Boy Swallows Universe

by Trent Dalton

  ‘Is Lyle a good man?’

  ‘Yeah, Eli,’ he says. ‘He’s a good man. Some of the time.’

  ‘Slim . . .’

  ‘Yeah, kid.’

  ‘Do you think I’m good?’

  Slim nods.

  ‘Yeah, kid, you’re all right.’

  ‘But am I good?’ I ask. ‘Do you think I’m gonna be a good man when I grow up?’

  Slim shrugs. ‘Well, you’re a good boy,’ he says. ‘But I guess bein’ a good boy doesn’t guarantee bein’ a good man.’

  ‘I think I need to be tested,’ I say.

  ‘Whaddya mean?’

  ‘I need to be tested. A test of character. I don’t know what’s inside me, Slim.’

  Slim stands up and looks at the writing on my drip bag.

  ‘I think they souped you up on some wacky juice, mate,’ Slim says, sitting back down again.

  ‘I do feel good,’ I say. ‘I feel like I’m still in a dream.’

  ‘That’s the painkillers, mate,’ Slim says. ‘Why do you need to be tested? Why don’t you just know that you’re a good kid? You got a good heart.’

  ‘I don’t know that,’ I say. ‘I’m not certain of that. I’ve thought some horrible things. I’ve had some very evil thoughts that couldn’t be the thoughts of someone good.’

  ‘Thinking evil thoughts and doing evil deeds are two very different things,’ Slim says.

  ‘Sometimes I imagine two aliens coming to planet earth and they have faces like piranhas and they drag me away in their spaceship and we’re flying through space as earth comes into view in the spaceship’s rearview mirror and one of the aliens turns to me from their driver’s seat and says, “It’s time, Eli”, and I take one last look at earth and I say, “Do it”, and the other alien presses a red button and in the rearview mirror earth doesn’t explode like it was the Death Star blowing up, it just silently vanishes from space – it’s there, then not there, like it was just deleted from the universe more than destroyed.’

  Slim nods.

  ‘Sometimes, Slim, I wonder if you’re not an actor and Mum is too, and Lyle as well and Gus, oh man, Gus, he’s like the best actor who ever lived, and you guys are all just acting around me and I’m being watched by those aliens in some grand production of my life.’

  ‘That’s not evil,’ Slim says. ‘That’s just batshit crazy, and a little self-centred.’

  ‘I need a test,’ I say. ‘Some moment where my true character can reveal itself naturally. I could do something noble, without a second’s thought, I just do it because doing good things is in me, and I’ll know for certain then that I am truly good inside.’

  ‘We all get that test eventually, kid,’ Slim says, looking out the window. ‘You can do something good every single day, kid. And you know what today’s good deed is going to be?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Backin’ up your mother’s version of events,’ Slim says.

  ‘And what were they again?’

  ‘August chopped your finger off with an axe,’ he says.

  ‘Gus is good,’ I say. ‘I don’t remember a single time when he did something bad against someone who didn’t deserve it.’

  ‘Them rules of good and bad don’t apply to that boy, I’m afraid,’ he says. ‘He’s walkin’ a different path, I reckon.’

  ‘Where to, ya reckon?’

  ‘Dunno,’ Slim says. ‘Some place only Gus knows how to get to.’

  ‘He talked, Slim,’ I say.

  ‘Who talked?’

  ‘Gus,’ I say. ‘Just before I blacked out. He talked.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He said—’

  A woman pulls the olive green curtain along the U-shaped rod. She wears a blue woollen jumper with an image of a kookaburra resting on a branch beside a gum leaf. She wears dark green slacks the colour of the gum leaf on the jumper. Her hair is red and she’s pale, late fifties maybe. She’s looking at my eyes the second she pulls back the curtain. She carries a clipboard. She swings the curtain back for privacy.

  ‘How’s our brave young soldier?’ she asks.

  She has an Irish accent. I’ve never in person heard a woman speak with an Irish accent.

  ‘He’s doing good,’ Slim says.

  ‘Well, let’s have a look at that dressing,’ she says.

  I love her Irish accent. I want to go to Ireland right now with this woman and lie in rich green grass by a cliff’s edge and eat boiled potatoes with salt and butter and pepper and speak with an Irish accent about how anything is possible for thirteen-year-old boys with Irish accents.

  ‘My name is Caroline Brennan,’ she says. ‘And you must be brave Eli, the young man who lost his special finger.’

  ‘How did you know it was special?’

  ‘Well, the right forefinger is always special,’ she says. ‘It’s the one you use to point at the stars. It’s the one you use to point out the girl in your class photo who you secretly love. It’s the one you use to read a really long word in your favourite book. It’s the one you use to pick your nose and scratch your arse, right?’

  Dr Brennan says the surgeons upstairs couldn’t do much about my missing finger. She says modern reattachment surgeries in teenagers are roughly seventy to eighty per cent successful but these complex reattachments rely heavily on one key element: a fucking finger to stick back on. After twelve or so hours without replantation of the amputated finger, that seventy to eighty per cent success rate bottoms out to ‘Sorry, you poor rotten son of a smack dealer.’ Sometimes, she says, finger replantations often cause more problems than they’re worth, especially when the lone severed finger is an index or pinkie finger, but this just sounds to me like saying to a starving man floating out at sea on a plank of wood, ‘Look, it’s probably a good thing you don’t have a leg of ham with you because it probably would make you constipated.’

  Amputations like mine, she says, at the base of the finger, are more complex still, and even if my teenage runaway finger suddenly emerged on a bucket of ice, it is unlikely nerve function would recover enough to make the finger anything more useful than something I could shove into a bed of hot coals as a neat party trick.

  ‘Now hold out your tall man,’ she says, twiddling her middle finger.

  I hold up my tall man.

  ‘Now shove him up your nostril,’ she says.

  She sticks her own middle finger in her nostril, raising her eyebrows.

  Slim beams. I follow suit, shove that tall man up my nose.

  ‘See,’ Dr Brennan says. ‘There ain’t nothing that forefinger could do that tall man can’t, you hear me, young Eli? The tall man can just go deeper.’

  I nod, smiling.

  She carefully unwraps the dressing around my fingerless knuckle and the air on the exposed flesh makes me wince. I sneak a look at it and turn immediately away with the image of a bald white knuckle bone exposed in flesh, like one of my back teeth lodged inside a pork sausage.

  ‘It’s healing well,’ she says.

  ‘How long will he be in for, Doc,’ Slim asks.

  ‘I’d like to keep him here two or three more days at least,’ she says. ‘Just monitor him for infection in the early stages.’

  She gives the wound a new dressing. She turns to Slim.

  ‘Can I speak to Eli alone, please?’ she says.

  Slim nods. He stands, his old bones cracking as he rises. He coughs twice, a chesty, nasty, wheezy cough like he’s got a hissing rhinoceros beetle lodged in his larynx.

  ‘You had that cough seen to?’ Dr Brennan asks.

  ‘Nah,’ Slim says.

  ‘Why not?’ she replies.

  ‘Because one of you bright quacks might do something silly like stop me from dyin’,’ he says. He gives me a wink as he passes Dr Brennan.

  ‘Has Eli got a place to go?’ Dr Brennan asks.

  ‘He’s going to his dad’s house,’ Slim says.

  Dr Brennan shoots a look at me.

  ‘Is that okay with you
?’ she asks.

  Slim watches for my response.

  I nod. And he nods too.

  He hands me a $20 note. ‘When you’re done ’ere, you get yourself a cab back to your old man’s, all right?’ he says. He points to a cupboard beneath my hospital bed. ‘I brought your shoes and a fresh set of clothes for ya.’

  Slim hands me a slip of paper and walks for the door. An address and a phone number on the paper.

  ‘Your old man’s address,’ he says. ‘I’m not far from you boys, just past the Hornibrook Bridge. You call this number if you need me. It’s the number of a hock shop beneath the flat. Ask for Gill.’

  ‘Then what do I say?’ I ask.

  ‘Say you’re best friends with Slim Halliday.’

  Then he’s gone.

  *

  Dr Brennan reads a chart on a clipboard. She sits on the side of the bed.

  ‘Give me your arm,’ she says. Around my left bicep she wraps a velvet cuff attached to a black pump shaped like a grenade.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Checks your blood pressure,’ she says. ‘Just relax now.’

  She squeezes the grenade several times.

  ‘So, you like Star Wars?’

  I nod.

  ‘So do I,’ she says. ‘Who’s your favourite character?’

  ‘Han. Boba Fett, maybe.’ A long pause. ‘No, Han.’

  Dr Brennan gives me a sharp eye.

  ‘You sure about that?’

  Pause.

  ‘Luke,’ I say. ‘It’s always been Luke. Who’s yours?’

  ‘Oh, Darth Vader all the way for me,’ she says.

  I see where she’s going with this. Dr Brennan should join the fuzz. I’ll bite.

  ‘You like Vader?’

  ‘Oh yeah, I always enjoy the bad guys,’ she says. ‘You don’t have much of a story if you don’t have some bad guys. Can’t have a good, good hero without a bad, bad villain, right?’

  I smile.

  ‘Who doesn’t want to be Darth Vader?’ she laughs. ‘Someone pushes in front of you when you’re lining up for a hot dog and you give them the ol’ silent Force choke.’ She makes a pincer grip with her thumb and forefinger.

  I laugh, making the same grip in midair. ‘I find your lack of mustard disturbing,’ I say and we laugh together.

  Out of the corner of my eye I catch sight of a boy standing in the doorway of my hospital room. He wears a light blue hospital gown like me. He has a shaved head but for a long brown rat’s tail stretching from the back of his scalp and draping over his right shoulder. His left hand grips a mobile IV stand holding the drip bag that’s plugged into his hand.

  ‘What is it, Christopher?’ asks Dr Brennan.

  Maybe he’s eleven years old. He’s got a scar across his top lip that makes him look like the last eleven-year-old boy with a mobile drip I’d ever want to come across in a dark alley. He scratches his arse.

  ‘Tang’s too weak again,’ he spits.

  Dr Brennan sighs. ‘Christopher, there’s twice as much powder in it than last time,’ she says.

  He shakes his head and walks away.

  ‘I’m fuckin’ dyin’ and yer givin’ me weak Tang?’ he says on his way up the corridor outside.

  Dr Brennan raises her eyebrows. ‘Sorry about that,’ she says.

  ‘What’s he dying from?’ I ask.

  ‘Poor bugger’s got a tumour the size of Ayers Rock in his brain,’ she says.

  ‘Can you do anything about it?’

  ‘Maybe,’ she says, writing my blood pressure numbers onto a sheet on the clipboard. ‘Maybe not. Sometimes medicine’s got nothing to do with it.’

  ‘What do you mean? . . . God?’

  ‘Oh, no, not God. I’m talkin’ about Gog.’

  ‘Who’s Gog?’

  ‘He’s God’s cranky, more impatient younger brother,’ she says. ‘While God’s off building the Himalayas, miserable ol’ Gog is off puttin’ tumours in the heads of young Brisbane lads.’

  ‘Gog’s got a lot to answer for,’ I suggest.

  ‘Gog walks among us,’ she says. ‘Anyway, where were we?’

  ‘Vader.’

  ‘Oh yeah, so you don’t like Darth Vader, do you?’ she says. ‘You and your brother wanted to chop him in half with an axe, I understand?’

  ‘We were pissed he killed Obi-Wan.’

  She stares into my eyes, rests her folder on the bed.

  ‘You ever heard the saying, Eli, “Can’t bullshit a bullshitter”?’

  ‘Slim loves that one,’ I say.

  ‘I bet he does.’

  ‘I see some shit in this place,’ she says, her Irish accent making that sentence sound like she’s talking about a fine dawn sunrise. ‘I’ve seen green shit and yellow shit and black shit and purple shit with polka dots and shit so thick you could plop it over your mother-in-law’s head and fairly knock her out. I’ve seen shit come out of holes you didn’t know existed. I’ve seen shit tear the arseholes out of women and men, but rarely have I seen shit so dangerous as the bullshit pouring out of your mouth right now.’

  She speaks with love and compassion in all that shit-speak and it makes me laugh.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say.

  ‘There are things you can do,’ she says. ‘There are places you can go to be safe, people you can trust. There are still people in this city more powerful than the police. There’s still a few Luke Skywalkers left in Brisbane, Eli.’

  ‘Heroes?’ I ask.

  ‘Can’t have all those villains walking around without a few heroes too,’ she says.

  *

  Dear Alex,

  Greetings from the children’s ward of Royal Brisbane Hospital. Firstly, please forgive my messy handwriting. I recently lost my right forefinger (really long story) but I can grip a Bic ballpoint pen just fine between my tall finger, my thumb and my right ring finger. My doctor, Dr Brennan, wants me to start using my hands and she said writing a letter might be a way to start practising my writing as well as getting the blood circulating in my hands. How are you and the boys and Tripod the cat? Sorry I can’t give you any updates on Days of Our Lives, they only have one TV in the children’s ward and it’s always on Play School. You ever been in hospital? It’s not bad here. Dr Brennan is real nice and speaks with an Irish accent that I think the boys in 2 Division would love. Dinner’s a bit rough with the roast lamb but breakfast (Corn Flakes) and lunch (chicken sandwiches) are spot on. I could stay a bit longer here but I can’t because I’ve got work to do. See, I’ve been thinking about heroes, Alex. You ever have a hero? Someone who saved you. Someone who kept you safe. What makes someone a hero? Luke Skywalker didn’t set out to be a hero. He just wanted to find Obi-Wan. Then he just decided to step outside his comfort zone. He just decided to follow his heart. So maybe that’s all it takes to be a hero, Alex. Just follow your heart. Step outside. You might not be able to get hold of me for a while because I’m going away for a bit. I’m off on a quest, going on a bit of an adventure. I have established my goal and I have the will to achieve it. Remember what Slim always says about the four things: timing, planning, luck, belief. I reckon that’s like life. I reckon that’s like living. I’ll write to you when I can, but if you don’t hear from me for a bit, I want to say thanks for all the letters and thanks for being my friend. So much more to say but I’ll have to leave all that to another day because my moment is almost here and my time is slipping away. Like sand through the hourglass. Ha!

  Your friend always,

  Eli

  *

  Slim always had this self-belief thing about escaping prison. It went something along the lines of, ‘If you truly believe the guards can see you then the guards can truly see you. But if you truly believe that you’re invisible then the guards will believe you’re truly invisible.’ I think that’s what he was saying. It was something about confidence. The Houdini of Boggo Road wasn’t as magical as he was sneaky and confident and a confident sneak can make his own magic. His first succe
ssful escape from Boggo Road was in broad daylight. A blistering Sunday afternoon, 28 January 1940. Slim and his fellow D Wing prisoners were being walked around the central circle towards Number 4 yard. Slim fell back among the group and he believed he was invisible, so he was.

  Four factors to a clean escape: timing, planning, luck, belief. Timing was right, between 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. on a Sunday when the majority of the prison guards were off guarding the majority of prisoners at prayer service in Number 4 yard, on the opposite side of the compound to Slim’s D Wing. Simple plan. Effective plan. Confident plan. On the way to Number 4 yard, Slim simply went invisible, slipped like a ghost from the single line of prisoners and ducked into Number 1 yard, adjacent to D Wing, nearest yard to his ultimate destination, the prison workshops.

  Then he believed he could scale a three-metre wooden fence and so he did. He climbed the fence bordering Number 1 exercise yard and leaped down to a track below, a sterile zone that ran along the inside of the prison walls to form a square shape. He crossed the track into the workshops area that was usually patrolled by guards but wasn’t during Sunday prayer service. Sweating, hot, quiet, stealthy, he ran to the back of the workshops and, invisible to the guards, climbed onto an outhouse that allowed him to climb further and up to the roof of the workshops.

  Here, potentially visible to the guards in the prison watchtowers, he produced a pair of stolen and smuggled pliers and rapidly cut through the wire netting covering the workshop ventilation windows. Timing, planning, luck, belief. And a slim build. The Houdini of Boggo Road squeezed his thin frame through the ventilation windows and dropped down into the boot-making section of the workshops.

  Each workshop section was separated by wire meshing. Slim cut and slipped his way through the wire from the boot shop to the mattress shop, from the mattress shop to the carpenter’s shop, from the carpenters’ shop to the loom shop, from the loom shop to paradise – the brush shop in which he had been working in recent weeks and in which he had hidden his escape kit.

  Timing is right for my escape. It’s 3 p.m. in the children’s ward play area, a polished wood floor communal space shaped like half an octagon. The area is bordered by white wood-framed latch windows like the windows in my school. Same time in the afternoon Slim made his escape. A time in the ward when most of these kids – about eighteen kids, aged four to fourteen, battling everything from appendicitis to broken arms to concussions to knife wounds to fingers chopped off by artificial limb specialists – are on a Tang and green cordial high from afternoon tea, their tongues still buzzing with the sweet elixir of the cream inside a Monte Carlo biscuit.