We Were Not Men

by Campbell Mattinson

  ‘For a lot of the time I just sat next to the phone, like right next to it, and hoped. I didn’t want them to ring or to come home and for the house to be empty. I’m sorry, Bobbie. I wasn’t running away from you.’

  We’d finished Werner’s goulash. It had been thick and rich and took some getting used to, but a few spoonfuls in and our hunger had cracked open. We’d all devoured it, every last skerrick, and most of a full loaf of thawed bread too, the slices going through the toaster in rounds. Bobbie had finished her third glass of wine; she’d motioned to see if Werner wanted a second. She’d poured herself first then tipped the finishing drops into Werner’s glass. She still had the empty bottle in her hand, at an angle, in the air. She looked as though she was waiting for Eden to finish and then she would stand up. But at some point she lost that look and sat squarely.

  She said, ‘You boys have hearts of gold.’ And then specifically to Eden, ‘So much about you reminds me of Jack. Though I’m not going to let you die on me.’

  ‘When the policewoman knocked on the door,’ Eden continued as if Bobbie hadn’t spoken, ‘and told me you were coming, I asked her if Jon was coming too, and she told me that she didn’t know, and I asked if you were definitely coming, and she said that you were on your way. They asked lots of stuff but eventually I could walk down to the back of the house, and that’s when I saw Mum’s vegie garden, and it made me feel really sad, and I just sat there, and then I thought that there might be some Nestlé’s milk in the cupboard, and there was, and I sat there and I was so sad about Mum and Dad. And then when I calmed down I knew how glad I was that you were coming. And that we had you.’

  Bobbie didn’t wipe her eyes but she looked fast away.

  Werner looked at Eden and me. ‘You don’t know it, but there are so many people in the background, people you’ve never met, who are marshalled in your favour. And bloody hell, why wouldn’t they be?

  ‘Do you have time for chocolate?’ Bobbie asked Werner, standing up and gathering plates.

  ‘I’m alone in that house up there,’ Werner answered.

  ‘There are mints in the fat cupboard. I’m getting another bottle.’

  Bobbie climbed down to the cellar as Werner went to the pantry. He pulled out a box called After Dinner Mints.

  ‘I didn’t know you can still buy these,’ Werner called out.

  ‘You have to want them bad enough,’ she called back.

  ‘She calls it the fat cupboard,’ Werner said. He frisbeed mints across the table. ‘By the way, I have no intention of selling this house.’ He talked at a volume Bobbie would not be able to hear. He then added quickly, ‘Does Eden know?’

  ‘About Hemi?’ I mouthed because Bobbie had already climbed back into the room.

  ‘Mint will ruin my palate but bugger it,’ she said.

  *

  Eden turned out his bedside light and lay on his back in the semi-dark. When he spoke it was into the night-time air, his voice remarkably clear; like a torch beam shone through bushland.

  He asked, ‘Did Dad say anything?’

  I wanted to play dumb. But Eden knew. Dad would say something.

  ‘In the car?’

  ‘Before he died.’

  I wanted to tell him but I didn’t want my dad’s words to spill out like the contents of a bag. And so I said, ‘Lucky. He said he was lucky.’

  *

  I pulled at the doona, turned and rearranged but I couldn’t get dozy. My back felt itchy. My arms and legs were wriggly too. I closed my eyes and tried to sleep but my mind was full of the package and the tissue and the watches. It was like Mum and Dad had come to us at the Flowerdale house and were now sitting on the top of the fridge. I lay in bed and waited for Eden and every time he turned, I turned too.

  ‘Come on,’ Eden eventually said. He’d stepped out of bed and tugged roughly at my doona. He moved to our bedroom door and pulled it open a crack.

  ‘Is she there?’ I asked, nudging in behind him.

  ‘Wait,’ he said.

  ‘I can’t see,’ I said.

  ‘Turn the night-light out,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t want to wake her,’ I said.

  ‘She’s on the couch,’ he said.

  He opened our door wider and we looked out across the loungeroom to the kitchen. ‘Don’t kick her glass,’ he said. In the near-dark he pointed at the glass and the bottle on the carpet beside the couch.

  He moved and was decisive and I was decisive too in the way that I followed him. We had the swift speed of the eager. We barely made a sound because we had socks on and were small. He led me to a corner of the kitchen just outside of Bobbie’s sight. Eden reached up and it was dark or nearly and yet the tissue paper had the brightness of a burn. Eden slipped his fingers under the tissue paper and cradled its contents. He reached back down. He opened the tissue carefully. As the watches were revealed I felt as though a light was released from them, though when I looked closer it was still dark and difficult to see.

  ‘Close your eyes,’ Eden said.

  I wanted to turn a light on or to take the watches and walk outside and when I thought of that I imagined holding the watches and just walking until the sun rose so that we could see the watches in their brilliance.

  Eden then lifted his hands and the green light of the coffee machine cast against the white of the tissue and when the watches were near head-height Eden leaned in and smelled at the watches and as soon as he did I knew why.

  I leaned forward and breathed in deep too.

  There was a smell. It was hard to tell whether it was real or imagined but as Eden held the watches I snatched at something that smelled like Dad and something that smelled like Mum though it seemed like a cold or not-quite-right version of both.

  ‘Let me,’ I said.

  I took the tissue and the watches from him and I brought them even closer to my nose and breathed deep again and when I went for a third try we nearly bumped our heads because Eden was going in the same. The smell was of leather and of old sweat and I saw Dad as he huffed fog onto his watch before cleaning its face on his sleeve. I felt like I could smell his breath or a semblance of it and it didn’t have to smell good to smell great.

  ‘Wall Street hours?’ a voice asked loud and clear, unmistakably Bobbie’s, though the shock of it made us nearly drop our treasure.

  ‘I couldn’t sleep,’ I said.

  ‘We’re taking the watches to bed with us,’ Eden announced. We had not conferred but we didn’t need to.

  *

  My dreams that night were grisly. I woke disoriented and with Dad’s watch in my hand. Eden was asleep when I woke but I worried that he might leave without me again and so I lay there with the night-light on and watched him. When he woke I said, ‘It’s pouring outside.’

  ‘Pouring pouring?’ he replied.

  ‘Really heavy,’ I said.

  ‘I’m gonna swim,’ he said.

  ‘The physio said not to,’ I said.

  ‘She said to be active.’

  ‘She meant not to stay in bed.’

  ‘I can kick,’ he said.

  After breakfast Eden moved around the rooms of Bobbie’s house and opened all the windows.

  ‘Can I open up your bedroom?’ he asked Bobbie as if it was trivial.

  She glanced at the door to her bedroom. ‘Probably not,’ she said.

  Minutes later Bobbie stood and walked to the bookcase, to the part where the stereo was. She put on Marcia Hines, ‘Shining’. ‘I can smell the lemon tree,’ she said.

  *

  We had plates, rods and pins removed and then one morning a few weeks later Eden and I raced at the back of Bobbie’s property for the first time since the accident.

  The water level had gone down but the rush of the last rain had cut our favourite groove of creek deeper. Our stretch was so narrow we sometimes bumped shoulders but at least it was mostly straight. We raced now in the opposite direction, against the current.

  ‘Always stare upstream.
It’s where we come from,’ Bobbie said.

  A cold creek in the lee of rain was not part of our physio’s plan but we were kids and Eden was alive and we didn’t want to be stopped.

  Bobbie had Dad’s watch in one hand, her other hand raised above her. ‘Fifteen seconds,’ she called. We breathed deep the bush, the water, the farm. We waited. We leaned down and swung our arms. Eden leaned further than me and rubbed his hands in the dirt, the semi-dry leaves, the red soil gritted.

  ‘Ready,’ he whispered.

  ‘She has Dad’s watch,’ I said.

  ‘He’s timing us,’ he said.

  And then Bobbie called, ‘Straight up the guts!’ and lowered her hand like a gate. We dived in and I broke below the surface and the cold water was everywhere on my bare skin and it was a special place, I felt it then. Eden had pulled back the curtain and opened this world underwater and suddenly I was part of it too. In the water we were not injured or special or especially visible. I couldn’t feel anyone’s pity in that cold country creek.

  I raced, even that first time, with my eyes wide open. I saw underwater the blacks and the browns, the clear and the murk, the shards of sun so distinct they almost looked like cotton. It was a forest under there, all secrets and gardens and stones and critters. I swam fast and I swam mad but what I did not do was swim blind.

  I was hellbent that day. I could not be left behind. I put my head down and beat my arms and legs so frantically that I had no idea where or what of Eden. He was more injured than me and I was ahead but I was so afraid of losing him that I crushed every last fibre into staying out in front. The finish was the log, another fallen tree. I arrived first, my handprint wet on dry wood. I turned to see where Eden was. He was so far back that I felt silly. He wasn’t even swimming properly. His arms were out in front and his head was kept above water. He went hard with his legs but only with his legs. He wasn’t racing, he was training.

  I had tried so hard and he had tried so little and it made me feel so stupid.

  ‘You won,’ he called, slowly coming up to me.

  ‘We were meant to be racing,’ I said.

  ‘You killed me,’ he said.

  ‘Is your back still sore?’ I asked.

  I pulled up onto the log and had started helping Eden when we both saw the snake. It was long, black and red-bellied. It had been sunning itself on the log. I immediately slipped back but Eden kept on forward and as he did the snake jolted straight into the creek itself, its black skin flaring. It fired straight back down the same channel we had just swum. It didn’t move much in the water, it just slipped straight along as if speed could be spelled in wriggles.

  ‘Watch,’ Eden said. He reached back to grab me then as if he really wanted me to see.

  ‘That was like lightning,’ Eden said.

  ‘It’s gone already,’ I said.

  ‘Let’s swim again,’ Eden said and slipped straight back in where the snake had just been.

  ‘If you need me I’ll be in the vineyard,’ Bobbie called out. And then she looked back and aimed towards me, ‘The long game’s usually the better one,’ she said.

  *

  That night just before dark Eden walked out into the cool air and wandered the side paddock and I was out there with him though I watched and wondered as I waited to see what he was up to. ‘Slippery,’ he said, and I thought he was still thinking of that snake. But then he turned to the bush and called, ‘Hemi!’

  And I said, ‘She’ll come.’

  And he said, ‘I miss her.’

  And I said, ‘She’ll smell of sawdust.’

  And then we went back inside. Bobbie didn’t turn to us but she said, ‘Don’t do a runner on me again.’

  *

  We lived at Bobbie’s at Flowerdale from Friday night through to Sunday but we were locked on to living at Newport during the week.

  ‘I feel as though I should offer you some advice,’ Bobbie said on our first proper day back at school. The day before we’d made a shopping list of rice crackers, bananas, bread and Vegemite and stuck it on the fridge. She’d looked at it and said, ‘Being a bad parent is easier.’

  ‘Do you want me to come in?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s okay,’ I said, zipping my bag.

  ‘I met Mr Colt by the way. He didn’t seem too bad.’

  ‘He’s different when adults are around,’ I said.

  ‘Kids can spot hypocrisy from the moon,’ she replied.

  ‘Mahmoud’s mum reckons he’s a root rat,’ Eden said.

  ‘I hope you don’t know what that means,’ Bobbie said.

  ‘Not,’ Eden said, ‘yet.’

  ‘Here goes,’ she said, in a good mood. ‘Every single piece of advice I got from friends at school turned out in hindsight to be terrible. Probably good to know that from the start.’

  ‘Thanks Bobbie,’ Eden said. He stepped from the car and slung his bag onto his shoulder. ‘I’ll remember that next time Jon has a brain wave.’

  And then we trotted into school, the bell just gone, and into the day that would change me.

  Part III

  It happened in the afternoon. It was fleeting. It wasn’t a hot day but it was warm, the class had started silent and on eggshells but as the day passed the return of Eden and me seemed to fall from everyone’s mind. The noise levels in the class shot higher. For the final session of the day, straight after afternoon play, Mr Colt led the class outside for a game of duster hockey, a made-up game played across the netball courts. Teams of two lined up holding long rulers, to be used as hockey sticks, the aim being to whack a whiteboard duster through the piles of jumpers we were using as goals. Over every battle we screamed and barracked. I was teamed with Carmelina. Until that day I had never had a single thing to do with her.

  We waited our turn, everyone cheered and screamed, I stood beside Carmelina.

  From nowhere and for a moment only I felt Carmelina’s hand slip into mine. She pressed my hand briefly and as if in a hurry, and then she let go. We continued to wait for our turn at the game.

  No one else would have seen, everyone’s attention was diverted. It happened so fast it felt critically important, like an accident. And then her hand was gone.

  It didn’t just feel like an acknowledgement, it felt predetermined.

  Carmelina was nine years old and that day she smelled of smoke and in a flood she had made me feel grateful. Unbelievably grateful. She had orange on her face from the duster, her skin was dark, it was as if she’d been dipped in earth, Flowerdale earth, it was as if we were part of a ceremony. Our hands touched and a tingle crackled through me as if gratitude was not just warm but a balm.

  And then we charged out onto the netball court and whacked the hell out of a whiteboard duster.

  And then later as Eden and I walked from school to our Newport house, where Bobbie would be waiting, I said out of nowhere, ‘I wonder if Bobbie knows how to make custard.’

  *

  ‘I saw a man today,’ Bobbie said once we’d arrived home, ‘in the house behind us, the one with the chook shed – pretty sure they’re ISA Browns. He was holding onto his clothesline and was just swinging slowly around in circles, in the sun, in the middle of the day, in dirty jeans and a floppy white shirt.’ Her voice seemed to have less air in it than usual, as if she badly needed to draw one long, deep breath.

  ‘I don’t get it,’ Eden said. ‘How could you see him?’

  ‘I think I was pacing the fence line. I knew I’d go stir crazy here. By the way, I met the Stunt Driver. She said she’s got something to give to you. You two are famous around here.’

  ‘Bet it’s a Golden Rough,’ I said.

  ‘Is this street the epicentre of Golden Rough consumption? I’d never heard of it,’ Bobbie said.

  ‘Her name’s Geri,’ I said.

  ‘What does she think of Barney Bananas?’ Bobbie said.

  ‘Can we go over?’ Eden asked.

  ‘I guess,’ she said. ‘Which reminds me. This Geri woman’s
hubby, the bee bloke, hooked a pumpkin over the top of the fence for us. I’m assuming it was for us.’

  ‘38.60,’ Eden announced.

  ‘His yard stinks of cow shit,’ Bobbie said.

  ‘Fifty-metre butterfly record at Altona for nine-year-olds. I checked on the computer at school. Been the record since 1980.’

  ‘First year of the All Ords,’ Bobbie said.

  I’d come home thinking of the touch of a girl’s hand. Eden had zeroed in on another mark.

  ‘Either of you any good with pumpkin?’ Bobbie asked.

  *

  Eden and I headed next door for chocolate. At the front door there was a white wooden lattice with a passionfruit vine growing on it. Bees bounced from it. The doorstep was cracked, crazy, a home job. Eden knocked and Geri, or the Stunt Driver as Bobbie called her, answered promptly but tentatively, as if she’d been waiting near the door but a few steps away. She was taller than us but only just. When she spoke her voice had a high pitch as if she was nervous or pent up. I’d seen her all my life, waved as she drove past, seen her through her kitchen window as we looked out ours, heard her talking to the budgie she had in a cage. I’d laughed at her nickname, at the way she had to stare through the steering wheel of her car. But I had never stood face to face with her, or not in a way where I was expected to speak. I’d watched her as Mum spoke with her, and knew that as she talked she pressed her toes inwards, so much so that she seemed to bob up and down slightly.

  And while a part of me still wanted to laugh now at how small she was, another part of me did not want to laugh at all, confronted as I suddenly was by the goodness of her. I was so struck with the realisation then, as we put out our hands and hoped for chocolate, that I rocked sideways and made the passionfruit vine shiver. I saw that afternoon that the world terrified Geri and yet still fundamentally she was eager, over-eager, flash in the face of it all, to be generous.