7 He’s right on time, that Pat O’Brien
After a while you forget how long you’ve been driving. The road becomes a no-man’s-land that stretches on forever. I wake up with a jolt, confused. The inside of my thighs are wet with sweat but there’s a drought in my head, pounding. I crack open a can of Coke that tastes like warm sugar water. Pat holds out his hand so I pass it over knowing that’s that. Men take one gulp and it’s gone, Adam’s apple bobbin’ up and down like a cork in the water. When I shift, knee sweat trickles down my legs. Nothing feels good in this heat and mess makes it worse. The car’s full of Pat’s work stuff, promotional posters and a cardboard cutout of a guy holding a beer. In his hand there’s a slit where Pat puts brochures about a competition to win prizes.
Pat works for a beer company. It’s not his job to sell the beer, but to sell the selling of the beer. He travels from one dusty town to the next, talking to the publican (the man who runs the pub and might have a wife or might not). Pat has to find out which beer will sell, survive or suck. What the customers want and what they don’t know they want, but will as soon as Pat’s company gives them a free hat with every carton. He has to tell everyone that it’s ‘no worries, too easy, not a drama’, that he’ll ‘call that one straight in, sort it out, turn it around, check in, check out and call again soon’. One publican called Tom always popped a coldie on the counter at 12.45 pm, leant on the bar with both hands stretched out. And come rain or shine Pat would walk on in. ‘He’s right on time, that Pat O’Brien.’
Pat would smile and down that beer in five seconds flat.
After business Pat and the publican have a yarn. This is when two men mumble about the way of the world, the lay of the land and old Farmer Ned who packed up and left Susan to take care of the whole bloody lot. The drought that wiped out half the crop and cattle that had to be shot ’cause you can’t let a walking bag of bones suffer like that. Then there’s Joan that’s on dialysis in the city three times a week so for her birthday the CWA ladies got on a bus and brought the whole bingo hall to her, nurses joined in too. And what about the Thompson boy who just got up one morning, ate his corn flakes, kissed his mum on the cheek, walked into the shed and shot himself with his father’s gun. Yeah. A yarn pretty much covers it all.
But I’ve got things to talk about too. Secrets from the past. I close my eyes and search inside my backpack. Feel the wrinkled texture of creased paper on the tips of my fingers, run circles round and round the page, lines up and across, down and over onto the other side like a wayward map with a million directions. It’s a drawing of an eagle flying through the sky with a long neck, blue face, purple eyes and an orange-feathered Mohawk. ‘To Michael,’ it says. These are the words of my grandfather, William Freeman. The only words of his I have ever seen. The picture is a bit torn and there’s a Vegemite stain in the corner. If you look close enough you can see my dad’s little-kid fingerprints in those brown smudges. Like ink.
That bird’s like me. A bit funny-looking. Not quite right. I remember when Dad gave it to me. He was sitting at the end of my bed. He was crying so I’m pretty sure he was drunk. I waited for him to say something but he just bowed his head down like he was gonna kiss my feet. I thought I’d seen that eagle fly through the night skies in Beyen, wings heavy and tired trying to find somewhere to land. Maybe I just dreamed it. After all, they don’t come from here. Hard to tell waking and sleeping lives apart sometimes.
‘When was the last time youse went up this way?’ Pat asks.
I had been here before, a long time ago. Mum said once we went to visit my grandfather, but I don’t remember. He’s probably got volcanoes in his head too—I would have gone against my will or written a protest sign on cardboard. That’s what French people do. Resist. Sometimes I imagined him as a big shadow travelling across the land, sending small creatures running under rocks for cover. He’d scream so loud the earth would shatter into lots of pieces like it used to be and we’d all be floating around on Titanic plates. For the sake of keeping everyone together I tried not to think about him too much. If I were the gambling kind I’d bet he’s the reason why Dad went bad. No doubt about it.
‘Never been here before,’ I say just to play it safe. Pat bangs on the air-conditioner, which never fixes anything.
‘Machines are strong on the outside and delicate underneath like a Turkish Delight covered in steel.’
‘Yeah, righto. Maybe you should go on Sale of the Century. Win us a new air-con unit.’
I crank down the window and the cardboard-cutout man in the back seat almost flies out! I reckon people would love to see him floating overhead holding a beer like he’s saying, ‘Cheers, good on youse all!’ to everyone down below. But Pat shouts at me to roll the window back up again. The plastic handle snaps off which, as the mechanic told Pat, was the car passively demonstrating its lack of servicing. Pat just got fixed what he could afford, not what was needed.
‘Listen, Dylan. I still got a job to get done. That’s what you do in the real world.’
‘I’m in the real world too,’ I said. But then I started to think about how I would support myself in Paris without a job. I’m only fourteen and don’t really have any work experience apart from picking up Margie’s toenail clippings and putting them in a plastic sandwich bag. With no sustainable income I’d fall into a spiral of poverty and end up on the streets, standing in line waiting to get a cup of soup from Le Salvation Army. My clothes would turn to shreds and they’d shave my knotty hair off. Hair is an important signifier of identity. If I had no hair how would I remember who I was?
‘Don’t let them shave my hair, Pat, please!’ I cry so hard snot slides down the back of my nose into my mouth. It tastes salty. Pat’s got one hand on the wheel as he pulls out a big blue hanky, the one Margie gave him at the funeral. I don’t even know if he’s washed it since but I take it anyways and bury my whole face inside. I’m breathing through the cloth, watching my mouth blow a hole in and out, in and out. I count until my eyes are quiet and there are no more tears. Pat shoves the cardboard-cutout man under merchandise boxes in the back and tells me to go for glory, crack the window wide open. That’s Pat. A frozen river that melts in the middle of winter.
I wind the handle down and this time it doesn’t break. Whoosh! I suck in hot blowy air and look out over the paddocks. High, dry grass moving side to side in the wind.
‘You got a yarn for me?’ says Pat. He glances over but all I see is the wide blue sky reflected back in his sunnies. He gives me the go-ahead with a nod ’cause he knows I got hundreds of them. Stories are everywhere—you just gotta turn on your senses and wait. I hear those blades turning, the big wind machines that birds fly into. They were far away, beyond the mountain range that bordered the horizon. I can hear lots of things that the eyes can’t see. So I tell Pat about those machines that store energy in the ground. Wind turns those propellers round and round and then if you were to go underground you would find tunnels where all those blades are turning other little blades and wires and cogs and locks and grooves and pistons and shoots. All working together to put energy into little metal boxes that men come and collect at the end of the day. The light down there is fluorescent electrical blue like threads of lightning, and if you touched it you might go flying down those tunnels so fast you’d end up in Estonia or somewhere else unexpected.