by David Thorne
A few houses popped up over the next century but the population only grew to a few dozen. There were several families living high in the surrounding mountains but these ‘mountain folk’ didn’t socialize much with ‘town folk’ as there was little reason to; squirrels were plentiful and younger siblings attractive enough if you ignored the gum disease, one giant eye, cleft pallet, and missing patches of hair. In the darkness, after the possum-fat lanterns were extinguished, it was probably easy to imagine Betty-Sue was Grandma. Or the other way around. Often, when my wife Holly and I are in bed with the lights out, I like to imagine she’s not sobbing softly into her pillow.
In the early 1900s, however, the government declared the mountains to be a national forest and sent the families living there notices to pack up and leave. Though many were illiterate, they figured out what was going on when government officials moved in to tear down and burn their cabins - which is a bit sad but we’re not talking 4-bedroom, 3-bath homes with a wraparound deck and plunge pool. I get that they constructed the cabins themselves with sticks and bear shit but that’s no excuse to omit a few conveniences. Taking a dump in a bucket a few feet from the wet slapping noises coming from the family bed couldn’t have been easy, I can’t even go in a public bathroom if someone’s two stalls down from me.
Probably grumbling a bit, the evicted families made their way down the mountain and out of the forest into New Market. For them, it was likely the equivalent of a modern-day family stepping into a wormhole, travelling several hundred years into the future, and discovering humans have evolved into electrical fields that communicate through discharge. Perhaps with names like Zzzzzt and Bz.
For the original residents of New Market, it was probably like purchasing a home, putting in floorboards and adding a pergola, then having 200 Gypsies move into your backyard. Gypsies with government issued land entitlements and $75 each as part of an Eminent Domain settlement. Town meetings were held, voices were raised, apparently someone lit a haystack on fire.
At first, the new residents were all, “ Hi, sorry to intrude, whoa, what’s that?” but this quickly dissolved into, “Right, well, this wasn’t what we wanted either but you know what? Fuck you, that’s what. You’re not all that. We were only pretending to be impressed by your paved streets and soap... and keep your eyes off Betty-Sue.” Especially after the haystack incident. They built cabins, went inside, and drew the curtains.
The original residents moved out after that. Land was abandoned, businesses closed, a highway bypassing the town was built. It’s a town of drawn curtains now, behind which the occupants tell bedtime tales to their six-toed offspring about how the civil war was fought over government overreach, not slavery, while shitting in a bucket and cleaning their shotgun. They keep mostly to themselves thankfully, venturing out only to unravel their confederate flags on windy days, drop off Dollar General job application forms, and to attend the annual commemorative haystack burning. It’s held in the Dollar General car park on the first Saturday of August each year but you’re not invited.
People who don’t own television sets
A television is always on in our house. Sometimes three or four at a time. I’m not even sure how many sets we have anymore but going by last month’s cable bill, I’d estimate eight or nine hundred.
Too much television is apparently bad for you but we balance the bad shows we watch - like The Bachelor and anything on Hallmark - with educational programs such as Jeopardy and... well, just Jeopardy actually. Maybe Shark Week every year, that’s educational. I only watch it for the seal attacks though, I couldn’t care less about boat-hippies in Speedos discussing graphs that show shark feeding territories have decreased in the last eighteen months due to overfishing. Decrease it to one spot. I’d be fine with going to the beach if I could say, “Here’s a nice place to swim, not over there though, that’s the shark spot.”
I know a couple, who aren’t homeless, that don’t own a single television set. Not even one in their bathroom. I won’t visit them as it means having to look at each other and come up with things to say. Things other than, “Why don’t you have a television set?”
I get the whole, “We’d rather develop our minds than stagnate in front of a box” argument but it’s undermined when the people saying it would tie for second place in a ‘who can be the least interesting competition’ because having a winner would be too interesting.
“Did you watch The Walking Dead last night?”
“No, we don’t own a television.”
“Oh my god. Are you poor?”
“No, we choose not to have one.”
“Do you own chairs?”
“Yes, of course.”
“What do you face them at? Are they all just facing in random directions?”
“No, they’re facing each other. To allow for conversation.”
“Oh my god, what do you talk about?”
“Many things. From ‘how our day went’ to political and social issues, the economy, the arts, spirituality, climate change, nature, science...”
“Every night? It doesn’t get exhausting after three or four times?”
“No, last night, my wife and I practiced our throat singing. We’re now able to produce three, sometimes four, pitches simultaneously. We start with a low drone then, by subtle manipulations of our vocal tracts, we break up the sound, amplifying one or more overtones until they can be heard as additional pitches while the drone continues at a lower volume. Would you like to hear some?”
“No thank you.”
Our neighbours, Carl and Toni, also don’t own a television and, as Carl’s only hobbies are mowing his lawn and loving Jesus, I imagine their evenings are spent sitting in chairs reading Bible passages, or just staring at each other waiting to die.
“Did you say something, Carl?”
“No, I just swallowed loudly.”
“Ah.”
“Yes, I decided to swallow my candy rather than wait until it was sucked small enough to disappear. These new caramel apple filled Werther’s aren’t as good as the originals. We should have kept the receipt so I could staple it to my complaint letter to Mr Werther.”
“Yes, Dear... so.... I noticed the Harrison’s at number 98 bought a new television. The box was out with their bins on collection day. It’s a Samsung. A HD one apparently.”
“The only HD we need is the Higher Deity, Toni.”
“Yes. Of course.”
“I can’t wait to meet Jesus.”
“Sorry?”
“Jesus. He’s magnificent.”
“Yes, Dear. He certainly is.”
“Did you know he has an army of angels and they all have flaming swords?”
“He has?”
“Yes. Well, not all of the angels have swords of course, some prefer harps. Mainly the girl angels. Because you need long fingernails to pluck the strings. “
“Yes, that makes sense.”
“Plus, there’s the servant angels.”
“Servant angels?”
“Yes, if you want a Werther’s, poof, an angel appears and gives you one. You don’t even have to ask, you just have to think about it and they show up with a whole packet. Of the original Werther’s of course, not these. Everyone’s telepathic in Heaven.”
“Really? I’m not sure how I’d feel about everyone knowing what I’m thinking.”
“Nobody cares what you’re thinking, Toni.”
The Spot
The River Murray is Australia's longest river, winding its way through two-thousand miles of the outback before reaching the ocean. It saw substantial commercial use by paddle-steamers during the 1900s and the river is dotted with small towns that once supported industry. These towns cater to families on holidays and retirees now, shoreline stores that once supplied grain and coal sell ice cream and inflatable rafts. The retirees mainly live on houseboats, it’s a very popular thing for retirees to do. Selling your house and buying a houseboat to live on when you reach sixty-five is South A
ustralia’s equivalent of ‘moving to a condo in Florida’. I suppose it’s the freedom that draws them, being able to cruise anywhere they want, finding a quiet area and docking for a few weeks, then moving on. Most of them just stay parked in the towns though, probably for the television reception.
My father liked the river. He didn’t fish or own a boat but he liked sitting beside the river drinking beer. It took a couple of hours to drive to his favourite spot, another hour or so to set up camp, then he would sit by the river and drink beer until it was time to pack up and leave.
There were closer camping spots, places we could have driven to in half the time, but my father hated anyone camping within twenty miles of us. He also hated houseboats cruising past and regularly commented that he, “didn’t come out here to wave at old cunts.”
When houseboats did occasionally pass by, the retirees would wave and my father would yell at them to fuck off. Once, a houseboat parked directly across from us under cliffs and my father paddled out to it on an inflatable raft and told an elderly couple that if they stayed where they were, he was going to paddle back out in the middle of night while they were sleeping, douse the boat in petrol, and set it alight. They left threatening that they were going to report him to the police when they got to the next town but the river police didn’t pay us a visit. Not that time. The next time we went to the river, my father took a few dozen signs that he’d had printed stating, ‘No Houseboats’ and made me paddle up and down the river, both sides, nailing them to trees. The next day, the river police made me take them back down.
It was a nice spot, thirty or so miles from a small town called Morgan. There were cliffs on one side, which caught the afternoon sun and shone red, with ledges that we could paddle over to and climb. There was no way of getting to the top but there were several outcrops that we could get to and jump off. My father made a rope swing one year but it snapped on the first go and I broke my arm and three ribs. I should have let my sister go first.
On the side of the river we camped on, there was a small sandy beach with a flat area above where we pitched our tent. It was a large canvas tent, big enough for four people to sleep in plus room for our gear. My father made a flag for the tent once; it featured two crossed beer bottles and the words, River Rat Lodge. He attached it to the top of the tent with a gum-tree branch and duct tape but it disappeared during a windy night. He made my sister and I walk around the area for a couple of hours looking for it but it was nowhere to be found. I discovered, years later, that my mother had taken it down and thrown it into the river because it was embarrassing.
It had been my father’s favourite spot for as long as I can remember. There were photos of me as a baby there. One showed me on my father’s knee as he sat by the river drinking beer. He had long sideburns and was wearing an orange tank top and tiny mint green tennis shorts with a belt. I was wearing his aviator sunglasses and had a cigarette in my mouth. Another, as a toddler, showed me screaming with a turtle attached to my left foot. I assume my father grabbed the camera and took the shot before helping me, which may have contributed to me losing my small toe.
To get to the spot, we had to turn onto an unmarked dirt track and pass through three old cattle gates. The gates were rusty and never closed, the second having fallen off its hinges long ago. One day, as we headed to the river for a long-weekend, the last gate was chained and padlocked. An old car hood was leaning against it with the words For Sale and a telephone number spray-painted across it.
It took a few months of negotiations for my father to purchase the property. The land for sale totaled three hundred acres but all my father wanted was ‘his spot’ so the owner agreed to subdivide and sell him ten acres out of the parcel.
We went to the river a lot more often after that - every weekend in summer. We’d leave Friday afternoon after my father got home from work and get back late Sunday. One weekend, my father hired a trailer and towed building materials to construct an eight-metre floating dock. We used it to tie up a couple of kayaks and my sister and I would run along it and jump off into the water. It became his new favourite place to sit and drink beer. He added to it over the years and it became a kind of patio, with a covered shade cloth and a table and chairs. A truck of sand was brought in to extend the beach and when my father bought a speedboat, a ramp was added to back it into the water and then a small shed to house equipment and toys. We had tubes, kneeboards and a giant banana, and water sports became one of the key aspects of being there. Sometimes I was allowed to invite a school friend to come up for the weekend but only one at a time as there wasn’t room in the tent for more, and, as my father didn’t like anyone knowing where ‘the spot’ was, he’d make them put on a blind-fold just before the turnoff.
A few years before, my parents had invited Mr and Mrs Ellis, a family from their tennis club, up for a four-day weekend. They’d chatted and it turned out the Ellis family enjoyed camping and had all their own equipment. The plan was for our family to drive up Thursday night with the Ellis family joining us the next day around noon. My father drew them a detailed ‘mud map’ showing how to get there. On Friday morning, my father had me clear a flatish area in camp so the Ellis family would have a place to pitch their tent when they arrived. There were quite a few rocks so he’d packed a pickaxe.
“Dad, my arms are getting tired.”
“Would you like some cheese with that whine?”
“No.”
“I can still see bumps. You know how the Egyptians got their land so level for building on?”
“How?”
“They flooded it with water. Whatever stuck out of the water, they’d dig away.”
“You want me to pour water on it?”
“No, don’t be stupid. Why would the Ellis family want to pitch a tent in mud?”
My efforts were wasted as Mr and Mrs Ellis decided it would be a much better idea to leave their vehicle in Morgan, rent a houseboat, and cruise down to ‘the spot’ to park and stay for the three nights.
My father was sitting at the edge of the river drinking beer when the houseboat came into view and slowed. He yelled at it to fuck off and threw an empty beer bottle, striking the hull, before realising who it was. It was the first time Mr Ellis had driven a houseboat and it was his first time pulling into shore. He powered up and headed straight for where my father was sitting, forcing my father to leap out of his chair and run as the houseboat’s twin hulls plowed their way several feet up the beach. My father’s chair went under the left hull. It was a folding camp chair that he’d bought himself for his birthday a few days before, blue with his favourite football team’s logo on the back. My sister and I had given him a beer cooler that also went under the hull but survived intact. Backwash from the houseboat beaching pulled it out and it floated away down the river.
Mr and Mrs Ellis didn’t stay at ‘the spot’ that night. They only stayed an hour and only because it took that long to get the houseboat off the beach. All of us pushed, apart from Mrs Ellis who sat at the controls powering the engines in full reverse, and my father, who had stormed off into the outback after a heated exchange. He’d demanded his mud-map back, which turned into a bit of jostling. Mrs Ellis tried to intervene and my father called her a whore. Someone also threw an onion but I can’t remember who.
The spot’s location was top secret after that. It didn’t matter that my school friends had no idea where we were or how to get there, the turnoff blindfold was obligatory.
“Right, Peter, put on this blindfold.”
“What?”
“David, help him put it on and make sure it’s tight. I don’t want him being able to see out of any gaps.”
“Why do I have to put on a blindfold? What are you going to do to me?”
“We’re not going to do anything to you, Peter. Just put on the fucking blindfold.”
“I want to go home.”
My father ended up going around to Mr and Mr’s Ellis’ house and apologising a few days later. He took the
m a bottle of wine and a Target gift voucher for $25 to go towards replacing a shirt that had been torn in the scuffle. They must have accepted his apology as they continued to play doubles matches together for years after until my father and Mrs Ellis had an affair and ran off together.
I was eleven the last time I went to the spot with my father. It was the weekend before he left. It was a good trip; usually my father was stingy about the amount of fuel the speedboat used but we spent all Saturday and Sunday on the water. He even let me drive the speedboat for a few minutes and later that evening, after the others had gone to bed, he poured some of his beer into a cup and let me have it. It was a still, dark night, there was no moon or breeze, and the water was like a black mirror. Stars reflected in it, making the cliffs look like they were floating in space. On our last night at the spot, my father and I sat by the river drinking beer.
…………..
My mother moved to a smaller house eleven years later and a lot of junk somehow ended up being stored at my place. I was in my final year at university and living in a share-house with two other students. The garage wasn’t being used to park in so it immediately became the catch-all place for ‘stuff’. For two weeks, a pair of chickens lived in there after one of my housemates, Cynthia the vegan stick-insect, rescued them from a cage on the back of a truck. They got out one day when I opened the roller-door. Our share-house faced a busy main road and, as if choosing death over one more day in the garage, Douglas and Katherine ran straight into traffic. Douglas, which was a stupid name as chickens are girls, made it the furthest. Katherine went under a wheel in a flurry of feathers almost immediately but Douglas made it across the median strip and almost two lanes. If she hadn’t looked back to check on Katherine, she’d have made it. I had to kick a hole in the garage wall, and then chip away at the edges with a screwdriver, to make it look as if Douglas and Katherine had pecked their way out. Cynthia the vegan stick-insect never guessed otherwise. She wanted to give them a burial but Douglas and Katherine were spread out over hundreds of feet and nobody was willing to stand in the road and halt traffic while she scraped them up.