by Stephen Orr
Around five o’clock the wind dropped and dragged its belly across the desert. Harry and Trevor put on their boots and went out to fix the shed roof. As they were finishing they heard Carelyn call from the house. ‘Trevor!’ They went in to find Fay back on the lounge, a rug across her lap, calling out above a soundtrack of Bruce Willis machine-gun fire. ‘Steady,’ she was saying. ‘Steady so it doesn’t collapse on yer.’
Chris was sitting beside her; he didn’t seem concerned. At one point he blocked his ears. Murray just said, ‘Come on, old girl, wake up, you’re having another dream.’
‘It’s not a dream,’ Carelyn said, kneeling beside her. ‘You alright, love?’ Her lips dry despite the fact she’d been sipping water all day.
They put her back to bed and returned to the lounge room. Trevor made a coffee and noticed Harry snuggled into the lounge.
‘You might need a shower,’ Trevor told him.
But Harry had entered the world of the hijacked office tower.
‘Harry,’ Trevor barked. ‘Shower.’
‘Now?’
‘Yes.’
Harry stood and left the room, dragging his feet.
‘She’s still hot,’ Carelyn told her husband.
‘Right,’ Trevor replied, stirring his coffee. ‘I suppose we better call in.’
‘Why?’ Murray asked.
‘She’s ill,’ Carelyn said.
‘It’s just the storm. The weather affects her, you know that.’
‘Dad, you don’t run a fever because of a dust storm.’
‘It’s old age.’
‘It’s not.’ Trevor stood looking through the front windows. The topsoil had settled and he could see beyond the railway line. The air looked smoky. It was the light stuff, he guessed. He knew it would settle in a few hours. Still, he would have to check the bores—all of them.
Murray found the satellite phone and dialled. He sat in a nook beside Harry’s lounge-room classroom. It shared the same chairs and desk but had a different purpose. There was a poster on the wall: an asexual human with dotted lines dissecting its body into small, meaty parts. Like the chart of beef cuts on a butcher’s wall. And inside these segments, numbers 1–63, defining every part of the bilateral carcass that needed diagnosing. So they could call and speak to a doctor and say, Yes, Doctor, number thirteen … a shooting pain that comes and goes.
Trevor waited and eventually spoke to a registered nurse. He told her about his aunt and explained her dreams and how she always needed the toilet.
‘Does it burn when she pees?’ she asked.
‘Does it burn when you pee?’ he called to Fay.
Fay looked at her brother. ‘What’s he saying?’
‘Does it burn when you pee?’
‘Yes.’
‘Yes,’ Trevor told the nurse, who explained that it was probably a urinary tract infection.
‘A urinary tract infection,’ Trevor said aloud, so they’d all know. ‘Right … how do we deal with that?’ He listened as she took a few minutes to move papers and fiddle with her computer. ‘She’s not allergic to penicillin?’
Trevor asked Fay, who asked Murray, who asked her again, before she said, ‘No.’
Trevor told the nurse.
‘Good. Trimethoprim, three times a day, for … seven days should do it. If she’s not better after two or three days, call back.’
Trevor found a pad and pen and asked, ‘What number’s that?’
‘Sixty-two.’
‘Sixty-two, three times a day, for seven days?’
‘Yes.’
‘Okay, thanks.’ He hung up.
Carelyn already had the medical kit out. She was sorting the ointments, dressings and plastic vials full of dozens of types of pills; checking the bold numerals designed to make sure no one gave the wrong medication. She found the pills: 62. ‘Right.’ After checking the name with Trevor she closed the box, relocked it and put it back in the cupboard. Went to the kitchen, filled another glass of water and sat beside Fay. ‘The nurse thinks you have a urinary tract infection.’
Fay just shrugged. ‘How did I get that?’
‘You just get it. Here, take this.’ She handed her the first of the yellow pills. Fay placed it in her mouth and Carelyn helped her with the water.
‘Yes, I’m feeling better already.’
‘You will.’
And Trevor said, ‘It’s just as well the storm’s gone, Fay, cos that probably caused it.’ He looked at his father.
‘What?’ Murray said.
‘Nothing.’
They pumped diesel from a drum to the ute. Harry worked for twenty minutes, until fuel spilled from the tank. ‘Dad,’ he called, and Trevor came out with a small esky full of food.
‘Thanks, old boy,’ he said, ruffling his son’s hair, and Harry asked, ‘Why can’t I come?’
‘You need your beauty sleep.’
‘Please?’
‘No.’ He climbed in behind the wheel. ‘Your mother needs your help.’
Harry retreated, convinced, but not happy. What would be more fun? Bush-bashing or wiping dishes? Cleaning out troughs or mopping piss from the toilet floor?
Trevor drove north. The track was all sand but he knew if he stayed on the ridges he wouldn’t get bogged. Bore number one, an hour and a half from home, the water in the trough warm and soupy but the pump still working. He unscrewed the bung and cleaned the trough before refilling it. Kept going: numbers two and three, the same story. Now he was nearly three hours from home.
He took out his swag, unrolled it and sat eating chicken and drinking warm Coke. Sand was blowing over from a dry turkey nest dam. As he napped, the desert, his farm, was still and silent. It’d had enough of blowing. He was woken by kangaroos coming close then jumping off into a distance of small, nocturnal spirits. He sat up and ate biscuits and drank the rest of his Coke; then shook out his swag and rolled it up.
He drove towards number four. Passing a big group of steers, his heart sank when he saw ribs and hips and loose skin. Although he saw them as animals (with fear, and pain, reflected in their big brown eyes) they were also meat, living kilograms, dollars and cents per unit, Dry Sheep Equivalents. He could only start paying his mortgage and school fees when they stood on the scales at the abattoir.
After lunch, six hours of driving, thirteen bores, he headed home. On and on, as one of Carelyn’s talking books read itself out and he retreated into his own thoughts, again. Late in the afternoon he started drifting off and the ute wandered into soft sand and bogged itself. He gunned the accelerator but realised he was just digging himself in. ‘Fuck.’ He got out, removed the tailgate and slid it under one of the back wheels. Getting back in, he started the engine and slowly inched out of the sand. The clutch shuddered and he stalled; his ute rolled back, settling, deeper, as if the land was alive, and hungry.
He got out. ‘You bitch!’ Kicked the tyre, and felt his toes crushing in his steel-capped boots. ‘Christ!’ he growled, leaning on the cab, noticing the sun settling on the western horizon.
It was after 11 pm when he came through the back door. Murray was the only one still up. ‘How are you?’ he asked.
He didn’t see the point of answering. ‘How’s Fay?’
‘She’s cooled down … and she’s stopped rambling.’ He looked his son over. ‘Problems?’
‘An hour to dig myself out of sand. Then I had to refill three times.’
‘The whole drum?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, go get showered. I’ll make you some eggs and bacon.’ He pulled himself up out of his seat.
Trevor was too tired to talk, argue, think. Murray watched as he shuffled across the room. Watched his shoulders, slumped, and his head, looking at the ground; saw how he dragged his feet and how his hands and fingers hung heavy and lifeless. ‘You okay?’ he called.
‘Yeah.’
‘You’re getting too old to do that by yourself.’
‘Who else is there?’
6
Aiden lived in a converted storeroom on the second floor of Mercy’s halls-of-residence. It looked out across a memorial garden, surrounded by dead lawn, lined by black-spotted roses that shed their little bit of perfume in the early evening, taking him back to Bundeena, and Fay, fiddling in her garden. It was a small room with a divan and no-nonsense mattress, cupboard, wardrobe and desk. There was an old aluminium lamp with a ring of little stars cut out of the shade. He often studied each of the five-pointed constellations and wondered how they’d been punched so clean.
He was sitting at his desk, reading a slab of words on his laptop; words he’d put there; words that made less sense the more he looked at them. As the volume increases the surface area increases too. But at some point the volume gets bigger quicker …
He studied these last few words: gets bigger quicker. Or should it be, he thought, gets bigger faster, at a faster rate, quicker rate, increases more, grows much faster? Do I, really, care?
He looked at the ring of stars and counted them. Nineteen. Shouldn’t they have added up to an even number? The volume increases at a faster rate than the surface area. That’s it, he said to himself, re-reading the sentence.
His eyes drifted out to the roses. Brother Symes was sitting on a bench, reading. He noticed his gold crucifix, and his Jesus hands and face and voice, blessing them like he really cared. And if it wasn’t God’s songs for his people and prayers and A-fuckin’-bide with me it was the perfect surface area-to-volume ratio. If the discolouration can be calculated carefully …
He stared at his laptop and the little camera watching him, still. Smiled. Good morning, Mrs Lawrence, he said, as he returned to the living room at Bundeena.
What are we working on this morning? Mrs Lawrence, his old School of the Air teacher, asked.
A practical report.
Go on.
He started reading but she interrupted by saying: Third person, past tense.
He shrugged. The thing is, I don’t really care, Mrs Lawrence.
Aiden …
I’m nearly old enough to leave school.
What would that achieve?
I could help Dad.
You’ll be able to help him soon enough. But if you neglect—
So what?
Aiden pressed backspace and his words (some he’d spent days sweating over) disappeared. When he was finished and the screen was blank he looked at Mrs Lawrence and said, That’s what I think of Biology.
You’ll have to do it all again, she said.
No, I won’t.
He looked up at the Brother, pulling his undies from his arse.
I can keep failing, and they can keep nagging, he explained. Eventually they’ll get sick of it and let me leave.
He looked at a few small stars floating above his desk. Leaned forward, opened his window and called out, ‘What’s up, Bro?’ Then shot back behind the curtain.
Harry was still sitting at his classroom computer. Carelyn had made him dress for school, as she had Aiden, every day of his primary school years: his SOTA polo shirt, navy pants, socks and shoes. Lessons wouldn’t begin until teeth were brushed and hair combed. And the background was always carefully controlled. No ironing piles or unwanted television. Chris was kept outside, mostly, and Murray was banned from singing or playing music.
It was morning assembly and Harry’s year level (sisters from another station, a boy half an hour from Port Augusta, another from a wheat-sheep farm on the Eyre Peninsula) was running the assembly. Harry had taken charge. The others (he told his parents) weren’t good for much. The sisters were always in their pyjamas, sucking ice-blocks, despite the fact that Mrs Lawrence was always on at them. The other boys just seemed to stare at the webcam and occasionally nod. Murray thought they were all inbred.
One of the sisters was having a birthday. Harry led them in a round of Happy Birthday and said, ‘So, Shakina, could you tell us what gifts you got?’
The little girl smiled into the frame that contained their five faces. ‘What?’
‘What gifts did you get?’ Mrs Lawrence repeated.
‘Oh … Mum’s made me a dress, and a couple of CDs, and Aleisha,’ and her sister sat forward so her head took up the whole frame, ‘she got me a thirty dollar gift card.’
‘Are you having a party?’ Harry asked.
‘No.’
Then he read out his weekly quiz: the questions Carelyn helped him write every Wednesday night. ‘Number one,’ he said, as the others scrambled for their books and a pen. ‘What is the second-biggest city in Queensland?’
The sisters looked at each other but the boys just stared at the screen.
‘Well, what’s the biggest?’ he asked, and Shakina said, ‘Perth.’
He turned and looked at his mum, sitting only a few inches away. She rolled her eyes and said, ‘Don’t tell them. Move on.’
‘Number two,’ he continued. ‘List the highest common factors of 24.’
Silence, again.
After the quiz they shared their news (Shakina’s dad due an operation on his knee, the latest from Australian Idol), then he closed the assembly and Mrs Lawrence played a clip of the national anthem (complete with sheep flocks, a one-legged Aborigine and a Bondi lifesaver with a tattoo of the Queen).
Later, after a morning tea of Fay’s re-warmed scones, Chris joined Harry at the computer. It was the weekly ‘Meet My Family’ session. Harry had worked through each member of his family three, four times, always avoiding his cousin, until one day Carelyn said, ‘What about Chris?’
Mrs Lawrence got things started. ‘Mr George … perhaps you could tell us about some of the jobs you do at Bundeena?’
Chris just looked at Harry.
‘Go on,’ Harry said. ‘They just want to know a bit about you.’
‘Well,’ Chris began, hesitating, ‘I help out around the house.’
Silence. The two girls and the farmers’ sons watched him. Shakina managed to keep her mouth closed. What is he, she was wondering, a retard? Around the house? What about the farm, the animals?
‘I help Harry with the chooks and the veggies.’ He indicated in case they were unsure who Harry was.
Silence, again. And then Shakina, unable to hold it in any longer. ‘What do you do during the muster?’
Chris stopped to think. ‘Sometimes I do the counter, so they know how many they’ve loaded onto the trucks.’
But Shakina wasn’t happy with that. That was something you got a kid to do, not a man. ‘So you don’t do the rounding up?’ she asked.
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
Everybody felt the awkwardness: Mrs Lawrence and Harry, the other kids and their mums; Murray and Fay, sitting on the lounge, and Carelyn, sewing a button on a shirt.
‘It’s sorta hard for him,’ Harry told Shakina.
‘Why?’
‘He got a … injury, when he was a kid.’
Shakina still wanted to know. ‘What, kicked by a cow or something?’
‘Everyone does what they can on a farm, don’t they?’ Mrs Lawrence said.
But Shakina just stared at the oldish-looking man, unsure.
Chris bowed his head. He could feel them staring at him, thinking, deciding. This, he remembered, is why he’d given up on the School of the Air after only six months. In those days it hadn’t been so bad. Just the radio, and the school books he couldn’t make any sense of. But his fellow students (and back then there’d been twenty in a class) had somehow been able to tell. Although he was hundreds of kilometres away from them, they somehow managed to tease him. Not with actions, or words, but pauses, and questions they knew he wouldn’t be able to answer.
Chris, what sort of tractor’s your dad got?
Eventually, he’d retreated from the radio they’d set up for him and Trevor. Murray and Morris had said to Fay, ‘Go on, make him do it,’ but no matter what she said, Chris had refused to go anywhere near the black box. ‘I don’t understand what she’s talking about,’ he�
��d tell them.
‘You just gotta sit and listen and answer a few questions,’ Murray had said, but it didn’t make any difference.
Miss, Chris reckons he’s got a dozen girlfriends.
I didn’t say that.
And he’s kissed them.
No.
Chris looked at the small black eye. ‘I have 187 videos,’ he said. ‘I’ve watched them all at least ten times.’
Harry gently bit his lip.
‘What sort?’ Aleisha asked.
Chris’s face lit up. ‘War movies … and thrillers, like Mission Impossible.’
Silence.
Fay took a deep breath. She stood and walked over to her son. Mrs Lawrence and the other students watched her growing bigger in the background. She put her hand on his shoulder and said, ‘Well, kids, Chris is gonna come and help me now.’
As they all thought the same thing. As they watched, as Fay led Chris out, towards the laundry.
And Shakina said, ‘Is that his wife?’
Trevor returned to the shed. He went inside and studied his newly repaired roof. ‘Right.’ Turned to a pile of old timber, took out his tape and started measuring. Most of them were too short, but there was a piece of pine that looked long enough to replace the rotten eaves that supported the busted gutter. He secured it in his vice and started sawing. Moments later he stopped and sat down, looking at the pictures of Harry’s hand. Looked at his own hands: liver-spotted, freckled, wrinkled; the pink, splotchy undersides marked with impossibly short lifelines. ‘I’m so tired,’ he said, leaning forward so his head almost touched his knees.
‘Right!’ Realising action was the only solution, he jumped up. Grasping the saw, he started working but stopped before he was half-way through. Placed his body in the darkest corner of his shed, sliding down until he was sitting on the floor, curling into a familiar tight ball. Breathing deeply, once, twice, before repeating: ‘I’m not feeling so good.’
There, in the darkness, he was nine years old again: ‘Well,’ Murray was saying to him, ‘the first thing is, you gotta learn to drive.’
‘Now?’ he asked.
‘Yes, now. What if we’re on a bore run and I have a heart attack, or slice me leg open?’
