles and into the frigid shock of the water.

  Although he could easily down the entire can in one long skol and go another, he sipped it carefully. Connor liked to keep the half-full can sitting at the edge of the pool with a napkin over the top to discourage insects. He kept his mind on that drink, made it the focus of his thoughts, his breathing, to take himself away from his body as it worked through a hierarchy of exhaustion – the urgent sting in his lungs that gave way to the burning ache of his shoulders, which in turn gave way to a pleasant numbness, where clockwork took over from his heartbeat, and he was no longer separate from the water he was sluicing through, back and forth, back and forth. Through it all he kept his mind on the growing thirst, the pleasant ache of want, the craving that seemed unbearable right then but would evaporate, vanish, never have existed, when the too-sweet, half-flat soda hit his tongue. Every five laps or so, as he reached the end of the lane and coiled against the tiles to turn and spring into another lap, he would burst out of the water enough to check that the can was there, and, in doing so, catch a glimpse of his father, slumped in a plastic lawn chair, reading the paper, a rollie dangling from his bottom lip.

  He swam five kay, and when he climbed out of the pool he picked up the Coke, polished it off in one go, then sat for a minute with the empty can, breathing deep, feeling his heartbeat calm, watching the steam rise from the pool, from his skin, as the first punchy rays of sun climbed over the horizon. The whole world seemed unreal, woven of mist and gold.

  He would never tell anyone, knew he would be made to regret it for the rest of time if he ever tried to describe it to the boys at school, but that was his favourite part of the day; his body exhausted, his mind slack, the world soft and easy.

  The night he’d won the competition down in Sydney, Dad had got drunk to the point of sloppy affection, hauled him up onto his shoulders to parade him about the pub – although he was too old for that stuff, and already nearly as tall as Dad – hollering, ‘Get a load of my Connor. That’s my golden boy, right here.’

  Dad set him down, expansively ordered a round of drinks for the bar, ruffled Connor’s hair. And yes, in that moment, Connor did feel golden, shiny, a glowing feeling where his dad had roughed up his hair cascading down his body like sparks. It was the happiest he could remember being, and that feeling was now inseparable from these precious moments, when training was done for the morning and the whole world was electric with promise.

  The men roared at the television. Dad in pure glee, his best mate, Skippy, in outrage, although it was a campy, confected sort of fury. They were watching the men’s 1500 freestyle, beamed live from the Barcelona Olympics. Connor was nine, in Ninja Turtles pyjamas. Dad had put a significant amount of money on Kieren Perkins to take the gold.

  Skippy, more out of mischief than out of sport, bet against Dad, a chunk of change on the German rival. It was clear, long before the end, how it would shake out – Perkins was lengths ahead of his nearest competitor, who was Australian in any case, and shot through the water to touch the wall, turned to see the scoreboard, punched a victorious fist in the air.

  In their Newcastle lounge room, Dad pumped his fist as well, crowed with victory, and Skippy moaned in mock horror, clutched at his face, then his heart, feigning a mortal blow. He writhed on the floor then came to a complete stop, playing dead with wide staring eyes.

  The children, Connor amongst them, rushed up to prod him, then squealed in delight and ran for safety when he startled back to life for another, even more exaggerated death, like an actor who refused to relinquish the spotlight. Skippy wasn’t really upset, he didn’t need the money. Times were good, steel as good as gold, China buying as much of the metal as the men at the mill could produce and then some. Skippy’s joy, even in defeat, was that of a Labrador – infectious, spreading to the children.

  After his win, Dad caught some of Skippy’s mania. Consumed by the magnitude of his luck, he leaped onto the couch with an unopened tally of beer, shook it up, and then cracked it so it sprayed across the room like champagne at a podium. Mum, mortified, hurried after him, snatched the beer, caught the overflowing foam in a schooner glass.

  She set it down, forgotten in the chaos that the barbecue had escalated into and, sensing an opportunity, Connor rushed forward and sipped it. Skippy noticed before anyone else, looked down to see the boy clutching the schooner in his tiny hands.

  ‘Easy there, mate.’ He reached down to take the glass. ‘You’re a little young for that sort of thing, don’t you think?’

  Dad stopped cavorting, looked over, and for a thrilling second Connor didn’t know which way it would go, but suddenly Dad was laughing.

  ‘Leave it, Skippy,’ he said, but kept his eyes on Connor’s. ‘You’re looking at the next Kieren Perkins. You’re looking at the golden boy. Let him see what it tastes like for a man to win. There’s plenty of that in the future.’

  Dad took the glass from Skippy, found a can of lemonade, and topped up the half-glass of beer, handing the frothing shandy back to his son.

  ‘I’ve got a feeling this kid is going to do great things. You do whatever you need to, boy.’

  He needed to train, twice a day, every day. Every morning, his father took him to the pool for a session before dropping him at school on his way to work. Until, one day, the work dried up.

  For three generations, Connor’s family had worked in the steel industry. Loading coal off the trains, firing the blast furnaces, loading the ships with polished steel ingots to feed foreign markets. But now Dad had been made redundant, like most of his mates. Of the blokes who regularly came around for beers on weekends, only Skippy remained employed, moving sideways and up by taking a supervising position at the docks, loading cargo ships with trainloads of coal from the Hunter Valley.

  Barely thirteen, Connor didn’t really understand the mechanics of it, what the reversal of the economy meant for the town and the family, but the magnitude of the event seeped into him, an anxious, skittering feeling under his skin. In the weeks leading up to the shutdown the family talked of nothing else, then, on Dad’s final day of work, he and his friends got hammered, exchanged bitter diatribes about boardroom betrayal.

  They stood around the Weber in the backyard, turning sausages. Attracted by the smell, Connor drifted into the circle of men, where one of Dad’s mates noticed him and ruffled his hair ruefully.

  ‘It’s this generation I feel sorry for,’ he slurred. ‘The fucking Chinese have rat-fucked the lot of them. Wait and see. This is just the tip of the iceberg. We’re the last Aussies who’re gonna be able to live like we have. The good life is over. Wait and see.’

  Annoyance surfaced on Skippy’s face for a second, barely perceptible. ‘Don’t listen to that miserable sack of shit, buddy,’ he counselled Connor. ‘Things are going to be better than
fine. Your old man especially. Don’t worry about it.’

  Skippy was right, Connor’s dad seemed immune to the gloom that had settled over the party. After wrestling the steaks and snags into submission over the coals, he poured a round of boilermakers and worked himself into a beer buzz. He dragged the stereo speakers outside to crank Bruce Springsteen so loud it blew the low-end out, so that the Boss’s angry, urgent guitar sprayed muddy and ugly over the party.

  Connor stayed up late, taking full advantage of the weird energy in the air. The men got stumbling drunk in the backyard and Mum drank wine with the rest of the wives until her cheeks were flushed and she started exchanging sly jokes with Anna, Skippy’s wife, who had brought over her famous pavlova. She carved off slice after slice for Connor, which he polished off with his hands, licking his fingers clean.

  ‘Manners!’ his mum scolded him. Connor apologised to Anna, but she only laughed, said that she was flattered, that she wished Skippy still looked at her the way Connor looked at sweets, and Mum blushed deeper and shushed Anna.

  That night Dad fell asleep on the couch, stubby still in his hand, and Mum carefully removed the drink and rescued his eyeglasses, leaving him to sleep it off.

  The next morning Dad was still on the couch, curled up under a blanket, so it was Mum who took Connor to before-school training. She seemed distracted, her face drawn in the pale orange glow of the dashboard lights. The corner of her bottom lip was trapped between her nicotine-stained teeth, as she worried it back and forth. She did not offer him a can of Coke, and Connor knew better than to ask if they could stop to get one.

  For the first few laps, without his can to guide him, he struggled to find his rhythm, felt the cold more than usual, but after a while his mind emptied out. Once he let go of the creeping tension of the world above, he found he could breathe easier, go further, push harder. When luxurious exhaustion had soaked into him, wrung him out so every fibre sang, only then did he finally climb out of the pool, struck by the feeling that something was different; something fundamental, changed forever.

  He did not realise what had happened until the drive to school, when the car crested the rise that led down into town. The chimneys of the blast furnaces had gone cold. For as long as he could remember he’d been able to navigate by scanning the skyline for the wispy black smoke that pumped day and night from the smokestacks. As the car looped around the beach road, he saw that the haze that had hung over the city all his life had disappeared. Once, the world beyond the town had been a blur, now he could see forever. All the way across the bay he saw Stockton sleeping, a few lights twinkling here and there, winking out as the sunlight set in.

  The haze dissipated even further over the course of the day, while an invisible gloom gathered. His friends were frightened, their families suddenly destitute, their breadwinners unemployed. Many were worried their families would have to move down the coast to Sydney to find work. By the time the final bell rang, Connor’s mood was sour. He did not want to move away, but right now he did not particularly want to be at home either. Dad was a cheerful drunk, but could become surly and impatient the day after a bender, and Connor was worried about what he’d find when he got back.

  Needless worry, it turned out. His dad was in a buoyant mood, showing off a shiny new Holden ute to the neighbours. He’d parked it on the street to better demonstrate the chrome rims and pearl paint, and the neighbours, all a little worse for wear after the previous night, stood around cooing over it like a newborn.

  In the driveway sat a shining, unhitched trailer with a gunmetal green cage. A decal of the bearded man that was part of the Jim’s Mowing logo. Dad had been busy. He had a plan. As he told the neighbours, anyone could have known the steelworks, and all the jobs it housed, was dead in the water years ago. Anyone with a half a brain, he told them.

  He’d had a contingency, a little hustle on the side he’d been sitting on all these months, and this morning he’d put it into action, taking the Shit-Can-Sen – the rusting, junky commuter train – into Sydney, where he’d purchased the ute and a Jim’s Mowing franchise. He’d been inspired in the months leading up to the mass lay-offs, driving around town, seeing the gardens gone to seed, the old steelworkers with bad backs and hacking coughs unable to tend their lawns. He excitedly listed the services he would provide to the community: weeding, mowing, tree doctoring. When the neighbours made their excuses and wandered off, he repeated them to Connor.

  He’d paid for it all with the union-mandated redundancy payout. Worried that someone else would have the same idea, monopolising the franchise rights for the area, he’d moved fast. He was sick and tired of working for wages, punching a clock. Now he would be in charge of his own destiny, making money for himself instead of the boss. He would have plenty of time left over to spend with the family, to take Connor to training twice a day.

  ‘In this world,’ he confided to his son, ‘there’s always someone out to get you. The trick is to stay one step ahead.’

  The business wasn’t working out, and Dad complained bitterly – to his son, to his wife, to his friends, to the people who’d sold him the franchise in the first place, who’d assured him that, even if he didn’t find reliable customers right away, they would accrue over the winter, in time for the boom in summer.

  They hadn’t. As the days grew warmer, he’d put an advertisement in the paper, considered a radio spot but balked at the cost, decided at last on having flyers printed. While the ute idled at the end of the street he tucked flyers into screen doors, first just on their street, then the block, then the neighbourhood, then the next. For days he drove in ever-expanding circles, spruiking his services, and, one Tuesday, while eating his lunch in a carpark overlooking a rugby field, the penny dropped.

  Connor was with him that day, by chance. He had the day off school, so had jammed in an extra training session at the pool. Dad had picked him up on the way home from flyering, bought them meat pies at a servo, then stopped in the carpark by the rugby field to eat. The radio was on low, and Connor finished his pie in seconds, eating so fast the mince scalded the roof of his mouth and he could taste nothing but heat as he demolished it. It was only then he realised that Dad wasn’t eating. He had stopped mid-bite, set down his meat pie and Coke on the dashboard, and was staring out at the field with a look of horror on his face. Connor followed his eyes, looked out across the park, and saw what his father saw.

  The lawn around the sports club was untended, overgrown; scruffy, eager white vines crept across the turf to choke the green. The rugby field itself was littered with twigs and broken branches that had blown in from a storm last week. Across the oval, where the RSL put out chairs and tables for diners, a scattering of men his dad’s age sat and sipped at schooners.

  Connor looked across, tried to catch Dad’s eye, but he looked away, blinking back tears. A long moment passed and Connor understood that he and his dad had come to the same realisation at the same time. It wasn’t just Dad and his new mowing business that were doomed. It was the town that was fucked, and therefore everyone in it; everyone he knew, 100 per cent fucked.

  Dad drove straight home, which took him down the high street, and Connor saw, really saw for the first time, how the town had faded in the past year. The little cafes and hobby stores and florists that had sprung up after redundancy money had soaked the town were disappearing, one by one. ‘For Sale’ signs in the windows of some, others just emptied out and abandoned. Nobody was hiring his father to tend their gardens because nobody could afford to.

  The shutdown at the steelworks, which once employed half the town, had only been the start of the bleeding. As the last of the redundancy cheques evaporated, the money that had trickled down to the rest of the town dried up; newsagents shut their doors, the theatre was boarded up, fine-dining joints were shuttered, or reborn as burger joints strategically situated on the path back from the pubs that continued to flourish.

  When they got home, Dad killed the ignition and told Connor to go insi
de. The ute sat in the driveway for a long time, and Connor watched TV, getting up once in a while to see his dad still sitting in the driver’s seat, staring blankly ahead. After an hour, maybe two, Connor heard the ute start up again as his father headed back to the RSL.

  For Connor’s birthday Dad took him to the beach, just the two of them. For hours they dozed on beach towels, broke up the day with long swims out past the breakers. Towards the afternoon, as Dad worked through the six-pack he’d brought along, he took to staying on land as Connor went out into the waves.

  In the late afternoon sun, through his beer buzz, it filled him up to watch his boy slip under the breakers, stay under for so long that a murmur of dread touched his heart, before draining out and refilling with relief as he popped up again in the surf an improbable distance away, waved, dived again.

  No matter what else happened, he’d made this kid, this champion. He told some of this to Connor when the boy came back to land, or tried to, but his feelings were complex, mind foggy and words awkward, a dog’s dinner of prickly, mushy pride.

  For dinner they bought fish and chips, taking turns to throw scraps to the gulls, aiming them strategically where they would cause maximum havoc among the birds. Feeling inspired, Dad opened his second-to-last beer and handed it to Connor.

  ‘You’re growing up, Con. Might be time to start thinking about the future,’ he said. ‘Have a look at this.’ Dad handed him a brochure for the Australian Institute of Sport. His manner was suddenly stiff and formal. He spoke of training programs, sporting scholarships, Olympic and Commonwealth prize purses, a glowing future. And after that, who knows? A job in radio, or even television? He could work for Nine one day, imagine that. Or at least a free ride to a proper university. As he elaborated on his plans for Connor’s future he let himself grow optimistic, sloppy with enthusiasm.

  Afterwards, as the sun sank and the tide went out, they wandered over the rocks exposed by the retreating water. Feeling light, and lightheaded, Connor bent down to find a sea anemone waving in umbrage at finding itself on dry land. Gingerly, he poked its tentacles, and marvelled as it retreated back into itself.