Gravity (9 page)

The burpmeister glanced at me, and I smiled. The kid smiled back and the sadness was in me again. Maybe it had always been there but – like an eel – I didn't see it until it swung close to the surface.

You can't pick what you'll miss.

‘Shit,' Debbie spat, and rested her face in her hands.

‘What?'

She shook her head and pointed at The Sushi House. It took a full minute for me to spot Marcia. She was still wearing her Hardware House uniform. She had a girl in each hand. They were little kids, probably her grandchildren. They were walking with a purpose and the chances of them spotting me sitting with Debbie were slim. I'd have to stand up, shout and wave my arms in that sea of people to make them notice me. And why would anyone want to hide from Marcia? She always had a smile on her face and she called everyone ‘Love'. She was in charge of first aid and was a gun at removing splinters. She was like a country nanna. There's an honesty that comes with living in a place where everybody knows everything about you for so long. Marcia had that sort of honesty.

‘Has she gone?' Debbie eventually asked.

‘Yes.'

Debbie unfolded her face from her hands and picked at her hair in the reflection from a shop window.

‘Why all the hush-hush?' I asked.

‘Oh, you have no idea what they're like, Adam. They could put us through hell.'

‘What, for having a coffee?'

‘One coffee means we're obviously sleeping together.'

‘It's only coffee. Let them think what they like.'

We weren't sleeping together and the more time I spent with Debbie, the less likely that seemed as a prospect. What I'd first detected as an air of mystery about her now seemed like aloofness. A sense of superiority.

‘You sound a bit paranoid,' I said.

She drained her cup. ‘You don't know what they're like.'

‘Obviously.'

But more and more, I was beginning to understand what I was like. I like simple, not messy. I like honest, not sly. I like talking straight.

I only wished I could live the way I thought.

I leaned forwards. ‘I heard a rumour that you were having an affair with Tony?' I whispered. I said it mostly as a joke – an irony – but as soon as the words passed my lips I knew I'd blown it. Struck a nerve.

Debbie shot a glance at me that was at once a look of horror and an admission of guilt. She stood and lost her sunglasses, bumped the table as she picked them up, then power-walked into the crowd.

I watched her pert little bottom disappear and thought
about Sandy Willis. Sandy with her downy moustache and unwashed aura, her too-close-together eyes and off-white teeth. I
knew
Sandy. Sandy was the opposite of Debbie Wilde. Sandy was a little rough and ready on the outside, but she was beautiful. Beautiful in a way that couldn't be simulated with cosmetic surgery or through workouts at the gym.

It was another smiling irony that it took the vision of Debbie's retreating tush for me to work that out.

Sorry, Sandy.

The midday sun had shredded the clouds by the time I ventured into the car park again. The MX5 had gone and I sat on the bonnet of Bully's Subaru for a melancholy moment. It was as though I was on a mission to shake the foundations of everything I considered to be real – my family, my future, my friends.

Love.

I shook them and some of them turned out to be fakes.

I wasn't just looking for a body to be with. It wasn't as simple as that any more. I'd find that whole concept difficult to explain to Bullant.

Mum thought she was a bad mum in the same way that I knew I was an irresponsible son and an unreliable brother.

I had convinced myself that leaving Splitters Creek was a courageous act. One glance in my rear view mirror told me otherwise.

My melancholy moment was shattered by a message from Harry.

Kicking on in the shed. Wish you were here.

And then, as if by magic, Harry's wish came true. I found a ratty old map under the passenger seat and wove slowly through the maze of the suburbs until I'd found the house with the little Laser parked in the drive.

Bonnie was home.

I knocked and called at the front door but the only response was a guttural bark from Felix. There was music rattling the shed. I did a chin-up on the back gate and the dog was right there, his steely eyes gleaming, tail sweeping.

‘Whoa! Hello, big boy. Can I come in?'

I found the latch and let myself in, my hand cupped over my balls. Felix butted my thigh with his wet nose and I shove-patted his head as I tracked across the yard, slipped through the shed door and shut him out.

The workshop erupted in a cheer.

‘Chainsaw!' Harry sang. He skipped across the room and gave me an alcohol-charged hug. I thumped his back.

Bonnie was there, glass in hand.

So was Germy.

And a stranger. An old bloke sitting on one of the bar stools with neatly parted grey-black hair. He wore bib and brace overalls and a stubbly three-day growth.

‘Chainsaw, this is Gordon Carter from next door,' Harry said.

The old man didn't get up from his seat, but we shook hands. ‘Harry says you're from up the country.'

‘Yeah, Splitters Creek. In the hills behind Orbost. Up near the border.'

Gordon shrugged. ‘Never heard of it. You're into woodwork?'

Harry handed me a beer and I thanked him. ‘Yes. Sort of. I haven't really done much but I love it. I worked at a sawmill up home.'

Gordon nodded knowingly. ‘It gets under your skin.'

He put his beer on the bar and got to his feet a little stiffly.

Bonnie swung in close and raked me with a smile. ‘How'd you pull up this morning?'

‘A bit sad and sorry for myself.'

She nodded.

‘Sorry about last night, you know, how it ended and that.'

Bonnie shrugged. ‘What? It was fine. No worries. I had a ball.'

She looked in my eyes for the longest time, her lips still wedged in a wry grin. ‘Maybe next time,' she said, and I agreed but I knew it'd never happen. Bonnie was just too
cool and cosmopolitan and complex for the likes of me. And there was Germy to consider.

From a high cupboard attached to the wall Gordon produced a wooden object. It rattled as he dusted it with his fingers and gave it to me.

It was like a baby's toy or a primitive musical instrument – four wooden rings threaded on a squat barbell of timber. It was deliciously smooth.

‘How do you reckon you get the rings on there?' Gordon asked.

‘Probably just threaded them . . .'

Examining the timber, I could see that the barbell shape was all one piece. If one end had been removed to slip the rings in place, the patching job was better than perfect. I inspected the rings and could find no joins. Not a mark or a crack or a blemish. It dawned on me that this skin-smooth barbell and rings had been carved from one piece of wood.

‘That's amazing,' I said. ‘It's all from one piece.'

Gordon conceded a faint smile.

‘You made this? How?'

‘Magician never reveals his secrets,' Gordon said, and his smile grew. He picked up his beer and gestured with his head. ‘Come on.'

I followed him to the shed door.

‘Where are you two off to?' Harry whined.

‘We're going next door,' Gordon said.

‘Oh, I see. Gordon's going to show you his etchings, is he, Chainsaw?'

Gordon looked at me, expressionless, then at Harry. ‘You're jealous.'

‘Bloody oath I am.'

‘You can come, too,' Gordon grumbled. ‘But you have to behave.'

Harry blew a raspberry and dismissed us with the back of his hand. ‘I know when I'm not wanted.'

Gordon closed the door behind us and patted the dog. ‘There is nothing on this earth as complex as the emotions of a Homo Sexual.'

He pronounced it as two words, like it was a botanical name or something. He looked at me, startled. ‘You're not one, are you?'

‘Sorry?'

‘A poof. You're not a poof, are you?'

‘Ah, no.'

He looked in my eyes for a moment, then nodded and walked across the yard. ‘Not that it matters. Harry's a good kid. What he gets up to behind his closed doors is his business.'

He said that but it was obvious that the thought of Harry being gay repulsed the old man. But
was
Harry gay? He certainly danced with women. He went home with women. He had kissed me on the cheek, but he was drunk at the time. Maybe he was the sort of guy who didn't mind.

Gordon's house didn't smell like an old person's place. There was none of that cabbage pong or aroma of stale perfume and mothballs. His place was sappy sweet with linseed and fresh paint. The front door opened into a hallway carpeted with a layer of sawdust. Beneath the dust, where a barrage of footsteps had scuffed it clean, polished floorboards gleamed deep red and brown. At first, I thought the
sawdust was a product of renovations but as we entered the lounge, I realised his house was also his shed.

On the wall, where there should have been a tacky print of a sailing ship, was a shadow board with every woodworking tool known to man hanging neatly in its place. The room was dim but the banks of bare fluorescent tubes on the ceiling would be as bright as sunshine if they were all switched on. Instead of a couch, Gordon had a saw bench and the TV had been replaced by a bandsaw.

I laughed. I couldn't help myself.

A wall had been removed between what had been the lounge and what was the dining room to make way for a rack of timber. The dining table was a workbench with a huge red vice bolted to one side. Fine French doors opened onto a covered verandah and the workshop continued out there beyond my line of sight.

‘Amazing.'

‘Not everybody who visits sees it like that. It's just a kind of practical solution, really. Stuff kept getting nicked from my own shed. After my wife passed away, I started bringing my tools in of a night. It just sort of grew from there.'

‘Why don't you use Harry's shed? Didn't you and his grandad work together?'

Gordon shrugged. ‘I
do
use the shed. Occasionally. I started bringing work home when Bill was still alive.'

Gordon stepped through into another room and returned with a wooden chain. My fingers marvelled at the workmanship. The chain – like the barbell and rings – had been carved from a single piece of wood.

He led me into what felt uneasily like a bedroom, packed
high with finished projects: a blond stand-alone rocking chair, a twisted hallstand and a solid timber filing cabinet that must have weighed a tonne. There was a nest of intricately inlaid coffee tables and something that looked like the podium at school. It had been formed from raw branches, some of which were ornamented while the tree was still growing with the scribbled tracks of insect larvae.

I was speechless for a long while as I pondered each piece, running my hand over flawlessly smooth timber and inspecting each joint as if I knew what I was doing.

‘Beautiful work.'

His eyes were suddenly sad, and he shrugged. ‘Keeps a man's thoughts from wandering.'

I breathed a laugh through my nose and nodded.

Wandering where?

To the dark places, of course. To the abyss of the unthinkable. Like the place where I dumped all the things I'd rather not think about, all my confusion and my broken futures.

It may have been a throwaway line from Gordon, but it struck a chord in me that grew louder until I felt like I needed to leave. It was too personal, too intimate to be in that room with the old man.

Gordon sensed my unease.

‘We'd . . . I'm keeping you from your mates.'

‘No,' I said, but moved past him into the hall. ‘It's fine.'

He locked the door as we left and the day outside seemed brighter and warmer than when we'd gone in. For Gordon, the woodwork was oblivion. The place where he could retreat from his pain. Perhaps a more productive oblivion than Bundy.

‘Do you sell any of your stuff?' I asked.

Gordon had put on his happy face, his tone was forced cheer. ‘Occasionally. I have pieces in galleries all over town. I don't need to sell them to survive. It's really just a hobby now. Beer money.'

He let us in the back gate and Felix puffed with excitement but didn't bark or try to sniff the old bloke out. Germy was loping across the back lawn. He waved with a single finger and told us he'd see us later.

My phone vibrated and beeped in my pocket. Gordon let the dog into the shed and I stopped beside a gnarled old lemon tree.

I spoke to Bully. He told me he was on his way.

‘Got a little surprise for you,' he said.

‘Good,' I said. ‘Is it liquid?'

‘Mostly, but we still need beer.'

‘Right, I'll get the beer.'

‘Yep, and I'll get the Bundy.'

I gave him Mum's address and phone number and told him to ring if he got into trouble.

‘If I can't find the bloody joint.'

‘There's a map behind the seat.'

‘Right. See ya.'

Bonnie was standing in the doorway.‘Who was that? Your squeeze?'

‘My what? My squeeze? Not bloody likely. Bullant.'

‘Bullant?'

‘Best mate since before we were born . . . if you know what I mean.'

She nodded. ‘Your face lit up like fireworks.'

‘Yeah? I haven't seen him for a while. He's coming down.'

‘Cool. The more the merrier. Bring him over. There's plenty of room to crash in the lounge.'

I laughed. ‘You don't even know Bullant.'

She shrugged. ‘Do I have to? He's a mate of yours isn't he?'

‘Yes, but . . .'

‘Whatever. The invitation's there.'

She wandered into the shed and I stood beside the lemon tree for a long while, imagining how Bully would go meeting Bonnie and Harry and that. Three beers and he'd probably start humping Bonnie's leg. Six beers and he'd be trying to rip Harry's head off in a homophobic rage. I wondered if Bonnie might live to regret her generosity.