Old Growth

by John Kinsella

  The bus driver sticks his head in the door of the restaurant and yells out, All of mine … we’ll be leaving in five minutes. And so the boys gobble and Joel says to Alvin, That looks like puke … greasy bacon and eggs, and Alvin says It’s not puke, it’s yummy and eats it so fast, he has fat running down his chin. Joel is eating a ‘continental’ and feels all the more sophisticated for it, and both scull (scull scull scull scull!) orange juices, then leap from the table and back onto the bus before Big Beard, who is somehow procuring more sherry, as the boys call all alcohol that's not beer.

  And next they are rrr.rrrr.RRRRR.rring out off the gravel onto the bitumen and the trees around the dry riverbed vanish and the plains with their squiggly bushes and strange eerie low shapes come back into focus under the rising sun which is shining in through their window, and now Alvin has the window, because he got in first, and though they wrestled for it, Big Beard’s grunting shuts them up.

  It is hard to move because even when they were out of the bus, Big Beard’s seats stayed reclined. The sun is cooking Alvin, who is feeling queasy and complaining and wanting to poo, but not wanting to get out of his seat so soon after setting off, so Joel leans across Alvin and pulls the curtains over, and the changing light and shuffling cloth makes Big Beard grunt and lift up and scowl down at the boys, his eyes very red, and the hair around his lips all sticky and foamy.

  Joel reads his western book and Alvin tries to look at the same Peanuts comic book he’s been studying for kilometre after kilometre, even under the night-lights last night which suddenly went off when Big Beard lifted up, reached back and turned them off without asking, and said one growly word, Sleep. Alvin drops his book and screws himself up and pushes against the seat in front with his legs, and Big Beard says, Watch it!

  Joel punches Alvin, who says, Joel, I feel bad.

  It’s your own fault, eating those expensive greasy bacon and eggs.

  Don’t say that, Joel.

  Don’t say what?

  Don’t say that about breakfast.

  What, Al? You mean greasy bacon and eggs?

  Don’t say it, Joel, it’s making me go green inside.

  Joel punches Alvin in the arm, puts his mouth to his younger brother’s ear, and says over and over, Greasy bacon and eggs, greasy bacon and eggs.

  Don’t, Joel, don’t.

  Hey, Al, you are starting to look green on the outside as well. Serves you right.

  Alvin squirms and kicks the seat in front hard, and before Joel can tell him off, Big Beard is up and arching over them, and says, If you little bastards kick that seat again I’ll throttle you!

  The bus suddenly slowing, the voice of the driver over the speakers – What’s going on back there? – and the sherry breath of Big Beard all feed the situation. All feed the green-at-the-gills, out-in-the-desert morning ambience of dust motes through the par-curtained light (Big Beard had forced the curtains how he wanted them, though the light streaming onto Alvin and Joel was nothing to do with him) … all feed the greasy bacon and eggs that sit wrong and now projectile-vomit from Alvin’s mouth onto the hands clutching the back of the seat in front, the big gnarled dirty hands, splashing up onto the beard and the cavernous loud mouth, vomit of everything, a vomit that is greater than the contents of Alvin’s stomach … All the vomit of the city and the Pilbara and their father’s ‘going away up north’ and their mother’s new boyfriend who stays the night every now and again and doesn’t sleep on the couch after all, and the smell of petrol being pumped and massive Kenworth trucks which their father had an eye on, which he was going to buy even if they had to sell the house, their mother saying, Over my dead body; and then greasy bacon and eggs at sunrise.

  As his brother’s vomit splashes back on to him, Joel finds himself lifting his fist to pummel his brother’s arm – a thin little arm covered in a skivvy but still looking thin. Normally when Joel punches it, with the middle knuckle on his right hand poking out like spike, he aims to crunch skin into bone. He wants maximum effect, to tattoo his brother with the sign of his power. He is older, he has had to bear more. He has to take more responsibility. He has seen his mother and father fighting in ways Alvin cannot understand. He has seen bruises on bodies where he should never have seen, never have been able to look.

  He raises his fist and stops, Big Beard barking and raging and his fists lifting and banging the seat. He sees his brother in a vomity heap, crying, and he opens his palm like revelation and pushes it into Big Beard’s beard – not hard, not punching, not with aggression, but firm-like, pushing the face away from his broken brother, the wire and the foam of the beard giving way but the head going back with force of the stopping of the bus. And he pushes further back, and hears himself saying, You leave my little brother alone, you horrible man! You leave him alone. He’s done nothing wrong. We’ve made him sick. All of us have made him sick!

  PACK OF CARDS

  Nearly end of holidays and the days were getting annoyingly short. The brothers would argue with their mother over coming in at the same time year round but she said, No, you need to be inside before dark. It was pretty close to dark now, but the day had been sunny and warm, and given winter wasn’t far away, they thought they could afford to dawdle a little.

  The boys – ten (almost eleven!) and twelve – had been to the newsagent’s in the town shopping centre mall. It was a large town for the region but a small town by the standards that population and size are measured against, and the mall was the focal point of everything. Of course, they didn’t really care about buying a packet of footy cards each, but more about meeting their mates and laughing at the ‘bobble-headed’ girls – Audrey Hepburn updos, not that any of the boys had thought much about or even heard about Audrey Hepburn. Today it’d been pretty boring, as no one much was about, and the footy cards were mainly doubles or triples of what they already had.

  As you leave the front of the mall through the electric sliding doors and walk past the MLA office of some bloke Dad knows but doesn’t really get along with (he always says, Politicians are all the same …), you come onto the main street with its multiple drinking holes, lawyers’ offices, hairdressers’, pet shops, furniture shop, Wheatbelt Job Futures and a couple of cafes, which didn’t faze the boys one way or another, but more interestingly there were side alleys leading down to the river where old, old fruit trees grew in the open yards of shops that had once been houses, and though the trees were pretty well empty now, the odd apple tree yielded something and the rotten fruit at the base was good for throwing at walls or each other.

  And it was crossing the main street and then turning down the first of these alleyways that the boys came across the Jack of clubs. There it was, face up, looking clownish in the dying light. The streetlights hadn’t yet come on but there was enough sunset to reflect off the gloss card and sting the eyes. It was in the middle of the path so they split like a river around an island and went either side to see it more clearly and out of the glare. They bent and bumped heads, called each other idiot and laughed. One hand went down to pick it up but another slapped it, agitated. Don’t. Why not? It’s just a card. I dunno … just don’t. You’re always pickin’ things up, what’s wrong with this? I dunno. I want to take it home.

  Neither of them touched the card, but they stood there studying it. It’s getting dark pretty fast, one said. The other bent lower and blew at the card, trying to move it without touching it. It seemed stuck to the ground. That’s because the air’s not getting under it, you’re blowing the card onto the ground. It’s not just because it’s a ‘brother thing’, you know. What? I mean, it’s not like Mum says when we do the same thing or want the same thing or whatever … I mean, I’m not not picking it up just because you said not to pick it up … just because you say or think something doesn’t mean I will. I know that – same for me!

  Someone yelled something in the main street and it broke the card’s grip on the boys. Better get home now, the drunks are out. Yeah, don’t wanna get caught by Dad.
He’ll be heading home for his dinner soon.

  Their father always drank from five till six, went home for dinner, then after giving the boys some life advice and slapping their mother on the bum, went back to the pub to drink till closing. Their mother would say, He needs it, after all the bad luck he’s had, though the boys never really understood what the bad luck was. He was a foreman at the grain terminal and spent a lot of time in the weighbridge office with his feet up on the weighbridge officer’s desk telling stories about the girlfriends he’d had before he got ‘shackled’, got ‘trapped’, got ‘the millstone’ around his neck … the boys had heard it many times because sometimes when their mum was working and they were too young to be left alone in the holidays, she dropped them at their father’s work. That was years ago – now Mum stayed home in the holidays and only worked during school hours. She told them, giving them a hug, that it had taken some sorting out, but that her boss drank with their dad and he’d been ‘accommodating’.

  They left the Jack of clubs and walked into the orange line of the dying sun. It’ll burn your eyes if you stare at it. You say that all the time and it never does. I’ve got better eyesight than you. Nah, you haven’t – if you did you’d see you’re steppin’ on another card!

  He lifted his foot and there was another card, but face down, so only the labyrinthine ambiguity of the back spoke in its secret way. Flip it over with your foot. He tried to, but his sandshoe just made it scrape back and forth and then, without warning, and drawing a slight yelp from his brother, he reached down and quickly flipped it before pulling his hand back as if he’d been scorched. A six of hearts. They both strained their eyes towards the end of the alleyway and saw a number of cards spread across the path – some face down, some face up. They ran to the cards and started declaring the suits, the numbers, the colours … Ace! Two aces! But it was getting hard to see.

  At the end of the alley was a narrow road that edged the river. On the other side of the road a streetlight flicked on and below it, on the green grass of the riverbank, they could see dozens of cards. There must be a whole pack! They ran across the road, one looking one way for traffic and the other looking the opposite, crossing in blind knowledge. They no longer cared about their taboo, their fear of the cards. They began collecting and counting. Forty here! They rushed back across the road to collect the pile at the end of the alley. Fifty cards! How many in a deck? Fifty-two without jokers. No jokers here. The two up the alley, the six of hearts and the Jack of clubs, that makes a pack, a full deck. They dashed up the alley, which was almost pitch-black now, to search the dusk-reinforced shadows, but couldn’t make out the cards. Then one of them slipped on a card and it was the six of hearts. Bent a bit, but we can use the iron to flatten it at home. They laughed, almost giggled (wouldn’t let anyone else hear them) … But the Jack of clubs was nowhere.

  They’d be in real strife at home. But they wouldn’t give in. They went up to the main street and followed the weak streetlight. Must be around here. Between the odd car cruising along and the yells from the pub because it was Friday Night Footy or something, they could hear ducks getting excited down on the river. They loved the ducks and the coots and the black swans and the rare white swans that belonged only there. They had to cross the suspension bridge to get home and the river would be low and glassy black far below them and the ducks would cut across like they were letting off steam before settling down for the night. They were both thinking about this as they searched – no longer with their eyes but their hands. Urggh, yuk! Shit … something sticky on the ground, like chewing gum. Pink bubblegum, the other laughed, I saw it while we were walking. It wasn’t far from the Jack of clubs. How did you miss it? Anyway, we must be close.

  Then they heard voices of people turning from the main street into the alleyway. A man and a woman laughing and sounding sleazy, though the boys couldn’t hear any words. That’s what the brothers called lovey-dovey sex stuff. It was their mum’s word – she loathed sleaze and would go on about it. They could see the pair silhouetted against the faint mouldy streetlight. This couple were in no hurry, in fact, had stopped in the penumbra of the light and the man had pushed the woman up against the pub wall. The boys, on the ground, stayed still and quiet. They couldn’t really see the couple and didn’t really look. They just stared into the darkness at where each other’s eyes would be and let their hands find each other’s and hold on, trembling.

  Can’t ya find it? the woman laughed. The man mumbled and then started grunting like a big pig. The woman was laughing and making sounds like a small pig. A laugh-groan. It sounded stupid. Embarrassing. The boys felt like idiots and scared and started crawling off towards the river light, hoping they wouldn’t be detected by the strangers, but these grunters were not worried about anything but their grunting. At the end of the alley the boys leapt up, each with half a packet of cards in his pocket minus one, and ran … A woman’s voice – Ya liddle pervs … look … didya see em, spying on us … dirty liddle pervs. But the boys were gone and running over the glassy blackness not even looking down for the ducks, which were kicking up one hell of a stink.

  Their mother was ropeable. That’s it, boys. You’re to be home by five every day without exception or you’ll lose pocket money for a month. You’re lucky your dad didn’t get in before you – there’d be hell to pay. Now, wash up and get to the table and we’ll speak about it later. When their father had headed out again. They looked at each other, dreading what was to come. Their mother never smacked them or really ever yelled, but they didn’t like getting on the wrong side of her. Her rejection hurt them, cut them to the quick. Stupid cards, they muttered under their breath, and on the way to wash up they shoved them under a cushion on the sofa.

  There would have been hell to pay. Their father wasn’t one for this mumbo jumbo, as he called it, about not smacking kids. He’d give them both a hiding even when only one was to blame.

  He was in a good mood when he came in. Didn’t even complain about having to leave the footy on the bar television, as he usually did on a Friday night, even though he wasn’t much of a footy follower. He’d brought home two bottles of beer, as he always did, and he did a rare thing and poured one for their mother who said, Darl, you know I prefer a shandy … but her father slapped her so hard on the bum that she went red in the face and sat down to her dinner and the beer.

  Mum and Dad laughed a lot during dinner and Dad rubbed both boys’ heads and said to their mother, Think I’ll be home a bit earlier tonight … whaddyareckon? That’d be lovely, darl, she said, her face lighting up. She kept pushing her hair all over with the palms of her hands and the brothers concentrated on eating their dinners.

  After dinner their dad dropped himself on the sofa to cuddle their mother, which he never usually did. Come on, love, he said. Okay, darl, but I’ve got the dishes to do. The brothers stood in the doorway, perplexed. Their mother lifted abruptly and yelped, What’s this? And she pulled the piles of cards out. Boys? she said immediately. There’s one missing, they said quickly. What? Their father swivelled slowly around to look at them. Transfixed by his boozed and flushed and replete gaze, they added as one, We’re missing the Jack of clubs!

  Their father stared hard at them, his gaze going from milky to steely. He held them there as his wife awkwardly clung to his large shoulder, rubbing the bristles on the back of his neck. She looked so small alongside him, there in her house dress and pumps. Then he spoke, at first harshly, then lightly and friendly, and they relaxed. Well, how about that … your luck is in, boys, you’re missing a Jack of clubs and I found one. Was stuck to the bottom of my shoe, would you believe it! Bubblegum and a Jack of bloody clubs. Would you believe it, love – they’re missing a Jack of clubs and I found one.

  The boys waited … for the card … for their father to make some other move. But nothing happened. Other than their father giving their mother a sloppy kiss, winking at her in a ridiculous exaggerated way and saying he’d be home early, then lurching up and
grunting and pushing past them and on out the door. No card. No more words. Nothing. But he had grunted as he lifted himself from the sofa. He had definitely grunted a pig grunt.

  And their mother sitting upright and smiling and holding twenty-five cards in one hand and twenty-six in the other and saying, to the thin air, Isn’t it lovely when he’s like that … isn’t it lovely when your father is happy.

  THE SHOPPING TROLLEY

  They fought over pushing it to the top of the hill, to their launch pad above the shopping centre car park. It was a Sunday afternoon and until the rush just before closing, the street and the car park would stay fairly quiet. Just the odd car or clutch of cars coming or going. One kid would ride the back of the trolley, steering, the others riding in it as it thundered towards doom. Some of the riders bore injuries from previous weekends’ test flights. One had even been up in court for damaging shopping centre property.

  Making a lot of racket, fighting over who would steer, they stopped silent when the girl with the headdress came running out of the shopping centre. They knew her – she went to their school. She worked Saturdays and Sundays on the checkout. They saw her head thing all ruffled, and tears flowing everywhere. What’s wrong with ya, girl? yelled one of the trolley girls. The Islam girl ran past them and hid herself behind one of the parked cars.

  The crew parked the trolley up on the kerb next to a gum tree, and went over to the girl, who had her head down as she tried to fix her scarf. What’s her problem?

  They stood around and kicked at the dirt and laughed, then hesitated, then said to her, What’s your problem? You’ve gotta stop crying so you can tell us what ya problem is.

  Monica, who had been in the shopping centre picking up a few snacks and stuff for them all, burst out of the shop’s doors and ran across the car park towards them, yelling, Shit, you should have seen it. She lost it completely and ran out, just leaving the till drawer open and everything!