Brown Skin Blue (16 page)

When I arrive at Humpty Doo on Sunday night, the rain is easing up. Big, lazy drops fall in patches here and there. The ground is soggy and flooded and everywhere water pools and runs in tiny rivers and currents.
Water always flows. It goes and goes and goes.
It rushes and gushes towards the river where the crocs lie waiting. Holding their breath, listening and watching.

I park the car outside the Humpty Doo Hotel, but I can't bring myself to sleep in the van. I don't want to go back there.

I'm dreaming. I'm sitting on the bank of the river and it's like a wall that I'm stuck on. It's raining and the water is rising fast and I know that if I wait long enough, I can slip in and swim away. I forget about the crocs until it's too late. And then I'm really caught. If I don't swim I'll drown, but if I make any noise the crocs will get me for sure.

It's Monday morning and I've just phoned Boof to tell him I don't need a lift to work.

It's a lonely drive by myself. Considering how old the car is, and how many years it's sat idle between moves, it runs pretty well. There's a package on the front seat next to me addressed to my mum. I've decided to send her a few things. It's not going to change anything, at least not anything permanent, but it feels good to do it. They're things I want her to have before she goes.

I've thought about her dying all morning. And I'm not sad. The thoughts go round in my head, the specifics and details, and even what it all means. But I don't feel anything about it. I imagine the men in movies rushing to their mother's bedsides and staying there until the final moment. Crying unashamedly and saying everything right.
And I don't know what my lack of feeling makes me.

I'm sad that there isn't anyone else to see her. It's just her and me and I'm not enough. It doesn't seem right. There should at least be one person for each of the umbrellas in her box. But there isn't. And the package is all I know how to do.

I have to park at the far end of the car park because the rest of it is under puddles of water. I get out and look over towards the river and it's up high, just lapping the jetty. The ground between the café and the jetty is muddy. Doesn't look like there'll be tourists today.

I'm halfway to the office when I see Bait round the corner come running towards me. His tongue is hanging out, his tail is wagging, and he near jumps into my arms. I'm so pleased to see the little bugger that I bend down and pick him up. Then I realise he's covered in mud. His feet are wet and the bottom half of his fur is damp and sticky. He's licking my face and arms.

‘Bloody hell, Bait. A snake can't keep you down.' I give him a good scruff on the ears and set him on the ground. It's good to see him.

Boof walks out of the office. ‘Barramundy,' he calls. ‘About time. Plenty to do today. Bloody rain has left everything in a mess. Found Bait, then, I see,' he says, sizing up the mud stains.

I follow him past the office and in through the café. I leave him to put my bag in the laundry.

I see myself in the mirror while I'm washing my hands and face. I want to see someone else. Something different but it's the same face as always. I imagine what I'd look like with white skin and then I think of Mum. I begin to realise I'll never know who I am. There won't ever be an explanation for the colour of my skin. I'm just another boy from the bush.

The water is dripping from my nose and I don't bother reaching for the hand towel. For a moment it looks like I'm crying without any effort or discomfort at all.

‘Barra!'

I spin around to find Sally behind me. I quickly reach for the hand towel and wipe my face.

‘You're filthy,' she points to my shirt.

I look down and see there was more mud than I thought there was.

‘Here,' she says, moving towards me. ‘Take it off and let me wash it. It'll dry quick enough. Besides, it's bloody hot and steamy and Boof's got a lot of jobs lined up for you. Can't see why you can't be comfortable. No one around today.' She's right up close to me with her hands on my buttons. I step away and undo them myself.

‘That your car out there?'

‘Yeah,' I mumble.

She moves to the door and closes it. ‘Here,' she says, ‘I'll do it.' She takes my shirt and runs it under the water in the basin. She rubs into it with the soap. ‘I'm pregnant, Barry,' she says without lifting her head up. ‘I didn't know till after we...' she stops talking but her arms are busy wringing the shirt. ‘But it happened before us, and—'

‘Bob,' I say. The thought of it makes me feel empty but I know it all the same.

She nods. ‘I think so,' she says slowly. ‘I just couldn't tell you.'

And then it all makes sense. I can see her at my mum's age, her kid all grown. Asking about his father. She's been thinkin' about it all now. She's been thinkin' of me as her kid all grown. Wondering if she should stay with her baby's father.

She turns around holding my wet shirt in her hands. ‘I really like you, Barra, but I've got to do the right thing.'

‘You in there, Barramundy?' Boof yells and knocks on the door.

‘Yeah, just a minute,' I say.

Sally's still holding my wet shirt as I walk towards the door.

‘Barra?' she says again.

‘Barramundy, come on!' Boof calls again.

I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror as I pass. ‘He won't hang around, Sally. He's not a stayer.' And I'm out of the door, following Boof down towards the river. But I don't know if it's me or Bob I'm talking about.

‘Bait. Come here,' Boof yells as Bait takes off across the jetty. The water is lapping up the sides and rushing fast. Boof whistles loud and Bait scampers back down the jetty to the bank where he sits underneath the nearest tree. It's no relief from the heat, but at least it's a bit of shade. The sun's blaring
down and the humidity is damn high. If only the river was a good place to cool off.

‘I need you to fix the hinges on the gate here, Barra. They've gone rusty and with the changing river levels, the gate's bent. And the tyres up the end there,' he points to the end of the jetty where the boat usually rests against the rubber tyres, ‘check to see they're still hooked on.' He looks out across the water and fans his face with his hat. Then he slicks back his hair and walks to the bank where Bait scampers from the tree to run along beside him.

I decide to deal with the gate first. Boof has left his toolbox on the edge of the timber and I use the screwdrivers and wrench to get the bolts out of the hinges. Then I take the whole gate off and rub the hinges down with steel wool before re-screwing them in the timber so they sit straight against the edge.

I'm sweating hard. My shorts are dirty and damp and my skin seems to glow in the sun. But I don't mind the change of work. I don't mind fixing things with my hands and in a way it's nice not to have the tourists around.

I can see the café from where I'm working. Sally has come out of the laundry and she hangs my shirt on the back of a chair in the sun outside the office. She looks small. I imagine her belly swollen with a baby and I can't believe it. Bob's baby. It's sickening. I still want her, and I feel bad that I've got thoughts of our nights together still fresh in my mind. She doesn't belong to me. And then I realise that I'm relieved the baby isn't mine. What a prick.

I imagine Mum fat with me, stuck in the van waiting.
No man around. Just a box of umbrellas under her bed and a growing collection of wooden spoons.

For a minute I wonder how it happened with Bob. How he impressed her. Or was he like me once. Just a fella she fancied in the moment. I really know nothing about her. Whether she has parents or friends, or anyone to look after her. Maybe that's why she went back to Bob. At least he's someone.

‘Looks good,' Boof comments as he walks past me with a load of rubbish for the industrial bins. ‘You're a good worker, Barra.'

Boof is generous with his praise. It comes easy and natural, like it don't cost him a thing. He's happy, whistling and walking with his bony stride. He's the first bloke I've met – that hasn't been in the movies – that I admire. He's straight up and down.

‘I gotta go into town, Barramundy, is there anything you want?'

I look up from the gate and remember the package. ‘Yeah. You going to the post office?'

‘Can if you want.'

The gate is fixed and I leave the tools and run to the car. I give Boof a five-dollar note to cover the stamps. ‘Thanks,' I say before returning to work on the tyres.

I stop by the laundry to get my water bottle.

‘What do you think you were doin' talkin' to him, hey?'

It's Bob's voice. He must be with Sally in the kitchen, which shares the back wall with the laundry.

‘Nothin', Bob. Leave it alone, will ya.'

‘Listen here, girl. You're mine. I don't want you near any other bloke. That clear?'

At first I can't quite believe it's Bob. He's so slick and full of false smile and cheer in person. I can't stand the bloke, but I still can't believe he's talking like that to Sally. I'd imagined him to be all cheesy grins and false promises.

‘You don't own me, Bob.'

‘You wanna bet?'

There's a sound of saucepans clanking and something shuffling. ‘Don't,' I hear Sally say. Then there's the shuffle of feet and I can't hear anything else. I grab my water bottle and run back to the jetty.

I'm pleased with the gate. It hangs better now than it ever has before. Cassie comes out of the office and waves over to Boof in the Land Rover. He comes back and she leans in the front window. Bob walks over to the car and I turn around. I don't want to look at the bastard.

I test the tyres on the jetty with my foot, pressing down on the top to see how loose they are. There's a row of eight of them and the first few are tight and snug against the jetty posts. It's the middle two that are loose. I lean down beside the first one to find the end of the rope that's tethered it to the jetty. I feel the jetty lurch underneath me and for a second I think I'm imagining it. I stand up and test the timber with my feet. I wobble but the jetty seems good.

Boof still hasn't gone. The car's idling and he's walked back inside the office with Cassie. They're arguing about something.

The water is slightly lower now, but I'm kneeling down with my hands around the tyre. There aren't any crocs in this immediate section of the river. They've been cleared out around the jetties, but still, they're not caged in and they will travel for food. And it's not that far down stream before it's Albert's territory.

I've got the end of the rope and I'm standing, pulling it tight so I can re-loop and knot it. I hear a crack and tearing sound, and before I realise what it is, I feel something flutter across the back of my neck. I think I hear Boof's voice behind me, yelling my name, but by the time I put all of the details together, a huge branch has snapped off the trunk of a tree at the edge of the water and has smacked me in the back. I'm falling towards the water and there's nothing I can do to stop. The river is running fast with the surge of water from the rain and I'm caught up in the current and pulled away with it. I'd have to thrash and swim hard to make it back to the jetty edge or the bank and by the time I'm thinking clearly enough to realise what it would take to get out of the water, I realise it's too late and I'm too far gone. Some things take you by surprise and there's nothing you can do about it.

I would have thought fear would be the first thing that came to me. Rushing, gushing, paralysing fear. Especially because I know too much. But, instead, the plastic life that has had me wrapped up from since I can remember dissolves and everything slows down. My thoughts are clear and lucid and everything that's been and gone, that is and will happen, becomes a gnash of things that are unfolding in the moment. I could be in cryo-sleep.

I'm a log.

I have to be the log that fell in the river if I have any chance of getting out alive. The sound and motion of the branch falling in the water would have been enough to rouse the crocs all over this stretch of the river. I'm swept along in the current like just another piece of debris.

I'm a log.

I roll on my back slowly and fold my hands over my chest. I close my eyes and shrink into the breathing of my mind. Nothing can get to me there. It's just me and my stories inside my skin. They're all here:
How the Boy Got Brown Skin, Toucan, Stumpy, Lovejack, Boomboom
and
Teabag.
And there's the story I've had sitting here since I was eight. The one I keep tucked away,
How the Boy Was Caught.
At the moment they feel more real to me than anyone outside my skin. They could just be all I have and maybe they're the last people I'll ever know if the crocs get to me and I'm holding on to them like they just might keep me safe from what's out there.

I know what is going to happen.

And it does.

Albert swims towards my left side. I feel him. The bulk of his body swishing through the water. Imagine every gram of his body weight is an ounce of fear and that's the heaviness of it, radiating through the current. The ripples from his movement rocks my body. Water laps over my mouth and I can smell the dirt of it. I want to spit against it, but I don't. Instinct isn't always the best way to stay alive. But I feel heavy, too full and stuffed of uselessness and maybe it's the feel of Albert dragging me down, or maybe it's just my own ghosts of time sitting heavy inside me. I feel like I'm not going to be able to keep breathing for us all and maybe it's because I know none of them could be my father and I feel raw with all the pretending. Mum lied about my fathers. It's like I'm standing with them all in my head and they just don't belong to me any more. If I don't let them go I'll either sink or be snapped up with the struggle to stay afloat. They're dead
weight pulling me down and I know, I just know, now that I have to let go of everything underneath my skin that doesn't belong. If I want to make it out of here I just have to hold fast to what I am – even if that's a hole of not knowing – because hollow logs float. I have to set them adrift in the river to find their own long way, every name of every father that doesn't belong to me. The river can have them. There they go, escaping me like air from a pin-pricked balloon: Teabag, Lovejack, Toucan, Stumpy, Boomboom. I'm back to being a boy without a father and that's how it is.

I've got a picture of Mum in my mind. She's watching all her men leave like she meant nothing to them and she's got precious little in their place. Just a determination to hang on and keep going and an iron grip on my hand. Jesus, my mum has guts. I have this light sensation as they leave my mind and I'm breathing easier. I wish, in a way, I could have made it easier for her. It occurs to me that, in their own way, each of them had the same story to tell.

Hold on, boy!

Maybe after all it was my own story they were telling back to me.

Nature can be a cruel bitch, but you bloody well hang on and don't fuckin' let go.
That's Teabag in his bathtub while Tracy ripped his world apart.

You suck it in boy and you dive in deep.

It's Lovejack going back to the bottom of the sea again and again.

There's this girl, she's waiting for ya. Hold on!

It's Stumpy and Boomboom waiting for the choppers.

Hope is all you got, don't you let go.

It's Toucan sticking it out after everyone else had given up.

It's not my father's story – it's bloody well mine. Always was and still is.

Hold on, Barramundy.

After I told Mum about Blue, she said there was so much to be sad about in life that she could cry the whole Adelaide River twice over, and I'm thinking now that it's the salt and muck and tears of people like her and me and us that's holding me up, a whole bloody muddy river of them. A river that breaks through the dry of the land and, by God, sometimes you can just feel it, standing there beside it, watching it go by. And I'm in it, now. In it up to my death and maybe, just maybe, my life.

I'm a hollow log.

I'm cold-blooded. I don't care.

I will my heart to slow down.

One beat every thirty seconds.

Albert is close to my head and I feel something coming towards my feet.

I wonder if he knows me, like some primitive recognition. I've held the hook over the side of the boat and made him jump for his meat, but these are his terms. Now I'm the bait. Out here in the river it's like a symphony of movement and there's no need for words. It's a world of knowing what's there but isn't seen until it's too late.

Suddenly I feel like life and death have me in a vice and I'm being squeezed on both sides. The pressure is almost
suffocating. There's no protection out here, no glass, no room, no coffin, not even silence. The river's pulse pounds in my ears. I'm in animal territory,
so this is how it is.
I've never been so alive or aware before and it's only because I might not survive. I'm so close to the end, it just might be the beginning.

Mavis swims up towards my feet. Albert and Mavis are separated by the space of my log-body and they're about as close as they'll ever come to sharing the same slice of the water. But I'm a log. If I play it right, they'll leave me be. Something sharp runs up underneath my back and down at my leg. I feel, somehow, like the crocs have lured me here. It's their place and ever since I stood at the edge of the river that first morning, I should have known they'd get to taste me close up. They say pig meat is close to human meat. That our bodies have trouble distinguishing it from our own flesh, which is why it's been taboo in some cultures for centuries. I just hope pig meat and human flesh don't smell the same. I'm counting on the fact that crocs aren't that smart. I just have to remember:

I'm nothing

I'm no one.

It's just not happening.

I've done that before.

If anyone can survive this, I can. And it occurs to me that I'm the only one who could. I have everything that's required. Dark skin. No shirt. And enough fear to know how to play dead. It's all been there when I look in the mirror; dirty, dark, serious. It's just bark, that's what it is, and if that's what I see, then that's what the crocs see, too. Just the flaky
protection of something hard inside, snapped off from its roots and floating free to nowhere and anywhere. If I was a man in the movies I'd be thrashing around against the injustice, trying to prove my strength over nature and adversity – and I'd be dead in a second, no matter the size of my bulging muscles, but I'm not. I'm a boy in a river of tears never cried and I have my own cards to play. I have been this moment all my life.

There's one last story that I have to let go of.

I've been on Blue's back for a while. He's carried me from the wall all the way back into town. He hasn't asked me anything, but he's walked to his own shanty. He puts me down inside near the torn vinyl sofa in the lounge room and tells me to sit down. It's just one big room with a bench and a stove in the corner and a small table. Rubbish is piled high on the table and in patches on the floor. There's faded old yellow carpet. It's flat and dirty and worn thin. In some places there's no carpet at all. Just frayed ends and threads and bare floorboards underneath. The air smells like burnt toast and tomato soup. Blue shuffles through the rubbish on the table for something and I hope it's more aniseed rings. There's a box on the edge of the table. It's small and brown and I stand up and open it. There's three blue umbrellas inside. Little cocktail umbrellas, like in Mum's stories. I pick one up and twirl it between my fingers.

‘Leave it alone,' Blue yells, grabbing the box, the three umbrellas rolling around the bottom. I'm suddenly scared.
He's never yelled before. He grabs my hand and pushes me back on the chair. He puts the lid back on the box and throws it into the corner of the room. I sit here on the sofa, just breathing. The vinyl is ripped and the seat feels funny under my bum. A sharp line of stiff vinyl and in between a spongy softness. Blue comes over and kneels down in front of me.

‘Hey, sorry, Barry. I shouldn't have yelled at you. Not a good thing to do right off, hey?'

I shake my head. I want to go home.

‘Come on. I haven't got any more sweets for you today. But if you're a good boy, after we'll go into town and get some. Would you like that?'

I nod. He pulls me up out of the chair by the hand.

I close my eyes. I don't want it to be happening. The pain, the pushing. The grunting. The pressure of Blue's arm on my back.

I'm a log. I don't exist.

This bad thing isn't real.

I want my mum.

Albert and Mavis have gone.

And so, I think, has Blue.

I can't help feeling like I'm about to be surprised from underneath by Elvis or Scoop and clutched into a death roll. Squashed by all that muscle and ripped under the water in a whirlwind of passion. That's what salties do to their prey;
they hold on tight and twist and roll in short, sharp bursts of energy.

I'm buoyant, floating up and down in the ripples and waves, just waiting for the current to run its course and take me in close to the bank. I'm trying not to think about how lucky I am to have escaped, not one, but two salties. I try not to think about those odds and what it means for my chances if I don't float in to safety soon. I don't really know where I am. I just have to remember that time doesn't matter. It'll all be over soon.

My life plays inside my mind, all the little and big things. They're jumbled up, Humpty Doo jigsaw of everything wrong way round and upside down.

Mum is covered in croc skin and she's holding a little blue cocktail umbrella up against the sun. She's behind bars in a farm with a sign saying ‘WHITE SKIN 69c A PACKET'. McNabm is in the sky, circling over me, clutching embers in his feet, blue blood dripping from his talons. I'm a Barraburger and he's fished me out of the bar. Sally is on top of me and I'm a snake in the grass. I won't stick by her, I'm gonna leave in the end. I'm a chicken, hypnotised and stunned. I'm floating away. Drowning in the bark of my own skin. Brown, dirty, dark. I'm realising that the colour of my skin just might save me from the crocs in the river. My mum has white skin and it won't save her from the sun. Crocs have evaded extinction for a million years, but they'll die for their skin because we want to wear it in every colour.

I can feel the crocs around me. They can see and hear me for sure. They're everything I don't want to know
is true. Lurking under the surface, waiting. Feeding on the scraps of meat I give them. They're waiting for me to slip up, to forget not to forget. Waiting to snap me up in ancient history.

But I'm not in a death roll yet. I must be winning. And I don't want to die to my own demons. They won't have the last word.

There's a small ball of panic rising in my guts and I feel like my body is about to betray me. It's beating stronger like a drum and in my mind I'm shouting for it to go away. It's black, this panic. And it's new. It wasn't here when I fell in the river. It wasn't here when Albert cut up underneath my body. This panic is the feeling of something rising inside me that I should have known has always been there. It's red hot. I try to listen to my mind.

I'm a log.

My blood is cold.

My heart is so slow I can't feel anything.

There's a high-up shrieking sound above me. I'm so surprised I open my eyes without thinking, before I realise it's the sound of a kite bird, and it's suddenly like I've never looked up before, never really seen what's been there hanging over my head all my life and it's there in full light. All I can think about is the story I've told myself of my own beginnings and the kite bird dropping an ember in the bush to start a fire. Small animals scurrying away and the kite bird waiting, waiting and finally swooping down, shrieking, to catch what it has wanted all along. That's what this red panic is inside me. It's the kite bird's fire.

The sky is the most brilliant blue colour I have ever seen and suddenly I'm rushing outside my own skin, my mind and I'm flying free, soaring with the bird in the blue that is swallowing me whole. There's no water, no crocs, just maybe God and all his nothingness and breathlessness and he doesn't care that I don't say much because up here there's nothing to say that can't be understood and touched just by being free and, even though I'm not really gone from my body down there, I've never felt so good. And it all happens in the split of a second because it's so bright and alive it's too much for my eyes and I'm overwhelmed and it's like a fire has started right inside my eyes. The body of me is blinded like Riddick without his goggles and it's so damn bright I can't stand it. I close my eyes but it's too late. The white fire is behind my eyelids and it's racing through my body and any minute I'm going to glow right through myself or burn up and I won't be able to hide anything. There'll be nothing dark left inside me, I could be white and vulnerable and exposed. That pulsing panic in my guts won't be dark and unknown anymore, the fire is coming for it. And yet part of me is still here, up high, looking down on myself and for a second I can glimpse everything and everyone that's kept me going. Mum, Sally, the hotel, Boof, Cassie and Bait. They're all in the fire of light inside me and one by one they disappear and it's only this dark hole in my guts. I'm soaring down towards it and I suddenly realise that it's not just what's lurking below the surface that can devour you whole, but things that circle round your head that you think are nothing but echoes in your mind.