Dad, why the fuck did ya send him over for? Elder Drumanure yells. He stands. There’s no answer. He bounds toward Younger Drumanure, who sprints toward the pool and dives over Markus’s head. Elder Drumanure follows. They disappear beneath the wading bodies across the breadth of the pool.
Heroes, Grayson says. He pushes off from the overflow grate. He sinks underneath and comes back up beside Markus, where he started. Spits and says, I wish I was … I dunno.
Pardon?
I dunno. If I could lose my mind, maybe I’d be happy. Like the people in old people’s homes — where I don’t know what I want and I’m happy with whatever I get given.
Like dementia? Markus sees the shoreline of the Lake, when it had been full those years ago on the camping trip. That same trip, Gray had told Markus that he’d lost his virginity. What’s it like? Markus had said.
Now, with Grayson standing in the water beside him, Markus asks about Cecily.
Wrestling to the fore in Markus’s mind is an image of a victorious Grayson testing the choppy surface of the Lake. He’s trying to get to Markus, who wades titan-like beyond the submerged sandbar. Out from the waves, draped in sparkling green weeds and crowned with mustard-coloured stones, Cecily walks up onto the beach. Her eyes are yabby-shell blue, and her skin creamy-smooth like the underbelly of Murray Cod (Maccullochella peelii). Grayson’d never told him what losing your virginity is like, and Markus has never imagined a good enough answer to fill the absence.
Hi, boys.
And then here Cecily is. For real. Which upsets Markus, because of how abruptly she appears, though it shouldn’t, because it was her on the grassy knoll who Elder Drumanure had been leering at. She’s standing right there on the concrete footpath before them. Actual, no longer just potential.
Grayson kisses her neck. They walk to get ice-cream.
And furious Markus, with Poseidonic strength, slashes at the water. A sheet of liquid sprays up and lands on Youarang walking past.
The couple comes back.
Grayson hands Markus an orange-flavoured Sunny Boy. Cecily and Grayson each have a waffle cone with a double scoop of cherry. Cecily tries to compensate with, We couldn’t decide for you.
Youarang, who’s hovering, tells Markus, Don’t eat in the pool.
Markus says, Get fucked, and splashes water at him, this time on purpose.
A noisy miner comes down from the fence, stretches a quiet noise in its mouth, as if enquiring. Cecily shoos it with her hand. It jumps back. When her pathetic defence subsides, it waddles even closer.
She waves again. Someone shoot that bloody thing.
Grayson squawks in its direction, and the bird flaps inelegantly away.
They’d survive a nuclear war.
Nah, not even a cockroach can.
Um, yes.
Yair. They can survive the radiation; a direct hit would kill ’em all.
Things aren’t meant to be around for too long anyway, says Markus, cutting in.
Well, people aren’t meant to live for as long as they do, at least, says Grayson.
Cecily says, Our generation’s meant to live to a hundred and fifty.
Nah. They say a thousand.
Who’s they?
They. Grayson laughs. Says, If we lived back years ago, we’d already have kids and a wife.
Cecily says, Too soon. Her voice is nasal.
Grayson says, Thank fuck we live now. His voice smoothed out by the ice-cream.
After a pause, Markus says, Why you here early, Cec? You usually come just before closing.
Everyone’s here, she says. She tips back her wide-brimmed hat, lowers her Ray-Bans and scans the pool. Bright beams of light reflect across her face. She says, So much skin.
They are quiet.
Markus stands in the water.
Grayson says, I gotta go home. Get shit organised for the gig tonight.
I’m looking forward to it, Markus says.
It’s just me an’ me guitar. Nothin’ great.
Okay.
I hope it works out, Grayson says. Adds something about hating it if he was stuck in Narioka forever, playing shitty gig after shitty gig in its three shitty dying pubs.
I hope you wish for more than that, says Cecily.
Like what?
A proper job, she says.
Grayson pushes Markus’s shoulder. Sounds like your old man.
Being in town, Markus heads to Elmyra’s. It is, after all, her birthday. We’re twins, she’d said to him last night at his own birthday party. A day apart and from different wombs, he’d reminded her. She’d come to his party dressed as Marilyn singing to Mr President; Markus’d taken off her white-fur jacket to reveal her glittering floor-length dress. He gets to the door of her house. It has a stained-glass motif in it. No answer. He rings her. Hiya. I’m screening calls. Make it wonderful. He tells the voicemail he’ll come by later.
Down the end of her street he can see cliffs: constant, flat, grey. Today they’re shimmying from the heat. It’s a pleasant area to look at. Narioka and the Depression, that is. Heading in the opposite direction past the places he’d driven by with Grayson earlier, Markus begins walking home. Out south, the pavement crumbles to hydrophobic-red dirt, and the dirt stitches itself into spiny strands of grasses and weeds; dead, dying, yellowish-grey. Walking beside the laser-ploughed fields — burnt-soil precision cut by some expensive machine — he sees that even the trees, standing near and far as if for some stage set, have been circumscribed. Manufactured and unnatural. Modern farming. Orders barked from dusted lips give way to the rapid put-put-put of truck or helicopter or drone. It’s such a drone. Now, out on these plains with longer grass and older trees, his pace slows. Sun splinters, lands in the space between objects. Burns his neck and arms. A heat haze keeps its distance. The drooping trees on his father’s driveway frame this view, their leaves appearing as black liquid drops that their limbs forbid they drip. Hot and sweaty and sunburned, he wades through the house and into the bathroom. He wets his face and hair.
Rene rediscovers him, i.e., finds that his son and his son’s best mate ran away and now one has returned. His father says, Ya lucky y’didn’t get bit by a brown snake.
I didn’t want to put you out.
Markus, that’s not … His father pauses. As if it’s safer, he tells him to go catch mice for Snake.
Markus grabs an empty bucket and heads to the shed. He could be making Rene proud. He’s thankful Rene’s not here to see his inadequacy. The mice Markus catches he’ll release when Rene’s not around. He hunts near his broken motorbike, near the prep table where his father grows seedlings, near the back and behind what they no longer need or have hidden in order for it to be forgotten. He follows squeaks and captures carefully in his hands warm, shaking mice (Mus musculus meaning ‘little thief’). Their black eyes don’t seem to register him. There used to be a dam out back. It’s still there, though bone-dry now and filled with windmill grass (Chloris truncate). When the dam was full, they’d yabby in it, and he’d drop in rail stones and watch the corrugated ripples. The stones plunking to and resting on the dark bottom never felt the tremors they made.
When he gets back to the house, he hears two deep voices, deeper than his own, in the cavern of the open-plan area. They resonate and spill out into the hall. Markus removes his boots. As he comes down into the room, Rene’s hand slips away from Buff’s back. They’re standing near the dining table. Rene’s offered Buff a beer and refrained from drinking himself.
His father clears his throat and says, I hafta get some things from town for Elba. His solid eyes at Markus, who reckons the man’d wanted to do this when he’d planned to take Grayson back earlier.
Rene has rules. Don’t drink and drive. Finish the food on your plate. Leave whatever drinks you take to someone’s house there. Go outside. Kitchen benches are fo
r glasses not arses. Don’t cry in front of anyone. How do you know you don’t like it if you’ve never tried it? A proper job’s a proper income. Labour’s the backbone of society. Rules that are uttered moments before you’re about to break one. They aren’t like the rules that other boys have. Buff has a 9.30pm curfew. The Youarang boy (so Markus found out through Buff) has a pocket-money system that decreases by a few bucks every time he wets the bed. Grayson has to leave the house at least once on the weekends. Rene could say, Can y’feed Cat? Markus would say, In a minute. And Rene understands that a minute in Markus’s time is anywhere from five minutes to an hour. The job will get done. One rule is odd, though. Markus has never asked why the song ‘Fast Car’ isn’t allowed to play when Rene’s in earshot. He’s never asked because of the way Rene growls, Turn that fucken music orf. So, when Rene tells Markus to feed the mice he’s captured to Snake, Markus knows Rene’s punishing him for running off with Grayson’s car. He wouldn’t’ve been that much over the limit, but still …
His father leaves after shaking Buff’s hand.
Gunna do it? Buff squats next to the bucket and plucks a mouse by its tail. He suspends it in the air in front of his face.
Markus says, Later, picturing releasing the mice when there’s no men about.
Pussy. Buff drops the mouse and grabs the bucket. I thought you were all for gettin’ rid a pests, said as a statement, not a question. Buff walks behind the couch in the lounge to where Snake’s tank is kept. When ya dad says do somethin’, ya do it. He slides the glass off the top. Keen for the charity footy match?
I haven’t seen it in the paper.
Narht, not goin’ in for a coupla weeks yet. Buff smirks. Y’better be ready. He takes the smallest mouse and holds it up to the side of the tank. Coach’ll wring ya nuts if ya not.
Snake, within the tank, eyes the mouse.
I’ll see.
Buff stands. Ya better do more than see. He drops the mouse inside the tank.
No sooner does the mouse hit the sandy bottom, and take its first bound, does Snake strike and eat. There’s a muffled squeak.
Beauty. Buff turns to Markus and winks. I’ll leave the rest to you.
Outside, in the buzz of a kazillion cicadas and the hum of the air-con unit on the roof, the more docile cool morning unfurls into a dragging afternoon. The muscles and bones of Markus’s body feel both bound down and restless. He lingers inside the shed, near the back, where the light falls on the engine of his motorbike enough to make the metal look, from the position he squats in, older than it is. He fiddles with tools. The clinking and tinking dulls on the oily rags he’s placed around the guts of the toolbox. By bending beside the machine, he’s trying to convince Buff that he knows more than words and books and shit that’s useless out here. There’s a sweating-fruit smell — which he tries to ignore — puffing from somewhere nearby. Cologne de provincial. It makes him sick: it’s a reminder of high school and of Buff Burrows speaking nearby him. Markus chooses to not quite hear. He downs the tool on the concrete floor. Stands. Grabs a Wrigley’s from his chest pocket, hopes its taste will overpower the fruity smell. Offers one to Buff. Narht, is the reply. Markus chews and whacks his now grotty palm on the leather seat. The motorbike creaks. Both young men gravitate toward the shed’s entry. They lean with their backs on opposing poles. Fruity smell wafting between him and Buff — what a wanker: immovable, with sweat on his neck and on his nose and talking, staring out of the shed and not listening, even to himself. How much a man. Nobody of seventeen is very serious, but Buff’s too mud-stuck to realise.
I started up at the abs, says Buff, y’know, like three years back. We’re walking through the kill room an’ the boss tells me that the world’s fucked, right. Doesn’t matter if I slaughter animals. Means nothin’. Life goes on an’ shit.
Markus stretches, trying to rid himself of the suffocating drowsiness. Your boss was right.
What d’ya mean?
Nothing gets out alive — what’s a few years less of living?
That’s a bit rough.
Or realistic.
Buff gets to work on the bike. He says, I’ll stick with rough, ay. Bit like this bloody rig, Bellos.
It does the job when it goes.
How often’s that? Bent down beside the motorbike, Buff ticks or tocks his tongue against the roof of his mouth. He discards the spanner and uses lock-grip pliers instead. You’re a spastic, he says, an’ ya call y’self a mechanic’s apprentice.
Soon to be a mechanic’s apprentice, Markus says.
What d’ya call y’self now?
A cowherd, pastoralist, grazier, I dunno. Out of work.
Yair, right, Buff says.
These are too bucolic, though. Markus laughs by making a sound like he’s spat out nothing. Watching Buff, he decides he needs age-appropriate hobbies. Reading doesn’t cut it anymore, let alone the poetry sitting at the foot of his bed. Maybe photography. Instagram. Snapchat. He could start a Tumblr and post his own dick-pics #sickcunt #hungaf #iwish.
Buff says he’s fixed the motorbike. He comes back to stand against the pole across from Markus.
An engine ripples through the yard. A Jeep churns dust, cuts its engine.
What a fucker. Buff’s gazing at the Jeep through his half-closed eyes.
Elba?
Me boss. What a fucker for tellin’ me shit like that. I mean, I was fourteen. He sighs.
Elba emerges from the Jeep. She looks around briefly and then sashays into the house through the front door.
Where’s she been? Buff says.
Markus says, Alice Springs. Darwin, too.
Hasn’t she already been there?
Markus shrugs.
Buff takes out a cigarette. I hate that. His cheeks compress as he sucks the smoke, which soon clouds back past his lips into the dry air. He thrusts a hand down the front of his footy shorts, scratches and readjusts whatever he’s packing.
What do you hate?
Travel. Buff drags the ciggie. Exhales the toxins. Dad went to the Alice, he says. Buff removes his hand from his footy shorts. Dad said that every day, fuck, there’s coons all over the place, fucken stoned an’ spaced. Layin’ in the gutter like fucken rubbish. Drags deep, eyes squint. White smoke ribbons up and down in front of him. He says, There’s fucken dirt, right, red dirt to the end of the earth. Y’ask Youarang, he’d know about it.
Why’s that, Buff?
’Cause, well. Y’know. ’Cause the kid’s a … Buff puts his thumb and index fingers either side of his nostrils. He widens the space the fingers indicate.
You’re a cunt, Burrows.
And you’re a soft cock.
It doesn’t matter where Youarang was born; just like you, he’s never left Australia.
Whatever. Buff smokes. Then he nods at Elba’s car. Those rigs are a bit gay, seen the fucken telly ads? I boughta Jeeeep. Fuck me dead. Buff smokes. When’s she an’ Ren gettin’ hitched?
Markus shrugs. He thinks of the motorbike, and how he starts his mechanic’s apprenticeship on Monday coming: another arena in which he will perform his absolute incompetency at labour.
I seen Elmyra earlier, Buff says.
You two have been spending more time together.
Buff nods slow, considered. What of it?
Markus shrugs. Hope you’re treating her well.
Fuck you.
I mean it.
What would you know? Buff says. She said you don’t bother much anymore. She said somethin’ about youse a few days back.
Yair?
(Markus and Elmyra had walked into her room on Wednesday afternoon. It was 43°C, and he’d had sweat sliding down from his back to the top of his arse crack. As he took a seat on her bed, she’d said, Why do we even talk anymore?)
So whatta y’gunna do?
I don’t see why I need to
do anything.
I can see what she means but.
Markus considers this.
She says ya spend too much time talkin’ shit with ya mates. Buff drags his ciggie. With Grayson. The way he says Grayson’s name, the way he exhales it with the cigarette smoke, is as if he regrets bringing it up. He sips a breath of fresher air, like he’s jumped in freezing water. I told her ya fucked in the head. He laughs like it’s a joke.
Markus says, I’m not her property. He decides to raise his voice, not too loud, just taking control of the phonemes, and not necessarily because Buff’s making him angry: rather, the word ‘her’ is there to be taken control of. ‘Her’ is absent and therefore eligible for this.
She didn’t mean it like that, Buff says.
There’s more that Markus could say. He wants to tell Buff to stop pretending to be such a fucken man — you’re Buff Burrows, not Brute.
Buff says, Have y’ever?
What?
Y’know?
There’s a no because it’s the truth, but Markus stifles the no with a shrug. Says, It’s what everyone else is doing.
Buff smokes.
There’s quietness.
The security door of the laundry rattles, slams.
Boys, Elba calls across the yard. Mark. Come inside from the heat. I have lunch.
Buff tosses aside his cigarette butt, squashes it with his boot. He has a deliberate gait; he keeps his eyes trained on the ground as he walks from here to there, as if not to catch sight of the vastness and have thoughts of insignificance.
Inside, Elba sways over. Her orange flamenco skirt swishes, her gold earrings jangle. Her bone-hard arms press into Markus’s sides. He releases himself from her hug and sits at the table.
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