by Scot Gardner
‘I’ve got cancer, Gary.’
He’d stopped smoothing the blankets. I could see his hand trembling.
‘So?’ I said.
He smiled again and shook his head. Vanessa and Maureen arrived. They both said hi but their smiles looked forced. They looked like they’d been partying for a week and were looking for a place to flake out. I backed away from the bed and gave them room to hug Kevin. I waved to him over Maureen’s shoulder. The big bloke winked and waved me off with a pointed finger.
It wasn’t until I sat down with Ash that night and told her about the job falling apart that I started to feel creepy. Started to feel like I was about to come to a crashing end, not just the job.
She held my shirt as I was leaving. ‘Don’t worry, Gaz. Whatever happens, I’ll still love you.’
‘Fanks, mate. You’re the best.’
I thought about hugging her again but I was scared. Scared I might start bawling or bar up or freak out and run away. My hands were fists in my pockets and my teeth ached from all the chomping on nothing.
‘Fanks.’
Twenty-two
Someone had ripped the cistern from the wall in the men’s toilets on Blaxton Drive. Homer explained that the council plumber, who was apparently a useless prick, was on long service leave until the end of May so we’d picked up a few of the jobs that couldn’t wait. Homer was pissed off and lecturing me on how he never used public toilets. That they are the places where all the poofters and sickos hang out. That image, burned into my head, of Homer’s arse in action kept popping up and I had to find thoughts to bury it. I thought about septic tanks and treatment plants and I wondered how a goldfish would go if it was flushed into a septic. I imagined it getting as big as a Murray cod feeding on shit and taking the arm off a poor plumber if he had to clean it. The idea grew out of that. The idea of taking the ocean to Kevin.
I rode my bike to the pet shop after work. I thought about buying a fish tank with a goldfish in it for twenty-six bucks but it wasn’t the ocean. Instead, I bought an eleven-dollar plastic goldfish bowl and carried it in my pack to the foreshore. I put some sand in the bottom and got a wet boot scooping it full of water. The sand quickly settled and I thought it needed some life in it so I spent the next fifty minutes trying to catch one fish. One pathetic little minnow was all I wanted. I could see hundreds of the bastards but they were too fast. I did catch a crab. It was purple with gold spots on its back, the size of a fifty-cent piece, and it was missing a couple of legs. It looked good in the tank. And then, on my way back to my bike, I had a brainstorm. I used the plastic bag I’d got the tank in as a net and in five minutes had managed to get soaked up to the knees and catch two shining little fish. I slopped them into the tank and carried the whole lot up to room 227.
‘What have you got there?’ Kevin asked.
I peeled the tank out of the wet bag and sat it on his bedside table.
‘The ocean,’ I said.
His mouth wrinkled with a smile that he struggled to hold back. ‘There are fish in there!’
‘Yep. And a crab. Only I don’t know how long they’ll last so you have to be out of here before they die, right?’
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘What do I feed them?’
‘Hospital food.’
‘And I’ve got to be out before they die?’
‘Yes. Little bits of hospital food.’
‘Amazing.’
I left soon after that. I was dripping on the floor and feeling like a dickhead. I stomped down the stairs thinking that bringing Kevin the ocean was something that a preppie would do.
Dad phoned after tea. Sharon got the call but some part of me must have known it was him. The phone rang and I suddenly needed to pee and I held my breath. Sharon whispered that it was my father and I took the call on the portable in my bedroom.
‘Hey, Dad.’
‘Gary. How the heck are you, mate?’
‘Good,’ I said, and the air stuttered in my throat.
‘Bernadette said you phoned the other night.’
‘Yes. Just ringing to see what you were up to and that.’
‘Nothing much,’ he said. ‘Nothing worth writing home about anyway.’
Yeah, bullshit, I thought. There was three seconds of silence on the phone while I sharpened my axe. Three seconds where I could hear him breathing and he sounded like he’d been for a run.
‘I spoke to a kid,’ I said.
‘Yeah?’
‘Bernie’s kid. Your daughter.’
‘Ahhh. Yes. That’s right. Been meaning to tell youse all for a while.’
‘How old is she?’
‘Fifteen.’
‘Been meaning to tell us for a long while, hey, Dad?’
‘Now listen, I had my reasons not to let your mother know.’
I did the maths and worked out why he had his reasons. If she was fifteen years old then she was probably hatching while Dad was still living with me and Mum.
‘What’s her name?’
‘Stephanie.’
‘Nice one. Do I get to meet her?’
‘Well . . . um.. . yes. I’m sure. Some day.’
‘What about next week when I come to stay?’
‘Next week?’
I didn’t expect him to be excited. I didn’t think he’d do anything special or go out of his way to help me. That sort of shit only happens in daggy soaps on TV. I think I only asked to piss him off. But everyone has to have their dream. I understood when I was about five that Dad wasn’t coming back, and the only way my little head could get around that idea was to dream myself into his world. Imagine myself living alongside him in paradise. I was living that friggin soap opera dream and I knew what was going to happen next. The truth was there, as plain as sea water. Dad was no hero. But I wouldn’t stop watching Home and Away or Neighbours or Days of Our Lives because I knew what was going to happen next. I just had to make sure. I had to hear it and see it for myself. I had to follow the script until my dream came down. Yes, the dream came crashing down, but by then I was outside shoving the thing. Waiting for it to fall.
‘Yeah. Next week. My job has finished up early and I’ve got some cash.’
‘That’s probably not going to work, mate.’
‘Why not, Dad?’
Ticking phone silence. Call me psychic or call me a bullshit artist but I knew. It all made sense. My dad was in jail.
‘Dad?’
‘Yes, mate?’
‘I could come and visit you, if you like. Which prison?’
I heard a little gasp. He breathed into the phone for what felt like five minutes but was probably five seconds. ‘Arthur Gorrie. In Richlands.’
And then we talked. Really talked. Like we’d never done in our whole lives. He told me that it wasn’t his fault he was in jail.
(No . . . it’s never your fault.)
That he was a little over halfway through a seven-year stint for possession of a commercial quantity of narcotics. That he should never have left Mum and me. That we all do things we regret.
(Like think with your dick. Should have kept it in your pants.)
That Bernie is married again to some bastard named Frank and that Stephanie calls Frank Dad and never comes to visit.
(God is a woman, Dad; you’ve got to rejoice in that. And cherish her and please her and look after her.)
And when he eventually had to go, I felt sad for him. A broken little man in a broken little life. I felt sad and I thanked him inside for being honest with me. For telling me all that shit and letting me read between the lines of his life so I didn’t make the same mistakes that he did over and over.
Twenty-three
I slept like a bear through winter that night. No dreams, just dark, still sleep. I woke up like an alarm had gone off, with my cheek resting in a puddle of dribble on my pillowcase. My last day of my first job. I’d learned so much about the world and about myself working for Phil Wasser that a mellow sadness crept into my bones.
&nbs
p; I loved the job.
I got dressed but there was no hurry. I ate breakfast a spoonful at a time. I rode my bike and marvelled at the mobs of waterbirds that had settled around the shrinking ponds on the floodplains. Pelicans and black swans and dirty-white dump birds with curved beaks.
Phil and Pip arrived as I was locking up my bike. They held hands as they walked across the car park and it struck me how much Pip looked like Phil. The shapes of their faces were similar and that. Phil could have been Pip’s dad. Good luck to them.
Homer arrived at five minutes to seven. He had a crazy look in his eyes. Even crazier then usual. He was keen to get on the road. So keen that we’d got halfway to Mullet Head when it twigged that he’d left the battery for the drill in Phil’s office. The van chewed a bit of tar in the U-turn.
Homer came back from the office cackling and shaking his head.
‘She was giving him head. Fair dinkum. Giving him a gobbie at his desk. I walked in on them.’
‘That’s disgusting.’
‘I said “My turn next?” and her face almost went purple. Ha!’
‘You’re a fucken animal.’
He licked his lips. ‘You got that right.’
The second-storey toilet had blocked at the fish and chip shop. I hadn’t even noticed that there was a flat above the shop. Homer tried unsuccessfully to dislodge the blockage with a plunger in the bowl. He told me to hunt for a lid on the sewerage pipe that ran down the outside wall of the building. I found the cap in the laneway, near the front of the owner’s blue BMW.
‘See if you can undo it,’ Homer hollered through the window.
The lid turned, but not easily. I should have noticed the brown ooze escaping from the thread. I should have thought about the four-metre column of pipe — poo-filled pipe — that disappeared into the wall on the second storey.
The lid shot off.
It escaped with so much force that it knocked me onto the bonnet of the BMW. I felt it buckle under my bum and my head probably left a dent. A huge column of high-pressure shit-water pinned me to the car. It blasted up my nose and under my eyelids. It peeled my lips back and filled my mouth. I was drowning. It drummed on my head and chest, my arms slapping uselessly at it. As the pipe emptied and the pressure dropped, it hosed me off the bonnet and onto the concrete drive.
On my hands and knees, my body erupted. Spewing and coughing, snotting and spitting. Blinking as my eyes screamed. I grabbed for air between every heave.
‘Jesus, Gary. Are you all right?’
Homer’s voice squeaked. He had his hand on my back. ‘Gary?’
I could see my shit-caked hands splayed in the lumpy mess of my breakfast. My eyes stung but they worked. My guts retched but there was nothing left. I could breathe. I nodded.
I felt Homer’s boots thumping on the concrete then a cold jet of water on my neck.
‘Here, mate. Sit up. I’ll hose you down.’
Shreds of partly rotted toilet paper had snagged on my fingers. I sat up and took a breath. I scrunched my eyes shut and pointed at my face. Homer opened the jet on the hose a little and gave me the most beautiful cold shower I’d ever had. The clear stuff blasted into my open mouth and pushed the dreads around on my head. I stood and took off my boots and overalls. I rotated slowly in my socks and boxers. I rubbed my face and blew my nose into my hands. The snot was brown but getting clearer.
‘I thought you were history, Gary. Jesus, what a way to go!’ he said, and chuckled.
I lost it then and started laughing like a retard. Homer hosed down the BMW and we couldn’t see a mark. The water was still beading on the bonnet when the owner, a sporty-looking bloke with white hair, appeared in the laneway and asked if everything was okay.
‘Yeah. Fine,’ Homer said. ‘Standard procedure.’
The bloke clapped his hand over his mouth and retreated.
Homer laughed and hosed the concrete. ‘Better get you home, mate. Have a proper shower.’
I picked up my overalls with pinched fingers. I saw the bulge in the pocket. My phone. I plucked it from the wet material and shook it dry. It was still working.
Homer said I should have the rest of the day off but I told him to wait for me. I showered and washed my hair twice but still found lumps of unknown mess while I was drying myself. Black jeans, runners and an old Ezekiel shirt. Half a can of deodorant. I looked and smelled like I was ready to party.
And party we did. Homer and I spent our last few hours together joking around on the job. We still got the work done (well, most of it) but managed to squeeze in a fair bit of laughter and fucking around as well. Homer wrote his initials on the roof of a house in clear silicone. RS. The letters were about a foot high when he’d finished.
‘RS?’
‘Rodney Simpson. Rat Shit.’
‘Should have written “Homer”.’
For most of the afternoon I would have told you that Homer was actually looking forward to finishing up. That he was happy about the idea. But when we stopped at the milk bar to grab a drink on the way back to the depot, he fished a handful of coins from his pocket and stared at them. He paid for his flavoured milk and he didn’t smile again that day.
Yeah, that’s it, I thought. We get through by making a joke of life. When it crumbles around you, you sit back and laugh. The harder it hits you, the more you pretend you didn’t give a fuck in the first place. And you duck and weave and hope the wall doesn’t fall right on you and crush the life from your bones.
Phil gave me my last pay and shook my hand. Homer, his brave face showing a few cracks, slapped my back.
‘Been nice knowing you, Gary. Probably see you around, ay?’
I walked my bike to the salon. Couldn’t be fucked riding. I felt a bit sick in the guts. I was in no hurry to work out what was next. I wouldn’t go back to school. Fuck that. No, I’d tasted the world. School was just a bad dream. I could stick with the plan and go to Queensland — and I told myself that I would, one day — but with Dad in jail and not really knowing anyone there, I’d be leaping into nothing. Fuck that. Getting up tomorrow morning would be enough leaping into nothing.
The salon was empty except for Mum. She stood at the counter reading Who magazine.
‘G’day, love. How was your day?’
I shrugged but didn’t say anything. I sat in the barber’s chair and looked at myself in the mirror.
‘Mum?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Shave my head.’
Twenty-four
It was good watching those turds of hair flopping to the floor as Mum buzzed my scalp with the clippers. She didn’t make me say please and she didn’t take any convincing. She only asked me once if I was sure.
‘You don’t know how long I’ve wanted to do this,’ she said.
She asked me if I wanted it finished with cream and a razor after she’d done as much as she could with the clippers. I liked the feel of the fuzz. My head went from being stray dog to kiwi fruit in two minutes.
I left my bag with Mum and ran up to the hospital. The air on my skull felt a bit freaky. I knew Kevin would get a kick out of my new hairstyle. He mightn’t say it but I knew he would be stoked that we had the same hair.
He was asleep. The curtains were closed and the blanket had been pulled up to his stubbly chin. I thought about waking him but the thought was quickly squashed by the idea that sleep was pretty important for a sick man, and that I’d rather see him better. The fish were still alive. In the gloom, I couldn’t tell if the crab was still kicking.
‘Sleep well, mate. Get better quick,’ I whispered, and left.
Ash phoned. I could hear the funky electronic music again and had jogged another three paces before the message got through to my brain that it was coming from my pocket.
‘Hello?’
‘Hey, Gaz.’
‘Maaate. How are you?’
‘Good. I was wondering how your last day at work went.’
‘Yeah, not bad. Guess what?’
‘What?’
‘I got a haircut.’
‘Bullshit.’
‘Serious.’
‘How do you cut dreads?’
‘You cut them off.’
‘Joking?’
‘Nup.’
‘Where are you now?’ she asked.
‘In Chrissy Bay. I’ll come over after tea.’
‘Shit-hot. Aggie’s here. He’ll freak when he sees you. Shit, I’ll probably freak!’
‘I’d better bring some anti-freaking bourbon.’
‘Do that and I’ll love you forever. We’ve finished the last bottle.’
‘Righto,’ I said, and told her I’d be there soon.
She’d love me forever? Ash was sounding more like Sharon every day. It was something that Sharon would say, but when Ash said it, it made me smile. Made me smile on the inside. Where the rest of my world was frowning.
I grabbed my pack from the salon and bought fifty dollars’ worth of pre-mix cans. Twenty-four in all. Eight each should keep us happy, I thought, as I stashed my bag in the boot of the Hyundai.
Mum couldn’t be stuffed cooking so we got pizza on the way home. Sharon kept patting my head.
‘You look so weird, Gaz. You don’t look like you anymore.’
‘I think it suits him,’ Mum said.
‘Yeah, it suits him, just doesn’t look like the old Gaz, that’s all.’
I ate the pizza and it tasted fine, but five minutes later I was sitting on the dunny spray-painting the bowl. The pizza could have gone through me that quick, I guess, but my guts had been bubbling since I’d taken a mouthful of someone else’s crap. Probably standard procedure.
I’d hoped the bourbon would ease it but it seemed to make it worse. It didn’t bother me for a while, what with Aggie and Ash rubbing my head and making a fuss. Candles lit the bungalow and Ash and Aggie were well on their way. After two more cans, Ash was shaking her head at me and feeling my hair with the inside of her arm. Then she felt it with her lips. Just brushed them over my ear and down my neck. My skin turned into one huge field of goose bumps and I knew our world was changing. You could tell me that I was drunk but I’d only had one can. I didn’t have any rose-coloured bourbon goggles on when I was looking at Ash, and she was beautiful. I couldn’t believe how blind I’d been for so many years. I mean, someone like Gel could pull her apart with his eyes and say she was fat or had a plumber’s crack or zits or scraggy hair or whatever, but I never saw that. I just saw Ash, my best mate since primary school. And that night, when she’d had a few and she had her hand resting on my knee, I wanted to grab her and kiss her. She was a woman. A beautiful woman who meant more to me than all the other beauties in the world put together.