The Road to Woop Woop and Other Stories

by Eugen Bacon

  ***

  If it hadn’t been such a dreary morning, perhaps the mood might be right. But a bleak dawn lifted to cobalt, to brown, slid to gray. One recipe for disaster that simmers you and River in separate pots.

  This spring is of a different breed. It traps you, brings with it . . . fights. You gripe like siblings, the inner push to argue too persuasive. Smiles diminish to awkward; words sharpen to icicles.

  Kununurra was a break long overdue. A planned trip. Your idea. A dumb-arsed one at that for a romance on the line. As though different soil would mend it.

  ***

  “Drive?” River had asked.

  “Best within the price bracket,” you said.

  “Do I look half-convinced?”

  “People drive,” you said. “It’s normal.”

  “Seems normal to take the plane.”

  “If we drive, River, what do you think the concern is? What?”

  “If we drive my road rover? I hope for your sake to never ask myself that question.”

  “That’s called pessimism.”

  “Who’s pessimistic here, Miss Price Bracket?”

  You flipped.

  Despite his harassed face, he stunned you by agreeing to the trip.

  Everything was organized to the last detail. Everything but the climate. A few hours into the day, the weather window opened, torrential rain that left a curtain behind. Despite the planning, you got lost. Twice. Ended up doing a long leg to Kununurra. Gave shoes for another fight.

  ***

  Irish Clover in “The Road to No Place” chants her soulful lyrics:

  You say you’ll climb no mountain with me

  I’ll go with you anyway

  Darling I’ll follow you

  Somewhere we’ve never been.

  I’ll go with you to the sun and to the night

  I’ll go with you where the water is wide

  I’ll go with you anyway

  No Place is where we’ll be.

  You say I’m not your rain, your rainbow

  But you’re my earth, my blanket

  You’re my canopy, my tree

  I’ll go with you anywhere we’ve never been.

  ***

  Not saying a word about River’s uncanny state, one he doesn’t appear to notice, makes you feel complicit with the devil. Like you’ve already sold your soul, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

  Your dread melts to curiosity. You glance at River and his lost hands and let out a cry. His belly downward is gone. Just an athletic chest and a head, cropped arms driving a car without touching.

  “River?”

  He doesn’t immediately respond, emotions barricaded within himself. When he looks at you, it’s with a darkened mood. “Have to listen to that stupid song?”

  You want to tell him that it’s his car, his radio. That he has no hands and no legs, and what the goddamn fuck is happening? But all you say is, “No,” a whisper in your throat.

  “Will you turn it off?”

  “No.”

  “Be like that.”

  No reason has its name, its talent, written on this new grumble. Its seeds sink deeper, water themselves richer, flower more malignant blues.

  Though he maintains the same proximity in his hacked body, so close you can almost hear his heart talk, he is drawn away from you, accepting without question the space, its margin creeping further out.

  You grip the seatbelt where he can’t see it.

  River is . . . my big red lobster. Beautiful, until the fiend.

  Two springs ago, you were working at a garden restaurant. He stepped into your life with a guitar across his waist, a rucksack on his back. An avid traveler, you thought. He caught your eye. Rapture, you thought. And then he smiled. Hey presto. Reminded you of the heartthrob muso who won the Boy-up Brook Country Music Awards years back. Your thoughts turned unholy.

  We fell in love swatting sandflies . . . in Broome.

  Longing swells, you feel empty next to a stranger.

  Before the trip, before he became this . . . this . . . your body was willing, the mathematics of your need. But everything around it failed. Night after night, you turned to your pillow, swallowed in thought. One day, you feared, the pillow would mean more than River.

  Sometimes you never kissed.

  Just a melt of bodies, a tumble of knees, flesh against flesh, almost cruel. Thrusts that summoned a climax that spread from your toes.

  ***

  “Jesus!”

  “Goddamn!”

  Your responses are simultaneous as an overtaking truck judders, sways dangerously close, pushes you nearly off the highway.

  Silence for a startling second stretches miles out.

  ***

  You switch driving at dusk. River lightly snores. Just his dreadlocked head and broad shoulders—his chest is gone. The road rover is a power train. You glide with your foreboding. River takes the wheel at dawn. You sleep. Wake on instinct. It’s a strange world in the middle of nowhere. A blue-green carpet with fluid waves. Ears of grass stir, tease, declare interest in everything about you.

  Sandy gold stretches a quarter mile deep, some dapples of green with burnt yellows. Beautifully rugged in parts, it reminds you of River’s morning face. You glance at him, what’s left of him: black gold eyes and an ivory-white jaw—skeletal. Clouds dissolve to shimmering threads across the ocean-blue firmament.

  The road rover halts at a divide.

  “Left or right?” says River.

  “Right.”

  A whiff of aftershave touches your nostrils. You can almost feel him on your skin.

  “Dying for a piddle,” he says.

  “Me too. Where do people go in this wilderness?”

  “The bush?”

  You wipe your forehead with the back of your hands. “River?”

  “Yes?” Just eyes—the jaw is gone.

  You hug your knees. “I wonder about us—do you?”

  “I wonder about it plenty.”

  Your stomach folds. You rock on your knees.

  “Maybe we should, you know . . .take time off,” you say.

  “We are taking time off.”

  You pull at your hair, worrying it. Tighten a long strand in a little finger.

  “Let’s not fight. Please, River.”

  “Okay. What now?”

  “Don’t know.”

  The road rover rolls into a deserted station.

  “Well,” the engine dies, “I’m going for a piddle.”

  “Me too.”

  You slip on canvas trainers, hug a turquoise sweater.

  ***

  You depart, perhaps as equals, not as partners.

  You step minutes behind into the station, seek the toilet. River is nowhere to ask. You see it, a metal shack, labeled.

  You push the door. It swings with ease.

  You climb down a stone step, jump sodden paper on the ground. The walls are dripping, the floor swirling with water.

  But the need to go is great.

  You move tippie-toe toward one of the cubicles, take care not to touch the wetness.

  Later, as you wash your hands, a cubicle door opens. River—nothing visible, but you know it’s him—comes out.

  “Dripping mess,” you say. “You could have warned me.”

  “What—spoil the surprise?” Your heart tugs at the lilt in his voice.

  “Can’t find the dryer. What’s this?” You move toward a contraption on the wall.

  “Don’t touch—” begins River.

  You’ve already pressed it.

  “—the green button,” he finishes lamely.

  A moan on the roof, roar, and a glorious waterfall of soapy water spits from the ceiling. The deluge plummets, spl
ashes and bounces off walls, floods you.

  You screech, try to run. Slip.

  Drowning in water, you lift your head and see a silhouette like a shimmering light forming of River. It is bolts of lightning shaping out a man. His translucent body is standing in the waterfall. Now he’s there, now he’s not. He’s shaking clumps of drippy hair, roped, from his face. “Washed itself, did it?”

  He’s still wavering in and out like a breaking circuit.

  You rise, coughing.

  You guide yourself with palms along the wall. Squishy shoes make obscene sounds. Your nipple-struck T-shirt draws your sweater tighter. You stare, horrified. Sobbing denim clings to your legs.

  “I just touched it,” you gasp.

  Drip! Drip! says the wall.

  “Oh, you beaut,” laughs River. Now he’s a silhouette, no longer twinkling in and out. There’s his smoky self, his smoky smile.

  The ceiling sighs. The flood gurgles and narrows its cascade to a dribble. Dripping walls, clomps of soggy tissue float in a puddle.

  He comes toward you, not the drift of a ghost, but walking, misty leg after misty leg. The blackest, most golden eyes hold your gaze, until you’re enveloped in his steamy form, in the waft of his aftershave: an earthy scent of cedar and orange flower.

  “We’d best get these clothes off,” he speaks to your hair. You clutch him, nothing solid, just the emanating heat of his fog. It leaves you with a pining for the touch of him—a longing for his finger tracing the outline of your nose. His mouth teasing the nape of your neck.

  You don’t know about tomorrow, whether River will ever be as he was, different from the torment he is now. Present, yet lacking. But he’s your rain, your rainbow. Your earth, your blanket. You’ll go anywhere with him.

  Suddenly, you feel more. You feel more deeply.

  SWIMMING WITH DADDY

  I get it right in the second tumble-turn. I approach the wall with speed, push my nose to my knees, heels to my hips, big kick off the wall.

  I have been practicing the dolphin kick.

  You take in the perfection of my glide. There’s warm pride in your eyes, soft eyes that look at someone in a personal way. You don’t wear glasses with big metal rims these days. Eyes couldn’t see better, you say when I ask.

  Little flutter kicks lead to the hand stroke and away, away I go. I like it when the weather is good like today, when sundown rays through the natural light ceiling put golden shimmers in the pale blue chlorinated water. The floor is tiled, tiny insets the size and shape of sticky notes. I imagine each tile has a message I listen for when you are silent. I track ebony lines at the bottom to keep my swim straight.

  “Learn the feel of water,” you say.

  You never swam a day in your life, yet you have wisdom to know. You speak clearly, concisely, with ease—easy words, easy eyes of a friend. Your voice is different than before, perhaps then it was alive. Not that now it’s dead, just calming. You calm me.

  I smile.

  You’re my daddy tortoise, my Moses, my Mandela—his spirit lives, my Brer Terrapin like in Uncle Remus stories.

  “Remember how Terrapin deceived Brer Buzzard?” I say.

  “I told you that story.”

  “Same way you told me those why and how stories. Why the crocodile lives in the water. How the zebra got his stripes. When the hyena found his laugh.”

  You weave your hands together. Big hands. Strong handshake. Best way to know a person’s self is by how they shake your hands, you like to say.

  You are well traveled. It is no wonder you have come to visit. Melbourne.

  I bought CDs of music you adore: the soulful sound of Mama Africa. I used to call you the black Irishman, perhaps for your love of the Irish: their humor, their coffee—stirred and topped with cream. The whiff of whiskey on your breath after breakfast was never disagreeable growing up. It was for me simply a daddy smell, a happy daddy smell.

  One couldn’t tell how well traveled you were, how well educated, when you visited Grandma in the village. You wore tire soles and a sheet around your waist. Handwoven batik in colors of the rainbow. You didn’t like a shirt or trousers in tropical heat that dizzied mosquitos. You drank toggo, pure banana brew cool from a calabash, washed it down with the soup of goat entrails slowly simmered over a three-stone-hearth fire.

  I liked how you did the voices, tawkin’ Suthern like when you did Uncle Remus. You first told his stories straight after your conference in Atlanta, Georgia, USA—your work paid for it. I sat on your lap, rested my head on your solid chest and you told me the Terrapin story.

  You said:

  Dey social, shake hands, ax each udder what happen ovah in de fambily. Den Brer Terrrapin he say to Brer Buzzard dat he tired o’ eating grits, and dat’s a fact. Dat he want to go into biddiness wid ’im, gittin’ honey from de good ol’ bumbly-bee. But Brer Terrapin crept alone into de hole, gobbled de last o’ bumbly-bee honey, licked it off his footses, so ol’ Brer Buzzard couldn’t tell what he’d done.

  You laughed telling that story, told me the moral was not about stealing or deception, like what Terrapin did, but about stupidity. You told me not to be stupid like Brer Buzzard else “de bumbly-bees gone come a-stinging you.”

  “Remember the story of the monkey’s heart?” I say.

  “You always loved water stories.”

  “Tell me the story.”

  “You’re too old for it now.”

  “Tell me.”

  “What do you want to hear? How the little monkey who lived with his clan on the bank of the lake fell from the overhung branch of a baobab tree and the big croc lunged from the murky depths of the water and snatched him in his jaws? How the monkey didn’t plead or cry, simply said he didn’t have his heart, and the heart was the best part of a monkey for a croc to eat? How Croc believed the little monkey had left his heart on the topmost branch that fanned out leaves to the stars, so gods of land and water could spice it? How Croc opened his jaws and let Little Monkey leap across his back and tail, scramble to his tree to fetch the heart? And Little Monkey bellowed from the top for Croc to open wide for the god-loved heart, and instead hurled a big mango that cracked Croc’s tooth?”

  “How hard is your heart, Little Monkey, roared Croc,” I say.

  “Stupid does that to you.”

  You don’t tolerate fools. Too much yam in the head, you call it. Sometimes you say too much onion, or cassava.

  “You didn’t tawk Suthern telling the monkey story,” I say.

  “It wasn’t from the South.”

  “It wouldn’t have made me forget our roots, the tongue of our forefathers, like how we prayed.”

  Injina lyo tata / In the name of the father

  No lyo mwana / And of the son

  No lyo roho mtakatifu / And of the holy spirit

  Amina / Amen

  Silent, you watch my backstroke.

  “It isn’t efficient,” I say. “Feels like I’m moving blind. No eyes on the crown to see where I’m going.”

  “Follow the ceiling.”

  “It has no lines.”

  “Picture them.”

  “How?”

  “A challenge then?”

  You knew about raising the optimistic child without reading those books proliferating in the parenting section of bookstores. Labels on the shelves of the one around the corner on Flint Street near Twenty-Four Seven Pharmacy tell you where to go so you can grow a resilient child, one who is active and success prone. You taught me to stay hungry, to go the step when I was training for sprint team. You shook your head when my lips puckered because I’d lost a race. It’s not about winning, you said.

  Now you watch my swim, right there by the edge like a coach, even though I am the one who tells you about technique, about how I haven’t refined mine because I taught myself.

  “The
stroke length isn’t right. I don’t get enough distance out of the stroke,” I say.

  “Lower your head.” You surprise me with this observation. “Level your bottom with your back and head near the surface. Now increase your foot tempo.”

  Eddies of water cling to my skin.

  I tell you I read about movement coming from hips down, body tipping on a seesaw for streamline, cheeks resting on water so I breathe cleanly every fourth stroke.

  “Black folk’s bottom is not made for streamline,” you laugh. “But you’re doing just fine.”

  I practice off the wall torpedoes.

  “Head down,” you say.

  Suddenly you’re there, in the water with me. You press my arms against the back of my ears. I dive, eyes downward. Kick, kick, kick. I finish with a breaststroke, head tucked between outstretched hands, back and head aligned. I pitch and pull my body forward in the water.

  You sit on the wooden bench along the wall as I rub down with a large beach towel.

  “Too much cloth,” you say. “Why not robe it?”

  You like efficiency, neatness. You smacked me once with a stick when I let my nails grow. Long time, I was a child . . . I cried, not for pain. You weren’t much for discipline. Mum was the flash temper. She gave it to you anywhere—church, school, playground—if you deserved it. Like when I ate fish, headfirst—slap! “You eat tail up!” Like when I spoke with a mouthful—slap! “Nothing wise comes from clog!”

  My Melbourne apartment is not flash; it’s not in Beach Boulevard. But it wears well a careless order: stacked paper neat on the table, arranged clothes on the four-poster bed rail, pressed sheets inside a blue doona . . .

  I soak, listen to the soft sizzle of mango and coconut bodywash foam.

  I remember how you took interest in the mouthwash when first you saw it. “Need all 945 milligrams of whitening? Can’t chew sugar cane?”

  “From where?”

  We laughed.

  You fingered my pore wash (200 milligrams), the soap free antibacterial hand wash (600 milligrams), the body scrub flannel shaped like a mitten, the black stone for my heels—you said it looked like the one your grandmother pressed on skin to take away poison from a snake bite. You liked the snow-white porcelain bowl for the toilet brush, its tiny blue flowers around the words “Eau de Cologne”; the spin toothbrush with its soft bristles; the squeegee window cleaning stick with its rubber lip to remove scrum off the glass . . .