Boy Swallows Universe

by Trent Dalton

  *

  The sun wakes me and my head throbs and I stare into the lips of the dried mullet head. I drink from a green council water fountain for two straight minutes. I strip to my underpants and swim in the lice-filled waters by the pier. I ride home and find August sitting on the lounge room couch exactly where I left him last night. He’s smiling.

  ‘What?’ I ask.

  Nothing.

  We watch television. It’s lunch in a test match between Australia and Pakistan.

  ‘How we goin’?’

  August writes in the air. Dean Jones on 82.

  I’m tired. My bones are stiff. I lean my head back and close my eyes on the couch.

  But August clicks his fingers. I open my eyes again to see him pointing at the TV screen. He points at a Channel Nine local midday news bulletin.

  ‘Christmas has come early for one very special family in Bracken Ridge in Brisbane’s northern suburbs,’ says the newsreader, a woman with big black hair-sprayed hair. Then there’s a shot of Shelly Huffman in her wheelchair with her parents outside their house on Tor Street.

  ‘That’s Shelly!’ I say.

  August laughs. Nods his head, claps his hands.

  The newsreader’s voice rolls over a series of images of Shelly and her parents weeping and hugging each other.

  ‘For the past three years, parents of four Tess and Craig Huffman have been trying to raise the $70,000 they need to transform their home into a disability-friendly space for their seventeen-year-old daughter, Shelly, who is living with muscular dystrophy. As of yesterday, they had raised $34,540 through school and community fundraising drives. Then, this morning, Tess Huffman opened her front door.’

  In the bulletin, Shelly’s Mum, Tess, wipes a tear from her eye and talks to a reporter in her front yard. She’s holding a box wrapped in Christmas wrapping.

  ‘I was going down to the bakery to get some scones because Shelly’s grandma was due to come around,’ she says. ‘I open the front door and there’s this box on the doormat wrapped in this nice wrapping paper.’

  The wrapping paper is a series of intersecting rows of candy canes and Christmas trees. ‘I tear it open and look inside and there’s all this cash,’ Tess says, sobbing. ‘It’s a miracle.’

  The footage cuts to a police officer standing in Shelly’s front yard.

  ‘We’re looking at a total of $49,500 in cash,’ says the straight-faced police officer. ‘We’re still making some investigations into the origins of the money, but from early assessments it would appear the money was donated by a genuine good Samaritan with a big heart.’

  I turn to August. He’s beaming, slapping his knees.

  The on-the-ground reporter can be heard off camera asking Shelly a question.

  ‘What do you want to say to that good person out there who left this money on your doorstep, Shelly?’

  Shelly’s squinting, looking into the sun.

  ‘I just wanna say . . . I just wanna say . . . whoever you are . . . I love you.’

  August stands in celebration, nodding his head in triumph.

  I stand and take two long steps before diving at his pelvis and driving him into the sliding window over the front porch. The window almost shatters on the impact of August’s rear skull. I throw a flurry of uppercut punches at his stomach and chin.

  ‘You fuckin’ idiot!’ I scream. Then he lifts me up from the waist and throws me with a sweeping hurl on top of the television. The newsreader tips over off Dad’s brown TV stand. The peach-coloured ceramic lamp sitting on top of the TV breaks into eight jagged pieces on the wooden floor. Dad marches out of his bedroom. ‘What the fuck is going on ’ere!’ he barks.

  I charge at August again and he drives his left then right fists into my face, and I throw a round of formless punches back as Dad comes between us.

  ‘Eli,’ he screams. ‘Give it a rest.’

  Dad pushes me back and I take a breath.

  ‘What have you done?’ I scream. ‘You’ve lost your mind, Gus. You’re fuckin’ crazy.’

  He scribbles in the air. I’m sorry, Eli. I had to.

  ‘You’re not special, Gus,’ I say. ‘You’re just fuckin’ nuts. You didn’t get brought back. There’s no more universes than this one and it’s a fuckin’ hole. There’s no more Augusts out there. There’s only one and he’s fucking deranged.’

  August smiles. He scribbles in the air.

  You were gonna get caught with that money, Eli.

  ‘Just talk, fuckhead,’ I scream. ‘I’m sick of your fuckin’ scribbles.’

  We all catch our breath. The newsreader is still talking out of the television lying face up behind Dad’s TV stand: ‘Well, if that story doesn’t warm your heart I don’t know what will,’ she says.

  August and I stare at each other. August talking more than I can in silence. I had to do it, Eli.

  The phone rings.

  It was no good in our hands, Eli, all that money. No good. Shelly needs it more than us.

  ‘Mrs Birkbeck was right about you, Gus,’ I say. ‘I reckon you had to make up all that bullshit about the people on the phones because you were damaged. You were so fucked up by reality you ran away into fantasy.’

  But you heard them, Eli. You heard them on the phone, too.

  ‘I was playing along, Gus,’ I say. ‘I bought into the bullshit because I felt sorry for you being such a nutter.’

  I’m sorry, Gus. I’m sorry.

  ‘Well, here’s the reality, Gus,’ I say. I point at Dad. ‘He’s so fuckin’ crazy he tried to drive us into a dam. And you’re just as crazy as him and maybe I’m just as crazy as you.’

  I turn to Dad. I don’t know why I say it but I say it. It’s all I want to say. It’s all I want to know.

  ‘Did you mean to do it?’

  ‘What?’ he says softly.

  He’s lost for words. He’s mute.

  ‘Everybody mute,’ I scream. ‘Whole world gone mute. Let me rephrase that, because maybe it’s too hard to understand and I understand that because I sure as shit can’t understand why you’d mean to do it, but did you mean to drive us into the dam?’

  The phone rings. Dad is momentarily stunned by the question.

  ‘Teddy says you tried to fuckin’ kill us,’ I shout. ‘Teddy says it wasn’t some panic attack bullshit. Teddy says you’re fuckin’ crazy.’

  The phone rings. Dad shakes his head, furious.

  ‘For fuck’s sake, Eli, you gonna answer the phone?’ Dad asks.

  ‘Why don’t you answer it?’ I reply.

  ‘It’s your mum,’ Dad says.

  ‘Mum?’

  ‘She called this morning,’ Dad says.

  ‘You spoke to her?’ I ask.

  He spoke to her. Dad spoke to Mum. That’s a phenomenon I’m not familiar with.

  ‘Yeah, I spoke to her. Some people in this house know how to communicate using their voice box,’ he says.

  The phone rings.

  ‘What did she want?’

  ‘She didn’t say.’

  The phone rings. I pick it up.

  ‘Mum.’

  ‘Hey, sweetheart.’

  ‘Hey.’

  Long silence.

  ‘How are you?’ she asks.

  Terrible. Never been worse. Heart like a brick. Hurricane for a head. I woke up hungover from the rum last night and now I’m hungover and missing $49,500.

  ‘Good,’ I lie, sucking in breaths.

  ‘You don’t sound too good?’

  ‘I’m all right, how are you?’

  ‘Good,’ she says. ‘Be better if you and August dropped round soon.’

  Long silence.

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘What do I think about what?’

  ‘Do you think you might want to come around and see me again?’

  ‘Not while he’s there, Mum.’

  ‘He wants to see you boys, Eli,’ she says. ‘He wants to say sorry in person for what he did.’

  This again.
Mum believing another suburban Queensland male leopard is gonna change his spots.

  ‘Mum, crazy fuckin’ coward abusers don’t change their crazy fuckin’ coward spots.’

  Long silence.

  ‘He really is sorry about all that,’ she says.

  ‘He say sorry to you?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘I don’t want to go into specifics but . . .’

  ‘Could you . . . please?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Could you please go into specifics? I’m sick of fragments. All you people ever do is talk in fragments and I don’t ever get any specifics. You always say you’ll tell me when I’m older but I get older and the stories only get more vague. Nothing fits. It’s all cracked glass bullshit. You don’t tell stories. You tell beginnings and middles and ends but you don’t tell stories. You and Dad have never told me a single complete story.’

  Long silence. Long silence and tears.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she says.

  ‘What did Iwan Krol do to Lyle?’

  Tears.

  ‘Don’t do this, Eli.’

  ‘He cut him up, didn’t he? Darren told me what he does. If he’s nice he chops the head off first . . .’

  ‘Stop it, Eli.’

  ‘But if he’s feelin’ real sadistic, maybe if he hasn’t had his lunch yet, or maybe if he woke up on the wrong side of his coffin, he chops off the ankles first and he keeps them muzzled but he keeps them alive. Then he chops the wrists and then a leg and then an arm, maybe. Back and forth he goes . . .’

  ‘Eli, I’m worried about you.’

  ‘Not as worried as I am.’

  Long silence.

  ‘I called to tell you something,’ Mum says.

  ‘You cut off Teddy’s head?’

  Long silence. Stop it, Eli. You’re losing your mind. Find it, Eli. Find your lost mind.

  ‘Are you done?’ Mum asks.

  ‘Yeah,’ I say.

  ‘I’ve been doing some study,’ she says.

  That’s great.

  ‘That’s great.’

  ‘Thanks. Are you being sarcastic?’

  ‘No. It’s really great, Mum. What are you studying?’

  ‘Social work. I started reading the books inside. The government kicks in a bit for my tuition and all I have to do is read up a storm. I think I’ve read more textbooks on the subject than some of my tutors.’

  ‘That’s really great, Mum.’

  ‘You proud of me?’

  ‘I’m always proud of you.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Bein’ here.’

  ‘Bein’ where?’

  ‘Just bein’.’

  ‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘Look, I’m calling because a woman in my Communications lecture says her nephew is a young journalist at The Courier-Mail. I told her that’s where my boy, Eli, dreams of working. I told her he’s going to be a great police rounder . . .’

  ‘Roundsman.’

  ‘Yeah, a great police roundsman, and she says I should tell my boy that the paper is always hiring youngsters for cadetships. You just got to go knock on the door and ask if you could apply for one.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s that simple, Mum.’

  ‘Sure it is. I looked up the name of the big editor-in-chief on the newspaper. His name is Brian Robertson. You go in and ask for him to come down from his office and see you for two minutes – just two minutes – because that’s all it will take for him to see it.’

  ‘See what?’

  ‘The spark,’ she says. ‘He’ll see it. He’ll see how special you are.’

  ‘I’m not special, Mum.’

  ‘Yes, you are,’ she says. ‘You just don’t believe it yet.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mum, I gotta go. I’m not feeling well.’

  ‘Are you sick? What’s wrong?’

  ‘I’m okay, I’m just not up for talking so much. You wanna talk to August?’

  ‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘You go ask that editor for one of those cadetships, Eli. You do it. Two minutes. That’s all you need.’

  ‘I love you, Mum.’

  ‘I love you, Eli.’

  I pass the phone to August.

  ‘Can you stay out of the room for a bit?’ I say.

  He nods. August never talks down the phone to Mum. He just listens. I never know what she says to him. I guess she just says.

  *

  I close the door on our bedroom and lift a thin slab of A4 paper up onto my bed. Paper. For burning this house down or setting the world on fire. With my spark. There’s a chewed blue Kilometrico ballpoint pen on my bedhead. I write on the paper but the ink won’t come through the ballpoint. I roll the pen furiously between my palms to heat it up and the ink runs enough for me to write and underline the title of my story.

  A Noose of Eli Bells

  In the event I die in a suburban Bracken Ridge inferno or in the event that I am splattered on the Sandgate Station platform 1 railway line by the 4.30 a.m. train to Central after I’ve greased the rails with Vaseline like Ben Yates did two years ago when Shannon Dennis told him under no circumstances – not even if he completed his butcher’s apprenticeship – was she going to have his child, I feel it is important for me to at least lay down some of the specifics surrounding the disappearance of Lyle Orlik. The facts of the matter are, first and foremost, Teddy Kallas had Lyle Orlik killed because he was in love with my mum. My mum does not love Teddy Kallas but she did love Lyle Orlik, a good and decent man who just happened to be a peddler of smack. It took me some time to come to terms with the realities of Lyle’s fate but I now accept he was most likely severed limb from limb by a man named Iwan Krol, the psychopathic muscle of Tytus Broz, whose artificial limb factory in Moorooka, south Brisbane, is a front for a vast heroin trafficking empire spread across south-east Queensland.

  In the event I am found splattered across the Sandgate Station railway line, please direct all subsequent questions as to why, as well as all bills for any clean-up costs, to Teddy Kallas of Wacol, south-west Brisbane.

  For the record, I am not, nor ever was, special. I thought for a while there that August and I really were special. I thought for a while there I really was hearing those voices down the line on Lyle’s mysterious red phone. But I realise now we are not special. I realise Mrs Birkbeck is right. The human mind will convince us of anything in the name of survival. Trauma wears many masks. I have worn mine. But no more. Teddy Kallas is right. My brother and I were never special. We were just fuckin’ crazy.

  A knuckle knocks on my bedroom door.

  ‘Go away, August,’ I say. ‘I’m on a roll here.’

  I wait for the door to open despite my request. It doesn’t. But a copy of today’s Courier-Mail slides into the room beneath the door.

  The paper is open at a ‘Special Investigation’ in the middle feature pages of the paper: ‘SUBURBAN WARFARE – ASIAN HEROIN GANG WARS ERUPT IN THE STREETS OF BRISBANE’.

  It’s a sweeping investigation into the violence between Darra’s 5T and BTK gangs and the widespread trafficking of Golden Triangle heroin across south-east Queensland. It’s a well-researched and well-written piece speaking of suspected anonymous Brisbane drug kingpins and Vietnamese drug families posing as humble and hardworking restaurateurs while expanding million-dollar drug networks north from Melbourne and Sydney. The journalist has quoted an ex-drug enforcement police officer who has complained of corrupt politicians and police heads ‘turning a blind eye for too long’ to the spread of heroin out of the outer western Brisbane suburbs. The police informant speaks of widespread suspicions among officers that several prominent Brisbane businessmen have made their fortunes ‘secretly riding the golden dragon of the illicit Asian drug scene’.

  ‘They’re out there walking among us,’ the informant says. ‘So-called upstanding members of Brisbane society getting away with murder.’

  I search for the journalist’s byline. I lie back on my bed and I write the
journalist’s name in the air with my middle finger that sits beside the lucky finger with the lucky freckle I lost to an upstanding member of Brisbane society currently getting away with murder. Her name looks beautiful up there in the invisible air.

  Caitlyn Spies.

  Boy Digs Deep

  I first see the man in the yellow two-door Ford Mustang when I’m sitting on the seats outside the Sandgate train station eating a sausage roll with sauce for lunch. He pulls up in the space in the car park reserved for buses and he stares out his window at me. Mid-forties, maybe. He looks big from here, tall and muscular in the cramped car seat. He has black hair and a black moustache. Black eyes watching me. We make eye contact but I turn away awkwardly just when I think he might have nodded at me. He pulls away from the bus stop and parks his car in the station’s car park. He hops out of his car. My train to Central arrives and I dump the last bite of sausage roll in the bin and pace quickly up to the top end of the station platform.

  I disembark at Bowen Hills train station, skip down a side street to the large red brick building with the fancy letters spelling The Courier-Mail on a sign attached to its front wall. It took me three months to summon up the plums to come here. This is where the paper is put together. This is where Caitlyn Spies works. She made it. She made it all the way from the South-West Star to where she belongs. Part of the paper’s crime-writing team, probably the team’s brightest shining star.

  ‘I’m here to see the editor-in-chief, Brian Robertson,’ I say with an air of confidence to the woman at the front desk. She’s short with short black hair and bright orange hoop earrings.

  ‘Is he expecting you?’ the woman on the desk asks.

  I fix my tie. It’s strangling my neck. Dad tied it too tight. It’s Dad’s tie. He picked it up at St Vinnies for fifty cents. The tie is covered in the letters of the alphabet, with the letters W, O, R, D and S highlighted in bright yellow. Dad said it would convey my love of words to the editor-in-chief, Brian Robertson.

  ‘Yes,’ I say, nodding my head. ‘But only in the sense that he should expect the most promising young budding journalists in Brisbane to enter the door of this building expecting to see him.’