narratorAUSTRALIA Volume One

by narrator AUSTRALIA

  ~~~

  Earlier in the day, somewhere else in the great metropolis, Bob and Arnold were talking.

  Bob said, ‘You’re always there for me, Arnold.’

  ‘And you’re always there for me,’ Arnold said to Bob.

  They were having breakfast together at the kitchen table. Scrambled eggs, which Arnold had prepared.

  ‘Pass the salt,’ Bob said and Arnold got the saltcellar and passed it across.

  ‘The thing is,’ Bob continued, ‘it’s nice having you always there for me and all. I’m not saying it’s not. It’s just that you’re ALWAYS there for me.’

  ‘It’s a double edged sword,’ Arnold said.

  Sighing, Bob said, ‘It would be nice if, just once, you weren’t there for me.’

  ‘Ditto,’ Arnold said.

  ‘I mean, day in day out, week after week. If you want to know the truth, sometimes I think it’s driving me insane. It’s not you as such, it’s just that you’re always there.’

  Arnold put a forkful of scrambled egg in his mouth and Bob said, ‘Sometimes I feel like I just want to punch you.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, really.’

  Putting down the fork, Arnold said, ‘Well, sometimes I want to punch you too. Just punch you and punch you until you go unconscious. At least then I’d get a few moments away from you.’

  ‘Yeah, well fuck you, Arnold.’

  ‘And fuck you too, Bob.’

  ‘Double fuck you,’ Bob said, and Arnold said, ‘Triple fuck.’

  Bob said, ‘Infinity fuck,’ and, annoyed now beyond endurance, Arnold put a hand around Bob’s throat and started squeezing. Bob made a choking sound and began doing the same thing to Arnold. They both passed out together and when they came to they were lying on the kitchen floor.

  They awkwardly got to their feet and sat down again.

  Bob said, ‘Still here, I see.’

  Arnold ignored that and went back to eating his breakfast, and another awkward day started for the conjoined twins.

   

  Sunday 27 May 2012

  Goin' South

  Sallie Ramsay

  Torrens, ACT

  ‘I’m goin’ south, soon as the drought breaks.’

  How many times had she thought it but never said it aloud, even to herself?

  ‘One day,’ she thought. ‘One day, I’ll ’ead south, straight and true, like a homin’ pigeon.’

  She had grown up on the coast where the Great Southern Ocean meets land at the end of its long journey from Antarctica. In winter, she sat for hours watching lines of giant grey breakers hurl themselves in a welter of foam onto the rocks at the foot of the cliffs. She tramped the deserted beaches in wind and rain, head down, hair blowing and face tingling, glowing with the warmth that only comes from challenging the winter head on. She enjoyed the long, lazy, languid days of summer; the thrill of riding a wave right to the beach and feeling the sand hot under her feet but, in her heart she looked forward to the time when the summer crowds left, leaving the cliffs and beaches to her and the circling gulls.

  In the steep hills behind the narrow coastal strip she explored the deep, moist, tree-fern filled gullies where lyre-birds danced. Water ran icy cold over moss-covered pebbles in the creeks where pobblebonk frogs called and, even in summer, the towering mountain ash were wreathed in mist until past midday. Then, one day, he was there; tall, tanned with a laugh that made others laugh, from somewhere she’d never heard of and couldn’t pronounce.

  ‘Drop dead gorgeous,’ she had thought, never dreaming that was what he would do a few months before their fifth wedding anniversary, leaving her to run a property burdened with debt in the middle of the worst drought for a century.

  ‘An undiagnosed congenital circulatory abnormality,’ the death certificate said. Did it really matter why? All that mattered was that she’d lost the love of her life.

  ‘What are you goin’ to do?’ they asked at his funeral.

  ‘I’m goin’ south, soon as the drought breaks,’ she said aloud, for the first time.

  But the drought didn’t break, the ground cracked under the relentless sun, nothing moved in the shimmering heat; the cattle had long gone. The harsh red country, the heat and the distances sucked the spirit out of her. Her eyes longed to rest on the soft greens of a misty gully. She tried to imagine the sting of freezing rain against her face and the smell of salt on the wind.

  He’d never stopped loving the vast cruel country.

  ‘It can wear you down, but you should see it after rain,’ he’d say. ‘Comes alive with flowers, blue, yellow, pink, that stretch as far as you can see. Flocks of birds come flyin’ in from God knows where and frogs start callin’ from the creek. ’

  But it hadn’t rained, not for six years ...

  It was only her love for him and the promise of heading south when the drought broke that kept her going. She never complained and tried with all her heart to love the land he loved, but now, with him gone ...

  Late one afternoon, she was standing on the homestead verandah when an old man kangaroo, its scarred, red hide stretched tight, barely covering its skeleton, collapsed at the edge of what had once been a garden. She watched it make a feeble, heart-breaking attempt to get up before collapsing again on the burning red sand. She went into the house, took a rifle from a cupboard and walked slowly towards the animal. For a moment it seemed to her they locked eyes in perfect understanding. She pulled the trigger and turned away, leaving the carcass where it lay.