His Illegal Self

by Peter Carey

  He could not poop. He was very hot inside the bag.

  He heard Dial crying. She was a giant among them and they dared to make her cry.

  She screamed at them that they were heartless bastards. Maybe they were talking about the boy. He was scared they would off him.

  A man said to leave her alone and that was when he pooped. It snaked out of him and settled in his underpants, hot and stinking, and he put his head inside the bag and pulled the string closed so no one else would know.

  Dial said, Do not shoot the messenger.

  The boy began to cry and he was still crying when they pulled him from his bag and carried him through the room and out onto the front lawn where a big man with hair across his face and head pulled off his soiled clothes and made him stand facing the wall while he hosed him down. The water was warm at first because the hose had been lying in the sun but then it turned cold and hard and it hurt his skin and only when Dial came running, screaming, from the house, did the man stop.

  Fuck you, she said.

  He would remember nothing of the man except his watery gray eyes. He rubbed Che’s head. He held out his hand to Dial but she turned her back and soaped the boy down gently and he watched with his arms folded and then stamped his foot and walked a circle on the grass and came back one more time to watch.

  All around was gentle summer, the cars on the street, the green grass, the ice-cream truck playing “Greensleeves.”

  The man was holding a big blue towel, not to the boy, to Dial.

  I’m sorry, Dial said to him. I guess I’ve fucked this up.

  She wrapped the towel around the boy and then she really cried, great loud gulps of air and snot and the man put his hands around her from behind.

  The man said, Don’t worry, baby.

  His eyes were kind, and wet. His own son was maybe eight inches from his own skin. Later the boy thought there was likely a code the father must live by so no matter how his heart was hurting he could not speak to his son, not even touch his hand, just live his secret itchy life enclosed in hair.

  In a humid garden on the other side of the planet earth, his child was lost to him, and he to the child. Clouds of insects were illuminated by the disappearing sun. The boy was an assistant to a starving hippie. The boy had had the air sucked out of him. He was lackluster, without hope. When asked to help he cut the stalk of a big orange pumpkin, but only halfway through. He pulled up two onions and picked one eggplant.

  His dad would have introduced himself if he could have foreseen this unhappiness.

  Back in the hut, his gut a sloshy sump of misery, the boy watched the skinny hippie “locate” the “spuds” and grease a crusted black roasting pan and fill it with chopped pumpkin and potatoes and onions. He saw how he hung the hurricane lamps beneath the sleeping platform and another in the middle of the doorway to the deck and another off the wall, its usual place because you could see the long thin streak of carbon rising on the yellow tar paper. The boy would live worse than trailer trash. There would be no light switches in his life.

  Adam lit a mosquito coil and they had to gather close around it. He had been the owner but now he was free of it. He rolled a joint from three papers and the smoke from the coil was like incense, musty as burning cow poop which he said it was.

  The dark came down and the air stayed hot and thick and after a while you could smell the vegetables roasting and the boy lay with his head on the mother’s lap. They were tender with each other but he had a secret buzzing anger quiet inside him, a vibration in his chest that got bigger all the time. She should have told him that was his dad.

  He heard a meow and there Buck stood. His anger grew some more. In the cat’s mouth was a dead creature almost half his size.

  Jesus, said Adam.

  Buck dropped the dead thing, and showed the boy his wet pink mouth.

  On the floor a pitta bird gave up its lifelong secret-the blue beneath its crumpled wing. The boy was crying. His dad was mad at him. Everything in his whole life was crushed and dead and beside this the fact that the pitta was protected, or that humans could only see that blue in flight or death-none of this could mean a thing.

  He kicked Buck, lifted him like a football that did not land until the open door.

  23

  You saw the cat, Dial said to Adam. You fucking petted it, man. You had it on your fucking lap. You can’t take my money and then say cats are against the rules. So give me my money back, if that’s how it is. Deal is over.

  Adam was all hunched up and twisted like a pipe cleaner on the windowsill. I’m into cats, he said, peering sideways at his lawyer, begging him to come and save his life.

  The lawyer’s name was Phil Warriner. He was tall with surfer’s shoulders. He had a big dumb paisley tie, long peaked collar, bushy sideburns, a droopy black mustache.

  I’m into cats as well, Phil Warriner said.

  Then give the money back, Dial said, almost high on relief. She didn’t want to live there anyway. Your client knew about the cat from the beginning, she said.

  Then she waited for the lawyer, watching him stroke his mustache like a fool. She could not imagine how this man had ended up in this crappy little office with felt tiles on the floor. All those years in law school and then spend your life in fucking Nambour, staring through the window at the Woolworth’s loading dock.

  The problem isn’t cats, he said. It’s birds.

  Dial turned to Adam, who was hugging himself and rocking. When we got in your car, Dial insisted, when you picked us up. You had a rooster, Adam. We had a cat.

  The lawyer took a yellow legal pad and drew a line down the middle.

  The question is, babe, Phil Warriner said, do you plan to honor your commitment to the Crystal Community.

  She let the babe go by. She said, No, no, don’t start that. I don’t have an obligation to anyone. Adam is the one with the obligation. He didn’t tell the truth.

  As she spoke the boy, who had been standing hard behind her all this while, lifted Buck from his cardigan pocket and pushed his face into his fur. So now he was kissing his cat. Great. Last night he was kicking it.

  The lawyer rolled a thin straight cigarette. We’re going to transfer Adam’s shares to your name, he said to Dial. That’s what we are gathered here to do.

  But you can’t do it, see, said Dial. She was smiling at him now.

  Oh? He tucked the ends in with a red match and lit up, holding in the smoke too long.

  There’s a rule against the cat.

  There is no rule, said the lawyer. They’re hippies, jeez.

  I’ve been in communes before, Mr. Warriner. They’re full of fucking rules, believe me.

  Phil, said the lawyer.

  We’re Australian hippies, Adam pleaded. It’s different here.

  Dial groaned. The boy was pushing the cat’s face into her neck. The kitten licked. Stop it! she cried.

  You buy shares, Dial. You get your own land, your own house. It’s yours. Tell her, Phil. She can do what she likes, man. Anyway, she paid.

  Phil smiled down at his desktop. Dial thought, Are you patronizing me? She watched the lawyer as he brushed the crumbs of tobacco from his desk to his lap, from his lap onto the floor.

  You’ll discover, he said, still looking down, that there are not many rules on Remus Creek Road and what rules exist have all been broken many times before. And then he smiled at her, his eyes crinkled. She thought, He’s hitting on me.

  You’re meant to be the lawyer.

  I’m an organic lawyer. He grinned, his cigarette jammed in the corner of his mouth.

  I can’t buy this land, she said.

  Look. Phil Warriner arranged his hands in his crotch. You already paid Jimmy Seeds the purchase price.

  Jimmy Seeds?

  Adam. Same thing.

  Same thing? Really. Well once this person here had my money he told me I could not have the cat. That’s a deal breaker, said Dial.

  There are all sorts of families, Adam said. W
e know that, man. We’re against the patriarchy, man.

  You are what!

  The cat is part of your family. The cat has to live there too.

  What Jimmy means, said the lawyer, is that you’re not meant to have a cat, but no one’s going to stop you. They’ll just say, That’s Dial, she’s into cats. She’s cool.

  So what did you mean, saying I was going to have to do something about that cat?

  I was stoned, man, jeez.

  So we can have a cat.

  Yes, said Adam. Y-e-s.

  The mother turned to the boy and sighed.

  The boy imagined he was being asked to decide. It would be years before he saw this made no sense. He always remembered the way her brows came down, all black and witchy. He had to answer did he love the cat. Would he live in the outback with no toilet or light switches, where no one would see him ever? It was not fair. He looked out to the lane. A sheet of newspaper was fluttering back and forth, blown by the hot wind. Then a truck arrived and he looked back into the room, avoiding people, staring at a photograph on the wall. It was the color of dead families, long ago.

  You know Bo Diddley? the lawyer asked suddenly, unhooking the frame and handing it to the boy. We hung out together in Sydney.

  The mother took the picture from the boy and returned it to the lawyer’s desk.

  Well? she asked the boy.

  She was blaming him, but what had he done? He was sorry he kicked the cat. He loved the cat. Not more than he loved his daddy though. It was not fair with everybody looking at him. He was just a little boy.

  In any case, Phil Warriner said, picking up a folder, you seem to have made a verbal contract. He upended the folder and watched its contents spill across the desk.

  Pull up your chair, he said to the mother.

  As she read the document, the boy could hear the paper on the loading dock flapping like something wrecked and broken in a trap.

  The mother asked, Who is James Adamek?

  That’s me, said Adam.

  The lawyer pushed a drugstore Bic toward the mother.

  The boy watched as she studied the clear plastic pen and then the filing cabinet and the picture of Bo Diddley and the spill of documents now lying in the dusty sunshine. She asked, Where did you go to school?

  Phil Warriner laughed.

  This is all legal? You’re telling me?

  Warriner picked up the document and read it quickly once again. He flicked Dial’s passport open, read it, checked her face, closed it shut.

  Just sign it, Anna, he said. You know what I mean?

  24

  The deceitful hippie was on a bus to far northern Queensland and she was left with fourteen acres and a piece of paper that said I give my car to Dial. Beside the Bruce Highway at Nambour, in the spewy waving exhaust fumes of the bus, the boy asked her, Can we go to a motel now?

  Can we go to a motel!

  But then she saw that frown-fold by his nose, the shifting secret eyes.

  Oh Christ, she thought, what have I done? This had been an unblemished boy and the most remarkable thing about him had not been his handsome father’s face but his perfect trust, the way he put his hand in hers and sat beside her on the bus, so close, resting his cheek against her arm. His eyes had been limpid, gray, in some lights, a lovely sulfur blue. His hair had been tousled, curly. It was hard not to touch him all the time. And here he was, his soul all curled up and fearful of attack.

  Can we, Dial?

  She looked into his eyes and wondered if an equal and opposite rage was burning in that perfect little head.

  Can we? Please.

  She was already tense about how they would get back to Remus Creek Road. She had no license, could not drive a stick shift.

  Can we?

  He hung off her finger with his fist, marsupial. How can he have endured all this? In the car she found a crumpled oil-stained map.

  Here, she said, what’s this?

  Is it the sea, Dial? He pushed closer to her, and brushed his cheek against her arm.

  We’re really near the beach, she said. It was the first time she understood where she had taken him. Would you like that, baby? She lay her hand on his head, the engine of his soul contained within her palm.

  And stay in a motel!

  Why not! She was not broke yet. She had Huck Finn inside her bag. They could play poker and eat pizza and swim all day.

  OK get down on the floor, she said. She was insane, of course, even now, particularly now. Get down on the floor? The little creature didn’t even argue, just curled himself with the kitten, in among the dust and matches on the rubber matting.

  Then she drove, best she could. Wrong side of the road.

  As for the boy, he did not seem to mind the sneezing dust and deadhead matches, did not seem irritated that she kept moving her hand from the gear stick to his shoulder and back again. The confused scampy cat soon went off to sleep on the back window ledge, but the boy stayed hiding, knowing the mother loved him once again.

  Did you really drive to Montana?

  That was his real mother he was talking about. I’m not used to this car, she called. I’m sorry.

  Did you have a map then?

  It’s a stick shift, she persisted. I’ll get used to it.

  Dial?

  Yes.

  With his stubborn quietness he was forcing her to look at him. She turned briefly, actually frightened of his seriousness.

  Are you scared they will arrest me, Dial?

  Don’t be silly, she said. She was driving way too slow. She could see the cars behind her and she was looking for a place to pull off the road.

  We’re underground. That’s why I’m on the floor?

  Don’t talk now. I’m concentrating.

  You said I had to lie on the floor.

  Shush! she said. There was a tractor yard up ahead and she pulled off. She counted seven cars pass by. Did she have to tell him now?

  It’s safer on the floor, she said. Just generally.

  Can I get up if I put on my seat belt?

  Sure you can, she said, pulling back onto the road.

  This was how you drove my daddy to Montana, right, Dial?

  How the fuck did he know all this stuff.

  It was an automatic, babe.

  It was a rental, Dial. And with a bullet in your arm.

  It was as if he was taunting her. In a minute he would want to see the scar.

  Look, she said. This is so pretty. They were traveling between walls of green sugarcane. Above the giant grass towered a small wood house on stilts.

  It was a.32, right?

  The sugarcane gave way to a forest of thin raggy-barked trees, their white trunks like chalk marks drawn on darkness.

  Right, Dial?

  Cameron told you all this nonsense, she said at last. How old is Cameron?

  He’s sixteen. He’s a Maoist.

  Well, she said, the press is full of lies. He should know that.

  She was pulling off the road, unable to go on. She could not look at him. She stopped beside a mess of churned-up gray soil and broken trees, a sad forest, cut off like a knife.

  What are we doing?

  She almost told him, I’m not your mother, but she got out of the car, pretending to look for something. She could not live like this, day after day. Some barbarian had been through these woods with bulldozers. There was not a flower to pick, nothing but these spooky injured trees with flaking skin like psoriasis. She tugged at the bark, and it came off in a long sheet, like paper.

  That was it. She would take that back to him.

  Look, she said. Isn’t this cool?

  He looked at her more than at the bark. Did he know she had gone mad? What is it, Dial?

  Australian tree bark, baby. You can write on it.

  He turned it over in his hand, frowning. What do you want me to write? he asked at last.

  Draw Buck, she said brightly, back behind the wheel.

  I’m going to write a word, he s
aid.

  Let me see when you’re done.

  She could feel him laboring beside her, serious, dogged.

  Are you done?

  He had written ANA.

  She thought, I can’t stand this. It has two n’s, she said.

  Are you angry with me again, Dial?

  No, baby. I love you.

  She kissed the top of his head. You know, some cats really love the beach.

  Are you Anna? he asked.

  Look, she cried. They had come onto a rise and there was the sea, miles and miles of it with yellow beaches disappearing into the chalky mist.

  Beach! he said.

  25

  Tired and burned and sandy, they coasted down onto the plain to the west of Coolum, and the tops and bottoms of paperbark trees were already drowning in the melancholy night. The sky was still dark green. The headlights were on but the mother had had trouble seeing through the smeary insect glass. Below the sky was nothing but a smudge of road, wormy white trunks showing in the scrub.

  The light made the boy homesick for his grandma. In the evenings the pair of them would drive like this, side by side, into Jeffersonville to Ted’s Diner. For a while one summer they would take his bike and he could ride around and around the empty parking lot at Peck’s.

  There were local kids but they were not friends to him. They had short hair and hard squinting eyes and once when he was eating in Ted’s Diner they stole his bike. He knew who did it and where they lived so on every trip to town thereafter he walked up into the little backstreets around Pete’s Auction Barn and on one of these occasions, just after dusk, he finally saw his bike lying on a little lawn. No question it was his. It had black electrical tape wound around the middle of the crossbar.

  He was wheeling it away when the kid came out and asked him what he thought he was doing.

  It’s my bike.

  Bullshit!

  Yes it is.

  Liar.

  The other boy was maybe eight but when he came down onto the lawn Jay dropped the bike and flew at him so hard he knocked him over and he dropped on him with his knees and smashed him with his fists and he did not stop until the kid’s father pulled him off.