The Glass Canoe (18 page)

EH

He was a Queenslander and though this is an interesting fact about any man, some get over it. Eh never did.

Eh is pronounced ‘ay' as in day. It was a question at the end of every sentence. That was the way up north Queensland.

He was a short, thick fair-haired guy, and when the boys got tired of calling him Eh they called him Guy, to stir him.

‘Bloody Kings Cross Yanks,' he'd growl. ‘What's up with “blokes”, eh? Or fellers? Guy, for Christ sake, it'd make you sick, eh?'

He worked for the council on night shift, and this was Thursday afternoon. The night before, his work was enlivened by an accident to the clumsy yellow street-sweeping machine with the flashing lights that goes into action round Parramatta in the early hours.

A drunk in a long American car fell asleep at the wheel and took the back wheel off the big machine—it has only one back wheel—and pushed the whole thing into the window of a butcher's shop.

Eh wanted to go back there in the morning to see the butcher's face.

‘I like looking at blokes to see the way they take things, eh?'

Eh lived with a woman a bit more than twice his age. This lady was the Great Lover's Mum, a handsome woman who acted more like a mother to Eh than a girl friend. I guess a mother was what he wanted.

I first got to know him at the Cross when he was talking of his early life in Queensland, before he came to Sydney. When they sneaked in to poultry farms up there they grabbed the birds by the throat. In New South you grab them by the legs. When you grab their legs they never let out a single squark.

‘No, mate, eh? Up there it's round the throat. Although I must confess one time I broke into a big farm, full of real grouse poultry, eh? I'm a bit slow grabbing this bird and the next thing there's forty thousand chooks roaring their heads off. I went through that chicken wire head first, eh? They had automatic lights and shotguns and I was lucky to get away, eh?'

He'd had a hard time just existing when he'd been out of work in the country for three months. He'd stolen
from fish shops and nicked off, snatched a woman's purse once and got twenty-five cents. After that he decided it was a lousy way to live, so he went to Brisbane and lived on the cats.

He could look like a little boy, sort of sad and vulnerable with big grey eyes, and after dark in city streets the lonely old cats would see him and ask him directions or whatever it is they do to sound out boys. Once he found he could do it, he came to Sydney and lived five months with a cat of about fifty-five in his pretty little flat at Potts Point. That was his longest stay with any one cat.

He'd been married once. Kids, too.

‘I went to leave home once, the kids hanging on round me crying Daddy don't go, but the missus knew I wasn't going, eh?'

‘How?' I said, since he waited for it.

‘'Cause I took the dog with me, eh?'

He didn't want to tell me how he finally came to leave.

All he said was he'd never get clear of the tangle of his life, that was how he put it. Tangle.

‘Several times I've stopped the cracks in the room, you know, with paper and stuff and turned the gas on, eh? Never done it. No guts, eh?'

I knew a dozen young guys no more than twenty-five, had done the same thing. It was a common confession. I've never given it a thought.

I wouldn't neck myself, I might miss something. Besides, there's no grog in the grave.

While I'd been in that gas-filled boarding house room in my head, he was back up north. Hungry.

‘So I ate mangoes. The first night I ate four dozen mangoes and my tongue swole up, eh? One night I was hiding in the bush and first thing in the morning a bloke scared shit out of me bursting out of thick brush, no tracks, eh? Chased by this cassowary. I ducked, I was in this little hollow, with branches over the top and bits of bark and grass to keep the dew off, eh? And when I was hungry I circled round near a property where I knew the people—too bloody proud to go ask for a feed, never liked handouts—and this dam they had, with barbed wire round it to keep out the sheep and animals, there was a kangaroo bogged in it, eh? I'm so bloody hungry I'll eat the bastard alive. So I take my clothes off, to keep 'em dry, eh? And crawl under the wire in this mud and what do I do but get bogged too, eh? Down on my hands and knees.

‘Before I know it, something's up me. I look round and there's this sheepdog, going to town on me. I can't move and he gets in, slips in on the sweat and all, like an expert, eh? Which he is. I know the dog, and all round the town everyone'll tell you he'll fuck anything, eh? Zot! Up me like a flash. My hands were stuck, I had to wear it. I tried to move and gradually got a hand
free and went forward under the wire, eh? Tore all my back on the barbed wire and got forward under the wire, but not before he blew, eh?'

He looked at me sort of up from under his eyebrows and continued.

‘I got away from him, chased him, grabbed a horse from the paddock and chased that bloody dog for miles on horseback, still naked, eh? I'd have killed him if I found him. And when I gave up I was hungrier than ever, eh?'

For the younger boys the most interesting thing about Eh was the seven tattoos on his stalk.

When it was out straight the seven tattoos were clear. Four were girls and you could read their names. He said the figures were pretty much like the photos he gave the tattoo artist.

Also there was Mother, a sea snake, and a clockface.

I asked him why no sheepdog, but he only muttered.

I should have asked him why the clockface.

When it was down they just looked like dirty marks.

Eh played breakaway, when he was selected. When he wasn't, he didn't complain, just quietly got the shits. I should have asked him how he kept it extended while the tattooman worked on it with his needle.

NEVER FIGHT WITH STRANGERS

Serge met his match one day amongst the various strangers he picked fights with when he played pool with a few of the kids one Thursday.

A scrawny little man, middle aged, in old trousers and a blue working singlet, potted the black while he was on another colour.

Serge had been off with the 'flu and spent most of the day getting well on Bacardi, and by this time he was well and truly. Despite his large capacity.

‘That's game,' he announces. And by local rules it is. When you're on the black you mustn't miss it and you mustn't pot another colour.

But the little man wasn't having any. He'd bet two dollars on that game and didn't like to lose. He was forty-nine and only three days out of jail. Tough little rooster.

‘Outside,' said Serge, and tipped his thumb in that direction. The monster looked out of his eyes, but the monster was drunk.

Never mind, Serge had this guy fucked and burnt.

They didn't get there. The little man got in three king hits before they got to the door, and closed both his eyes. Serge couldn't see. His face bled like a pig. The little bloke didn't stop there. While Serge was flailing round trying blindly to connect, he cut him to pieces. Hitting Serge in the body was a waste of time, his solar plexus was a foot or two underneath the flesh, but
around the head he bled like anyone else. Every time he breathed out he spattered hundreds of red drops over his opponent.

The little bloke departed. Serge was a mess. When he'd got to a tap and cold water had helped stop the bleeding, he found the only benefit he received from this brief encounter was he'd sobered up slightly.

It was a lesson to the young guys. You could see them look round speculatively at the eight or nine middle-aged guys that always sat under the windows on the street side of the red bar. They'd been there since they were boys.

They never got up when there was a fight. When there was action coming and you saw the furtive gleam of pink as men whipped out their teeth and shoved them deep in their pockets, they hardly even turned their heads.

Don't worry about Serge. Whatever cuts and gashes he got healed up without scars. Like flesh-coloured porridge, or water closing after you pull your hand out.

MAYBE

Alky Jack wasn't impressed. He'd seen it all before.

He started talking before I got to where he was leaning over the red bar, one elbow in an odd pool of dry amongst the slops.

‘The population must be kept passive,' I heard him say. ‘This is done by myth. These myths are put in your cornflakes every morning. The kids are given them on a spoon at school. Their pop songs are heavy with them. The telly is rotten with myths. At present they're American myths because we cop so much of their stuff; later it'll be our own myths. But it's all the same.'

‘What do you mean, Jack?' I said. I knew he'd tell me. He'd keep on talking whether I was there or not. I'd been thinking about something I read in a magazine, and wondering how light can go at the same speed no matter what speed the thing is going that shoots out
the light. It felt good, knowing no one was going to tell me why.

‘That it's a free society, you can work where you like, human rights are respected, anyone can become a boss and an enterpriser, education is a universal right, we're all equal, the elite is generous and just and the best people to be in charge and they only want the good of the rest of us, rebellion is a sin against God and religion, private property is sanctified and necessary to humanity; that our bosses work like buggery and the mob is lazy, they're honest and we're dishonest, they're superior and we're inferior. That's the myth.

‘And because we live in compartments and the compartments have nothing to do with each other, all the bullshit about communication doesn't have one atom of effect. There's in every country a class of people that only see other people with Daimlers or Lincolns, and never see the hungry. And all down the scale there's different strata of people who only ever mix with their own lot; at work, at the club, at church. And this lot here, who do we mix with? Ourselves. That's why none of you mob ever thinks you're badly off. You see nothing else.'

I'm not bothered about what other people have, whether I see it or not. But I knew Alky Jack would have a good answer to this: probably that circumstances acclimatised me to what I know.

He'd be right. But the trouble with me is I really have no wants, except be with the guys and have a beer now and then. You can always get a place to sleep.

And with a bit of luck, one good meal a day. But what makes the light shoot out anyway? Why does it have to go anywhere?

‘The word Human is the beginning of metaphysics,' Alky Jack went on after a minute. ‘And yet,' he went on, his voice sinking and the words coming spaced and slow, ‘and yet, a human is a tool as an animal is, as a tree or a lump of rock is; a human is a thing used. Everything's used. Nothing exists for itself.'

He seemed on the brink of some lighting-up inside his head.

‘Perhaps there
is
no specially human thing apart from being used. Or using yourself. Perhaps all us animals are machines. Perhaps that's what we're trying to do all the time with new making and inventing—duplicate ourselves and other animals. Duplicate their movements like in machines, their interior workings like in refineries and processing, their mental workings like in computers and data banks, duplicate their behaviour like in social systems.'

His hand wandered round looking for his drink. I moved it towards the open part of his hand—he couldn't see anything for looking into his own head—taking care to touch the glass near the bottom and not tip it.

‘So maybe all we do comes from within ourselves. And maybe we break down and get crook when we don't act like the machines we ought to be.'

He leaned forward over the bar. Sharon gave him a glance, saw he was thinking, and went on working.

‘If it all comes from inside us, then neither Hitler nor JC was mad. Loving others and dying for others looks like a mistake, but if it comes from inside. . . .

‘In that case hating, destroying and killing are quite understandable. After all, I hate the bastards that tell the man on the jackhammer that he's not working hard enough and his machine's too noisy, when he's working at the bottom of a hundred foot hole in winter at six in the morning, building shiny air-conditioned offices for the critic that says he's superior because he earns more.'

He looked at me.

‘You don't understand. Look at you. On the way to being an alcoholic like me. Not Alky Jack: Alky Meat.'

He wasn't usually sarcastic. Usually he never had a bad word for anyone.

‘I mean really hate 'em. I could line the bastards up. You know. Rapid fire. Mow the cunts down.'

I didn't believe him. Couldn't have done it in a million years. But he thought he could at that moment.

‘Jack,' I said. ‘Maybe the ones that keep the mob passive with little myths, maybe their urge to be the
boss comes from inside, and maybe the ones that believe the myths, maybe their urge to believe comes from inside, and maybe their urge not to do anything about it even if they know they're being handled, maybe that comes from inside. So we're where we've always been. Maybe?'

He looked at me again. Really looked. His eyes had a sort of cutting edge.

‘Do you imagine you've disposed of the human race in a few well-chosen words?'

‘No, Jack.' I always liked to give him his name. It was the only way I could say I liked him.

‘No, Jack, all I mean is whichever lot a guy belongs to—you know, by the composition inside, like you said—what he has to do is what he digs out of himself. And what the whole lot of us has to do is keep digging inside and keep making things that get their idea from inside, so what they are and what they do stay sort of in line.'

‘Stop it,' he said. ‘I don't want to hear it. I know what you're saying comes from what I was getting to, but I don't like where it's getting to. I don't want to come to that conclusion. I want to stay thinking that with some effort we can change.'

‘Maybe we can,' I said helpfully.

‘You young bastard. You don't care. Whichever way it comes out, you don't give a stuff.'

He was right.

‘No,' he said manfully. ‘I don't care if arguing gets me pointed in that direction, I don't want to go there. I think if a thing's wrong and unjust it should be changed. And can be changed.'

‘I hope you're right, Jack,' I said. I meant it. It meant a lot to him.

But light
does
travel, they've proved it. So what makes it travel? What pushes it? It goes so fast it's sort of like an explosion.