The Glass Canoe (14 page)

OVERHANG

The morning after, I was feeling sad. Gentleness was indicated.

Gently I got to my feet and gently I lifted both hands to my head. There's a lot to be said for levelling-out the blood pressure by lying down, but times come when the upright stance is better. Reduces the pressure at the top of the vessel. What I needed.

Some dew on the grass, not much. I looked up. Sun dived at me, tried to crash-tackle my head through two glassy openings in front. I prudently shut them, felt forward with a foot to look for balance.

Several empty bottles of pilsner tumbled over on their sides with a suicide shriek and bashed together like one of those new concussion bombs.

I tried to open my eyes. No. That was a nowhere nothing.

I felt round blind in my pockets for paper and some means of inscribing my will. No paper.

I bent my knees slowly and after three months reached down near the ground. A bottle with a long slopey neck nuzzled my hand like a death adder. I was interested to find my skin so sensitive.

Something swept round in an arc until I was off balance. I steadied and let it move another few inches. I think it was an arm. If it was an arm I'm pretty sure it belonged to me, or someone close to me. Wetness encountered the outer covering of my arm nerves and the awkward thing on the end of my arm. Another bottle made of glass.

The beer label came off, courtesy of wetness.

I walked a few miles further along the grass and came to a body. Prodigal of time, I spent a lot getting down far enough to search the body for a pen. I still couldn't open my eyes, the sun was waiting for foolish moves like that.

The sick man inside me could stand it no longer. Squatting down, I mean. I straightened, slowly, like one of those trees on the movies, or demolished chimneys, that pick themselves up and come straight again like before they fell. The last bit very slowly.

Getting my top half upright I put both hands on both hips. One hip each. In doing this, I found my own pen. It was in two pieces. I took out the refill, and used that, throwing the broken bits away. The next question
was how to get it out. You might think this is no easy thing, and you are dead right. First, which hand?

To make a short story shorter, I wrote out my will on the back of the beer bottle label. The sun dried it while I was thinking.

To whom it may concern. Last will and testament. Being of sound mind.

I had to get another label then, that one was full.

I don't smoke, which is a rare affliction at the Mead. The same body I tried to rob before had a packet of cigarettes. Which I split open, allowing the coffin nails to escape on the grass. They didn't make much noise, but I guess that's because they didn't want anyone to know they were free.

I opened out the empty packet and wrote the rest of my will on the white cardboard. Why is the inside of cigarette packets always white? I asked the question then and I'm asking it now.

No one answered me then, either.

I wish I had a lot of things, I wrote. I'd enjoy giving a lot of things to people. I'd make my darling rich, for a start, so she wouldn't have to worry about anything.

I was really drunk.

Things were not what she wanted; she could do without things. I never saw a less thingy person, man or woman. Only animals are less thingy than she is.

There was no thing I could give her. She just wanted me.

And I was near death. I wrote quickly: Dear world, you are all I know. I like you. Take the lot.

The last bit wasn't much chop. I crossed it out with my dying effort and wrote: I
give you all I've got.

Before I collapsed, I got the two bits of paper and folded them together and stuck them in a buttonhole in the front of my shirt and slowly lowered myself to the earth to die.

‘Beer makes the world go round,' I said in farewell.

My eyes were already shut, but as soon as I hit the earth a steel curtain behind my eyes came down and I passed away. Goodbye, I said. My mouth stayed open, but did I care?

ELISSA DIDN'T GIVE A STUFF

That afternoon around three I was jumping out of my skin. I have this lucky digestive system, I can be dying in the morning and right as rain by lunch. Usually I don't get crook at all. I found out later some of the boys played a little joke on me.

I can drink a good deal, and until I hit the night air I don't show it. Even walk straight. But when I go, I go. Out like a light. No headaches, just sometimes a little uneasy in the belly. But when you get fed spirits in your beer, you lose your timing. You pass out at entirely the wrong time.

Anyway, last night was last night. I'd missed some day, it was up to me to make the most of what was left.

My little pet car got me to the back of the pub into a nice shady spot by three. Blackie was standing guard,
watching us come to drink when we weren't thirsty. Yet he never made a snide remark. There was an old toilet block out the back of the Southern Cross. It was brick, and looked OK painted white. It was the sort of old outhouse that you'd whitewash years before they put the plastic in the kalsomine. It was hardly ever used.

It was further to go past the bar for a pee, then come back, so I went for a pee in there.

There was a man hanging in the darkness. He'd stopped swinging, so I knew he must be dead. There was no hurry.

I had my pee. I even turned round and gave the little bloke a look—his first look—at a dead man.

I felt sorry for the man hanging. His face looked resigned, but that could be my imagination, or the relaxation of death. I felt sorry for his tongue, too. There was a fly on it.

Relaxation. That might be why he wanted to die. Plenty of people are dying to relax. I guess that isn't funny to people who care more about dying than we do, in our tribe.

I put the little bloke away and patted the dead man's pockets. He had money. Why would a man with money neck himself? He could have drunk his money out first. A comb, a letter, some keys, and shoes. Imported. The trousers tailored. A good knitted shirt. With short sleeves, and the points of both elbows worn down smooth and whitened and powdery. A desk
worker. On his wrist one of those watches where you can see the guts, wheels turning and things ticking. The sort of thing where they don't even have the price on the ads.

I guess things have as much pull on me as they have on my little darling. I lifted out the letter. It wasn't new.

There was no light there to read by, so out I went and in to the bar. Sharon gave me a schooner. I took it over to a chair.

It was addressed to a woman. Inside, it said ‘Dear Elissa', then a comma.

I haven't had a day's sickness since I last saw you
.
Remember all the little things I used to get wrong with me? A chill
,
a temperature
,
pains in the back or the chest
,
and I used to be ashamed of them
.
Now they're gone
.
And I've found what my sickness really was
.
Loving was my sickness
.
I recovered from that and my body is better
.
The person I loved above everything ignored me
.
Now I'm where I can't feel her ignoring me
,
and I don't have to get something wrong with me to attract her attention
,
which was usually irritated and tight-lipped with impatience
.

Loving was the main thing in living
.
I never bothered to take ego trips at work or among friends
.
I found it easy to work for others and take orders and knuckle under to discipline
.
But now I've got rid from inside myself of dependence on an employer—I'm out
on my own—and I won't take orders from anyone
.
I do as I like and people lap it up
.

I'm well thought of now
,
where before they didn't know I was there
.
People listen to me
.
Money comes easily and bigger orders are automatic when I simply say I want bigger orders
.
All because I won't listen to anyone
.
I had no idea people were so simple and so stupid
.

I make love when I feel like it and with whom
,
and treat them all as if I'm going to throw them over tomorrow
.
The result? They're hanging all over me
,
begging me never to leave
.
Offering everything
.

And what of the person I loved above everything? I know that whatever she says
,
she's same as the rest
.
With the addition of tears
.
Can't be happy without me
.
I know it
.

She used to say it was ridiculous to expect the fever and anguish and passion of love to survive the first months or years
.
It never abated for me
.
And I felt humiliated that I didn't have this toughness that could look calmly on the death of love
.

Now I care for nobody and they all want me
.
And she
.
She finds—I know she finds—the fever and the anguish unendurable
.

As I said
,
I haven't had a day's sickness since
.
All that's happened is I've died
.

Vivian
.

I'd have felt easier if he smelt of grog. But he'd done it because he wanted to die. He'd been wrong about Elissa.

I went out to the car, pretending to get something. On the way back I went in to the old toilet to put the letter back. I stuffed it into Vivian's hip pocket and went back to the door. What would I do?

I walked to the bar and told Sharon. ‘There's a stiff in the old shouse.'

‘Yeah,' she said, not looking up. Waiting for the crack. I waited, too. At last she'd poured the beers and one for me and looked up as she passed it over and took the money.

‘You joking?'

‘Not this time. Not that sort of stiff. This sort.' I made a hand sign at my throat. She stood there watching me. I didn't look away. She shrugged with her eyebrows and pushed her lips upward and went towards the manager. She stopped, turned. ‘Not kidding?'

‘Not kidding.'

‘Okay,' she called back.

The bar manager lumbered out and I walked behind. He didn't send Sharon back.

They both took in the sight of Vivian.

‘Is he dead?' said Sharon.

‘He's stopped swinging,' I said, but she didn't get it.

‘How did you come to find it,' said the bar manager.

‘Came in for a piss.'

‘Better call the police,' he said.

Vivian's socks were down, there were the scars of boils on his ankles. And from his shanks a few pathetic hairs spread down towards bald ankle bones.

In a place like the Southern Cross you can't descend on an old toilet in a body and have nobody notice. Footsteps on cracked concrete announced spectators.

They crowded in and round Vivian. He started to swing again. And that's how he became the property of the Southern Cross.

Up in the corner of the eaves I noticed the skeleton of a small bird. Maybe it just didn't have the energy left after its time of panic and bewilderment.

‘Better cut him down,' someone said.

‘He's doing no harm up there.'

‘Where'd he get the rope?'

‘Hey. That looks like a bit of my rope.' A man dashed out to his ute. He was a builder. In he came, shark-eyed.

‘That's my rope. Don't you bastards cut it. I'll undo the knot when you want him down.'

‘Aren't we going to take him down?'

‘Where'll we put him?'

‘On the bar?'

‘Cut it out. I want to sell beer on that bar.'

‘So? He'll be star of the bar.'

With appropriate ceremony he was borne into the manager's office and sat on some newspapers in an easy chair. The builder got his rope back, undamaged. He marked where the neck had been, and the knot, to show his kids.

The photographers came, then the police. By nightfall Vivian was a celebrity. I made sure the boys from the press got the letter first. Man swings for love, and all that.

I once saw a funeral take off from the Old Men's Home, the box carried on a dray, just a horse and cart. No mourners, just a driver. They shot the box in on the floor of the dray: Bang! and at the graveside shot it in again: Bang! to the bottom of the hole in the ground. I was a little kid then, it impressed me.

Vivian's was a pauper burial too. We'd whipped round and got plenty of flowers, but we didn't think of the style of service and stuff like that. We assumed he had plenty of brass. We hadn't contributed to that. Whoever his relatives were, if he had any, they tied everything up so it worked out the dead man had nought.

Not that he needed it. A hole in the ground is a hole in the ground, however much it costs, however many words are said from the top looking down.

No one turned up at the paddock but us from the pub. It was a rainy day, none of the press or TV
came. Even the minister, hired for the occasion and not scoring much out of it, wanted to stand fifty yards away on the paved part of the road. The ground was wet and soggy and bad for shoes. He wanted two dry feet, didn't care who else got wet, long as he didn't. He was prepared to say the words from there, while we stood round in the mud.

Not for long. Serge put a hand under his collar and lifted him off the bitumen, his arm swung like a crane and the man of the cloth was deposited on wet soil.

‘Over there, mate. That's you. Not fifty yards away 'cause you're frightened of getting your bloody feet wet.'

The parson did as he was told and said the words by the hole in the ground. Someone held an umbrella over the coffin so the raindrops only splashed on the foot end.

As far as we could see, the words did nothing for the cells that died, the circuits that failed. But who knows?

No strange women turned up, no Elissa. Old Viv had been dead wrong about her. Much he knew. She didn't give a stuff.