The Glass Canoe (4 page)

MICK SAID:

I'd been at this girl for nearly a week and all she'd say was no. This was unusual for me. Normally if I smell a No in the air I give the bird the big A. No risk.

This No has started to get to me.

It's Show time. I took her with Flash and his bit to the Showground. It's night. After we see a few things we sort of get out of the bright lights and find ourselves up near the pig pens with packets of sandwiches. Which we hoe into.

The smell. It's atrocious, but I get hungry and after a while I don't notice it.

As soon as we stop eating, Flash and his bird are into it. Hands everywhere. We take refuge behind a big truck. He's OK, but I get nothing. No use saying I can't get it in, I can't even get a hand on it.

I get jack of this, so I say, ‘You better have a good night here, enjoy the Show. I won't see you much any more. I'm mixed up in football, there'll be training nights after work and the boys are setting up a mob of us to train in the gym on the other nights.'

There's tears then. And ‘I don't want to lose you.'

I put my hand on her tit and whack! She knocks it off.

So I do it again, and this time it stays. This is all right. So next I try to get a finger in and whack! she clobbers my hand.

I do it again and this time it stays there. Now I reckon I have to keep that finger in or she'll go cold, so I undo my belt, one of those fancy things with big shiny buckles, with one hand and lying on my elbow. Boy, I have every muscle straining right out of their sockets. But I keep that finger in.

‘I don't want to be pregnant,' she says.

So at last he's free and I put him in under my finger, just pretending it's only the finger. I don't know if she believes it. When he's in I jam up tight, don't let her move. She's so tight I blow in about ten seconds, my hand still there.

Then I hear this low sort of yell. ‘Look out! Stop, Mick!'

It is my mate. He's pulling his pants up in a sweat. I look round where he's looking.

The truck has rolled away. Five hundred people,
kids and all, are watching, eating paddle pops, sitting at tables with hamburgers and cans of drink.

The other doll's laughing, but my bird is ashamed and worried and red and half in tears, all at the same time.

There are no cops, that's something.

Funny thing, even with all the embarrassment, as I get up to go I notice, in a pool of water, some oil must have dripped from under the truck and there are these rainbow colours on the water, moving and shifting as if they were nervous. Mostly a sort of bright red and a bluey purple. You want to keep looking at them to see what shapes they'll change to next.

We're standing watching the prize bulls and saying it was a bit sad that as soon as they win their blue ribbons they'll be knocked on the head and cut up—girls like you to be a bit sad about killing things—and set out neatly in butcher's shops for people to look at their insides and all their private parts that even they—the bulls—hadn't seen, and all for a quid, when I hear this joker ask someone the time.

I'm just about to tell him, when another bloke in a broad-brim hat bends down under this Santa Gertrudis, grabs its balls, swings them to one side and looks and says ‘Eight-fifteen'. The first joker looks at him sideways, says thanks and goes. He hasn't gone ten metres when someone asks
him
the time.

‘Eight-fifteen.'

‘Yeah?' He hadn't looked at his watch.

‘Yeah, I got it off that bloke back there. He just took hold of a bull's balls, looked and told me.'

That country joker did this three times. I had to know how he did it.

‘Well, mate, it's easy. You just squat down, grab the bull's balls, pull 'em to one side and you can see the showground clock.'

Country jokers like to take the piss out of Sydney guys.

SOMETHING TO WONDER AT

At my darling's place the radiogram is playing. It fascinates me to see a stupid machine recognise the size of the record and only put the arm over enough to come down right on the outside edge of it.

Maybe it's not so stupid.

I look at it a long time, and think about it, but it's a mystery. In a way, I like not understanding how it works.

SERGE AND RONNY

Serge was a Russian. He was only middle height, but everything about him was big. Beer and heredity filled him out to such an extent that he gave up the beer to keep his weight down to seventeen or eighteen stone. His expansive nature he could not give up. Anyone within reach was liable to be included in the brawl.

He was a pub fighter. Not like some that went round wherever there was a man with a reputation and waited to take him on. Serge was a pub fighter at the Southern Cross, and only there. He wasn't even king of the pub.

Simply that he fought often, and usually with strangers. Some gig from another part of Sydney, where the local rules on the pool table were different, would protest at Serge putting a colour on the black, Serge would say, ‘Outside,' the primeval savage would peep out of Serge's eyes, and that would be it.

Sometimes in the middle of a conversation, the monster would take over and Serge would swing. No change of expression, no verbal form of intention heralded the action. His arms, legs, chest, stomach were so thick you'd wonder where you had to place a punch for him to notice it.

Not that there was time for wondering. If you were slow off the mark and his first swing got you, he'd have a hand in your hair or round the back of your head and pull the head down to meet his vast knee on the way up. This tactic resulted in many a smashed face. If he hadn't had enough exercise at that stage, he'd follow the transgressor down to mother concrete and carefully smash the head down on it until such time as he—Serge—had enough.

His hands wore a covering of skin millimetres thick. He held dry ice in his hands, or a pot of boiling water, without discomfort. People watched his face when he came in the pub to see if the weather could be read there.

It was handy to know early if it would be necessary to duck a chair or a king-hit. When the action started, all laws went into neutral, the only custom that continued was aim and punch.

He had an authoritarian sense of old-style honour. He never spoke of women, or rooting, never of his own or anyone else's women—I don't think women had much place in his scheme of things—and he was a great stickler for clean talk.

‘Behave,' he'd growl at some eager swearer, who was f'ing this and that in a loud voice. If the words were natural parts of a conversation he didn't object. He never swore himself.

One night around ten when the pub emptied and a small fight attracted attention up the street some of the boys discovered two old pensioners hard at it behind the bushes on the front lawns of the dairy company, where Serge worked. Full as ticks.

He took charge, pounded over, lifted the old man off the old woman and zotted him on the chin, whereupon he flew through the air four or five yards and lay still.

‘Get off her, you dirty old cunt.'

And to the old lady he gave the advice, ‘Not outside the Dairy Company,' in a pained voice. And patiently, ‘Get up, love, and pull your dress up.'

The onlookers grunted. He looked round warningly.

‘I mean pull your pants up. Go on, love.'

Kindness to women. He was someone to keep an eye on, but you couldn't help liking him.

When he came in looking dark, the mob would say, ‘He's depressed. Watch him. Something's on. He might go off today.' Always hoping.

But this was what he always said about his mate Ronny. Ronny would be away somewhere for a month
or two, and when he came in and started zotting down whiskies Serge would be hopeful of entertainment in the form of an explosion. Ronny would think nothing of drinking himself into a loving mood and wanting close contact with his fellow man. Or fellow boy. Both usually picked smaller opponents. Perhaps that's not fair: there weren't many as big as they were.

It had been a joke, under earlier publicans, that Serge had been barred from the pub for years, but no one was game to tell him.

Men like Mick didn't come into Serge's circle, they kept their own circles some distance away. Like similar peaks in a chain of mountains round the red bar. If you were in Serge's circle, Serge was the peak: if you were in Mick's, Mick was. A member of the circle acknowledged this by joining, or agreeing to join when invited. As in the aboriginal tribes we'd pushed out, there was no chief in our tribe. Just a fairly loose system of elders, who laid down laws and dispensed wisdom from the shoulder. The shadow-men who stood on the sunless side of the peaks, looked enviously at the creators of action. They'd stand over the world if they could.

One day I was two feet away from Serge, and walking past, when the monster got out and let fly a king-hit at a young guy talking to him. I didn't hear what they said, but I guess the young bloke disagreed with him. Soon they were chasing round the bar, Serge ponderously, the young bloke nimbly getting behind
him and hanging on, turning with Serge so he couldn't get those fat arms on his head and pull him down to meet the knees. At the same time Ronny's monster took him round the bar to clean it up. Anyone he took a fancy to, he'd grab and belt. Drinkers, pool players, onlookers, the lot.

While they were blueing, I thought of all that energy exploding during the few minutes the fight lasted. Lots of impresarios in the outside world could have used that energy, harnessing it to make a profit. It was purer the way the boys used it. It isn't as if they went off their heads for a good reason—they did it nobly, with no cause.

Chasing someone out the door Ronny got fouled up with an old stranger woman visiting the pub trying to get away from the slaughter. She clumsily tripped, slipped and fell on her belly. Ronny, who wasn't co-ordinating all that well, was lusting for fresh faces to punch, and didn't see her. He tripped over her, swayed and fell back on her. She lay where she was while Ronny went in search of the faces that would ease the itch in his knuckles.

The following day Ronny saw her, really saw her, for the first time. From the dock in Parramatta court. Four hundred bucks fine and a bond. He was a nice-looking guy and I guess the judge liked his direct blue eyes and fresh face. He spoke well too. One thing about Ronny. No matter what work he did, the palms of his
hands were always pink and soft, and he smelled of soap. Always.

That day I got away from the golf club early to be in the pub in case they didn't clap him in boob. The way he saw it, going off was just something a bloke did from time to time, and if people got in the way, they got in the way.

We played second row together. I liked the right side, he took the left.

THE KING

Once he was king of Parramatta. Not recognised in social columns, only pubs. He was medium height, built like King Kong.

The only time he ever backed away from a fight was one night near the Bar Roma. Two guys were attacked by about twelve. Just for the sake of the exercise the King goes over and wades in. He's joined by the three with him. In no time the twelve heroes are routed and depart together.

The King is not stupid and never believes an enemy is safely disposed of unless he can see him there on the ground. He walks on, watchful, and sure enough there come the twelve back, this time with sawn offs.

‘Who's the hero?' says one of them.

The King and his boys are already round the corner, leaving the first two, who were late getting away. They
were big, but this didn't help them. After the kicking stopped they lay on the footpath until a roving police car saw them and got an ambulance.

Two months later they were still in hospital.

The King said he didn't recognise any of them and couldn't remember their faces, but he was, after all, a fist man. He didn't like guns. Not for personal discussions, anyway.

After he lost interest in being King, what with getting older, he nevertheless always had a retinue of admirers and helpers who would back him up whatever he did. He threw a big shadow, and they stood in it.

Mostly there was no expression in his eyes. One Saturday morning I was talking to him and noticed his eyelids come down, sort of sleepy. He was measuring me for a king-hit. Then the eyes came awake, lids rose back to normal. The monster had got old and tired. I was sorry every time I saw that happen. I would have patted his shoulder, except.

In his spare time and holidays he loved to go hunting. His idea of hunting was to go north to somewhere like Inverell, where he'd be content with forty to fifty rabbits a night and half as many hares.

‘No, you don't shoot 'em,' he told me. ‘Spotlight. They sit there, hypnotised in the light. You go round and knock 'em on the head. Then you toss 'em in the freezer. Must freeze 'em immediately, so their muscles are OK for cooking.'

The King could bend over, not from the waist but from the hipbones. In the Zoo once I saw chimps do the same thing, picking up nuts. King Kong did it too. Our King could bend and put his elbows on the ground.

And yet, when he spoke of the snap-frozen muscles of clubbed vermin, I'll swear there was a tiny gleam of humanity in his eye, sad as a tear. He went on talking about one of his mates that made a living flying over the countryside dropping chicken heads laced with ten-eighty.

‘For the dingoes.'

Poor dingoes. Getting the same treatment the blacks got when they interfered with the white man's crops and herds and flocks. I didn't want to hear any more.

Next time I heard of him he'd settled down even more and had a job as an undertaker's assistant.

‘Last week,' he said, watching me with relish, ‘I had to go out and pick up this body. When the cops finished, they stood back and I had to get it out of the car. Been there six weeks, killed himself in the scrub with a hose from the exhaust. I knew right away I'd have to put gloves on, you can't touch things like that with your bare hands. By myself, I was. Put the gloves on, reached in, came back outside and tied a handkerchief round my mouth—I breathe with my mouth, nose was broken so many times I don't use it for breathing —and reached in again. Bits of body fell off, broke apart. I had to put the lot in plastic.

‘Nothing would ever get the smell out of that car. Nothing. I know the bloke from the saleyard that tried to do it up. In the end he had to auction it. Some silly bastard bought it. But I've seen that before. Never get the smell of a human body out. Gets right in the upholstery, even in the metal.'

Next time I saw him I was driving through Parramatta from the course on the way to the Southern Cross. The traffic held me up a bit and I waved.

‘How's business?' I called out.

He wasn't embarrassed.

‘Dead!' he roared out from the undertaker's doorway. ‘Dead!'

The traffic moved. I moved off, waved again.

He called out after me, ‘I'll get you one day! I'll plant you!' In the rear vision mirror I could see the grin on his face from the end of the street.

Once, late at night, he confided to me that he wrote poetry. I didn't mention it again and neither did he.