After rehearsing this imagined meeting out in my head dozens of times, I started to become vaguely fond of Steve Sanders. He might’ve had a good reason to bash me, even if he never deigned to spell it out. Maybe he didn’t want to spell it out because he’d realised after making the decision that he was wrong, but had too much pride to admit it. Steve Sanders was probably not an unreasonable man at all. Maybe he was beaten as a child, or had fallen on hard times. Maybe he was upset that I had a job and he didn’t. Maybe he was annoyed that I, a stranger, was living a satisfactory life in the town while he was not.
But in the light of day, I was so worried that I did not feel ashamed to press Rob for more details about Steve Sanders.
Rob was surprised I didn’t already know him. Everyone in the town knew who Steve Sanders was. He drank at the Railway Hotel, and was a born-and-bred local of the town. Rob had not been bashed before. He seemed pained on my behalf, but impatient about my quest for any reasons behind Steve’s motives. As time passed, I began to sympathise with his lassitude. Did Steve Sanders really need a reason to bash someone? Maybe he did not. And why should I know why? More important questions remained unanswered in the world, and logic was a precious commodity, especially in the town.
No amount of roleplaying on my part could place me in the mind of Steve Sanders. I looked at men in the Woolworths and tried to imagine wanting to bash them. It was easy to generate a dislike for them, but it was a flimsy and dispassionate dislike. Maybe Steve Sanders was so pure of heart that he could not look at another person without wanting to enact the strongest manifestation of his emotions pertaining to them. Maybe, when Steve Sanders bashed me, I would notice a trick in his eyes that revealed the reasons, and then it would all make sense.
After a while I came to see things as Jenny did: I would need to get the bashing over with. It would be a surrender. I would face him and extend an invitation to beat me, believing that under those circumstances it would be foolish for him to do so.
I visited the Railway Hotel one Friday night after three rapidly-drunk beers. The pub was on a quiet strip of the town and attracted mainly old people. It felt like someone’s smoky lounge room, with the Channel Seven news playing from a television in the corner, and the smell of roast and gravy permeating the bistro. It did not seem like the kind of place someone enthusiastic about random bashings would visit regularly.
Apart from some elderly men watching sport in the pokies room, there were only three families eating dinner in the pub. I sat at the bar and ordered a drink, browsing some of the pub’s photos for evidence of anything Steve Sanders-related. The photos depicted red-faced men and women waving their glasses towards the camera, having a deserved drink. The publican poured me a headless schooner of his cheapest beer, and I asked him whether he knew a Steve Sanders.
The publican pointed into the bistro at a family eating dinner. Steve Sanders, with his family.
I could only see the back of Steve Sanders’s head, but his two young daughters and wife were in full view. They were all neatly dressed and beautiful, with stern faces turned towards the nightly news. It looked as if they were having a routine Friday night pub dinner, the kind of tradition common among normal families in towns. The woman could not have been older than forty, while the girls, with their satisfied, focused faces, both appeared aged between eight and twelve.
As for Steve Sanders himself, I could only see the back of a balding head, and the upturned collar of a football jumper. He wore neat faded blue jeans and working boots, and from my vantage point did not seem tense or aggressive. He was a regular, heavyset man of apparently below-average height. He had a domestic life, and enough money to take his family out at night.
What do you want Sando for, the publican asked me.
I sipped my beer. That’s not the Steve Sanders I’m looking for, I told the publican. Little wonder it isn’t, since there are so many of them in the town.
The publican grunted in a manner which confirmed that indeed there were many of them in town. He made no move to go about his business, though obviously bored of me.
After that we sat silently for a while. When the quiet between us became intensely awkward, I lied that many years ago I had attended high school with a Steve Sanders in a nearby town, hence my search. I had heard that he’d moved here and often visited this very pub. We had made no arrangements to meet, but I thought I’d try my luck surprising him.
When the publican looked at me I saw doubt on his face. You’re that bloke writing the book, aren’t you, he said.
I nodded, in a manner I hoped looked begrudging. I’m writing a book about some old towns in the region, I said. I’m certainly not writing about this town, as rumour would have it, and besides, the book will probably not be a very good one. It’d probably be among the worst ever written, and I will likely need to stop writing it one day and focus on something else, such as opening a shop of some sort, or working with the council.
The publican listened. When I had finished my speech he fixed his eyes on a nearby Keno screen and remained silent. I did the same, and wondered how I could escape the pub without appearing guilty. The Channel Seven news theme aired dramatically from the television watched by the Sanders family, so I pretended to watch it also. They appeared to be in conversation now, or at least, the woman and two girls looked as if they were listening to Steve Sanders hold forth about some or other topic.
After a longer period of silence, the publican asked whether I was sure the dining Steve Sanders wasn’t the one I was after. He had noticed I was watching them. He said he’d call him over.
I told him to stop, almost yelling. I assured him I was on such intimate terms with my Steve Sanders that I would know, just by looking at the back of his neck, whether he was the correct one. My Steve Sanders has no children, I said. Nor a wife. And anyway, I said, isn’t it interesting what is happening on the news right now.
We’ll be swamped with them soon, the publican agreed.
Later I told Jenny at the pub what I had done, and she seemed amused. She was honoured that I had taken her advice to get the confrontation over with, even if I had failed because my strategy was too transparent.
She said that I should walk the streets at night, or even by day when the football’s not on. Make it seem spontaneous. Act like they do in sport; expect it when you least expect it — she threw my small change into the till — but try to look like you’re least expecting it.
*
The town had a train station, but it was now only a museum. It was a historical landmark in the eyes of the townspeople, yet Jenny didn’t know when it was built or when it had closed.
I asked Jenny about the train station one day at the pub. I wanted to know whether one could get a train to the city, should one wish to do so. I was careful to add that I did not want to take a train to the city. I was only curious about the town’s infrastructure.
She said the town didn’t have “infrastructure”, and that no one knew when the train station was built, nor when it closed. Old people probably knew both dates, but no one would think to ask them about it, because it was simply a historical train station.
The train station museum didn’t have any plaques or signage indicating the train station’s age, she said. It was the train station museum only by name, because truthfully, it was mainly a showcase for local arts and craft. Pottery, porcelain dolls, plates, placemats, collectible spoons and teacups were all available to purchase, and all were decorated with images of the train station. It wasn’t even a museum: it was a shop.
A freight train raced through the platform at 5pm every weekday, and during that time the train station museum staff ushered all visitors — if there were any at the museum at all — onto the platform so they could imagine what it would be like to board or disembark a train in the town.
One day a man ran and leapt onto the high speed freight train as it passed through the station. It was a talking point for many weeks afterwards, but not because the man had possi
bly wished to kill himself. Instead, the news reports focused on where the man could be. Where could the train have taken him?
Many people in the town, including Jenny, had never thought about the freight train properly before. It had not occurred to them that the train station museum had once been a fully operational train station. The freight train had been assumed to be a performance put on by the train station museum in order to attract customers, and Jenny admitted this was not a clever assumption. But since no one ever had cause to scrutinise the freight train, no one had done so. It was just part of the train station museum’s daily attractions. So no, you cannot get a train to the city from here, she told me. The train line doesn’t go anywhere. She busied herself at the register.
I told Jenny that it was impossible for the train line to go nowhere, and that it would not be hard to find its final or even next destination on a map. She insisted that it didn’t go anywhere because trains didn’t run along it, except for the one freight train.
People in the town talked spiritedly about this for more than a fortnight. The destination of the freight train was of great interest, because everyone wanted to know where the leaping man went.
The fuss culminated when a group of men and women took it upon themselves to walk along the train line, starting from the train station museum and heading west. People gathered to watch them depart. Jenny told me that these people who’d decided to wander along the track, though they had good intentions, were the stupidest people in the town. If someone had asked her beforehand who would take part in an adventure like that, she would have listed the top ten stupidest people in the town, and she would have been correct, because it was these people who went. But if there’s one thing the people in this town love to do, Jenny said, it’s to watch stupid people do stupid things, and to encourage them.
I asked her what happened. Did the police stop them? Did they walk, or were they on pushbikes, riding next to the tracks? Did they take a packed lunch?
She asked if I knew what was on the other side of this town, though she didn’t wait for a response – waving her arms westerly, she told me that there was countryside, of course. And then, on the other side of that countryside, there was more countryside. Then there might be a town somewhere, but no one can walk there. You can walk for as long as it takes to get to the next town, but you won’t get there, because you just have to drive. It’s simply impossible to walk. You need a car, and you need your car to have a full tank of petrol, and an emergency can in the boot.
Jenny didn’t know what had happened to the stupidest people in the town, nor did she have any theories. Best case scenario they camped out and then came home, she said. Where they should have stayed in the first place. At home.
*
There was a customer famous among the shelf packers at the Woolworths. His name was Rick McDonald and he would visit the supermarket every day. At about 1pm he would arrive, retrieve a trolley, and then gradually wander each of the aisles, grabbing only one or two items along the whole way. He would spend many hours doing this, and on some days he would still be in the shop when it closed at 10pm. He was a laughing stock, a local fool, but my fellow packers were fond of him in the way you can be fond of idiotic men. Management never bothered him because no matter how long it took, he always purchased at least one or two items.
Rick was a middle-aged man who reportedly lived alone in the poor area near the old gasworks, where everyone strange in the town was said to live. Myths circulated about Rick – chief among them was that he was an undercover agent for the competing Coles, situated in the competing plaza, sent to assess the price of every item on a daily basis, even on weekends. Yet he was clearly an eccentric, even if most of the myths that had formed around him were rational. All assumed some businesslike purpose to his daily visits, as if it were impossible for the town to host a genuine stranger.
One evening as I was packing tinned tuna, he turned into my aisle and bumped his trolley into mine, sending several dozen tins of tuna rolling to the laminate. Upset, he parked his trolley and started bundling cans into his arms – except he kept dropping them, causing an even bigger ruckus. I told him to proceed with his shopping, that I could fix the problem, but he insisted, in a friendly if frantic manner, that he stop and help me shelve for a while.
Rick kept apologising as we shelved tuna in chilli oil together, one tin at a time. He said he often watched us packers, and wondered how we coped with such gruelling workloads. He was obviously eager to compensate me for what he believed was a grievous waste of my time.
I told Rick that I did not care whether I finished packing the shelves or not, since working at the supermarket as a packer was not my life calling. Nor was it gruelling, because I was able to listen to dictations of my writing as I worked. You see, I’m writing a book about disappeared towns, I told Rick, and I’m nearing completion, so it won’t be long before I’ll never have to step foot inside a Woolworths supermarket again.
He told me that this was too bad, that he thought my situation ideal. The job was as simple as putting products in shelves, and surely that can’t be so dreadful, since there are people in the town who do much more difficult things on a daily basis.
I agreed that he was correct. It wasn’t the strenuous nature of the job I objected to, I simply thought it was mindless, annoying, and far below my capabilities. Rick conceded that it probably was, but maintained that my job was ideal nonetheless.
He told me that the supermarket was the only thing that made him happy. He loved it because it was a hive of activity. There was always music. It had a nice variety of smells and colours. He’d always wanted to work in a supermarket like this, only he wasn’t good enough.
I told Rick that any old idiot can work in a supermarket, and that it wouldn’t be difficult to apply for a job and get one.
That’s easy enough for you to say, he said, because things are easy for you. For many years he’d never quite believed he’d reach adulthood, because as a teenager he could not stop anticipating it. He’d spent all of his teenage years painstakingly planning how he would use the freedom adulthood would grant him.
When he’d finally made it, Rick had discovered that his adulthood was a substandard and boring way of life. But he couldn’t imagine me feeling the same way, since I was working in a supermarket. You may believe there’s nothing interesting about your work, he told me, but at some early stage in your life it would have seemed very strange and interesting indeed.
As for Rick, adulthood for him had been just waking in the morning, alone in his bed, only no parent forced him to get out of it anymore. Apart from that there was no difference from being a teenager. The view hadn’t changed. He’d always thought colours might be different, but they weren’t.
It was beautiful being a teenager, Rick said, pushing my trolley to the next shelf. He’d spent those years wondering about the mysterious times ahead of him. It wasn’t that he had great ambitions, nor did he have any specific notion of how he would spend his adulthood, but the promise of events and milestones was intoxicating. The world would change and he would see it change, until eventually he might be in a position to be an authority on change, an expert on transitions.
Between teenagehood and adulthood he had expected a big moment that would bridge the two. Suddenly he would be an adult, and teenagehood would be remote, far behind him. It would be a distant memory, even if it was only moments before. The world itself would change. He’d imagined adulthood as a transformative threshold, and he’d expected every vantage point in the town to become unfamiliar overnight. But nothing like any of this happened.
Shortly after becoming an adult he’d married a woman and they had a child. Neither of them worked, but it was enough to simply live in a house, albeit in the poor area of town, and be adults with a kid.
Life had been all about his wife Ruth and daughter Giselle. He’d enjoyed saying the words “wife” and “daughter”. He would say to people he knew, “my wife and my daughter,�
� all of the time. He would sit in the lounge room as they watched TV together, and feel amazed that finally he had crossed the transformative threshold. Yet he hadn’t changed at all. He could still remember vividly how it felt to be a teenager. He’d been doing adult things, yes, but he still had not felt dramatically different to how he had felt a mere year earlier, when he’d been seventeen and wondering about the future.
When his wife Ruth was pregnant he had not expected that she would ever actually give birth. As her belly swelled over the course of eight months, he’d assumed that the foetus would either die or that it would prove to be a strange tumour. Then, as Ruth was giving birth to Giselle at the town hospital, he’d expected the nurses to take him aside and advise that it was impossible for this infant to be reared by the likes of them. It would need to go to a carer, and he and Ruth would need to continue being a barren married non-adult couple.
Then, after the midwives had laid Giselle on his wife’s breast, he’d believed it was impossible for the child to ever grow. They would always be in the birthing clinic, and Giselle would always be an infant, and his wife would always be incapacitated on the bed. It was impossible to imagine what would come next.
The Town Page 4
