by Nick Earls
‘Always been a thinker,’ Laszlo says as he goes for Steve’s jug and pours himself a glass. ‘Good on you, Kane.’
‘Pours better than you too, Lurch,’ Trev says. ‘Are you planning to drink that or use it as an aid to shaving?’
‘Ah, you’re all bloody comedians, aren’t ya?’ Lurch says, in a way that’s not exactly happy ‘And so bloody funny that you do verges for a living. Any bloody funnier and they might even let you stick bitumen into holes in the road.’
It’s a joke, but a little obscure. Not to worry. That’s Lurch for you.
The others are all having burgers – Lurch, Trev and Benno – but I told them I’d eaten at home so I’d just have a couple of beers. The way things went at home, I couldn’t spend any more money on food tonight. Plus, that piece of pizza was just about enough.
Steve says he doesn’t like calamari, but he can never talk them into extra prawns instead so he’s got a couple of calamari rings going if I want them. Sometimes people trash calamari in the deep fryer and the rings are like little white car tyres inside the crumb coating, but these ones aren’t bad.
It’s hard to believe what Mum said. And I can’t remember the exact words any more, so maybe I’m not getting it right. I had such a clear plan for this evening. It had been such a good day, so maybe I didn’t want to listen to anything that’d spoil it. That’s all I thought was going on – the usual crap at home, the crap that’s become usual – and then it took a turn. All that stuff started coming out and it seemed to be about my life and the time when it began. I’d always known it hadn’t been the best of circumstances, but I thought they must have been good times anyway Good in some respects, at least.
Like before Christmas, like the last two months or so – the best summer of my life, and some of the worst days I’ve had in ages.
Tanika turns up when Lurch is off getting another jug (full-strength). She looks like Kylie Minogue to me, or as good as you get round here. Kylie Minogue from round about the time of ‘Locomotion’, but with much more original teeth. And she’s dressed up for this, for tonight, because she wants to let me know my level two’s a big deal. And I appreciate that.
Suddenly, she realises we’re all watching her walk across the room and she gets embarrassed, but the guys don’t stop watching. There’s this thing about going the group perve when you’re working on a road. Everyone expects it, and there’s got to be some perks with the job. They watch her all the way to the table, and Trev pulls up a stool so she can sit between him and me.
‘Hi,’ she says to me, and she puts her hand out and touches my side as she pushes herself up onto the stool.
It’s all just part of the hello, but it’s also taken in by the group perve, and I’m kind of ready for them to stop it now. This is Tanika we’re dealing with, not passing pedestrian traffic, and we’re not on the job now. She’s got a midriff top on, and my hand goes on her bare back, just as a reflex because she touched me.
‘Introductions wouldn’t go astray,’ Benno says, so I do the honours.
Tanika says it’s good to meet them and that she’s heard a lot about them, though I’m not sure she has. She’s got lip gloss on, and big earrings, and she’s blow dried her hair so that it’s bigger than usual, big and frizzy. With the short skirt and the midriff top, it’s a hot combo. And Trev’s perving her right up and down at close proximity and then giving me a look that says I must be the luckiest man around, and what did I ever do?
Good question. She’s just in from outside, so her back is warm under my hand, like the evening out there. Her skin often surprises me. Mine’s always dry and rough, and it’s not helped by sun and work and sweat, and I thought skin was just skin until I met her. Tanika’s skin is always soft and smooth.
I am to turn these thoughts, Father Steele says, into an appreciation of the wonders of nature. And I truly appreciate the fact that nature is under my hand just now, even if it comes along loaded with improper thoughts.
‘Hey, I picked Harbo up from the hospital this afternoon,’ she says to me, and then she looks around at the others. ‘Harbo’s this old guy we help out sometimes. He’s kind of sick. They thought he had cancer for a while there but it’s actually TB, a sort of chest infection. He’d had it a long time ago and it was coming back. Anyway . . .’ my turn again to get her attention ‘. . . they’re pretty happy with him. He’ll be on the tablets for a while, but they reckon they’re doing the job.’
‘That’s good news. So we’ll have the old bugger round for a while yet.’
‘Well, probably. Not that you’d think that to talk to him.’
We don’t give them the whole story. We know what the whole story is, just the two of us. Harbo only heard the word cancer when the doctors talked through the possibilities, and he walked out of that hospital thinking he should get his affairs in order. We made him go back there, and it took some pushing. I told him he owed us a favour for the work we put in on his boat, and that was it – go back to the hospital one more time and get everything properly looked at.
‘Wouldn’t mind a drink,’ Tanika says. ‘You wouldn’t have a spare glass so I could pour myself a beer?’
‘Jeez, we’re a rude mob,’ Trev says. ‘I’ll get you one. You’re sure you’re right with beer? You don’t want spirits or anything? A Breezer or something?’
‘Beer’s good.’
He slides off his stool, and looks past her at me. ‘And she thinks beer’s good. Jesus, Kane, where does a bloke get himself one of these?’ And he rolls his eyes and sets off for the bar.
‘He’s a bit of a dag,’ Tanika says, smiling about it.
‘He’s a lot of a dag,’ Lurch says. ‘He’s the whole arse end of the sheep if you ask me.’
‘Hey, did you get that dickhead on the door with the “no trainers” rule?’ she says, and she swings round to give Benno and Lurch a look at her shoes.
And therefore her excellent legs. They perve mightily, like two people with a lifelong passion for footwear. We probably won’t be seeing these guys again socially, that’s what I reckon. At least not until a time of year when there’s a fair bit less flesh on show.
‘They’re not trainers,’ she says. ‘Are they? You guys’d agree with me, wouldn’t you?’
Steve leans over and says, just to me, ‘I reckon she could say they were clogs and those guys’d agree with her. What do you think?’
‘I told him they were a fashion shoe,’ she says to the other two, and it’s become a bit of a performance. ‘And if he didn’t know the fashion that shouldn’t be my problem.’
Too right,’ Benno says. ‘Do you want me to hit him for you?’
And he could be serious, but we all laugh. The rest of us laugh, then Benno laughs too.
‘I might tidy up a bit of that drool around your mouth first, but, Benno,’ Steve says. ‘And maybe stop the tongue hanging out. You don’t want to go belting people while you look like your mind’s on other things. It could be seen as impolite.’
‘And . . .’ Lurch says, and then he remembers that only Steve makes jokes about Benno, so he stops. ‘Nothing. They’re not trainers, but. Obviously. They’re a fashion shoe. Hey?’
Benno isn’t smiling. He doesn’t have to. Benno will never get caught up laughing at something he doesn’t definitely think is funny, and that’d include nothing that’s at his expense. But we know how it is and, if you can get a laugh out of Benno, you know you’ve done well.
Trev comes back with a glass and pours a pretty dodgy beer for Tanika.
‘Fetch me a bloody razor, someone,’ Lurch says. ‘Mr Neale’s up for a shave.’
‘It’ll settle,’ Trev says in a shitty kind of way, and Lurch just laughs.
Tanika holds up the glass and it’s more than half-full of foam and she says, ‘Yeah, and any time you want to pour me a beer to go with this, that’d be fine.’
And she gets a laugh out of Benno with that. There’s a lot to admire about Tanika Bell, always, even if I could have done
without her driving my pervy workmates crazy with that performance about the shoes. It’d actually not be that hard to get them talking for an hour or two about a fine pair of tits or a great arse, or whatever, so it’s not a huge accomplishment really to fascinate them with your obviously excellent legs.
‘Well, now that we’ve all got a glass,’ Steve says, ‘a toast to young Kane and his accomplishments. One of the hardest young workers for Caloundra city, and a guy who’ll go far, hey?’
And we clink our beer glasses together over the middle of the table, and even Benno gives a nod while the others are saying, ‘Good on you, Kane,’ and ‘Go for it, Kane,’ and things like that. It’s a good moment, a good moment in a strange, strange day.
There’s talking after that, but I’m not much into it. It’s my mother I need to talk to, but probably in the morning.
Steve says something about plants, my interest in working with plants, and they all start talking about TV gardening shows, particularly the backyard makeover type. No one’s interested in the quieter kind any more, the kind where there’s just some old guy with a lisp talking about plants as though he’s a bit excited. Now they have to rip your yard up to make it look like anything worth watching, and they always finish the job with only seconds to spare.
The guys talk about ‘Backyard Blitz’ and we all know every one of them’s totally hot for Jody but it’s Trev who actually says it first.
‘She knows so much about plants and how they’d do in different parts of Australia,’ he says, in awe of something (and it might be wisdom, I suppose, but it’s probably not). ‘She knows more about ’em than they’d ever put on the tag that you get on them when they’re at the shop. She’s good. She gets real dirty too. Specially on the wet jobs. Real dirty I love an episode of the Blitz when you see the clouds rollin’ in on the Saturday morning and they’re knee deep in dry dirt already and you just know Jody’s going to be getting all muddy. And that’s when you wish there was another chick in the crew as well, and they’d have disagreements on the wet days, really bad ones, and . . .’ And that’s the moment when he realises he isn’t in his lounge room at home, talking to himself. ‘Christ. More beer?’
‘You’re the saddest man in the world, aren’t you, Trev?’ Lurch says. ‘I’m not sure I was totally aware of that till now.’
‘Hey, it’s . . . So, ever watch the Blitz do you, Tanika?’ It’s the first time Trev’s said her name, and it makes him edgy and he has to look over her shoulder at the oars mounted on the wall behind her. He’s not gifted with the ladies, they say.
‘Oh, sometimes,’ she says. ‘I’ve watched a couple. It’s on Sundays, isn’t it? We usually keep pretty busy on Sundays. But I don’t mind the skinny Pommie guy, ’cause his jokes are pretty bad and his accent’s funny’
‘Not Jamie then? He’s the Manpower one, the one who runs the show and used to be a stripper. Stripper or a dancer, but I think semi-nude. Maybe even more nude than semi.’
‘Nah, I’m not so much into the fully professional gym body. You know, the buffed and oiled thing. I don’t mind a bit of muscle but, once a man’s gone around getting money poked down his jocks for a living, you know . . . it’s not my thing.’
‘Sure,’ Trev says. ‘I know what you mean. Every muscle on this body’s au naturel, hey? Made out of sheer hard work.’
Lurch laughs and chokes on his beer. That’d be at the weekends would it, Trev? Round at your place or something? Not Monday to Friday, that’s for sure. What a line – “every muscle on this body’s au naturel, baby”.’ He pulls up a sleeve and shows us a bit of bicep, swivelling his wrist round and stroking his muscles as though we should all be wanting them bad. ‘Let us know when you’re using that line on a chick who isn’t taken, Trev. I’m pretty sure we’d all want to watch.’
‘Nah, you’re being a bit harsh,’ Benno says. ‘There’s that muscle in your finger that you use for the TV remote – Trev’s got one of those that’d get a fair bit of a work-out. It’d be pretty fat, I reckon.’
‘I’ve got cable,’ Trev says to Tanika. ‘And some people don’t. If you get my drift.’
‘Sure,’ Lurch says, figuring it’s his turn again. ‘I’m jealous as hell. We all are. Of most of Trev’s life, actually. Trev needs that channel that gives you the weather in three hundred cities around the world, ’cause he could find himself in any part of Caloundra on any given day.’
‘There’s movie channels, prick. And more sport than you could poke a stick at. And an unbelievable range of documentaries. Just last night I was watching one about these Americans in search of a frozen woolly mammoth in the permafrost of northwestern Siberia, and they got out of their truck with about sixteen coats on at this nomads’ camp in the snow. And there’s this nomad there, just standing there, chatting to ’em, hey? And you know what he’s wearing? A bloody T-shirt. And I just thought, you, Siberian man, are one tough mother.’
‘You see,’ Steve says, leaning across in front of me and talking to Tanika, ‘this is why they have a girl in the crew on those TV shows. They need a kind of moderating influence. See what I have to deal with every day? These guys’d argue about anything. Next up, Lurch or Benno’ll start saying something uncomplimentary about the Siberian guy, and Trev’ll take it personally.’
‘Hey. Bullshit. I was just saying . . .’ Trev realises, just in time, that he’s taking it personally ‘Anyway, why can’t we have a chick in our crew, Stevo? A chick who humps plants around and gets a bit of dirt on her. I’d be up for that. I could do with meeting a lady like that. As a colleague, and stuff.’
‘Colleague, mate? Sounds like you work somewhere pretty flash. Would you be talking about that other part-time job of yours with your colleagues on the board of BHP, or something?’
Trev gets shitty when we all laugh. If he was at BHP, he’d be the only guy on the board with a seventies rocker mo and hair going past the collar of his Motorhead T-shirt, and the knee out of one leg of his faded jeans in a way that makes it clear it’s not a design feature (not a fashion hole). He must have given the dress code of this place a fair shake on the way in.
‘Hey, rack off,’ he says, having maybe had enough of being the butt of the jokes, but picking his time badly, as ever, since I think the others are only getting started. ‘This is just equality I’m talking about. Chicks have got as much right to hump plants and get dirt on ’em, hey? They shouldn’t be excluded.’
‘Yeah, mate,’ Lurch says. ‘And then you’d be saying we should set up some team showers and you’d be responsible for soap.’
Trev glares at him, and then he decides to laugh along. ‘Well, I like to think of myself as a team player, yeah. And you know what they say, mate. At the end of a hard day on the unisex work crew, cleanliness is next to excellent.’
Steve changes the topic of conversation.
‘Hey, I’ve got a photo of my boy,’ he says. ‘It came back today.’
He can never quite stop being in charge of the crew, even when the only thing that’s going wrong is excessive smutty talk in a public place. But being in charge is something he handles pretty well. Maybe there’s something for me to learn there. Maybe that’s the kind of job I could do some day.
He opens his wallet and he pulls out the photo of his new baby, his son who’s six weeks old.
He shows Tanika first and she says, ‘Look at him. Look at him and his little round face and his red cheeks. What’s his name?’
‘Ewan,’ said in a proud-father way, and Tanika looks at the photo one more time before handing it to Benno. ‘The wife’s got a bit of a thing for that actor, Ewan MacGregor. But I s’pose if she doesn’t take it any further than this I can be okay about it. He’s married anyway, apparently. Seven pounds five-and-a-half ounces he was, so that’s not a bad size. There’s a bit of heat rash or something on those cheeks, but you get that.’
I get the photo last and I look into Ewan’s eyes to see what he knows. To see what you know, that early on, about the world you’ve
got. In his case, two parents who have only ever seemed happy to me. But he doesn’t even know the camera’s on him, doesn’t even know what the camera is. He’s looking right past it, but probably not at anything.
And he’s so small. I want things to work out for him, I really do.
I give the photo back to Steve and I want to tell him he’s got to look after that kid. That little round-faced red-cheeked kid. Stick around and give him the best kind of life. Steve’s a good guy. Why would he not stick around? But will he? Can you ever tell? Can you ever know what you’re really like until you’re put to the test? Can you know what the test will be? Can you ever really know what you’re going to have to deal with when you’re starting out? Debts and disagreements and a boat going down in a storm. And no love there in the first place, I’m now told. Eighteen years on, that’s where you can be. A working adult, getting promoted, finding out the truth when you’re on your way out for a beer.
Was there ever a night in a place like this when my father passed around a photo of me, and looked glad to have it in his wallet and told his friends how much I weighed and things like that? I can remember his face, and some of the things he said and most of the things we did, but I’ll probably never get to ask him about that. I can’t remember him ever having the expression Steve had when we started handing the photo round, but the baby in the photo never gets to see that anyway. Someone should tell Ewan about that expression, but it’s a story they should save up for some shitty day in his future, because we all have those. And that’s when they can tell him he was wanted from the start.
I can’t get into this evening. First, there was Tanika stirring up the guys, then the TV backyard show talk, then the baby discussion. It’s easy to limit it to two beers because that’s more than I want.
It wraps up pretty early. Steve’s been missing out on sleep because of Ewan. Lurch says Trev’d surely have to be heading home soon anyway, for a bit more Siberian T-shirt spotting on Foxtel. Then Trev says – in a poke-that-where-it-goes kind of way – that he’ll be watching a full-on Star Wars marathon, actually, and Lurch says if he buys the beers can he come over?