by Stephen Orr
Eventually he came to the television room. He slid the door open, went inside and a middle-aged man, wearing a singlet and pyjama pants, said, ‘How are yer?’
‘You haven’t seen the nurse?’ He sat down beside him.
‘Ha! Good luck.’
The man was watching a black-and-white movie, John Mills, a few London gangsters, and the inside of a bank vault. ‘Warren,’ he said.
‘Trevor.’ They shook hands.
‘Absolute shit at night,’ the stranger explained. ‘It’s either this or how to flatten yer fuckin’… abs.’
‘Can’t sleep?’ Trevor asked.
‘Sleep all day. Night time’s better: no one to bother you.’
‘I need to find a doctor.’
‘What, y’ sick?’ He smiled.
‘I wanna find out where my wife is.’
‘What happened to her?’
‘I rolled the car. They took her in a different ambulance.’
‘You should go down to the main desk and ask. Decent roll?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Your car?’
Trevor shrugged. ‘I suppose. We ended up in … the bushes.’
The man massaged the stubble on his chin. ‘I’ve rolled me car a couple of times. Dirt roads … I mean, y’ start off slow, don’t yer, but the next thing yer doin’ eighty and there’s a bend and bam, over you go.’
He watched an ad: a ladder being assembled, broken down and put back together.
‘I just ducked, as we tumbled,’ Warren said, remembering. ‘I’s sure it was gonna crush me, so I ducked …’
Trevor saw his lips moving and heard sound but didn’t really know what he was saying. He wanted to stand, find his wife, but something was stopping him.
‘So, who was in the car with you?’ Warren asked.
‘My sons … my wife.’
‘Right.’ He was watching the movie. ‘Boys okay?’
But he didn’t want to answer.
‘I’m off to bed. You want this on?’
‘Why not?’
Warren hitched his pyjama pants and was gone. Trevor was left with no excuse. ‘One’s fucked up his leg,’ he replied, to the empty room. ‘The other one’s blind.’ And then he cried, dropped to the ground and drew himself into his usual tight ball. Five, ten minutes. The storm of tears receding and overtaking him. Fence posts; distance markers; describing his journey towards darkness.
‘Mr Wilkie?’
It was a doctor, but not the reassuring, tweed-jacket, John Mills type. A young Indian in jeans and sandshoes.
‘Yes,’ Trevor said, realising there was no escape from this room. He sat up, took a deep breath and looked at the doctor who, having put on his solemn face, sat opposite him. ‘You have been in a motor vehicle accident?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
There was silence; nothing, except a strangely out-of-place chase sequence.
Part Two
2005
9
It had been a moderate summer. There’d only been a few days when they’d had to retreat indoors, switching on the backup generator, re-watching movies, staying out of each other’s way. January had rolled towards its conclusion; the two month anniversary had come and gone (like some stranger waiting on their doorstep, never knocking). Then, a storm had arrived. Low, grey clouds spread across Bundeena. Sand had blown around the compound, filling the empty jars and bottles that had fallen from Harry’s tree. Trevor had picked them up, once, twice, but had decided to leave the rest for now; he’d wait until Harry came home.
The muster crew’s hut had filled with sand again. Chris had asked Trevor if he should sweep it out, but he’d just shrugged and said, ‘If you feel like it.’ Murray had overheard them and taken Chris and a couple of brooms and swept it out anyway. Chris had been surprised at how easy-going, how helpful his uncle had been. Something had changed.
Chris knew the old man had liked Carelyn. He’d often help her. More than Trevor, who was his son, which made it different. Fathers and sons had to be at odds, he guessed. Which perhaps was why Murray didn’t like him. Maybe he’d become his son, somehow.
Fay and Chris had worked on the veggies and tended the chooks through this first part of summer. To Fay, it was important that when Harry returned everything was normal. He would want to come out and fill his tin with grain and sprinkle it; he would want to collect eggs and, she thought, it might be good for a laugh if he dropped a few, and said something like shit or fuck, looking at her apologetically, and of course she’d say (she could hear herself now), ‘Not to worry, Harry.’
She’d often think about her grand-nephew. How she loved him. More (she felt) since she’d visited him at the Children’s Hospital; since she’d seen him, sitting up in bed eating ice-cream and jelly; since she’d heard him say, ‘It’s already better, Aunty Fay. They reckon I’ll be back on my bike by September.’
At which point Aiden had just looked at him. ‘Highly unlikely, dickbrain.’
Aiden hadn’t forgotten his brother. He’d cleaned and oiled his bike; emailed his teachers and friends with regular updates (‘Yes, unfortunately, he is just as annoying as ever’); given him his spare mattress so he wouldn’t have trouble getting in and out of bed; bought posters and put them up around the room.
He, like Fay, and all of them, had realised how much he missed Harry. After Aiden’s own week in hospital, and after the bandages had come off, the first thing he’d said to Murray (who’d been left in Port Augusta) was, ‘What time’s the bus for Adelaide tomorrow?’
Carelyn was gone, and he’d spent most of the days since in agony, with a sore jaw from trying to stop himself crying. But now, he sensed, his thoughts should turn to the living.
‘Bill Clarke’s comin’ to drive us home,’ Murray had explained, but Aiden was having none of that. ‘Can he drive us to Adelaide, or should we get the bus?’
So he’d caught the bus, or been driven to town by Trevor, every week over those first two months of holidays. He’d slept beside his father in his brother’s room on a couch they made up every night. He’d spent his holidays telling his brother to get off his arse and hobble down to the cafeteria with him; to walk across to the gardens; to keep on with his physio, despite feeling like he didn’t care about anything anymore.
Trevor—his thoughts split between house, farm and black- dog hours spent sitting on a shitty public toilet (until the cleaner moved him on)—had been there for the first two weeks. He’d watched the nurses remove his son’s cast, adjust the metal pins, clean his skin, treat an infection and try to humour him. Helped him with his pain, and he’d cleaned his arse. Grown close, so that they were really just the same being. Washed him and dressed him and read to him, and played games that bored him shitless. Dealt with the voices telling him he’d had enough.
And later, he’d helped him with exercises; two, three, four times a day, telling him the more he did the faster he’d be home.
After Christmas and New Year he’d realised how much needed doing back at Bundeena. So he’d asked him if he minded if Murray came to stay.
‘I suppose,’ he’d agreed.
Murray, with his unsmokable cigarettes and transistor, had set up on the couch. At first Harry wasn’t happy. ‘Pop, can we play Scrabble?’
‘No.’
‘Pop, they got Mad Max on tonight.’
‘Well … you go.’
Then Murray would disappear for hours at a time, sitting on a bench just beyond the yellow line at the entrance, chugging away, making friends with every stray father and uncle he could find. Anything was better than that room, trapping him all day, every day (mostly). Just because his son hadn’t taken out the roo. He couldn’t stand the antiseptic smell, the nurses’ fake smiles, the small servings of lean beef and mixed veg. The walls, closing in on him. ‘Harry, I’m just off for a smoke.’
‘But, Pop, I got physio in a minute.’
‘The nurse can take you. That’s what she gets paid for.’
Harry felt like a chunk of his world had been surgically removed: the bottle tree, his whip and trail bike. Even his responsibilities: vacuuming his room, making sure his homework was packaged and addressed ready to be sent off to SOTA. And his rewards: building jumps with Aiden, helping his mum spoon mixture into patties. This is why he was lost—lying staring up at the ceiling of square tiles; watching, but not watching, the plasma in the television room. Looking at Murray and thinking, What have you got to say? What are we going to do?
Even the afternoon of his mother’s funeral, as he sat trussed up in bed, reaching out through the air, the walls, the city, the hills, along the hundreds of kilometres of railway track. ‘What time does it start?’ he’d asked Murray.
‘Two.’
As he’d looked at his grandfather, and asked with his eyes, Will it be better afterwards? Murray’s face replying, Not necessarily.
Back at Bundeena, Aiden had retreated to the shed. To Fay’s old Holden, its windows sitting loose in their slots, a heavy green tarpaulin pulled back to reveal an unfinished artwork along the body of the car: a house and a field of purple lavender; a bottle tree; a yelping dog; and a herd of stick-legged cattle wandering across the bonnet. There were people too: round-headed, big-bodied; a mum and dad, boys, an old man, a woman, a blur of paint disappearing into the wheel well.
Chris was drawing more flowers—hibiscus, and lavender.
‘Not too small,’ Aiden said to him.
Chris knew how they could paint them: olive-green stems, the florets, the small serrated leaves. His hand made long, flowing lines as his head tipped from side-to-side to follow his own music. ‘It’s quiet now.’
Aiden said, ‘Well, it’s gonna be, isn’t it?’ He wondered how much Chris really understood. ‘She’s not coming home.’ Dipping his brush, starting on a rose with a stem the size of a gum tree.
‘No one says much anymore,’ Chris continued.
‘I do. Dad does. Pop’s always grumbling.’
But Chris was thinking about it differently: how they used to form groups and laugh or discuss cattle prices; how there was always a buzz; how Carelyn always seemed to be the centre of everything: cooking, SOTA, arguing with Murray, keeping the boys in line. He wondered who would do these things now; who would make Aiden polish his boots, remind Trevor about air filters and ordering diesel; who’d make Murray take his cigarettes outside. ‘We need someone to take over,’ he said.
‘Take over what?’
‘The house.’
Aiden scraped the bottom of the tin for the last of the paint.
‘Someone to take Mum’s job?’
‘Yes.’
‘Who’s gonna do that?’
Chris stopped to think. ‘Maybe it should be you.’
‘I’ve got school.’
‘Maybe you should quit.’
‘I’m not allowed to.’
Aiden dropped his brush into the empty tin, placed it on the bench and wiped his hands on an old singlet. ‘That’s the last of it,’ he said.
Chris stopped half-way through a flower. ‘Should we buy some more?’
Aiden couldn’t answer. There’d been enough in the car to finish the mural. ‘We should,’ he replied. ‘Perhaps we can ask Dad.’
Chris couldn’t see the point of drawing stems and leaves no one would ever paint. ‘I can pay for it.’
‘How much you got?’
‘Two hundred and … fifteen dollars.’
Aiden smiled. ‘Well, if you’d like. You could choose the colours.’
Chris thought again. ‘No, we gotta keep it the same.’ He stood, gathered the empty cans and said, ‘I’ll write down the names.’ Then he turned and walked from the shed. Threw the brush back at Aiden. ‘Aren’t you gonna clean it?’
‘Yes,’ Aiden replied, holding the brush, studying it.
It was khaki. He could still see it, dissolving in his eyes; the following few days, on his face; even a week later when the dressings were removed. A translucent green, filtering every object he saw in his room, as his new roommate (a tyre-fitter named Sterry) said, ‘Good as new, eh?’
‘Sort of.’
‘Still not clear?’ the specialist had asked.
‘Clear enough.’
The doctor had looked at Trevor. ‘It’ll fade over the next few weeks.’
Aiden hadn’t been too concerned. He was studying his good pants and jacket, lying across his bed. He’d looked at his father and asked, ‘What time does it start?’
‘Two.’
‘Do we gotta get there early?’
‘I suppose we should.’
Although he really wanted to ask, Do we gotta go at all? Do we have to make a public display of all this? Why? What will it achieve?
Trevor, already in his own suit, had ironed his son’s clothes. ‘You’ll feel better when it’s over.’
After everybody’s watched us, with false pity, Aiden wanted to say. When they’ve seen us blubber, and break down.
He looked at the brush, ran the bristles over his hand and threw it across the shed. He wondered why he was bothering. The mural, by necessity, would have to remain unfinished. He picked up the singlet and smeared the fresh paint across the door.
Trevor was standing beside him. ‘You okay?’
He looked up without speaking.
‘Could you help Fay get tea started?’
Then studied his mural.
‘Well?’
‘Okay!’
Trevor stood his ground. ‘There’s only one of me,’ he said.
‘I know.’
‘You know that Chris is next to useless.’ He reminded him of the day he’d asked Chris to hang out washing and found him, an hour later, carving flowers out of cheese slices, sticking them onto windows and watching them melt and peel off. He turned and walked away, stopped and looked back. ‘Come on then.’
‘I’m coming.’
‘You got the shits on?’
Aiden just stared at him, thinking, You are the reason. You.
‘Well?’ Trevor asked.
He dropped his head into his hands. ‘Fuck off,’ he whispered.
‘What?’
Don’t make me say it, he thought.
But Trevor was gone, into his ute, throwing up gravel and dust as he disappeared down the hill.
‘Fuck!’ He stood, kicked the side panel of the car, two, three times and stared at it. Some of the paint had flaked off but the scene was mostly intact, remade with new hills and valleys. He kicked it again, this time on the passenger door. ‘Fuck you!’ he shouted.
He walked to the front of the shed, sat on his trail bike and started it. Then he revved the engine and drove off, almost immediately at full speed. Fay came out of the house, calling something to him.
He rode down the hill onto the main bore run. Then, travelling on the verge, opened his throttle and shot across the desert. He squinted, but there was no wind, no sand. He knew there wasn’t any danger; knew he’d be fine. Accidents only happened to the old, and soft, and stupid. He leaned forward and, for the first time in months, felt good. Angry-good. Dropping his head he worked the throttle and rode the bumps and clumps of bluegrass gently in his saddle. The horizon kept receding, as he hoped it would. There was no limit to this world, to its sand and gidgee trees, its bushes and dried bores. It just accepted him as he went further, but no further, into it. It had no life, no death, no love; no understanding and no forgiveness; it had nothing; no morals, values, compassion. It didn’t like him, it didn’t hate him; it refused to know anyone or anything.
He saw a few kangaroos and set off into the grass, chasing them. They fled then stopped and looked back at him. He kept moving. Full throttle. They jumped away. He closed on them. They stopped. He kept moving. They started again, but he was up to them.
There was a single juvenile at the back, by itself. As he caught up to it he kicked it in the back of the head and it tumbled. He stopped, turned and went back to it. The other roos stood watching. ‘Fuck off
,’ he shouted. He got off his bike, killed the engine and let it fall into the sand.
The juvenile had just got to its feet, but he kicked it in the head again and it fell over. He stood watching, detached, unaffected by the animal’s plight. It kicked its legs, making a long, deep arc in the sand, unable to stand up.
He took a deep breath, found his knife in his pocket and opened it. Then he knelt down beside the animal, grabbed its scrotum and cut into it. The roo struggled and made a series of low, guttural moans. Only wanting to finish the job, he castrated it, stood up and threw the warm, bloodied sac onto its body.
He waited for a moment, satisfied. Saw it bleed from the wound, and noticed how the sand welcomed the blood. How it stopped moving, mostly. Breathed deeply; seemed to be asleep.
He looked at the other roos. ‘Well?’
They turned and hopped off, occasionally stopping to look back.
He saw that the animal was still moving, but didn’t care.
Harry, sitting in bed, sick of his own thoughts, looked down the hallway. ‘Pop,’ he called, but there was no response. Picking up his phone, he messaged him: Pop where r u?
Send; and received, by Murray, sitting across the road in the Cathedral Hotel. He read the message and muttered, ‘Christ,’ thinking how it hadn’t been more than an hour, wondering why Harry couldn’t entertain himself for such a short time; draining his schooner, wiping his mouth and saying to his newest mates, ‘Gotta get back.’
‘The boy?’
‘Yes, the boy.’
Meanwhile, Harry was busy with his usual Friday visitors: Dr Feelgood and Dr Diamond, clown doctors (or, according to Murray, just clowns). Diamond, with his polka dot bandana, pink hair and Groucho Marx nose/glasses combination, playing his ukulele, attempting a Tiny Tim falsetto; all fluorescent wig and exploding bow-tie, improvising a hornpipe that started at the door and finished at the window.
Harry tried to smile. He thought they needed his approval and encouragement. Felt himself laughing, but then thinking, Go away.
Diamond used a tube and a wand to blow bubbles. ‘Harry, do you know what I hate most about hospitals?’
