‘Moorr-toon!’ Mum is yelling.
Oh. Not a murder. Please.
‘Morton! Morton!’
She sees me coming. All of a sudden and out of nowhere, something hits me in the gob and I go down again. It’s Errol. Jumped off the dunny roof at me. Me mouth’s full of feathers and stink.
‘It’s your father,’ Mum says, looking at me like she’s not sure of anything in the world any more. ‘Ort, he’s awake. He’s awake.’
I get up on one elbow, all embarrassed. Errol shakes himself, poops on my hand. Errol is a hen. A she. I never thought of it before.
II
Chapter Six
FROM UP THE road I can hear a car coming. It’s a sound like a waterfall from a long way off. Tyres make that water sound on the road. I’m up on the big fat fencepost here, looking. A bunny bounces out of the bush and onto the bitumen. Out the way, bunny, you’ll get chundered by the car that’s bringing me Dad home. Some ants crawl up my leg but I’ve got no time for them. Have to hope they behave themselves. A long time I’ve been waiting for today. Feels like I been waiting all my life, like I been waiting since before dads were invented.
There. I see the sun off the windscreen and hear the engine sound. Real quick, I pull the comb out of my shorts and push my hair back off my face. Never wanted to comb me hair before in all my life. Hear that engine – a big six. Dad likes a big six. Roomy, he reckons. Give you room for your elbows under the bonnet. But a terrible waste of juice, he always says.
Here he comes, slowing down now. But as they pull into the gravel drive I can see another man driving, a man with short red hair and a white jacket. I jump down and run beside the car for a while, and before it leaves me behind up the track I get a look inside and see my Dad lying in the back with the sheets and short hair and a kind of nothing look on his face.
By the time I get to the house they already have him out on a stretcher thing and are carrying him inside and the bloke in white is talking.
‘We’ll have to see if you can manage. And of course there’s no promises.’
‘The doctor has explained it all to me,’ Mum says, kind of flustered.
‘And who’s this athletic young man?’ He looks at me. I don’t like red hair.
‘This is my son Morton.’
‘Well, hullo, Morton.’
‘Why isn’t he walking?’ I ask. ‘Why wasn’t he driving the car? What are you carrying him for?’
They stop walking with him and the sun hits us hard and the white sheet and the white suit make us all squint.
‘I think we’d better get Mr Flack out of the sun.’ They get walking again. Tegwyn opens the door looking squinty like she’s just got out of bed, and I follow them in.
I didn’t know this was going to happen. I thought he was going to be alright, but he looks pretty crook to me. From up the back of the house Grammar is calling.
‘Is that you, Lil Pickering?’
‘No, Mum, it’s me. We’ve brought Sam home.’
Why didn’t he bring himself home? What the hell’s happening here?
‘Shame about his hair,’ Tegwyn says.
‘Yes,’ Mum says, ‘he had beautiful hair. It’ll grow back.’
‘Took him years to grow it,’ I say. ‘He told me it took him years.’
‘Well, he’s got plenty of time to grow it back.’
‘He looks like a punk with it all standing up like that,’ Tegwyn says with a laugh.
‘Short hair looks more manly, anyway,’ says the man in white.
I pull a face at him when he looks away. I hate red hair. Short and red. Him and Mum go into the kitchen and talk quiet for a bit and I get a good look at my Dad. His face is pale and thin and it makes his whiskers stand out like pig-bristles. I pull the sheet down and what I see on his neck makes me yell.
‘What’s going on?’ the redheaded man says, running in.
‘Ort, what’s wrong?’
‘His neck! What they do to his neck?’
‘It’s a tracheotomy, son,’ the man says. ‘The doctors had to open his throat to let him breathe. He was all smashed up.’
Mum touches me on the arm but I don’t look up from the big gob of sticky plaster that goes up and down with his breathing. A whistling comes out. Like the wind through the crack in a door. It makes me cold all over. Makes me bum tingle. A hole in his throat.
‘Anyway, Mrs Flack, as I was saying, hospice workers will visit if you like and we’ll rely on you to keep in touch. I’ll bring the wheelchair in and show you how to set it up.’
While they go outside, I get a good look at Dad’s face. One eye is all wonky and white at the edges. His mouth is alright and his teeth look okay. He looks at me with his one good eye and his one wonky eye as I open his lips with my finger. I can’t tell if he knows me. I pull the sheet down further. All his chest is covered with sticky plaster. He has big white undies on that look like they come from the hospital. His legs are skinny and a bit yellow. There’s all stitch marks on them and mercurochrome painted here and there.
Mum and the redhead come in with the wheelchair. Just the look of it makes me frightened. They hoist Dad up and slide him into the big armchair in the corner and prop him up with pillows, put a blanket on his knees, and Mum kisses him on the cheek.
Then the redhead goes, revving up his hospital’s big six Holden. I sit there for a long time just looking at what’s left of my Dad, listening to that cold draught whistling in and out of him.
‘I’m not going back to school,’ Tegwyn says, eating her tiny piece of steak. She starves herself something terrible.
Mum looks up. You can hear the whistling from in the loungeroom. Mum looks at her fork. ‘Why not, love?’
‘I wanna get a job.’
This kind of talk turns me guts. It’s like a fight without blood or fists. Words going back and across. Makes you wanna keep your head down.
‘You’ll get a better job if you stay at school two more years, you know.’
‘I don’t wanna better job. Anyway, in two years there’ll be no jobs.’
‘Where will you work?’ Mum says, looking real tired. ‘There’s almost no jobs now.’
‘In the city.’
Mum sighs.
‘You did,’ Tegwyn says, kind of whining. ‘You got a job early and that was in the city.’
Mum nods.
‘Don’t you like us?’ I say. The words just come out of my mouth. I wasn’t even thinking of them. It scares the pants offer me.
Tegwyn spits a bit of fat onto her plate. ‘I hate it here.’
Then Mum is crying, hands over her face, elbows on the table, and Tegwyn goes to her room and I just sit there feeling useless.
‘I thought Dad was going to be alright,’ I murmur, after a long time.
‘He will be,’ Mum whispers, snuffling. Some snot shines on her lips and her eyes are angry with tears. ‘He will be, Ort. I won’t let him not be.’
Here I am up in the middle of the night, watching through the door cracks and the holes in the wall. There’s an old sticker on Mum and Dad’s door that says GET THEM OUT OF VIETNAM. There’s a good hole right next to it. On the big bed, Mum is asleep with the sheet up to her ears, and Dad lies there with his eyes open, his toes moving a bit like they’re dancing in the breeze that comes in the window. The house is quiet except for breathing in Tegwyn’s room, snoring from Grammar’s and that cold whistle from in there. He’s still all busted up. He hasn’t been fixed. He should be fixed.
It took me and Mum ages to put him to bed. Flamin’ Tegwyn wouldn’t come out of her room. We had to roll him and drag him like a feed sack, push him, pull him. There’s his heel marks in the dust on the floorboards in the hall. How are we gonna keep it up? How? What do we do to get him fixed? He’s not bad, you know. He’s done nothing bad. My Dad kisses me goodnight and he puts his fingers in me hair and tells me stories and shows me how to do things that you don’t normally think of. He sits out on the verandah at the back and plays his
old guitar with the LIVE SIMPLE sticker on it and teaches me chords that are too big for my fingers. He kisses Mum all the time and calls her ‘Babe’ like on the movies. He knows about trees and cars and chooks. He knows everything. He’s flamin’ better than everyone else’s stupid dad, he can run faster and his hair is long like a Red Indian’s. He never, ever, ever hits me. He loves us. He’s good! Good! Crap! Turd! Shit! He’s good, you hear me?
‘Ort! Stop all that shouting. What are you doing out of bed? Get back to bed. You’ll wake the dead.’
It shakes me up, you know. I thought I was only thinking. I reckon I’m going nuts. It’s real embarrassing. But I don’t go to bed. I can’t sleep. It’s lonely when you can’t sleep.
This used to be a happy family. Everyone loves everyone. Why does it go like this? It’s all stupid.
Outside, the ground is all bright like there’s a full moon. I go out. There’s no moon. The sky is clear and winking at me a thousand times. There’s no moon. The light is coming from the roof. I walk out into the yard and look back at the house. There it is, that little cloud, small and fat like a woolly sheep, glowing bright. It looks like it’s in exactly the right place there just above the roof. It’s crazy, but inside me it feels like that shining cloud is the most normal thing in the world. And I bet no one else can see it. It just shines down at me and it makes me smile and I stand there until I feel tired enough to go inside to bed.
My porridge looks like fresh sick with all steam coming up out of it. I feel tired already. Dad is in his chair at the end of the table and Mum is giving him his porridge, feeding him like he’s a baby. Makes me angry to see that. It took us so long to get him in there to the kitchen out of bed. Mum won’t let him stay in bed. ‘I’m not having him waste away in there,’ she said. She won’t use the wheelchair; it’s still in the loungeroom. I’m with her on that. It’s a horrible-looking thing. But it’s so much work moving him. We can’t keep it up. I know it.
‘Eat your breakfast, Ort,’ Mum says. She looks real tired.
‘Can’t.’
‘You’ll never grow up big and strong.’ What does she think I am, a baby?
‘Like Dad, I s’pose.’ And straight away I wish I didn’t say it. Mum’s face goes all crook and white.
Tegwyn comes in with an empty plate.
‘She ate it all. Like a pig.’
‘Don’t say that, love.’
‘I’m sick of her. Why do I have to feed her? Why do I have to look after her?’
‘You’re older.’
‘No, I’m a girl. Ort doesn’t have to ’cause he’s a boy, ’cause he’s got a dangler and I haven’t.’
I look at Mum. She looks surprised like she’s never thought of it before.
‘You and Dad always talk about boys and girls being equal. You’re hypocrites. I’m leaving school.’
Mum still has that surprise on her face. ‘Well,’ she says, ‘now we’ve got two people to look after. You’ll have to look after one of ’em. I’ll have to find some work to get us some money. Maybe Mrs Musworth’ll give me some laundering. Now there’s two people, an old woman and her son.’
‘You don’t think you’re hypocrites, then?’ Tegwyn puts her nose up in the air.
‘I don’t know.’ She looks worried. ‘Maybe we are.’
Tegwyn sits down to her porridge like she’s not real happy with that answer. I keep my eyes away from hers. I didn’t know she hated me for being a boy.
Mum sighs. The kitchen is warm. The fire I lit in the stove is going good. Lunch time, it will be too hot to sit in here. I look at Dad’s eyes, try to see where they’re looking. Wonder what he saw when he was in that coma. It’s like his eyes are looking in and not out. Wish he could tell me about it.
And then there’s a thump at the front door. We all look at each other.
‘If that’s Mr Cherry, you call me straight away,’ Mum says, looking like one more thing will be the end.
I go through to the front door that we never used until lately, and I open it with a pull and there at the door is a big man with old clothes that you could buy at a school fete for fifty cents, a real long face with a big hoe chin, funny eyes, a book in his hands, and grass seeds all over him.
‘Hello, Morton, is your mother there?’
I don’t say a flamin’ word. I know him. Me mouth must be way open but I can’t help it. It’s the joker from under the bridge.
In the end, Mum comes up behind me and says, ‘Can I help you?’
‘I’m not selling anything,’ he says, then looks like he’d like to change that but can’t, so he shuts his mouth.
He’s big, tall. Wide hands. He could do with a wash.
‘Yes?’
‘I’ve come to help with Sam.’
Mum grabs my shoulder hard like she’s trying to pop a boil out of it. ‘Are you from the hospital, then?’ Oh, look at him, Mum, does he look like he’s from the flamin’ hospital?
‘No, I’m not from anywhere in particular. Nngth.’
I look up. What was that? He said this funny word at the end then.
‘No, I’m here to help you bathe Sam. It must be time now.’
‘I didn’t ask anyone to come,’ Mum says.
‘No,’ I say, ‘we didn’t ask anyone to come.’
‘I understand that. Nngth.’
There he goes again.
‘Are you from the Social Security?’
He shakes his head, smiling.
‘Council?’
Mum looks at me. She wants to let him in, I can tell. She’s mad. He’s a stranger. He’s dirty. We don’t know who he is. We didn’t ask him to come.
‘We didn’t know about any of this. Who’s paying you?’
‘I’m a voluntary worker.’
‘For nothing?’
‘Yes. More or less.’
She looks like she’s decided to close the door on him, like she’s suspicious after all, but then she just looks kind of scared and lost and she gives me a dry smile that says ‘I’m sorry’.
‘Well, you might as well come in, now you’re here,’ she says with a sigh. ‘He’ll be finished breakfast in a moment.’
We go inside to the kitchen where Tegwyn is feeding Dad his porridge like she’s the angel of the house. Mum asks the bloke to sit down. He puts his black book down on the table and he’s so big he makes the chair disappear.
‘G’day, Sam,’ he says to Dad. Dad swallows porridge and his eyes don’t go anywhere special.
‘This is Tegwyn,’ Mum says, kind of nervous. Tegwyn just looks him up and down. ‘And —’
‘He knows, Mum,’ I say.
Mum looks embarrassed. She’s only got on the big tee-shirt of Dad’s that she wears in the mornings before she gets dressed proper.
‘I’ll just go and get changed,’ she says.
‘No need. Really,’ the man says. But she’s gone.
Then the kitchen is quiet. I look at Tegwyn and Tegwyn looks at me. Now’s the time I feed the chooks. I should be out there feeding the chooks. Mum comes back in with a pair of shorts on and a shirt.
‘My name is Henry Warburton,’ the man says.
‘You’ve been sleeping under the bridge,’ I whisper. He makes like he doesn’t hear me. His eyes don’t ever look at the same spot.
‘Well,’ Mum says.
‘Come on, Sam,’ Henry Warburton says, getting up. ‘You could do with a bath, I’ll bet.’
‘He’s not that dirty,’ I say.
‘I meant he might feel like one,’ Henry Warburton says. He picks Dad up in his arms like he’s a little kid, and asks, ‘Where to?’
‘You mean you don’t even know the way to our bathroom?’ Tegwyn says with a halfway grin. Henry Warburton smiles.
‘Your Mum’ll show me.’
Outside the bathroom door I listen. The water is running and it makes the walls hum. From Grammar’s room comes the sound of Tegwyn playing the piano. She hasn’t played in the morning for ages. Dad always wanted her to play i
t in the mornings. Grammar always did. She was the one what brought Dad up because his old man died when he was five. Grammar looked after him. She used to play the piano at dances in country halls all over the place. He used to sleep on the lid in a little fruit box. That’s what he told me, or Grammar told me, I forget. Tegwyn is playing some old song that Grammar used to sing. Makes a lump in yer throat.
In there, in the bathroom, they’re putting Dad in the water. No, they’re testing it. The water’s still running. Someone farts. Must be Dad. Henry Warburton goes ‘Ahem’. I reckon they’re embarrassed. Good old Dad.
Grunting, lifting noise. Putting him in the bath.
‘Not often you see a man bathing another man,’ Mum says. No sound from Henry Warburton. I can hear the water moving. Dad and me used to have baths together. In the winter when it was cold, I used to snuggle down into the hot and his big legs with all their black squiggles came up high out of the water. He used to sing songs like:
You can get anything you want
At Alice’s restaurant
and he would hum and I would look at his old fella and wonder about it. You can hear the wind through the holes in the wall. Mum’d yell at us to get out, but Dad would keep singing and I would snuggle down in the water.
‘Why are you here?’ Mum asks Henry Warburton. ‘Why are you doing this?’
‘Does there have to be a reason? Nngth?’
‘There has to be a reason for everything.’
‘Yes.’
‘Well?’
‘I don’t really know why I’m here.’
‘I don’t believe that.’
‘Your husband is sick.’
‘He’ll get better.’
‘Not on his own, he won’t.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘I . . . Nngth. Nngth.’
I put my eye up to a hole and look. Why does he do that sound? Mum looks real worried. She watches Henry Warburton rubbing Dad’s chest with a flannel. Dad looks like he’s fair enjoying the bath.