Carmelina and I scooped our fingers under the bird and lifted it from the ground and its heart or at least its pulse beat against my palm. We had all gone absolutely quiet. And then the bird did, it went quiet too. We held and hoped but I noticed immediately when its pulse stopped. The gull had died in the hands of Carmelina and me.
I looked for Eden but he had already moved forward. He lifted the dead bird from us and carried it. He strode towards the scoreboard our dad never managed to finish. When we reached the scoreboard Eden placed the gull on the ground beneath and began pulling at strands of onion grass. He piled whatever tufts he could manage on top of the dead bird. As soon as we realised what he was doing we got down on hands and knees and helped him bury it. As I pulled at the grass I saw that my hands still had blood on them. I had rinsed my mouth repeatedly but I could still taste vomit.
We stood then in unison as if we too were a flock. We looked at Minh. He looked sheepish. No one had accused him of anything but the bird was dead and he’d thrown the rock. He looked at Rena and she was hesitant and then he changed tack completely. He put his hand on Carmelina’s arm and on my arm too. He tried to pull us together.
‘It’s your turn,’ he said. Suddenly Carmelina and I were standing face to face and just touching, in front of Eden and everyone else.
Our hands rested loosely on the upper arms of the other. We were meant to kiss. I had never felt Carmelina so close. A gull had followed us to the scoreboard and it continued to circle. I thought of the traces of blood on my hands. I wished I’d wiped them better though I knew I’d done my best. I looked up at the scoreboard and through it to the sky. I noticed that Eden had updated our tally. I looked back at Carmelina and she looked at me and if we were actually going to kiss then the time was now. I thought of Eden and of how he had looked at me in the middle of a race. I thought of my mouth and how it might still taste of vomit. I looked hard into Carmelina’s eyes and it did not feel right and I was certain that we would not do it. My arms dropped and so did hers and we stepped apart. The spell we’d all been under snapped and we all rushed away.
*
‘Bought his sense of humour at Kmart,’ Bobbie said of Mr Colt, coming in. After school on a Friday she’d usually be waiting for us off Jubilee Street but she had wine to deliver in the city and was late. The school had obviously called her. ‘Not exactly currying favour,’ she said though she was not disapproving. ‘Spoiled his applecart,’ she said. As she talked it occurred to me that we were a family, that’s what we’d become. ‘Whack-o,’ she said and she all but rubbed her hands in glee.
Bobbie was not a touchy type and she had bags in her hands but even so she looked at Eden and me as if we’d proven that day that we were precious.
‘Too sick for a yo-yo?’ she ran straight on, offering me a biscuit from a brown paper bag. ‘We’re doing Skasey’s for tea.’
I’d already washed my hands but I went and washed them again.
‘Can we swim first?’ Eden said.
‘Up the creek if you’re lucky,’ she said. ‘Friday traffic.’
‘Werner’s?’ I called.
‘Beats curried sausages,’ she said.
*
Our bags were permanently packed. We still had our yo-yos as Hemi jumped ahead of us into the car. ‘I’m getting roly poly,’ Bobbie said pulling on her seatbelt, though she seemed the same as always.
There was traffic, it was sunny, she was in a good mood. We crossed a bridge and she looked at the city skyline and said, ‘Jack.’ And then she went quiet.
‘At work,’ she eventually said, half-way to Flowerdale, ‘I used to hide where I came from. I’d pretend that I wasn’t from the western suburbs. Listen to this,’ and she turned to make sure we were listening. ‘I got along with this one client. He had all our correspondence sent to his business address. I never thought anything of it. We’d speak on the phone a lot though. Daily even if the market was stroppy. One day he told me that he’d bought this small farm at Flowerdale and he’d planted a cornfield but he had other grand plans. A vineyard. A cellar. Chookens maybe. Ducks. He had quite the vision. It was just one of those convos you have on the way to advice.
‘Anyway. One Friday night in 1997 I was waiting for takeaway at the Chinese at the bottom of Fergie Street when this bloke walks in with a hessian bag over his shoulder. He stands there waiting and I ask him what’s in the bag and he says baby corn.’
‘Can we put some music on?’ Eden asked.
‘You can see where this is going,’ she carried on. ‘I was about to turn away when I saw that the bag had the word Flowerdale stencilled in black. Which didn’t make me twig but it made me read below it. HARDACRE, it said, in an arc, right there on the sack. It was Jack Hardacre. My favourite client. He lived in the west too. We were united in shame and we didn’t even know it.
‘Jack, I said to him. I let my guard straight down, I just said his name as if I’d been wanting to say it for my whole entire life. Right there in the foyer of the Jade Palace Chinese Restaurant.
‘Did I hold my breath as I waited for him to realise who I was? No I didn’t. I didn’t have time anyway. He said Bobbie, instantly, like he hoped it was me. Cancelled the takeaway, put down the bag and we ate in.’
The late afternoon light made the back of Bobbie’s neck look sepia. ‘Razzmatazz, he used to call me.’
*
We crunched along the driveway at Flowerdale. I’d washed and re-washed but I was convinced that I still smelled of the dead bird. As soon as the car pulled up I bolted for the creek, Eden hot on my tail. We stripped off with cool air running down the ferns and onto the surface of the creek. At that late time of day the water had the dark brown colour of platypus fur. Eden and I rushed onto the mossy log and dived into the creek almost as one. The water felt beautiful and I swam as deep into it as I could. Eden was close by but in that enclosed world I felt for the first time that day as if I was alone. As I made my way along the stony bottom of the creek I pictured Carmelina. Every time I looked into her eyes they seemed to sparkle that little bit more. Soon she could double as a torch. I’d rested my hands, bloody as they’d felt, on the skin of her upper arms. I’d felt her hands on my skin. She’d felt warm and alive and this warmth and this life were magnetic. I swam along the creek bed for as long as I could, though eventually I had to head back for air.
And when I broke from the water Eden was there and the smell of gull had finally gone and I knew it was time. I said to him, ‘Start winning.’
He was by the edge of the creek. ‘I am,’ he said. He stopped walking and turned to me.
‘I mean it,’ I said. ‘I want you to.’
I thought of him standing on the table in the staffroom. ‘You can go faster,’ I added.
‘I know,’ he said. ‘And I am.’
Eden took a half-step towards me. I still had my hands dangling in the water and so when he stopped only a metre or two away he seemed taller and larger. We were a similar height but in my mind he was more. We were late for Werner’s but I realised suddenly that Eden was going to ask or say something important.
Before he even spoke then I felt anxious. I was hungry too, which never helped. I wiped hard at the corner of my eye as if I had a part of the creek still stuck in there.
‘Are you going to drown in her?’ he asked.
‘Am I what?’ I said.
I thought then of how Bobbie stored eggs in the fat cupboard rather than in the fridge because she didn’t want to shock them when they went into a hot pan. I had a feeling that Eden had just done that with me, that he’d served his question to me soft, as if at room temperature.
I took my time but eventually I said, ‘I’m going to fall deep.’
‘I know,’ he said. He closed and then re-opened his eyes. He did this so slowly it was as if he was sunbaking in me.
‘Did you try to love her or did it just come to you?’ he asked.
‘It just happened,’ I said.
‘Don’t drown on me,�
�� he said.
‘Win,’ I said.
*
‘Crazy paving,’ Bobbie said as we headed for the back door of Werner’s. His house was only across the road but we’d driven up his hill because we were late. ‘You’ll like this house. The flooring is resin and cork.’ Bobbie noted these things as if she was eager for us to approve. Eden and I were more interested in the blue boxing bag we’d spotted hanging from the back verandah. A set of old, suede-brown, frayed-leather boxing gloves dangled from the top of it. ‘There’s another pair on top of the bin,’ Eden whispered, pointing off to the side. When Werner opened the door, he had on a black t-shirt with words printed in white. ‘DON’T TELL MUM I’M A CYCLIST,’ it read, ‘SHE THINKS I’M RECOVERING FROM CANCER.’ Bobbie looked down at Werner’s bare feet as if the flooring was why we’d visited. Then she bumped straight past him. She had a bottle of wine in each hand.
‘You’ll get us trolleyed,’ he said.
We went to follow her but Werner held us back. When Bobbie was at a safe distance he placed a thumb against the chest bone of both of us. He said, ‘Win me a river.’ His face was narrow, his eyes were black, his tone was serious. It might have been creepy but it was stirring.
‘I’m on the futures desk already,’ Bobbie called back. She was by herself in the kitchen. ‘Keep them moving.’
The TV was on. Eden and I walked over and watched as Bobbie and Werner moved around the kitchen. Eden used the remote to flick it off Better Homes & Gardens. I turned to see if Werner minded and saw Bobbie walk straight for a cupboard and pull out two wine glasses. She seemed to know exactly which cupboard they’d be in. When I turned back to the TV, the screen showed an image of a house in a red dirt landscape. A family stood beside a 4WD as they waved goodbye to the house. A dog stuck its head out the car door window. The sky on the TV screen had the rich blue of evening, just as the sky out the window now did, at Werner’s. The camera jumped to inside the car then, to a view from the back seat. I noticed immediately that you could see the arms of both a man and woman in the front seats. Beyond the man and the woman there was a view out the front windscreen of a road, black and metal grey, with flat barren lands on every side. I thought for a second of primary school and of our life beyond it.
‘Werner just called me comely,’ Bobbie said. ‘What do you think?’
‘Bobbie,’ Werner said.
‘What’s comely?’ Eden asked.
‘I think he means comeworthy,’ she said.
‘Not in front—’ Werner started but never got the chance to finish. Bobbie said, ‘Life’s too short to make it shorter,’ as if that somehow settled it.
Bobbie then said, ‘Come on, show them then.’
‘You don’t want me to,’ Werner said.
‘Canned tuna was on special at Aldi,’ Bobbie said. She didn’t wink but clearly she thought this was funny.
Werner went to the oven and checked it briefly before grabbing olive oil and lemon from the bench. ‘Baked fish, charred peppers, roasted tomatoes, greens, asparagus. And feta. Okay?’
‘And red wine,’ Bobbie said.
‘I’ve got rosé in the fridge,’ he said.
‘You’re not the real Martin Guerre,’ she said.
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Wall.’
‘She calls it,’ Werner said, speaking to us directly. ‘My Great Wall of Tuna.’
And with that he swung a pantry door open.
In it there must have been more than a hundred small cans of tuna, all stacked in rows and to a height. I thought of all those fish, those big strong fish, and how they’d grown up to be canned. ‘Lean,’ Werner said.
‘Loopy,’ Bobbie said.
‘You can have some if you like,’ he said to Eden and me.
‘He’s never offered me any,’ Bobbie said.
Werner pulled four tents of tinfoil from the oven and allocated them to plates. Bobbie stepped up to help. ‘You’ve mangulated them,’ she said, pulling the tinfoil open. A fly flew past and she looked at it as if daring it to try that again.
We carried our plates to the front of his house. There was crazy paving out there too. There was also purple wisteria, a pergola and a view. Werner pulled out his phone and checked it before taking a bite. ‘People thought smoking was hard to kick,’ Bobbie said.
‘You got a proper phone yet?’
‘The wankers took over the asylum,’ she said.
*
‘It’ll take a crow bar to wrench me away from this wine,’ Bobbie said, moving nowhere. As soon as tea finished Eden had asked about the punching bag. There was dessert but Eden and I had already had yo-yos. ‘Toblerone would have done,’ Bobbie said.
‘There’s d’Affinois,’ he said.
‘Ooh là là,’ she said.
‘And Mersey Vale.’
‘Collins Street to Camberwell,’ she said.
Werner strapped the gloves on Eden’s hands and then put the second pair on me. ‘Old army gloves,’ he said. The gloves were frayed and worn but they had the velvety feel of skin. Werner had us stand almost side by side and hit at the blue bag. He repositioned our feet and hands and made us put more shoulder or leg into our punches. ‘Keep your chin level,’ he said. ‘Hands up. Straight out with the left. Find your range. Detonate with the right.’
Werner had bare feet and bare hands, a narrow face and narrow arms, but his chest and thighs had volume. Every now and then he hit the bag to show us what he meant. When we hit the bag it made a padded sound like bouncing up and down on a couch. When Werner’s fist landed it was like someone had just slammed their car boot.
‘Consider it part of your training now,’ he said.
Eden and I jabbed at the bag as Werner barked encouragement. Jab and move, jab and move, he urged, as if the Friday night tea had disappeared and we were back in the face of training. Every now and then he’d bark louder and say ‘Detonate!’ and we’d snap a right hand at the bag. ‘Punch straight,’ he said. He seemed to enjoy us. He didn’t laugh or smile as he shuffled around but he kept a sharp focus the whole time. ‘Jessica,’ he said at one stage, ‘liked the bag but she was never here long enough.’ We kept punching and did not respond but even so he added, ‘My daughter.’ I punched distracted for the next minute as I thought of the fact that Werner had a daughter or a family and I didn’t know and had never thought to ask. I stopped being distracted and detonated my right hand.
‘Crisp,’ Werner said.
‘Compact.’
‘Through.’
‘Twist your right foot.’
‘At the neck,’ he said.
I did not think of anyone’s neck because it was just a blue bag. I did, though, think of Carmelina. She was a rock in a crisis. I wished she could see me as I punched straight and hard, my top off and my muscles shining.
*
Bobbie was slumped in her chair when we returned. ‘The advice factory sleeps,’ Werner said. We remained quiet as if sure that Bobbie would soon wake. Even asleep though she still seemed to dominate. The mosquito candles had been lit but it wasn’t yet properly dark. We could still see out across the hills. Werner checked his phone and I looked at the purple black sky and saw a kestrel or a hunting bird in the distance. The bird held in the sky for all the time I watched, its wings flapping fast in order to remain still. Werner said, ‘You’ve tired her out.’
‘How about,’ he started afresh, ‘we try some feedback.’ He picked up his bottle of wine and refilled his glass. Bobbie sometimes called him a Pepperjack man but I looked and the bottle said Andrew Garrett. ‘You,’ he said to Eden. ‘What’s the best thing about Jon, the swimmer?’
I thought he’d say my loyalty. Everything I did was in the context of Eden. I could beat him one hundred times in a row and I’d still think he was faster, fitter, better.
Eden hardly had to think. ‘Killer instinct,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ Werner nodded.
‘He’s a racer,’ Eden added.
‘And what’s the worst thing?
’ Werner then asked.
‘He’s better than he thinks,’ Eden said.
‘Can work on that,’ Werner said.
‘Jon thinks,’ Eden continued, ‘he has to be the best he can be in the next five minutes and if he’s not then he’s not good enough.’
We trained upstream and against the current but every day I lived as if I was being swept along or was rushed.
‘The real finish line,’ Werner responded, ‘is always further away than you think. Don’t pull up too early.’
‘Okay,’ Werner then said, turning to me. ‘Eden’s strengths?’
All I could think was that Eden was a beautiful swimmer. Whenever I watched the flurry of bubbles trailing out behind him they’d spin so straight it was as if he and the water had collaborated.
I said, ‘The water is soaking wet.’
And they laughed.
And I added, ‘He combs straight through it.’
Thankfully then, Bobbie stirred. ‘Pull your shoulders back,’ she said, her eyes just open.
‘And the worst?’ Werner prompted.
Bobbie looked for water but the jug was empty; she picked up the wine bottle but it was empty too.
‘What are we figuring, comparison rates?’ she said.
‘Eden has one fast pace,’ I said. The light had finally died, the kestrel was now invisible and Bobbie was awake. The day felt as though it had gone on forever.
‘He swims like he has more to lose than he has to win,’ I said.
Bobbie motioned for Werner to pass her his bottle of wine. She looked at the label and then looked at him as if he’d disappointed her. ‘Eden swims,’ she said on the back of what I’d just said, ‘with his mum and dad on his shoulders.’
Bobbie tried to stand then but she’d been sitting in her chair for too long. She got half-way before rushing a hand out to the table to steady herself. The table was wooden and old and it cracked dramatically. We jumped to steady her. ‘Toilet still on the blink?’ she said.
We Were Not Men Page 15