Brown Skin Blue (6 page)

It's Saturday. The first day of my life as a man. I look in the little mirror above the basin in the toilet. I'm sure I'm going to see something different. But the same face stares back at me. Serious. Dark. Dirty. I practise smiling, but it looks all wrong. I try small ones, large ones. Exaggerated ones. Cunning ones. Nothing works. My face settles back into its familiar grooves and I go to the shower block and I've got a sick feeling inside me that seems all wrong. I should be walking taller. Instead my shoulders are hunched forward as always and I'm clutching a towel to my chest. At least nature's perky this morning. The air smells sweet and hot and birds are clucking and chirping madly.

The Humpty Doo Hotel does breakfast on the weekends. Usually I just have bread in my room and wait for Boof to pick me up, but on the weekends I go into the small
dining room with the plastic, strawberry-covered tablecloths, and have bacon and eggs with toast and coffee.

‘Ah, hi there, love,' Bessy says. She's the weekend woman of the diner. I smile and quickly get rid of it now that I've seen the way my smiles appear to others. A smile on my face looks as out of place as a tiara on a croc. Or boxing gloves for that matter.

There's a huge ten-metre boxing croc on the corner of the Humpty Service Station. Smiling stupidly – as much as a croc can with a jaw already fixed in a stretched, frozen grin. I have no idea what this plastic croc is supposed to show.

Hey there little people. Come near me and I'll smile like this, raise my paws with bright orange boxing gloves and give you a good cuff around the ears.

I've named the boxing croc, Shelby. And I'd love to see him come to terms with any of the salties in the river. Albert, Elvis, Scoop. Especially Mavis. She'd have his gloves off and his arse in a deadlock roll quicker than he could wipe the smile off his face. Apart from fear, humans have a fascination for big things. You know. The Big Banana, The Big Pineapple, The Big Crab, The Big Tomato. We want to lure people in with whatever we have. Food, beasts, crustaceans. I wonder how many tourists actually see ‘The Big Thing' and think, ‘Wow, that big thing looks so good, we should stick around and see the small ones.' Tourists have photos taken with ‘The Big Things'. Some people probably have a whole photo album of them. You go to Coffs Harbour to see The Big Banana, not the farms of little ones. What's interesting about the real thing?

‘Here, you want to read the paper, love?' Bessy's beside me with a folded-up newspaper. ‘Another bloke left it here.'

I look up. ‘Thanks.'

I'm not much for reading the paper but it's something to do while I wait for my breakfast. I open it up and lay it flat on the table. There's a brochure for Top End Game Fishing and Fogg Dam. I move them out of the way and there on page one is his name. McNabm Blue. I scan the article. There's pictures. Some of the same words leap out at me.
Inquest. Inquiry. Children still not safe. Where are they now? Cycle of abuse repeats itself through a new generation.
I rush from the table and run to my room where I vomit in the toilet again. I lay there on the tiled floor and suddenly the thought of what happened with Sally and what happened with Blue – the good thing and the bad thing – are all in a mess together.

I'm at the back of the van, crying. Mum clouted me with the wooden spoon so hard my bum hurts and I'm that bloody annoyed I'm crying. It wasn't my fault I saw Mrs Dickers in her knickers. I was lookin' through the window to her van to see if Jonny was there. Mum caught me, saw Mrs Dickers inside with her knickers down at her knees, and slapped me across the back of the head. Then she dragged me back inside our own van and went at me with the wooden spoon. She took off then. For making her go and lose her temper like that and get stuck into me like she promised herself she'd never do.

‘I reckon you could use a sweet or two. Whaddya reckon?'

I turn around and Blue is there with another small white paper packet. I wipe at my face. I don't want anyone to see me with tears and red eyes. I'm not a baby.

‘No shame in crying, Barry. Here, take 'em.'

I take the bag and put two lollies straight in my mouth.

He sits down on the ground. He's smiling. He's nice. I don't sit because my bum hurts.

‘You get a beating?'

I nod.

‘Yeah. Happens when you're a kid. You're doin' me another favour, you know. By eatin' those sweets. They'd only rot my teeth and make me get older quicker. It's lucky there's good kids like you to help an old bloke out.'

I smile at him because I feel better with the aniseed and sugar in my mouth.

‘If you want, I could have a look at your bum for you. If it's real red, I've got cream that could help.'

He's real nice. My bum hurts and I don't know how to make it any better and my mum's gone and she's the one who hurt me. I turn around and let him look.

I'm hungry now that my stomach's empty. But the rest of me is filled with everything that happened back then. I don't want to have to explain myself to anyone, especially Bessy, and I don't want to have to find somewhere else to have my meals to avoid her forever, so I go back into the dining room. I fold the paper without lookin' and wait for my breakfast.

She's there straightaway with a plate of steaming food. Bacon, crisp and burnt. Fried eggs with sauce. Chunks of butter on thick toast and black coffee.

‘I knew you'd be back,' she says.

She leaves the plate on the table and goes back to the counter. I'm about to dig in when she calls out to me.

‘Oh, Barry, I almost forgot. That young lass was in this morning. She said to give you this.' She walks back over to me and pulls a piece of paper out from her apron pocket. She winks and nudges me with her elbow. ‘She's a real sweetheart, that one,' she says, then leaves me to the note and my food. I put my knife and fork down and open the piece of paper.

I fold the paper and tuck it under my plate. S. S for Sally. S for Sweetheart. I turn slightly towards the counter where Bessy is wiping the bench and humming to herself. She doesn't see me and I turn back to face the eggs and bacon.

There's other things I keep in my head besides stories. I collect facts. Incidental, meaningless facts. Sometimes I run them through my mind just for the fun of it. Sometimes they come up all on their own, like now.

I've suddenly got a picture of Blue splayed and stuffed, hanging on a wall in the museum of depraved individuals. The Big Blue. His face in a plastic grin. His eyes wide and stunned. His teeth sharp and whitened. A noose higher up on the wall. Waxed and shiny. In my mind there's a black space at his crotch, like a doll. No sex parts. Just the thought of them. And underneath there's a plaque which reads:

I pick up my knife and fork and decide to eat my breakfast even though I'm not hungry any more. The egg's on my fork and Bessy sits down on the chair next to me.

‘Now,' she says. ‘I've got a spare minute. The crowd hasn't come in yet. Your sweetheart said you'd be wanting a word with me.'

She's sitting there smiling. Her face is round and pink and squashed up in an unknowing, pleasant sort of way. I'm cornered. Again. Nowhere to go. Too much to say and a fear of saying anything. I squash the eggs in my mouth and chew slowly. Bessy just sits there. She's got her hands linked together, rolling one thumb over the other. She's waiting. I have to swallow.

‘Well,' I start to say. ‘Um.' I don't want to talk to Bessy. I don't want to say the name.

‘Teabag. Teabag Jones. Your sw—'

‘Sally. Her name's Sally.'

‘She asked if I knew a man by that name,' she continues.

‘And?'

‘And I know him. Lives not far from here, as it happens. Teabag Jones,' she says. ‘Well, that's what he's called. Can't be too many of them around, hey?'

‘No,' I manage to say. The bacon looks good.

‘You want me to give you his address?'

I nod. It's easier than anything else. She pulls a pencil out from between her boobs, licks the end and scribbles on the paper napkin. ‘There,' she says. ‘Glad I could be of help.' She stands, straightens her skirt then goes back to the counter, humming.

I tuck the napkin underneath my plate and take a piece of bacon with my fingers.

‘You might be wondering how I came to know him,' she says behind me.

I glance around, but she's still rubbing the counter furiously.

‘Well, let's just say that not everyone gets it right, you know. Some of us have to smell trouble before we know what it is.'

My crunching echoes in my head.

‘He wasn't all bad,' she says, sighing. I'm staring at my plate, but she's still talkin'. ‘But he wasn't much good, either.'

There's one egg left on my plate and I'm wondering whether it came from the chook that I hypnotised yesterday.

‘All I'll say is that it's easy to get lost in some blokes right off the bat. Oh they can make it all sound like a dream, you know. Their eyes're so bright you're blinded. Can't see the forest for the trees, then.' She's humming again and I hear her footsteps clicking along the cement floor. The humming gets softer, I see the door at the end of the bar open. The door closes and I swallow the last of my egg. The coffee is cold, but I drink it anyway.

‘That's the trouble with those dark blokes. They can blind you with those eyes. I used to think God himself was inside 'em.'

Christmas didn't mean much to the bloke that had just moved into his first home. Life had been tough. School had been a disaster and he'd tried just about everything shitty life had to offer. It was hard having dark skin in this country, even if his parents were white. It was hard to know where to look. What was a bloke like him supposed to do?

Nothin' seemed to come naturally. Everywhere on the news there was talk of Aboriginal rights. The Tent Embassy, the first raising of the Aboriginal flag. He felt something stir, like part of him belonged to those things, but he was trapped against an overwhelming need to keep going.

His place – his house – was just the beginning of something. It didn't matter that he didn't know what. He had a job, even if it
was only packing things on trucks. It was something to fill his days. At least he was working.

His parents called twice a week. It was too far to see them in person very often. They were busy, he didn't have a car. Besides, he had to get on with life. He had to find out what he was made of.

It was Christmas Eve, 1974, and the arrival of Santa wasn't nearly as important as the warnings about the cyclone activity. He had the radio on the kitchen table, the antenna bent at the best angle for reception, and he sat there, listening to everything that was said.

There had been another cyclone warning earlier that month, but it hadn't come to much, and he didn't think this would be anything to worry about either. He'd just hang tight, hide in the bathroom, and wait out the storm.

He was going to make himself a cup of tea when the storm suddenly seemed to rip through the world like a beast. The sound of wind and rain and smashing was overwhelming. There was no time to grab anything, no time to wonder about whether he should get out of the house or stay put.

He hid in the bathroom, the strongest part of the house, curled up in the bathtub while the wood panels were ripped from the house joints like flaking blisters. The roof left in surfboards, flying off into the sea outside. Furniture flew everywhere. All around the earth shook and his small house was demolished piece by piece. Nature screamed at everything standing in her way and it crumbled under her.

She'll win every time.

That night, Tracy tore most of Darwin down to the ground and, for the bloke hiding in the bathtub, the fear and terror were so great he could not even remember his own name.

Tracy left and the sun came up on the world. It was Christmas Day. When he stood up out of the bathtub, his home was unrecognisable. Houses were gone, the streets – if there was any way of telling what streets were and houses were not – were covered in timber and glass, cars, metal sheeting. Fridges, tables, chairs. An entire human world blown to smithereens and demolished into one giant rubbish heap. Nature did this. Nature could do this to people.

It was the girl from up the road who first saw him standing there. Pretty little thing with blonde hair. Her clothes were patchy, wet and smeared with dirt.

‘What's your name?' she said to the bloke beside his bathtub. There was no flat, no front yard, no neighbours, no nothing, just...

The bloke shook his head and it was hours before he said any words at all.

There was a small group of people huddled in the corner of the world near where their houses and homes and cars and lives had been. The girl and the bloke clambered over the uneven ground, their feet disappearing in between the rubbish. They stood with the others.

Their eyes were taking everything in, but their minds could not comprehend what had happened. Not truly.

After a while, the bloke lifted his arms to wipe at his eyes and, for the first time since Tracy arrived, realised there was something squashed in his fist. The muscles were so tight around it, clamped shut for hours, that at first he could not open it. The girl took his hand and rubbed it. Her fingers were warm and blood came back into his hand, painfully at first. His fingers opened slowly and, inside, flat against the palm of his hand, was a teabag.

The girl laughed and took his hand in hers.
Teabag,
for his
name, was a tease, at first. Something to bring back a trickle of forced laughter between them all.

‘Geez, mate. Of all the things to hang on to.'

‘Bloody Norah, you're the laugh.'

‘Shit, hey.'

‘My ring,' said a woman in the group with them. ‘My ring is gone.'

But something happened there, between that girl and the bloke. She became his first wife.

Long after that – though not as long as it should have been – Dolly was the excuse for a while. How could he love his wife when he felt so strongly for the woman in the van?

Dolly knew what she was to Teabag and it didn't matter. This one cried on her shoulder.