by Nick Earls
‘All right,’ he says. ‘Next issue. The long-term future of said Stormy Deluxe.’ He puts down his fork. ‘Here’s the bit you don’t know. You’d be thinking, to look at me, that I’d have a few years left, right? A few years, but not a lot of years. It turns out it might be quite a bit less than that, but there’s no drama there. Nothing to get worked up about. While I was in hospital that couple of days for the burns, they picked something up on my chest X-rays and it doesn’t look good. They said I should play it safe and start making a few plans, and I don’t have any kids – I’ve got no family at all – but what I do have is this old tub that’s now been turned into a prize specimen.’
He looks around, at the varnished wood and shiny fittings and cushions everywhere like you’d see in a magazine. But it’s not about that. He’s not telling us about the boat. They’ve told him to make plans.
‘I felt bad about that for a while,’ he says. ‘People putting in money and time, fixing the old Stella for me when I’d sent her to the bottom out of my own stupidity and now I’m going to peg out on them some time anyway. But how do you stop people fixing a boat for you with that piece of info? You can’t stop all that generosity by killing the mood and telling them maybe they should just prop you in a corner somewhere ’cause you might not be worth their bother. So she’s fixed now, spectacularly, and it’d make me feel a lot better if someone like you two could take her on when the time comes. If you don’t blow up the stove, she shouldn’t cost you much to look after, and she might show you a few good times.’
I have to look away from him, but I make the mistake of looking at Tanika and she’s stopped chewing mid-mouthful and she looks like she might cry. I feel sick. He’s fed us with all this amazing food, and now I feel sick. So I look at the table and tell myself it’ll be okay. Harbo looks good, not good but sturdy. Like an old tree that once got hit by lightning but got through it. Nothing’ll bring him down for a while yet, surely.
‘But don’t feel sorry for me,’ he says. ‘Here’s how I look at it. I sink my boat, and stacks of people turn up wanting to help me. You two most of all. I know I keep myself to myself sometimes, and that suits me – it’s suited me since Sabine jumped ship – but it can leave you wondering if people notice you’re there at all. And now I know. They notice, and they want to help me. That’s about the best thing that’s happened to me in years. See? And that’s enough. That’s better than I was expecting. And now there’s this bigger thing they can’t help me with – the shadow on the X-ray – but that’s okay. They would if they could. I know that. And I’ve got a bit of money set aside, so I’ll talk to Father Steele about that and see if there’s anything he wants done. But I wouldn’t mind it if you two took the Stormy Deluxe.’
There’s thunder outside, and a cool wind blows through the hatch and into the boat.
‘There we go,’ he says. ‘Like bloody King Lear. The old bugger comes to grips with his own mortality and that, of course, portends a storm. I think portends is the word. Did you ever see that one? King Lear?’
‘So what’s going to happen?’ I’d rather not ask it, but I need to know.
‘We’ll see. They haven’t even finished the tests yet. But I wouldn’t get too worried about it. I’m pretty well set up here, whether it’s weeks or months or whatever. I just thought you should know. Before they turned up at one of your houses one day with a bloody big boat. I wanted to run it by you, that’s all. And I reckon you two don’t always get a fair hearing from some of those church people, so . . . So, have a boat instead. Something like that.’
He laughs, and I laugh with him since it’s not a choice anyone gives you. So, Kane, it’s up to you – would you like the fair hearing or the boat? Like one of those dramatic game show moments, when you can take the cash and leave or risk it all on the next question.
‘Well, thanks,’ Tanika says. ‘I don’t think we thought you’d . . .’
‘Of course you didn’t. You were here to help. And maybe to spend a bit of time with each other, but mainly here to help. What do you reckon, Kane? You wouldn’t mind having one of these, would you? A smart-looking tub like this one?’
‘Well, it’d be great, but . . . I hope it’s yours for a long while yet.’
And maybe it’s reassurance that I’m looking for, but he says it doesn’t really bother him either way and he tells us he’s pretty tired now and he might have a lie down. But just tired – all gourmeted out – and fully expecting to wake up tomorrow, so we shouldn’t look so worried. It’s been a big day, seeing the boat go back in the water and his hands come out of bandages.
And we shouldn’t bother with the dishes. He’s the host, so he’ll fix them up later.
‘Might even leave them till morning,’ he says. ‘Just this once.’
Outside, the wind’s picking up, tossing around leaves and rubbish, and the stars are all gone. There’s a flash of lightning over the hills and thunder rumbles across us.
I pick up my bike from where I left it near the fence and a warm heavy drop of rain lands in my hair.
‘Any second now,’ Tanika says. ‘We’re going to cop a pounding.’
‘Not a lot we can do about it.’
‘I reckon, in the circumstances, I could probably give you a lift home. You and your bike, in the bus. I think that’d be okay. You know, Samaritan. It wouldn’t be safe for you out there.’
‘You sure?’
Rain slaps down onto the concrete, each drop practically a handful at a time. Just a few so far, but plenty more to come.
‘Yeah, I’m sure. So come on.’
I follow her to the bus and the bike tyres bounce as they hit the steps on the way in. Rain lands on the roof, lumps of it, more than before but still not yet the real thing.
Tanika stands there next to the driver’s seat, leaning on the steering wheel as I lead the bike past, and she says, ‘Father Steele and my mother both talked to Dad.’
‘Yeah?’
‘And it’s not like it’s all fixed, or anything, but I told them about my feelings. So, we’ll see. Anyway, Dad reckons he’s been not quite right about you. The family-man side of him got the better of the rest of him for a while there. He figures you’re a good bloke who just succumbed to lust before he’d really had the chance to think it through. He’s wrong of course. You succumbed to me. But that’s their problem, the stupid way they think of things. I thought it was a top night that night, and I couldn’t give a rats about the nativity play, if truth be told.’
‘I was kind of over it myself. Steelo does it the same way every year. I know you can’t change the story, since it’s the birth of Jesus, but he doesn’t leave much room for interpretation. And, if we’re being honest, I wouldn’t have been up for it this time around if I hadn’t heard you were lining up for one of the other Magus spots.’
‘Good,’ she says, and the rain comes down harder. ‘Better drive this thing, I guess.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Hey, I’m the bus driver, so I make the rules, right?’
‘Sure. The driver’s ultimately responsible for whatever happens on board. But the usual rule is just sit down and shut up, in the interests of safety. A bit more imagination wouldn’t go astray.’
‘Exactly. Well, my rule is you should kiss me now. Or this bus isn’t going anywhere, pal.’
‘All right, that’s probably fair. Harsh but fair, and who am I to question the bus driver? But I thought it was just a Samaritan act, you driving me home.’
‘No one in the Bible kissed like the Samaritans, they reckon. They were just careful about it. Kept it to themselves and didn’t push it too far before the time was right. So when they wrote the Samaritan story, they just looked like a bunch of people who’d go out of their way to help an old guy when he was down.’
She lets go of the steering wheel. Car headlights through the windscreen light up her face, streaky with the rain on the glass.
It’s dark again when my hand reaches her arm, when my arms move around h
er, when my mouth finds her mouth for the first time in weeks, here in the stale warm summer air in this unlit bus with my bike squished between us as the edge of the storm is replaced by the worst of it, clattering down on the roof so nothing else can be heard. No cars, not the change in my breathing, not the quiet thing Tanika says to me when the kiss comes to its end.
I take the seat right behind her, the seat that’s usually hers, and I put my hands on her shoulders for a second. It’s as if Joe Bell could turn up now, or Father Steele, and any time I touch her could be the last, so I don’t want to stop just yet.
She flicks the indicator on, and she drives.
I watch the road ahead of us, the lights blurring with the rain washing all over the windscreen, parked cars passing below us to the left and the dull shapes of boats on the water beyond them.
I’m leaning forward and I think I can smell her hair, the fragrance from her shampoo with new rain mixed in. Ill remember that tonight, later. There’s a lot not to forget. Harbo, the Stormy Deluxe, the things I didn’t know about life. My life and his. And sometimes you get to know things slowly – they take weeks or months – then other times they come in bunches, fast, almost too fast. Onto you like this rain. Harbo and the shadow on his lung, his past with Sabine and the pirates and the ultimate piracy of his best mate. But sometimes those things happen. My father leaving all those years ago. Tanika Bell, turning up last year, doing the nativity play, telling me it wasn’t over and meaning it.
I keep leaning forward, listening to it all, watching it all, remembering everything from then and now. Glimpses of other times and this, the deafening sound of water pounding steel, Tanika’s white hands on the wheel when the lights catch them, working the bus through the streets of Mooloolaba and onto the Nicklin Way, into the mad face of this thrashing pounding storm, the worst of the summer.
She shouts something out to me, something about the storm and how wet I’d be if I was out there on my bike. And I don’t mind being wet, I don’t mind storms so much, but I tell her, This’ll do me.’ And she doesn’t hear any of it. ‘You, me and rain on a tin roof. That’ll do.’
And the words don’t seem to make a sound, but we don’t really need them to. Not now.
making laws for clouds
(february)
part two: friday evening
Fridays we do takeaway when we can, and tonight we definitely can. And I’ve gone the full family-size takeaway deal, first time ever – three large pizzas, two bottles of Coke plus garlic bread for twenty-four ninety-five (more for home delivery).
When I’m stopped at the lights I can lean over and breathe in the aroma of Meatosaurus pizza, but I hold myself back from eating. Not even the end piece of garlic bread between now and home.
It’s bought for sharing – for Mum, Wayne and me to eat what we want and as much as we want because we can. Not every night, but tonight we can because I’ve been bumped up to a level two at work and it means a bit more money. So, just this once, I’ve pushed the dinner budget up ten bucks to let us celebrate.
It’s for Wayne, partly. Wayne always wants to do all-you-can-eat, but it costs a lot and it only ever works out financially if you want to eat a lot of those bacon bits. And Wayne only ever really wants to eat pizza anyway so this should be ideal. We’ve never done all-you-can-eat, not since I was a kid. Maybe we’ll do it when I get to level three. That’ll happen one day.
They’ve left the outside light off at home, as always, but it’s only just getting dark and it’s not as if I don’t know the front steps pretty well by now. I park the bike under the house and I pile dinner in my arms and I find myself singing the old Domino’s ad about having the hots for what’s in the box with the dots. There were some pretty cute girls on that ad. Student girls in a city somewhere, probably down south.
Upstairs there’s TV noise, the six o’clock ‘Simpsons’ repeat, and heavy footsteps heading down the hall. Slow, heavy footsteps, a door shutting with a bang it didn’t need. Mum’s already been at the rum, obviously, and that makes her a bit unco.
I duck under the beams and past the broken lattice and the creeper that’s sending skinny wavy tendrils out across the steps. She’s talking to herself down the back of the house, probably in the bathroom. I can hear her. She talks a lot when she’s been drinking – about things gone wrong, the lack of fairness in the world, and good things too. Loyalty, and her two good sons. It could be any mixture of that right now. I can’t make out the words. But sometimes when she’s talking she wanders down the back of the house and when you do that it puts you in the bathroom.
It’s dark inside, with just the flickering light from the TV. That’s how we like to watch it when we can. It’s economical and it’s also atmospheric, particularly for SBS which tends to have more nude stuff. Wayne hates watching nude stuff in full light. It totally shatters the illusion. He’s fine with subtitles though, and most of the nude stuff on SBS does have subtitles. In some ways, he’s more sophisticated than a lot of people think. He’s become pretty nifty with accents, not that he’s found a lot of use for that yet. But he has a good ear and he likes nothing more than a few naked ladies, so SBS works for him pretty often.
I ring the doorbell to create a sense of occasion. Tonight calls for that, at least at the start. There are footsteps inside, Wayne-size, then a head-shaped shadow low down on the louvres. The corner of the curtain lifts up by about the width of a human eye.
‘Hey, it’s only you, doofus,’ Wayne says when he opens the door. ‘Why didn’t you use your key?’
‘’Cause I like seeing you peep through the curtains, in case I’m a scary Mormon come to tell you about the evils of your personal habits, or someone come to terrorise you with a hot new mobile phone deal. Woo, Wayne. Woooo, watch out for the scary doorbell ringer. Sign up for our new prepaid one-dollar deal with a free phone plus huge monthly bills that you can’t possibly pay and then we’ll come around and give you a kick in the nuts every thirty days. Woo-ooo. Even if you don’t use the phone at all, we’ll still kick you in the nuts. Woo-ooo. Every thirty days.’
‘Dickweed. Ghosts don’t sell phones, so you can quit the stupid noise. Hey, that’s pizza. A whole stack of bloody pizza.’
‘You bet. And it’s okay, Wayne. It’s okay to check who’s ringing the bell. I can tell the difference between respectable caution and downright fear.’
‘Yeah, well. That’s right.’
‘So how are the pants, Wayne? Are the pants saying caution to you, or fear? Will there be laundry?’
‘Dickweed. That was years ago, the last time that happened. And it was surprise, not fear. And there’s a huge difference between those two and you know it. I was just caught out for a second. It could have happened to anyone, that’s what Father Steele said. Anyone who hadn’t got round to asking where the facilities were, and then got a bit of a shock of some kind.’
‘Sure, mate, no worries.’ Some days I’d like it if it was slightly harder to suck Wayne into getting totally defensive, but it’s still pretty good value. ‘If Steelo said it, who am I to doubt you?’
‘Anyway, pizza. Pizza, dude. And is that Meatosaurus?’
‘You’ve got a fine nose on you, young Wayne.’
There’s noise further back in the house, then the big shape of Mum, looming up out of the dark, swaying from side to side in the twitchy blue TV light as she makes her way along the corridor.
‘Late home, Kane?’ she says, like it’s the only thing she’s noticed.
‘Yeah, but only slightly. Only slightly later than usual. It’s only just dark.’
‘Oh. Oh, righto.’ She looks around, towards the windows as though they’ll give her a better idea of exactly how dark it is and that’ll make things right.
‘And, you know, I had that meeting today, that work meeting with the big boss. And it was pretty good, so they bumped me up to a level two and that’s more responsibility.’
‘Oh.’ She hasn’t had a good day, I can tell.
‘Yeah, level two, Mum. So that’s . . .’
‘Have you got pizzas there?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Boxes and bloody boxes of pizzas? Are we having a party and I didn’t know?’
‘Well, not a party, but it’s the level two that . . .’
‘How many pizzas is that? Is that three pizzas? Three pizzas and three of us? What are you doing, Kane?’
‘Well, it’s the level two . . .’
‘What do you think this is? Bloody Christmas? No, that’s right. If it was bloody Christmas you’d’ve come home with another CD you’d been wanting to listen to and then you’d give it to me and borrow it back.’ She takes a mouthful of drink and puts her hand against the wall to steady herself properly. ‘Powderfinger. When did I ever ask for Powderfinger?’
Wayne’s looking at me. He wants me to pick her up on her lousy musical tastes, like usual. Tell her I was only trying to educate her, stop her getting out of touch. But not today. It’s not the time for it, and she’s got this wrong.
‘Look, you don’t understand. The level two – you’ve got to let me explain.’
‘I look in front of me and I see three pizzas when two would do and that’s not like you. We’re on a knife edge here, mate, and you can’t go doing things like this. You can’t go getting big ideas. You can’t order three of something, plus garlic bread, when two would do. That’s where the rot starts. Things like that.’
‘What do you mean? There’s no rot. It’s perfectly all right. It’s perfectly all right to do this in the circumstances. I got bumped up to a level two. It’s a big deal, right? Well pretty big, anyway. I’m going out after with the guys from work . . .’
‘Going out? Going out? Jesus, Kane. Not to one of those places with pokies?’
To the surf club at Mooloolaba.’
‘Definitely pokies,’ Wayne says.
Thanks Wayne.
‘Ever since Christmas,’ she says, and we’re back to that again. ‘Ever since before Christmas . . . It’s that girl. It’s that girl. Is that bloody girl going to be there tonight?’