~~~
A ‘bituvabash’ they called it. The number of men, some gaunt, almost skeletal, others with paunches bulging over shabby work shorts, gathered around the beer keg out the back, continued to grow. Nearby, ‘the girls’, a group of females of various ages, shapes and sizes, cackled and squawked like the chooks at the bottom of the yard. He stood watching in silence. ‘Bituvabash’ was a satisfying word he thought, as were ‘cackle’ and ‘squawk’, but ‘else’ remained a real problem.
He thought very carefully before he asked the question. He wanted a serious truthful answer. Not to be patted on the head and told he was weird or asked, ‘What do you want to know that for?’ Just a simple answer, that was all. He knew he had to ask soon, before too much beer was drunk and ‘the girls’ got stuck into the cask wine.
‘Where is “Somewhere Else”?’ He got no answer so he raised his voice and asked again, ‘Please, I want to know where is “Somewhere Else”?’
‘Wouldn’t you like to know?’
‘Yes, I would.’
‘Wouldn’t we all? Wouldn’t we all like to be there?’ the man laughed, gold fillings in his teeth gleaming in the light of the late afternoon sun. He took a swig from the stubbie in his hand.
‘You’re a weird kid, aren’t cha?’ he said, shaking his head, before turning back to his mates.
The boy knew it was no use asking again so, with a sigh, he headed back to the kitchen. His mother, her hands dripping suds, turned towards him from the sink.
‘Didn’t I tell you to piss off and go play somewhere else?’
‘I just want to know where “Somewhere Else” is, that’s all. How can I go there if I don’t know?’
‘Cheeky young bugger. Piss off.’ He dodged the slap aimed at his face and was about to ask again when the man with the gold fillings came in.
‘Not botherin’ your mum are ya?’
The boy watched as the man came up behind his mother, pressed her hard against the sink, covered her breasts with his hands and began to squeeze. His mother closed her eyes and leaning back began to move rhythmically against the man.
‘I just want … ’ the boy began.
‘Didn’t I tell ya to piss off?’ His mother wrenched herself around to face him, her face red and angry. ‘Now piss off or else!’
As he closed the kitchen door the boy glanced over his shoulder and saw the man gather his mother’s skirt up above her waist and lift her onto to kitchen bench. He didn’t know why but he began to run; away from what was happening in the kitchen, away from the bituvabash, away from the cackling, squawking girls, away, away to somewhere else.
Suddenly he understood, ‘somewhere else’ was not where he was, it was another place; somewhere different, maybe better, maybe far away, maybe close by but not here. He kept repeating it over and over out aloud: ‘somewhere else’, ‘somewhere else’, ‘somewhere else’. It began to feel good and sound right; he grinned and was laughing as he set off down the road to find it.
Saturday 2 February 2013
Hares
Ian Kennedy Williams
Kings Meadows, TAS
You should have seen them, he had said. Hares. Mob of them, big as wallabies. He pulled her close to the window, but the open ploughed field where he had seen the hares had given way to crops of vegetables and stretches of bright yellow rape seed. Bad timing, he had said, meaning her decision at that moment to go to the toilet. It was disgusting, she told him. Someone peed on the seat. And it flushes straight onto the track. He laughed, not caring much. She stared out the window, watching for more hares, while the train lurched and swayed, rattling across the border into Slovakia.
They were both retired, comfortably off. She was the one who wanted to go. Before it was too late, she said. She was not old. Sixty-eight is not the time to be contemplating final things, she had told their friends. The truth was, she was in remission, felt strong and wanted to make the most of it. Their friends agreed. It was Maurice who took some convincing. She would watch him from the back verandah while he mowed the lawn or picked the last tomatoes, knowing he would come in late in the afternoon for his glass of beer and with a new argument against their going. Why Europe, he had said at first. Why not New Zealand? You always said how ridiculous it was that New Zealand was so close and we had never been there. It was true, she had often expressed a desire to see the thermal springs at Rotorua. But New Zealand was not Europe. And there was not the sense of urgency then, when going to New Zealand one year could be put off because there was always the next year. Or the year after. Who was it said, she asked him once, that being hanged in a fortnight concentrates the mind? He shuffled off to the computer to Google it. He took it so seriously, this dying business, more so than she, it seemed. At least they could talk about it. She had feared that it would be too much for him, that he would retreat into bewildered silence. Of course it was the practicalities they discussed; practicalities were his strong point. There were the wills to update, bequests to consider. Funeral arrangements. There were some good jokes over that. It kept the real things at bay, the painful, hurtful part. The part about fear and loss and helplessness. And love. If there had been children, it would have been different. Grandchildren, especially. Young people are so tiresomely free with their feelings. Occasionally, when a bottle of wine was all but drained (she was not supposed to drink), she would note his unease, and sense a struggle inside him to say something that he could not say when he was sober. Was it her courage he wanted to speak of, her seemingly calm acceptance of her condition? Her agnosticism? (The sooner you die, the longer you’re dead, some joker on TV quipped, giving her a laugh.) Were there infidelities he wanted to confess? She would have liked to think so. Something other than sex and death informed his discomfort; she could see. Something more like hurt and anger. Why are you doing this to me? he wanted to say. How will I live without you?
The closer they came to leaving, the more he fretted. She would tire easily, he said, lose her medication. He went over the small print of the travel insurance. He feared she would die suddenly in some unspeakable foreign place. The horror stories he had heard about overseas deaths and the rigmarole surrounding the return of bodies. She reassured him; have me cremated and posted home. So much cheaper. Before they left, their friends threw them a party. Austria, they sighed. The Alps, Salzburg, Mozart. Vienna. It embarrassed them to feel so envious. She had always dreamed of visiting Vienna, she told them. It was Maurice’s sister, Angela, who gave her a moment’s pause. She aspired to see Venice, but knew she would never go. You should leave something wanting, she said. When you die. Some wish, some desire. Some dream unfulfilled. That’s how life is.
She had travelled a little when she was younger. Asia mostly, though there had been a week in New Caledonia in 1968. This, of course, was before she met Maurice who had never travelled outside Australia. Mostly they holidayed in North Queensland to escape the raw Tasmanian winters. Their friends came home with tales of river cruises, medieval castles, concerts in grand palaces and English pub walks. What was the food like? she would ask of a French provincial bus tour. Maurice would query the cost. In Vienna, they booked into a small family hotel a little out of the city centre. Maurice said it would be a more authentic experience than staying at one of the major chain hotels; one Hilton was no different from another half a world away. In the event, he was right. Streetcars clattered past the front entrance. The guests were mostly German or Swiss, or salesmen who exchanged business cards at the bar while she practised her German on the concierge. A transport pass bought at the Tabak across the road from the hotel allowed them to travel freely around the city. In the evenings, they walked a block to a pub where they ate pork sausages and sauerkraut and goulash soup. Maurice complained about the stink of cigarettes, irritated that people could still smoke where others were eating. He was given to saying, Back home you couldn’t do this, or Can you imagine anyone doing this in Australia? until she told him to give it a rest. She had gone fully expecti
ng him to hate every moment of the experience, and was determined not to let it get to her. For the first couple of days, because the flight had tired her, they had stayed mostly around the hotel. The one excursion was to Schonbrunn Palace because it was only a short bus ride away. The day was unseasonably hot, the palace and grounds thick with camera-wielding tourists. They climbed stairs, shuffled with the throng from room to room, Maurice alternately grumbling because he was not allowed to take photographs and reading from the literature they had picked up at the entrance … Emperor Franz Joseph, who was born in the palace in 1830 and died here in 1916, replaced all the empire-style furnishings with those of rococo … Outside they drank lukewarm coffee in a crowded café and wrote postcards to their friends. Struggling to find the words to describe what she had experienced, she wrote the attendants are all stony-faced and: Maurice is taking a photo of sparrows eating cake crumbs under the table …
At the end of the week, the exposure to the city’s fabled riches had left her struggling to recall, in any meaningful way, what she had seen; she wished she had had the patience and energy to take notes. She had to remind herself that she was in Vienna, the anticipation and thrill of arrival of a week ago having given way to something mundane. Familiarity. Where to today? Maurice would ask. What about the Freud Museum? There’s a museum dedicated to The Third Man, did you know? He wanted to ride the Ferris Wheel at the Prater. An American couple shared the cabin with them. Isn’t that something? the woman marvelled. On a calm, clear day, the panoramic view of the city from the top of the wheel was breathtaking. The man shrugged, lifted a camcorder to his eye. Sure, baby, but it’s not Paris. Maurice photographed everything, each shot meticulously recorded in a notebook he had bought at the airport. She had observed, as the week progressed, that there was less of a whine to his complaints, though he still had something to say about the local beers, if not the old women in the street with their defecating dogs or the tardiness of the hotel housekeeping staff. She was surprised, given his disdain back home for public transport, at the readiness with which he took to riding the streetcars. Clutching his knapsack and chattering nonstop, he was like a small boy being taken on a special excursion. On Kartnerstrasse, one afternoon, he disappeared into a basement store and returned wearing a black fedora. You look ridiculous, she told him. She could not understand the change in him. He had begun to enjoy himself while she weakened to the pull of home and what was waiting for her.
It was Maurice’s idea that they take the intercity shuttle to Bratislava. It was a few days before they were due to leave, and he felt they had ‘done’ Vienna. He wanted to see something of the old east, the Europe that had been closed to the free world after the Second World War until the fall of communism in the late eighties. Before leaving Australia he had confessed to knowing next to nothing about European history. All you read about, he said, is financial crises, political scandals and ethnic butchery. It was his last breath of resistance to their going. She told him to think on the trip as a late education. Now his head was filled with dates, statistics, potted histories and references gleaned from a myriad pamphlets and information sheets. Enough material, he was thinking, to inform a Rotary talk after their return to Launceston.
It was about half an hour into the journey that he saw the hares. There was that childish delight in the new and unexpected again. Except that this time it prompted memories of his childhood, growing up in a small farming community in the North West. He fell quiet after that, his comments confined mostly to the surprising frequency of wind farms and to the crops he recognised growing in the fertile soil of the agricultural plain stretching across the Austro/Slovakian border. She sensed that something of the energy that had driven him to take such delight in the experience of Vienna had burned out, and that, like her, he was preparing himself for the return home and – as far as it was practicable – the resumption of their normal lives. What that meant for him, she could only guess at. What she did know, what she had come to realise, was that, however helpless he might feel in the face of it, the wasting months she faced ahead would be all the more unbearable if she had to journey them alone.
Arriving in Bratislava, his spirits revived. The city was smaller than Vienna, the old town, though again crowded with visitors, seeming less a cultural artefact than the more famous city across the border. Maurice thought it much like Melbourne, noting the bustling narrow streets and alleys with their student-filled bars and cafes. Everywhere there were brightly coloured banners touting some sporting tournament the city was host to. This, Maurice read, while they sat drinking beer, was the historical heart of the city, the old world Hapsburg baroque. That vision of the communist era that had piqued his curiosity, the Eastern Bloc concrete with blank apartment buildings and potholed streets, could only be explored by taxi or streetcar to the outer suburbs. Instead, after lunch, they dozed on a city bus tour. A castle was visited, foreign embassies pointed out and a monument, too high on a hill for her to climb the steep path, photographed. On his return, Maurice described rows of gravestones, explaining that the monument commemorated the Russian soldiers who had died liberating the city during the Second World War. In Europe, he said, the dead never leave you, do they. It seemed to her a very un-Maurice thing to say. Whatever photographs he had taken, she noted that he was no longer keeping a record of them.
Minutes after leaving Bratislava Central, he fell asleep. The section of carriage they were in was empty, apart from an elderly woman sitting opposite them who was accompanied by a small boy, most likely her grandson. The boy flipped through a picture book while the woman watched the passing scenery, turning occasionally to say something in German to the boy. Maurice slept through the ticket check on the Slovakian side of the border and was still asleep when the train passed the open fields she recognised as the place where he had seen the hares. For some utterly stupid reason she suspected that it would be the hares – or more pointedly, that she had missed seeing them because she was in the toilet – that would linger in her memory while the jewels of Vienna would need Maurice’s meticulously recorded photographs to give them some sense of propinquity. Perhaps Angela was right; Vienna would have been more meaningful to her if she had never visited.
With this dispiriting thought in her head, she left Maurice sleeping while she went again to the toilet, which thankfully was relatively unsoiled compared with the morning journey. On her return, she was surprised to see the boy standing in the aisle with a grave expression on his face, and his grandmother sitting where she had sat, next to Maurice. Maurice was slumped forward, his head seemingly resting on the windowsill. Reaching for her hand, the grandmother placed it in on Maurice’s, which was familiarly warm and calloused. The woman’s expression resembled her grandson’s. Tot, she said sharply. Tot. And then, because she was not understood, in English. Dead.
Sunday 3 February 2013
The Headstone
Ken Ward
Berowra Heights, NSW
There’s a freshness in the air that belies the true nature of this place. A light dew glistens on a park bench though this doesn’t deter Alice as she sits down absentmindedly. She stares past the grass. Past the headstones, past the iron fence, past the church steeples, staring up at a sky of brilliant blue.
An intake of breath, sharp, through her nose and throat, filling her lungs. There’s a constant restlessness buzzing through her, tension burning in her chest. A spreading tightness across her shoulders. With a feeling of emptiness she takes in the scene about her, looking closer now, in more detail. And all she sees is what’s missing.
There’s the absence of pain. There’s the absence of anger. In this place, a monument to the tragedy of life, where is the hurt, where is the outpouring of grief?
‘I want to feel it in waves. I want to gulp for air and sputter and choke.’
She’s clenching and unclenching her fists. An elderly woman shuffles by, glancing at Alice with a friendly smile. Alice flinches, turns her head away, and looks down at the grou
nd. Once the woman has passed from her line of vision she gets up from the bench and wanders through the maze of graves.
‘Is this it?’ she thinks, absorbing the unremarkableness of the death and decay around her. Headstones in various states of ageing, very few looking recent, very few looking cared for and visited.
Alice lets her head drop to her chest then rolls it around her neck, exhaling in exasperation. Lines from a book, the title long forgotten, come back to her in this moment:
We lie them down here amongst us as a reminder. Then we walk away trying to forget, fearing the day it is us who are laid down to rest.
And then a flourish of colour out of the corner of her eye. Flowers, fresh and upstanding, in Technicolor. A glistening marble headstone, shining in the sun.
Alice ponders the flowers cut from the earth and the soul displaced form this world.
‘Not long ago this person was here, breathing, talking, laughing, alive.’ As she stood in front of the plot, she read the inscription on the stone:
My name was John Walters
I enjoyed my life
I loved my wife
I am proud of my son
I’m thankful for the time we had
Frozen to the spot Alice read and re-read the message. Finally, someone was speaking to her. And they weren’t even alive. She sat down, cross-legged at the foot of the grave.
‘Who were you John Walters? What was so good in your life? How did you die? Was there pain? How are your wife and son coping?’ she thought, the words flooding her mind in crashing waves.
With no trees providing shade over this spot the sun warmed Alice. Even though he was unknown to her in this life she imagined John Walters as a friendly neighbour. Always ready with a smile, as he stands out on the street washing the car with his son.
They’d pass each other outside the corner shop from time to time, Alice would always be too busy, lost in her own thoughts to acknowledge his nods of hello, the openness in his face as he attempted to connect with her in that moment.
A wave of tightness flushed through her as she cursed her lack of awareness.
‘If only I’d opened my eyes, taken the time to know him. His easy-going, everyday ways. His love of the back pages of the newspaper. His out of date jokes that made him laugh more than anyone else. His simple sincerity. The way he remembered things about you, you thought other people let slip through the sieve of their mind once you turned and walked away.’
In a moment of unconscious action Alice removed from her bag a small notebook and pencil. She flipped through pages filled with sketches and random thoughts until she found an empty space.
Dear John Walters
My name is Alice Shewgrand. Though alone as I feel, I am glad we met here.
Thank you for your kind message. I feel envious of your wife and your son. I feel envious of all who knew you. And sad that I did not.
Though, in life I may never have been able to know you as I do now. I hope your wife and son take comfort from your message and from your memory. I hope they haven’t suffered too much.
I hope they. I’d like to come back and visit if that’s ok?
Rest now.
Goodbye,
Alice x
She carefully tore the page from the bind in the notebook and folded the note in half. Over the fold she wrote his name ‘John Walters’ and slid it between the flowers in a bouquet of white carnations.
Jonathon held the note in his hand as he crossed the street and into a café across the road from the cemetery. He kept it folded on the table in front of him until the cup of coffee he ordered was served. A heaviness sat upon his shoulders. Up until now he’d felt an ambivalence about his father’s passing.
Others thought him numb or in a quiet shock. Unable to grieve. Not mature enough to express his hurt and loss. But he felt no loss. Just a confused sense of obligation to a memory.
He sipped his coffee and felt a scorch down the back of his throat. He opened the note and re-read it for the second time, then folded it once more placing it on the table, his father’s name staring up at him in Alice Shewgrand’s looping penmanship. After rereading it he couldn’t seem to form a clear thought in his head. Too many questions all flowing together at once as cars merge lanes joining a freeway during the peak hour rush. The cacophony of car horns, revving engines, then squealing tyres drowning out all rational thought.
Was it anger? Was he angry at Alice?
‘What right does she have to say these things? She didn’t know my father,’ he thought. But was that it?
He’d worked out from her letter she may be facing her own troubles. And something about the headstone affected her in some way.
‘What did she see there?’ he asked himself. ‘What did she see that I’ve missed?’
It’d been just over a year since his father passed away. Jonathon hadn’t visited the grave since the funeral. His mother urged him to go today. Not so much to pay his respects, more to be with him. She was aware now, more than ever, how little Jonathon had connected with his father. He was sensing something from his mother that he couldn’t quite comprehend. He didn’t fully understand that she needed him to connect. With his father. With his loss. With her loss.
She needed her son to feel this sense of absence before she could truly reconcile with her loss and move on.
He took his time finishing his coffee. He stared out the window, at passing traffic, which was light today; at people queuing at a bus stop; at a blue sky littered with white marshmallow clouds; at trees in the cemetery; at the grass surrounding the headstones; and then back to the table in front of him and the note with his father’s name on it.
His mind had begun to clear. And one thought came through stronger now.
‘Really read it,’ it said.
The tissue was stained black and damp from tears. There was no one reason for her tears today. Alice just couldn’t help herself. A letter in the mail addressed to her. An upcoming date marked on the calendar hanging in her kitchen. A particular scar on her stomach that her eyes lingered on for the first time in a long time. It all added up.
And sometimes the sum-total was simply too much for the dam she’d built inside to hold it all back. She’d been walking. Without too much purpose. In no real direction. And when she reached the large iron gates of the cemetery she knew she’d visit John Walters again.
She sat in the same spot as before, at the foot of the grave, and placed her notebook on top of her bag, open to an empty page. There were fewer flowers this time. These ones not as fresh. Maybe they’d been here more than a week or so?
It had been weeks since Alice had met John for the first time and she had not returned since. She held tight to the warm memory of that first encounter. It had a gentle power. It calmed her for a time. And then it had faded and her mind had become consumed with other thoughts and feelings.
Before she could think of what had become of her letter she noticed a slip of paper resting behind a small bunch of colourful garden flowers. It had her name on it.
Alice Shewgrand
The handwriting was plain and looked as if the author had been careful to make it as neat and legible as possible. A feeling of both trepidation and anticipation coursed through her. She had never considered receiving a reply. Her letter to John was written spontaneously, with no thought for consequence. Her hands trembled as she gingerly unfolded the letter.
Hello Alice Shewgrand
My name is Jonathon Walters. John was my father. Although I didn’t know him that well. I never took the time. He was much older than my mum. He was much older than all my mate’s dads. He was quiet. He always had this knowing smile on his face.
I understood this as being distant. I would do things, sometimes just to provoke a reaction. He would smile that smile, not saying a word and that was that.
It infuriated me. I could never pierce his bubble. I felt I could never reach him. So I stopped trying. People liked my father, though, and he en
joyed being around people.
I think it’s ok if you visit him. He’s dead after all. It’s been very hard on my mum. We’re doing our best to cope. Thank you for your concern.
You take care also,
Jonathon
Alice quickly reread the letter absorbing each word, each sentence. So many thoughts rushed through her mind though ultimately she felt very sad for Jonathon Walters. He didn’t know his father. He’s struggled to feel a connection with his father’s death.
For quite some time Alice sat staring at John’s headstone message. There was a calmness, a stillness to this place around where John lay. In this moment her pains dissolved in the words and sentiments John Walters had left as a parting gesture. Alice picked up her pencil and began sketching.
An old man leaned on a small retaining wall. His arms were folded. He had a faint, beatific smile on his face. He was watching a young boy, eight or nine maybe, waving a gushing hose over the family car. You couldn’t see the boy’s face as the picture drew him from the back.
‘This is how Alice sees my father,’ Jonathon realised. ‘This is how she sees us.’
This may be the first time Jonathon thought of himself and his father as an ‘us’, the two of them together, joined by an unseeable force. He was seeing them both through another’s eyes, as someone might instinctively view a father and son. It was a pencil drawing and details were at a minimum.
This is no memory Jonathon remembers. Though somewhere inside him he wanted it to be. There should have been something familiar about this picture Alice has drawn. But maybe it was more about her?
Was it a connection she wanted to see?
He put the drawing face down on the kitchen table.
John & Jonathon Walters
His father’s name linked with his staring back at him. He felt uncomfortable. Alice was joining dots together where there were none to connect. Her narrative wasn’t right. Jonathon stared into space for a while, his mind drifting. He got a glass from the cupboard and filled it with water from the sink, draining it empty in one long, slow gulp. He picked up the picture, put it in his pocket and went upstairs to the study.
She’d been sketching a picture in her notebook when her phone rang. It had been three days since Alice had visited John’s grave. There were no flowers this time. Only an envelope resting up against the marble headstone with her name printed in block capitals on it. Alice picked it up, felt the smoothness of the paper, the lightness and bend in its contents and then put it in her bag.
And three days later she remembered the letter in her bag. Alice carefully opened the envelope and removed an A4 page folded in three. On the inside was a colour photocopy of a photograph, left aligned with some writing in the white space to the right of the picture.
On the right side of the image, a middle aged man in a smart shirt and tie, smoking a cigarette sitting on a sofa smiled straight at the camera. To his right, Alice’s left, at the other end of the sofa a young teenage boy, t-shirt and shorts, sitting cross-legged, his head buried in a Gameboy. This could be two images taken at completely different times laid over each other to form one artificial moment. The note written next to the picture read:
This photo was taken 12 years ago when I was 13. My dad was 51.
This is the last photo I could find of just the two of us.
Alice wanted to know more. But everything she looked at was just small, mundane details. Was there a story to this picture?
Possibly not. Maybe the camera was just on hand. A moment of forced fun with Jonathon refusing to join in the spectacle, though John’s smile didn’t look forced, fake or insincere. He looked relaxed. The smile was the sort saved for someone you know – a shared moment of understanding.
Alice realised whatever was behind his smile was between John and the photographer, presumably his wife. Jonathan was simply there and the camera lens was zoomed out enough to include him. Alice wanted to move beyond the fiction and fantasy of her imaginings to know what was between this family.
Jonathon insisted on carrying the new flowers his mother and aunty had brought to place at his father’s grave. He was a good few paces ahead of them as they made their way through the cemetery. There was a nervousness, an anxiousness that pushed his walked into almost a trot and the closer he got to the grave the more he picked up speed.
And there it was. Another letter.
He quickly scooped it up, pocketed it and hurriedly put the bunches of flowers in place. He then retreated to the end of the plot, standing behind his mother and his aunty – his father’s sister. He remained mostly silent and still for the rest of the visit, which didn’t last too long.
Before leaving his mother knelt before the headstone and kissed the top of it lightly, as she would her husband’s forehead when he was alive and then turned, without looking back, heading for the car.
Jonathon lingered at the foot of the grave for a moment, looking at the spot his mother kissed, his eyes then falling down over his father’s message. A tightness built up in his stomach, a feeling he hadn’t felt standing here before. He lowered his head in a half-nod then followed his mother back to the car.
Back at home in the peace of his father’s study he opened Alice’s latest note. This time no picture, simply words.
The only photo I’ve seen of my dad and me together is when I was only a few months old. He’s holding me in an awkward way. I’m asleep and he’s looking at my mother (who’s taking the picture) with a strangely blank expression.
He left soon after that. I’ve never had contact with him. I wouldn’t know where to start. He has a name, which I know, of course, but beyond that?
I guess that’s something we have in common – our fathers and the unknown. I wonder about the other people in my life. Are we connecting?
Sometimes I feel like’s there’s an obstacle in the way that I can’t get over or push through. People are talking at me about things, not to me about anything. It’s as if I’m sliding by people with nothing to grip onto.
And then your dad.
‘And then my dad,’ Jonathon thought. He reread the line Alice had written about the feeling that’s there’s an obstacle in the way. There was the shuffle or re-organising drifting up the stairs from the kitchen. The house was in a constant state of flux. His mother was always tinkering with seats, coffee tables, bookshelves.
Two months ago the living room got its first new coat of paint in five years. That was just the beginning. Jonathon couldn’t bear to be around it. It made him uneasy. He’d moved back home just before his dad passed away. To be there for them. For support.
He flicked open a photo album lying on the desk and looked at the picture he’d copied for Alice. Twelve years ago was the last time they’d been captured on camera together. What happened since?
Surely there were odds and probability formulations saying this couldn’t be the case?
Jonathon spent the next two hours feverishly going through every album, every envelope, every shoebox filled with photos he could find. And nothing. He could find no more than nine photographs of himself and his dad. And all but two of those were beyond his infant years.
Where they destined to grow apart, to never have a sense of understanding or connection?
There had to be more. How could they be father and son and yet have so little between them?
Jonathon tore into his room, pulling out everything from inside his wardrobe. School notebooks. Diaries. Unused art sketch pads. Football boots in various stages of decomposition. Folders covered in stickers and graffitied band logos. But nothing linking his dad with him.
Rising from the sprawling mess on the floor Jonathon moved to safer ground at his computer desk. It was a relic of a thing and he hadn’t booted it up in, well, who knows, three, four years. It was plugged in and all looked in reasonable order, if a little dusty.
Power on, it whirred into action. It took a couple of minutes to push through DOS and the Windows start up screen.
‘Amazing!’ Jonathon thought. ‘No password.’
This was pre CTRL-ALT-DELETE and password protection for the home PC. The start-up process finally settled on the home screen, the wallpaper a pixelated and stretched image of a rock band he’d long ago lost interest in. A few familiar documents saved on the desktop took him back to the last years of high school.
He opened up Word eager to browse through his old work, now completely irrelevant and useless. He clicked ‘File’ and scrolled down to look at the most recently opened documents.
Letter.doc
Dien Bien Phu – A French Mistake.doc
JW Resume.doc
Hamlet Themes And Quotes.doc
Shakespeare, Vietnam and the HSC. That dodgy job at Grace Bros promoting after shaves in the summer of ’96.
‘Letter.doc’ didn’t ring an immediate bell, and as the most recently edited document he opened it first. It took a few seconds to load the file and the instant it did Jonathon caught his breath.
Dear Jonathon, my son
Years separated us but blood will always bind us always together.
For whatever it’s worth I’m your father and I am so proud of you and the man you’ve grown to be.
There was more, much more, but Jonathon couldn’t see the screen clearly through the welling-up in his eyes. Downstairs in the dining room as she was lifting out the dining table chairs into the hallway, Jonathon’s mother hears him thunder down the stairway, followed by the door slamming loudly. Then silence.
Alice carefully folded the letter and placed it back inside the envelope. She held onto it for some time while seated at the foot of John Walter’s grave. She should be relieved. She should be happy.
Instead she was tired. Worn down. But in a much better place than she had been. Alice could move on with her life now.
Putting one envelope into her bag she removed another. This one had Jonathon Walters’ name on it.
‘Thank you John. Good luck with Jonathon.’
She placed the envelope with a card inside it against the base of the marble headstone, stood up and read John Walter’s message one last time.
‘Thank you,’ she said again.
‘Why? Why write it on a computer nobody uses? We don’t even have a printer anymore. Who’s going to read it, huh? WHO?’
Jonathon was scowling, his hands balled into fists as he spat anger at his dad’s headstone. ‘When did you want me to find it? Did you even want me to find it?’
He stopped, throwing his head back. His jaw muscles clenched, teeth grinding.
‘You’re smiling at me aren’t you? Laughing at me. How could I make you proud?’
Jonathon took a deep breath, exhaled and released his shoulders, feeling them drop a long way down the side of his body.
‘Why now? Why are you telling me this now? Why couldn’t you tell me before …’
Silence.
He was crying, his body shaking, kneeling now in front of the headstone, his hands holding the side of the cold marble. Opening his eyes Jonathon noticed the card lying in the grass near the headstone. He’d only half seen it before, his fury flooding his vision with blinding red anger. It was addressed to him, in Alice’s cheerful handwriting. He held it a moment before opening it.
‘Thank You!’ on the front of a greeting card, a big teddy bear smiling from ear to ear waving his hands in the air. He opened the card.
Even here, in death, he is still trying to be your father.
Jonathon put the card on the grass. He ran his fingers over the engraving on the headstone. He ran his finger through his dad’s name. He placed his palm against it and pushed hard, letting go, letting it all out.
Monday 4 February 2013
The Gravy Train
Marilyn Linn
Darlington, SA
The Election Express is now boarding on Platform 5 – all aboard please.
Carriage 1 – all sitting members who expect to be re-elected please proceed to your carriage
Carriage 2 – only for female candidates who have organised reliable child care
Carriage 3 – new candidates with high hopes please board Carriage 3
Carriage 4 – candidates who are only in it for the generous superannuation, board Carriage 4. Please note it is a larger carriage. Check door numbers.
Carriage 5 – those who don’t fit any of the other categories board number 5.
The Program
Carriage 1 – will be fitted with buckets and brooms with which candidates must clean up the mess that emanates from their collective orifices. One glass of Penfolds Grange will be available on the quarter hour for the duration of the journey.
Carriage 2 – will be provided with DVDs of the latest Wiggles to ensure candidates do not miss out on any bonding experiences with their young off-spring.
Carriage 3 – will have supplies of tissues and chin wipes to assist with mopping up brows and chins. Spring water will be freely available to keep candidates hydrated.
Carriage 4 – genuine leather seats will be provided for those who are growing accustomed to luxury at taxpayers’ expense. Cream cakes and cola will be provided to give all candidates sugar and fat fixes to keep them happy.
Carriage 5 – crisps and orange juice will be available for these candidates. There will be a bell rung on the quarter hour and everyone must change tables and endeavour not to sit with more than one other person known to them. Small talk will be required. Advisors will advise.
All candidates must present a positive countenance and banish any negativity. A broad smile must be worn at all times. Hand shaking is an art to be practised and an executive consultant will be available to assist with correct grip and finger positions and strength of grasp.
The expectation is that, during the outward journey, all candidates will ask questions and answer each others’ questions. If an answer is not known or the other person chooses not to answer the question, then the candidates will learn a few set answers for such situations. An executive consultant will be available to assist with word choices and candidates will learn to avoid answering yes or no to any further questions. This skill is mandatory.
Candidates will avoid all polling booths on Election Day, but information may be fed to candidates through mobile phones. Candidates may wish to keep in close touch with helpers at particular polling stations either of strength and safety, or weakness and risk, with little time spent on the middle areas. Consultants will be available to assist with choices.
Photographs are a must and the media are welcome to attend. However, care must be taken to ensure current leaders are not photographed in such a way that underlings appear taller or stronger than their superiors. A box will be available for height challenged personnel to stand on discreetly and consultants will be available to assist as needed.
Clothing will already have been discussed with potential politicians and anyone not suitably attired will be assisted by a consultant to improve their personal presentation. Optional clean ties for men and scarves for women will be available to cover spills incurred during the journey.
On arrival at the destination all candidates are expected to grin and wave happily, no matter the outcome of the journey. Party faithful will clap and cheer and spouses will hug. Caution is advised that only one’s own spouse is embraced enthusiastically. And smile.
When the polls have closed and the results are known, many candidates will have to change carriages for the return journey. As many newly elected candidates will be uncertain where they should go, advisors will assist and public opinion is to be ignored.
Bon voyage and good luck.
Tuesday 5 February 2013
A Lang Time Ago
Alexander Gardiner
Bullaburra, NSW
A kin remember back in ma Scoatish days,
Whin I as a wee boy in the snaw did play.
Ah boy, yea micht jist ask? Aye! Ah wance wis a boy,
an’ aw capers an’ tricks ah did employ.
/> We built igloos albeit very small,
then, as bairns we wirnae very tall.
Ah wis born in Auld Reekie toon,
in 1936 oan the furst o’ june.
Auld Reekie. Whare is that be?
it’s Embra’ ah bonny place tae see.
Stull no’ ofay wae thay twa names?
it’s Edinburgh whare wee played snawie games.
Sledges wee made oot o’ widin’ crates,
an’ slid doon the Cockle Shell wae aw’ oor mates.
This wee shell like hill in the then, King’s park,
wis covered in snaw at the winter’s start.
An’ St Margaret’s loch whin thick wae ice,
an’ aw’ wee boys an’ lass’s, skatin’ wid entice.
Until the auld Parkie wid chase us oaf,
rid faced, splutterin’ an’ wae an’ aufie coaf.
Git oaf tha’ blidy thin ice at wance,
it’s oanly huddin’ yer weight by chance.
Na na, na, na na, Parkie canny catch us,
we cried oot, no’ unnerstondin’ aw’ the fuss.
The same Loch in summer we wid fish fur fun,
the same splutterin’ Parkie chased us oan the run.
Back noo tae the winter snawie games,
whare wee bairns that Parkie kid niver tame.
Buildin’ Snawmen in the middle o’ oor street,
an’ dressin’ them up tae look a treat.
Makin’ slippery slides oan the street’s footpath,
whilst ignorin’ the dangers an’ the auld folks wrath.
Oh we had a rip roarin’ time as wee lads or lass.
rememberin’ aw’ those shenanigans o’ the past.
I luved the snaw an’ the winter time,
cos it covered Auld reekies smoky grime.
Edinburgh is noo a smokeless zone,
an’ durty grime is nae langer prone.
An’ snaw!! Weel yea kin keep, thanks,
ah wull though, remember aw’ those pranks.
Wan wee wee trick I wid like tae mention,
frae the beginnin’ it wis ma intention.
We wir wan up oan aw’ the lass’s games,
we could pee in the snaw an’ write oor names.
Tuesday 5 February 2013 1 pm
Podiatrist
Sharon Hammad
Winmalee, NSW
Pain in toe
Where to go?
One who’ll treat
Only feet
Sick with dread
Lie on bed
Never knew
Legs askew
Plaster cast
Sets so fast
Surely part
Work of art
Pretty soon
One more moon
Better news
Cushioned shoes
Twinkle toes
Smell like rose
Pain all through
Money too!
Tuesday 5 February 2013 6 pm
Comments Please!
Demelza
Taroona, TAS
As a budding poet
I long for true critique
Someone brave enough
To say where I am weak
To point out all my spelling faults
And my grammatic errors
Someone who will surely cringe
When scissors rhymes with terrors
I’d hoped that this ‘narrator’ stuff
Would provide some good insight
And give me clear direction
On should I cease to write?
Let me throw no judgement here
We write for different reasons
Be they therapeutic
Or a changing of the seasons
But if anyone could let me know
(Be it James or Jen or Bob)
Should I continue writing?
Or keep my day time job
Comments please are welcome
Make them long and full
Use a little tactfulness
Sometimes the truth is cruel
Wednesday 6 February 2013
Lawson’s Inspiration
Robyn Chaffey
Hazelbrook, NSW
In ‘The Ballad of the Drover’
Henry Lawson showed the strain
As ‘Across the rocky ridges,’
And ‘Across the rolling plain,’
Stout-hearted men and women
Long passed, etched out a living
Companioned just by animals,
Never minding days of striving.
As the hero of this story,
The young drover, Harry Dale,
Pressed on long day by day
Thoughts of love to keep him hale
So, by Lawson’s words of old,
Pride of our heritage evoked,
Descriptions of our fragile land,
Emotions stirred, I’m feeling choked.
The reading of this famous work,
This writer’s powers descriptive,
‘Hazy dado’ and ‘light’ning trickles’,
His ‘fatal stream’, enrich his missive
Till my heart and soul cry out
In pride for this, my country –
For generations past who forged …
Forged our way and made us free.
As one who also likes to write,
Lawson fills me with such awe;
As with rhythm, rhyme and language
Each stanza has me wanting more.
No painter ever yet existed
Could more clearly paint a picture
Of hard work, love and sadness
Borne our future to ensure.
Living now mid our Blue Mountains
I look ‘across the rocky ridges’
Out toward ‘the rolling plains’
Ever grateful for the bridges
Those like Harry Dale and sweetheart –
Bridges not alone of landscapes
But of peoples, souls and hearts –
Designed that I may freely traipse.
Oh that I may learn from Lawson,
All of life and love and land,
All the joy of life and living,
To paint in words but half so grand.
Thursday 7 February 2013
Life In The Light
Laura Murfet
Gympie, QLD
A solitary light, in golden attire
The attraction for many,
The embers of life.
A heartbeat turned still,
The key to life.
We wander paths
Of stone and grit
To arrive at death
Unscathed by logic,
Unharmed by existence.
In the end,
When all is finished,
For the very first time
Our eyes are open,
Wide with life.
Entity is but the beginning,
A journey where departure
And arrival, mean the same thing.
Goodbye is the foundation
To embark on new paths,
To let go of being,
To live in the light.
Thursday 7 February 2013 4 pm
The Black Dog And My Dog Bundy
Joanna Rain
Nelson Bay, NSW
They say the dog is black,
Mine is blue, black and grey,
His coat changes colour
With each passing day.
My dog comes to visit
Almost every day,
He is the only constant,
He rarely stays away.
Sometimes he brings nothing but his presence,
Sometimes just slight unease,
Often he brings total despair,
Sometimes, just fleas!
He has many different breeds,
Bipolar, anxiety, PTSD, OCD and PND –
For some he only visits them in winter t
ime,
They call that SAD you see.
My dog’s name is 'Bundy'
It’s what I feel like drinking in his company.
I don’t know why they chose the dog for this metaphor,
Dogs bring happiness and joy,
Maybe it is their empathy?
Strange, I can’t imagine life without Bundy,
Depression and anxiety are far from funny.
He’s always been there,
He knows my every joy and fear
He knows my sadness, my nervousness,
He knows my total and utter despair.