We Were Not Men

by Campbell Mattinson

  ‘I don’t know my way anymore,’ I said.

  ‘Newport’s home,’ he said, certain.

  ‘Newport’s salt,’ I said. ‘Flowerdale’s dirt.’ Because every time I got out of the car the first thing I smelled at Newport was the sea just as at Flowerdale it was the rich red soil.

  I looked away. I looked to my right and saw a huge ship painted in a gunmetal colour. It was loaded with cargo. I looked to my left and saw rows of oil tanks just like the ones near us in Newport except these ones were not white or baby blue but were painted a pale or rusted khaki. I felt surrounded by power and movement, by energy in stores, and all of it was locked away behind metal with no windows.

  ‘I am home,’ my twin brother said to me. The Warmies were just off to the side and we had ventured into this big world of international water and he might have been saying that this was home, this water, but I knew he meant himself. His arms felt strong and he’d locked them around me. I wanted to brush my cheek against his biceps or his shoulder but I didn’t. I thought then how fast those arms made him move.

  I said, ‘I’m breaking.’ I had not planned to say this and I wanted to be a hawk but I still had terror running through me and it made me shiver.

  ‘I’ve got you,’ Eden said. He put a hand to the back of my neck and pulled me towards him and our foreheads touched.

  ‘I know,’ I said.

  ‘I mean it,’ he said.

  And I basked in him for a split brief moment and the sun felt warmer and my shiver slowed and then he said something and it was everything and nothing and I gripped myself tighter.

  ‘You’re coming with me,’ he said.

  I knew that I wasn’t and that my speed or my strength was gone but I liked hearing him say it. I had won races and set records and none of that was fake.

  ‘Don’t,’ I then said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Leave me behind,’ I said.

  ‘Press on,’ he said simply.

  ‘I will,’ I said.

  ‘Press on,’ he said again. ‘You’ll turn, you will,’ he said. I kept looking him in the eye and we were locked and he said, ‘That’s what Bobbie did at work. She just kept turning up and turning up and then one day the path opened up. That’s what you have to do. Just keep diving in. Just keep diving in.’

  I felt as though at any second he would turn and burst away. I thought I wouldn’t be able to keep up. The feel of my twin’s hands on me was tremendous and I wanted him to stay and so I tried to think of something good to say. I was always wondering in my head if there was something I could have said and that if I had Carmelina would still be with me. I said then as an admission, ‘I’m slipping away.’

  ‘Fat,’ he said immediately, just like Bobbie would, ‘fucking,’ he paused, ‘chance’. He said this final word loud and I dug my hands into his skin.

  ‘We’re not half-broke,’ Eden said, right up against me, his teeth gritted. ‘We’re not no-hopers. We have hope. We have hope. We are bloody full of it.’

  *

  Sometimes I’d lean against a warm brick building at lunchtime at school and there would be friends around and the air would smell of hot jam doughnuts and I’d tune out and imagine the colours of Flowerdale and of Newport. I’d see spring green vines and orange dirt, pools of bright blue and dark sea. I’d see flames, the refinery, the dense green of gum, sunshine on bark as it peeled, tree trunks flanked with moss, white steam and that churning aqua scum rushing out from the power station. I’d see the shimmer of fish, frightened, crowded in; the red glow of sun on closed eyes; Hemi’s tail making black shadows as it wagged; the brown of weekday bread, the white bread of weekends.

  And as I saw these colours I’d feel myself fill up with them and I would feel saturated and then I’d imagine a day or a time when I’d turn around a corner and find Carmelina there. Always these colours and this corner turned would lead to Carmelina. In this imagining we’d hang and talk as if that was what we always did, like we’d never stopped.

  And then I’d think or I’d want that it wouldn’t be day at all, this chance meeting with Carmelina, it would be wet and night, and I’d be walking home from somewhere, a party or something, walking down the middle of the road because it was so late and because the dark at the edges would feel too scary. I’d turn and see her and the road would be all reflections because of the wet, neon somewhere or maybe a traffic light, and we’d walk down the dark wet road together so late at night without even talking, without even acknowledging we’d ever been apart, orange street lights showing our way just like the night light in my bedroom once did.

  And then I’d think of Bobbie and how before we came she’d been alone in that farmhouse out there. ‘The winners,’ she’d once said to me as I was helping her put washing into the machine, ‘are the ones who can swallow the most indignities.’

  *

  Eden and I only competed at swimming but at school we’d sometimes play cricket and footy at lunch. Our school didn’t have a baseball team but near the end of Year 9 there was a one-day championship between four schools. Our phys ed teacher picked a team based on who was good at sport. One day Eden and I hopped on a bus and went to compete at baseball.

  We arrived wearing footy shorts and tracksuit pants as if we were rocking up for gym. As we stepped off the bus we saw that the three other teams were all in immaculate baseball uniforms. If Bobbie had been there she’d have commented on the swishing of manes.

  The first innings we fielded. I had on a borrowed baseball glove. My fingers reached too far into it. The team we played sent their best batters in first. I spent the first twenty minutes of the game watching balls sail over my head, out of the ground and into the houses across the road.

  The first time a ball flew at me I went at it with two hands like I would in cricket, hands in front of my eyes. The glove got in the way and the ball deflected to the ground. People laughed. Then another ball flew at me. It was a sky ball. As I watched the ball fly I noticed a plane groan past in the background. This plane made me think of a helicopter and of that night. Just before the ball reached me I flung the baseball glove away. The ball dropped from the sky and stuck in my bare hands and watching all these easy home runs had made me angry though I only realised it then.

  Then it was my turn to bat. I looked at the pitcher and thought of Carmelina and how she no longer returned my messages. This made me think of swimming and how I couldn’t swim fast enough anymore.

  The first pitch came straight at me. It hit me on the point of the shoulder. It hurt like a bullet. The referee stepped towards the pitcher and halted play. He was both the referee and the coach of the opposing side. He gave a warning but I didn’t believe it.

  The next pitch was higher but it dipped late. It looked different but it hit me in the exact same spot. The first one had hurt but it was nothing in comparison to the second. I stood and did not rub it, but on the inside I ran for my life. The referee issued another warning. I knew the third pitch would be straight at me again. I was ready but when it came it was at my head. I rose to it and saw it coming at my chin. It had a curve to it or a swing. I thought I might let it hit me and then stare the pitcher down. It would have knocked me out though. I wanted Eden to help but there was no time. I thought of Bobbie and how she’d never once used the word love or not as Mum would have.

  I stepped inside the ball then and suddenly it wasn’t baseball. It was more like cricket but really it was just me and nothing else. Baseball has a clear field of view but when the ball reached me I was inside its line and outside its view. My feet were sure and across and I’d planted them. My arms were powerful. I smashed that ball in a way that would have deformed it. It was the best hook shot of my life. I hit it so sweetly and gave it so much that it disappeared over a set of classrooms. It wasn’t a home run but it was a six. None of the kids we’d played against that day knew who Eden and I were or what we’d gone through. I realised this then. I turned to Eden and the bat still felt sweet in my hands an
d I didn’t care if I was out or in or whether the pitcher should have been cautioned. I hadn’t had a moment that good in a while.

  Eden lay on the ground, casual. The sun was on him. His teeth were white and his face was bright and he had the biggest smile ever.

  ‘Shot, Jonno,’ he said. Everything was so quiet as he said these words that it seemed as though they resounded.

  *

  And then I realised that Eden and Bobbie in her way were marshalling their forces. Because they thought I needed to be rescued. Because I hadn’t taken the bend when Carmelina left and now I was just sliding.

  *

  On the way to the next swim meet Bobbie called me ‘Baker-Finch’ and I didn’t know what that meant but I hid behind it and laughed and then there was silence between us in the car and this was unusual. Eden got faster all the time and the Victorian Institute of Sport had filmed him underwater and had started to talk to him about the Rio Olympics. It was two years away.

  This next race wasn’t normal. I jumped in and sprinted the start because that was what I always did. We finished the first lap and it was the 200-metre free and near the end of the second I felt myself slipping. I was slowing down or at least not sitting so high in the water. As I slowed I imagined the voices of the other swimmers. They said that I was dead and that I was gone. They knew they were going to catch me. As I imagined these voices I felt the spring of hope in their stroke. I was still leading but I had already lost. I took a breath and glanced ahead and the wall was too far and we still had another lap. We turned again and near the start of that final lap I saw the spray. It flicked out ahead, into my clear water, they’d moved close enough to throw water out ahead of me like confetti.

  No one believed in me now, not even me.

  I thought to myself then that the only thing I had left was surprise. I put my head down and closed my eyes and they kept coming at me and I would be overtaken. I clawed then into the rainy-day part of myself. I took from what cannot be rebuilt. I attacked even though my arms and my legs didn’t want to. I realised as they were about to pass that they were weak too and could only surge because I’d let them.

  My head down, a hand of cards, poker. I swam heavy but I swam gritted. I’d bluff their house down. I acted and reacted then as if I was strong and I’d been waiting and they’d fallen for me. I was only one thing and it was now. I drew then from the only energy I had left and that was the deep dark dehydrated well of hate that I had for being written off. I dug and I clawed and I led or at least I held them. There was losing and not losing. I would win or I would stop. I swam then as if every stroke was my last and as I did I felt the pace of the swimmers around me ease as if they had hit mud in the form of doubt. I had reached too far and I had to stop but I didn’t. Instead I attacked again as if I had plenty. My body was a milkshake of lactose. Still they came. Still the wall eluded. Even in the water I could feel that my face was a map of red. But still I kept on and still I dug deeper. Then I was done. You can’t fake speed and you can’t bluff it. I had my eyes closed and my head down and I had lost so many races. I felt the wall then and I’d held them off. I’d won.

  The water washed and my chest heaved and I had time to think.

  Fuck them, I thought.

  Fuck them all, whoever they are.

  She hasn’t even called, I thought.

  Fuck her too.

  *

  Bobbie approached and she beamed and she said, ‘Great swim,’ and I enjoyed her saying it. ‘I knew you were oversold,’ she said.

  I said, ‘It wasn’t fast.’ I didn’t care but I’d looked at the time clock and it wasn’t anything special and in fact I’d still swum slow.

  ‘Even better,’ she said.

  ‘It was slow,’ I emphasised.

  ‘And you still won,’ she said. She said this as if winning in a slow time was even better than breaking a record. ‘Slower than you want but faster than you think,’ she added.

  We walked back to the stands then and I wrapped a towel around my shoulders and I’d just won and it was the first time in a long time but I sat down beside her as if nothing was different. We looked out at the pool and not at each other. She said, ‘You showed grit.’ She looked straight at me then.

  I did not turn to her immediately and I made her wait but then I said, ‘If I was a ship I’d be turning.’

  *

  Eden and I were in the kitchen doing the dishes. I pulled a pizza tray from the hot soapy water and turned it over and saw a name, in handwriting, written on the tray itself. Georgina. I did not know who Georgina was, but it meant that it was a tray from when Eden and I first landed at Flowerdale, from when people had left dishes of food.

  Suddenly I was interested in racing again. ‘What do you think of, when you’re standing on the blocks, when you’re just about to race?’ I said, still looking at that name on the tray.

  Sometimes I wondered if I started races so fast out of panic.

  Eden took the pizza tray from me. He was lightning with his answer. ‘I feel like I’m just about to jump into the best bit,’ he said. ‘Like the best bit of my favourite song.’

  I thought again how different we were. I thought again how magnificent he was.

  ‘And then,’ he said, ‘I look over at you.’

  ‘Straight down the lane,’ I said. ‘You only ever look straight down the lane.’ Because I always looked for him and he never looked back.

  ‘I think,’ he said, the pizza tray now dry in his hands, ‘about the other swimmers. And how they’re thinking about you. And about me. Because people are always thinking about us. But especially about you. Because you’re going to lead out. You’re going to race for that first wall as if you’ll die if you don’t beat everyone to it.’

  The water in the sink was hot, too hot, and I didn’t have gloves on. I danced my hands around the plates or I had been. By mistake then I put my hands too deep into the boiling water and they hurt but instead of pulling them straight out I kept them there for as long as I could stand it.

  I said, ‘I have to get on the front and drive it.’

  ‘That’s not racing,’ he said, ‘that’s ushering.’

  *

  And then the stakes ramped higher. And everything after that, well, it was after that.

  *

  It was late, I was isolated, I was at a festival in Melbourne with Eden and fifteen or twenty people from school but we’d split up. I stood near a boatshed by the Yarra River. The shed’s walls were made of cedarwood, Western red, not arranged crossways but in narrow vertical slats. Over the road and up the hill there was the music bowl. A hum like bees, like a chant, came from that direction: a song by The National, ‘Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks’. Most of my friends had been drinking since afternoon and were drunk now and I’d had nothing but I felt drunk anyway or something like it; we’d trained hard that morning and I hadn’t drunk enough water and it was warm and I felt light-headed and dizzy.

  And as I stood there with my back on the slatted wood I suddenly wanted to, for the first real time, I wanted to try alcohol. I knew though that when I did it would be one of Bobbie’s wines, one of her choosing. This thought though and that fuzzy lightness in my head made me feel loose and alone. If I’d texted Eden he’d have come to me. I didn’t though, I waited. I looked at the river flowing by in the night, peddling rubbish. I tried to melt further back into the slatted red wood wall. I closed my eyes. I thought of the weatherboard wall where I’d first kissed Carmelina. I thought of all those little moments with Mum and how I’d thrown them away as if they would be endless when in fact they had been numbered and few. I wished I could go back. I wished I could go back and collect those moments with Mum and place them in a nest as if they were fragile and precious like eggs. I wanted to nurture the time I’d had with Mum but instead it tunnelled the other way; I could feel everything I had of her slipping, just like I was now, the same as the river. I opened my eyes and looked at the water and there were reflections but they were just
lights, city lights, and so I closed my eyes again and rested.

  There was a gentle cool to the air, swept along by the run of the river. There were people all about, bumping into one another, making sounds that could mean anything. With my eyes closed I thought again of the dirty river. Follow this river and it would take you to The Warmies or just about. I wondered if I could dive into the river with some form of conviction, if I had it in me. I wanted to think that I could still swim fast, that I had speed buried in me, that I had something more than just winning, something blistering. I was thinking these things, my eyes closed, the river and the wood, those endless cravings for anything that I could imagine of Mum, when I felt a pair of lips press against mine, not a word, just lips, they could have belonged to anyone.

  I wasn’t shocked. I didn’t jump. I took to these lips as if I’d been waiting. They pressed soft but in a way that made me know they would not go away. I did not open my eyes. I did not recoil or move. I returned the kiss. It was Carmelina.

  I knew without looking and I knew it in my toes and all the way up. I would have pretended it was her even if it wasn’t. I buzzed; I was excited; I shivered so fast I could have taken off, like a drone. When I eventually did open my eyes it was still night but it was like opening them to a brand-new day; the slumber had been long, the waking was wonderful. Carmelina. It was her; she was back and she was kissing me as if she was in a hurry or was trying to make up time. I hadn’t turned a corner and I wasn’t walking, I’d just been standing there, the wall of a boatshed, but it still felt exactly as I’d imagined it would. I opened my eyes as a boat moved past on the water, bright orange lights blinking on its sides. A word came to me. I said this word in my mind, as if breathing it in. Now. I thought the word Now. I thought again of Mum and as soon as I did I wanted to run or swim to her as fast as I could to tell her that Carmelina was here and that she had come back to me.

  *

  I was excited but I said, ‘I’m not the same.’ As if I was a river.