Chapter 9
On the Sunday, Rube copped another hammering on the football paddock, Steve’s side lost without him, and I wandered the streets a little bit. I didn’t feel like going home that day. Sometimes you just don’t. You know. It was time to tak
e stock of things.
At first, I allowed the sullen events of the previous day to cloud my path as I walked. I walked beyond Lumsden Oval, deeper into the city, and I have to tell you that there are so many weirdos in the city that by the time I made it home, I was actually feeling glad I made it back at all.
I was wearing jeans and desert boots and I’d had a shower in the morning and actually washed my hair. As I walked I still felt it sticking up in that uncontrollable way, as if it was out to expose me. Still, I felt okay about being clean.
Maybe the old man’s right, I thought to myself. All that carryin’ on he goes on with about us bein’ dirty and a disgrace … I guess it feels okay to be clean.
The usual shops crept back from me as I went past. Milk bar places. Fish ‘n’ chips. I also walked past a barbershop and there was a bald guy in there cutting at a guy’s locks with a kind of ferocity that scared me. I always see something like that — some kind of molestation of a human being that can only make me trip or lose my footing with grim surprise. Or fidget with discomfort. That day, I remember it made me try to persuade my hair down, but it was up again right away.
All up, the day and the walk weren’t the success or rejuvenation I had been looking for.
I kept walking.
Have you ever done that?
Just walk.
Just walk and have no idea where you’re going?
It wasn’t a good feeling, but not a bad one either. I felt caged and free at the same time, like it was only myself that wouldn’t allow me to feel either great or miserable. As normal, traffic echoed around me, adding to the sense of not belonging anywhere. Nothing was fixed. Everything was moving. Turning into something. Exactly like me.
Since when did I have something for a girl in my gut?
Since when did I care about my sister and wt was happening in her life?
Since when did I bother caring about the contents of Rube’s mind?
Since when did I listen to Success Story Steve and care about whether he looked down at me or not?
Since when did I walk aimlessly around? Walking, almost prowling, through the streets?
Then it hit me.
I was alone.
I was alone.
No denying it.
I was certain.
See, I was never a guy who had a whole heap of friends to belong to. Besides Greg Fienni, I never really had friends. I kind of stayed on my own. I hated it, but I was proud of it too. Cameron Wolfe needed no one. He didn’t need to be amongst a pack. Not all of us roam like that. No, all he needed was his instincts. All he needed was himself, and he could survive backyard boxing matches, robbery missions, and any other shame that came down the alley. So why was I feeling so strange now?
Let’s be honest.
It had to be the girl.
It had to.
No.
It was everything. This was my life. Getting complicated.
My life, and as I walked along the hurrying street, I saw sky above me. I saw buildings, crummy flats, a grimy cigar shop, another barber, electric wires, rubbish in gutters. A derelict asked me for cash but I had none. There was city all around me, breathing in and out like the lungs of a smoker.
Almost instantly, I stopped walking when I knew that all the good feeling had vanished from me. Maybe it slipped out of me and was given to the derelict. Maybe it disappeared somewhere in my stomach and I didn’t even notice. All there was now was this anxiety I couldn’t explain. What a sight. What a feeling. This was terrible: a skinny kid standing, alone. That was the bottom line. Alone, and I didn’t feel equipped to handle it. Very suddenly. Yes, quite suddenly, I didn’t feel like I could handle my feeling of aloneness.
Was this how it was always going to be?
Would I always live with this kind of self-doubt, and doubt for the civilization around me? Would I always feel so small that it hurt and that even the greatest outcry roaring from my throat was, in reality, just a whimper? Would my footsteps always stop so suddenly and sink into the footpath?
Would I always?
Would I? Would?
This was terrible, but I dug my feet from out of the footpath and continued walking.
Don’t think, I told myself. Think nothingness. But even nothingness was something. It was a thought. It was a thought, and gutters were still full of the loosened stuffed gutsity.
I didn’t feel like I could cope with this, but I walked on regardless, trying to dig up a new idea that would make things better again.
Can’t worry yourself like this, I advised myself a bit later, when I reached Central Station. I hung around in the newsagent’s for a while, looking at Rolling Stone and all that kind of thing. It was a waste of time, of course, but I did it anyway. If I’d had the money on me I would have got a train to the quay, just to set my eyes on the bridge and the water and the boats there. Maybe there would be a mime there or some other poor sap I couldn’t give money to anyway because I had none on me. But then, if I had the money for the train, maybe I would have it too for a humble busker. Maybe I could even have taken a ferry ride over the harbor. Maybe. Maybe …
The word maybe was beginning to annoy me, because the only thing that was fixed was that maybe would be with me forever.
Maybe the girl had something inside her for me.
Maybe Sarah and Bruce would be okay.
Maybe Steve would get back to work and on the paddock as quickly as he wanted. Maybe one day he wouldn’t look down at me.
Maybe my old man would be proud of me one day, maybe when we finished off the Conlon job.
Maybe my mother wouldn’t have to stand over the stove at night, cooking mushrooms and sausages after working all day.
Maybe I could cook.
Maybe Rube would tell me what was going on in his head one night. Or maybe he would grow a beard down to his feet and become some kind of wise man.
Maybe I would end up with a couple of good mates at some point.
Maybe this would all go away tomorrow.
Maybe not.
Maybe I oughta just walk down to Circular Quay, I thought, but decided against it, because one thing that wasn’t a maybe was that Mum and Dad would fold me if I came in late.
After fifty times of hearing that guy over the loudspeaker saying, “The train on Platform Seventeen goes to MacArthur” or wherever it was going, I walked home, seeing all my doubt from the other side. Have you ever seen that? Like when you go on holiday. On the way back, everything is the same but it looks a little different than it did on the way. It’s because you’re seeing it backward.
That’s how it felt, and when I made it home, I shut our half-broken, half-hearted small front gate and went in and sat on the couch. Next to that stinking pillow. Across from Steve.
After half an hour of a Get Smart repeat and part of the news, Rube entered the room. He sat down, looked at his watch, and said, “Bloody hell, Mum sure is draggin’ the chain with dinner.”
I looked at him.
Maybe I knew him.
Maybe I didn’t.
I knew Steve because he was less complicated. Winners always are. They know exactly what they want and how they’re going to get it.
“Just as long as it isn’t the usual,” I talked over to Rube.
“The what?”
“The usual dinner.”
“Oh yeah.” He paused. “That’s all she cooks, though, isn’t it?”
I have to admit right now that all the dinner complaining really shames me now, especially with the way people on the city streets are begging for food. The fact is, the complaining happened.
Still, though, I was over the moon when I found out we weren’t having mushrooms that Sunday night.
Maybe things were finally looking up.
Then again, maybe not.
I’m running.
Chasing something that doesn’t seem to exist, and time and time again I tell myself that I’m chasing nothing. I tell myself to stop, but I never do.
The city is thrashed around me by broad daylight, but there is no one on the streets. There is no one in the buildings, flats, or houses. There is no one in anything. The trains and buses drive themselves. They know what to do. They breathe out but never seem to breathe in. It’s just a steady outpour of non-emotion, and I am alone.
Coca-Cola is spilled down the road. It flows into the drains like blood.
Car horns blow.
Brakes snort and then the cars carry on. I walk. No people. No people.
It’s weird, I think, how everything can just carry on without all the people. Maybe it’s that the people are there but I just can’t see them. Their lives have worn them away from my vision. Perhaps their empty souls have swallowed them.
Voices.
Do I hear voices?
At an intersection, a car pulls up and I feel someone staring at me — but it is emptiness that stares at me. When the car leaves, I hear a voice, but it fades.
I run.
I chase the car, ignoring blaring don’t-walk signals that flash their red legs at me and beat at my ears, just in case I’m blind.
Am I blind?
No. I see.
I keep running and the entire city swipes past me like I’m drien by some human-alien force. I bump into invisible people and keep running. I see … cars, road, pole, bus, white line, yellow line, crossing, Walk, stutter, Don’t Walk, smog, gutter, don’t trip, milk bar, gun shop, cheap knives, reggae, disco, live girls, Calvin Klein billboard with woman and man in underwear — enormous. Wires, monorail, green light, orange, red, all three, go, stop, run, run, cross, Turn left anytime with care, Howard Showers, drain, Save East Timor, wall, window, spirit, Gone for lunch, back in five minutes. No time.
I run, till my pants are torn and my shoes are simply the bottoms of my feet with some material around the ankles. My toes bleed. I splash through Coke and beer. It dribbles up my legs, then down.
No one is there.
Where is everyone?
Where?
No faces, just movement.
I fall. I’m out. Cracked head on gutter. Awaken.
Later.
Things have changed, and now, people are everywhere. They’re everywhere they should be, in the buses, trains, on the street.
“Hey,” I say to the man in the suit waiting for the walk sign to clock on. He acts like he may have heard something, but walks on when the right sign arrives.
People come right at me, and I swear they are trying to trample me.
Then I realize.
They come right at me because they can’t see me. Now it’s me who is invisible.