by Trent Dalton
‘He could fuck up a lot for us, Muz,’ said the largest screw.
‘We gotta call the warden?’ asked ginger.
‘We’re not calling the warden,’ said the man they called Muzza, Muz and, the least preferred, Murray. ‘He’ll hear about it in good time. He loses just as much from this shit getting out as we do. He doesn’t need to hear about it when he’s home eating Christmas ham with Louise.’
Muzza thought about things for a moment. He bent down to my eye level.
‘You love your mum very much, don’t you, Eli?’ he asked.
I nodded.
‘And you’re a bright boy aren’t you, Eli?’ he asked.
‘Not bright enough, it seems,’ I said.
Muz chuckled. ‘Yes, true shit,’ he said. ‘But you’re bright enough to know what can happen in a place like this when people make our lives difficult. You know that, right?’
I nodded.
‘All sorts of things can happen in the night in here, Eli,’ he said. ‘Real horrible things. Things you wouldn’t believe.’
I nodded.
‘So tell me how you spent your Christmas?’
‘I spent it eating canned pineapple from St Vinnies with me brother and me dad,’ I said.
Muz nodded.
‘Merry fuckin’ Christmas, Eli Bell,’ he said.
The ginger screw, whose name turned out to be Brandon, drove me home in his car, a purple 1982 Commodore. He played a cassette tape of Van Halen’s 1984 all the way home. I tried to pump my fists to the sonic thump of ‘Panama’ but my freedom of expression was hampered somewhat by my left hand being handcuffed to Brandon’s rear left armrest.
‘Rock on, Eli,’ Brandon said, uncuffing me and letting me out, as per my request, three doors down from our house on Lancelot Street.
I scurried light-footed into the house to find August asleep on the living room couch, Papillon resting open on his chest. I saw cigarette smoke down the hallway in Dad’s room. Beneath the saddest Christmas tree ever decorated was a present wrapped in newspaper, a large rectangular book, a felt pen Eli scrawled across it. I tore the paper away to find the gift inside. It was no book. It was a block of paper, maybe 500 blank pages of A4. On the first page was a brief message.
To burn this house down or set the world on fire. Up to you, Eli. Merry Christmas. Dad.
*
He gave me another block of paper for my fourteenth birthday, along with a copy of The Sound and the Fury because he noticed that my shoulders were broadening and he said any young man needs broad shoulders to read Faulkner.
It’s on one of those pieces of A4 paper that I write my list of possible occupations within bike-riding distance that would provide enough money for August and me to save for a deposit on a house in The Gap, in Brisbane’s lush western suburbs, which Mum can move into upon her release:
•Chip fryer at the Big Rooster takeaway restaurant on Barrett Street.
•Shelf stacker at the Foodstore grocery shop on Barrett Street, with the frozen food section August and I hang out in on the hottest summer days, debating which ice block is more bite for your buck out of a Hava Heart, a Bubble O’ Bill and, the unchallengeable masterpiece, the banana Paddle Pop.
•Paperboy for the mad Russians who own the Barrett Street newsagency.
•Bakery assistant for the bakery next door to the newsagency.
•Cleaning out Ol’ Bill Ogden’s pigeon loft on Playford Street (last resort).
I give this some more thought, tapping my blue Kilometrico pen on the paper. And I scribble one more potential occupation, drawing on my limited skill set:
•Drug dealer.
*
A knock on the front door. This never happens. The last time someone knocked on the front door was three months ago when a young police officer came to chase up Dad about a drink-driving incident three years ago in which several local mothers said he knocked over a stop sign outside the childcare centre on Denham Street.
‘Mr Bell?’ the young officer said.
‘Who?’ Dad said.
‘I’m looking for Robert Bell?’ the officer said.
‘Robert Bell?’ Dad pondered. ‘Nahhhh, never heard of ’im.’
‘What’s your name, sir?’ the policeman asked.
‘Me?’ Dad said. ‘I’m Tom.’
The officer took out a notepad.
‘Do you mind if I ask your surname, Tom?’ the policeman asked.
‘Joad,’ Dad said.
‘How do I spell that?’ the policeman asked.
‘Joad like toad,’ Dad said.
‘So . . . J-O-D-E?’ the officer said.
Dad shuddered.
A knock on the door always means something dramatic in this house.
August drops his Papillon – he’s read it twice already – on the living room couch and rushes to the front door. I follow close behind.
It’s Mrs Birkbeck. School guidance counsellor. Red lipstick. Red bead necklace. She holds a manila folder filled with papers.
‘Hi, August,’ she says tenderly. ‘Is your father there?’
I shake my head. She’s come to save the world. She’s come to cause trouble because she’s too fucking earnest and self-inflated to know the difference between caring and carelessness is exactly the size of a five-centimetre thorn lodged in your arsehole.
‘He’s sleeping,’ I say.
‘Can you wake him for me, Eli?’ she asks.
I shake my head again, turn from the door and pace slowly down the hall to Dad’s bedroom.
He’s reading Patrick White in a blue singlet and shorts, rolled cigarette in his mouth.
‘Mrs Birkbeck’s at the door,’ I say.
‘Who the fuck is Mrs Birkbeck?’ he spits.
‘She’s the school guidance counsellor,’ I say.
He rolls his eyes. He hops up from his bed, stubs his cigarette out. He hacks up a chesty tobacco spit to clear his throat, spits it into the ashtray on his bed.
‘You like her?’ he asks.
‘She means well,’ I say.
He walks up the hall to the front door.
‘Hi,’ he says. ‘Robert Bell.’
He smiles and there’s sweetness in his smile, a softness I’ve not really seen. He offers his hand for shaking and I don’t think I’ve seen him do that either, shake another person’s hand like that. I thought it was just August and me he knew how to interact with on a human level, and we usually just communicate in nods and grunts.
‘Poppy Birkbeck, Mr Bell,’ she says. ‘I’m the boys’ guidance counsellor at school.’
‘Yeah, Eli’s been telling me about all the wonderful guidance you’ve been giving to my boys,’ he says.
The lying bastard.
Mrs Birkbeck looks quietly and briefly moved. ‘They have?’ she replies, looking at me, her cheeks glowing red. ‘Well, Mr Bell, I believe your boys are very special. I believe they have great potential and I guess I consider it my job to inspire them enough to turn potential into reality.’
Dad nods his head, smiling. Reality. You know, midnight anxiety fits. Suicidal depressive episodes. Three-day benders. Fist-split eyebrows. Bile vomit. Runny shit. Brown piss. Reality.
‘Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all,’ Dad offers.
‘Yes!’ Mrs Birkbeck says, taken aback.
‘Aristotle,’ Dad says earnestly.
‘Yes!’ Mrs Birkbeck says. ‘I live my life by that quote.’
‘Then you keep on livin’, Poppy Birkbeck, and you keep on inspirin’ those kids,’ Dad says sincerely.
Who the fuck is this guy?
‘I will,’ she smiles. ‘I promise.’ Then she refocuses. ‘Look, Robert, can I call you Robert?’
Dad nods.
‘Ummm . . . the boys weren’t at school again today and . . . umm . . .’
‘I’m sorry about that,’ Dad interjects. ‘I took the boys to a funeral of an old friend of theirs. It’s been a tough couple of days for ’em.’
She looks at August and me.
‘A tough couple of years, I understand,’ she says.
We all nod, Dad, August and me, like we’re starring in some sick midday movie.
‘Can I talk to you for a minute, Robert?’ she asks. ‘Maybe just the two of us?’
Dad takes a deep breath. Nods.
‘You two make yourselves scarce, will ya?’ he says.
August and I pad down the ramp at the side of the house, down past the hot water system and a couple of Dad’s old rusting engines. Then we duck under the house, weave through Dad’s store of unwanted and unworking washing machines and refrigerators. The space beneath the house narrows as the earth floor climbs up towards the living room and kitchen areas of the house. We crawl up to the top left corner of the under-house area, damp brown dirt caking our kneecaps, and sit right beneath the wooden floor of the kitchen where Dad and Mrs Birkbeck talk about August and me at the octagonal table Dad usually passes out on at midnight on sole-parent pension day. We can hear every word through the cracks between the floorboards.
‘In all honesty, the work August produces is brilliant,’ Mrs Birkbeck says. ‘His artistic control and originality and innate skill represent a genuine artistic talent, but he . . . he . . .’
She stops.
‘Go on,’ Dad says.
‘He troubles me,’ she says. ‘Both the boys trouble me.’
I never should have told her a word. She had rat written all over her.
‘Can I show you something?’ echoes Mrs Birkbeck’s voice through the cracks.
August is lying down with his back on the dirt. He’s listening but he’s not caring about what he’s hearing. With his hands tucked behind his head like that, he might as well be daydreaming by the Mississippi River with a straw of grass in his mouth.
But I care.
‘This is a painting August did in art class last year,’ she says.
There’s a long pause.
‘And these . . .’ We hear the sound of paper in her hands. ‘. . . these were done early this year and these were done just last week.’
Another long pause.
‘As you can see, Mr Bell . . . ummm . . . Robert . . . August appears obsessed with this particular scene. Now, somewhat of an issue has formed between August and his art teacher, Miss Prodger, because while Miss Prodger believes August is one of her most outstanding and committed students, he simply refuses to paint any other image but this one. Last month the students were asked to paint a still life, and August painted this scene. The month before that they were asked to paint a Surrealist image, and August painted this. Last week August was asked to paint an Australian landscape; August painted that same scene again.’
August stares straight up at the floorboards, unmoved.
Dad remains silent.
‘I would never normally betray the confidence of a student,’ she says. ‘I consider my office a sacred space for sharing and healing and educating. I sometimes call it the Vault and only myself and my students know the password to the Vault and the password is “Respect”.’
August rolls his eyes.
‘But when I feel the safety of individuals within our school community might be at risk, then I feel I must say something,’ she says.
‘If you think August is gonna hurt someone then you’re sniffin’ the wrong rabbit hole, I’m afraid,’ Dad says. ‘That boy don’t hurt no one who don’t deserve it. He doesn’t do anything on a whim. He doesn’t carry out a single action that he hasn’t first thought through a hundred times over.’
‘That’s interesting you say that,’ she says.
‘Say what?’ Dad replies.
‘A hundred times over,’ she says.
‘Well, he’s a deep thinker,’ Dad says.
Another long pause.
‘It’s not the other students I’m concerned about, Robert,’ she says. ‘I truly believe August – and those thoughts he keeps running over in that extraordinary mind of his – is of risk to no one but himself.’
A chair slides briefly across the wooden floor of the kitchen.
‘Do you recognise that scene?’ she asks.
‘Yeah, I know what he’s paintin’,’ Dad says.
‘Eli called it “the moon pool”,’ she says. ‘Have you ever heard him call it that, “the moon pool”?’
‘No,’ Dad says.
August looks at me. What did you tell her, Eli, you fuckin’ rat?
I whisper: ‘I had to give her somethin’. She was gonna kick me outta school.’
August looks at me. You told that crazy witch about the moon pool?
‘When Principal Gardner told me of the recent traumas in their lives I thought it was natural that the effects of these events would manifest themselves in the boys’ behaviours in some way,’ Mrs Birkbeck says above the floorboards. ‘I believe they are both suffering from some kind of post-traumatic stress disorder.’
‘What, like shellshock or something?’ Dad asks. ‘You reckon they been in a war, Mrs Birkbeck? You reckon those boys just got back from the Somme, Mrs Birkbeck?’
Dad’s starting to lose his patience.
‘Well, of a kind,’ she says. ‘Not a war of bullets and bombs. But a war of words and memories and moments, just as damaging to a growing boy’s brain, one could say, as anything on the Western Front.’
‘You sayin’ they’re loopy?’ Dad asks.
‘I’m not saying that,’ she says.
‘Sounds like you’re sayin’ they’re nuts,’ he says.
‘What I’m saying is some of the things running through their heads are . . . unusual,’ she says.
‘What things?’
August looks at me. Why do you think I never told anyone but you, Eli?
‘Things that could potentially be harmful to both boys,’ Mrs Birkbeck says. ‘Things that I feel I am obligated to tell the Department of Child Safety.’
‘Child Safety?’ Dad echoes. The words are acid on his tongue.
August looks at me. You fucked it all up, Eli. See what you’ve done. You couldn’t keep your mouth shut, could you? You couldn’t be discreet.
‘I feel those two boys are planning something,’ Mrs Birkbeck says. ‘It feels like they’re heading towards some destination that maybe none of us will know about until it’s too late.’
‘Destination?’ Dad asks. ‘Please tell me where they’re going, Mrs Birkbeck? London, Paris, the Birdsville Races?’
‘I don’t mean a physical place, necessarily,’ she says. ‘I mean they’re heading to certain destinations in their minds that are not safe for teenaged boys to go to.’
Dad laughs.
‘You get all that from August’s little watercolours?’ Dad asks. ‘Have your boys ever engaged in any suicidal behaviours, Robert?’ Mrs Birkbeck asks.
August shakes his head, rolls his eyes. I place an imaginary pistol below my chin, giggling, blow my imaginary brains out. August chuckles, hangs himself, tongue out, on an imaginary noose.
‘Eli said August was painting his dreams,’ Mrs Birkbeck says. ‘The moon pool was from Eli’s dreams, he said. But he said he associated deep feelings of fear, feelings of darkness, with the moon pool. He said he could recall this dream in vivid detail, Robert. Has Eli ever spoken to you about his recurring dreams?’
August has a twig in his hand that he breaks into small bits. He throws a bit of stick at my head.
‘No,’ Dad says.
‘He can recall his dreams with remarkable clarity,’ she says. ‘There is great violence in these dreams, Robert. When he tells me about some of these dreams he can describe the sound of his mother’s voice, the way drops of blood look on the wooden floors of a house, he can tell me the smells of things. But I told him that dreams do not come accompanied with smells. Dreams do not come with sound. And I asked Eli to start calling these dreams what they are.’
A long pause.
‘What are they?’ Dad asks.
‘Memories,’ Mrs Birkbeck say
s.
August writes in the air. Child Safety takes August Bell to hell.
August writes in the air. Child Safety teaches Eli Bell to never tell.
‘Eli said the car went into the moon pool two days before Frances left you,’ Mrs Birkbeck says.
‘Why do you want to dredge all this shit up?’ Dad asks. ‘Those boys are doin’ all right. They’re movin’ on. They can’t move on when bleeding hearts like you keep dredgin’ up shit and twistin’ things around in their heads and replacin’ things that happened in their heads with things that happened in your head.’
‘Eli said you drove them into the moon pool, Robert.’
And the dream feels so different when she says it like that. You drove them into the moon pool. He did drive us into the moon pool. Nobody else did. It had to be him. We were in the back seat and we were playing corners, rolling against each other in the back seat with the weight of a turn squashing one of us into the side door.
‘I like your sons, Robert,’ Mrs Birkbeck says. ‘I’ve come here today in the hope, for their sake, that you can convince me I should not inform the department that August and Eli Bell live in fear of their only guardian.’
I remember the dream. I remember the memory. It was night and the car turned sharply off the road and the car bounced along gravel and between tall gum trees that passed by my window like God was shuffling through images on a life slideshow.
‘It was a panic attack,’ Dad says. ‘I have panic attacks. I get ’em all the time. Had ’em even when I was a kid.’
‘I think Eli believes you did it on purpose,’ Mrs Birkbeck says. ‘I think he believes you intentionally swerved off the road that night.’
‘So did his mother,’ Dad says. ‘Why do you think she fucked off?’
A long pause.
‘It was a panic attack,’ Dad says. ‘Go ask the cops in Samford if you don’t believe me.’
Samford. Yes. Samford. It was rural. Had to be Samford. All the trees and hills. The wheels bounced hard on dips and ditches in the rolling land beneath us. I had enough time to look across at Dad in the front seat. ‘Close your eyes,’ he said.
‘I was takin’ ’em out to Cedar Creek Falls,’ Dad says.
‘Why would you go to Cedar Creek Falls at night-time?’ Mrs Birkbeck asks.