by Paul Haines
After a few weeks, Kane's curiosity got the better of him, and he decided he'd follow his old man. That night, the family had dinner together, and once the plates had been cleared, Wes excused himself and slipped out the back door. Kane watched him disappear around the side of the shed. Half an hour later, Kane stood outside the shed door, his hand hovering over the handle. He pushed open the door to find his father sitting on a chair in the dark, drinking beer from a long bottle, and listening to crackly talkback radio. Wes glared at him but said nothing. Kane shut the door and went back inside. He, too, said nothing.
Wes had stepped up alright.
Kane told me this a few years later, halfway through our second bottle of cheap tequila as the night marked midnight. We were in his shed listening to Mike Oldfield bouncing out of the speakers and off the walls. He was trying out a chair for size. At the time, we laughed. Kane was my best friend between the ages of ten and fourteen. I haven't heard from him in over eight years.
18
A rust-stained grill swallows my rear view mirror. A tuft of red hair matted with dried blood is caught between holes in the grill. The engine roars as the truck changes gear.
I need to make a decision. Speed up or slow down? Or get out of the way? Get to the outside lane.
Something hits the back of my car, shunting me sideways into the barriers.
Baxter.
I wake. It's 3am, and Isla's crying.
'Can you get her please, hon?' my wife says sleepily into her pillow.
'Sure.' My hands are shaking.
19
I clearly remember the night Baxter and I became friends.
We were drunk and walking home from the pub, winding our way along the Leith River in the moonlight. Our breath white frost in the autumn evening air, we talked shit about whether The Cult had sold out and if Pop Will Eat Itself was for real. We stopped at a bridge that crossed the Leith—a metre-wide water pipe ran parallel at ground level.
'It's a rite of passage.' Baxter turned towards me, his hands buried in the pockets of his denim jacket. Long red locks hung upon his collar, his mullet spiked in front. He climbed up onto the pipe and tapped it with the toes of his Doc Martens. 'You have to walk it.'
A metre of pipe wasn't much when most of it was curved. I leant over the bridge and looked down. The water in the Leith gurgled several metres below, black and cold. 'I'm too pissed.'
'That's the rite of passage.'
I shook my head and grinned. 'You're mad.'
He shook his head and scowled. 'You're soft, Stevie.'
Baxter walked out to the middle of the pipe, the sound of his boots loud and intrusive against the night. He made it look easy, matching my pace on the bridge. He even kept his hands in his pockets, though his eyes remained on the pipe in front of his feet.
'Not bad, Baxter. I'll buy you a beer.' I was impressed.
He looked up from the pipe to glare at me. 'That's the problem with you soft bastards. You think you—'
And then he wasn't there.
I pulled him shivering from the Leith, and we lay on the river bank laughing, steam rising from our wet and muddied bodies, chests heaving, adrenalin burning through the booze, forever etching that moment in my memory.
That feeling of being alive.
20
What? You were expecting a straight narrative. Something linear? Like life, with a start and an end? Life is not like that. It does have a start and an end, but the middle is confusing, disjointed. Life blunders its way forward, staggering through an assault of intrusions that pull you backwards and shunt you sideways.
Life is, has, and always will be haunted by the past.
21
Data flows. Fluorescent lights bathe my face. My aching eyes retreat into their sockets. They feel like they're being poached. I need to apply drops daily to ease the irritation.
Someone makes a joke about 'going postal' on this project. We all laugh. Though it's not said, we all know this means coming into work with a loaded gun and letting loose.
On the way back from the bathroom, I pass two women talking in the hallway. I see them from the corner of my eye. Something about one of them makes my step falter, and I glance back. Dark hair obscures her face. She is more solid than I remember, but solidity comes with years.
I can't tell for sure, but she could be my first love, an older version of the woman who first broke my heart. Amy Barnett. The only woman I loved that I now hate. I keep walking.
By the time I get back to my desk, the lights are too bright and my eyes are streaming. I feel sick, excuse myself, leave the building, get in the car, and hit the freeway.
I count a dozen late-70s model Ford Falcons, dull red-orange and heavy, on the trip home. Baxter drives every one of them. Amy sits in the back of some of them, laughing, her bare legs raised and resting on the headrest of the seat in front of her.
22
It's now officially recognised. Back To Work Blues. They're talking about it on breakfast television, between reports of bushfires, interest rate rises, water restrictions, and analysis of the best weight loss programs.
I'm pretending not to listen as I focus on Isla batting the toys dangling from the arch of her playmat. Her hands flail; the finger and thumb coordination's not developed yet. She gums me a smile and resumes her batting. My heart melts.
'Maybe that's what you've got,' says Jules. My wife has been watching both the show and me pretending not to watch. 'Everyone gets it.'
'Yeah, maybe, I don't think so.' I crouch and kiss Isla's cheek. She wriggles and grunts her appreciation. I grab my car keys and walk towards the front door. 'Gotta go, I'm late. Love you.'
'Paul?' Jules face hangs low with concern. 'Talk to me.'
'Hon.' I force a smile. 'I'm fine, just tired. That's all.'
I get in the car and bury myself in the congestion leading towards the bridge. I turn off the music and flick on the radio, searching for a traffic report. There'll be one on talkback for sure.
#
Am I having a mid-life crisis?
A mid-life crisis is an emotional condition that can appear in both men and women, usually around the age of 35 to 50 years. The anxiety felt usually focuses on the realisation that the person's life is halfway over, but unhappy marriages, dissatisfaction at work, loss of sex drive can all contribute. I'm not ticking all the boxes here, but I'm certainly giving the pen a good work out.
There are supposedly different neurological reasons why men can't articulate their experiences compared to women.
What? You want me to articulate those reasons? No can do.
We want out of the rat race, but we're still The Provider. It's wired into our DNA. We think we're stuck. I spend a lot of idle time at work checking this all out. A lot of time.
So am I having a mid-life crisis? You tell me.
I want out, I know that much. But to where?
#
Smoke from the bushfires still hangs over the city. I can smell it seeping through the aircon. Across the road, at the petrol station, fuel has hit a new high per litre. Peter Little fills a rusting, dented Ford Falcon with petrol. He removes the cigarette from his mouth and taps ash onto the forecourt. He grins at me, a good-to-see-you-mate grin: let's catch up over a few beers, smoke some weed, a little speed perhaps, ha, ha, ha ... a Little speed, sit us down and chew the fat over the past.
He's at least twenty metres away, and his sharp blue eyes drill into mine. He's wired, completely a-grade wired.
He knows where I work. Where I live.
23
... softening the hidden nooks and crannies.
I'm driving, and I hate it.
The road winds treacherously along the Taieri Gorge, and I constantly brake and shift between gears. I'm a shit driver; I know it and so does everyone in this car, but I'm acting like I don't care, like this is nothing. Logging trucks, enormous and snaking, career full speed head on ...
24
I hardly take drugs anymore. I tel
l people I still do, to maintain the image I believe I need to maintain—you know, still bucking the system, bohemian lifestyle, that sort of thing—but I usually have an excuse ready if the opportunity for public consumption rears its head.
I used to love it and the twisting corridors it used to lead my mind down. An altered consciousness exploring angles I'd never considered in the straight light of day. But over the years, all the corridors inevitably began to lead in the same direction. Down into darkness.
I found myself thinking about being chopped into pieces with a blunt axe, of being bound naked spread-eagled on a bed while the blade partially severed the inside of my thigh only to stick in fractured bone. This thought kept coming back again and again until I managed to stop myself thinking while under the influence—but then what was the point?
I'd end up sitting alone in a darkened room, with the music down low, listening to the big hush of the nocturnal city, waiting, inevitably, for the sound of wailing sirens to approach—or for Jules to tap on the window.
25
'Little was my best mate at high school,' Baxter had told me in my other lifetime. 'You'll like him, Stevie.'
We'd been on our way to the Cook Hotel for happy hour, three-dollar jugs of beer, pulling our coats tight against the freezing sleet that pricked exposed skin like needles.
'He's not like a lot of them down my way; he's smart.' Baxter glanced at me, an eyebrow cocked. 'He'll beat you at chess.'
'We'll see. Haven't met any of your school friends before.'
Baxter laughed, a harsh sound caught by the wind and swept away. 'That's because most of them are dead.'
'Eh?'
'Not much to do in Invercargill. So we drove cars. Fast. I've written off two, been pulled out of three others. Lucky to be alive, really. There used to be six of us. Now there's only me and Little.' Baxter pulled open the doors to the pub. Heat and noise poured out into the street. 'Black ice is a killer. I wonder if Little has earned red laces yet?'
26
I scan through the work email registry and phone directories for the surname Barnett. Nothing, and with it, a fleeting instance of relief. Then I scan for the name Amy. She could be married now, and somewhere, deep inside, I feel nauseous thinking that.
There's an Amy on the third floor and one on the fifth. I've only ever met one Amy in my life, and now there's two of them in the same building.
I take the lift to the third floor. My eyes are stinging.
27
In our first year at university, Baxter bought himself a second-hand 1978 red-orange Ford Falcon for $5000. This was two years before I met Peter Little; and therefore, two years before I knew Baxter had been involved in at least five serious traffic accidents. I suspect this was why he never had insurance for the car.
I went in that car once with Baxter down to the bottle shop to buy a keg of beer and a couple of packs of cigarettes, B&H Gold, thanks, mate, for a party. The Sisters of Mercy blasted from the speakers in the doors. The engine growled, the gears ground, and the muscles tensed on Baxter's arms whenever he turned the wheel.
He never got to drive that car out of Dunedin. Within two weeks, just before midnight, a lecturer on a $10,000 motorbike crashed into the side of the car as Baxter pulled out from the curb after buying a $1.20 steak and cheese pie from the 24-hour dairy.
Without insurance, that pie became the most expensive meal Baxter ever had. He had to sell the car and lost almost half of his university savings in the payout.
If only it had been the most expensive lesson he had learned.
28
Country roads. Long and meandering. If you want, you can do more than the speed limit. No median barriers. Huge road trains roared along these narrow tree-lined chutes, ploughing through kangaroo and possum.
I tell myself it's a good thing that I'm no longer working in the northern rural areas anymore, that I'm bound to my desk in an industrial suburb and enslaved to the computer chained to it.
No more open roads and open spaces.
29
Baxter was right. I did like Little.
I was expecting a Southern Bogan, and in outward appearances, Little didn't disappoint. He kept his blonde hair at a number two buzz, wore black Levis and a black woollen jersey, and sported black Doc Marten boots—with black laces not red.
The man himself, though, was quietly spoken, his conversation intelligent, and his smile comforting. And he bought the first jug of beer. And the second. And the third.
Little had run into a spot of trouble with one of the skinhead gangs in Invercargill. He had grown bored with making up $25 foils from the garbage bag of sticky heads he was going to on-sell for the gang and whipped up to the shops for a packet of cigarettes, B&H Gold, thanks, mate, and a chocolate milk. It was during this opportune moment that the drug squad busted his house. They found his fingerprints all over the cannabis foils and bags, but they didn't find Peter Little. He kept on walking. At that point, Little thought of his good ole buddy Baxter and decided that maybe he should check out some honest work opportunities in the not-so-far-away-but-far-enough city of Dunedin.
Little moved into our flat. He took the couch in the stairwell/entry area; Baxter already had the lounge as his room. We'd sit up smoking pot and drinking beer with the music blasting; our thumbs and forefingers hammering on keys as we battled through computer games.
One night, in the dead of winter as the frost pressed its palms against my bedroom window, something weird happened. For the life of me, I still don't know how. One minute, we'd been killing each other on screen, the next my dick managed to find its way into Little's mouth. We sat on the end of my bed where my girlfriend Amy lay wrapped beneath the sheets comatose. I normally had trouble relaxing with oral sex but not that night. I remember Little wiping his mouth, and laughing, and his eyes sparkling in the mute light cast from the computer monitor. Later, I realised he looked deranged. Little rubbed the shape of Amy's legs beneath the blankets and said we'd better not mention anything.
We went back to the screen. Little dispatched a host of Ur-Quan Kzer-Za Dreadnought Fighters to hunt down my already-cloaking Ilwrath Avenger.
He won the game.
I never said a word.
30
I'm home late from 'work'. Only the porch light remains lit. I let myself in quietly, trying not to disturb the sleeping family, unsure what excuse I'll use when Jules's interrogation begins. It's the project. Deadlines. Pressure. Won't be for long. The truth is I don't know where I've been for the last few hours. Before I can get my story right, the hallway light flicks on.
But it's not Jules, and the unprepared lies fall from my lips unspoken.
Baxter, naked, pulling on a pair of disintegrating Levi jeans he'd cut down into shorts, emerges from my bedroom, nods at me, and wanders down the hallway. I peer into the open bedroom door. Jules is asleep, huddled under a bundle of quilts.
I follow Baxter to the kitchen.
'What are you doing here?'
He ignites one of the burners on the stove, leans in, and lights his cigarette. He drags deep, the embers burn bright, and exhales slowly; his eyes never leave my face.
'I could ask you the same question, Stevie,' he says.
He props himself against the stove and taps ash to the floor.
'You can't smoke in here.' I grab him by the arm and lead him towards the back door and the courtyard. His skin is cool and damp and stinks of sex. 'What the hell were you doing in my room?'
He laughs, a strangled hiccup, and drops himself into a chair. 'Good job, nice house, pretty wife, cute baby. Looks like you made it, eh?'
I shake my head. Something is wrong, badly wrong.
He blows smoke at my face, something I've always hated. 'Been fucking yer wife lately?'
At first, I mistake the question for a statement. I should be seething, raging, freaking out. The skin on Baxter's arm is melting, the flesh soft and runny. The hair on his head frizzles. I should be feeling something, anything,
but I'm not here, no, not at all.
My voice echoes from a long way away. 'You try anything on her and I'll kill you.'
Baxter laughs and flicks his cigarette at me.
'Paul?' Jules stands in the doorway, bleary-eyed, dressing gown pulled tight over pyjamas. 'What are you doing out here?' Then more incredulously, 'Are you smoking?'
Baxter's cigarette burns in my hand, a red sizzle of flesh. His chair is empty. I stamp out the cigarette, go inside, and run my hand under the cold tap in the kitchen.
Jules sniffs the air and stares at the oven; her eyes are suddenly angry. 'For Christ's sake, hon, you've left the gas on.' She rushes over to the oven and turns the lever to close off the gas. 'You've got to be more careful than that; you could have killed us.'
I mumble an apology and tell her I'll come to bed soon.
Baxter.
It was Baxter.
31
Numbers. They're fucking with my head.
32
I'm driving, and I hate it.
The road winds treacherously along the Taieri Gorge, and I constantly brake and shift between gears. I'm a shit driver; I know it and so does everyone in this car, but I'm acting like I don't care, like this is nothing. Logging trucks, enormous and snaking, career full speed head on, and to let them pass, I keep edging into the loose gravel on the side of the road overlooking the drop into the gorge. The sudden loss of traction sickens me ...
