by Peter Rix
The old people are good for presents, Tom insisted, but we don’t want to sit with them.
He pointed to the place-setting without a chair. Where’s Karen?
Oh, hell, I forgot all about her. Jim hurried along the hall to the study.
Sorry, Karen, I didn’t mean to leave you all this time.
He moved to the back of the wheelchair. Her arm reached erratically for the keyboard. He must have startled her. Maybe she’d been asleep. One hand flailed at the backspace key. In staccato jerks, the cursor erased the lines of text, working from the bottom of the screen, while Jim read from the top:
Amit is so hot, his skin is like smooth chocolate. I want to touch it. I want to see his skin against mine, his body on mine. We could have a baby who can run and talk and swim and do everything to show them. No one knows but Amit is very gentle and looks at me like I am a real person. I hate it when Tom and the others tease him. Why are we trap–
The cursor won the race, and the words disappeared even as he tried to go back over what he had read. He could not find words, could not meet her eyes as he pushed her along the hallway and into the chaos of the dining room and fussed with her place-setting at the table.
Hey, don’t give Karen a knife and fork, Tom shouted. She’ll make too much mess. We’ll help her to eat. We know how, don’t we, Amit?
Amit took up the chant, We helped Karen to eat at Tom’s eleventh birthday at Pizza Hut, and at …
Jim retreated to his place at the other table. After lunch, he wheeled Karen outside. Tom came to sit with them, scribbling yet more notes for his speech. What could Jim say to her? I’m very sorry. I know how terrible it must be for you. For ten minutes, they sat, his hand resting on the arm of her chair.
You are incredibly brave, Karen, he got out finally. He thought there might have been one instant of eye contact before her head jerked away.
Tom let go a great hoot of a laugh. She’s not brave, Dad! I can scare her easily. Do you want me to push her wheelchair near the pool? She’ll go ballistic.
He saw the look on his dad’s face. It’s only a trick, Dad. She knows. We’re friends.
Amit gave a small speech at Tom’s party. Tom gives speeches, he said. I don’t give speeches. I’ve been friends with Tom for a long time? I remember all of Tom’s birthday parties. Now I’ll remember this one. Tom is my good friend.
Virginia stood to speak, skipped her little smile towards each table in turn and sat down without a word. Tom’s speech raced on.
Let’s wind it up now, mate, Jim said.
But the crowd called for more, urging him on, and, of course, Tom loved an audience. It ended only when he caught sight of Fran lighting candles on the cake.
On behalf of all my family, including Nanna and Pa, Gramps, Rusty the dog, my uncle John, Tiger the cat, and my two fish Donnie and Maree, who can’t be with us today because they have all died, I want to thank my favourite parents for having me.
The guests sang Happy Birthday; lots of bright eyes and tight throats. They toasted the birthday boy with champagne. Tom downed two glasses like lemonade. After the last guests left and the clean-up was done, Jim brought Fran a cup of tea.
We got through it, he sighed.
What are you talking about, Jimmy? It was a real celebration.
I just meant … forget it.
Tom staggered up and buried his head in his mother’s chest.
I don’t feel well. I think I’ve got an alcohol problem.
Do you like your new watch? Jim asked him. It’s a real one, you know, expensive. Make sure you look after it. See how it’s exactly the same as mine?
Tom hadn’t noticed. He lined his wrist up against his dad’s and stared at them in wonder. He counted the holes on the leather straps, ran his fingers over the shiny glass faces, examined the digital numbers, counting aloud as the seconds ticked over. He made Jim stand with him side by side, sat together with him at the table, then held his father’s arm up high next to his own, as if it were inconceivable that the two watches wouldn’t somehow find a way to be different.
What about when you go to bed tonight, though, Dad, and I’m upstairs in my bed?
What do you mean, Tom?
About the watches.
They’re the same. Waterproof, shockproof. They won’t change. It doesn’t matter where we are. Asleep, at work, wherever. Exactly the same.
Tom walked slowly from the room, staring at his watch. They heard him talking to himself down near the pool. He slipped back into the kitchen a while later, agitated, needing to check again. Bands, faces, numbers. Finally, he accepted the enormity of it.
The same, he whispered. Exactly the same.
The next morning, Jim found him in the study, slowly turning the pages of the dictionary.
What word, mate?
I’m looking for exactly, Dad. Mum said it starts with e.
Fourteen
If you notice anything at all on your way to the put-in points upriver from Wassford, it’s likely to be the town sign out past the edge of the settlement – one of those names you look at twice, like you’ve misread it or there’s a misplaced letter or something else not quite right. You’ll be thinking about getting onto the water, though, so you won’t waste much time on it. Fact is, for the river runners who do chance the odds and make the trek from Brisbane or Sydney, Wassford is mostly just a slab of VB from the pub, or cleaning the dusty general store out of instant noodles.
How did the town get its name? Jeremy Farmer asked this at his first school P & C meeting. He’d arrived in town that week to take up the position of doctor for the just completed medical centre. Lionel Sharnley, the school’s lone teacher, slipped him a grin. It was a joke, he said. Set the trend for the next hundred years, eh?
Later, over a welcoming beer at the pub, he related how it had happened. In the early days, the place was just a loggers’ camp, he began, and Jeremy recognised it straight off as the kind of story told to all new arrivals.
Lionel settled back in his chair. They used bullock teams to haul the timber out, he said. Have a look at the old photos next time you’re in the general store. Our mob here had their own name for the area, probably for a few thousand years, but of course the loggers ignored that and called it the Wash Ford. No one’s sure why – maybe because it was where they crossed the river, maybe some other reason. Whitefellas don’t pass on important stuff like why a place is called what it’s called, do they?
Jeremy wanted to protest, but he already liked this small, tough-looking man who seemed ready to take the piss out of every situation. Maybe it was one of those survival things, Jeremy was thinking, and he kept his mouth shut.
For years, the place wasn’t considered worth giving a proper name to, Lionel was saying, but finally some government fella came through to formalise it all. The way my granddad told it, a few of them took him down to the river and showed him where the bullockies used to give their teams a bath after each haul out with the logs. Even described how they washed behind the bullies’ ears and under their tails! Soap and everything. Next thing, Wassford appears on a map. They’d dropped the h for another s, but my granddad’s old man and the other kids took off into the bush for weeks, they were so scared they’d be in trouble.
Lionel gave Jeremy one of his looks, so the doctor couldn’t be sure whether he was expected to laugh or was being laughed at. Finally, he asked, What was the name your people gave this place?
Can’t tell you, Lionel said. Secret business. Have to spear you if I did. He knew how to put on a real classroom disciplinarian face. In the thigh, he said, pointing. But you get to choose right or left.
Within a year, having a beer together on Saturday afternoon had become a ritual for the two men, one whose importance in their week they would have been embarrassed to acknowledge. It was to one of these sessions that Jeremy turned up with a piece of startling news.
Here’s the difference between your unreliable oral traditions, he goaded his friend, and the more
civilised approach of written history. I have undertaken some research. That surveyor knew more about this place than your mob.
If you’re planning to stuff around with our story, Lionel interrupted him, you better get some good thick pads for those chicken thighs of yours.
Jeremy would not be derailed. As a man of science, he said, I seek only the truth. It transpires that w-a-s-s is a simplification of an old English word, w-a-e-s-s, written with a diphthong. You’d know about them, would you, a man with your education?
Give me a break, Lionel grinned. I only teach up to Year Six. Anyway, tell your story, whitey.
I’ll ignore the racial slur, Jeremy said, because I recognise it as the pathetic attempt it is to avoid being proved wrong. Guess what waess means, mon professeur? Believe it or not, in merrie old England it was a term for, and I quote, A place near a river that floods and drains very quickly. That would be just about the perfect description for this valley, wouldn’t it? The surveyor dropped the diphthong and, voilà, a name that fits exactly.
I’ll be buggered, Lionel said.
Jeremy held up his beer in a victory toast, but Lionel waggled a finger at him.
No, Doc. What I’m getting at is, the old name the people had for this place, it meant the same thing, more or less.
Wassford gets its storms mainly in the unreliable weeks of late summer. Saturated airstreams form ranks of thunderheads, which roll across the coastal plain to hurl themselves at the Great Divide. The rain falls gently at first, but this is just a feint for the attack to follow. The main front crashes into the high peaks beyond Wassford like some great fury hurling jagged white warnings from the ramparts and watchtowers. At the height of the deluge, there are no individual drops; they have been already subsumed into those around them, merging first with just one, then with uncountable others, freefalling from overhangs, gathering momentum on the crags and scree. The water slips into creases and folds in the rock, cracks and crevices that deepen into gullies, then gorges, until the torrents sweep down to scour the valley.
Driving through narrow canyons towards the sea, the biggest flood lays waste to the countryside, scorning the boundaries of fences and fire trails, gouging the earth, ripping into sandy riverbanks, tearing at the defensive lines of casuarina and river gum, demolishing the burrows of wombat and platypus. Feeding off the landscape it devastates, the monster sweeps into its yellow-brown maw everything in its path that is too slow, too weak, too ready for sacrifice.
Wassford was built just where the hill country meets the coastal plain, so they’ve seen it many times. Heard it. Taken the brunt more than once.
It happens fast in this valley, the local SES captain tells new recruits. A few inches up on the tops and you get this sudden wash down through the cut. Then it empties out within hours, like someone’s pulled a plug. Most of them are no problem, just give the valley a good flush out. The white-water mob have a ball when it runs. Pity it’s not a bit more reliable. We could have a good little industry.
When the storms threaten, the captain checks the latest from the Bureau, and with old Doug if he’s around. The town’s safe enough, and so are the camping spots, but if it looks like a bad one he organises warning barricades at the bridge, just in case.
Fifteen
We’re here, guys, look: Welcome to Wassford.
Tom saw the sign, except it didn’t say Welcome to.
Russell parked the group’s van outside the shop.
Just chill around here, guys, while we get some supplies, he told the group.
Chill. Like James and his friends do, and that’s because it’s cool. Tom could see a guy in the ute parked beside the van. He was chilling too. Wassford was quiet without any noise, until an old yellow bomb clunked past on three pots, which is inside the engine, where you have to keep your fingers away from even if your brother reaches in there. Tom watched Russell and Kaylee do stretching, and then they walked into the shop. Lizzie and Virginia didn’t know about chilling, so they went with them like shadows do.
Tom wanted to phone his dad to see if there was a Macca’s in Wassford, because everyone was hungry after the long drive. Then he could buy burgers for his friends. The prepaid card on his mobile was completely used up now, so he had to look for a public phone. Tom climbed out of the van to ask the ute man, but the man was chilling fast asleep. Tom looked up and down the road. He couldn’t see anyone else. Maybe Wassford was like a ghost town? Maybe this could be a real adventure.
It’s quiet, he said in the special voice for when he was a movie star. Way too quiet. And that was James’s joke to be scary.
Tom knew something was going to happen in Wassford. Wassford was like a town in a movie, a scary movie where the people have to hide in their houses until the hero comes. He would be the hero person who saved them. That would be even better than the Macca’s. Tom looked at the town. All he needed to know was the thing he had to do. It could be a clever thing or a brave thing. Clever was hard for Down Syndromes, he decided, so brave would be better. One night at home when there was an argument downstairs, he crept into James’s room. They talked about how when you’re afraid you have to try to be brave.
I don’t know how to be brave, James.
You’re kidding me, aren’t you? James said. You’re the bravest person I know.
Not like you. Dad says you took off on the biggest wave out on the reef.
That’s just Dad. You know what I reckon, little brother? The way you just get on with it every day, no matter what shit’s being thrown at you, that’s what brave is. All right? So be quiet now or piss off back to your room.
Brave. He could go to sleep with that but he wasn’t stupid. James was his big brother who loved him.
At the end of the street, where the buildings stopped, he could see a sports oval with a white fence and one very huge tree. Under the branches, someone was moving around. He began to walk along the middle of the road towards the oval. The hungry feeling in his stomach was quite strong now. It would be best to do the brave adventure thing and find the Macca’s as well. Amit climbed out of the van, but he held onto the door handle like it was the whippy in a game of hide-and-seek.
Russell said if we go for a walk we have to be back at the van in five minutes, Amit said.
Don’t you even know time? Tom called back. Minutes are easy.
Amit looked at the general store, then at Newton, who was still sitting in the van because no one had told him to get out. Tom stopped to wait for Amit, who let go of the door handle and followed because Tom was his best friend. Amit walked along the side of the road, not in the middle.
When he crossed the little bridge and came near the sports ground, Tom saw that a group of people were lying in the shade of the big tree. Scattered all around them were scrunched-up newspapers, old blankets and empty bottles. If I could sleep under trees, instead of in my bedroom, Tom thought, I wouldn’t have to tidy up like Mum says. The people under the tree were asleep, even though it was still bright daytime. Maybe they had to wait a long time because of being early. The man closest to Tom was flat out on his back like a lizard drinking, except James said their dad didn’t really know about how lizards drink anyway.
Tom waited for Amit. Do you know these people? Tom said. They’re like you.
Amit looked at the people. I think we should go back now?
Not everyone was asleep. Out in the middle of the oval, two men were throwing a football. One of the men reached high for the ball and fell flat on his face like Elle Macpherson could never do because of the bazoomas. Tom said, Oh, yeah, good one.
He and Amit watched the men on the oval.
What y’up to?
Tom jumped when he heard the voice. The old woman sitting against the tree looked up at him, but her eyes were almost closed. The woman didn’t care about being neat and tidy, because her dress was all dusty. It’s rude to gawk at tits, even mothers’ ones when they’re getting dressed, but the old lady’s tit came out of her dress and she had to put it
back to make Tom remember about the gawking. Anyway, this one was not a nice tit that made you want to touch it like Maisie’s or Virginia’s. It certainly was a good scary thing when the old lady spoke, but now Tom had someone to talk to about the phone.
I’m Tom. This is Amit. He has black skin too but he comes from India, not Australia.
He waited so the woman could tell them her name or say hello. Maybe she hadn’t been told about manners.
Amit and I are looking for a public phone, Tom said.
The old woman pushed on the trunk with her hand so she could stand up.
Are you all right? Tom said.
Amit didn’t like being under the tree. It’s better to wait for Kaylee? We should wait for Kaylee?
The man with the football came to say hello to them. The woman was still trying to stand up. Tom knew how you have to help people who are old or people who might fall over and it doesn’t matter if they are on the train station or under a tree. Tom was the one who helped people, so he bent down to pull on the woman’s arm.
I’m very strong, he said. I’ll help you get up.
Tom pulled harder. Amit bounced from one foot to the other as if he were going to do a special war dance like on TV. The man from the oval dropped the football on the ground.
He asked Tom, What’s goin’ on?
Amit told him, I said to wait for Kaylee. I told him that would be better?
The man pushed past Amit. Amit took a step back. His eyes began to go crazy. You shouldn’t push people. Now the adventure thing was going wrong. Amit would go crazy for sure.
No trouble this time, all right, Tom? That was his mum. The man tried to step past Tom to reach the old lady, but he only bumped into Tom instead, and Tom sat down hard on the ground, and then the football man tripped over Tom.
Now the football man would be angry with Tom and Amit, like always happens with disabilities people, even when it’s not their fault. Now Tom and the Aboriginal man had to get ready to fight with spears and boomerangs like on the outback trip with his family. Tom wondered where he could get the special white paint on his face and his chest so all the others would know.