We. Are. Family.

by Paul Mitchell

  But it didn’t stop Ron from feeling alone on the farm.

  God, what a whinger he was. And there was nothing worse than one of those; that’s what his father Bernie told him. Especially when Ron was complaining about helping in the cattle yard.

  ‘Ron, what’s a bloody whinger good for?’

  Nothing. He knew it. But he still felt lonely.

  Once calving season ended and Bernie had finished shoving his hand up cows’ arses all night. Instead he was in the paddocks every day. He sorted out the feed. He fixed fences. When that was all done he was in the shed. He tried to get the tractor going. If he couldn’t get it going soon, he said, they’d be bug-gered. He wouldn’t call anyone to fix it. And there was more chance of moving the Grampians than changing Bernie’s mind.

  ‘We need to bang in some oats this year,’ he reckoned. ‘If we don’t, we won’t have enough money to eat mutton, let alone lamb.’ So Ron could forget about getting a new Ross Faulkner footy. He’d be lucky to get a pair of socks.

  Bernie was too busy to even say hello. And Ron’s mum wasn’t much better.

  She swept and cooked and cleaned and ironed and barely took time out to breathe, let alone talk. No time, really, for Stan or Ken or Sheree, and definitely none for Ron, the second youngest. And the eldest whinger.

  Sheree wasn’t great company. Stan and Ken didn’t talk much to him either. They were both at high school and couldn’t have cared less what was going on anywhere else. Definitely not the bed next to them.

  Alone at home? For sure. The universe? Who knew.

  Trevor Randall had a crew cut. Liked to pretend he was a soldier. He was always on a mission, that was for sure, to give everyone the shits. He put a beer bottle to his fat lips and told them all what a deadset hero he was.

  ‘I can shoot a rabbit from fifty paces...’

  Glug glug on the grog he went.

  ‘...‘tween the eyes...’

  Stan didn’t look at him. Talked to the fire instead. ‘Goodonya.’

  ‘What can you hit?’

  Stan shook his head. He picked up a decent-sized rock and aimed close to where Ron was hiding. He threw it and hit smack in the middle of a tree nearby. A bit of bark flew into Ron’s lap.

  ‘Good enough for ya?’

  Trevor laughed.

  ‘Yeah. That’d kill a rabbit. If it was a toy one.’

  Randall was big and strong, and he always put shit on his mates until they wanted to belt him. Only way he was ever happy. His old man was the same. In fisticuffs at the Lake Wartook Pub every second week.

  ‘Yeah, but we wouldn’t want to kill your toy rabbit,’ Stan said. ‘Why not?’ Glug glug on the beer and now a packet of cigarettes from his shirt pocket.

  ‘Why not? Because then you’d have nothin to wank off on at night.’

  They all cacked themselves.

  ‘You’re a fucking poofter, Stan Stevenson.’

  Fucking was a bad enough word, Ron thought, but poofter? Jesus, you didn’t call someone that unless you wanted to start a brawl. Which, of course, Trevor did. Get a brawl going and then get all friendly afterwards. He was a maniac, one mad son of a turkey. But he didn’t deserve what happened. And for the life of

  him, Ron didn’t know, then or later, why Stan did it.

  He could have taken Randall down any other way he wanted. But he called out, ‘What was that?’ and pointed up. Of course Ron was first to look: Jesus! It must be a UFO! he thought. But there was nothing. If there’d been something, he’d have seen it. Stan’s mates all yelled, ‘What?’ and they must have looked up too. When they lowered their heads, Trevor Randall was on the ground.

  ‘Get up, Randall,’ Stan said. He nudged him in the ribs with his boot, but Randall didn’t move.

  ‘Come on Trevor, you numbskull,’ Ken added. He bent down and shook him. Randall moved, but made a choking sound. Then nothing. Willie Thompson took off his beanie and looked to Stan.

  ‘Shit, is he all right?’

  ‘Who cares?’ Stan said. He took a bucket to the crashing falls and came back with it full. He threw water on the fire and it hissed and gave off steam. Two more buckets and it was out. Ken shook Randall again.

  ‘Leave the dickhead. Let’s go,’ Stan said. The boys looked at each other and then the trees. They were silent and Stan lit the kero lamp.

  ‘You can stay and watch this drongo snooze, but I’m heading off.’

  He carried the lamp through the clearing and his mates followed.

  Ron could have gone over to see if Randall was all right. But all he could think about was getting home before his brothers did. He took a short cut through the bush, got his legs scratched to buggery, but found his bike and charged for home.

  They must have ridden pretty slow. Ron reckoned he’d been in bed quarter of an hour before they got home. The idiots turned on the lamp and he pretended to be asleep. Stan jumped into bed, but Ken sat up on his.

  ‘Shoulda checked.’

  Stan was silent. He turned to the window and the dark out there.

  Randall had made it to the Bennett farmhouse, lumbered up and knocked on the front door. The Bennetts said he looked like something from another planet. He was days in hospital, but he never said what happened to him. When he got out, he never spoke properly again. Or anything.

  Ken sat on his bed for ages like a dummy that night. He saw Ron watching him, but he didn’t move or tell his brother to piss off. Ron got sick of watching him and stared at his UFO photo until it faded into sleep.

  In the morning, when the news had got round and everyone knew what Stan had done, Ron pulled the photo off the wall. He took it into the lounge where the fire was going. He poked at the kindling, put a small log on, and tossed the news article into the flames. The words crumpled first and then the UFO. Grey then black then charcoal pieces up and out through the chimney.

  5. Nick Stevenson

  Nick Stevenson butted his cigarette out and watched the skinny bus driver pile his Adidas bag into the guts of the Greyhound. Bus to Victoria’s a bastard, Nick thought. He shoved his hands into his ripped jeans and cursed being unable to afford a plane. Plus the trains weren’t running on account of the heat and the warped tracks. Truth was he didn’t want to go to Westmore at all, by bus or plane or car, but his uncle Ron had kicked on. Cancer. Stevensons were coming from around the country to send off the old spud. Nick’s dad Ken was Ron’s elder brother. So Ken was going to support his former sister-in-law Jules at the funeral. And he wanted his sons beside him.

  ‘Least you lot can do,’ the old boof-nosed one had said over a cup of tea after he’d finished in the garden one afternoon. There were lawn clippings in what was left of his grey hair. ‘So get your puny arses sorted out.’

  Nick could have got a lift with his mum and dad and brother; they’d decided to head to Westmore as a crew. But after the last few weeks of spending time a bit too close to his brother, the idea of sitting in the backseat with Tim made Nick opt for the bus.

  Which, now he was on it, was a sardine can, smell included. Too many passengers had peeled off their shoes and let their socks loose. It was so foul his dead uncle Ron could have smelt them coming by the time they reached Mt Gambier. There wasn’t enough room to fart. Nick had to let them go by cupping his hands in his lap and hoping none of those disasters snuck out and got up the nose of the young bloke beside him, who was too polite for Nick’s liking.

  The bloke wore a shirt and tie, even though he looked a few years off being bothered by facial hair. Excuse me, would you like this, can I move that? He kept asking. Nick couldn’t have cared less. The young bloke had glasses that he wore to read, and when Nick saw the book he was flicking through, he checked round for spare seats. A useless idea. The carry-on lug-gage rack was his best chance for somewhere else to sit.

  The bloke was reading the Bible. And he was right into it.

  A few weeks before, Nick and Tim had sex with the same woman. At the same time. It was crazy shit and it took him
back to when he and Tim were kids. They used to piss in the same bowl, streams clashing like swords. But, thank God, there was no clashing when it was one girl between two. Not if you were careful. And Nick was.

  Crazy shit doesn’t just happen. Nick put it down to when his dad Ken had said Nick and Tim’s wives were in good pastures. That his sons served life up to their women on a platter and all those women had to do was sit back and fan themselves. But Ken hadn’t dared let his daughters-in-law hear it; he’d told Nick and Tim on Christmas Day while they’d sat together beside the barbecue, cracking heads off prawns. Nick had been complaining about the double shift he’d worked the week before at the wool classers. He’d had to head straight home after it and make dinner because Cynthia had a hair appointment. It was a Thursday night. Only night for hair, it seemed. Nick could never figure that out. He guessed it had to do with all the hairies being busy on the weekends going to the Moresworth Hotel nightclub. Getting down and boogieing with a busload of boys on a footy trip. But whatever the reason for Cynthia’s cut and style, Nick had had to look after the kids while he was trying to cook fried rice. He shouldn’t have bothered having a go at fried rice because he never knew how much soy sauce and how many peas. But he gave it a shot because Cynthia was always onto him about not being able to cook anything but spag bol or snags. Ken listened to him complain and ran a hand through his sweaty grey hair. Then he shook his head slowly and added some oil to the barbecue hotplates. Tim piped up.

  ‘Same thing happened to me last Friday,’ he said.

  He was in a singlet. Tatts of Hawaiian girls dancing on his muscles.

  ‘I picked the kids up from school and kinder. Knocked off early from the trout farm...’

  Then he’d cooked up a storm of spaghetti, but Corinne had complained that she didn’t like cream in pasta sauce, he knew that, so why did he put it in?

  ‘Jesus, I didn’t know she didn’t like cream.’

  No, apparently she only liked tomatoes. And not too much pepper, not as much as he’d stuck in.

  ‘I told her, well, you know, I’m sorry. I’ll try and remember that for next time.’

  Ken stared at him. Then Nick.

  ‘Women today don’t know how good they’ve got it.’

  Their dad’s remark stopped them in their prawn-shelling tracks. Hadn’t they just been saying in the lounge over a stubby that they weren’t getting any sex? Well, you know, maybe once every couple of weeks. And even then they had to have dinner cooked and the baby’s nappies on before their wives would even look at them. Plus, no matter what sort of thing they wanted to get up to once the gear came off, it was just a case of get your prod out, do your investigations, and then piss off out of there.

  ‘Different in my day,’ Ken said. He flicked the prawns onto the hotplate and they juiced and sizzled.

  Not long after Christmas, Tim hooked up with a girl after work. She was down from Flinders Uni, doing a placement at the trout farm. She was a rezzie there, she’d told him.

  ‘As long as you’re not what rhymes with it,’ Tim had laughed and she’d shaken her black hair and poked her tits out, he said. Like one of those beauties from Erandale. Tim was twenty-nine, but he looked younger and he surfed. He’d given Nick the gory details of how he’d got her ankles at her ears in the wagon part of his Commodore. Then Tim had dropped her at the station with a thank you from him and a tongue kiss from her.

  A month later, they picked up a girl each at the War and Tooth Hotel. It was a Thursday night; all the hairies had finished scis-soring, and it was open mike night. Nick and Tim sang ‘Brothers in Arms’ with some hippie bloke on guitar. They’d sung a lot as kids. Nick had even learnt guitar for a bit. And their rendition of the Dire Straits song had brought a Vietnam vet to glassy eyes, along with the two girls they’d got friendly with afterwards. They took them back to Tim’s mate Raisin’s place. He was away in Adelaide for work. Tim got the bedroom and Nick the lounge. The telly whispered now and then and the lights went on and off: Raisin had the house set to a timer to keep burglars away. The brothers showered with no soap or deodorant and were back to their wives by ten.

  The bus made it out of the suburbs and onto the highway proper. The bloke with glasses flipped through the Bible, stopping every now and then to close his eyes.

  Nick hadn’t copped a look at the Bible since RE in Grade Five. He’d told his teacher Mrs Wilkins that ‘Jesus’ was a swear word and she should watch her mouth. It got him a few a laughs—and a trip to the Principal.

  ‘Don’t tell me to watch my mouth, Nick Stevenson.’

  He’d been a bit confused about getting in trouble. According to Mrs Wilkins he hadn’t sworn, so why had he still ended up outside the Principal’s den? Nick had his Bible for Juniors on his lap for the wait. There was a cartoon picture of Mary on the cover. But there was nothing on the Bible beside him now. It was black leather. The bloke held out his hand for Nick to shake.

  ‘Leigh Forsyth,’ he said, like it was a name Nick should know.

  He thought there should be a law against these blokes talking to you about their religion, when all you wanted to do was whack Nirvana in your headphones and remember back before you got married. Slabs of West End and Holdens with flames down the sides. Women like the ones Tim had organised for them a few weeks back. But he shook the bloke’s hand anyway.

  ‘Nick Stevenson.’

  ‘Are you going to Melbourne for work?’

  ‘Uncle carked it.’

  ‘Oh, sorry to hear it.’

  ‘Don’t be.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  Christ, this bloke wouldn’t budge. It was going to take something stronger.

  ‘Because he was a cunt,’ said Nick.

  Tim’s wife Corinne took the kids and nicked off to Queensland for a couple of weeks. She had to help put her mum in a nursing home. With Corinne gone it was on for young and old. Mainly old, but Nick and Tim did manage the occasional young girl. There was one called Fizz. That was the best Nick could make of her name; she was all fluttery eyelashes for Tim while they were at the pub. But her even younger friend Lil couldn’t have given two shits for Nick on account of him being too old for her. She went home, had to work—who didn’t?—and they were left with Fizz at the War and Tooth. Nick was the third wheel. He was ready to rock home, it was getting onto nine thirty, but Fizz wouldn’t have it.

  ‘Nah, nah, stay,’ she said, and he watched the silver stud on her tongue roll.

  She smiled and slapped Tim on the knee. Leading him by the dick. But she’d drop it soon and head home. As soon as she could do it without making Tim feel like too much of a twat. Not that Tim would have given a shit.

  ‘I feel woozy,’ she said, and all but fell off her barstool.

  ‘You drug her?’ Nick whispered.

  ‘You fucking kidding?’

  They didn’t know what to do. Hospital wouldn’t have been a good look. Their wives knew too many nurses. So they helped Fizz into the Commodore. She was slurring. They headed back to Tim’s man cave and Fizz fell asleep.

  ‘Don’t you get any ideas,’ Nick said.

  Tim looked crushed. ‘What do you think I am?’

  ‘Randy.’

  Nick thought Fizz would be skates on and out of there once she woke up. But she flipped her tits out. Both nipples were curled with tatts.

  It all happened too quick, before Nick had time to think.

  Or maybe he didn’t want to think.

  He propped in from behind while she sorted Tim out. They swapped halfway, and when they finished, Fizz fell asleep on Tim’s biscuit-crumbed couch. When she woke, she didn’t want to leave. She wanted to move in with Tim. She wanted to talk about her father and her uncles. And her brothers. The bad shit they’d done. She started slurring again and Tim got her into a cab. Nick had his shower and washed himself over and over, with soap this time, a lot of it. So much that when he got home, Cynthia said he smelt nice and tried to kiss him. He told her he felt shithouse and he
went and threw up in the ensuite loo.

  Nick thought the c-bomb would be enough to bury the bloke’s head back in his Good Book. But no such luck.

  ‘What did your uncle do?’

  Normally Nick would have given this bloke nothing. But there were six hours of bus ride to come, and he could choose to either shut up or motor mouth. He chose to motor. Because he still held hope that if he shocked the bloke enough he’d leave him alone.

  ‘He had a crack at his sister when she was a girl.’

  ‘He hit her?’

  ‘Nah mate. He did the dirty with her. And then stuck her in the loony bin when she went mental years later.’

  The bloke went still. Shut the Bible. He nodded like a toy dog stuck on a car dash.

  ‘Oh...’

  ‘Yep and the granddad did the dirty with my uncle apparently. Granddad died of natural causes, apparently, right after my grandma died. That’s what everyone says. But someone should have shot the cunt.’

  Nick wasn’t sure if any of those stories were true. The only part of any of them he knew was true was that his dad and his siblings had been in and out of orphanages after their parents had died. They’d got passed around, like the stories when Ken caught up with his brother Stan.

  The pair of them got pissed in front of the Vulcan heater while the footy blared on TV. Nick wasn’t sure the two old buggers even believed their own stories, but it was like they had to keep telling them. Like the stories were sharks that couldn’t stop swimming from here to there or they’d cark it.

  But they never talked about Nick’s grandmother. No talk of natural causes or any causes at all.

  Whatever had really gone on in his family didn’t really matter to Nick now. Because he’d decided they were all nutjobs. Sometimes he wished the whole family line had gone down in Ash Wednesday when the fires had threatened Stevenson houses in three states. And missed them all. But an Ash Wednesday bake would have taken Nick out too. And he was just now starting to live a bit, wasn’t he?

  He’d thrown up heaps after that night with Fizz.