Ironbark

  It’s another cold night. I follow the not-wallaby-proof fence to the woodpile and pick up a good-sized log. But I don’t want to go to bed just yet. I stand the log on its end, sit on it, take out a last smoke and light up. There are no red eyes tonight. If I sense anything at all from the bush, it’s a feeling of calm. Perhaps Gran is out there, a ghostly mobile phone in one hand, watching over me. It’s a soothing thought. Dumb, but soothing. I’d get a warm glow if it wasn’t for the fact that something – probably a huntsman the size of a dinner plate – has emerged from the log and is starting the long ascent up the north face of my sweatshirt.

  I jump up pretty quick, brushing real and imaginary critters from my clothes. I thump the log against the ground to discourage anything else that might have taken up residence. When I’m satisfied there’s nothing left but wood, I pick it up and take it inside. It snuggles down into the embers of the fire and makes satisfying crackling noises. I sit for a while and watch the shifting shapes within the embers.

  Then I get out my pocketknife. I like the sense of routine as I carve a third line into the post.

  I’m getting up earlier than usual. Mind you, that’s not a real surprise. Back home I’d crawl out of my pit around midday. Except on school days, of course. Then I’d get up at about eleven. In my defence, I wouldn’t get to sleep until at least three in the morning. Too much to do at night – watch DVDs, surf the net. Here, those options are not even on the menu, and it’s lights out at nine-thirty while wallaby guards patrol the perimeter fence. Maybe I should start a one-man riot or dig a tunnel. I’m not having any trouble sleeping, though. No problem with that.

  Maybe there’s something in that old saying about fresh air being good for you. I just wouldn’t want to risk it if I had a choice.

  So, I’m up and at ’em by eight at the latest. Granddad’s up before me, of course. I get the impression the old fossil is tooling around at four in the morning, milking wallabies or something. God knows why. It’s not like he has to sink fence posts, castrate cattle or plough the odd paddock.

  Anyway, I’m feeling kinda good. Body and mind. I even give his porridge a go, though it looks like quick-drying cement. Turns out it tastes like it, too. A hurried wash of the dishes and then we’re outside on the verandah, in our regular places, doing our regular thing. Staring at trees. You can bet your life Granddad will die in that chair. The TAB have stopped taking bets. He’ll be found, one day, stiff, vacant eyes staring out over the fence. I reckon it’ll be tough to tell he’s actually carked it, though. You could talk to him for a day or two and still not know for sure.

  ‘So what’s on the agenda today, Gramps?’ I say, full of quick-dried cement and enthusiasm. ‘White-water rafting, free-fall parachuting?’

  He takes his time to answer, as always.

  ‘Nothin’,’ he says. ‘Nothin’ to do.’

  ‘No chores?’ I say. ‘Another shack to build, a few hectares of land to clear?’ I’m serious. I’m tingly with energy and need to do something with my hands. If Granddad hears me, he doesn’t let on. The silence stretches.

  ‘Whaddya say we chop some more firewood?’ I continue. ‘You could teach me how to use a chainsaw.’

  ‘Don’t need firewood. Got plenty.’

  ‘Aw, c’mon. You can’t get enough firewood. I’ll do all the work. You can just act in a supervisory capacity.’ I thought he might be impressed with that last sentence. ‘Beats sitting here waiting for death.’

  He mulls this over a bit and then nods.

  ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘But any dicking around with the chainsaw and that’s it. Understand?’

  ‘Gramps!’ I say. ‘Language, dude.’

  * The chainsaw is serious fun. All that power buzzing in my hands. I feel like donning a hockey mask and stalking Granddad through the bush. I don’t share this idea with him, though, on the grounds he’d be unlikely to wet himself laughing.

  He gives me the safety demonstration and tells me a million stories of people who have sawn off their own noses, arms and willies through not obeying the basic rules. It’s instructive, particularly when he says the chainsaw can rear up if you hit a snag in the wood, and do serious damage to your fleshy bits. I’m pretty attached to my fleshy bits.

  I take to it, though, like a fly to poo. It’s great, the way the blade slices through the wood, all this fine dust spurting. I do it the way he tells me, cutting a log about two-thirds of the way through and then shifting it over to finish the cut. The smell is terrific, too. This resiny sweetness hangs in the air. I slice and dice about twenty decent-sized logs in just a coupla minutes and then Granddad taps me on the shoulder and signals for me to switch off the saw.

  ‘That’s enough,’ he says.

  ‘C’mon. Just a few more.’

  He shakes his head.

  ‘Nah. No room to store it. It’d be a fire hazard.’

  I snap the safety guard on the saw while Granddad backs up the tractor so we can load the logs. I pull out a smoke and sit on this tree stump. I can’t imagine the loading and the splitting when we get back is going to be as much fun, and I deserve a break. This is only my third ciggie of the day, so I’m feeling seriously virtuous.

  ‘Take a load off, Gramps,’ I say, patting the space next to me on the log. ‘Smoko.’

  And then he surprises me again. He creaks himself down next to me and reaches into his pocket, pulls out a packet of tobacco and rolls a ciggie. I’m, like, whaat?

  ‘Hang on,’ I say. ‘Time out, dude. Since when did you smoke?’

  ‘Oh, since about sixty years ago, give or take. Don’t do it much now, though. Lungs aren’t what they used to be.’

  ‘Not surprised if you’ve been doin’ it for sixty years. Give or take. You old dog. You like bowlin’ the odd wrong ’un, don’t you, Gramps?’

  He doesn’t say anything, so we sit, toking happily. I wonder if the moment’s gone, but give it a go anyway.

  ‘So, tell me about yourself, Gramps. Tell me about Gran.’ To be honest, I know next to nothing about this guy, even though he’s my granddad and all. I can barely remember Gran, just this vague memory of a woman with white hair who smelled of bread. I have this picture in my head of her rolling out dough on a board and turning to look down at me. You know, like a close point-of-view shot in a movie. I’m looking through my own eyes, except I’m really young. I have no idea if the memory is real or whether it’s just some random film-still stuck in my head. All I know is she died, years ago. I went to the funeral, but don’t remember anything about it.

  It’s funny. She’s someone who’s really close to me, in blood, I mean, yet I know less than squat about her as a person. All of her life, wiped out forever. What’s left of her is inside Granddad’s head. And when he dies, even that’ll be gone. Like she never existed. It’s not often I think about this sort of stuff. And when I do I try to stop. If we were meant to dwell on philosophy, God wouldn’t have invented computer games, that’s my motto. Sometimes I can’t help myself, that’s all. And as I start to think about that, other questions spring into my head. I mean, why didn’t I know Gran? Why did we never come to visit? And the same applies to Granddad after she popped her clogs. I remember a few years back we actually had a holiday in Tasmania. It was hell. Lots of walks and wandering round ancient buildings listening to some dude go on about our convict heritage. Undiluted boredom. But the point I’m making is we never even dropped in to see him. Is that strange, or is it just me?

  Granddad’s quiet while this is spinning through my noodle and I’m starting to think we’re back to verbal dribble. I should have taken advantage when he was a gusher. But he’s just thinking.

  ‘Your gran?’ he says and his voice has gone quiet, inside himself, if you get my drift. ‘I don’t know where to start. You’re too young to understand, but she was the kind of person that is your only love. I knew it the first time I saw her. The very first time our eyes met. I thought, “This is the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with.” Even more tha
n that, I knew that if I didn’t, I would never be truly happy. There would always be a gap that couldn’t be filled.’

  It’s a little embarrassing, this stuff. Actually, it’s monumentally embarrassing. I kinda wanted the facts: how tall, star sign, how old she was when she gave the bucket a good toe-end, that kind of thing. So I try to change the subject. I’m not comfortable with the idea of true love, particularly involving people with excessive wrinkles.

  ‘Didn’t you guys live in Launceston at some stage?’ I say. From wrinkly love to real estate seems like a good conversational gambit. And I have a vague memory of that, I think.

  ‘Yeah. We lived in Lonnie for years.’

  ‘So how come you’re in this place, then?’

  ‘We bought this near on thirty-five years ago. Cost us two hundred dollars, including legal fees.’ He chuckles. ‘Just a plot of land, forty hectares. Nothin’ on it then, of course. We’d come up here whenever we could. Cleared the land, built the houses, laid the water pipes from the river. Your gran loved it here. Said it was a place of magic.’

  ‘Yeah, but I mean, why are you here now? Did you have to sell your place in Launceston?’

  ‘No. That’s still there.’

  ‘So what gives, Gramps? I hate to be tactless, but this is serious boondock territory and you’re getting on a bit. Wouldn’t it be better to be somewhere with a little more . . . comfort?’ Closer to hospital, is what I’m thinking.

  ‘I moved here right after your gran died.’

  I remember what he said the day before yesterday about Gran the Guardian Angel, looking out for him.

  ‘’Cos this is, like, the place the two of you built together and loved? Right? You feel comfortable here.’ I’m pretty pleased with my insight, but not too thrilled the subject is getting round to love again, even if I’ve only got myself to blame.

  ‘No,’ says Granddad. ‘I’m here to be with her. This is where she is. There isn’t a day goes by I don’t talk to her.’

  Seriously freaky. That’s what I’m thinking as I split the logs and stack them under the eaves. Granddad has gone into the main shack and I’m out in the yard by myself. Suits me. There’s nothing like someone telling you they speak to a corpse every day to stop a conversation dead in its tracks. Forgive the pun. I mean, I know I should understand, and on one level I do. Here’s Granddad, devoted to Gran, and she carks it and he can’t cope. So he keeps her around, talks to her, like imaginary friends some people have when they’re kids. I mean, it’s understandable.

  But still freaky as.

  I wait until I’m sure Granddad has gone to sleep and then I wheel the motorbike a good way up the track. I’d scoped it out yesterday and noticed the key sticking out of the ignition. That left the question of fuel and whether or not the machine had been used in the last twenty years and would still start. The jerry cans were the answer to the first question. And yes, two of the cans had fuel in them and I’d topped up the tank. As far as whether it will fire, well, there is only one way to find out. I take a small bag of tools from the lean-to.

  It’s a heavy mother, though, and I build up a good sweat by the time I push it a decent way up the track. So I stop and have a breather. The forest is quiet. Even the kookaburras seem to be having a break. Maybe, like me, they’re anxious to see if this puppy will start. I wipe the sweat off my forehead and get ready to crank it over. The bike, not my forehead. It’s an old machine and doesn’t have electronic ignition. Electronics hadn’t been invented when this sucker was built. It’s a kick-start job.

  I find a flat spot and straddle it. I tell you, that’s not as easy as it might sound. They must have built the old machines out of solid cast iron and concrete, because we are talking a heavy load. For a moment, I’m in serious danger of the whole thing falling over and squashing me flat. A touch embarrassing if I have to call for Granddad and he finds me pinned like a bug under a mass of metal I shouldn’t be messing with. It’s okay, though. I get my balance and give a good kick. Nothing. I do this a few times before I remember to turn the fuel line on. I can almost hear the kookaburras laughing. Even then, there’s nothing. It doesn’t so much as cough.

  There’s no spark at all and I reckon it might be a problem with the plugs. So I find this old plug spanner in the tool kit and take ’em out and give ’em a clean. There’s about half a kilo of filth lodged in there, but to be honest I’m not optimistic even as I stick them back. I give it a go. Still nothing. Apart from nearly pulling a muscle and scraping my shin on the frame. I fiddle around with a few leads. Don’t know why, but it seems a good idea.

  I’m on the point of jacking the whole thing in and wheeling the bike back when it fires. Doesn’t start, but fires briefly and dies. I reckon I’m on the right track, or it’s just playing with my emotions, so I do some more leadfiddling and kick it over again. This time the engine catches and holds. Then I realise I’ve got a problem. This engine is one noisy sonofa. People in Melbourne are probably snorting morning tea out of their nostrils, going, ‘What the hell is that?’ And I don’t want Granddad to know, for obvious reasons. On the other hand, I’m worried about letting the revs drop in case it cuts out and I’m back to the lead-fiddling.

  There’s only one solution. I pull the clutch in, smack my left foot down, lob it into gear and away I go. It might sound like a Boeing 707 on a runway, but it doesn’t have much poke, so I’m not exactly a streak disappearing up the mountain. I’ve got all these clouds of foul smoke coming from the exhaust. I could probably hear the trees dying from pollution if it wasn’t for the sound of birds coughing. After a minute or so, I reckon I’ve put enough space between me and the shack, so I pull over and idle the throttle.

  The engine’s sweet enough. Well, not sweet. It hiccups a lot, but it’s not cutting out and that’s the main thing. I sit for a while, feeling like a Hell’s Angel, and consider my plan of action. It’s a case of once bitten, twice shy. I’m not keen to repeat the getting lost scenario. I check the track and the tyre marks are pretty clear. If I keep to the dirt tracks, I reckon I should be okay. Nonetheless, I stop every couple of hundred metres and make a gash in a tree trunk with my pocket knife. I feel better about doing the Hansel and Gretel impersonation.

  I can ride a bike, see. A couple of years ago, Dad enrolled me in extracurricular sports activities at the school. They’d informed him I’d wagged every Phys. Ed. class for the past decade and he got paranoid about the state of my health. So he signed me up for this course, which cost megabucks. I had to laugh. There were all these upper-class options on offer, like yachting and even polo. Dad would have creamed his suit trousers if I’d gone the polo option. He probably had images of me in a cashmere sweater, a debutante with teeth like tombstones on my arm, chatting to Prince Harry. He’d have settled for rugby, I guess. Maybe even cricket at a pinch.

  So I did motocross.

  It was dirty and noisy, and I didn’t have to use my muscles to move. I could even have a smoke if I took my trail bike on a cross-country ride. But the biggest plus was that it really annoyed him and kicked him hard in the wallet.

  Anyway, I can ride a motorbike, even a dinosaur like this one.

  The engine must have blasted itself clear, because I’m not trailing black smoke anymore. Not exactly a clean exhaust, but not likely to choke all living creatures within a hundred metre radius. The back wheel is down on pressure, as well. I can feel it slide, particularly in the mushy ground, but that’s not a huge problem off-road. Sometimes the slope is too steep to go straight up without pulling the bike down on top of me, so I have to go off to the side and find a better route. The recent heavy rain has turned the mountainside into mud, but that just makes it more fun. About halfway up I stop and plug in my iPod and that’s so cool. The feel of the bike under me, the way it slips and slews, all to the crashing sound of heavy metal. It’s like I’m blasting my own exhaust clean.

  The last twenty or thirty metres before the summit are kinda steep, so I gun the engine. I don’t exactly soar
onto the top of a mountain like some stunt guy, but the wheels do leave the mud for a fraction of a second. They even do it at the same time. Airtime! I feel good – and yes, I am aware of how sad a person that makes me.

  I sit on the same random rock as before and check my watch. Five minutes to lunch at school, so I pull out a smoke and eyeball the vista to a couple of my favourite tracks. But after a minute or two that becomes really strange, so I turn the iPod off. Why is that? Why is it that, surrounded by constant noise, like I am all the time in Melbourne, I can listen to music continuously.

  But when it’s quiet – at the very time when you’d think noise would be vital – I become reluctant to disturb it?

  I don’t know. It beats me.

  So I gaze at absolutely nothing, listen to absolutely nothing and it doesn’t feel bad.

  I give Kris another few minutes to get out of the classroom and hit the open spaces. It’s possible she’ll have to track down the chick with the phone as well, so I allow a couple more minutes for that. In the meantime I turn on the phone to see if I’ve got any messages, but nothing comes through. That worries me. I did ask Kris to text me and she must have had time. But then I guess texting is not always possible if you’re relying on other people’s phones and the credit they may or may not have. I punch in the number she gave me and she answers on the first ring.

  ‘Yo,’ I say. ‘Stud reporting for duty.’

  She laughs. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Oh, not too shabby, considering. What about you?’

  ‘Okay. Missing you.’

  ‘It’s natural,’ I say. ‘You’re only human, after all.’ She doesn’t say anything to that – no laugh, or anything – and I figure that was maybe not the right time for a touch of humour. ‘Miss you, too,’ I add, and hope it doesn’t sound like an afterthought.