‘I appreciate the lift, Boof,’ Sally is saying.
‘Not a prob, love,’ Boof says. ‘I usually take young Barramundy home, so it’s no trouble anyway.’
Sally turns in her seat to look at me. Her mouth scrunches into a small grin.
‘Where do ya live?’
I swallow and pat the dog.
‘Humpty Doo Hotel,’ Boof answers.
Suddenly Bait is my friend. The only diversion from having to answer any more questions without studying the same trees and spinifex through the window. Bait slobbers more. Hangs his head low and lays it on my lap. He looks up at me, briefly, wet black eyes. Clear and bright. Simple and stupid.
‘Well you can drop me there at the same time,’ Sally says.
‘You got plans?’ Boof asks and Sally turns back to look out the front window. She turns up the radio.
‘Sorta.’
‘So, Barra,’ Boof adjusts the rear-view so he can see me. ‘Time you told us about yourself, I reckon.’
‘Yeah, where you come from?’ Sally adds.
I’m cornered. Stuck in a car with no escape and an oily runt on my lap. ‘I been all over, really.’
‘Likely story,’ Boof says with a smile.
‘No. I have. My mum, she moved around. Sometimes we’d stay for a few years in one place, other years we’d move every week.’
‘So what’s your favourite place, then?’ Sally prompts.
‘Here,’ I say with finality, hoping that’s an end to the discussion of my life.
Sally turns back around to face me. She flicks her fringe. I like how she does that.
‘That dog likes you.’ She’s smiling and her nose wrinkles. She understands about the dog.
‘Pat him,’ I offer.
Boof is singing along to the radio – ‘Great Southern Land’ by Icehouse – tapping his fingers on the wheel, lookin’ happy.
‘Great Southern Land, in the sleeping sun.’
Sally leans over and pats Bait on his head. He whimpers with pleasure. She’s stretched against the seatbelt and her T-shirt is held tight at her waist with the tension. It stretches and the lace on her bra peaks up over the material. Her breasts are firm and round.
‘You walk alone with the ghost of time.’
She wipes her palm across my shoulder. Bait’s oil and stench. She pokes her tongue out at me and unwinds back into her own seat.
‘They burned you black, black against the ground. And they make it work with rocks and sand.
‘If Bait likes you, then I like you,’ Boof adds at the end of the chorus.
Bait likes everyone.
The song finishes on the radio and Boof holds the last note loud, long and out of tune. And he doesn’t seem to care. Boof seems comfortable in what little skin he has.
‘Hey,’ Sally says, leaning over to the radio to turn the volume up higher as a news bulletin comes on.
Government investigation ... Small communities ... continuing abuse ... lack of care ... after notorious paedophile, McNabm Blue ... something should have been done...
They’re all the words I hear coming from the speakers through the radio. My heart leaps into my throat and I think I am going to pass out. I wind the window down and suddenly Bait is too heavy and hot and I push him across the seat. I’m gulping air and sweating like I’m a bloody cloud about to burst with rain. The same line of Great Southern Land going over and over in my head. You walk alone with the ghost of time.
Sally and Boof say something, they turn the radio down then Sally turns around, reaches over towards me, but it’s all shrinking away. I’m being pulled down. Suddenly every fear I have is thrashing inside my mind. I can’t get away from any of it. He’s not really dead at all and the noose is out there, waiting to catch me unaware. It’s going to get me for sure. I can feel it squeezing my throat dry. I couldn’t look up, even if I wanted to. It’s all down and back, just the way it was. It’s black back there at the ground of my beginnings. And it’s blue. It’s all Blue.
‘You look sad, young Barry. What’s a boy like you got to be sad about, hey?’ Blue says to me.
I’m sitting under the shade of a tree at the edge of town. Mum’s in the van. I left when it was rocking. My mates and I were playing marbles in the dirt. I lost most of my smallies, but I’d managed to keep my large. I was rolling them over in my pocket, wondering how long to leave it before going back home, when Blue showed up.
He’s a nice lookin’ bloke. Some around the town are rough and ugly. Scary when they’ve been on the booze. Can’t stand up straight. They spit and slosh and their eyes don’t look human. Most of the time they don’t give us kids a second look. We’re not worth talking to or knowing. Except to kick or punch or swear at.
We’ve been in this town for a while. At least a year, or more, I think. We came while I was in second grade, and I’m in the third now, so it must be about right. This is the town I was born in, too. Batchelor, near the Rum Jungle. But we’ve been all over the place in between.
The Rum Jungle got its name from an accident in the 1800s when a bullock wagon got bogged in the jungle near the croc-infested Finnis River. The bullockies let the oxen go and set about drinking the rum. One of the biggest binges in history. Mum’s great-grandfather was a bullocky. Got struck by lightning. And died with a whisky bottle clutched under his arm. Mum says that her great-grandfather knew how to plug out of life. He was already soaked in the spirit when he departed, she said to me. The only way to get one up on God.
‘Na. Just waiting,’ I say to him.
He sits down next to me under the tree. He smiles and reaches into his pocket. He’s got jubes covered with sugar in a small white paper bag.
‘I got too many of these. They can rot a man’s teeth. You should have ’em.’
I haven’t ever been given lollies by a grown-up before. ’Cept my mum, sometimes, when she’s happy and cashed up.
I’m bloody hungry so I take them and say thanks.
‘No problem. You’re doin’ me a favour. You young things can do things a bloke like me can’t any more. You’re special, you know.’
‘You kiddin’?’
‘Na. I’m serious.’ Blue’s quiet for a moment while I put two jubes in my mouth. They’re black rings with white sugar.
‘I bet you’re thinkin’ that most grown-ups don’t think to say that to a kid, right?’
I’m not thinkin’ anything except how good the lollies are, but he’s kinda right. I nod.
‘Yeah. We’re a disgrace to ourselves, sometimes. Adults, that is, boy. We should tell you young blokes a lot of things to make you feel good about yourselves. But we get lazy and forget.’
‘Well. I’m gonna leave you to those,’ Blue points to the paper bag, ‘and your thoughts. What’s your name?’
‘Barry,’ I say.
‘Barry.’ Blue stands. ‘But I’ll be seeing you around. Okay?’
I look up and have to squint because of the sun blazing red and hot, but I nod again. Most of the shacks and vans have got silver aluminium roofs and, in the middle of the day when the sun is red and angry, the roofs glow hot like they might just go up in flames. Sometimes the roofs change and look like mirrors with the sun bouncing off and poking you in the eye. I’ve seen it from up the water tower where I’m up so high that I can see the tops of everything you can’t see from the ground. It looks like a giant pinball game with sunbeams racing round the rooftops.
‘You ever feel like you need a sweet. Come and find me. You’d be doin’ me a favour.’
Blue leaves and I feel real good.
7
The door of the Land Rover is open, the engine is idling and the buffalo horns are in front of me above the pub door. Boof is standing outside on the dirt in front of me. I’m clutching the seatbelt like it’s a lifeline.
‘You right, Barra?’ Boof says.
I swallow but I’m dry.
Sally comes out of the pub door with a few cans under her arms. Three beers. She gives two to Boof, pulls the ring on the third and hands it over to me.
‘What happened, Barra?’ she says.
‘I dunno,’ I say honestly. I remember hearing his name and then I was somewhere in the past.
‘You right, mate?’
‘I’m fine,’ I say, pushing past them to get out into the fresh air. ‘Thanks for the lift. I’m fine,’ I call over my shoulder as I walk to my room. Bait barks after me.
I’ve got a small TV with rabbit ears on top of the bar fridge and I turn it on and something documentary-style rambles on. I can only get the ABC.
...Australian soldiers went to the Vietnam War...
I turn the ceiling fan on full and it rattles like the wings of a helicopter.
Horrific injuries and shock ... Little wonder they didn’t adjust to life back home...
I lie down on my bed and close my eyes.
...Tonight we talk to some of the men who came back...
I plan to stay this way for the rest of the weekend.
There’s a knock on the door. I open my eyes and it’s dark. The fan’s still whizzing above me and the curtains are fluttering like sails in the breeze. There’s another knock. Louder. I stand up and go to the door.
‘It’s me, Barra. Sally.’
I open the door and Sally’s standing there, arms folded. No smile. No flick of her fringe. ‘You gonna let me in?’
I move and she walks past me. She looks around the room for a minute then turns on the light switch by the door.
‘Nice,’ she says.
I close the door and turn off the TV before sitting on my bed. Sally sits next to me.
‘Listen,’ she says, ‘I just want to make sure you’re alright. You’re a strange bloke, Barra. But I like you. You kinda went funny in the car earlier. Looked like you were gonna pass out.’
‘The heat,’ I mumble.
‘Right,’ she says. But she’s tough and I know she doesn’t buy it. She sighs. She stands up and walks around the room. It’s small. She could just turn on the spot and take it all in. She walks to the fridge and opens it up. It’s empty. She closes it again. ‘What’s this?’ she says taking my list from under the magnet.
I stand and walk over in a hurry. ‘Nothin’,’ I say, trying to grab the paper.
Sally whips it behind her back and stands against the wall. ‘Nothin’, hey?’
‘Come on, give it back.’
She wrinkles her nose. ‘Look. You tell me what it is, and I’ll give it back. Deal?’
I think about wrestling her for it, but the image of her breasts and lace from the car come back to me. I don’t want to get that close. Or I do.
I nod and walk back to the bed.
‘For a minute there I thought you were gonna fight me for it. Here,’ she says handing over the paper.
I take it and put it under my pillow.
‘So. What is it?’
I swallow.
‘Come on. We had a deal.’
‘It’s a list.’
‘Of what?’
‘Fathers.’
‘Fathers?’
‘Yeah. Fathers.’
She’s quiet. She’s got her hands underneath the sides of her legs and she’s leaning forward. She turns her face to look at me. ‘Want a drink, Barramundy?’
‘Sure.’
8
Sometime before McNabm Blue, I remember my mum telling me stories at night. Tucked up in bed. I have these recollections. She looked nice in those moments. Smiled. Patted me. Sometimes hugged me. I can’t remember all of the stories exactly, just the feel of them being told to me. I remember princesses and gypsies, something about Australian animals and legends. There was one about blue umbrellas.
But, as I got older, the stories stopped. I don’t know whether I’ve put the events together that way, or whether they actually happened, but I don’t remember any stories after McNabm. She’d tell me to get to bed and that was that.
She soured as I grew. Like milk left on the bench. It came through her skin that went yellow. She shrunk inwards slightly each year. I grew and she shrank. At least that’s how it seemed to me.
So I took to making up my own stories at night. In my head in the dark. I’d look up at the ceiling and imagine it was the storyboard of my own life. All I had to do was write the words. Make my mind bend and twist to get them right and it would all be there, waiting. Etched above me in a cloud that would follow me wherever I went. With stories I can fill in the dark bits of life. I can paint in things that are missing, things that should be there but aren’t. Like my fathers.
We learnt about Aboriginal dreaming stories at school. We had to write one and draw the pictures. Mine was terrible. The teacher said so. I felt better knowing mine was just as bad as the kid’s next to me. Deano wasn’t there that week. I reckon I could have written a really good one, but I didn’t like to stick out, either. But the ones I made up in my mind at night were perfect. They said everything I couldn’t write at school. I’ve got a whole lot of them stored away. I’ve polished them up in my mind so they sound just right. They’re an explanation for the bits of me that don’t make sense. There’s one about how McNabm hypnotised me like a chicken called How the Boy Was Caught. But this one’s about how I came to have brown skin.
9
How the Boy Got Brown Skin
When the great fire had ripped through the bush like a hungry wave, the first white woman appeared out of the smoke. Leaves, flowers and seeds went black and crumbled to ash, but the trunks of the trees were strong and didn’t die. They were black against the white smoke that rose up from the ground.
It was the kite bird that had lit the fire, taking a burning ember in its sharp talons and dropping it in the forest where all the small animals lived. Soon the flames ate up the trees and the red-hot jaws swallowed everything. The animals ran from their homes, their burrows and nests, running ahead of the fire into the open. That was where the kite bird was waiting, circling above and lookin’ down. It swooped on them all, snatching bilbies and bush rats in its claws till its belly was full.
But after that first great fire had passed, the earth was laid bare and passion burnt black and white together. The smoke swirled into a white woman, and the black tree next to her left his roots and became her man. They lay down together in the warmth of the ash on the ground. Nine months later, their son was born, brown as the dirt under their feet.
If you look closely after a fire has gone through the bush, you’ll see the black people standing tall and straight in the white smoke. And months later, up out of the brown dirt, comes new life. Trees grow back their leaves, flowers open and seedpods burst. The animals come back to nest. But the kite bird circles overhead, waiting and watching, always.
10
The bar is crowded. It’s always busy on the weekend. I shouldn’t be allowed to buy alcohol, I’m not eighteen yet, but no one has bothered asking my age. I’m tall. And maybe my serious, dirty, dark look make me appear older than I am. It only crosses my mind now that I’m here with Sally. She’s changed out of her work clothes and she’s wearing jeans and a T-shirt. High-heeled shoes and makeup. She’s painted her eyelashes with mascara. Red lips and dangly earrings. She changed in my small toilet area and the thought of her wrestling in and out of two sets of clothes in such a small place was painful.
‘You always bring a change of clothes with you to work?’
She shrugs and raises her voice over the crowd. ‘Fridays I do.’
‘Where do you live?’ I ask.
‘Malak. But I like going to different hotels on the weekend. I like meeting new people.’
I’ve almost
finished my beer and Sally’s on to her second already. I made a pact with myself before I’d even tasted my first beer that I’d never drink more than five a night. I don’t know where that number came from, but somewhere I must have decided that it was a respectable number. Somewhere much lower than the twenty-plus my mum could put away of a night.
The pub is full of the smell of beer and froth. Sweet and earthy. People everywhere laughing through the cigarette smoke. The jukebox is blaring away in the corner. There’s no set style to what comes on. ‘Sea of Heartbreak’ by Johnny Cash has just started and he’s singing of loss and loneliness and the sea of tears and I’m thinking of my mum sitting on the end of her bed singing along. She used to say Johnny’s a man who knows how to feel. When we’d both go to the pub for dinner, sometimes, she’d give me a fist full of change and tell me to make sure Johnny was playing for at least five songs in a row. She couldn’t sing very well – about as good as Boof, really – and the drunker she got the more she sounded like a howling cattle dog. Her music has always sounded familiar to me. I’ve never got the hang of the modern stuff. I don’t mind it if it’s on, but I don’t follow bands and music like guys my own age are supposed to.
The blokes back at my old job would wear band shirts under their button-up work shirts. Eminem, Coldplay. Even Jimmy Barnes. Pictures of their favourite rocker clutching a microphone with mouths open wide and eyes closed with emotion. Or the band name, logo style. All those shirts were black. The images were sticky coloured plastic that would peel away with age. Some blokes said they only washed their shirts when they really had to. Others wore their peeling patches with pride. Like a badge of loyalty. Only a true fan could reconstruct the full band image with only a few coloured splotches here and there. We were all Superman in our own way. Waiting till knock-off time to rip off the disguise and let our real selves loose. The self that really mattered. Except my shirts were just plain Kmart Bonds. Usually dark blue.
Brown Skin Blue Page 4
