by Steve Toltz
I stood at the crossroads and watched the people drag themselves about their business. I looked at the cinema. I looked at the general store. I looked at the barbershop. I looked at the Chinese restaurant. That all of this had sprouted from the primordial soup was a profound and impossible mystery. There’s nothing perplexing to me about a leafy shrub evolving out of the big bang, but that a post office exists because carbon exploded out of a supernova is a phenomenon so outrageous it makes my head twitch.
Then I had it.
They call it inspiration: sudden ideas that explode into your brain just when you are convinced you’re a moron.
I had my idea, and it was a biggie. I ran home thinking Harry was instructing both of us, Terry and me, in different lessons, but to be honest, I don’t think Terry got anything out of Harry at all. Oh, a few practical pointers, sure, but none of the philosophy, none of the juice!
First Project
I’m not a handyman by nature. The objects constructed by me that exist in the world are few; scattered in garbage pits across the country lie a misshapen ashtray, an unfinished scarf, a crooked crucifix just big enough for a cat to sacrifice his life for all the future sins of unborn kittens, a deformed vase, and the object I made the night after visiting Harry in his stinking prison: a suggestion box.
I built it optimistically; it was a real cavern, 50 centimeters across, 30 centimeters in depth, enough space inside to fit literally thousands of suggestions. The box looked like an enormous square head, and after I gave it a varnish I took the handsaw and widened the mouth farther, opening up the corners a couple of centimeters on either side so the mouth was smiling. First thing I considered was attaching it to a stick and pounding it into the earth somewhere in the town, but when you’re building something for public access, you have to take vandals into account; every place on earth has them, and beyond too.
Consider the layout of our town: one wide, tree-lined main street with four smaller streets running off in the middle. At this crossroads was the epicenter- the town hall. No one could go about his business without passing it. Yes, it had to be the town hall to give the suggestion box an official air. But to achieve permanence, so no one could remove it easily, it had to become part of the structure, part of the town hall itself. It had to be welded, that was obvious, but just try welding wood to concrete! Or to brick!
I scavenged around the backyard for scraps of corrugated iron that hadn’t made it onto the roof of my father’s shed. With his grinder I cut them into four pieces and with his welding torch I entombed the top, back, and sides of the box. I put a padlock on it, and at three in the morning, when every last person in the town was sleeping and the lights in the houses were off, I welded it to the bottom of the handrail that ran up the steps to the door of the town hall.
I placed the key to the padlock in an envelope and laid it on the front-door step of Patrick Ackerman, our lackluster town councilman. On the outside of the envelope I wrote his name and inside the following words:
I am entrusting you with the key to unlocking the potential of our town. You are the key master. Do not abuse your privilege. Do not be slow or lazy or neglectful. Your town is counting on you.
I thought it was an elegant little note. As dawn rose over the hills and the prison was backlit by a sinister orange glow, I sat on the steps and composed the inaugural suggestions. They needed to be beauties; they needed to inspire, to excite, and they needed to be within reason. So I refrained from putting in some of my more outlandish and unworkable suggestions, such as that we should move the whole town out of this dismal valley and closer to some water- a good idea, but beyond the jurisdiction of our three-man council, one of whom no one had seen since the last big rain. No, the first suggestions needed to set the tone and encourage the populace to follow suit. They were:
1. Turn to our advantage that desultory tag “ Least Desirable Place to Live in New South Wales.” We should boast about it. Put up signs. Maybe even exaggerate it in order to turn it into a unique tourist attraction.
2. For Jack Hill, the town barber. While it is admirable that you continue to cut our hair despite the crippling arthritis afflicting you, the result is that this town has more bad, uneven, and downright mysterious haircuts than any town in the world. You are turning us into freaks. Please- retire your vibrating scissors and hire an apprentice.
3. For Tom Russell, proprietor of our general store, Russell and Sons. First off, Tom, you don’t have a son. And not only that, you don’t have a wife, and now that you’re getting on in years, it looks like you will never have a son. True, you have a father and it’s possible you yourself are the son your shop refers to, but as I understand it, your father died long ago, decades before you moved to this town, so the title is a misnomer. Secondly, Tom, who is doing your inventory? I was in your shop just yesterday and there exist items that no human being could possibly have any use for. Empty barrels, oversized pewter mugs, thong-shaped fly swatters, and by God your souvenirs are curious: one normally buys a model of the Eiffel Tower in France, at the Eiffel Tower, not in small Australian towns. I know it is a general store, but you have gone beyond that. Your store is more vague than general.
4. For Kate Milton, manager of the Paramount, our beloved local cinema. Once a film has been running for eight months, Kate, you can pretty much take it for granted that we’ve all seen it. Order some new films, for Chrissakes. Once a month would be nice.
I reread my suggestions and decided I needed one more. A big one. It’s impossible to articulate what I thought was wrong with the people of my town on a level deeper than bad haircuts and vague supermarkets- deeper problems, existence problems. I couldn’t think of a suggestion that addressed these directly. It was simply impossible to point to the bedrock of existence, show the crack, and hope that we could all ponder its significance without everyone acting all sensitive about it. Instead I thought of an idea to address it indirectly. I guessed that their problems had something to do with priorities that needed shifting, and if so, the underlying cause of that must be linked with vision, with what parts of the world they were taking in and what they were leaving out.
My idea was this: I wanted to adjust their perspective, if I could. That led me to suggestion number five.
5. On Farmer’s Hill, build a small observatory.
I offered no explanation, but I threw in the following quotes by Oscar Wilde and Spinoza, respectively: “We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars” and “Look at the world through the perspective of eternity.”
I reread the suggestions and with great satisfaction slid them into the awaiting mouth of my newly constructed addition to the town.
***
The suggestion box became the town’s conversation piece. Patrick Ackerman held an impromptu meeting where he read out my suggestions in a solemn voice, as if they had come from above, not below, where I was sitting. No one knew who had put the box there. They guessed, but they couldn’t agree. The townspeople whittled their friends and neighbors down to a short list of about eight possibilities, but nobody was a sure thing. They certainly didn’t suspect little old me. While I had been out of my coma a good many years, they still saw me as asleep.
Amazingly, Patrick Ackerman was enthusiastic about the whole thing. He was the kind of leader who desperately wanted to be fresh and progressive, but he lacked motivation and ideas and he seemed to adopt my suggestion box as his surrogate brain. He violently shouted down any derision and opposition, and because of his unexpected outburst of enthusiasm, the council, mostly from shock, agreed to every one of my suggestions. It was wild! I really wasn’t expecting it. For instance, it was decided that Paul Hamilton, the unemployed one-legged seventeen-year-old son of Monica and Richard Hamilton, would start immediately as Jack Hill’s apprentice barber. It was decided that Tom Russell had one year to remove the words “and Sons” from his signs, or marry and reproduce or adopt a child, provided that the son was white and from England or Northern Europe. I
t was decided that Kate Milton, the manager of the local cinema, should be diligent in procuring at least one new film every two months. It was unbelievable! But the real shock was to come. It was decided that plans should be immediately drawn up for an observatory to be built on Farmer’s Hill, and while the budget allocated was a paltry $1000, the spirit was there. I couldn’t believe it. They were really going to do it.
Patrick decided that the box would be opened only once a month, by him. He would peruse suggestions to ensure he didn’t inadvertently read out anything profane or offensive, and at a public meeting he would announce them to the town, after which there would be discussions and debates and votes on which were to be carried out and which were to be ignored.
It was a tremendous thrill! I can tell you, I’ve had one or two successes in life thus far, but none has given me the absolute feeling of satisfaction of that first victory.
While the observatory would take some time in planning, my idea of using the dubious title “ Least Desirable Place to Live in New South Wales ” as a tourist attraction was immediately put into effect. Signs were erected on the road where it fell into town, and on the other side, where it rose out of it.
Then we waited for the tourists to come.
Amazingly, they did.
As their cars pulled into our streets, the townspeople put on dour faces and shuffled their feet.
“Hey, what’s it like here? Why is it so bad?” the tourists asked.
“It just is,” came the mopey reply.
Day-trippers wandered the streets and saw in every face a look of despair and loneliness. Inside the pub, the locals acted miserable.
“What’s the food here like?” the tourists would ask.
“Terrible.”
“Can I just have a beer, then?”
“We water it down and charge extra. OK?”
“Hey- this really is the least desirable place to live in New South Wales!”
When the tourists moved on, the smiles returned and the whole town felt like it had played a great prank.
Everyone looked forward to the box’s monthly opening, and more often than not, it was brimming. The meetings were open to all, and it was usually standing room only. They routinely began as Councilman Ackerman announced his disappointment at the things found in the box that weren’t suggestions- orange peels, dead birds, newspapers, chip packets, and chewing gum- and then he’d read out the suggestions, an astounding array of blueprints for possibilities. It seemed everyone was caught up in the spell of ideas. The potential for the town to reach a higher place, to improve itself, to evolve, had caught on. People started carrying little notepads with them wherever they went; you would see them stop abruptly in the middle of the street, or leaning against the streetlamp, or crouched over the pavement, struck by an idea. Everyone was jotting down his ideas, and in such secrecy! The anonymity of the suggestion box allowed people to articulate their longings and desires, and really, they came up with the strangest things.
First were the practical suggestions pertaining to infrastructure and general municipal matters: dismantling all parking restrictions, lowering taxes and petrol prices, and fixing the cost of beer at one cent. There were suggestions aimed at ending our reliance on the city by having our own hospital, our own courthouse, and our own skyline. There were proposals for entertainment events such as community barbecues, fireworks nights, and Roman orgies, and there were countless suggestions for the construction of things: better roads, a town mint, a football stadium, a horse track, and, despite the fact that we were located inland, a harbor bridge. The list just ran on and on with ultimately useless proposals that our town’s council simply wasn’t fat enough to satisfy.
Then, when municipal matters bored them, the people began to turn on each other.
It was suggested that Mrs. Dawes shouldn’t walk around like “she’s better than everyone else,” and that Mr. French, the town grocer, stop pretending he was “not good with numbers” when caught out shortchanging us, and that Mrs. Anderson immediately cease overexposing her grandson by shoving photographs of him under everyone’s noses because while he might be only three years old, “we’re all beginning to groan at the sight of him.” Things turned so quickly because Patrick Ackerman was struck down with pneumonia and his second-in-command, Jim Brock, took up the task. Jim was old and bitter and mischievous and read out the most profane, personal, idiotic, and provocative suggestions in an innocent voice, but you could hear him smile, even if you couldn’t see it. Jim was shit-stirring, and because anonymity guarantees honesty (as Oscar Wilde said, “Give a man a mask and he will tell the truth”), everyone in the town was really letting loose.
One suggestion said: Linda Miller, you whore. Stop fucking our men or we’ll organize a lynch mob to cut your great big knockers off.
And there was this one: Maggie Steadman, you old bat. You shouldn’t be allowed to park your car anywhere near our town if you can’t judge the dimensions of things.
And this one: Lionel Potts should stop showing off his money and buying everything in town.
And another: Andrew Christianson, you have no neck! I don’t have a suggestion for fixing it, I just wanted to point it out.
And this: Mrs. Kingston, stop bothering us with jealous concerns about your husband’s fidelity. His breath smells like rotten eggs after they’ve been shat out a runny bottom. You have no worries there.
And this: Geraldine Trent, despite your promises of “I won’t tell a soul,” you are a horrendous gossip and you have betrayed the confidence of just about everyone in town. P.S. Your daughter is a drug addict and a lesbian. But don’t worry, I won’t tell a soul.
People came to dread the reading of the suggestions in case they themselves were to be mentioned. They started to feel vulnerable, exposed, and eyed each other suspiciously in the streets until they spent less time socializing and more time hiding in their homes. I was furious. In the space of a few months, my suggestion box had really made our town the least desirable place to live in New South Wales, or for that matter anywhere at all.
***
Meanwhile, the twins had turned sixteen and celebrated the occasion by quitting school. Bruno and Dave were saving up for guns and planning a move to the city, and Terry wanted to join them. As for me, I’d finally managed to extricate myself from the gang. There was no reason for me to pretend I was doing any good watching over Terry, Bruno had finally reached the point of wanting to “vomit his whole stomach up” at the sight of me, and frankly, I’d had a gutful of the whole stinking lot of them. The benefit I derived from my association with the gang was firmly secured; I was left in peace by my schoolmates. I didn’t wake with dread every day, so now my mind was free to do other things. It’s not until it’s gone that you appreciate how time-consuming dread really is.
I spent every spare millisecond with Caroline. I was fascinated not only by her increasingly succulent body but by her idiosyncrasies. She was obsessed with the idea that people were holding out on her. She relentlessly squeezed their stories out of them; she thought that older people, having lived in many places and cities, had experienced all that life has to offer and she wanted to hear about it. She didn’t care about the children in the town; they didn’t know anything. It was easy to get the adults talking. They seemed ever watchful for a receptacle in which to pour the banked-up untreated sewage of their lives. But after she heard them, she’d incinerate them with an unimpressed look that said very clearly, “Is that all?”
She read too, only she gleaned very different things from books than I did. She obsessed over the lives of the characters, how they ate, dressed, drank, traveled, explored, smoked, fucked, partied, and loved. She longed for exoticism. She wanted to travel the world. She wanted to make love in an igloo. It was comical the way Lionel Potts encouraged his daughter. “One day I’m going to drink champagne hanging upside-down on a trapeze,” she’d say. “Good for you! I know you’ll get there! It’s important to have goals! Think big!” he’d
ramble on endlessly. She really set him off.
But Caroline wasn’t as totally discontented with her surroundings as I was. She found beauty in things I just couldn’t see. Tulips in a flowerpot, old people holding hands, an obvious toupee- the littlest thing would send her squealing in delight. And the women of the town adored her. She was always adjusting their hats and picking flowers for them. But when she was alone with me, she was different. I realized that her sweetness, the way she carried on with the people of the town, was her mask. It was a good one, the best kind of mask there is: a true lie. Her mask was a weave of tattered shreds torn from all the beautiful parts of herself.
One morning I went over to Caroline’s and was surprised to see Terry standing outside her house, throwing stones so they landed in the garden bed underneath the front windows.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
“Terry Dean! Stop throwing stones in our garden!” Caroline shouted from the upstairs window.
“It’s a free world, Caroline Potts!”
“Not in China!”
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Nothing. I can throw stones here if I want.”
“I guess.”
Caroline watched from the window. She waved at me. I waved back. Then Terry waved too, only his was a sarcastic wave, if you can imagine it. Caroline waved ironically, which is totally different in tone. I wondered what Terry had against Caroline.