Boy Overboard

by Peter Wells

  Keely is standing on the other side, too, by Carrot. Light fingers its blossoms, moisture butterflies all over us. Periwinkle rugs soften the curves of the valley all around us. Creepers invade ancient trees, weighing down the sky with their green closeness. We are doing nature study. Nature Study. Carrot is doing that thing with his hips.

  ‘Come on, Jamieboy,’ he says to me whispering softly, as if inside my ear, my mouth, he is lying on top of me as we play on the grass, rolypolying against each other, ‘Come on, Jamie, come over here.’

  He entices me to jump the creek.

  ‘O!’ I say. ‘O?’

  Not wanting to let them know I am frightened of this gash of sleet which rumbles slowly and darkly from hidden sites to sea. Lumbered with rubbish from the tip.

  ‘It is narrow here. Jump.’

  ‘Heeeeeeh,’ goes Keely when Carrot grabs him from behind and pretends, they pretend for me to be lady and men lovers.

  When Carrot sees something suddenly. He dives down into the periwinkle.

  ‘Hah!’ he cries triumphantly.

  In the light, he holds up an opalescent old balloon.

  ‘Aaahhhh,’ says Keely, of a sudden silent.

  ‘Oooh,’ says Carrot putting it on his ear like it is an earring. He pretends to be a lady, walking, swishing his hips from side to side.

  ‘O, Jamie,’ he says, ‘O, Jamie, my sweetness come over here. I have something tasty for your dinner.’

  He speaks in a high, funny voice.

  ‘Haahaaaa haaaa,’ I laugh but instead out comes a creak, dry and rusty. ‘Haaah?’ I end on a funny dry note.

  Carrot holds the balloon out to me.

  Come and get it, Jamie, he calls to me.

  Keely joins in, under the dapple dark.

  I look at us. All three of us are coated and speckled as if wearing a magic costume. All our living flesh is moving with the slow wave and toss of trees overhead. We swim through silence. Now I know. This is the silence of the beginning of the world. The animals from the zoo, their cries, provide the decor.

  This is the beginning and this is one of the moments.

  ‘Jump!’ says Carrot then losing patience. ‘Come on, Keely,’ he says to his lieutenant (it is strange under the trees, down by the creek, it is Keely who is Carrot’s handmaiden here, all relationships go into a strange reversal, nothing is as it seems on the dry and open paddocks upstairs). Keely is changed into a strangely subdued character, like he is silently waiting and listening for Carrot to address a certain word to him at which point he, he, he …

  Danger smells. And I smell it now.

  Carrot starts his winklepickers marching off, picking through the periwinkle, dragging with him all the speckly spaces of light. Keely is simply pulled along in his wake, washed after him. As he goes he turns a mute face towards me, but already I can see his eyes are sealed shut, or if open, they are the eyes of a drowned man.

  I see in that instant Keely has been lulled to the bottom of the creek and all its dark coursing has passed through him. Eels have made themselves at home in him, not even knowing they have swum in through his open mouth and out through the eye in his behind, not even knowing they are slithering, not between the dank earth banks of the creek, but his chill fleshy body. Old bits of rubber with stickiness dry in them, rusty needles, photos at the last stage of their holding an image, half-eaten crusts, the dead bodies of rodents swollen by their sleepy transit through Keely’s blood stream. All this I see and sense as Keely turns his blind eyes from me.

  I am seeing the face of a drowned man.

  Carrot has almost dragged Keely’s wet and stiff body into the undergrowth so he can masticate, at leisure, on all the remains of his warm, blood-heated brownness.

  And for one instant I stay there. But I know, unless I move, the patches of light which trance restlessly, again and again, all over my skin will join together, or rather, fleet apart and a chill cloak of darkness will fall over me, and I will be dragged into being nothing, not even existing, simply part of the silent trees, and the soundless forest and the whispering creek.

  ‘Ohhaaaahhhh?’ I cry. ‘Carrot? Keeeeeeeeeeelllllllllly?! Wait for me, eh. Yous fellas wait for me eh? Eh?’

  No answer.

  I must jump.

  I move back, to get a good run up.

  ‘Hand it over, Jamie,’ says Stumpy, implacable.

  ‘Yeah,’ says Angel. ‘Let’s get him, dirty rotten little lying cheat.’

  ‘I,’ I say, wanting to turn round truth and balance it on my palm.

  Look at this prism.

  I begin to run. My feet take off for me. I am praying for flight.

  ‘Tell us then. Didja do the paintin’? Who did it for ya?’

  ‘We only want to know the truth,’ says Cora-Lee the journalist.

  My feet begin to hurtle towards the creek.

  Uncle Ambrose please save me, please drive towards me in your scarlet Jaguar, let the door fall open with a heavy somnolent creak, let the smell of leather upholstery sumptuous and rich be so dense everyone around me goes into a trance and Stumpy lets out a sigh, as if within a really good dream, a long deep happy one, as she murmurs slowly and thoughtfully, ‘Is that walnut on the dash?’

  Run Jamie run.

  I converge all my powers on leaping across the creek.

  Inch by inch the creek widens before me. It changes into a leering embrace, a welcoming smile, opening itself before me as it fleets wider. Down below (as now I am in mid-air, having gathered behind me all the energy of a giant spring — and in that second I know I have left everyone behind me: Uncle Ambrose; Ponky; Aunty Gilda; even Maddy — but mid-air I see in my hand I hold his painting, this is my torch, this is what lights my way) eerily and still, I see an eel, in a patch of sunlight look up and watch my traverse — its eyes, Carrot’s eyes, greedily try to snag my shadow and eat it. A laugh bursts from my lips. It is only shadow, I want to say. Welcome, welcome, says the eel, come closer, come closer, I will not harm, just touch me, just put your fingers there and feel how warm, how hot, are you cold? I’ll warm you, don’t worry, you needn’t worry.

  But it is too late, the momentum of my jump is such that I am already hurtling towards the other side of the bank.

  ‘You couldna paint the pitcha. We know. Just tell us. That’s all we want ta know.’

  Wet clay, tentacles of periwinkle rise up to greet me, jump into my body, thud into the bones of my leg. But Carrot was right, Carrot was true, he lied as always — to where he was trying to seduce me is in fact a soft marshy eddy of the creek, carefully cloaked with weed so it looks like hard ground. Cold acid water burns through my shoes, grabs my legs by the muscles and begins to yank me, hard, desperate, into the creek.

  Uhahhhh, the breath fights to battle up my gorge. My fingers grab hold of the clay, I pull myself, my body all along the pug, feeling its chill embrace welcome me, offer to fold itself over me and give me a long sleep.

  For one second this is enticing.

  ‘Carrot? Keely!’

  I see them standing there, behind a thick engorged trunk of a tree, laughter skimmeying up and down their bodies like rings running so fast their faces are blurred into masks.

  ‘Heeeehhhheeee,’ skimmies Carrot.

  ‘You lied to me, Carrot!’ I cry, as I pull myself out of the pug.

  The wet clay unsucks from me with a last sore kiss.

  Then I cannot stop this, my voice is louder than ever, more true because this is the heart of my hurt. ‘You you lied to me, Keely. You did.’

  And I see in the distance Keely goes still, untying his laugh from himself, trying to unlace from around himself the tight black thread of Carrot’s ownership. But, as much as he struggles, Carrot keeps up his laugh.

  ‘Fall in didja, Caughey? Eel get you, Caughey. That’ll teach ya.’

  You lied to me, Keely, I don’t say now because my eyeshot funnels straight into Keely’s face and down into his warm hot burning insides where it rips apart vessels and le
ts bleed my hurt. I can see the soft shudder of the impact on Keely’s face.

  ‘Come on. Tell us what’s true,’ says Angel then, angry at my continued silence.

  But my eyes are on Keely’s face who, seeing me look at him, turns his face slightly away from mine so his eyes do not risk any concussion, risk any contamination. In that instant he sells me. He decides I am too risky to know. What I want is beyond what he can give, in front of all these people.

  Can I tell them I cannot tell them? Can I tell them what is true? I cannot tell them. You lie, Keely, you lied, you lied, you lied.

  This is the power of my heartbeat, its secret motor.

  In the distance I have not even noticed Uncle Ambrose has driven away.

  He was never coming anyway.

  The circle closes.

  But, at the very last second, as the hands rise up and the bags begin to swish towards me, as the eyes widen, then narrow into slim slits out of which, too soon, will shoot burning arrows, as the boots fall back to dig, with luscious vengeance, into my legs and shorts — as all of this goes into a sedate musical dance and I prepare myself to go St Joan to the stake — why why do I think of Fainell as he emerges back up the banks of the creek, his face eerily white, in his defeat an invincible victor, possessing something nobody can destroy (except perhaps himself)? With all these thoughts streaking through me, a sound leaks in.

  A single long sharp sound.

  It is the school bell.

  It is the message which subliminally jerks us out of where we are, and, unknown to ourselves, sends a message hurtling through our blood streams that we must move on to the next classroom and begin again, begin forgetting again, begin learning again.

  So in this second everything freezes.

  Then crumbles.

  ‘Lying cheat,’ says Carrot to me, whispering into my ear as he brushes past me. ‘You’re so fulla lies and skite you wouldn’t even recognise the truth if it run over you like a bus.’ Then he narrows his eyes and smiles at me and pours down my ear a spurty hot draught. ‘Come back down the creek. Soon. I got a present for ya.’

  And he winks.

  Truth

  IF I SAY something is true, then why isn’t it? If words represent actions, why can’t something be true, just by saying it? Aren’t words the truth?

  KEELY GAVE ME the eel like a present. He placed it in my hand.

  ‘It wants to feel you,’ says Carrot screeling. I am in shock and I walk towards our classroom, which is empty, natch, since we are all on Nature Study, ‘studying nature in all its wonder’. I do not know what to do with the eel, which keeps squirming its head round to look at me. It terrifies me. It eats me.

  I see the aquarium, our class aquarium, which is a bold square of glass so thick it is shaded green when you look at it in a certain light. Inside the greenglass is the pretty universe Coralee and Angel have created. There are dimply crystal necklaces growing up onto the surface. There is oxygen weed daily placed in there to keep the water clean. Goldfish transfer their rainbow essence all over the glass. And at the bottom, on the lunar pebbles, Coralee has placed a Chinese bridge, an old man, a courting couple. It is all so pretty.

  As soon as I see it, I comprehend. I will place the eel within, so it shall live. Besides part of me is already no longer there. I want to go back, go back and find out, find out what KeelynCarrot are always doing down there by the darkcreek.

  I slip the eel in and run away.

  They are nowhere.

  Nowhere.

  I keep hearing their laughter under the trees.

  You lied to me, Keely.

  And when I come back into the class, there is a small knot of people gathered round the aquarium. Coralee is sobbing, as she holds in her hand the dying moments of a goldfish. I see its mouth open and shut for the last time.

  ‘Someone has murdered,’ sobs Coralee.

  All around our shoes is a welter of thick water welding shame and crime to us.

  ‘Who done it?’ cries Stumpy furiously. ‘Who wrecked our class project?’

  I open my mouth as if to say, to speak. But Mr Pollen now rushes in.

  ‘What’s the problem? What has happened? What happens when I leave you on your own, trusting you all to use your time beneficially?’

  We comprehend in one moment the special length of the word is used to flay all of us. And, indeed, because he has given us special trust, we all of us feel more wretched.

  ‘Someone done it,’ says Angel shrilly.

  And as she speaks she stands aside revealing the big eel dead inside the aquarium. It has thrashed all the water out in its last moments. In its fury. Its face looks congested with anger. Its jaws are open. Eyes glazed but looking, looking at me.

  I shudder.

  Already there is a terrible fish smell. Stagnant. It smears its shame all over me.

  ‘Who done it?’

  ‘Who done the terrible thing?’

  We won’t tell on you, if you don’t tell on us.

  ‘THE PERSON ONLY has to speak up,’ says Mr Pollen lightly, dandling his words on his tongue, as if they dance on point.

  There is a long moment of silence and I wait for the words to come up my soundpipe to sing the tune which will explain everything. I think I am saving the eel, that it will live, that it will be added to our class exhibit. I don’t think it will kill. I think it will live in water. In water, the divine essence, the thing which gives us life.

  Without water we die.

  BOOK FOUR

  OPEN SESAME

  Wonderful City

  HE IS WAITING for me there, by the bridge. Standing with his bike leaning against him. Casually, I turn, slowly, to spy if anyone can see him.

  No one.

  He tenses a little when he sees me, and smiles, almost. I almost smile back but my lips form stiff and I sigh, almost apart from myself, so the words slide out in a moan:

  ‘Whatcha doin’ heeeeeeeere for?’ ‘and the word here takes on the skid of a long deep groan, like the lick of a wave sliding into the chute of a cave and echoing up and round the walls, before slithering out again.

  Low.

  He says nothing, but gets on his bikeseat and begins to ride off. He is silent, and his knees, I see, have been scratched with blood, which has dried. And by his eyes is a soft flowering bruise, which has changed the mask of his face, as if a giant thumb has been pressed into his wax and gouged out and into it another shape: as if the native shape of his face is not good enough.

  As I push down the weight of my pedals, desperate to catch up with him, I moan low, ‘Wai-it,’ (like it is two words and each one is a swingbridge towards him), ‘Wai-it for me, Maddy. Don’t leave me be-hiiind. Please.’

  ‘Whatcha up to?’ I lie all offhand when I bike-bike up to him. We are on a crest. Wind fingers through our hair, flacking our shirts and pasting secret smiles on our faces.

  ‘Watcha up to, Maddy?’ I lie urgently at the same time so he knows he may undress whatever is inside the vacancy of my mind.

  For now I know there is nothing.

  ‘You thought of what you’re wearing for the fancy dress ball?’ he asks then. Accusingly.

  He explodes this in my mind. I watch, from a far distance, the explosion happen. It is a fine explosion, in tiny shivering sharp spears of metal all firing out from a central point of contact. In it I see faces: Stumpy disbelieving; Keely watching me close; Carrot picking his nose, looking at it intently, rolling it into a small bullet between thin crouchback fingers, flicking it at me.

  Dust darkens the air.

  I have seen something I cannot quite name.

  Is it chance? Luck? Hope? Escape?

  Or rather, what I see has no name yet. Is the missing word.

  So this is his mystery as he keeps silent, pedalling beside me, he who knows the missing word, carries it before me.

  He starts to ride away from me quickly, laughing.

  The streamers float out from his mouth and flash through the air. His l
egs pump.

  He carries the word away from me.

  ‘Waaaaiiit for me. Waiiiitttt.’ I moancry as I stand up on my pedals pushing.

  He turns to me and laughs.

  ‘Catch me,’ he cries.

  We race now laughing, air tearing down our throats and blasting into our faces. Now the roads and houses fleck past us and we control all the slide of earth which lies on the rock, resting on our tongues. Turning sideways, tears roil from the corner of our eyes, dragged out by the pen of the wind.

  He relaxes and settles back on the hooked bikeseat.

  I do likewise. Copycat.

  We coast now silently.

  Past a blackbird on a swaying powerline.

  Its beak follows us. Knowing eye glints.

  NOW WE HAVE fingered down into our part of the street. It is as if we have not so much come to a house than the place has opened up its fur and we have entered into the soft moist space of it, its density of associations, and we come upon it so unexpectedly it takes on the satisfaction, the surprising satisfaction of completion.

  Outside our house he says, ‘Let’s go into our place. I’ve got something to show you.’

  As always with him, as if I have no will or he has invented my will, in all my vacancy I follow behind him and soon all there is is the sound of a bumper rattling on the wheel of a bike as it rides over the small indentation at the bottom of the drive, where the concrete parts from asphalt, and soon this splinter of sound is softened, then multiplied then lost in the striated echo as it shivers up and down the sun and shadow stripes of weatherboard. The eery cackle of the cabbage tree palms send out a greeting. We turn the side of the house and there it is, our world, our sleeping beauty which has been staying there, awaiting this moment, for its rebirth.