by Scot Gardner
She shook her head. ‘I can’t go back.’
‘Why not? Of course you can go back.’
She considered her words for a long time. ‘A mum just doesn’t leave.’
I understood, with those few words, that Mum and I had broached the same part of the Splitters Creek wall to be there. That, unsurprisingly, our struggles had a common thread.
‘But you didn’t run away, Mum. You escaped. There’s a big difference.’
‘There is?’
‘Of course. You run away if you’re weak. You escape if you’re brave.’
Mum snorted. ‘Sounds like semantics. Sounds like you’re trying to justify your own bad decisions.’
How do mums do that? I had been standing on the edge of my self-doubts and Mum had shoved. I teetered, arms flailing.
There was nothing brave about shirking responsibility. There was no real freedom in pretending that it didn’t happen.
How do they see straight through you?
‘If you’re weak, you run away. If you’re weak, you escape,’ she said. ‘It’s not a prison. It’s family. It’s a town. It’s our history. Being there isn’t a punishment. It’s a test.’
She looked at me, her eyes soft with resignation.
‘We failed.’
The words were as honest as an open hand to the cheek.
‘Every time I see you, every time you open your mouth, every time you say sorry, it rubs my nose in it.’
There was a long, ear-splitting silence. The sort of silence the city had never known. I could think of nothing more to say or do.
Nothing.
I left.
I waited for a train to take me back to the Subaru. There were more pigeons than people on the platform. They scurried about like big wobble-headed rats, pecking through the morning’s detritus.
‘Go home,’ I told the fat one that came right up to my boot.
It leapt into the air, reedy wings pumping and clapping.
It probably was home.
I called my dad.
‘Hello?’
‘Just me, Dad.’
‘Adam?’
‘I just wanted to check that everything was okay. That you were okay. How’s Simon?’
‘Si’s okay. I’m fine. How are you?’
‘I’m good.’
And then silence swallowed us. I heard traffic and pigeon wings cutting the air. I missed him, but the words were a splinter I couldn’t get out by myself.
‘I have to go,’ I eventually said.
‘Righto. Look after yourself. Come home soon.’
‘See ya.’
I phoned Bullant.
Chuck said he was still in bed, that he’d had a big night. He was certain that Bully’d want to talk to me and that he’d get more joy than a dad should from waking him.
Bully did want to talk to me. He didn’t sound tired at all. There was a squeaky sort of excitement in his voice that I hadn’t heard since we were in primary school. He told me that the guys had given up hassling him for information about me; that the storm had passed. He said that Simon was coming up to his place for breakfast most mornings and hanging around at the pub while Dad was on the road. He said that Dad had been absent from the pub for a couple of nights but that he was back drinking at the bar again now and things seemed to have settled with him and Simon. I walked in circles on the platform as I listened. It had been too long since we’d spoken. It had only been a few days, but it was too long. My eyes misted with tears a couple of times. Little tears that crept out of the darkness in my belly. I swept them away. My train arrived and I realised that I didn’t have to hang up so I kept talking, mostly about work. I told him about Harry and Bonnie and when he asked about Mum I told him she was well. That story was too big for the phone. I got him to write down my number and he asked me what I was doing that night.
‘Wouldn’t have a clue, mate. Why?’
‘I miss my car,’ he said. ‘Don’t get me wrong; the ute’s a lovely vehicle, but it’s like a bloody tank and shit, she’s thirsty.’
‘I don’t think I’ll have time to get up there this weekend. I don’t . . .’
‘Nah, I’ll bring the ute down there.’
‘You shouldn’t have to do that. I was the one who . . .’
‘Bah. I need to get out of here. Need a bloody holiday. I didn’t make it to training on Thursday. I rang Childers and told him that I’d pulled a hammie and wouldn’t be available for this morning. Maybe I’ll call in sick at work on Monday, too.’
My phone started beeping and vibrating in my ear.
I swore.
‘What?’
‘My phone’s going weird. I have to go. Give us a call if you’re serious about coming down.’
‘I’m serious. I’ll see you later.’
The beeping and vibration was a text message from Debbie.
Coffee?
Sure, I replied, but I wasn’t.
She sent me directions and, after I collected the car, I found her sitting in her MX5 near the eastern entrance of the shopping centre. Exactly where she’d said she’d be. I guess the car wasn’t easily concealable, but I did feel a sense of achievement in finding her.
With a smile as her only greeting, she walked into the centre and I followed.
Like a good puppy.
With all the self-doubts stirred and murky in my body, I asked myself what I was doing following the woman in the dark sunglasses. I watched her firm bum through her designer tracksuit and realised I was looking for distractions. Searching for another form of oblivion. Mum hid behind her work and her new life. I tried to occupy myself with Bundy and women.
Debbie sat at a table in the food court and I plonked myself opposite. She lifted her sunglasses into headband mode and smiled again.
‘We don’t have to have a coffee. I understand if it’s awkward and that,’ I said.
She glared. ‘It’s only a coffee.’
I wondered who she was trying to convince.
She bought cappuccinos.
Silence.
It buzzed around us until it had woven an impenetrable shell of awkwardness.
This is fun, I thought, and a boy sitting at the table behind Debbie let rip with a forced Coke burp that almost tore a hole in the space–time continuum. It cracked the egg of silence that had settled over us.
Debbie laughed quietly and shook her head. ‘Who’d actually want to have kids?’
I laughed and shook my head. Kids aren’t the problem, I thought. They’re just honest and some of them don’t care what you think of them. Some of them will kill you with their farts and then try to kiss you back to life. Debbie couldn’t see the boy who’d burped. At a squint, he looked like a ten-year-old version of Francis. And if Francis had brought forth a burp like that, it would have been cause for much celebration. Tori would have called him Thunder Guts and the boy would have tried to force another one until some of the Coke found its way back into his mouth.
The burpmeister glanced at me, and I smiled. The kid smiled back and the sadness was in me again. Maybe it had always been there but – like an eel – I didn’t see it until it swung close to the surface.
You can’t pick what you’ll miss.
‘Shit,’ Debbie spat, and rested her face in her hands.
‘What?’
She shook her head and pointed at The Sushi House. It took a full minute for me to spot Marcia. She was still wearing her Hardware House uniform. She had a girl in each hand. They were little kids, probably her grandchildren. They were walking with a purpose and the chances of them spotting me sitting with Debbie were slim. I’d have to stand up, shout and wave my arms in that sea of people to make them notice me. And why would anyone want to hide from Marcia? She always had a smile on her face and she called everyone ‘Love’. She was in charge of first aid and was a gun at removing splinters. She was like a country nanna. There’s an honesty that comes with living in a place where everybody knows everything about you for so long. Marc
ia had that sort of honesty.
‘Has she gone?’ Debbie eventually asked.
‘Yes.’
Debbie unfolded her face from her hands and picked at her hair in the reflection from a shop window.
‘Why all the hush-hush?’ I asked.
‘Oh, you have no idea what they’re like, Adam. They could put us through hell.’
‘What, for having a coffee?’
‘One coffee means we’re obviously sleeping together.’
‘It’s only coffee. Let them think what they like.’
We weren’t sleeping together and the more time I spent with Debbie, the less likely that seemed as a prospect. What I’d first detected as an air of mystery about her now seemed like aloofness. A sense of superiority.
‘You sound a bit paranoid,’ I said.
She drained her cup. ‘You don’t know what they’re like.’
‘Obviously.’
But more and more, I was beginning to understand what I was like. I like simple, not messy. I like honest, not sly. I like talking straight.
I only wished I could live the way I thought.
I leaned forwards. ‘I heard a rumour that you were having an affair with Tony?’ I whispered. I said it mostly as a joke – an irony – but as soon as the words passed my lips I knew I’d blown it. Struck a nerve.
Debbie shot a glance at me that was at once a look of horror and an admission of guilt. She stood and lost her sunglasses, bumped the table as she picked them up, then power-walked into the crowd.
I watched her pert little bottom disappear and thought about Sandy Willis. Sandy with her downy moustache and unwashed aura, her too-close-together eyes and off-white teeth. I knew Sandy. Sandy was the opposite of Debbie Wilde. Sandy was a little rough and ready on the outside, but she was beautiful. Beautiful in a way that couldn’t be simulated with cosmetic surgery or through workouts at the gym.
It was another smiling irony that it took the vision of Debbie’s retreating tush for me to work that out.
Sorry, Sandy.
The midday sun had shredded the clouds by the time I ventured into the car park again. The MX5 had gone and I sat on the bonnet of Bully’s Subaru for a melancholy moment. It was as though I was on a mission to shake the foundations of everything I considered to be real – my family, my future, my friends.
Love.
I shook them and some of them turned out to be fakes.
I wasn’t just looking for a body to be with. It wasn’t as simple as that any more. I’d find that whole concept difficult to explain to Bullant.
Mum thought she was a bad mum in the same way that I knew I was an irresponsible son and an unreliable brother.
I had convinced myself that leaving Splitters Creek was a courageous act. One glance in my rear view mirror told me otherwise.
Twelve
My melancholy moment was shattered by a message from Harry.
Kicking on in the shed. Wish you were here.
And then, as if by magic, Harry’s wish came true. I found a ratty old map under the passenger seat and wove slowly through the maze of the suburbs until I’d found the house with the little Laser parked in the drive.
Bonnie was home.
I knocked and called at the front door but the only response was a guttural bark from Felix. There was music rattling the shed. I did a chin-up on the back gate and the dog was right there, his steely eyes gleaming, tail sweeping.
‘Whoa! Hello, big boy. Can I come in?’
I found the latch and let myself in, my hand cupped over my balls. Felix butted my thigh with his wet nose and I shove-patted his head as I tracked across the yard, slipped through the shed door and shut him out.
The workshop erupted in a cheer.
‘Chainsaw!’ Harry sang. He skipped across the room and gave me an alcohol-charged hug. I thumped his back.
Bonnie was there, glass in hand.
So was Germy.
And a stranger. An old bloke sitting on one of the bar stools with neatly parted grey-black hair. He wore bib and brace overalls and a stubbly three-day growth.
‘Chainsaw, this is Gordon Carter from next door,’ Harry said.
The old man didn’t get up from his seat, but we shook hands. ‘Harry says you’re from up the country.’
‘Yeah, Splitters Creek. In the hills behind Orbost. Up near the border.’
Gordon shrugged. ‘Never heard of it. You’re into woodwork?’
Harry handed me a beer and I thanked him. ‘Yes. Sort of. I haven’t really done much but I love it. I worked at a sawmill up home.’
Gordon nodded knowingly. ‘It gets under your skin.’
He put his beer on the bar and got to his feet a little stiffly.
Bonnie swung in close and raked me with a smile. ‘How’d you pull up this morning?’
‘A bit sad and sorry for myself.’
She nodded.
‘Sorry about last night, you know, how it ended and that.’
Bonnie shrugged. ‘What? It was fine. No worries. I had a ball.’
She looked in my eyes for the longest time, her lips still wedged in a wry grin. ‘Maybe next time,’ she said, and I agreed but I knew it’d never happen. Bonnie was just too cool and cosmopolitan and complex for the likes of me. And there was Germy to consider.
From a high cupboard attached to the wall Gordon produced a wooden object. It rattled as he dusted it with his fingers and gave it to me.
It was like a baby’s toy or a primitive musical instrument – four wooden rings threaded on a squat barbell of timber. It was deliciously smooth.
‘How do you reckon you get the rings on there?’ Gordon asked.
‘Probably just threaded them . . .’
Examining the timber, I could see that the barbell shape was all one piece. If one end had been removed to slip the rings in place, the patching job was better than perfect. I inspected the rings and could find no joins. Not a mark or a crack or a blemish. It dawned on me that this skin-smooth barbell and rings had been carved from one piece of wood.
‘That’s amazing,’ I said. ‘It’s all from one piece.’
Gordon conceded a faint smile.
‘You made this? How?’
‘Magician never reveals his secrets,’ Gordon said, and his smile grew. He picked up his beer and gestured with his head. ‘Come on.’
I followed him to the shed door.
‘Where are you two off to?’ Harry whined.
‘We’re going next door,’ Gordon said.
‘Oh, I see. Gordon’s going to show you his etchings, is he, Chainsaw?’
Gordon looked at me, expressionless, then at Harry. ‘You’re jealous.’
‘Bloody oath I am.’
‘You can come, too,’ Gordon grumbled. ‘But you have to behave.’
Harry blew a raspberry and dismissed us with the back of his hand. ‘I know when I’m not wanted.’
Gordon closed the door behind us and patted the dog. ‘There is nothing on this earth as complex as the emotions of a Homo Sexual.’
He pronounced it as two words, like it was a botanical name or something. He looked at me, startled. ‘You’re not one, are you?’
‘Sorry?’
‘A poof. You’re not a poof, are you?’
‘Ah, no.’
He looked in my eyes for a moment, then nodded and walked across the yard. ‘Not that it matters. Harry’s a good kid. What he gets up to behind his closed doors is his business.’
He said that but it was obvious that the thought of Harry being gay repulsed the old man. But was Harry gay? He certainly danced with women. He went home with women. He had kissed me on the cheek, but he was drunk at the time. Maybe he was the sort of guy who didn’t mind.
Gordon’s house didn’t smell like an old person’s place. There was none of that cabbage pong or aroma of stale perfume and mothballs. His place was sappy sweet with linseed and fresh paint. The front door opened into a hallway carpeted with a layer of sawdust. Beneath the dus
t, where a barrage of footsteps had scuffed it clean, polished floorboards gleamed deep red and brown. At first, I thought the sawdust was a product of renovations but as we entered the lounge, I realised his house was also his shed.
On the wall, where there should have been a tacky print of a sailing ship, was a shadow board with every woodworking tool known to man hanging neatly in its place. The room was dim but the banks of bare fluorescent tubes on the ceiling would be as bright as sunshine if they were all switched on. Instead of a couch, Gordon had a saw bench and the TV had been replaced by a bandsaw.
I laughed. I couldn’t help myself.
A wall had been removed between what had been the lounge and what was the dining room to make way for a rack of timber. The dining table was a workbench with a huge red vice bolted to one side. Fine French doors opened onto a covered verandah and the workshop continued out there beyond my line of sight.
‘Amazing.’
‘Not everybody who visits sees it like that. It’s just a kind of practical solution, really. Stuff kept getting nicked from my own shed. After my wife passed away, I started bringing my tools in of a night. It just sort of grew from there.’
‘Why don’t you use Harry’s shed? Didn’t you and his grandad work together?’
Gordon shrugged. ‘I do use the shed. Occasionally. I started bringing work home when Bill was still alive.’
Gordon stepped through into another room and returned with a wooden chain. My fingers marvelled at the workmanship. The chain – like the barbell and rings – had been carved from a single piece of wood.
He led me into what felt uneasily like a bedroom, packed high with finished projects: a blond stand-alone rocking chair, a twisted hallstand and a solid timber filing cabinet that must have weighed a tonne. There was a nest of intricately inlaid coffee tables and something that looked like the podium at school. It had been formed from raw branches, some of which were ornamented while the tree was still growing with the scribbled tracks of insect larvae.
I was speechless for a long while as I pondered each piece, running my hand over flawlessly smooth timber and inspecting each joint as if I knew what I was doing.