Ironbark

by Jonsberg, Barry

  But I can’t. When it comes down to it, I’ve got a yellow streak a couple of klicks wide.

  The more I think, the more depressed I am. All that guff about being in a quiet place where there would be less stimulus for my IED. All those trees and quiet walks. The simple life. Since I’ve been here, I’ve had more outbursts than I would in a month in Melbourne. Maybe it’s the medication – or lack of it. But I don’t regret that. When it comes down to it, I’d sooner be an alive menace than one of the living dead. Possibly I should be ashamed of that. But I’m not.

  I close the exercise book and line the pencil up neatly along the binding. The shack feels hotter than hell, even though the fire has basically died. There is only a dim glow from the embers. I wipe my hand across my forehead and it comes away slick with sweat. Sleep isn’t an option, so I step outside. The cool air calms me.

  It’s so dark I can’t see a metre ahead. I glance up at the sky, but there must be clouds rolling around ’cos I can’t see a single star, or even a hint of the moon. It’s difficult to tell where the treetops stop and the sky begins. I stand on the verandah and wait for my eyes to adjust. It’s cold. A slight wind cools my face and I turn towards it. The beads of sweat chill. I think of Granddad’s bottles of Boag’s and condensation running down the sides. I even think of trying to find the well, because the thought of a cold beer is really tempting. But knowing my luck, in this darkness, I’d fall down it.

  So I sit on the verandah and listen.

  I hear the wind whispering through the trees. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear it was saying, ‘It’s cool, cool, cool.’ I think about Gran, out there somewhere, watching over Granddad. Or – what was it Granddad said? – her love looking after him. It’s a pleasant thought. Complete horse manure, of course, but heart-warming. If you’re that way inclined. I sit and think about Gran, but I haven’t got many memories to feed the thoughts. Just random pictures in my head. For some reason, I get to thinking about that text message as well. The message from another dimension. Witetrees. Maybe I’m coming down with a nasty bug, but I wonder about it. What if it wasn’t the production of an overwrought imagination or the scrambled settings of my phone? What if it was from Gran? You know, if she’s looking out for Granddad, maybe she’s also looking out for me.

  Trust me, I know how sad this is. But I’m tired, emotionally exhausted and running a fever. And the idea of a corpse in the forest with a ghostly mobile phone is kinda satisfying. I wonder what kind of deal you get in the afterlife. You know, unlimited credit, or free texts. Or do you get tied to a plan for eternity?

  Trouble is, all these thoughts are tumbling one over the other. I get to thinking about what Granddad said about things locked inside you getting out, making some impact on the world. And it’s mixed up with an image of Kris at school.

  At first it’s just an image, but then it takes on the aspect of a story. She isn’t sick. She’s never looked healthier, sitting on the oval with Steve and his fine features – features I could happily reorganise. They are laughing. Actually, they are laughing at me. And he hands her a mobile phone and she’s just thrilled at how considerate he is. She kisses him, long and lingering. Then I see a boy in a leather jacket, his legs twitching as he tries to make himself a part of a corner. And a girl who screams when I lift my hand. I see Granddad ripping a side mirror off a sports car.

  The wind is building. The trees aren’t whispering now. The rustle of leaves and branches has taken on an angry sound. My eyes have adjusted sufficiently to be able to make out the treetops bending and shaking against an angry sky. The cold bites and I wrap my arms around myself, hug myself close. Suddenly, I want to be inside. The flush of heat has been sucked from me and I’m shivering. I want to warm my hands over the fire’s embers. When I stand, the muscles in my legs ache. I am coming down with something.

  The wind slams the door shut behind me. The fire is on its last legs. There’s only the dimmest of glows in the fireplace, but I kneel in front of it, shove my hands virtually into the ashes. A sudden gust of wind gets caught in the chimney. I feel the cold on the back of my hands. It’s like a storm has blown in. I hear rattling outside, and worry for a moment if the dog’s going to be all right.

  The fire is giving off no heat, so I climb back into my bed and gather the blankets around me. I’m too cold to think about undressing. Even with the blankets around my shoulders, so I’m wrapped up like a baby, the cold seeps in. My teeth chatter.

  The wind picks up another notch. Now the trees sound like they’re screaming. Something bangs a couple of times – metal striking metal – and then there’s a terrible rattle on the window, as though a tree branch is thumping against it. At the same time, the latch on the door jumps, falls back into its slot. I can almost see the wood bend inwards with the pressure.

  I can’t remember a tree being close to my shack. I think and think, but I can’t remember. There’s so much rattling and thumping going on I can’t straighten my thoughts. So I jump off the bed and push a chair under the latch. I don’t think anything’s coming in, but I can’t stand the door rattling around for the rest of the night. Just for good measure, I unwrap one blanket and tuck it into the curtain rod over the window, blotting the outside. Something heavy smacks against the glass just as I’m finishing and I nearly fall off the bed. The door rattles again, bulges, but doesn’t give.

  I don’t want to sleep. So I sit in the corner furthest from the door, watching. I watch the door and the window, and listen to the storm’s anger. I huddle into the blankets and wait it out.

  There’s something wrong with the room, but it takes me a while to spot it.

  Across the four lines carved into my bedpost, there is another, horizontal gash. The cut is white and fresh.

  I don’t remember doing it.

  I must have fallen asleep at some stage, because when I wake my neck is aching where it’s been twisted.

  It’s just gone six and there are pale splashes of light leaking through the blanket over the window. My muscles protest as I lurch to my feet. The chair has come loose and is resting on all four legs. I slide it back under the table, pull the blanket off the rod and step outside. The light is milky. There is no sign of the storm, no fallen branches, nothing out of place. There are no trees close to my shack.

  The whole place is quiet. No sign of Granddad and I’m kinda pleased I’ve beaten him to the verandah for once. I risk sniffing my armpits. Big mistake. I smell like I’ve been ridden hard and put away wet. Then again, I haven’t had a shower in how long? I’ve slept in my clothes and I got all sweaty playing Dance Dance. Pretty soon, Granddad will have to take me outside, with a clothes peg on his nose, and hose me down.

  I grab some fresh clothes and head for the shower. I’m not looking forward to it and as soon as the water hits me I want to scream. It’s impossible to stop the sharp intake of breath. I grit my teeth and soap myself all over. I even wash my hair. There are critters living in there. Finally, I scrape the fungus off my teeth and tongue. It’s cold as, and I keep shivering, just wrapped in a soggy towel, but there’s no alternative.

  When I finally get into warm, clean clothes I feel like a new person. Any traces of my mystery fever have well and truly disappeared. For a while there, I must have been delirious. The previous night has the quality of a bad dream. I stride over to the main shack and am disappointed to find Granddad sitting there. I want to tell him I’ve been up for ages, but reckon that’d be too sad, even for me.

  ‘Morning, Granddad,’ I say. ‘How are you, dude?’

  He grunts. He’s not a morning person, that’s for sure. Then again, I haven’t seen much evidence of him being an afternoon or evening person either, so it’s not a profound observation. So much for the major bonding we did yesterday. Now he’s back to Mr Grumpy. Inside, I grab a cup of coffee from a jug sitting on the stove. I leave it black. I need all the warmth I can muster.

  I slump into the chair next to him and sip the coffee.

  It smells li
ke coffee. It even looks like coffee. But God knows what sad kind of bean was responsible for this. I drink it anyway. It’s marginally better than boiled water.

  ‘Want some porridge?’ asks Granddad.

  ‘Like an enema,’ I reply. ‘I’ll make breakfast.’

  ‘I like porridge,’ he says.

  ‘Well, so do I, Gramps. But let’s be honest here. That stuff you make would be better rendering walls. Seriously. I was going to cook last night, but never got the chance. I’ll make breakfast.’

  Granddad shrugs, takes a noisy slurp from his coffee mug.

  ‘Any bacon?’ I ask.

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Eggs?’

  ‘Some, I think. In the corner cupboard. Oh, by the way. That shopping you did yesterday. The bag’s still in the ute.’ I’d forgotten about that, but I’m thrilled. Granddad must have picked up the bag from the games arcade before we split. I’m impressed. It must have been a pain in the rectum, dragging me out of there, with a heavy shopping bag full of cast iron cooking utensils in one hand. I fish all the stuff out of the ute. Time to baptise the saucepan.

  I find a carton of eggs in the cupboard, but there’s no use-by date on them. So I crack one and sniff it. I can’t swear to it, but I reckon it’s okay. I crack another three into a bowl. It’s almost too much to hope for, but my luck must be riding high today because I also find a tin of chopped tomatoes in the cupboard and a small bottle of white vinegar. I know we’ve got salt and pepper and olive oil, ’cos I bought them myself. Ready to rock and roll.

  I discovered this recipe by accident, but it’s a good one.

  I splash a good slug of olive oil into the pan, move the coffee pot and heat the pan on the stove top. Because of the lack of temperature regulation, I’ve got to take extra care I don’t overdo it. When the oil is fairly hot I drop in the tomatoes, a dash of vinegar, a teaspoon of sugar and some salt and pepper. Not too much. You can always add, but you can’t take away. Then I stir it all around with a wooden spoon. This is the really important part. Even on a regular stove you’ve gotta keep stirring. On Granddad’s wood stove, I have to stir and lift the pan away from the heat at regular intervals. Otherwise it’ll overcook. The idea is to reduce slowly. Takes about half an hour, by which time your arms are aching like hell, even though you keep swapping over. Trouble is, it’s not over then. All you’ve got is this mushy pulp of tomatoes.

  Now the eggs go in. And yes. You stir and keep on stirring until the eggs have scrambled into the tomato mixture. It’s touch and go whether the eggs set before your limbs drop off. But it’s worth it.

  A couple of minutes before the end I drizzle olive oil onto the stove plate and slam down four rounds of bread to fry. Normally, you’d eat this on toast, but I reckon fried bread’ll work. I turn the bread while I firm up the eggs. Then it’s onto a plate and out to the verandah where Granddad has doubtless starved to death.

  He stares at his plate as if I just took a dump on it.

  ‘What’s this?’ he says.

  ‘Scrambled eggs and wallaby placenta,’ I say.

  ‘You’re kiddin’.’

  ‘I’m kiddin’. Just eat.’

  But he doesn’t seem excited at the prospect. The way he prods at it with a fork you’d think it was about to explode. Finally he takes a bite, but he keeps it at the front of his mouth for a while. Easier to spit out, I guess. But he doesn’t spit it out. He takes another mouthful.

  ‘This isn’t half bad,’ he says, voice muffled through the scrambled egg.

  ‘I’m overcome with your enthusiasm, Gramps,’ I reply. Funny thing is, I almost am. By his standards, this is as excited as it gets. He scrapes the plate clean, leans back in his chair and lets go a huge belch. We sit in a thin cloud smelling of tomato and egg. Then he washes the dishes. If I had a camera I’d take a picture.

  While he’s away I give Kris some more thought, but I don’t get anywhere. All I know is I’ve got this uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. On the one hand I can’t wait to speak to her. On the other, I’m beginning to dread it. So when Granddad plops himself down next to me, I talk without ever really meaning to.

  ‘Can you explain to me about women?’ I ask.

  He just stares at me. I wouldn’t swear to it, but I reckon there’s a pitying look on his face.

  ‘Got women trouble?’ he says.

  ‘Well, not women,’ I say. ‘Woman. I mean, come on, Granddad. You’ve been around the block a few times. No offence. So what is it they want, hey? I mean, they say they want one thing, but when you do it, it turns out it’s all wrong and you should have done something else. And when you tell them that you were only doing what they wanted, then they say you should have known without being told. I mean, what’s with that?’

  Granddad sighs and scrapes at his face. Doesn’t he ever shave? Come to think about it, his stubble never seems to get any longer either. Maybe he has one of those shavers sad old rock stars have? The kind that keeps your stubble to a good designer length?

  ‘There was this bloke in Sydney and he was walking along a beach . . .’

  ‘Whoa, dude,’ I say. I even put my hand up. ‘This isn’t a joke, is it?’ ’Cos I’ve heard jokes from people over thirty and they are never funny.’ Granddad ignores me.

  ‘There’s this bloke in Sydney and he’s walking along a beach when he sees a bottle in the sand. So he picks it up and wipes it and a genie pops out. And the genie says: “I will grant you one wish and one wish only, so you’d better make it a good ’un.”’

  This is getting better and better. A joke about a genie. Radical.

  ‘And the guy says, “Well, I have to travel to New Zealand constantly on business. Trouble is, I hate flying and a boat takes too long. I wish for a bridge to be built between Sydney and Christchurch, so I can drive.” And the genie says, “Hang on. Do you know how impossible that is? It would require the biggest engineering feat in history. It would take hundreds of years, use up most of the available natural resources left in the world and thousands of people would die in the construction. It’s completely out of the question. Can’t be done. Wish for something else.” And the bloke thinks for a moment and then says, “Okay. Tell me what it is that women really want.” And the genie pauses and says, “So what colour do you want the bridge?”’

  Granddad’s pleased with himself. I can tell. So I dredge up a laugh.

  ‘Is that it then?’ I ask. ‘I need to build a bridge instead?’ ‘Women are not like us,’ he says, all serious.

  ‘Thanks, Gramps. Your middle name’s not Sherlock is it?’

  ‘Their minds work in different ways. You can’t ever really understand them. Just do what you’re told and make the best of it.’

  This is the culmination of years of experience? I wish I hadn’t asked. But turns out he’s got another pearl of wisdom to share.

  ‘They’re emotionally tough, though. Tougher than us. So you need to develop a thick skin. Are you tough enough?’

  I give that some thought. More than it warrants.

  ‘Me? I’m Ironbark, dude,’ I say.

  I don’t feel tough, though. Not really.

  I hate waiting, so I decide to head off up the mountain early. It’s only ten o’clock, but Granddad has disappeared and I have absolutely nothing to do. There’s no point in writing in my journal and we have enough logs to last till the Second Coming, and I can’t sit on the verandah staring at trees any longer. It crosses my mind to walk up the mountain. That would certainly kill time. But the scent of the motorbike is just too heady to resist. Plus, I still feel tired on account of getting virtually no sleep last night. Anyway, the motorbike is a much better way to kill time. Provided I maim trees as I go this time I can do some exploring, without fear of getting lost.

  Like I say, I have no idea where Granddad is, so I’m concerned about firing up the bike. Odds are, he’ll hear. But I do it anyway. What the hell. I’m Ironbark. It catches on the second kick. I’ll give the old bike that. It’s probably got t
he indent of Captain Cook’s bum on its seat, but it’s gutsy despite its years. I can’t imagine many bikes built today would still be around in forty years’ time. These thought processes are a little worrying. It’s a short step to, ‘When I was young . . .’ I slam the bike into gear and take off. That way, I don’t have to think.

  I ride a different way, but I’m careful to stop every now and then and carve a mark on a tree. I just hope these trails I’ve made don’t cross. The rate I’m going, every tree in the forest will have a mark. I get this image of myself, sitting on the bike in the middle of the bush looking round at all these trees, each with a white gash, and wondering how I’m going to get home.

  In the end it doesn’t make a huge amount of difference. I mean, it’s not as if I’m likely to stumble across Aztec ruins. Trees and clearings, clearings and trees. Every route is scenic. In fact, I might as well have come up the old way. Would have saved a few trees a few scratches. But I don’t have any problems and before I know it I’m soaring – well, creeping might be a better word – onto the summit. The rock is waiting for me.

  I sit on it and reach automatically for a smoke. It’s funny. I don’t even feel disappointed when I find they’re not there. Already my chest is feeling better. I know about your sense of smell and taste improving after you’ve given up and I know that takes time to kick in. But I’d swear the scrambled egg and tomato this morning tasted sharper, cleaner somehow. Probably my imagination. But I don’t miss them. Don’t even miss that I’m missing them. How cool is that?

  It’s just gone ten o’clock and I’m two hours early. I suppose I could kill more time riding the bike along the ridge, but for some reason I don’t feel like it. A watery sun has emerged from a light scattering of clouds and it’s peaceful up here. I even begin to think the view has improved. Can quitting smoking do that as well? I stretch out across the rock and soak up a few rays. While I’m here I might as well close my eyes.

  It probably takes me all of thirty seconds to fall asleep.