by Unknown
Not long afterwards his father came down the stairs and made for the door. ‘There’s some things I need to get done today,’ he said, wrapping half a loaf of breakfast bread in a tea towel and putting it in a paper bag.
‘I made some croissants, if you’d like one,’ Leon offered.
‘Bread is good enough. Thank you. Must get going now. Have a good day.’
‘You too.’
He waited until his father had gone out of the door and disappeared round the corner, before jumping the counter and turning the shop sign to closed. He locked up and ran down the street after him, his feet slapping hard on the bitumen. He followed at a distance and was led all over the suburbs. They circled every block of Parramatta, leaving no road uncrossed. They went down every alleyway and under every tunnel, over every bridge. A few times his father went into cul-de-sacs and Leon had to wait anxiously behind a bush for him to come out again, always with his head down, so that he could have stood right in front of him and he wouldn’t have noticed. Finally, with the sun way over west, they came to the train station, which was, on a straight walk, only ten minutes from the shop.
For the first time his father raised his head. He sat on a bench on the platform. Trains entered and left the station but his father’s only movement was to take a hip flask out of his pocket and bring it again and again to his mouth. People were met and seen off, they crowded the platform, then left it and crowded it again. The loudspeaker announced trains to Waterfall, Green Point, Central. People were met and kissed, were waved off, left with luggage, left with nothing. People waited and ate chips, smoked cigarettes, drank milk drinks and left all the smells behind when they went. In the middle of it all sat his father on a red bench, looking straight ahead, bread tucked safely into the crook of his arm, fingers pressed white on his flask. Leon left him there and walked home. All the way he felt something following, but each time he turned there was nothing to see.
He wondered what to say to his mother. When his father came in, he sat at the kitchen table with a newspaper that looked fished out of a bin. He unfolded it in front of him and did not turn the pages, but stared hard at it, drinking his way steadily through a bottle of sweet sherry. Leon kneaded dough for the next morning’s bread and didn’t know what it meant. His mother came home and she had a new hairdo, shorter with a wave over one eye. She wore lipstick and a camel wool dress, even in the heat.
‘You look pretty, Maureen,’ his father said, looking up for the first time from his paper. His mother glowed like she’d won the thirty-dollar lotto.
In the mornings, with the sun bright in the kitchen, the place looked dark, but he knew it was not. It was like he’d been in the sun too long and burnt his eyes. His chest throbbed and his stomach felt tight; something sat on his ribs, peering down and breathing foully in his face.
He kissed a girl behind the boat shed at the harbour and he felt it die a small bit. But she was not Amy, and she took his hands from her breasts and straightened her handbag and her hair with one hand. He walked home alone, feeling the terrible thing rolling over and dragging itself after him in the dark.
That night he woke to his mother pulling on his sleeve. She put a finger to her lips and motioned for them to get under the bed. She’s gone mad, thought Leon, but he did it anyway because she looked scared.
‘What are we doing?’ he whispered close to her ear.
‘It’s not good to wake them up when they sleepwalk,’ she said and on the landing the floor creaked. The whites of her eyes shone in the dark and Leon saw the naked feet of his father pace slowly round the room. The air under the bed was thick and sweet. The feet moved close to the bed and Leon wondered if they were found, and then he saw that on his father’s right foot the two smallest toes were missing. What was left was ugly grey skin. The feet receded and left the room, and they slept there under the bed. In the morning his mother made pancakes and his father sat silently at the breakfast table.
‘At least he’s getting out of the house, chicken,’ his mother said to him as they watched his father lope down the street, away from them, his towelled bread held tightly to his body. He would go out until lunchtime and then come back, so that his mother could run her fingers through his hair, straighten his collar and sit him down to a sandwich or a piece of cake. After lunch he would go out again, mumbling something about looking for work, but the work was never found, and with Leon running the place they had no need of extra money anyway. When his father returned he’d be wobbly and thick-mouthed, looking at his tea as though it were dangerous, picking and sorting through the food rather than eating it. Then the routine became worn and thin in the middle so that he returned later and later for lunch, glassy-eyed and drunk, and then not at all, only for supper, when he would be anxiously and darkly stared at by his wife, and he’d look at the floor, his eyes as wide as they could open, his breath hard in the back of his throat. Those nights he had to be herded to bed by Leon’s mother and she said quietly, ‘hup, hup,’ as they climbed the stairs. Leon watched out of the corner of his eye as his mother touched his father’s face, only to have him flinch away; then her sad look made him pat her hand, but quickly like she would burn him.
Leon bought a used Holden off a mechanic in town and parked it proudly outside the shop. His mother frowned at it. ‘It’s ugly in brown, chicken,’ she said, but she took it to visit a friend in Dorrigo whom she had never visited before, or mentioned. She left with a larger suitcase than she needed and she kissed them both more than was necessary, her eyes frantic and sad. The bad thing hunkered down in Leon’s guts and the shop seemed so dark that at times he had to find his way around the kitchen by touch.
His father stopped coming home for supper. His mother came back from her break in Dorrigo and she seemed to have made up her mind to fill up the silence in the house.
‘Mrs Shannon’s pregnant again.’
‘How about a walk just the two of us?’
‘How about a sandwich?’
‘Glass of tea?’
But the quiet answers from his father stopped. His mother tried cooking exotic meals; curried fish, pork in aspic. Anything with meat in it was not eaten and anything that was eaten had no effect on his father’s expression. He started to drink beer alongside his wine. She showed him photographs that she thought might interest him, cut-out from the newspaper – Marilyn Monroe, an elephant swimming, a huge shark washed up on the northern beaches – but he would not look. He stopped lifting his head when she came into the room. He would not look at Leon’s mother, but sometimes Leon would catch him staring at him, as if they had never met before, and he would have to leave the room, get into the kitchen and lose himself in a cake.
Leon followed his father again and this time his route to the train station had extended. It took them until dark to get there, going through West Parramatta, every street, into Rydalmere and through the subway, always with the same heavy steady stride, with no breaks, apart from once when his father disappeared into a public convenience, but Leon couldn’t be sure if he had used it or just walked in and out of each cubicle. It seemed his father was taking a giant run-up at something, like he might try to jump over the harbour.
One day he did not come back from the train station. He was not back that night and he didn’t turn up in the morning. Leon’s mother sat around in her housecoat and slippers. She drank sweet tea and stared at the ceiling as if her eyes were full of liquid and she had to keep them tilted upwards so as not to spill any.
Leon sold bread in the usual way. He watched his mother out of the corner of his eye. He tried putting his arms round her but she waved him off, then pulled him back and pushed him away again. It wasn’t till the end of the week that he saw that the sugar figurines of his parents were gone. His mother saw him looking at the space and smiled feebly. ‘He’s always been a fragile man, even before the war. We propped each other up.’ She held her face in her hands and was silent a long while. ‘I’m sorry, my chicken,’ she said. ‘I’ve missed him so
much and he wasn’t even gone.’
He didn’t know where to put the look she gave him.
5
Frank liked the idea of living off the land, and he pictured himself pickling beetroot and biting into sweet capsicum and sun-warmed tomatoes. He’d have an area for experimentation, for exotics – prickly pears, artichokes, watermelons.
He paced out a vegetable garden, planting four sticks as markers in the corners and later in the day browsed the seeds in the camping shop. He took tomatoes, lettuce, leeks, curly beans, spiny cucumber and marrow. He bought a tin watering can and a set of different-sized forks and trowels. The woman did nothing but nod and smile this time, for which he was grateful.
On the drive home, he stopped short of the cane, turned off the engine and walked into the shade of the blue gums, to get a breath of their coolness and have a look around at what was his. Hot sheets of eucalyptus rose from the ground, and he thought of the creek where he and Bo had found the fat pale yabbies, Bo boasting about how he could put his hand underwater and come up with five clinging, one on each finger. If he had wanted to.
The evening he’d left Eliza by the jacaranda tree with the half-empty bottle of rum and crying because he’d shouted, because he’d gone all aggressive, Bo turned up with a bleeding ear and a ropy sleeping bag. ‘I gotta go away, Franko,’ he said. They’d walked out of the suburbs without speaking, Bo’s ear still bleeding down his big neck, Frank with a sleeping bag, two stale loaves and a bagful of the dark syrup stout his old man had taken to drinking, and the gasoline tins that banged against the back of his knee as he walked. They drank steadily and thumbed a lift in the back of a truck with an old cattle dog, which was on the nose, but friendly. The dog put its head in his lap and he played with its cold ears. His old man had been face down at the kitchen table as he left, breathing wetly.
They’d walked the last few miles to Mulaburry, stopping now and again to huff on a gasoline-wet tea towel, then ambling on, blinking in silence, their eyes on the sky, which was black and gold in places. Road trains blasted by them in the dark and Frank could feel the wind from them parting his hair. At Mulaburry beach they put their sleeping sacks on the sand and built a fire to keep off the biting things. Neither of them wanted the feel of a roof over his head.
Bo looked at him in a way that Frank could see he’d already got old on the inside. ‘Can’t hear nothing from me ear,’ he said. ‘Reckon she’s bust it for good.’
Frank opened a fresh bottle and handed it to him. Things beyond the gold ring of the fire moved in and out like black sea anemones.
‘Reckon you should get someone to look at that?’ He hoped not – he didn’t know where they would find a doctor and he didn’t want to be thinking about it. Not now.
‘Nah. The other one’s still going.’ Bo made a honk that might have been a laugh. The waves rumbled on. ‘I hit her back.’ Bo took a dramatic swig of the bottle.
‘Cripes, mate,’ was all Frank could think to say. ‘Well, cripes. It had to happen one day.’
Bo looked at his knuckles. He smoothed them over his lips and closed his eyes.
The air underneath the trees was hot and sweet. Even in the relative cool of the bush, Frank could feel the sun up there crackling in the gum leaves. His feet remembered the sponge of the gum-leaf floor; his back remembered sleeping on it. His wrists remembered the mosquitoes, and his mouth the creek and its crawling cold water.
He rested a hand on the bark of a tree and felt it warm and smooth in the centre of his palm. He felt his skin growing back to cover old bones that had ripped out. Then he felt eyes on him and his skin prickled, and the hair on his arms and his neck stood out. ‘Get out of it, Creepin’ Jesus,’ he said out loud but that only made the feeling worse and he walked quickly to his truck.
Back at the shack he saw that the stove door had swung open again. Not a crack this time: it was wide open like someone had had to manoeuvre a pie dish in there. He stood in front of it. It must have been a tick the stove had, the metal expanding in the heat of the sun. Either way, something had made a meal of the guts, the inside of the oven was licked clean.
When Bob turned up with a chicken-shaped gift wrapped in newspaper and leaking bloodily from one end, Frank realised it must be close to Christmas.
‘Frank!’ called Bob, pitching the parcel at him like a football. He caught it, letting it swing a little behind his body, taking it deep. ‘An invitation for you. From the wife. She sends you this chook to sweeten the deal – hasn’t been plucked. If you’d rather spend Christmas with a plucked and gutted bird you’d better give that back an’ come an’ stay with us the holiday.’
The package was still warm and he had the feeling the chook had been killed just before Bob left home as an afterthought for a good joke. He looked down at the bundle, black and white and red all over.
‘Well?’ demanded Bob.
‘Love to.’ Christmas had not occurred to him. ‘Thanks.’
‘Right,’ said Bob, turning towards the car. ‘You’d better chuck ol’ Jozé back to me then.’ He put his arms out ready to catch. Frank threw bleeding Jozé back high and tall, and the chook landed in Bob’s arms. He clambered back inside the cab, putting the newspaper bird on the passenger seat, ignoring the blood that already stained the seat cover.
‘I’m telling you this for your own good – I got a kid who’s seven and won’t put up with visitors without presents.’ He started the engine.
As he began to back away Frank called, ‘What time should I come round?’
‘Come round early – we open presents after breakfast.’
When the van kicked up dust and noise, and Bob’s arm lazed out of the window, his usual long still wave, Frank shouted after him, ‘Hey! Hey! What day is it?’ but Bob didn’t hear.
Down at Crazy Jack’s Toy Basement he was faced with a wall of stuffed animals, a wall of dolls and a wall of things in khaki, an army made of plastic. Inspecting the firing mechanism on a civil-war cannon, he put his hand up to his face and said loudly, ‘Buggeration.’ When he took his hand away a small girl was watching, and he smiled and looked around hoping her mother hadn’t heard. The kid picked up a stuffed dragon and backed away from him like she was dealing with a hostage situation. He smiled wider to show that he was friendly, and the girl turned on her heel and ran away down the next aisle.
He’d forgotten to ask if the Haydons’ kid was a boy or girl. What kind of an arsehole was he anyway? Choosing was hard enough – and there didn’t seem to be much in the way of a neutral toy. He stepped back from the dolls with bendable legs and breathed through his fingers.
A shop assistant with pink lip gloss to match her pink pinafore came over. ‘Can I help?’
‘I have to buy something for a seven-year-old.’
‘Boy or girl?’
‘Not sure yet.’
She looked at him strangely, but smiled. ‘Well, why don’t you pick a boy’s toy and a girl’s toy, so when you make up your mind which one the kid is you can give it the appropriate gift.’
He liked her use of the word appropriate and saw that her hair was thick and a strand curled at her throat. ‘That’s a good idea – you think you could help me pick out something for the girl – I like this cannon if it’s a boy.’
She eyed the cannon in his hand. ‘That’s kind of crappy, don’t you think?’
He looked down at the toy. ‘I suppose it is.’
‘How about this?’ She took down some sort of disc that shot out of a bow-type attachment. ‘It whistles as it flies.’
‘Does it?’
‘Sure.’
‘Well, I’d better have it then.’
The badge on the girl’s rounded front read ‘My Name Is Leonie’, with a happy face at the end of it. My Name Is Leonie saw him looking at her badge and puffed out her chest. Softening her voice and picking up a pornographic-looking Barbie doll she said, ‘And this is the kind of thing that little girls like.’ She handed it to Frank with a glossy smile and wa
lked saucily back down the aisle to the till.
He parked by the bay with the idea that he might read the paper in some cool spot, perhaps with the rocks as shade. There was no breath off the water as he ankled about in the shallows, absently scanning the paper. No chance of rain for Christmas Day.
LOCAL SWIMMER STILL MISSING
Come home for Christmas, pleads missing girl’s father. Local
girl and Home Counties swimmer Joyce Mackelly has been
missing since Tuesday, 19 November. Joyce, fifteen, left her
weekend job at the Blue Wren coffee shop in Mclean at 5.30
and was last seen hitch-hiking between Camel Bay and
Rayners Island.
Poor bastard.
He turned the page and as he did a leaf slipped out and fell into the water. A grained photograph turned black in a wave and he scooped it up and put the pulp back between the pages of the newspaper, which he balled up. He hadn’t really wanted to know anyway.
There had been nothing that he could even think of buying Bob and Vicky in town. Drink was the get-out clause; he could take them champagne or a crate of beer. It was stale, going to spend Christmas with this family who had taken him on like an old friend even with him acting mad as a coot. He should probably take some as well as a present. As he tumbled these thoughts over, he waded further out, so that the water seeped into his shorts and even though it was not particularly cool, it was better than nothing, and he sat down in the sea, the newspaper a wet rock in his fist. The waves were small and water swilled round his neck. Something surfaced a little way away, a lazy flop in the water. Mullet probably, this close to the river mouth. He kept his eyes on the spot and saw it surface again over to the right this time. A flash of belly. A biggish fish. It splashed again and at the same time something bumped his calf, and he nearly shot out of the water. Making the sound of a kicked dog, he saw that it was not a shark – he was sitting in a shoal and a blunt-headed mullet was nosing at the back of his knee. The tameness of the fish, the water thick with them and their oil-slicked backs and tin-can bellies chopped the waves. A flock of gulls appeared from behind the rocks and dived again and again, noisy white streamers into the torn-up water.