90 Packets of Instant Noodles (3 page)

I wake up with the light burning holes into my eyes. It's some crazy dawn time and now I'm awake I know there's no more sleep to come.

The first thing I do is look outside to see if it's been raining. I was totally out of it last night and didn't hear a thing except a bit of rat-scratching before I lapsed into unconsciousness. The ground looks wet but that could just be dew; it's so bloody freezing here at night.

I approach the taps with a sort of dread, telling myself,
There won't be any, it hasn't rained, you'll have to drink from leaves like lizards do and tie plastic bags around branches just to catch a few wet drops, you're gunna die of thirst out here over the next few days, a slow, painful, creeping death...

Squeak-turn. I do it slowly.

Yellow-brown sludge glumps out. The stench is unforgiveable for this early in the morning.

Then the tap bangs and chokes and all of a sudden water
sprays
out like someone put a high-powered sprinkler head on the thing. It's a bit stale-looking but I keep it running and it gradually gets clearer until what's coming out looks vaguely drinkable. I leave the tap on and grab the two biggest saucepans and put them under it, then run and get my water bottle and fill that up too. Who knows how long this stuff'll last, and I don't wanna be bone dry when it clags out next time.

With that sorted out, and feeling pretty damn exceptional for fixing it myself, I shake the dead cockies' shells out of the toaster on the counter and plug it in. Musty heat pumps out. I slap a couple of slices of bread in and crack open the Vegemite.

Of course, the victorious feeling doesn't last for long. I feel like I'm doing a handyman apprenticeship in twenty-four hours. There's a smell that's been
brewing
in here since I arrived. I've managed to avoid it till now, but the time has definitely come. It has to be another dead animal—nothing else could smell so bad. I think it's under the shack somewhere. It really fucking pongs.

I saw one of those live traps around here yesterday—you know, a cage with a door that drops down once you've caught whatever big bastard it is that treats the place like it's his own personal pantry, complete with nesting equipment. The mattress in the spare room has had tunnels bored through it, and I don't think that's because foam is tasty. Dad was right, this place needs some serious cleaning up. There's crap everywhere—rusty tools, old books, bags of mouldy clothes—all covered in dead blowies and the legs of daddy-long-legs. Who knows where the heads went? In fact, there are spiders crawling around everywhere and they have to go. That's what I can do today, I guess. Sort out this shit. It's not like there's much else on offer. And, according to Dad, there ain't much happening in town—plus there's the trek in. So I think I'll zone out here for a bit. See what I can find. There's gotta be something to do, there's really gotta be.

Breakfast used to consist of Weetbix, a handful of Nutri-Grain and a good slopping of yoghurt. Now it's toasted stale bread (mould scraped off) with a smearing of rock-hard butter (never again—it's margarine all the way from now on) and a smudge of Vegemite over the top. I've done the maths: four Weetbix a day would be twenty-eight a week—that's more than a family-size box each week! That'd fill my entire pack, man. No, I just can't justify it, as bloody Dad would say. Dreaming of a decent brekky makes me think of the special
petit déjeuner
class we had for French last term, complete with croissants and hot chocolate. Aargh.
Aargh.

‘Le petit déjeuner,' said Miss Marpassant, our French teacher. It was meant to be a bit of a slack period, but she had all the time in the world to nail my pronunciation, it seemed.

‘Le p-petit dé—... Le petit d—,' I tried to repeat.

‘
Le pe–tit–dé–jeu–ner,
' she said again, enunciating it in clear, separate syllables.

Behind me, someone snorted.

Oh, this fucking stammer.

‘Joel.' She locked on to me.

‘Le pe-petit d-d-dé—,' I tried again.

Miss Marpassant didn't avert her eyes from mine. She stayed with me, and together, eventually, we said, ‘Le petit déjeuner,' to a spattering of relieved snickers and muffled pig-snorting around the room. I leaned back into my chair. I wasn't that embarrassed, to be honest. I reckoned the others were more embarrassed about it than I was. I couldn't have given a fuck. I didn't look at any of them, just kept my eyes pinned on Miss Marpassant as she headed back to the whiteboard.

There was this point where I knew I'd changed. I mean, I looked back and I could see that somewhere along the line I'd got rough, like my edges had exploded, a blown retread on a dirt road. But I can't pinpoint when it happened, or why. It's not as though I come from a home where my old man beat me up and my mother's an alcoholic or I was fostered out eighteen times and one of my foster fathers interfered with me or anything. My folks are pretty average—you know, bloody annoying, but all right. We can have a laugh and stuff, so I figure that's a good sign. Okay, Mum and Dad are divorced, but that's no big deal; she and the old man couldn't live together anymore—I get that. Mum and I see each other most school holidays and she doesn't hate Dad, so things are fairly mellow on that front. Scott, her boyfriend, is a total jammer, but that's her problem.

The stammering thing started when she and Dad split up, but I was seven, so to me it seems as though I've always talked this way. Mainly it just keeps me a bit quieter at school, cos I don't want to start saying something that I can't finish. French is hard, but I don't want to have to give it up. Words that start with
d
or
p
or
t
are particularly excruciating, and in French almost all of the words start with
d
or
p
or
t.

Even in normal conversation I often have to change words mid-sentence when I realise the one I'm about to use is going to come out sounding like a misfiring engine, so I think up other words that mean the same thing. Maybe that's why I do pretty well in English, cos I've had to stock up with all those substitute words.

The worst thing about it, though, is that I've always been a bit of a joker and you can't pull off jokes when you stammer—you kind of lose the whole rhythm—so somewhere back there I said
sayonara
to cracking funnies too.

The folks brought me up to be polite and all that, and I was. I mean, I am. But I'm also different now, and I don't know if that's because I really have changed, or if it's just because I started doing different things and so I
think
I've changed. I mean, how do you know who you really are? You can be different every other day of the week, I reckon. I can do well at school and talk to old Grandma Higgins next door while she's watering her roses, so I'm a polite young man, right? But I also break into joints and rip them off so I'm a little shit, right? A delinquent. But how can I be
both?
That's what I want to know. And not only how, but what the hell does that make me? A polite little delinquent shit?

Ms Andrews

After a few nights I hear these noises outside the shack. I figure it's just a possum or something (not a thirsty possum, I hope), but it goes on for a long time, kind of scratching and groaning, and I manage to spook myself out over it. A torch would be handy—if only I'd thought to bring one. Surprisingly, I don't have bionic vision. I get up eventually and peer out the door at the bushes and say,
Anyone there,
loud and aggro, like I'm not worried at all. Of course, there's no answer because nothing is there, apart from my imagination and a few night critters. Still, I might look around for an old fencepost or a plank of wood to have handy, just in case. What would I do if a bunch of bogans decided to drop by for a visit?

Today, I find a tiny bottle of oil and a dustpan and brush and stare at the louvres. I mean,
louvres,
out here, when it's minus five at night. Drafts slice into the cabin like long, cold knives, waking you from sleep. I have to wrap a jumper around my head at night to keep my face warm, for fuck's sake. My nose feels as though it's in the early stages of frostbite. I haven't felt warm in ages.

Dear Dad,
I think.
Who the hell designed this joint? The Crapp Brothers?

I start by brushing the cobwebs away, getting all the dust and leaves out from between the glass slats. I rub a cloth over the lever, and squirt oil deep into the mechanism, then force it up and down, open and closed, open and closed, until gradually the rust and dirt give way to the oil and the windows start to smoooooooth themselves open and
shushh
shut really, really snugly. That's my aim: the tightest, closest, most draft-free fit possible.

I go from room to room, oiling each one. Some are just rooted, no matter what I do, but others start to shut like a dream.

Dear Dad,
I think.
Just call me Mr Fixit. No Job Too Small. No House Too Crap. Think: hut in Antarctica with louvres for windows; a house with no washing machine. Think: a house infested with rats and you'll know where I'm coming from. A cold, dirty, ratty kind of place.

Might need to visit that swimming hole you mentioned. And listen, can you send me some music, cos
I can't hack the silence much longer. Radio National does
not count. Listening to geriatrics drone on about how they need the council to install speed humps in their street to slow down the hooligans just makes me wanna frisbee the
thing out the door into the nearest tree trunk. It'll have to be tapes because there's no newer technology in here than that—which you know. But, oh, I should be grateful, I think. I should, seriously. I bet Craggs hasn't got anything except his cell-mate to listen to. They told him not to bother taking his iPod; apparently, music and television are privileges you have to earn when you're inside.

I'm hungry, so head to the kitchen for The Ritual of the Noodle. I pour water in the small saucepan, set it on high. I don't break the noodles—no, no, no. They go in undisturbed. I let them soften, then fork them loose and cook them a bit longer. Then I add the sachets. The extra chilli powder usually ends up in the bin.

Food calms me down. Makes me feel better, even if only for a little while. But now I've eaten almost everything. I need to stock up. The problem will be carrying it home. Even if I keep to the light stuff, it's still 17 kilometres on foot through the bush. Christ.

The walk to the road with my empty backpack is fine. No problems at all. I figure that section is about 10 k's or so, and you go through some really funky patches of forest. You also pass through some areas that have been cleared big-time; they're like footy ovals in the middle of the Amazon. Huge deadzones. N–o–t–h–i–n–g is living there. It's almost as though someone's tried to keep it hidden by clearing where no one normally goes, as if having it out of the way makes it better.

I'm sitting on the side of the road having a drink and giving my legs a rest when a ute approaches from the south. The guy pulls over, even though I keep my head down.

‘Where you heading?'

Err. Mind your own business? ‘Town.'

‘What, Nallerup?'

That rings a bell with what Dad said. ‘Yeah. Is that the nearest?'

‘Yeah, mate, it is. It's the only. Hop in.'

I'm not normally into hitching but somehow it seems different out in the country, especially when you've still got a few dozen kilometres to go. The guy seems okay. There's no sawn-off on the back seat or anything, put it that way. I'm stoked, actually.

‘You live down this way?' I say.

‘Yeah, gotta farm not so far away.'

The trees thin out as we get closer to town. The guy's got his car radio on and it's joy to my ears, even if he is playing eighties shite.

‘You new to these parts?' he says, changing gears as he takes a corner wide.

‘Me? Yeah, kind of.'

‘Where you staying?'

‘Uh, me old man's got a shack in the bush back there.'

He swings his head my way, eyebrows raised. ‘You kidding? The old Strattan place? Not far from the Bibbulmun?'

I nod. ‘That's the one.'

‘There hasn't been anyone there for years.'

‘My folks don't go there often.'

‘And you're out there on your own?'

Christ. Do I really want this guy to know everything about me? ‘Well, yeah, for a bit.'

He doesn't say anything to that, but he looks at me like he reckons it's pretty strange.

Eventually, we get to a couple of shops bordering a main street. ‘Here y'are, then.'

I look around, confused. This is it? This is the
town?
All
of it? I find it hard to move. Then he kills the engine, which sort of answers my questions, like, full fucking stop.

‘Right.' I grab my bag and breathe out. ‘Thanks a lot for the lift.'

‘Any time, mate. It's a long way from that place. You wanna have good legs for that hike.'

I nod. Yeah. A long way. For this.

I look around. It takes two seconds to take in this whole joint. I look around again. There's no fucking post office.

Okay. O-kay.

Dad: you fucker.

Take a breath or ten. There's a general store that looks about as big as the deli we go to for milk and papers and stuff at home—that must be where Dad has that account he told me about. There's a real estate agent (as if!), some hippie aromatherapy join-theashram shop, and an Elders store that sells tractor parts and food for cows. That is, there's no supermarket, no post office, no pub, no bank. In fact, there's probably more choice for cows here than for people, and that would be because no one in their right mind would choose to live here. In my view.

I get it, Dad, I get it. This is all part of it, all part of this test, or lesson, or whatever the hell you call it. This is: drop Joel in the middle of nowhere and see if he can make his way out alive. Like one of those army training camps you see on TV where there's always one guy at the back whose knees are giving way and he's about to spew and pass out and the whole show's about whether or not he can hack it to the end. His best mate's usually jogging up the front somewhere like he's taking the dog for a walk, grinning at the chicks as he goes by.

I hoick my backpack up on my shoulder and trudge over to the shop.

You
fucker,
Dad.