Making Laws for Clouds

by Nick Earls

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I don’t think anyone knew your dad had so much owing, with that and everything else. And no insurance.’

  ‘Didn’t think he’d go though. That’s the bit I remember. I knew she sank off the coast, and I knew he left, but I didn’t know the money side. Until not so long ago. I thought they just . . . it was just . . . We don’t talk about it much. Actually, we don’t talk about it.’

  ‘Oh, sorry mate. I didn’t mean to bring it up if it’s a problem.’

  ‘No, it’s not a problem. It’s just, well, it’s just life, isn’t it?’

  Is it? Is there any more to say than that? She went down straight out from this beach, in deep enough water. The sea’s dark blue off here, and that works well on postcards but it means it’s deep.

  He gives me a sad kind of look, but Harbo’s face was probably made with looks like that in mind. Tanika feeds a few more chips into her mouth and looks out to sea.

  ‘Not fair though,’ he says. ‘But you wouldn’t want to hang around waiting for fair, I suppose. You liked that boat though, didn’t you?’

  ‘Sure. Some of the best times I can remember, frankly. From when I was a kid anyway. I liked her a lot.’

  ‘Well, maybe you’ll have one of your own one day.’

  ‘Not this side of a Lotto win, I don’t imagine. But that’s okay. I’ve got . . . plenty.’

  Three African violets growing in pots. That’s what I’ve got, once the Stella’s fixed.

  I think Harbo can tell he’s depressing me, so he starts talking about himself again, something about starting off on coastal steamers because he was just a kid and the war was on and he wasn’t supposed to go anywhere near combat.

  I don’t want people feeling sorry for me. I don’t need it. We worked out years ago that we were better off without Dad. So we don’t talk about him. There’s nothing to talk about. He was pretty much a jerk anyway, Mum says. Just a jerk, and there’s no need for us to talk about the money. What’s done is done.

  Three African violets, a hammock, a bar fridge, a steady job with the council, and this is just a pothole I’ve hit at the moment.

  I was already depressed because of finishing the boat. That’s the main problem. It’s not so much Harbo bringing up the Stormy or the changes in the family situation. I’m okay with how things are, always have been. And it’s not like we get much of a shot at Lotto anyway. Mum says there’s some of that gambling gene in the family on account of Dad, and we can’t take any chances. She’d rather the money went on rum. And she does go through a bit of rum, so I can see what she means.

  But when the boat’s finished, I won’t be meeting Tanika at the bow again, or sitting here eating chips with her, and that’s just not fair.

  ‘And then the Japs sunk that hospital ship, the Centaur, right off the coast from here,’ Harbo says. ‘So there you go. So much for nowhere near combat. Not supposed to call them Japs any more though, are we? It’s racist or something. So people had probably better stop calling us Aussies too then, hey?’

  He tells us it’s not a bad life, the sea, sometimes. Not that he’s got much to do with the sea any more, but he’s used to the movement of water and it’s good to still have that. He doesn’t mind waking up in the middle of the night with a change in the weather and the boat rocking on waves coming up the river.

  Lately, on land, he’s been dreaming of the boat rocking and then slamming into something or running aground, and as he comes out of the dream the first thing he knows is that he isn’t moving at all, so it might be true. Twice he’s swung his feet onto the floor to check if the Stella’s taking on water, then he’s realised it’s a bedroom he’s in, the small third bedroom of a brick house owned by people who mean well but ask him too often how he is and get him too many fresh towels.

  He carried it all in his time, when he was properly at sea on freighters. Spices from exotic places, but tyres and shoes and office furniture from the same exotic places too. That’s the world for you.

  ‘Got shot up once,’ he says. ‘By pirates in the Straits of Malacca. There wasn’t a lot of that going on in those days. Not that they were up to much. They were only pirates ’cause they had machetes and a couple of guns. Otherwise they would’ve just been a bunch of layabouts with an old fishing boat. I was married then, sort of. Well, no sort of about it. I was married but she nicked off with my best mate not too long after that.’ He looks up, as if his piracy story’s suddenly turned strange on him. This was a story about being shot up, an adventure story. Life got mixed in and caught him unawares. ‘So, who’s your best mate, young Kane? Better watch him with this little lady.’

  He’s making a joke, but he hadn’t expected to and he doesn’t know the score. We’ve been pretending, Tanika and me. With Harbo we’ve pretended this is more than it’s allowed to be, and I don’t know what’ll happen after today. Suddenly, this could kick me in the guts again, and my plan was to toughen up. Where did that go?

  ‘Sabine, her name was,’ Harbo says. ‘She had a Dutch father – actually, a Belgian father – and an Indonesian mother. I learned a bit of cooking from her, you know.’ He stops and nods, thinking back to something. Something a long time ago, and that he hasn’t thought of for a while. ‘Anyway, what is it Buddhists say? Shit happens? Sometimes it does, but not always. It’s worse, I reckon, when people make it happen. When some of the better stuff’s around and people stand in the way of it. Don’t you think? There’s a lot of bull gets talked about how people conduct themselves. Isn’t there? But I don’t reckon much of it’s worth listening to. I reckon, a lot of the time, people should mind their own business a bit more. They don’t get it. You shoot up a boat, you bust up a marriage, that’s bad stuff. But there’s a lot of stuff people make a fuss about for no good reason. Hey? And some of it might even be important, or good at least, but they’re just too used to looking at it the wrong way. That’s what I think. About a lot of things.’

  Harbo declares an end to all the bulldust he’s blowing up, and he says he’s not usually given to this much philosophising unless he’s got a good few full-strength Fourexes in him.

  It’s hot inside the Stella and he starts unpacking some boxes of supplies, but he’s asleep soon enough. Flat out on a new mattress up in the bow, away from the light, grunting his way through overheated middle-of-the-day dreams, like a man fighting pirates. Or the ghosts of pirates, coming up at him out of the dark.

  Tanika and I finish off. Everything but the name on the stern, and there’ll be a signwriter over on Monday to do that.

  ‘I put a bit of the boat varnish on my nails,’ she says when I find her in the cabin again after I’ve washed out the brushes. ‘What do you reckon?’

  She shows me, all ten glossy fingertips, and I have to walk away then because I’ll kiss her if I don’t. I have to get out of the cabin and up into the daylight, even though there’s nothing more to do outside.

  ‘We should have something to drink,’ I tell her. ‘I’ll get some drinks.’

  Joe Bell comes back around sunset.

  ‘She’s looking good,’ he says to Harbo, and he pats the white side of the Stella.

  My work, and he’s putting his grubby hands all over it. But that’s all right for once, since this conversation’s about to get better than he’s expecting. So I can just smile, and take my share of the compliment.

  ‘Nothing to do with me,’ Harbo tells him. ‘But it’s a good job all right. I thought we might have a barbecue or something, maybe next weekend, to thank everyone who helped out.’

  ‘You don’t have to do that. It’s a very decent thought, but you don’t have to do it.’

  ‘No, but, you know, everyone’s been decent to me. And I’d like to acknowledge that. So I thought we’d have a barbecue next weekend, and I’m planning to have these two young ’uns round on Monday for tea. That’s the day she’s launched again, and they’ve put in a lot of effort, you know. They were working all day today, finishing off, and I was yacking o
n and I got to boasting about my fancy Indonesian cooking. So I’ve got to show them I can come up with the goods, haven’t I?’

  Mr Bell says nothing.

  ‘It’s a matter of honour, hey? Can’t let ’em think I’m some old guy who’s all talk and no action. And the bandages come off my hands on Monday. So, that’s it then. Tea at the captain’s table, with the skipper back on deck. Tanika was pretty sure she was free. She’s not doing anything on Monday, is she? Oh, how was today? How was the music?’

  ‘All right,’ Mr Bell says, with mean vanishing lips that’d rather say nothing at all.

  I’d high-five Harbo right now if his hand wasn’t wrapped in bandages, and if the gesture wouldn’t look a little obvious. Like a master yachtie, he’s tacked right around Joe Bell and left him bobbing up and down with nowhere to go.

  He told us he’d fix it. He asked us to dinner once he’d woken up and taken a look around, but Tanika said she wasn’t sure that her dad’d be up for it. There were circumstances, she said, and coming here to fix the boat was one thing, but . . . And Harbo smiled, a cocky old-bugger smile, and said, ‘Yeah? Watch me. Christians are putty in the hands of the elderly and infirm. Supposed to be anyway. We’ll be right.’

  We get on the bus – Tanika row one, me four rows back, the usual seats. Harbo’s already on his way into the yacht club. He’s got quite a few mates who, it turns out, don’t mind a beer. More mates like that than we first realised. I don’t know why I thought Blessed Virgin people were the only people he knew.

  He started unpacking boxes again once it got cooler, and that’s when the suggestion of dinner came up. The church people had kicked in to replace the food he’d lost, but most of them had given him tinned pineapple or Spam and, as he said, ‘There’s only so much Hawaiian pizza a man can stomach.’ Not that he was ungrateful.

  He’s sick of the bandages. You can tell. The fixing of the boat’s kept him going, watching it getting closer to finished every day, but he wants his hands fixed too. He wants them to feel the simple pleasures of life again – that’s how he put it, and then he told us that meant how cold a beer glass is late on a hot summer afternoon, the second a fish takes your bait on the end of a hand line, things like that. And he wants to get back to cooking and making things, and from that point of view he’s not so much into tinned pineapple and Spam. He learned things from Sabine about spices, and you don’t forget them just because she ups and leaves you.

  The street lights are on by the time we turn onto the Nicklin Way this evening, and there’s a shop I have to look out for. One where Harbo says there’s an Asian lady who stocks just the right stuff. I think I know the one, but I’ve never been there. He gave me a list of the things he’ll need for Monday, and he gave me some cash. She’s somewhere near the big fruit barn.

  Joe Bell moves around in his seat while we’re waiting for the lights to change, and he reaches forward and does something I can’t quite see. Tanika leans over and takes a look. And I’m stuck, of course, watching the back of her head. Like someone sitting a couple of rows back from their own life, waiting for a second chance. I don’t need another reminder of the prison scene in movies with the window and the hands – everything real out of reach and just for watching, and then gone.

  Country music starts to play, Christian country music.

  ‘This is that group we went to today,’ Mr Bell says, his head half-turned so he can call out over his shoulder. ‘That band.’ Said loud enough for me to hear it, loud enough for row five, not just row one, and that’s a change. ‘Thought you might want to listen to them.’

  Tanika says something I don’t quite hear, and I shout out ‘Thanks’ since it seems like the smart thing to do, whether I want to listen to them or not.

  ‘Why don’t you come up the front, Kane?’ he says. ‘Next to Tanika. You’ll hear it better here.’

  I stand up, but then I wonder if I’ve heard him right, so I don’t move.

  ‘Hurry up if you’re coming,’ he says. ‘The light’s gone green.’

  Tanika slides along the seat to make room, but she keeps looking out the window rather than anywhere near me. And I sit down next to her, just like he said, but with one buttock practically sticking out into the aisle I’m so careful not to make a mess of this. We sit there frozen, a good third of the seat empty between us, and we say nothing, all the way back to my place. Tanika and me, staring out at the cars, abiding by the rules as we understand them, listening to some song about how the Lord saved a man from his loneliness after his heart got broken. And fair enough. That kind of thing can be intense, I’m sure.

  So I forget to look for the shop where I’m supposed to pick up the food for Harbo.

  Mr Bell pulls up in our driveway and I say ‘See you’ to both of them, but only when I’m on the steps and getting out.

  ‘Good work, Kane,’ he says.

  And I say ‘What?’ before I remember my manners, and that now would be a particularly good time to use them.

  ‘With the boat. With Mr Harbison’s boat. Good work.’

  ‘Oh, thanks.’

  And it’s not quite a smile on his face, definitely not a smile, but it’s also not that you-fornicated-with-my-daughter glare that I’ve come to know and not love over the past month. Tanika says nothing, just watches. It’s as if we could break this spell of slight improvement with just one wrong word.

  The bus drives off and I stand at the gate for a while, wondering if something’s actually changed. And wondering what I’ll do if it has or, at least, if it’s starting to. Wondering just how accommodating I’ll be to any change of mind from Mr Bell. Pretty accommodating, I would think. This is the world I’ve got to live in, and it’s not a time for pride.

  ‘Hey, dickweed.’ It’s Wayne’s voice, shouting out from the verandah. The outside light’s off but I can see him there, standing in the doorway. ‘Get your butt in here. I’ve made tea.’

  ‘Good work. What are we up for?’

  ‘Nachos. And it’s getting cold. Mum’ll lift the cheese off the top of yours and eat it for you if you don’t get up here.’

  ‘Good on you, Wayne.’ I’m not particularly hungry, but nachos is Wayne’s second-best meal (second-best of two). ‘What did you think of the band? Mr Bell played the tape in the bus just then.’

  ‘So you know they sucked. Obviously. How was the boat?’

  ‘We finished it. We finished the painting. And the Bells shouted us fish and chips for lunch and Harbo told us about getting attacked by pirates, back in the old days.’

  ‘Pirates? Like, pirates with cutlasses and that?’

  ‘Cutlasses and buried treasure. A bit of plank walking and the odd beheading. Fair bit of flogging. I’ll tell you about it later. Once your tea’s gone down.’

  ‘Cool. Pirates, hey? So what did he say about them?’

  ‘Oh, lots of stuff. He reckons they were pretty tough. You know, those pirates used to flog people just for interfering with themselves, Wayne. Flog ‘em nude. They’d creep up on them in their hammocks while the lights were out and catch them at it. So Harbo reckons.’

  Wayne gives me the look of someone about to introduce their pants to a bad surprise. His mouth moves, but no words make it out. Tonight, he’ll barricade his bedroom door and get up every ten minutes or so to check that his windows are locked. Terrorising Wayne would have to rank relatively high on my list of life’s simple pleasures. Poor Harbo. He never had a brother, so he had to get his fun fishing with a hand line. It’s just not the same.

  monday

  Harbo’s new hands grind the spices while some seeds roast on the grill, and the smell of it all makes you realise why Hawaiian pizza could never really meet his needs.

  ‘It’s a banquet,’ Tanika says when he fills the table with food, and the smells of the meal grow big enough to hide the smells of varnish and paint and turn the cabin a step further back into a place where someone lives. ‘Like one of those twenty-four ninety-five per head minimum four person ones. A
total banquet.’

  ‘That was the idea,’ Harbo tells her. ‘But don’t worry, the other idea was that I’d get a couple of reheats out of any leftovers, so there’ll be no offence taken if it’s not finished.’

  It’s almost ceremonial, the way he serves it out a small amount at a time and tells us about each dish – the spices, the idea behind it, the tricks of the trade.

  ‘So there we go,’ he says. ‘She was worth some of that trouble, Sabine. Before she came along I was limited to the old hundred-and-one-ways-to-reheat-beans style of cooking.’ He shovels in another mouthful. ‘But maybe, cooking aside, this’d be a good time to make a bit of a break from the past. What do you reckon, Kane?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, conquer the past, more than just break from it. That’s probably more like it. Do you ever want to do that?’

  ‘I don’t have much of a past. No Japs except tourists. No pirates.’

  ‘Anyone who’s lived has a past, mate, even if there’s only eighteen years of it and all on this coast. I was thinking something symbolic, maybe a new name for the boat. Stella Maris always struck me as a bit . . . pretentious. So I cancelled the signwriter and I’ve got him coming back later in the week. How would you be about the name Stormy? Do you reckon it’s time to give it a run again? Partly recognising all the work you’ve put in. I’d only do it if you were happy about it, of course.’

  ‘Stormy? Yeah. I don’t know how Mum’d feel though. Not a big fan of the Stormy mark one, as I recall. But I’d like it. Maybe a name with Stormy in it, Stormy and something more, another word or two. Anyway, she’s a bit more flash than the Stormy now, after the refit.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Tanika says. ‘Deluxe. That’s what you called her, Mr Harbison. The Stormy Deluxe. How about that?’

  ‘Stormy Deluxe,’ Harbo says, trying it out. ‘Sounds like a racehorse. I’m up for it if you are, Kane.’

  ‘Yeah. Yeah, it’s good.’