White Ute Dreaming

by Scot Gardner

  ‘Um, yeah.’

  ‘Not bloody likely.’

  ‘Straight road and everything. Not much traffic. Carn.’

  She shook her head. ‘No way. It’s harder than you think, Wayne. You haven’t got your learner’s permit or anything.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Nup,’ she said.

  It had been a long while since I’d seen the inside of a hospital and all the memories of my last visit came wafting back like a fart in the supermarket. We had to walk past a courtyard with nice flowerbeds and two old blokes in wheelchairs. They were both missing a leg from the knee down and were kicking back in the afternoon sun. Well, not doing much kicking but they looked relaxed. I waved with my stump but neither of them noticed.

  Uncle Don looked half-dead. More than half; three-quarters maybe. His skin used to be the colour of a good strong hot chocolate, now it looked more like a banana milkshake. His eyes had sunk, like his head had been deflated a bit and he was held in place by a network of tubes and wires like that bloke in Gulliver’s Travels. Yeah, Gulliver. He was stoked to see us.

  ‘Hi Don, how are you?’ Mum asked, and then hugged him so he couldn’t answer anyway but he would have said, ‘Good, yeah. Going all right, Sylvie. And you?’ like he always did.

  I held his hand. I moved to the side of the bed and sort of shook hands and he didn’t let go. He was still hanging on when Ted and Penny came in and my hand was slimy with sweat. I slipped out of his grip and stood against the wall while he pleaded with his brother and sister to take him home.

  ‘I don’t want to die in a bloody hospital. Take me home and put me in a chair under the lemon tree. Let me die with a beer in my hand. Right? Not all these bloody tubes and wires and shit. We’ll get a bit of a fire going, right, and when I’m done you can chuck me on top.’

  Ted laughed. Mum started crying. Penny walked into the corridor. Later that night, after Mum had a long talk with his doctor, we took him back to his place. Mum helped him slick his hair back and get his clothes on. He sat in his favourite armchair and watched a bit of telly. I fell asleep on the couch but I woke up again at about three o’clock.

  ‘Where are my teeth?’ Don asked. Ted and Penny had gone. Mum was having a smoke in the kitchen. ‘They’re in your pocket, Donny.’

  Through bleary eyes I watched him stick his teeth in with a wet rattle.

  Mum was on the phone when I woke up again, telling Uncle Ted or someone that he’d gone. I rubbed my eyes and looked at his chair. He just looked like he was asleep. His head hung forward a bit but not uncomfortably. I watched his chest for a while waiting for him to breathe. He didn’t. So that’s what a dead person looks like? Nothing spectacular really. I thought about Kerry and the talks we’d had about death and I got a bit freaked. What if when you die you just step outside your body? What if his spirit was floating around the room watching us? I went and had a shower and by the time I got back into the lounge, he’d gone. They’d loaded him into a fat black hearse and Mum was standing in the drive talking to one of the blokes. It all happened a bit quick.

  I thought we’d pack up and go home. I hoped we would anyway. It’s not much fun living in a dead bloke’s house and Mum always packs shit clothes when she packs for me. Stuff I haven’t worn for ages that she likes and I hate. Turned out the funeral wasn’t going to happen until Wednesday. I moped around the dead man’s house on Sunday and Monday like everyone else, set up Den’s slot car set, smoked Mum’s smokes and got freaked at night.

  On Tuesday, Mum had to go with Uncle Ted to the solicitors and I found the key to the back shed. Didn’t think the old bloke would mind if I had a bit of a look out there. He had an easel set up with blank paper sitting on it. A ratty old armchair, a dusty desk and a single fluoro overhead. He’d drawn all over the desk in pen. Some maths calculations but mostly really fine doodles of people and animals. Must have taken years to do it all. He’d been a clever bloke. I found an old work locker, a tall one for hanging clothes in. It had been laid on its side and attached to the wall so that it made one long shelf with a door on the front. Bookshelf. The locker was packed with stick books. Every edition of Penthouse magazine since 1972. Playboy. Mayfair. The works. What a goldmine. I found an old stale packet of Benson and Hedges in another draw so I sat in the armchair and smoked the old bloke’s smokes and read his stick books. Yep. I remember you.

  Mum came back from the solicitors while I was taking a leak in the backyard. I did a quick tidy-up of the shed and wandered into the house.

  ‘Ted and I are the executors of his will and they’re going to read it next Tuesday, so I’m going to have to go home and come back or stay here till then. I think I’ll stay. Clean up a bit of this mess.’

  That sounded exciting. I would have been bored shitless of stick books by then. ‘What about me?’

  ‘I’ll try and get in touch with your dad. Maybe you could stay with him for a couple of days. Do you want to go to the funeral? You don’t have to.’

  I nodded. I’d like to say goodbye to the old bloke. ‘I could go back on the train after that.’

  They didn’t slick his hair right. They dressed him up like a ponce. At least they left his teeth in. I couldn’t see them but I could tell by the way that his cheeks were hanging that they were still in. It wasn’t him. It was his body all right, resting in a shiny coffin on top of a solid timber pedestal, but it looked like a cold lump of meat. Nothing like the cheeky bugger that had lived in it. I wished I hadn’t come. There were about fifty people there. I only knew Mum and Ted and Penny, and Jenelle my thick cousin. Don hadn’t been big on church and they had the funeral at the chapel where they were going to cremate him, but they still had someone come in and rabbit on about God and him. Called him Donald Kirkbride instead of Kirkwood. Dickhead. Probably didn’t even know him. Quite a few of the people in the chapel were Aboriginal. One big lady was bawling her eyes out. Made me wonder if she’d been Don’s woman. He’d always lived by himself, never had a wife or an obvious girlfriend but he’d been happy.

  At the end of the ceremony my floodgates opened. An athletic Aboriginal bloke, about thirty, dressed in a cool-looking suit and barefoot came to the front beside Don’s box. He sat on one foot and stretched the other leg in front of him. He rested the end of a long wooden didjeridu on his toes and sat for almost a minute with his eyes closed and the other end to his lips. From my front row seat I could see the dots and lines—red, black, yellow: the colours of the earth—that came together to make the picture of a snake with its head resting on a bit of a lump on the wood near the fella’s big toe. When he played my skin crawled. That low rumble was the saddest, most awesome sound I had ever heard. My eyes started watering and they wouldn’t stop. Don’s coffin started to sink like magic into the pedestal as the bloke played. I guess it was all done with hydraulics and that but with that awesome music it turned into an eerie thing, watching his body and his box disappear. Mum and a few others near me started sobbing out loud. He was gone.

  Chapter Ten

  MUM DROPPED ME AT THE STATION THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON. I got on the two fifty-five to Spencer Street. I wasn’t sad but I tried not to get too excited in front of Mum. Can’t help myself, I love trains. Her brother had just died. Had to cut her a bit of slack, you know. She gave me twenty bucks and kissed me on the cheek. See ya.

  There weren’t many people on the train. A few pensioners and a bloke in a blue singlet with more tattoos than bare skin. He had tattoos on his bald head. Mate, that’d have to hurt. My seat was next to his. I sat down half on the armrest instead of the seat.

  The bloke looked up, smiled and said g’day. ‘Don’t worry, mate. I don’t bite hard.’

  I hadn’t brought anything to read. Should have grabbed a couple of mags from Uncle Don’s shed—I didn’t think he’d be needing them. The tattoo bloke was looking out the window as we rumbled through the outskirts of Shep into the farmland, so I read his arm. He had a cobweb over his elbow and a snake wrapped around his wrist with eve
ry scale drawn in. ‘Jill’ and ‘Amy’ and ‘Kim Hun’ were tattooed side by side on his shoulder and I wondered how his girlfriends would feel about that. I was trying to read the upside-down word tattooed in fancy old writing on the back of his hand when I noticed he was watching me.

  ‘Nice tattoos,’ I said, and my voice squeaked.

  ‘Yeah, thanks mate,’ he said, and turned his fist toward me so I could read it properly. ‘Peace.’ He showed me the other knuckle, which I thought would say ‘War’ but said ‘Love’.

  ‘You can’t go wrong telling someone that you like their tattoos,’ he said, and smiled. His teeth looked like they were his own and they were clean and shiny. He had a star tattooed in the middle of his brow like an Indian woman and another one on each cheek.

  ‘Have you got a favourite?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah, but I don’t get to see it much,’ he said, and lifted up his singlet to show me his back. It was a massive eagle with every feather drawn in.

  ‘Whoah. That’s stunning.’

  ‘Thanks mate,’ he said, and pulled his singlet back down. There was an older couple across the aisle and the bloke was trying not to look. The old woman was smiling.

  ‘Have you got any that you wished you’d never had done?’

  ‘Oh no. Every one has been a big decision, I tell you. Here’s my first one . . .’ he said, and turned so I could see his other shoulder. It said: ‘R.I.P. Robyn.’

  ‘Who was Robyn?’

  ‘A girl in high school. Mate, I loved her.’

  ‘How did she die?’

  ‘She didn’t,’ he said, and I thought I’d asked too much. ‘Some blokes get tattoos before they’re old enough, you know, some backyard job with a needle and some pen ink. They’ll live to regret it, some of them. My dad was like that. He didn’t tell me not to get tattoos, he just told me to know myself before I started getting them. If you don’t know yourself, like the things that really crank your handle, then there’s a big risk you’ll get a tattoo that you’ll regret later on.’

  I nodded and thought about that for a minute. What about when you get a new girlfriend and you’ve already got someone else’s name tattooed into your skin? That’s a bit awkward. He must have read my mind.

  ‘Yeah, but even so, life’s a journey. If you don’t change every now and then, you die. Kim Hun is my wife. We’ve been married for sixteen years. Jill is my eldest. She’s fifteen and Amy is twelve.’

  ‘Cool,’ I said, and bit down on my tongue.

  ‘I wanted my body to be a work of art. All the pictures mean something to me. They all tell a story.’ He rolled up the leg of his pants so I could see his left calf. Oriental warrior.

  ‘This bloke, Musashi, is a Japanese folk hero. A Samurai. He could fight. Mate, he was the best of the best. He could sit a grain of rice on your head and cut it in two without hurting you. When he’d had enough of fighting he’d retreat into the forest and meditate. That’s me. I’m on the train now to Melbourne to catch a plane out of Tulla to Darwin. I work for the whole of the dry season on a mango plantation and my wife and kids live here, with her family. Great money. And when the wet comes and things get a bit uncomfortable up there, I fly back home with my pockets full of cash. Me and the missus and the kids pack our gear in the ute and go bush for a couple of months every summer. Mate, it’s a good life.’

  He looked at his boot and mumbled, ‘Except for the week before I go back to work.’

  He had spoken softly. His voice was sort of like music, like he’d be a good singer. He told me some great stories about his tattoos. His life. My favourite was the tattoo on the underside of his right arm. Near his wrist. It was a car wheel. No shit. Even had ‘Good Year Wrangler’ on the wall of the tyre. It was circled by the sort of art I’d seen earlier on that bloke’s didjeridu and three letters. W. U. D.

  ‘On the station there are lots of Aboriginal workers. My boss, Todd, the bloke who owns the farm, employs them during harvest when they haven’t got other stuff to do. The station backs on to an Aboriginal reserve so they don’t have to walk far to go home. They’re a happy mob and one of the blokes—Peter—comes back every year and works with me. I’d say he’s my best mate up there and I was telling him about my summer trip with the family a couple of years back and he gave it a name. He called it my “White Ute Dreaming”.’

  The trip went so fast. I didn’t even know his name. I told him about Uncle Don. He asked me about Dad and I told him stuff that hadn’t had words wrapped around it very often. Like how I hated my dad. Like how I reckon he’s hot for Pat but he can’t be honest with me. Like how I sometimes think the reason he doesn’t want me around is because he doesn’t like me.

  ‘I doubt if it would be like that, mate,’ he said, and looked out the window. ‘Sometimes dads find it hard to tell their kids that they love them. Don’t take it too personally.’

  We had started zipping past metro stations when he asked me how I’d lost my hand. He was innocent and honest about it like a year-seven kid with guts so I told him straight. I had an accident with a brick saw.

  He screwed up his face and sucked air through his teeth. ‘Bet that hurt.’

  I nodded. ‘It was a year ago. Bloody painful for a long time. Just tingles when I get in a hot shower now, though.’

  ‘How was it at school?’

  ‘Fine. No problem,’ I said, and his brow scrunched up. ‘To be honest I felt like a bit of a retard to start with. Everyone gawking at me and that.’

  He laughed out loud. ‘I bet they got over it.’

  ‘Yeah. They did. Now no-one really cares. I mean, sometimes people who don’t know me stare at me and that but I guess that’s only because I’m different. They’d do that if I had mega zits or slanty eyes or spiky hair or whatever. Or tattoos.’

  He laughed and nodded. The silence that followed made his next words tear into me.

  ‘What did you learn from it?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What did you learn about yourself from your accident?’

  ‘I dunno,’ I said.

  His brow scrunched again.

  ‘Well, for one thing I learnt that even though people look a bit different on the outside it doesn’t mean they’re demented or bad or that. You know?’

  ‘Yeah. That’s pretty obvious.’

  The train was fluffing and groaning as we pulled up at Spencer Street. The sound could have been the workings of my head. The tattoo bloke was collecting his bag from under his seat. We got out before the grannies and stood facing each other on the platform.

  ‘I learnt that it will take a bit to stop me,’ I said, and shook his hand.

  He laughed. ‘Salaam, brother. Been good to meet you.’

  He burst through the turnstile and into the street.

  ‘Hey! What’s your name?’ I shouted, but he didn’t hear me.

  I ran after him but the bloke at the turnstile stopped me and wanted to see my ticket. That’s bullshit. The bloke with the tattoos just burst through without blinking and I’ve got to show my ticket. Everyone knows that all teenagers, especially boys, jump trains, steal shit, burn things down, draw all over the walls and wreck the furniture. That’s a crock.

  I wasn’t in a big hurry to get on another train out to Chisholm but I was in a big hurry to find a lemon tree. There were none on Spencer Street so I nipped back into the station and used the dunny there. A huge biker bloke with a beard that covered half his pot gut stood at the urinal. His arm had the tattoo of a fish with wicked, pointy teeth. I peed and peed but the big bloke peed longer. At the sink, washing our hands, I couldn’t help myself.

  ‘Nice tat,’ I said, and he stood and looked down at me.

  ‘Ta, mate,’ he said, and walked off.

  It works.

  I walked around to Bourke Street. It was getting dark but there were still a few people around. A small crowd had gathered around a busker so I went to check it out. He was making music that was like the stuff Kerry listens to—all mystical and wishy
-washy. Pushing through to the front I could see he was playing something like an electric guitar that didn’t have a body, just a neck. He finished the song as I got there. The crowd clapped and filed some coins into his case.

  ‘Thank you. Any other requests? I’m going to make this one my last song,’ he said into the little microphone that was hooked in front of his mouth like a telephone operator. If he had got up from behind the music machines that surrounded him, you would swear he was a feral. Hair all over the joint and clothes with holes. His woolly beard had something orange stuck in it.

  ‘Can you do “Mull of Kintyre”?’ someone asked.

  ‘No, not on Thursdays,’ he said, and they laughed.

  ‘How about that one from Picnic at Hanging Rock?’

  He plucked three notes on his guitar neck then said, ‘Nah, you’ll all go to sleep. Something with a bit of guts.’

  ‘How about some Feral Pigs?’ I asked.

  ‘Pigs! Yes. Now we’re talking,’ he said, and looked at me. ‘What song would you like?’

  ‘Can you do “Nasty Piece”?’

  He nodded and turned to his drum pad thingy. He touched it gently with his fingers and it let rip a giant bass drum sound. Pressed a foot pedal and got a serious groove happening. He pulled the orange thing out of his beard and used it to play the strings on his bodiless guitar. What a sound. Pigs live. He even knew all the little starting bits and he sounded like Jason when he sang. The street started dancing and I grooved along with them. No-one would know me so I didn’t care. He did an extended solo that cooked and finished up with a massive crashing chord that had everyone screaming and whooping.

  ‘Thank you! Have a good night.’

  I fished in my pocket for some coinage to stick in his case but I only had Mum’s twenty. I wasn’t going to put it all in.

  ‘Can I get some change?’ I asked, and the young bloke standing next to me laughed.

  ‘Change? What for?’ Mr Feral Music said.

  I felt like a dick but I was in too deep and too hyped up from the dancing for it to slow me down.