Brown Skin Blue

by Belinda Jeffrey

  Its been qiet without you around here. Im sick too. Doktors say I got canser. In me skin. Im in the same plase if you want to come and see yor old mother some time befor its to layte. Yore a good boy Barry.

  Dolly

  The Mindil markets are packed tonight. There’s so many people here we had to park on a side-street miles away. Boof said in the car that some nights they can get around fifteen thousand people coming.

  The sun hasn’t set yet, and we’re sitting on fold-out chairs on the beach front, watching the sun light up the sky like a rainbow firecracker.

  Vendors, selling everything from food to kids’ toys, have their stalls running parallel along the central concrete path. At least a quarter of the stalls sell food. Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese, Thai, Indian, Italian. And the most enormous pancakes stuffed with caramel, chocolate, bananas and strawberries, covered in chocolate syrup and cream. There’s even cinnamon donuts.

  We’re all here. Cassie, Boof, Sally, Bob and me. The drive over was the most uncomfortable journey of my life. Sally in the middle of the back seat with Bob on one side and me on the other. Bob talking non-stop with his hand on Sally’s leg. She didn’t say much and I tried squashing myself as close to the door as I could. I have this hating her/missing her tug-of-war under my chest. I feel bruised.

  Sally’s tried to smile at me a few times and I’ve ignored her. Cassie and Boof left the chairs to get food and Bob went in search of the toilets. Now I’m stuck here alone with Sally.

  ‘What gives, Barra?’ she says, leaning over towards me.

  I look out over the water.

  She sits back against the chair and crosses her legs. She’s got the top leg swinging like an impatient metronome. ‘What’s got up your arse?’ She’s angrier this time.

  My head flicks back towards her. ‘You’ve got some nerve,’ I spit. ‘I saw you. with Bob. At my bloody hotel the other night!’

  She looks back at me blankly, her eyes open wide and her mouth set in a straight, thin line. ‘We’ve got no ties, Barra.’

  ‘What are you playing at?’ I’ve said more than I wanted to. She knows I’m angry and hurt. Shit.

  ‘Listen,’ her tone is softer. Her mouth changes into a nervous tug. ‘There’s things you don’t understand. There’s stuff I couldn’t tell you.’

  ‘Got that right.’

  ‘Anyway. I told you not to be a girl about things. I’m still your friend, Barra.’

  ‘And Bob?’

  She’s quiet and her mouth sets hard. Her eyes tighten.

  I’m none the wiser about Sally, what’s going on or anything else. ‘Well thanks for bloody nothin’,’ I say, standing up.

  ‘You’re not the only one with problems, Barry,’ she yells after me.

  I’m out of there. I’ve got money in my pocket and a coffin that still feels bare and lonely. It needs something more.

  ‘Best croc skin around,’ the vendor says.

  I’m standing at the front of a small stall. There’s people swarming everywhere around me. Some are right up beside me, poking their faces across the table lookin’ at the array of purses and bags, belts and cigarette cases. Fairy lights and trails of coloured bulbs are strung around the frames of the little stalls. Groups of musicians have set up, dotted here and there among the stalls. At certain places the music from two different groups blends into a mash of instruments and voices. Like here at the crocodile skin stall. There’s so many people here you have to watch where you walk. Everywhere you turn, there’s someone else trying to move into or out of that same spot.

  ‘Nothin’ like croc skin,’ the vendor continues. He’s dark but not Aboriginal. He looks Middle-Eastern. His eyes are whiter and the ridges on his face are darker than the rest of his skin.

  ‘The most fierce, ancient and deadly creatures in the wild, they are, but their skin is worth a fortune. Just look at the depth of colour. The strength. Sheer beauty.’

  Before me, the stitched and polished croc skin shines. There are varieties of black, brown, reds and even blues where the leather has been dyed. I pick up a small black wallet. It’s cold in my hand. This could be Albert or Mavis or Fester. I hand over the money and slip the wallet into my back pocket. I’ve still got some change so I look around the stalls on my way back to the chairs. I’m taken in by an assortment of wooden guns. One shoots rubber bands. I buy it.

  Cassie and Boof are back at the chairs but Sally and Bob are gone.

  ‘Barramundy,’ Boof says, seeing me approach. ‘You can be the first to hear the good news.’

  I sit down.

  ‘Bait is going to be alright.’ Boof holds up his mobile phone as proof, then slips it back inside his shirt pocket.

  Cassie punches Boof in the arm. ‘And,’ she says.

  ‘And we’re movin’ in together. Her place,’ Boof adds, bending across her chair to kiss her on the cheek.

  ‘Congratulations,’ I mumble. I’m really happy for them.

  ‘Hey,’ Boof adds, ‘what happened to those people near the hotel? You heard anything else?’

  The news about the fire has ripped through the whole Top End. It’s been on the local news, the papers. There was even a reporter who came around the hotel the day after. I took off soon as I saw him. But on the news later that night, there he was, standing on the dirt patch, talking about the fire. In one frame, a chicken scurried past on the ground behind his legs. None of the family wanted to talk about it, but plenty of the neighbours were happy to retell just what happened. They stood right outside the house, pointing to the black mound of rubble, wide-eyed. Toucan even got his face on the news. Just a quick word about how he was one of the first to see what was happening.

  I haven’t seen Tyson or the family since that night. I don’t know where they are, where they’ve gone. It’s like everyone is excited about their tragedy and it feels wrong. A whole family has lost everything.

  ‘I haven’t heard anything,’ I say. It’s really the truth. I’ve heard the same story a hundred times over, but nothing else.

  ‘Whatcha get?’ Boof leans over towards me. I hold up the gun.

  ‘Here,’ he says. ‘Pass it over.’

  Boof turns in his chair to face the path. Sally and Bob are walking towards us. He’s got his arm around her shoulders.

  Boof holds up the gun and aims. The rubber band flies from the end of the gun and smacks Bob in the face.

  ‘Right on the donger!’ Boof says, laughing.

  Suddenly I’m laughing. I can’t stop. And it feels bloody good.

  We’re sitting right beside a small, open, grassed area. There are old tin cans spread out in a circle around the space and children have been playing around them since we arrived. A woman with dreadlocks and Doc Martin boots shoos the kids away and they run to sit behind the tin cans. The woman walks around the circle with a long stick. She lights the end with a lighter and touches the top of each can with it. Flames leap up out of the cans, which must have been filled with metho. The flames are burning and there’s a black smoke coming off each one. A smoky, earthy smell mixes with the food smells.

  There are bamboo torches stuck into the ground at the back of the grassed area near the fence. An old blue kombi van sits in between two torches and completes the circular space. The woman disappears inside the kombi and a crowd gathers around the tin torches.

  A man emerges from the van, followed by a boy. They’re in scraggy, coloured clothes, striped socks and boots. The man has braces attached to his three-quarter length pants and doesn’t wear a shirt. His muscles move and bulge as he walks.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen and children,’ he says spreading his arms out wide to the side. ‘Tonight you are going to be entertained by the Travelling Charmers.’

  The crowd is growing and everyone claps. Suddenly the boy leaps up from behind the man’s back to stand on his shoulders.
r />   ‘Edward is only eight, ladies and gentlemen, but there’s no trick he can’t do.’

  Music starts playing, like carousel music. The woman appears again. Her face is painted white and she’s in a thin, white dress.

  For a while, all I’m watching is the tricks that these people can do. Acrobatic rolls and jumps, lifts and falls. The kid is amazing. He’s got no fear. Then there are the fire tricks. Both the man and the woman breathe fire. They take a long stick with a wad of material on the end and spit metho on to it. Flames leap out and everyone claps. The man swallows a sword, he swallows fire. The boy chases a fire wheel, keeping it moving with a stick. He jumps through a circle that’s on fire. The woman lights up fireballs on the end of strings and twirls them all around her body. The music changes. Fast and slow, happy and sad. Each of them disappears into the van and changes clothes.

  Underneath all the excitement and tricks, there’s a story. It’s almost so subtle, no one notices. I watch all the kids pointing and gasping at the fire tricks. Some kids have glowin-the-dark swords and they swing them around. And behind them, just beyond the kombi and the little wire fence, is the ocean. Slapping against the sand. A backdrop of rhythm and soul. The sun is a red glow on the horizon, the sea is black for a while before the sun goes for good. It’s only the fire in the grassed ring that glows.

  But the story is there. The man and the woman are saying, look how great we are, look what we can do! And the boy jumps out from between them, here and there, and he says, look at me, look what I can do, too! But the adults don’t see him, they move away, push him away, take away his toys. Yet the crowd see him, only they know what is going on. They pick it up after a while and start clapping and cheering when the boy does his tricks. They boo when the adults take his things away.

  And then there’s the crisis of the show. The fire wheel, which has been brought in during the show, won’t light. The woman tries, the man tries, but it won’t work. They try out every acrobatic and magic trick they can think of, but it won’t work. It’s strange how simple stories work. Everyone knows what’s going to happen, by now, but it still feels tense inside your chest, you still hope that it will work out, we still want the boy to win.

  And then it happens. The boy stands underneath the fire wheel. No tricks. He folds his hands over his chest, bows, then blows a kiss. Fire leaps out of his mouth and catches onto the fire wheel, which lights up and spins around. There are small firecrackers in the wheel and they snap and explode and zoom around. The colours light up: blue, red, gold and green.

  The Travelling Charmers hold hands in the centre of the circle in front of the fire wheel and bow. The audience claps and cheers. Somehow it feels good watching something happen inside a green circle that would never happen in real life. A mother, a father, a son. Setting the world on fire and holding hands to watch the glow.

  For the last leg of the ride home, it’s just me and Sally in the back seat. As I get out of the car Sally slides across and stands on the ground behind me.

  ‘Give us a minute?’ she turns to Boof.

  Boof shrugs his shoulders.

  I walk to my door with Sally behind me. It feels good that she wants to talk to me while I’m trying to punish her.

  ‘Listen, Barra, there’s something you don’t know,’ she says to my back. ‘It’s not just what you think. Don’t hate me, Barra. I got myself into trouble and I’m tryin’ to do the right thing. Talk to me at lunch tomorrow. I’ll tell you more then.’

  Why is it only men in the movies who know what to do? They’re always the strong, fix-it, muscle types who take care of everything. Even if they let their women down, they’re strong about it. They’ve still got something women want. And another thing I know, I’ve gotta go and see my mum.

  26

  A storm breaks over Humpty Doo. It hammers rain the whole night, pounding on my tin roof. I sleep in little naps because the noise is so loud. Just when I fall into a deeper sleep, thunder cracks and wakes me up. Or the rain eases off and then belts down again. Pity it wasn’t raining the night Tyson’s mother left the toddler’s bottle warming in the saucepan on the stove. That’s what people around the pub are saying caused the fire.

  The trouble with rain is it won’t stay at one pace. If it was just one speed and sound you could get used to it and sleep on through. But it changes and your body can never quite settle into a rhythm.

  I feel groggy and edgy this morning. I open the door to find the rain streaming down from the sky like corrugated tin sheeting. The ground is muddy and flooded and no one is around. Rain is something you have to accept if you live in the tropics, but it’s a pest for the tourist industry. Not many people brave torrential rain to see the crocs when they could put it off for a fine day.

  I’m about to run for the shower when there’s a knock on my door. Bessy is there under a large striped umbrella.

  ‘Got a call from your boss. He says not to come into work today. Have a day off.’ She doesn’t wait for a response before she’s off, tiptoeing through the puddles back to the pub.

  I’m about to close the door when I see Tyson sitting on the edge of the concrete path that runs from the door to the diner along the line of motel rooms. His body is just covered by the awning, but his legs and feet stick out in the rain. He splats his feet in the puddles on the ground. I close my door behind me and walk over to him.

  ‘Hi there,’ I say, sitting down next to him on the path. He doesn’t look up. ‘How’s everything going? I haven’t seen you around here lately. I thought you all must have gone somewhere.’

  ‘We’re staying with my auntie just down the road from our house,’ he says.

  ‘How’s your foot?’

  His feet stop slapping the ground. ‘Pretty good. Still got the scar though.’ He lifts his foot up, heel towards me. There’s a red, jagged ridge across the sole of his foot.

  ‘Wow. You’ll probably still be able to see it when you’re my age. Hey, I never got around to telling you how cool your chicken trick is.’

  ‘My dad taught it to me.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yeah. That’s all I remember of him.’

  ‘So the guy that’s with your mum, he’s not your dad, then?’

  Tyson shakes his head. ‘Dad left when I was a kid.’

  The way he says it makes me feel cold and tight in my throat. He couldn’t be more than nine or ten and I’m suddenly sitting beside him wondering how long it’s been since he’s thought of himself as a child. It’s like I’m sitting next to a version of myself at the same age. Lost between a childhood that might never have been and a sea of nothing in between. Grown up and ground down too quick.

  ‘You ever see him? Your dad?’

  ‘Na. Mum says he was good for nothin’ anyway.’ He turns to me, his white God-eyes lookin’ at me. Lookin’ up at me. ‘You got a dad?’

  ‘Na. I’m like you.’

  ‘We’re leaving tomorrow.’

  ‘You’ll be right, Tyson. Sometimes moving on is better.’

  ‘You reckon?’

  ‘Sure. Just ... just you gotta watch where you put your feet in life. Gotta watch out for glass.’

  He smiles and turns back to watch the rain.

  ‘Come on,’ I find myself saying as I stand up. ‘Come here.’ I step off the path to stand in the rain. My feet are in the mud and it’s soft and cold and slippery. ‘Let’s get totally wet and forget where we are. Come on, don’t even think about it.’

  Tyson stands next to me. We hold out our arms and the rain bashes down on us. I lift my face up to the sky and, just before my eyes close, I catch just a glimpse of a single tear drop. I’m wet and heavy. For the first time in ages, my head is clear and I can’t think of anything.

  On the ground it’s like our feet and the earth are one. We could be melting into the mud or emerging out of it, depending how you look at it. Today we c
ome from the land and nothing else. The sky is raining a river.

  Men in movies always make the most of their opportunities. When something comes their way, like the weather – or an army or a government hit-man – they change tack. It’s like they’ve always got a pre-made plan in their minds for any eventuality. And when things change they just look for the next option. So I’m thinkin’ that if I can’t go to work today and I’ve got the weekend to follow, I should take the bus and see my mother. I don’t exactly want to. But I don’t want to end up being the jerk that didn’t go, either.

  I sent Tyson back to his auntie’s place loaded up with stuffed crocs, tea towels and a couple of boomerangs.

  Mum lives in Katherine and, now that I’m here, it takes me a while to find the van. Mum’s in the hospital, but I have to see the van first.

  Things have changed since I left, even though it doesn’t seem that long ago. The van is empty and it’s smaller than I remember. I have trouble imagining how we both lived in it together all those years. It’s still got the same curtains above the table, though they’re thinner now. You can almost see each thread in the worn patches. I pull the curtains back and remember lookin’ at Mum burying the wooden spoon in the dirt outside when we lived in Batchelor. My bed is still next to the table along the side wall. When I was a child her bed always seemed so far away from mine, so cut off from my side of the van. But it only takes me two decent steps now from one bed to the other.

  There’s an old smell in here. It hits me the moment I walk inside. Like burnt mutton, tobacco and mothballs. But after a while it’s familiar and I realise it’s always been here. Lurking in the wood panelling, the lino, the air. I know that if I stay for too long I won’t even smell it anymore. It won’t even exist. It will just be a part of who I am.

  I feel like I’ve been hiding for years and the moment I leave this van everyone will know where I’ve been. They’ll see me clear as day, and I don’t want it. I want to be a croc with my own stretch of river. They can feed me and look at me, but don’t no one come too close. I just might bite.