And so they raced.
*
In the weeks home from school getting over their injuries – The Coffin having ploughed into the ramshackle wagon of Andy’s, crushed it, then run loose, hit a tree, flipped, and entombed Roger – the boys spoke, once they were able, on the phone.
They agreed to call it a draw, since The Coffin only smashed into the other cart because Andy’s steering rope had snapped and his machine had veered in front of The Coffin. All that weight. Mega accident, wasn’t it! Smash-up derby. French Hell Drivers. Speedway on a Saturday Night (which neither of them would ever be allowed to attend, but they lived off the fumes from descriptions overheard at school). All that momentum.
Mostly, though, they talked about Lost in Space, which they got to see early in the morning because their parents planted them in front of the telly to keep them out of their hair; or they talked about the electronics kit they both wanted for Christmas. Neither of them talked about Alistair and Don, not really.
*
With the two injured drivers screaming – one hurled from his machine, the other trapped under his – Alistair turned to Don and Don gave him a look that said, Run! and they did. The injured were taken to the local doctor’s surgery in the station wagon of a busybody neighbour who was always watching the bush and the path across the road, and who happened to know Roger’s father and rang his home.
After the drama and recriminations, after the tears and tellings-off, the four parents agreed that both their sons, when recovered, would be forbidden such ‘enterprises’ again. Neither boy mentioned their seconds, though the neighbour had, not really knowing either boy and unable to say much about them other than: I’ve seen them around – one of them is the sort you keep your eye on. Nah, harmless, nothing to do with it – a couple of kids from school who were just watching, the drivers told their incredulous parents.
*
Alistair had never puffed on a cigarette before, and though he coughed like mad, he loved the headspin it gave him. Those boys are dickheads, said Don, drawing deeply on his fag, and flicking his Bic with the other hand. I mean, said Don, It’s real toddlers’ stuff, this playing soapbox cars. Girls’d laugh at ’em. Alistair, almost blacking out, falling onto his back on the lush green grass oval of a school that neither boy attended, said, I play with cars and boats. Bet you do, said Don, and corked Alistair in the arm. Hey, come off it, what’d you do that for!? To wake you up. Playing with toy boats. No. Gee that hurt. Well rub it, here, I’ll give it a rub – all better now? Yeah, it’s fine. I don’t play with toy boats, I have a real boat. An old speedboat.
Alistair let that info wash over Don, who drew deeply, and then lay back with his arm folded behind his head, flicking the Bic so close to his straggly greyish hair that it singed. Phew, that stinks, said Alistair. A boat, eh? Yeah, a real boat. And I’ve got my own jetty as well.
*
Mrs Rowley looked down her glasses at Don when he sauntered through the gate. He was huge for his age and looked more man than boy. He had a smoke hanging in the corner of his mouth and wore his Freo Rocks T-shirt that also had AC/DC blazoned across the chest. Gidday, he said to Mrs Rowley, You soakin’ up a few rays? Mrs Rowley was reading on the banana chair on the patio and drinking a G & T. Who are you and what do you want? Here to see your illustrious son, young Alistair. We’re going for a boat ride. Mrs Rowley pursed her lips, placed her book in her lap and called, Alistair, come here right now, please!
Hey, your mum is somethin’, said Don as they cast off and Alistair throttled the outboard.
She’s something, all right, said Alistair. And my father’s even better.
What’s he do for a crust?
He’s just rich.
Where is he?
Away on business.
Is that right? Love your parents?
What do you think?
No?
Why should I? I don’t love anyone. Love is weak and makes me sick.
Hey, you sound pretty tough for a sissy.
The prow lifted as the prop dug into the tannin-stained river, and the wake went large as it could, and they almost sped out into the reach, then onto the bulging stomach of the river.
Give us a smoke, said Alistair.
No worries, and if you pull this tub over near Canning Bridge and give me a few bucks, I’ll go into the bottle shop and pick us up a bottle of green ginger wine – my sister works in the drive-through.
What, you think I carry money with me on the boat?
Don’t rich kids always carry money
Ha! Anyway, no need, look under that sack behind you, at the front of the boat.
Well, shee-it! Fucking Cointreau!
Yeah, my mother drinks it all the time. That and gin. There’s about ten bottles of each under the bar.
Do you know how much this stuff costs?
More than oranges?
*
Roger and Andy didn’t see each other till the next school year. By the time they were both repaired, the school year had ended and their reports, outstanding, were posted home. Both had been ordered to scrap the wrecks of their machines. Andy did, but Roger just took the wheels off and turned the The Coffin into a large garden box. That was his latest thing, vegetable gardening.
A raised bed, eh, Dad?
Impressive.
I’m going to plant tomatoes in it. I like the idea of a coffin giving birth to life.
It was nearly your coffin, you idiot.
Roger hated his dad calling him an idiot, and he resented his punishment, but he still felt a pique of embarrassment, which confused him.
Andy went away to Sydney for the holidays to stay with cousins.
*
High school! Roger rode to Andy’s, as they’d agreed on the phone and their parents allowed; then they rode on together to their first day of high school. Andy’s mum had said a stern hello, then added, Well, ride carefully, at least it’s nice in the cool of the morning. She was spraying the roses to kill aphids.
They didn’t say much riding to school, nor at school, overwhelmed as they were by their first day. But they rode slowly home, leaving a little later so they could travel side by side along the new bikeway.
Dad says it’s all opening up out here. So, Sydney was good?
Yeah. What’d you do?
Not much, as I said on the phone. Just piss-farted around. Planted tomatoes. That was mint.
Dickhead. Anyway, they say mintox in Sydney.
For real?
Yeah.
And I went swimming in the river and got an ear infection and it def wasn’t mintox. But I caught a few kingy and a million blowies off Deep Water Point Jetty. My dad took me down there a few times.
They pedalled against a stiff sea breeze and cars raced past. They could smell the creek and the river, the dankness of paperbarks in the hot afternoon. And they could smell the shifting sand everything was built on. They both felt out of place and knew that five years of high school couldn’t pass quickly enough. Neither would live where they grew up; both would go away. They would always remember the river. It saturated them.
So, you seen Alistair since getting back?
Nah, he doesn’t want to speak to me. Rang him a few times, even once from Sydney, but his dad answered or his mum and they said he wasn’t free.
Did they say ‘wasn’t free’? Jeez!
Yep, sure did. My dad spoke to Alistair’s dad and he said that Alistair felt I was ‘a little immature’. Alistair had told his dad that I still wet the bed!
Do you?
Fuck off!
I don’t like the way Alistair condescends.
Who says he condescends?
Now you’re getting touchy.
And Andy was. His ears went bright red, always a sign, and he started pedalling faster.
Hey, hang on, said Roger, and he was on Andy’s back wheel all the way; then Andy swung into his drive and waved and yelled, Seeya tomorrow, and that was it for the day.
*
Things had returned to normal, and Andy and Roger spent more and more time together outside school. They did their homework together, stayed over each other’s places on weekends, and argued like crazy. There was no mention of Alistair, and for reasons unknown, which he didn’t question because he didn’t care, Roger was forbidden to contact Don. He’s been having problems, he was told. What’s new, Mum? Don’s always having problems! But the fact was, both Andy and Roger had seen Don around plenty: walking around the suburbs, loitering by the river, heading to Alistair’s. Don ignored them, and they pretended to ignore him. That was the picture, really, if you pried.
*
One Friday evening after school, Roger and Andy rode their bikes down to Deep Water Point, and just sat on the sand and looked across at the weird old buildings of the private school across the expanse of water. It was where Alistair went. Alistair’s family are not even religious, said Andy. Don’t believe in God, even. None of them. He started digging through the white surface deeper into the muddy wetness all the way to black silt, screeching, Ouch! then pulling his hand out fast.
What? What?
Ah, it’s just a shell, almost cut my finger. Wonder how it got down so deep.
Yeah.
Andy threw the decrepit half of the bivalve out into the scum at the water’s edge, and said, Hey! Look at that.
What?
Look, over there, coming this way.
And speaking of the devil, a devil not to be believed in, Alistair’s boat came into view, ploughing along near the shore, with Alistair up front and Don at the outboard.
Can you believe it? Look at them, will you!
Bloody hell, Alistair and Don – kings of the river. And hey, read the name on the side of the boat.
Cheeky bastard, he stole that – it’s plagiarism!
Coffin was written in large black letters with red shadowing just above the Plimsoll line.
I bet Don did that, continued Roger. He’s really skilled with art stuff. Hey, they look like a pair of clowns, don’t they, all poncy and sitting upright like they own the world!
The friends, best friends, Andy and Roger, literally rolled around in the sand, flicking it up in the air, the white specks raining down over their clothes, through their hair, getting in their eyes. They always joked that the river sand was just the grey sand of the suburb washed to look clean but really it was just the same old sand. It was raining down on them. They let loose, yelling and shrieking and waving their arms. Hey, youse two look like girlfriends! Sissies in your poncy boat. You lucky little boys being out in the big boat on the big river! On our big river! It’s our river our river our river and it’s bloody mint. Yeah, it’s MINTOX!
And with that, Andy and Roger turned away, bent over, aimed their bums at the oncoming vessel, and flashed browneyes. The boat deviated towards the shore, right at the exposed targets, Alistair coughing and spluttering and Don pumping his fist, but by the time they ran the boat ashore, the friends, the best friends, were hotfooting it on their bikes to their respective homes, knowing the phone would ring, the phone would be answered, and the next steps planned.
SELLING DESK SETS IN THE CITY
Brett had been out of work for a couple of years – apart from two months pulling carrots in market gardens and a few days here and there doing ‘odd jobs’. It was the beginning of the nineties, and work wasn’t in abundance. And he’d been battling drug and alcohol problems and when Social Security and the CES forced him to go on a sales training course he did so because (a) he had no choice, and (b) he had to do something … something else.
He lived with his partner of four years and their two-yearold at the foot of the Perth Hills near Armadale. It was the suburbs, but bordering on rural – the odd orchard and market garden hanging on as housing estates blossomed more than fruit trees. Though he helped an old orchardist bring his mandarin crop in, he was paid in mandarins, and the government didn’t accept that as ‘pay’ or ‘a true effort to find a job’. But receiving the call to attend the seminar in the city, he wandered down through his old friend’s orchard to give himself the strength to get through the bullshit – and it was a short cut down to the highway and the railway line, where he’d catch the train into the city.
The orchard was twelve acres, split by a side road and nudging up to the Canning River, which was really more of a stream this close to the hills. The orchardist lived in a lean-to made of corrugated iron that branched off his sorting shed. He had an old cabinless Massey Ferguson tractor, which he drove down to the local shops. Well into his seventies, he suffered from many ailments, which he attributed to the pesticides he’d been using for decades – including DDT, an old drum of which he still possessed. Though he complained about the effects of the toxins, he kept using them. Brett begged him to stop for the sake of the suburb’s children, but the old man persisted. The younger man had decanted some of the plastic drums of poison and diluted them down, taking the decanted poison to the disposal place up in the hills when he managed to borrow a car from a friend. He had done this a number of times.
Cutting through the orchard Brett felt grim. He detested sales work. He was not designed for it. His degree in politics was useless, he accepted that, but he’d rather pick fruit or pull carrots or mow lawns than sell … things. He saw the orchardist and waved, and felt better for it, but kept walking despite the old man trying to get him to come over. The old man yelled out, The world is not that bad! Drop by this evening. Brett thought over his partner’s words: You two look ridiculous together … he’s so small and round and you’re so tall and gangly. But she’d said that to him just after discovering he’d pawned her earrings and silver bracelets to buy a couple of sticks of mull. Things were a bit tense.
The train made its slow uneven way into the city and Brett stared out of the windows at nothing in particular. He had a yellowing paperback edition of Suetonius in his jacket pocket; he didn’t read it. He just went on and on and let the time vanish.
The seminar was being held in what had been an empty suite of offices in one of the city’s half-filled skyscrapers. And these offices had been empty a fortnight ago. But they were bustling now, like a Scientology interview centre. A regular hive. Show your letter, said the zealot at the front desk. Brett was stamped in and told to go to seminar room 1. There were two ‘seminar rooms’, with numbers 1 and 2 in red texta on ill-cut card pasted to the doorframes. He went in and took a seat. A few other bedraggleds, dressed out of type and struggling to make a go of it, were mixed with a handful of zealot parodies at the front of the room. Two of the zealots were engaged in eager conversation – a young man and a young woman, white shirt and white blouse, black trousers and black knee-length skirt, each waving whiteboard markers around as if they were wands. As one, they turned to their audience and said, I think we will begin. And they did – preaching the word of sales.
It took half an hour before Brett worked out what they were selling – what he’d be selling for them. Desk sets: plastic moulded desk sets with two pens in plastic swivel holders, a tubular well for pencils and other pens, a flat square well for paperclips and bits and pieces, and a peculiar little globe of the world which could be turned and looked as if the map would peel off in quartered orange-peel-like segments. The four quarters of the world. For the zealots, it was clearly the coup de grâce, but for Brett it was the world reduced thus: an inaccurate map of the continents which wobbled on its axis, and would inevitably be taken by gravity not into the sun but to the floor, where it would be swept away.
Despite the lecture, Brett was still bemused how he was supposed to earn any money out of these sales. The formula worked like this: an ‘experienced’ member of the sales team would take the disciple out on their rounds; items would be sold and the experienced salesperson would take forty per cent and the company sixty. The ‘trainee’ would be receiving free training in the field and the ‘seminar’ was free. Inspirational lectures would be held each morning for trainees and salespeople a
like. How long one remained a trainee was unclear, but enthusiasm would be monitored by the mentors, and reports would be made. Further, within the swirl of ambiguities, it seemed that trainees would be expected to supply leads – to lead salespeople to potential customers, to use ‘personal contacts’ to enhance the strength of the team and the company. Brett waited to see how this would manifest.
Paul Rise was his ‘model salesperson’, or mentor. Paul was a zealot. Okay … Brett? It is Brett, isn’t it? Hello, Brett, you in there? Ground control to Brett. (Paul, thought Brett, obviously likes a bit of levity in his interactions with minions.) Okay, Brett, let’s make this happen!
Their patch was the city itself. So who do you know in the city, Brett? Brett had no idea why he responded at all, but he did. Maybe caught up in the ridiculous energy of the moment. Maybe because he was strung out, hanging for a drink and a bong, maybe because he was stepping outside himself, finding it surreally perverse. Well, Paul … it’s Paul, isn’t it? Well, Paul, I have a few old friends in the city … older people, people my family have known for decades. One runs an accountancy office and another a shoe store. I also have a friend I went to university with who is a lawyer – he was a mature-age student doing a unit of philosophy and kind of took me under his wing – but I’d rather leave him in peace. I have nothing to do with him these days.
Brett felt his mouth moving and felt his heart racing and had no idea why he was proffering his life to this zealot. Maybe because the zealot Paul Rise hadn’t always been a zealot. Maybe he’d been a long-term unemployed dropout like him, a drunk and stoned Paul marking the days off, trying to be creative. A synergy and kinship, or maybe just playing his role in the absurdist play that was the Australia of their time. Of any time?
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