The Glass Canoe (19 page)

THE LAST TRUMP

The Great Lover took to sitting on the doorstop, resting his glass on a cross-member of the floor-to-ceiling glass partitions that lined the back of the pub. It was only a few weeks after we'd found the newly heavy keg that it began to change shape.

‘I think that keg's getting shorter,' Flash said to him.

‘It would with his arse sitting on it,' Danny said.

‘Yeah,' Mick said, showing an interest. ‘Look how it's bowed out in the guts of it. Hey, King. Take a look at the heavy keg.'

The King looked at the keg and at Mick. He said, ‘He's collapsing it, the heat of his bum's melting the steel.'

‘It's allowed,' Mick said.

‘He's let a few go, that's what's doing it,' Flash put in.

‘Shut up, you cunts,' the Great Lover said mildly, looking up from the morning's crossword. ‘What's a four-letter word denoting labour?'

‘Kids,' Mick said promptly, proud of his wit.

‘Look, Meat,' Flash said. ‘Look what he's done.'

‘It looks shorter,' I told him.

‘Maybe it's getting fatter,' I added.

‘How can a stainless steel keg get fat?' said Flash. ‘I think Meat's been thumping the mutton.'

‘Meat's got some to thump,' Mick said.

‘That's allowed too,' said the King.

‘It can't be shorter,' the Great Lover said. He stood up. ‘There. It was up to my knee yesterday, it's up to my knee today.'

‘You were pissed then, you're pissed now,' Flash said.

I was convinced it was the same height. Next day the recessed top was puffed up. The thing was getting fatter from all angles.

Saturday, during the fifth race everyone with a bet on was over near the other door, the one furthest from the pool tables. The gallopers were eight hundred metres from the finish of a two thousand four hundred metre Invitation Stakes, no one was near the fat keg when it went off like a bomb. We were deafened for the finish of the race and guys were going round frantically saying ‘What won? Didja hear?' It might have been the last trump for all the notice they took.

It took a few minutes for the smell to percolate through the red bar. The publican was at the races, the explosion brought the bar manager out of the woodwork, the smell brought him to the ruptured keg. The weld round the top was intact, the split was half an inch from it, running along parallel. The steel had almost gone back to its original shape.

‘I can't see what's in it,' he said, peering at the crack. ‘But something's rotten.' His face was screwed up, the smell hurt.

Mick stood near and said, ‘Those kids that pinched it must have put a cat in it or something and welded it back up.'

The smell was like slimy, strong tentacles reaching out of that keg and gripping you. When you took a sniff you felt weak, like an open grave was breathing up at you.

‘Listen, fellers,' the bar manager said, ‘let's get this out of here,' and Mick and the King grabbed hold of it without a word and took it outside, smell and all. The bar manager had things to do and disappeared after picking up a few glasses. Mick and the King were gone till the start of the sixth.

Sunday when I drove past to the club around ten in the morning, there it was, perched on top of the neon sign of the Cross. It was stayed there with rope, lashed tight.

For the sake of neighbouring noses, I hoped the crack was well open and the smell venting high in the air.

We forgot about the keg after we got used to seeing it up there. No one round the place was strong enough to lift it down and it wasn't doing any harm. The publican asked Mick if it was secure and Mick said nothing would shift it.

‘I'll get it down for you when the stink's gone,' Mick said.

‘Fair enough,' the publican said, and that was that. In the next months you could see a thin line going up the outside wall of the pub where the ants made a highway. The keg was black with them on the side of the crack.

It was another Saturday months later. The publican was off to the races again watching his share of a syndicate-owned galloper come second. Mick and the King were in the pub together.

‘What do you think?' Mick said.

‘Well, I reckon,' agreed the King.

‘Fair enough,' Mick said. They both downed their beer and went outside. Mick shinned up the wall on to the roof and pulled the King up after him. Mick was taller, he got his nose up near the crack of the keg and sniffed. There were no ants there anymore, so they were pretty safe.

They put it in the King's ute and took it away.

Monday the keg was back where it was before, holding back the banging door. It was no longer swollen, no longer cracked. A new weld had appeared alongside the earlier one.

Whoever was drinking near the door sat on it and waited for a game or just talked or watched. It had lost its extra weight, it was just an empty keg again. Guys in from the car park kicked it when no one sat on it, and were rewarded with a good hollow boom.

Apart from the welds, the only difference from an ordinary keg was that it rattled. Whatever was dead inside it had left bones. Ants had no use for bones.

Guys that wanted to show their strength would lift it up when the music from the juke-box was on, and shake it in time to the music. Made a horrible racket. Those bones
had
to be bigger than cats' bones.

A DIFFERENT SORT OF CHAPTER

In the Cross of the South we sat in beerchairs, at beerglass tables and trod on concrete, enemy of all that was glass, enemy of human skin and of the fragile skull.

In Fortress Australia, I sat at a typewriter of glass—made from melted beerglasses—with red keys like the Red Bar, typing on this beerglass paper in letters of amber.

In my darling's bed I said, ‘Once upon a time we weren't here, but that was going to end. Someday, again, we won't be here. And it'll be forever.'

In my sprawling Sydney, each Cross had its Alky Jack and its Danny and the rest; and each bed had its Meat Man and his darling.

They were my pub, my house, my darling, my town and my people. All beautiful.

RONNY

Next time I saw him he asked me to do him a favour.

Why not? It was a Sunday, my darling had had to go somewhere with some study group or something—I never ask questions: I suppose she takes that as a sign of no interest—and I didn't feel like going to the Leagues Club, so I
said OK.

Ronny drove. He went in close to the city to a street where the houses are all touching, each with a foot thick wall between the ones on either side.

‘Remember, once you touch her, she's yours.'

‘Touch who?'

‘You'll see. It only takes the slightest touch. A finger. And she's yours.'

‘Come on, who is it?'

‘She's this crim's missus, and he told me to look after her while he's inside. You know, see she gets a bit.
He doesn't want everyone in the district through her. He knows I'm clean.'

‘Why me, then?'

‘I'm bloody sick of her. Trouble is, now she's used to me, she wants me. As I
say, all you have to do is touch her. Arm, hand, anywhere.'

We get there early, I've had nothing to eat, he brings out some bottles, introduces me and says how about a beer for breakfast. She's stuck on him, you can see that. She looks only at him, hardly at me, just nods hullo, then turns back to him and the lights go on behind the eyes.

He talks a bit and she's hovering round trying to get near him, but he keeps talking, sitting at the kitchen table and filling her glass and pushing it towards her every time she makes a move. She tries to touch his soft pink hand, but he keeps it out of the way.

‘I better get some cigarettes,' he says suddenly and bolts for the door. On the way past me he says Go for your life, Meat, so she can't hear it. The little kids have nappies on and the place stinks of them and they're running round dirty and yelling, but she takes no notice. I make sure the nappies don't brush my gear.

When he's gone I try to make some talk with her and it's very hard going. She's polite and when I get up to rinse my glass with water—a habit I have when I drink bottled beer—she shrinks away from me even though I'm two metres away. I stay on my feet and try
all sorts of indirect movements to get a little nearer.

By and by, like a horse, she gets used to me being there, and doesn't move so far away. I pour her another beer, she shoots the glass out, gets her hand away from it and leaves it till I fill it, then brings her hand back to get the glass.

Several times I get up for one reason or another, and she flattens against the wall when I pass. I stop and face her and she still shrinks. All the time I keep my voice down, real low, just like when you're calming an animal that finds you strange.

In the end I trapped her in a corner of the kitchen, just worked her into the corner bit by bit and got closer to her.

I pretended to have an itch on my leg and my hand whipped down suddenly to scratch, she reared back but there was nowhere to go. Her arm hit the wall and bounced outwards and my hand came up from scratching at the same time. The back of my hand touched the inside of her forearm, which was bare.

She was against me in a flash, pressed up tight. Every bit of her, feet and legs and thighs and belly and chest and shoulders, pressed against me. And her face. I had to move my face to one side when her hair got in my mouth.

Her tongue—I got a sight of it just before, all coated with white—rammed into my mouth and round like a propeller.

She dragged me to the bed and tore the clothes off me. All she had to do was undo a couple of buttons and all she had on fell off.

While I was rooting her, the kids roamed round and several times patted me on the bare bum. With sticky fingers. Their nappies were full, the smell was strong enough to beat you black and blue. I hope that was Vegemite on their hands, or Golden Syrup. Peanut butter, even.

I'd drunk the better part of three bottles of beer and the one place I hadn't been to was the dunny. I was busting for a piss. I went to get off her, but she grabbed me tight, pulling me back in again. He hadn't gone down yet, especially with half of him being a piss-horn.

‘Look,' I said. ‘I need a piss. Gotta have one.'

‘Never mind that,' she said.

‘That's all right about you,' I said. ‘I'm the one busting.'

She kept on holding me in to her and I tell you she was the strongest woman I've ever met. In this way, at least. Usually it's not that hard to get away from them.

Suddenly she looked me in the eyes and said, ‘Do me a favour.' As if she was asking something very solemn, like when a person particularly wants to be buried rather than burned and gets someone to promise that it'll be done the way he wants it.

‘Sure, anything. But let me up for a piss. For Christ sake.'

‘Promise me.'

‘Promise what? Let me up. I promise.'

‘No, I'll let you up a little way, if you promise.'

‘I promise. Now let me up.' I reckoned if she let me up a little way I could get my arms in against her and push her off.

‘Do a bit on me,' she said sort of softly.

‘What?'

‘Do some on me. I'd like it. On me.'

‘Cut it out, I couldn't do that.'

There I am, looking round for some way to get off, but she's strong as a lion. She lets me get him out and up a bit, but the power in her arms frightens me. There's no way I can escape.

‘I'm just not used to the idea,' I said. ‘I've been brought up to do it in the can.'

‘You can't get there, can you? So let it go.'

‘But the bed?' I said desperately. It was coming.

‘Forget the bed.'

I did it. A little flow at first, then it poured. Must've been half a gallon. She let me up a bit more and grabbed the old feller and swished him round, playing the stream on her face, in her hair, on her stomach. It was everywhere, all over the bed and her, down her legs, everything.

The funny thing was, the way she did this to my water, as if it was something great, made me horny
again so I got in and did it again, lying on her all covered in my own piss. The ups and downs of a white bum attracted a few more sticky pats. All very friendly.

When it's all over, she bursts into tears.

‘You'll think I'm awful,' she said. And went on crying. I tried to pacify her as much as I could, but I was dying to have a shower and get the smell of her off me. And the smell of me.

‘Tell me you think I'm not awful.'

‘You're not awful,' I said. She stank. ‘Everyone has things they like. Not everyone's the same.' I tried to get more conviction into it. ‘If we were all the same, where'd the fun be?'

She sounded a bit calmer and looked at me to see how I was taking it. I hoped those kids had clean hands; every time they came round they patted me. They sure had a thing for bare bums.

‘Get up on your hands and knees,' she said suddenly. ‘I want to do something for you.'

Why not, after that? I got up on the wet bed on hands and knees. And I tell you what, it was OK. A bit embarrassing at first, but she did it so thoroughly and so enthusiastically that I soon got used to it and started to get quite a taste for it. I didn't realise she could get her tongue in so far.

Ronny got back a lot later. As we were driving through the Sunday traffic I wondered why she hadn't
commented on the old chap. Most of them are alarmed or pleased, and mention him.

Perhaps they only do it to please me. Maybe there's plenty as big.

I enjoyed playing second-row with Ronny. No team ever pushed our pack off the ball while we were there. After he left the team I took the left side. Had trouble with my right shoulder. Still have a lump where the collarbone nestles in to the shoulder bone.

I haven't seen him for a long while.