Hey Brother

by Jarrah Dundler

  All that I’d gleaned in just a few weeks, but still I couldn’t think of anything good enough to say.

  As the bus rolled on, Ricky sniggered, jabbed me in the ribs and started making a sound in the back of his throat like the beginnings of a kookaburra’s call.

  Dickhead! I tried to block him out as the bus wound through the back streets of town, collecting more kids.

  We approached the bottom of the main drag. The servo, I told myself: that’s when I’d talk to her. What’d ya do on the weekend? That’d do, keep it simple!

  We rolled past the servo. I opened my mouth. Shut it.

  Like he could read my mind, Ricky jabbed me again. ‘Pussy.’

  Urrrghh! I jabbed him back.

  Right, then: the farm supply store. That’s when I’d talk. Nope, we rolled past it. Summerfield Hair? Nope. Bottom Butchers? Nope. Jim’s Cafe? Nope.

  I tuned into their conversation to hear Jade ask Jessica, ‘So, how was the coast on the weekend?’

  Shit! She stole my question.

  ‘Awesome. Bit of a mish—like over an hour—but made me think for once this place might not be so bad. They had some really cool shops and funky cafes there and a super-chilled vibe. Plus we had the most delish fish and chips ever.’

  Fish. Fish! She liked fish. I had it. I had my in.

  Once we passed the bakery, I’d talk. Nope. The top pub? Nope. Top Butchers? Nope. By the time we’d rolled past all those shops and then the row of dusty ones up the dead end of town, I still hadn’t said a word. Ricky’s taunts were getting worse—his jabs harder, his kooka-call louder.

  Jade turned to look at Ricky, then at me.

  ‘Ricky,’ she said. ‘Um…like, what’s up with Trysten? Is he okay?’

  ‘Okay? What do you reckon? Poor fella looks like he’s constipated or something!’

  Jade laughed, smiled at Ricky, then rolled her eyes at me and turned to face the front again.

  Up ahead I could see a double-storey redbrick building: the Maths Block of school.

  Ah, stuff it. Now or never!

  I rammed my head in between Jessica and Jade’s shoulders, and ripped into my tale at a million miles an hour.

  ‘Jessica, heard ya like fish! Well, get this! On the weekend I caught a huge fish—bass, it was—which saved my mum’s life ’cause I chucked it on her lap and she screamed and ran round then the fan fell and…’ I took a quick breath. ‘And if she hadn’t been up running round it’d’ve smashed her head, the fan not the fish, but jeez, it was good to get her up ’cause she’s been hittin’ it hard since Shaun’s been off in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban. Won’t get off the couch, won’t do nothin’…’

  I trailed off. Silence settled for one…two…three…seconds. Then Ricky’s kookaburra laugh exploded.

  Jade turned her face away with a look of disgust, like someone was holding a fresh dog-shit in front of her nose. ‘So…Like…Yeah, um, nice one, Trysten. Real nice.’

  Josie brought the bus to a halt. The doors flung open, the sound of the air decompressing like a giant sigh.

  I slumped in my seat, staring at my shoes, unable to bring myself to look at Jessica. I waited till I could sense her and Jade moving. Once they were up, I watched them walk down the aisle.

  I’d blown it. For sure. I felt dumb as.

  But then, just before Jessica hopped off the bus she turned and looked at me in a way no girl’d ever looked at me before. She looked at me in a way that made my heart spring up into my throat and my dick shift a bit in my jocks. Her lips were curled into a sliver of a smile and her gaze, locked on mine, was mischievous, like she was a little kid about to do something naughty.

  Then, before she skipped down the bus steps, she rounded it all off with a wink. Nice and slow.

  ‘Holy shit!’ Ricky slapped my back with one hand, his forehead with the other. ‘Y’see that, brother? A wink! C’mon, after ’em!’

  He charged down the aisle.

  I tried to move fast, but I couldn’t. Jessica’s look had frozen me. And when I got to the end of the aisle and spotted my reflection in Josie’s rear-vision mirror, I saw my face was still frozen, frozen as it had been that whole time Jessica had been looking at me.

  Jaw hanging like it might be busted, eyes popping out of my head like a dead fucken fish’s.

  4

  While Mr Finkle tried to get all us no-hopers in Maths for Life interested in some triangles he’d chalked up on the board, Ricky yapped and yapped and yapped. He was a hundred per cent sure the giggle from Jade and the wink from Jessica were signs.

  ‘Not long and we’ll be reeling ’em in, brother.’

  ‘Really? I dunno, hey. Maybe she was just trying to make me feel good.’

  ‘No way—you did good! Real good. You’re in for sure! We both are.’

  ‘Yeah? Ya reckon?’

  ‘Sure! Why not? Anyway, no harm in dreaming big. Right?’

  At recess Ricky bailed me up in the corridor, twisted me into a headlock and dragged me round and round the quad, yap yap yapping again. Whenever we passed Jade and Jessica’s spot, the table under the leopard tree where the bitchy girls who Jade’d been friends with since kindy sat, Ricky put on a little performance. Waving, winking, giving them the thumbs up and puffing out his chest. Jade just rolled her eyes but Jessica smiled and flashed me that look again.

  ‘See, brother—she’s yours for sure! Good times are coming. Good times are coming.’

  I wasn’t sold, though. Ricky was a bit like my old man in that respect—busting out sayings as if he knew what was round the corner. Difference was that Ricky’s sayings were almost always on the sunny side, whereas Dad’s were more often than not dark and stormy. I usually didn’t buy it from either of ’em—how could they know what was round the corner?

  But this time Ricky ended up being right. For the next few days good times did come and felt like they might just keep on rolling.

  Each morning on the bus as Jessica walked up the aisle she flashed me a big bright smile, which made my heart swell. I didn’t tell any more stories, or manage to say much more than a squeaky hey or a croaky how’s it goin’, but every now and then for the ride through town she’d look over her shoulder and shoot me a tiny sliver of a smile. And each morning before Jessica got on the bus, Ricky scored a few more laughs off Jade. Not enough for her to lift her legs off the seat and invite him to sit next to her, but soon enough, he claimed, he’d be sitting next to Jade and I’d be next to Jessica.

  Things picked up at home too. Mum started to pull her head in. Eased up on the drink. Not entirely, but enough that she was able to get up most days and do a bit of work. Day by day her mood lifted—she smiled more, scowled less. Then one afternoon things started looking even better and I knew—I just bloody knew—she’d be up for a long while.

  I hopped off the bus, leapt over the weedy cattle grid, started up the driveway—and a flash of movement up at the house caught my eye.

  Mum was on the front steps. Jumping up and down. Waving her arm above her head, flapping something in the air. Something small and white.

  What’d she have? What had got her so worked up?

  As I passed by the little old rundown besser-block dairy in the bottom paddock, I looked up again and worked out what she was flapping.

  Zippity-fucken-doo: we have a letter! I raced on up.

  Mum read the letter from the top step, in a clear and steady voice like a pollie delivering a speech. Shaun thanked us for the package we’d posted, told us he’d been on a couple of patrols and already seen a bit of action, and that even though he was freezing his balls off he was having the time of his life. Then he went on to say that he missed us—me, Mum and Kel. At the mention of her name Kel opened one eye, lifted her tail and slapped it down, thonk, on the timber. Shaun ended his letter by saying he doubted he’d write again. Given the crap postal service, he figured he’d arrive home before another letter would.

  After reading that line Mum’s smooth voice cracked and her
eyes welled up. Well, here we go, I thought, but then she smiled and I knew it was all good—those tears were the happy kind. ‘Give us a squiz then, Mum.’ I started up the steps, but by the time I got to the top she’d already stuffed the letter into her jeans pocket.

  ‘Tsk! I just read it to you, didn’t I? You don’t need to read it. It’s mine. Addressed to me!’

  Before I could protest she poked her tongue out, twirled round and stalked inside. As I passed her bedroom I heard her dressing table drawer squeak open. Stashing the letter in her ‘precious box’. Probably worried I’d crumple it, tear it, smudge the bloody ink or something.

  Ah well, whatever. It was good to know Shaun hadn’t forgotten us. And the letter, word from Shaun, was the real pick-up Mum needed.

  As I walked through the house smiling, I wondered what Dad would have to say.

  Before dark, as the jagged shadows of the ranges crept across the valley, I set off down the slope to find out.

  Dad wasn’t at the caravan. He was working, for a change. The Landy was parked on the flats up past the swimming hole, and he was hauling football-sized rocks out of the creek and loading them onto the tray.

  ‘Gonna take ’em to Mick’s. Doing some landscaping.’

  ‘Oh yeah,’ I said, pulling up a long blade of grass and chewing on it. ‘He paying ya?’

  Dad looked up, frowning. ‘Well…yeah, he’s paying me.’ He rolled another rock onto the tray. It clacked and clattered into the other rocks before settling into place.

  ‘What, so that makes ya a working man again, does it?’

  ‘Cah!’ He shook his head. ‘Smartarse.’

  As Dad marched off back down to the creek, I wondered if it was money Mick was paying him with or some of the pot that Mum reckoned he grew forests of. Doubted it, but. Dad was pretty straight. Never smoked. Hardly drank. Still, it might explain all that staring off into space he’d been doing, like Tren and Blake sitting in the back row in Finkle’s Maths class every day.

  Dad returned from the creek hauling a mother of a rock, back bent, legs spread wide, long arms straight down. He swung the thing barely an inch off the ground, and it looked as if it was ready to plunge back into the earth and send him tumbling over himself.

  ‘Oooooh,’ he groaned. ‘Ahhh…booossshkaaa.’ He looked up at me, wincing. ‘Oi! Ya gonna just stand there or are ya gonna give us a hand?’

  I tossed my chewed blade of grass aside. ‘S’pose I could.’

  I helped haul that big rock up onto the tray, and while we loaded a few more—sloshing ankle-deep into the icy water, clambering up the bank, hefting the rocks—I told him about the letter. Recited it as best I could. Told him about Mum, too. How she’d been on the drink for a bit but the letter’d picked her up, how I was sure it’d keep her going till Shaun got home, how this was the start of good times.

  Old Greggy Boy did his usual thing—listened, thought, and then thought some more. Didn’t say nothing about the letter or Mum until he was carrying the last rock of the load up the bank towards the Landy.

  ‘Ah, well. S’good to hear Shaun’s touched base and he’s doing okay and that your mum’s trying to lay off the grog. No good for her, that stuff. No good at all.’

  I could sense a but coming. He was going to toss something else out there. Something dark and stormy.

  ‘What?’ I took the last rock from him and cradled it against my chest.

  ‘Ah well—you know what they say about good times?’

  ‘Nah. What?’

  ‘They don’t last forever.’

  I raised the rock above my shoulder. ‘Ah, piss off, ya old grump!’

  I launched the rock. It cracked and thumped down the bank, then hit the water with a mighty boooossshhh!

  ‘Jesus! Settle down, Trysten. Was just saying. Look, well, you know yer mother as good—’

  ‘Ah, shut it!’ I stormed off. Just bloody like him, it was. Just bloody like him.

  At the top of the slope I looked up to the house. Warm light streamed from the kitchen window. Inside, Mum was singing some cheesy pop song that I hadn’t heard her singing for years. Her voice drifted along with the cooling evening breeze and the smell of tuna casserole.

  ‘You’re wrong this time, Greg,’ I said as I pressed on towards the house. ‘Good times are coming. Good times are coming, and they’re staying.’

  Bloody dickhead was right, though.

  A few days later when I walked up onto the verandah after school I called out my usual ‘Hey, Kel,’ but the old girl didn’t open her eyes.

  ‘Kel!’ I called, louder. Along with her eyesight and legs, her hearing was going too.

  ‘KEL!’

  Still nothing.

  I walked over, and before I could even give her a little nudge in the side with my shoe, I knew.

  ‘Mum!’ I yelled. ‘Hey, Mum!’

  She raced out.

  ‘What? What is it, Trysten? What’s wrong?’

  She looked from me to Kel, then crumpled in on herself and fell to her knees with a thud.

  That night at dinner, after burying Kel down the bottom corner of the front paddock next to the remains of Ned, Mum was still in tears. I’d teared up too as I dug Kel’s hole, remembering all the time I’d spent playing with her and Ned when they were younger and fitter, when we’d first moved onto the farm. But I only cried for a bit. Poor old girl’s time was up. It was a shame we let her suffer so long. I’d tried to convince Mum to take her to the vet to get her put down, or to let Dad do it with Pop’s old twenty-two. She couldn’t bear the idea, though.

  ‘She was the last, Trysten,’ Mum sobbed over her barely touched soup. ‘The last of Pop’s gang. After old Ruby passed on, and Jacky’s working days were looking numbered, Pop got Ned and Kel from Jim Davis whose kelpie Rosie’d had a litter. Just before you were born, it was. Pop took Shaun with him to Jim’s. Let him pick the pups. And name ’em! Oh, how your brother loved those two dogs. Kel was always his fave, though. Shaun and Pop and Kel and Ned would go roaming round the property together—Ned by Pop’s side, Kel by Shaun’s.’

  I was only five or so when Pop died, so I only had a handful of memories of him. Most of what I knew about him was from stories Mum and Shaun’d told me. Shaun had heaps, especially about Pop fighting the Japanese in the jungles in World War Two. Mum always said all those old stories of Pop’s were probably what sparked Shaun’s dream of joining the forces. I liked hearing about Pop, but sometimes it made me feel a bit shit. Like I’d missed out on something special.

  We sat for the rest of the meal without saying another word. The only sounds were the radio and the humming of the fridge, which Mum kept glancing at between her occasional sip of soup. Probably thinking about those beers in there, the few mid-strengths stashed up the back, left over from when Shaun’d last stayed. Last shop she’d been strong, hadn’t got her usual two slabs of scotch and dry. She didn’t love beer as much as scotch, but she could still knock ’em back.

  As I was clearing the table, she raced off to the lounge room and returned with a pen and paper. ‘Going to sit here a while. Write Shaun a letter. Feel like he needs to know.’

  She was holding my gaze, but I could sense her eyes wanting to steal off to the fridge. She was waiting for me to go to bed so she could crack those beers.

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Yeah, good idea. Probably good to let him know before he gets back, hey. I’ve got some homework, so I might join you here for a bit. Cuppa?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Mum sighed. ‘Alright.’

  After twenty minutes of Mum scribbling on the paper, sipping her tea and eyeing the fridge, and of me drawing triangles in my workbook and punching random numbers in my calculator, she said she was done and with a sigh went off to watch telly, carrying the radio with her. Once she got to the lounge room she flicked the telly on and turned the radio up. I hated it when she had both going at once. I stayed up for another half-hour pretending to do homework till I heard her snoring join the sounds of the radio and telly. />
  I looked at the fridge and thought about pulling the six-pack out, hiding them in the laundry cupboard, or emptying them down the sink. She’d flip if she caught me, though. I knew what Ricky would say about all that beer in there—drink ’em yourself, brother. But I wasn’t keen on beer, not after the first time I’d tried it.

  Ricky’d pinched a tinnie of VB off his dad and snuck it into the sports carnival at the start of the year. ‘Get this into ya,’ he said, handing me the can, which was wrapped in a filthy footy sock. I took a swig. It was bitter and frothy and made me burp something fierce. Ricky insisted the second slog’d be better, but it tasted just as bad to me. ‘Yeah,’ he’d said, wincing as he took his third slog, ‘probably ’cause it’s warm, hey.’

  Maybe the cool ones in the fridge would taste better. Maybe knocking one back would make me feel better. Thinking about Mum, though, I doubted it. Booze never did her any good, and it could well be the same for me.

  I left them where they were and went to bed. In the morning when I opened the fridge, I saw the beers hadn’t been touched. Mum’d stayed strong. Hadn’t snuck into the kitchen at night to drink them.

  But later that afternoon I realised those few measly beers were the least of my worries. I could’ve tipped ’em out, chugged ’em back, it wouldn’t’ve made a spit of difference.