Jube adjusts her bikini top so that more of her breasts are showing. People would pay what Benny has won just to be around her. Not just the share that’s owed to her, but all of it.
*
When The Empire Strikes Back is over, Gran Donna puts on Return of the Jedi. The theme song begins to gallop; Benny and Gran Donna lean forward in their seats.
Return of the Jedi is their favourite of the trilogy. It’s the one in which Luke Skywalker fights Darth Vader; the one in which the Empire is finally destroyed forever. Their favourite scene is at the start of the movie, when Han Solo, who has been frozen in carbonite by Jabba the Hut, is rescued by an anonymous bounty hunter.
Gran Donna’s favourite part is when the bounty hunter takes off the helmet and it’s Princess Leia, shaking out her hair like someone in a shampoo commercial. Benny’s favourite part is just before that, when she presses the button that releases Han Solo. The hard shell covering his face disintegrates. His arms, raised in protest, slacken. His frozen rage melts. He is free.
Outside it is now dark and has begun to rain heavily. Benny hears the front door open. Someone squelches up the hallway.
It’s Jube. She sticks her head through the lounge-room door.
‘I’m soaked right through,’ she wails, and begins to sneeze. ‘Better not let Big Dave catch you in here with that pipe,’ she adds with a sniffle, looking sternly at Gran Donna.
An hour later the Rebels are being captured by Imperial Forces and Big Dave returns from work. At the sound of his footsteps, Benny’s heart gets racy in his chest. He snatches the pipe from Gran Donna’s mouth.
But it’s too late.
‘I can smell tobacco smoke,’ Big Dave roars from the hallway.
His footsteps draw nearer. Benny squeezes his grandmother’s arm. ‘You’ve got to tell me,’ he urges in a whisper.
Gran Donna looks at him silently, carefully, with her watery eyes.
‘Whatever you want, that’s what I’ll spend the money on. I don’t care what the others say.’
She plucks her pipe from Benny’s fingers and tucks it carefully into her dressing gown pocket.
‘Anything, Gran. It doesn’t matter. It’s your decision.’
But she will not answer him.
*
That night Benny has a dream. He dreams that his body is light, weightless. He dreams of distance and endless quiet, of days as empty as balloons. He dreams of a place where not even the sound of his own voice can break the silence.
And it’s just him there, in that soundless paradise; just him and Gran Donna. He wakes up with the sun on his face and an ache in his chest. And knows what to do.
*
He is dismantling the Hills hoist when Big Dave comes outside. ‘What’s going on out here?’
‘I’m making room,’ says Benny.
‘What for?’
‘A delivery.’
Big Dave shoves his big hands into his pockets and looks around the garden. The garden furniture has been stacked neatly underneath the kitchen window. The garden gnomes have been lined up along the back wall. The few shrubs that had been growing in the middle of the lawn have been pared back to ground level with a hacksaw.
‘It’s something big, I take it,’ says Big Dave. ‘This delivery of yours.’
‘You could say that,’ says Benny.
Big Dave kicks at the lawn and a clump of grass flies up in the air and smacks into the laundry wall. He narrows his eyes at his brother. ‘You remember what we agreed, don’t you? A third to me and a third to Jube?’
Benny nods without meeting his eye.
‘Because if you’ve spent all the money …’
Benny hauls the clothes line from its pole and lays it down next to the stacked-up furniture. He digs around the pole with a spade and lifts it out of the ground.
‘What are you two doing out here?’ It’s Jube. She and Gran Donna are standing on the back step – Jube sniffling in her sloppy joe, Gran Donna in her dressing gown, dipping her floury fingers into a pouch of tobacco.
‘Benny’s having something delivered, apparently,’ growls Big Dave.
Jube screws up her face, which is a blotchy red. ‘What is it? And how much did it cost?’
Benny taps the pole of the Hills hoist with the edge of the spade so that the dirt comes loose, and stacks it with the rest of the furniture. Dave and Jube are watching him like hawks. Now the garden is an empty, grassy square.
Jube has an idea. ‘Is he getting a house, do you think?’ she asks Big Dave.
‘A house!’ Big Dave’s eyes glimmer dimly. ‘That could be it. How much are houses?’
Jube shrugs. ‘Depends on the house, I s’pose,’ she says sniffling. ‘What’s that noise?’
They cock their heads to listen. It is a funny sort of noise, like the grumble of the winter sea, or the roar of a Wookiee. As they listen it gets louder, so loud that Jube plugs her ears with her fingers, and that’s when they see the road train back into the driveway.
A man with a clipboard jumps down from the cabin and walks towards them.
‘Delivery for Benjamin?’ he asks, glancing at his clipboard.
‘That’s me,’ says Benny.
The man turns his head in the direction of the truck and nods.
Two men get out. They unlock the doors at the back and open them wide. They unlock the rivets that hold the side panels in place and fold the panels back. Sitting on the tray of the truck is a rocket ship. It is a pale grey, the colour of Gran Donna’s pipe smoke. Each of its wings is painted with a single red racing stripe. One of the men shifts a gear stick in the cabin and the tray begins to jolt upwards. It slides out over the lawn and descends.
‘Sign here, please,’ says the man with the clipboard when the rocket ship is settled in the middle of the lawn.
Benny takes a pen from the man and signs the clipboard. The man hands over a package, which is small and rectangular and wrapped in brown paper. He walks back to the road train and climbs into the cabin and pulls out of the driveway.
Big Dave stares at the rocket ship open-mouthed. ‘What in the devil?’ he says, his face growing as red as his sister’s.
‘This is a joke,’ scoffs Jube, and blows her nose derisively on a handkerchief. ‘It’s a fake. It’s got to be. You can’t just buy a rocket ship.’
Benny puts down the brown paper package and walks towards the rocket ship. The door beneath the left wing is open. He climbs inside, into a room that is comfortable and warm. He looks around, and a smile begins to play at the corners of his mouth.
The floor is carpeted a deep, plush red. Soothing music wafts from a set of speakers in the roof. A row of mahogany cabinets makes a crescent-shape beneath the window. It is nothing like the Millennium Falcon, he thinks; it is ten times better.
He hears a scrabbling at the door: Big Dave and Jube are climbing inside. They stand up, Jube coughing and wheezing, and take in the view. Big Dave begins to open the cabinets and drawers, one at a time. Each one he opens is stacked with something different: crisp white linen, bottles of water, gleaming saucepans, tins of food. ‘You’ve been planning quite a trip I see, Benny,’ he says through a clenched jaw.
As Jube gazes around, her brow darkens. ‘You’ve done it, haven’t you? You’ve spent every single goddam –’ She stops suddenly, and her eyes light up. ‘Ha!’ she says triumphantly.
‘What?’ says Big Dave.
She smiles, at Big Dave first, then menacingly at Benny. ‘I was right. It is a fake. This thing’s going nowhere. There are no controls!’
Big Dave scans the interior again. He opens and closes every cupboard and drawer that he hasn’t already explored. He begins to grin. ‘Dimwit Benny,’ he gloats. ‘Thinks he bought a real rocket ship.’
Jube and Big Dave be
gin to laugh. Clutching their stomachs, they laugh until tears streak their cheeks.
‘A rocket ship!’ wheezes Jube.
‘Of all the things!’ roars Big Dave.
That’s when Benny remembers the package the delivery man handed him. He hops down onto the lawn and walks over to the step where he left it. Gran Donna is still standing there, stuffing tobacco into her pipe. Standing beside her, Benny picks the package up and peels the tape off. Carefully he unfolds the paper.
Inside it is a box. He opens the lid and pulls out its contents: a black plastic panel covered in buttons. He turns it around so he can read the labels on the buttons. With the tip of his index finger, he presses one.
He watches as the door of the rocket ship slides closed.
‘Hey!’ shouts Jube, but it’s hard to hear her from behind the reinforced metal door. A clanging noise accompanies her shouts: Big Dave must be bashing his fists against the inner walls.
Benny presses another button, and the motor begins to roar. The rocket ship shudders. Flames flicker from the hole at its base. Slowly, it lifts off the ground.
Benny watches as it ascends into the hazy sky, quickly gaining speed. Up it goes past the roof, past the tallest trees, past the misty clouds. Up past the last migrating birds, past the jumbo jet flight path, past the moon that looks as small, from here, as the painted white moons on the tips of Jube’s fingernails.
In the middle of the lawn, smoke drifts from the charred circle of grass.
When at last the rocket ship is a tiny speck, a morsel, an eyelash in the sky, Benny crouches and swings back his arm. He tosses the remote control out beyond the garden and towards the sea. He turns to face his grandmother with his knees still bent, his whole body shaped like an inverted question mark: the crescent of his legs and torso, the oval of his head.
‘Well?’ he asks her.
It has started to rain again. Fat droplets sizzle on the burning grass. Gran Donna looks at Benny. She strikes a match on the matchbox cupped in her floury palm. She lights her pipe. She sucks at it deeply, and says not a single word.
Going Down Swinging
Underwater
Romy Ash
‘What do you reckon it’s about?’ she says.
‘Yeah,’ he says, looking up from his mobile for a moment, then back to the screen.
‘My dream,’ she says, but he doesn’t reply.
She looks out the train window. Futons are hung out over sunny balcony railings. It seems strange that futons are flung out for all to see when on the train everyone’s books have privacy covers on them. She thinks about asking her brother about it, but he sits up suddenly.
‘Change here,’ he says. He’s begun to speak like this, in simplified English, even to her. She follows him out the doors, which on this old train open as slowly as a yawn. The air is hot and stinky, like bad breath.
She is the eldest, but here she follows him a step behind. When they were kids she always made him hold her hand whenever they crossed the road to the beach. Her brother let her, but when they reached the curb he would throw her hand away from him, disgusted.
She follows at his heel along the platform, down into the underpass and then back up again into the light. They stand behind the line. They have a strange collection of bags, a little esky, beach towels.
The next train arrives and they step on. They sit down across from one another, him facing the way they are going, the esky an awkward square between their legs.
‘Ohio goziamas,’ she says, to practise but also because she knows the mispronunciation will annoy him. Annoying him is a habit she finds impossible to break.
‘It’s mus,’ he says, and she smiles to herself.
‘Mus, mus, mus, mus, mus. Ohio goziamas.’
‘Mus.’
‘Mus.’ She tastes the sound in her mouth. Their esses sounded like snakes hissing.
‘Mus,’ he says.
‘I’m saying mus,’ she says, and rolls her eyes. He takes out his mobile. ‘How much longer to the beach?’ she asks.
‘A while.’
*
A giant blue blow-up slide makes a triangular silhouette against the horizon. Through it is the flat expanse of water, little waves lapping at the shoreline. They have settled on grass in the shade of the concrete underpass. There is a wide lick of sand between the grass and the water. Her brother has a hibachi out and lit. He lays four silver fish on the heat. Their skin sizzles and spits.
‘I’m hot,’ she says. He looks pointedly at her. She’s still wearing all her clothes. He’s stripped down to board shorts and is applying sunscreen. She looks down at her arms, at the marks on them – bruises in the shape of fingerprints, her boyfriend’s hands. She licks her finger and tries to rub one off, but it stays there, persistent.
‘What does it matter? They stare anyway,’ her brother says.
She peels her shirt and pants off, and quickly lies down on her towel. She can feel each bruise, even with her eyes closed. On the top of her thigh, the corner of the kitchen table. Each place where his hands had grabbed and squeezed and pushed her away. A bright blue bruise blooms out from under the top of her swimsuit. That one from pulling her back in. Some are an older, dirty crayon yellow.
*
She had mewled kitten-like over the phone to her brother, curled up on the floor around her bruises. Her brother had said, ‘You sound like sorrow,’ in that strange way he’d begun to talk. ‘Get on a plane. I’ve booked you tickets. You’ve just got to get on.’ Then he’d hung up. She had felt quite clearly that this was the last time anyone would try to help her, and that if she didn’t go she would stay on the floor forever.
*
She feels someone looking and opens her eyes. A man with his goggles still on. He’s dripping water.
‘Where are you from?’ he says in heavily accented English.
Her brother wipes sweat from his face and looks up at him. He answers in a long string of Japanese, the syllables sounding to her like gunfire: bang, bang, bang, bang.
The man looks across to the blow-up slide and says, ‘It’s a nice day, isn’t it?’ Her brother answers in Japanese. The man in the goggles leans down to the barbeque and picks a sizzling fish off the grill with his fingertips, grabbing its burnt tail, silver-black in the sun. He crunches it in his mouth. With his goggles he looks reptilian. He walks away without saying goodbye.
‘Was that rude?’ she says.
‘I said he could have a little fish.’
‘I don’t understand anything.’ She sighs.
‘There are so many men like him here,’ her brother says, putting his hat over his face. From within the hat he says, muffled, ‘Lonely.’
She closes her eyes. She can only hear the sound of the cars on the overpass above. It’s the same sound a waterfall makes, a booming hush. She can’t hear the sound of the little waves on the beach at all.
‘Let’s go for a swim,’ her brother says.
*
The water is a cloudy brown, though it had looked blue from the beach. It feels thick around her legs. Japanese float like flotsam, on rings and blow-up mattresses, inert, fingers trailing in the water. There’s no current, just a dirty stretch of water right out to the tankers lining up to go into the port: on the horizon they look small as toys in bathwater.
‘I don’t know if I can do it,’ she says, hovering, arms out, trying not to touch the water. A plastic bag floats towards her.
‘Maybe it will be better a bit further out.’ He has his hands in the water. His arms look brown and sinewy as beef jerky. She feels glowing white, straight from winter to this humidity, this air so wet that everyone carries a little white towel around with them to mop the sweat.
He walks out further until he loses his footing and is forced to swim. She follows, and becau
se she’s short she has to start swimming almost straight away. The water feels like a hug from someone large and strange. She thinks she might cry.
‘It’s not better out here,’ he says. ‘Don’t put your head under.’
She looks back at the shore. A girl bobs in front of her, a bubblegum-pink floaty ring around her waist. She is wearing perfect make-up.
‘I’ve got to get out,’ she says.
They swim back in. She unwinds a plastic bag from her foot at the shore: she holds it as it disgorges brown water but can’t decide what to do with it. She looks at the beach, at the water. She gulps air and drops the bag to the ground. The water claims it back, and it looks like it belongs there.
‘Why did we come here?’ she says.
‘I didn’t know it would be like this.’
‘It’s awful.’
‘It’s not Australia,’ he says, and starts to walk back up the beach, leaving her there alone.
She picks a strand of noodle-like weed off her arm and begins to cry. Swimming has always cured her of hangover, melancholy, tiredness. She’s grown up making her decisions underwater, in the quiet there, or out the back past the breakers, with the water surging around her and the about-to-break waves lifting her way up high and back down again. This is the first time that swimming has made things worse.
*
A girl is smiling and walking towards her. She must be about fifteen but she wears a childish one-piece swimsuit. She stands out among the other teenage girls who walk across the sand, crippled in their heels, fingernails painted into bejewelled claws, triangles of cloth over their bits.
‘I can’t believe to find you here,’ the girl says in an American accent.
‘Pardon?’
‘This is my grandmother,’ the girl says, offering a wrinkled version of herself, a twin with the juice sucked out of her.
The Best Australian Stories 2012 Page 13