‘Get out!’
‘Get in!’
‘GET OUT!’
‘GET IN!!!’
Pat is none too pleased with me.
‘I’m not having this, Dylan. Stop piss-farting around and get out.’
‘We need the water. It’s a life force. Plus, you stink.’
•
This was true on all accounts. The shower hadn’t worked at the last pub and when it jolted into action all that came out was brown stuff with sandy bits in it.
Pat takes his boots off at the edge of the dam and all the hot botheredness comes out like steam from an oven. He paces up and down in the shallow bit like he is still thinking of something to say. Water molecules vibrate faster than the speed of sound and slow everything down. I reckon that’s why Mum had led me here in the first place, so I could help Pat slow his flustered heart. He takes his shirt off, splashes some water on his face and under his armpits.
‘All right, you’ve had ya fun, now move.’
But I just hold out my hand. You have to be patient with people who are scared.
Slowly, he comes in deeper until the water’s up to his nipples. Pat can’t swim but I just keep holding out my hand. I look at him like Crocodile Dundee staring down that big old water buffalo. Hard to believe a man like Pat could be scared of something so beautiful. That he can’t see how it will help his body heal itself.
But then he lets go. Enough for me to guide him into the middle of the dam where the mud disappears below and you have to float. He takes a sharp breath in.
‘I can’t…’
He struggles at first, tries to turn back and get out, but I’m under him before he knows what’s happening. I push his legs to the surface until he is floating and can’t do anything but stare straight up…and then he lets the water take his weight. I do the same and I’m back home. Mum’s defrosting the fridge, eating pieces of ice as she goes. Pat’s got his legs up on the table, pushing the chair back like a cocky schoolboy showing off. There’ll be chicken and chips for dinner and I’ve got a Golden Gaytime as a special arvo treat.
I look over and Pat’s floating on the water by himself. He’s waiting to walk through the back door of a memory as well.
The first time I met Pat, Mum kept staring at me like I was a lab rat and no one’s sure if the experiment’s gonna work out. She sipped her shandy all quiet and polite and Pat kept looking round the bar like he had someone else to meet. I counted Pat’s fillings up the back of his mouth, which I could see when he threw peanuts down his throat. Two on one side, three on the other. Dirty gold colour. After a while they forgot I was there. Mum smiled when Pat whispered something in her ear even though she pretended to be shocked. Some people say they don’t like games and just want to get real, but adults play all the time. Mum said Pat was a bit rough around the edges and that is what she liked about him most. Back home in France, people wouldn’t know what to do if a snake crawled into their living room and curled up asleep under the TV. But Pat did. Got a long stick with pincers on the end, grabbed it by the neck and shoved it in a brown sack. Twisted it round so the snake got dizzy then drove it halfway out of town. Back home in France the men would wail like a baby if they were fixing a fence and some barbed wire pierced their hand so deep it looked like it would come out the other side. But Pat just snipped the wire off on the other end, drove himself to hospital and said, ‘Think I might need some snitches.’ Of course he meant stitches but by then he’d lost a litre of blood and was about to collapse. And even though Pat could not dance like a Parisian, he had his own little moves that made Mum giggle and that is better than knowing the right steps. Like when he wiggles the first finger on each hand pretending to be an AFL umpire. Or sticks his hip out to the side like he’s shutting a car door. Mum would laugh and laugh. And I liked it when Pat danced with me too. He’d spin me round until everything turned into a blurry rainbow and I was proper dizzy. He’d always catch me before I fell. But sometimes Pat came over to the house, thoughts swirling round his head. He’d just sit on the couch with his mouth closed tight. One night we brushed the flies off a lamb roast for an hour and a half because he was so late. When he did finally come Mum only talked to me.
‘Dylan, why do you call when you’re going to be late?’ she said.
‘Because you might make someone worry.’
I was happy ’cause I’d got the answer right, but Pat just took out a beer from the fridge, cracked it open and finished it in one gulp. Then he said, ‘Now listen…’ and that’s when you’re supposed to leave the room. However I was starving so I shoved a forkful of peas in my mouth. I knew it was stupid but Mum was still trying to talk to Pat through me and it all became a bit of a mess. If only I’d forked up a piece of roast potato first. White food before green. Always. I stuck a finger down my throat to start again but Mum yanked it out. She said if I ate in reverse everything would be the same, only backwards. Pat said I had to stop all these stupid food rules, and Mum said we were a package deal. Like when you buy sausages and the butcher says there’s a promotion so you have to get the sweet Thai chili sauce even if you don’t like it.
Mum shouted at him in French: ‘Vous êtes tous les mêmes!!’ Then Pat said, ‘Why do you do that when you know I can’t understand?’ So Mum said it in Australian: that sometimes the way he talks is blunt like a dull knife. She started to cry and told him the heat in Australia sucked everything dry and made her feel like she couldn’t breathe anymore. And that if he couldn’t love me for who I was then maybe we’d just go back to Paris. Pat said Mum was an enabler and what I needed was discipline. So while they were shouting I sat on my bed and listened to my Best of Johnny Farnham tape on the cassette player. ‘Take the Pressure Down’. ‘You’re the Voice’. The heavy hitters.
Once some real dancers in sky-blue tights gave us a workshop at school. Me and Dean Flanagan did a duet to ‘Two Strong Hearts’. We nailed it. But that night I skipped some of the words. Maybe Pat was gonna be just like Dad and everything would be ruined again. When Mum came into my room I lay down and pretended I was asleep. Then it was quiet and I watched the shadows go across my wall when Pat’s car reversed out of the driveway. Could hear him all the way down Hooper’s Crossing, going over the one-lane bridge, the back way home. Hands gripping the wheel so tight his knuckles were ready to pop through his skin. All ’cause his heart was scared that Mum would leave.
Here in the dam I look across at Pat floating on the water and I know he’s been watching the colour fade from the exact same memory. Before either of us can say anything, the sky above fills with hundreds of butterflies. Like a moving painting changing shape and size in a dance only they know. Me and Pat are puppets with hundreds of tiny strings and the butterflies lift us up towards them, leaving specks of dust on our face as their wings flap in slow motion.
‘Dylan, about the boat…’
Pat’s words cut the strings and we are back on top of the water. I breathe out and blow those butterflies up higher and higher until they’re nothing more than tiny dots fading into the blue sky.
‘I need you to listen…’
But I don’t want to hear about the boat right now. I don’t want to hear or see anything except what’s right here. I’m listening to the bush, alive with a sharp endless rhythm. In this dry heat cicadas blare. Crows caw.