Max

by Michael Hyde

  ‘I haven’t been in a canoe or a kayak since the Falls. Pretty mad thing to do, eh, Mum?’

  ‘Oh yes, pretty mad,’ Meg took a swig from her water bottle, rol ed up her trousers and paddled in the water. ‘If you want to know the truth, Max, it’s right off the bloody wall – then again, nearly everybody I know has done crazy things, weird things. Usually because they’ve got pain in their hearts. Like you. Let’s face it – at any one time you could make a list of all your woes in life and convince yourself that nothing will ever be any good or right again.’

  ‘Like Lou?’

  ‘Just like Lou. And like Bob too. And probably like a lot of people you know. The thing is, Max – and I know you’ll probably think this is your mother raving on – in times of real strife we all need a safety net. We can’t be left to just float around. We need some love.’

  An azure blue kingfisher hopped among the tangled maze of roots in the chocolate-brown mud.

  ‘So what did you and Lou have in common?’ his mother asked, hands thrust in her pockets, standing calf-deep in the water.

  ‘Not a lot. Graffiti, mostly. He hated the bush. Could never convince him to come paddling. He hated swimming too but he was a great artist. If you come down to the city I’ll show you some of his pieces. Y’know, dad never liked me doing it much. But he liked Lou alright.’

  ‘Dave can’t talk. When the Vietnam War was on he was known as the paint-up specialist. Every week he’d go out painting up anti-war slogans, “Free such and such”, “US out”. Matter of fact he took you one night. I was out and he was supposed to be looking after you. I nearly killed him.’

  ‘You’re having me on?’

  ‘No – it’s true.’ Meg shielded her eyes against the sun.

  ‘He was rather good at it, though.’ She smiled wistfully at Max and reached down into the water, picked up a rosy pink stone and held it in the palm of her hand.

  ‘Remember that bloke dancing around Shelley last night – she was the one throwing her clothes into the sea. His name’s Sam. He runs the local fruit and vegie shop. He reckons if you want to paint something, he’d be happy to supply the paint. He’s got an empty wall.’

  ‘What’s he want – advertisements?’

  ‘Hardly. A painting. Something interesting – whatever you want. That’s if you don’t mind doing it legally?’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, really. And that girl you were watching last night – she works there part-time.’

  ‘What girl, Mum?’

  ‘Give me a break. Who are you kidding? The one that made your eyes hang out of their sockets. In any case, she’s too old for you and you’ve already got a girl back in the city. What’s her name – Mai?’

  Max felt a hot flush and grinned foolishly.

  ‘Oh well, there’s no harm in looking, is there, Mum?’

  ‘Not usually. Anyway, she’s gone back to the city for a few days to see her boyfriend.’

  Meg laughed at her son’s discomfort. She tossed the stone into the deeper reaches of the river, which sent out perfectly measured ripples to the bank and beyond. A crow’s call wailed in the bush like a lost child. Max lifted his head.

  ‘About time,’ he thought.

  22

  IT WAS THE MIDDLE OF THE WEEK. A wind scurried up the main street of the township. A retired couple wandered along in front of the shops, their arms linked together, commenting on prices as they checked their shopping list.

  They stopped for a moment, the only audience for Max’s work as he stood on a plank of wood resting between two ladders, spraying paint over the wall at the front of Sam’s fruit shop.

  Inside the shop lay small mountains of dark oranges, bunches of parsley and coriander, unwashed red potatoes, stalks of celery. Yellow butternut pumpkins were stacked like wood next to buckets of garlic, ginger and lemongrass. He thought of Mai – Mai of the long black hair, as sweet as the sandalwood incense that wafted from the shop.

  Don’t these people ever stop burning incense? Max wondered. I think Woody’s going to like this town. Nothing he said or did would seem weird to these people.

  That morning they had received a letter from Woody and Dave. Dave had gone on with a lot of worried nothings and Woody talked about his new batch of jam. ‘Naomi must be back on the scene,’ Max said to his mother and then felt immediately disloyal. Bye, bye, Despina, he thought to himself.

  Woody finished the letter by asking, ‘Max, how do you think the old guy, your friend, knew you were in trouble? Do you think it was accidental? He was a long way from his island. I was just wondering, sorry. We hope you are both happy. Dave sends his love.’

  His attempt at a signature was to show the world that he was becoming older. He ended with a PS. ‘I’ll bring some jam for you, Mum.’

  At least he didn’t call her Meg. Max frowned, then caught himself and smiled.

  Before him were swathes of purple spray. He had thought all his birthdays had come at once when Sam had given him one hundred dollars to buy the paint.

  Good is what you’re going to get, Max said to himself, returning with a couple of shopping bags that rattled with cans of spray paint.

  He worked rapidly, moving back and forth along the plank, only stopping long enough to shake his cans. Thin fine jets of black and purple spray swamped the blankness of the wall. Showers of paint buried the greyness. Finely crafted yellow letters, golden in the weak autumn sun. The words fluttered from his heart and this time he knew them in his mind. This time they came from him, wild and willing and were part of him, neither alien nor enemy.

  The scene on the railway bridge seemed so long ago, like it had happened in a dream. Lou had killed himself, stepped off a bridge with a rope around his neck. Whichever way Max looked at it, the story didn’t make much sense and certainly had no happy ending. It was especially sad for Lou but did Lou have a good enough reason to set such an example. Did he? He judged the future by what he had in the present. Maybe he thought he was a no-hoper. No hope in the present, no hope for the future. If only he’d stuck around – his story might’ve changed. Maybe staying alive was reason enough to be alive, meaning enough for Max, for all of us. Anyway, if there were no Max, who would tell their story?

  At two o’clock he was finished. He jumped down from his platform. A crow, standing on the edge of a cascading rubbish bin, pecked hungrily at a half-eaten chiko roll.

  Max’s work lay damp and glistening. Sam emerged from his fruit shop and stood next to him, taking it all in.

  On the left of the painting a crow, black as sump oil, stood haughtily, tough and bold, its eyes black as night. Against a massive backdrop of royal purple – the best, Lou, the best – Crowman stood, his thick strong beak half-open. And from his mouth poured words that people would wonder about for years. A line of cursive golden script coiled down the wall:

  He likes to glide but he knows sometimes

  he has to flap

  Crows?

  They know things

  At Crowman’s feet limped a smaller crow, swathed in bandages, and in the corner of the piece stood Max’s tag, the Da Vinci man.

  Sam shook Max’s hand and thanked him, then walked back into his shop, grinning like a mullet as he returned to his boxes of potatoes and overburdened shelves. Max wandered off in the direction of his mother’s home, leaving the old couple on the footpath in front of a painting, reading words that echoed down the street, across grassy banks and out onto the swollen inlet.

  23

  IN THE MID-AFTERNOON of the next day, settled in a single sea kayak, Max waved goodbye to Meg who was standing up to her shins in salty water, sea-grass stroking her feet. The craft had beautiful momentum, though Max still had little idea of how to quickly or effectively change its course.

  Small flat islands, covered in sand and saltbush and lush green grass, spread out across this side of the inlet. They were a home for a myriad of water birds, herons, swamp hens, pelicans and pacific gulls. A salty wind bit at his eyes
and the skin on his face. Pushing the sea kayak into top gear, Max left the islands behind, like posies floating in the wake of a ship. His muscles began to feel well-oiled again, his body thriving on its own movement and sense of purpose. Oh, to feel as though some peace was just within his reach. It was enough to make him sing and laugh and cry. Just like he had in bed last night after talking to Mai on the phone, listening to her voice, tasting her lips, remembering a mound of autumn leaves and a kiss that seemed so far away.

  The sky was dull and grey, seemingly lifeless. Max kept a watchful eye on the wind and sky. If the weather turned dirty he would have to allow a few minutes to rein in his kayak. He had no intention of dying, no intention of flirting with suicide. No matter what he had done in his recent past, no matter what the reasons, this time he was paddling for the sheer joy of it.

  He headed for Lawson Sands, named after the great Australian storyteller who many years ago camped, wrote and got drunk at Brown’s Beach. The sands lay only centimetres below the water’s surface at high tide but were exposed for some hundreds of metres when the water ran out to the sea. In summer months when the water level was always low, red jellyfish swam in the warmer waters and fairy terns hatched their eggs on the sands.

  A pelican and its mate flew overhead, heading towards land, chests puffed out like self-important matrons. A salty tang whipped his face and tousled his hair, while curds of foam circled on green velvet water.

  Max looked at the horizon and saw dark clouds building. At the same time he realised that the water had changed – it was almost unfriendly. The surprising quickness of the change made him falter in his rhythm. He was halfway between dry land and Lawson Sands. Black, brooding clouds straddled the mountain ranges to the north. Seagulls screeched and wheeled, fighting their way back to shore. Max breathed in the air and smelt rain on the wind.

  Turn or go back? Turn or go back? The kayak kept on course like there was a magnet in those northern ranges. And then he saw it. Bolts of blue lightning, violent zigzags bouncing and ricocheting off the peaks, lighting up the sky. It was the kind of picture that made sailors take off their caps and fall to their knees.

  The water began to rise as the wind blew harder. The chop turned into small waves with no rhyme or reason. A swift-moving current pushed the kayak sideways as rain, cold as ice, began to pelt down.

  Paddling against the flow was difficult. Max’s heart was thumping and his breath was reduced to short gasps. If he could turn the kayak more in the direction of the current, perhaps he could trust to luck and go with it. Maybe it would run into a headland, a beach, or dryland.

  Desperately he tried to remember the rudiments of turning a sea kayak around. He leaned out to the side, and dug his paddle into the boiling waters but a rogue wave from nowhere saw its chance and rushed at the unbalanced boat, thumped it on its side and tossed Max sideways into the seething waters of the inlet.

  Releasing the spray cover was easy. Seeing anything at all was difficult. The rain poured down in thick white sheets and slapped the surface of the water like a scolding parent. Another wave hit Max and tossed him away from his boat. Max lunged as it was swept away and then lost sight of it completely. He knew that without the kayak he was gone – done like a dinner.

  But it couldn’t be far away. They were both in the same current. Max struck out, hauling his body through the water. Under the black, overcast sky of the inlet he pounded through the water, on and on, gulping down air and rain. His shoulders screamed out to stop and give up, his body ached and his spirit began to tire.

  In the midst of that roaring wind and howling gale, Max felt he was fighting a losing battle. But why did it have to be a losing battle? Max threw his hand out one more time. It didn’t have to be. Another stroke. Choking. And one more time. Thump. His hand struck something solid. Max scrabbled for a hold on the boat, and realised that it was upturned. Blindly he slid down to where the boat narrowed. He threw an arm across the hull and yanked himself onto the boat, pulling his body out of the water until he lay face down, hugging his kayak, on a current that ran to who knows where.

  The rain began to ease and the light from the fireworks on the mountains allowed him to see and regain his bearings. Though he couldn’t be totally sure, he thought he felt the power of the current easing. Max began to paddle with his hands towards where he hoped Lawson Sands was. His arms ached to their core but the storm was pass-ing and a dull light shone on the inlet. He felt the scrape of the sand before he realised he had made it.

  Made it to the sands.

  Made it to his island.

  He rolled off the boat and on his hands and knees, dragged the kayak into shallower water. Rain still poured but it was lighter now, feeling almost warm in the after-math of the storm. Forked lightning kept up its crazy dance in the mountains, as it bounced off distant pinnacles and leapt into the sky. Max stood ankle-deep in water, his feet planted in the sand. He held the kayak by its rope and looked at the now visible shores of the inlet, lined with trees drenched by the drizzling rain.

  Waves of cold ran up and down his body. His clothes clung to him like a suckerfish. He wrapped his arms around himself, shivering so much he was afraid of falling apart. How long had he been breaking? How long had he been aching? How long had he held his finger in the dam wall, terrified of what might spew forth and drown him?

  Max cried as if there was no tomorrow and in his tears, with his face upturned to the rain, he saw Lou’s dark shape walking the shiny streets. A silhouette against the lights, he carried his canvas bag with a coarse rope coiled like a snake inside, walking with neither a smile nor a frown as he approached the bridge near the paper mill, treading softly on the steel walkway he heard nothing, felt everything and nothing, reaching into the darkness of the bag, feeling the roughness of the cord, he wrapped it around the icy handrail, secured it with a knot, wound the other end round his neck, felt the tightness of the noose. Then, Lou stood on the top rail with arms outstretched like angels’ wings, thinking of... of what? Thinking of nothing? Thinking of Max? Of his parents? Of dying young? Maybe he hated himself. Maybe he had all his dreams knocked out of him. Maybe he shouldn’t have done it.

  Is Lou happy now? Who knows? There’s more than Lou’s dark shadow in this rain. Those words of his, still tucked in Max’s top pocket: ‘I don’t need anything else’. What did that mean? What more do you need?

  Most of us need a lot more, thought Max. Certainly more than Lou was prepared to settle for and got.

  He sat on his upturned kayak, elbows on knees, his hands clasped together before him.

  ‘Oh God, Lou,’ Max cried. ‘I loved you and you were my friend. But geez, mate, you were a long way from your island. A long, long way...’

  In the distance he saw a small launch that chugged out from shore. A mother stood in the bow, searching the waters for her son.

  24

  DAVE AND WOODY DROVE up the coast to collect Max. It had been decided that Woody would stay a couple of weeks with his mother. Even though Meg had assured Dave that their eldest son seemed OK, the idea of Max coming home by himself on the bus was enough to worry the hell out of Dave. Unless he had Max in his sight anything was likely to happen – if the last few months was anything to go by – the bus could explode, Max would convince the driver to float the bus down the coastline or, as Woody suggested, his big brother might repaint the bus with Lou’s face all over it.

  The two boys thought it strange having both their parents under the same roof, even if only for a night. In fact it felt more like two families holidaying together. Of course, Woody and Meg delighted in each other’s company but when they al sat down together to have dinner there were some awkward silences – especially when Woody chatted gaily about Despina – ‘Why doesn’t she come around any more, Dave?’ – and Naomi – ‘She makes really great jam, Mum. I’ll ask her to send you her recipes if you like.’ Shortly after that Dave and Meg started to empty glass after glass of wine as though they had something caught in th
eir throats.

  The next morning both Dave and Max wanted to get an early start. The drive home was done in silence, except for Dave still worrying about his eldest son and Max occasionally reassuring his father that he was fine. Dave made an attempt to lighten things by asking Max if he would be happy to see Mai again. But even though Max smiled to himself looking out the window, that’s as far as that conversation went.

  The house was dark and quiet when they arrived home. Max and his father went straight to bed. Dave was exhausted and wanted some time out. Max went into his room and flopped. For the first time in a long while (‘How long had it been?’ he wondered) his body wasn’t aching and his mind seemed remarkably still. He found he could close his eyes without a jumble of pain racking his brain. As he slipped into sleep, with the image of Da Vinci man floating in and out of his dreams, Max smiled and knew where he had to be and what he had to do.

  At six the next morning Max left a note on the table for Dave. ‘See you for breakfast. Gone paddling.’ It was signed with a drawing of Da Vinci man.

  25

  IT IS VERY EARLY IN THE MORNING and fog drifts over the Maramingo River. The weather has settled into winter dampness. Mountain ducks with green feathered collars dart in and out along the slippery banks. A crow cries out, its question lost in the surrounding bush. Rats sniff and bustle. Swamp hens scratch. Welcoming Max home.

  Max paddles with the cool sun on his face and he wonders why he still hasn’t told his father that he loves him the way he told Meg when she rescued him. He wonders too where Woody’s questions come from. He wonders why he now wants to show Lou’s writing to Mai. And he wonders why he’s paddling away from Nick’s island, which is already covered in blackberries and strangling vines.