by Michael Hyde
‘Come on. I’ll give you some of the jam I made. It’s good.’
‘I know your jam’s good, mate. Just leave me alone. I’ll be out soon.’
Woody’s jam had been a weekend activity with one of their dad’s girlfriends. Her name was Naomi and she had it bad for the father. She was also into Buddhism. Somehow, homemade jam and Buddhism seemed to go together like the Vatican and the Pope, or peaches and cream.
Naomi told Woody it was wrong to capture lizards and ants and butterflies. And it was even worse if you ripped their wings off or dropped hot candle wax on them, just to watch them squirm. She bought him a book on ants, with stories of their amazing strength and purpose, social organisation and will to protect and survive. They started an ant farm together. Woody wrote about it for a month in his school journal.
Max picked up a pillow and hugged it to his face. He heard his door open again, knew it was his father and said, ‘I’m alright.’
‘OK mate. Just checking.’
Woody and Dave were in the kitchen when Max walked in. His father was making lunches at the bench. Woody glanced at Max, pushing his mop of fair hair out of his eyes.
‘What’ll it be today, Sir? Lightly munched snails, sprinkled with garlic sprouts on a bed of moutarde grainee?’ asked Dave.
Woody grinned. ‘Not today, Dave. I feel like fried ants sprinkled with shredded butterfly wings.’
‘Don’t let Naomi hear you saying that’, Max said. ‘She’d probably reckon you’re eating your relatives from a past life.’
‘Ah, the Max has come to life’. Dave looked gently at his oldest son.
‘Yep. Back in the land of the living...’ and the rest of the sentence fell like a cold pancake onto the kitchen table.
The table, made of oregon, was one of the things Dave got when the divorce and settlement came through. He also ended up with the kids. Dave stayed in town with them and Meg moved up to a Victorian coastal town. Brown’s Beach was isolated, beautiful and mysterious. Large and small rivers, heathland cliffs, mountains, the rolling and rushing surf, dunes covered with marran grass.
Meg had two jobs, one at the abalone co-op and another in the video shop. She was an easygoing person whose only wish was to avoid anger in her life. Not that she didn’t have a backbone. She did. But she was afraid of anger and hate-filled words and the effect they had on people.
So Dave got the oregon table. It had been a wonderful place to sit around. Every now and then some of Dave’s mates would come around on a Friday night, get a bit tanked up, maybe a little stoned (if they wanted to remember their youth) and play cards, listen to music and watch TV. Sometimes Max’s mates would be there. Once a girl called Jodi turned up in Max’s life but after a couple of love bites and a hundred phone calls, she disappeared from the kitchen table.
Dave’s girlfriends came and went. There was always something exotic, eccentric or mad about them. Cathy, the one before Naomi, was into numerology. She was a nurse like Dave, so they always had plenty to rave about. She shuffled numbers like a pack of cards.
One Sunday afternoon Woody was playing in the loungeroom with his plastic soldiers. Max was trying to finish an assignment, thinking about the run he and Lou would do that night.
Cathy said: ‘You know Dave, if you add both our birth dates together and multiply that by the number you come up with when you subtract my age from your age, the result is a ruling number 7... which luckily, we both have. And if you do that with my ex’s numbers, you arrive at a ruling number 3... and historically and astrologically 3s and 7s have never got on well. What’s your ex-wife’s birth date, Dave?’
‘Don’t remember’, said Dave, getting up to find himself a beer.
And that was the last time Cathy’s face was seen at breakfast around their kitchen table.
Lou, of course, was often there. Max knew almost nothing about his family, except that he was the only son. His older sister had run off to another state looking for work and escaping her parents. Lou hadn’t seen her for four years and his parents didn’t talk about it, which meant Lou wasn’t to raise the subject. His father worked in an office in the city somewhere and his mum was a primary school teacher. His parents would go to work, come home, eat tea, watch TV, go to bed, get up, go to work...
About the only thing that Lou ever mentioned was his father’s television watching habits. ‘He comes in at night, takes off his tie and puts on a jumper. He switches on the telly, reads the paper, eats his tea, then reads a book, all the time the TV’s blaring away. Oh yeah, and when I come in he nods at me and I nod back.’
Lou spent many nights sitting around the oregon table, his long hair falling over his face. A face that always appeared to be puzzled, in school or out. Apart from when he was with Max, Lou was quiet, often answering others’ questions with a smile or a quizzical look.
That face hovered in Max’s brain, while Woody and Dave continued to chat.
‘Want some jam, Max?’ asked Woody. ‘Want some, Dave?’ he asked his dad.
Woody’s habit of calling their father ‘Dave’ rankled Max. He wasn’t sure why. Maybe because it showed what good friends his father and Woody were. They joked around. They both liked football – watched games, footy panel shows, videos of their favourite grand finals. Dave put up with and even encouraged Woody’s constant stream of whacky reflections and questions about life, the cosmos, ants and sex.
‘Max?’
‘Yes, Woody?’
‘Maybe Lou’s still around.’
Dave, with his back to his two sons, kept slicing the bread.
‘He’s probably gone into another world, just like ours – maybe exactly like ours.’
‘Yeah?’ said Max lifting his eyes from the wooden tabletop to look straight into Woody’s bright eyes. ‘Where’s this parallel universe? Next door?’
Dave placed the bread knife on the bench and looked out the kitchen window.
‘Maybe... maybe we go in and out of different worlds and just don’t remember it.’ Woody fidgetted with the jar of jam. ‘Lou might be a spirit in a next door world – starting all over again.’
‘Yeah. And he got there by walking through the back of his bedroom cupboard.’ Max almost regretted his snipe but not enough to stop him. ‘He’s probably riding on Aslan’s back right now.’ He caught his dad looking at him but he was on a rapid he didn’t want to get off. ‘Yeah, Woody. Lou’s hanging onto the bloody lion’s mane. Instead of lying in a bloody box, stiff and hard and cold...’
‘...and dead’, his father said. Max stared into Dave’s face, his eyes lost at sea, his face shadowed by the rushing storm clouds.
‘...yes, and dead’, Max said. He let his head rest on the table, nose squashed against the wood, puddles of tears running into pools, while his father put his arms around Max’s shoulders and buried his face into the nape of his son’s neck. There in the warm toast-filled air of the kitchen.
‘If there was something that could fix it for you, I’d do it or buy it or say it... but I don’t know what it is or where it is.’ Dave looked across at Woody, smiled and said, ‘Unless of course, it’s Woody’s jam.’
In the days and nights that followed, the memory of Fatman and the night on the bridge faded. And Dave slowly stopped asking him if he was alright. But Lou never went away.
6
MAX'S FATHER HAD BEEN A NURSE for about ten years. Every third week Dave had night shift at the hospital and Max was expected to stay home and look after Woody.
One night he and Woody were alone in the house eating take-away in front of the telly. It had been nearly a week since Lou died. Dave had given Max some time off from school which he’d spent alone, watching television, playing Nintendo, sleeping in and moping around the house.
Max never talked much to Woody; there was something about Woody’s mind that reminded him of a minefield. So he stuck to questions and commands.
‘What do you want for tea Woody?’
‘Have you had your shower yet?’
‘What
time did Dad say you had to be in bed?’
‘Don’t switch the channel, mate. I’m in charge of the remote.’
Or, on this particular night: ‘Don’t let those bloody ants out of your farm Woody. They’re not like bloody dogs, y’know. You can’t take them for a walk.’
Woody ignored most of his brother’s remarks but this one made him think of large black ants with small dog collars around their necks, their owners commanding them to ‘heel’.
‘They’re really interesting, Max. They’ve all got a job to do and they just get on with whatever they have to do.’
Max stared at the television.
‘And they help each other. Whenever danger’s around they grab their eggs...’
Max tossed the remote onto the coffee table with a sigh. ‘And whenever one of their mates breaks a leg, they cart ‘em back and eat them. Great friends to have, I must say, Woody.’
His little brother was not to be put off. ‘Yeah well. That helps to keep them going. They don’t seem to worry about dying. Just accept it. It happens to all of them. It happens to us. Dave says that’s the only thing you can rely on – that and birth. He says everything that lives has to die.’
Max got up from the couch. He felt heavy and his heart was leaden. ‘Geez, Woody...’
The TV droned on. Some crook was caught, his pregnant girlfriend fell in love with the copper, the cop couldn’t handle the idea of bringing up another man’s child (especially the child of a crim), they both parted sadly wishing it had happened in another time, another space.
Woody watched his brother from the corner of his eye. He slid his fingers along the top of his ant farm.
‘Max. You know, coming back as an ant wouldn’t be all that bad. What do you want to come back as, Max?’
‘A younger brother,’ replied Max. ‘Then I could get my own back. You better go to bed. And don’t forget to switch off the telly.’
7
WALKING ALONG WELLINGTON ST was the best part of the school day. There was every kind of shop imaginable but the ones that grabbed Max’s attention were the Vietnamese groceries with their boxes filled to the brim. Moist vegetables, yellow marrows, lime green bok choy, Chinese broccoli with pale yellow starlit flowers, thousands of baby red chillies. Nodules of ginger, garlic tinged with purple, styrofoam boxes of dark brown nuts, chunks of Chinese cabbage, dark green zucchinis and lemon grass lying in shallow wicker baskets. The smell of the spices and packets of dried mushrooms blended with the salty tang of dried fish.
Every week morning, Max would pass by the Tan Dai grocery and glance at its small bronzed Buddha sitting in the gloom at the back of the shop, fat sticks of incense sailing their aroma onto the street.
A woman shopkeeper hosed off the footpath. Max stepped onto the road, dodging the spray. Horns of the morning traffic warned him off, reminding Max of the other night, of Fatman’s blood and spittle, the sour stink of Fatman’s body, the fall into darkness, the screeching train staring him down, its lights rushing up the line, searching for those words.
Those words still simmering in his brain.
‘The words... those words on the wall... they belonged in my brain. They were meant to remain in my mind. Silent. All wrapped up. Mine. ‘I thought you were my friend’... Yeah mate, I thought you were. But you didn’t hang around, did you? Some friend! But you were, weren’t you? My friend? It’s just you didn’t talk much. Some of the kids even thought you were mute. You know that, mate? Deaf and dumb. Dumb – no talk! Dumb – stupid! You weren’t either of them mate, I know that. You were just locked up in yourself. God! Imagine what was locked away in your brain. Should go to the cemetery and ask for your head. Maybe get some answers. Two heads are better than one, eh.’
Max laughed out loud and startled a man with a vinyl shopping bag standing in front of a Chinese restaurant, its steaming windows hung with red glazed ducks.
‘I’ll tell you another thing, Lou. It was bloody scary the other night. Bloody scary. But I wished I could have seen Fatman’s face when I jumped off the bridge. His face looked like a balloon already but his eyes must’ve been out on stalks when I went over the rail.’
Max broke into a run. And laughed all the way to school.
The school’s main attraction was that it lay next to the Maramingo River, the same river that was at the end of Max’s street. He had often dreamt of paddling to school for the sheer joy of it but other kids would have thought he had tickets on himself. Besides, The Falls were halfway between his house and the school. They were nothing like Niagara but still, going over the two metre drop in a lightweight kayak wasn’t something you’d normally choose to do.
This was his first day back at school since Lou’s death. He was not sure how he felt and he had no idea how he should act. Should he be cool? Maybe silent? Angry? Where was the guidebook for these situations? Had he ever been told things like this might happen?
One day your mate was here and the next day he’s vanished. Gone to who knows where. But in the past week there had been many times when Max felt as though Lou was at his elbow, mooching along, saying nothing, smiling every now and then at Max’s comments. Memories of secret exploits.
God, what times they’d had. Climbing onto the tops of carrier trucks. Hanging on for about eight blocks while they sprayed their tags before they jumped down and ran off into the night. What a time! But now, as he approached the gates of the school, Max began to worry about the geeks at school.
The kids who hated Lou would say nothing – unless they were complete arseholes. Then there’d be the professional soapie stars who could barely remember what he looked like, probably didn’t even know his name. They’d be looking forlorn and rushing off to the girls’ toilets or sick bay to weep their crocodile tears. And of course there were those who loved him and they’ll have a hole in their life where he once graced them with a smile walking down the corridor or standing in line at the canteen. Few of them would’ve had a conversation with Lou. He was your silent type but silence has its own seductive charms.
School was school. Old, two storey brick built in three sections. It could have passed for a factory or a knitting mill but it was a school of about a thousand students and eighty teachers. And on this day, a decision had been made. A decision not to dwell on the subject of death.
The Deputy Principal stood in front of the early morning staff meeting.
‘If it’s raised by the kids, discuss it by all means but let’s leave most of it up to the experts. Extra counsellors have been assigned to the school if the students want someone to talk to. I suggest we watch out for signs of high drama and any kids who insist on talking about suicide. Let matters die down of their own accord. And Miss Turner, watch out for that boy, Max Fairchild. The dead boy was his best friend. Oh, and Miss Turner! Would you mind steering away from poetry for a day or two, until things blow over...’
Max sat in the classroom, rolling his ruler around in his closed hands. He stared at the feet of the students sitting opposite. The teacher was late. Teachers could afford to be late to senior classes and this class was more docile than most. It was Home Economics Theory. ‘Materials and technology in Food’ was its official title but the kids called it ‘Cooking’. Max had chosen the subject with Lou. They needed an extra unit, so they took it because it looked not so much easy, as relaxed. In any case, you got to have a good feed at the end. That was a big plus.
Around the room kids were doing their normal catch-up work. Terry Griffiths over there, drawing his eight hundredth car for the year, picking at his flaming red pimples. Silvana reading her fiftieth book. Chris, Mark and Tien checking off their footy tips, belting Mark on the arm because he’d picked six winners. Guy and Kirsty, heads together, whispering their array of insults, taunts and vicious gossip. It didn’t pay to overhear or get too close.
In the midst of all this were hushed conversations and surreptitious looks over shoulders at Max. And at the spare seat next to him.
Mai, one of Vietname
se girls, was doing her homework. She put a hand to her head to think for a moment, and, glimpsing Max through her black, black hair, she looked at him and didn’t turn away until Miss Turner walked in.
Miss Turner taught English and Home Ec. ‘These days teachers teach anything,’ thought Max. ‘Next she’ll be teaching astro physics.’
‘Morning, ladies and gentlemen.’ Janet Turner looked steadfastly at Chris, Joe, Kirsty. Anywhere but at Max. ‘Now. Where were we up to? We were looking at grain and cereal products and the effect of different types of flour on things like bread, pastry, thickeners and sponge cakes.’ Janet gazed at her class and realised that wheat or any other topic remotely connected to her subject was irrelevant. She forgot the admonitions of the meeting before school. Forgot them or ignored them.
‘But before we get on with things as though everything’s normal, I’d like to say how sorry we all are about the death of Lou Petrocelli.’ The class fell silent. ‘Dealing with the death of a friend, somebody you’re used to seeing day in and day out not being here anymore, well...’ She perched herself on the edge of the desk. ‘It’s... it’s more than difficult.’ She stood up, clasping her hands before her. ‘My own mother died two years ago and I still sometimes forget. Something happens and I go to the phone to ring her and tell her some news.’
She halted. Terry looked hard at his drawing. Silvana ran her fingers over the cover of her book. Max stared at the floor. Guy looked at Max, like he was searching for something in his face.
‘Sometimes I even begin to dial and then, and then...’ Janet Turner didn’t know how she had arrived at this point and wasn’t sure where she was headed. She was trying, somehow, to say something to help. Especially to help Max but here she was again, lost in her own mother’s death.
‘Look. I wanted to say a few simple things, but if I was to be honest, there’s nothing simple about death. And nothing simple about life, for that matter... Would any-one else like to say something?’