in it seemed unreal and unimportant, as if I’d created them or seen them in a film. In my mind, I called that the old life. I wanted a new life, a life among ordinary people, people like Ned and Stan Harrop and Flannery. Now Ned’s death had shaken everything loose and I didn’t try to fight the thoughts.
The old life. It had been my life for thirteen years. The old life. The Job. The endless, seamless job that had no clear beginning and was never finished. ‘Your job!’ Susan had screamed one night. ‘Don’t call it your fucking job! It’s not a job. It’s your fucking life! It’s your fucking personality! It’s you. It’s what you are. You don’t exist without it. There isn’t anything fucking else in your world, don’t you understand that?’
I did understand that. And then again I didn’t. Not that it made any difference. She left me anyway. I came home one day and she was on the pavement putting suitcases into her car. It was a sunny day in early spring and, from a full block away, I saw the gold of her hair catch the light. A flash, like sun on a helmet.
Another departure. My whole life seemed to be about departures. My father and I changing towns every year or two, the two of us packing everything into the truck, sometimes no-one to say goodbye to, driving away from some forlorn fibro house in the grey dawn. I used to put myself to sleep thinking about the towns, trying to picture the few friends I’d made. Wal in Cunnamulla who gave me a Joseph Rodgers pocketknife. Sleepy-eyed Gibbo in St George whose mother always wanted to feed me. Russell in Baradine whose dog had spotty pups. For many years, I had the feeling that it was vitally important to keep the memories of these and other people and places alive. To let them fade away would somehow be an act of betrayal, of disloyalty. Perhaps this was because I had no recollection of my mother, and I felt that this was somehow my fault, as if I had not cared enough about her, as if I had cast her off, thrown away her memory. Your mother. Other people’s mothers ask you about your mother. The fathers ask: ‘So what’s yer father do?’
Why did we keep moving? I never really understood. I asked my father once, one night in my first university vacation, watching him work in the smithy. He didn’t stop what he was doing. After a while, he said, ‘Never wanted to stop anywhere long after I lost your mum.’ There was a long silence, then he said, ‘Nothin’s forever, John. Enjoy what you can and don’t be scared to move along.’
Before I was in my teens, I could tell when we were going to move. My father became morose, pacing around at night, not fishing, not reading, saying things like: ‘Jesus, imagine endin up in a dump like this.’ Once that started, it was over. Mentally, he was already somewhere else. It only remained for me to tell the teacher and get my sealed envelope. And prepare myself for the fight.
That’s the thing I remember most clearly about the string of tiny towns that looked as if they’d been dumped on the site from the air. The fight in the first week. They trailed you after school like mongrels following a bitch on heat. Big boys, small boys, fat boys, thin boys, all aroused by the prospect of violence, strutting, jostling. You walked on, whole body tense, heart like a piston in your chest, feeling them getting closer, half hearing the taunts through the blood noise in your head. Then someone would try to trip you, usually a small one, over-excited, wide-eyed, flushed. Or a few would run past you, turn and block your path or dawdle along, finally stopping. That was the moment.
By the time I was twelve, I’d learned to short-circuit the process, stop, turn, issue the challenge, draw out some pale-eyed, mouth-breathing boy, spitty lips, hands too big for his wrists. You couldn’t win these fights. Some bigger boy always dragged you off if you got the upper hand. But what my father taught me was
The old life. It had been my life for thirteen years. The old life. The Job. The endless, seamless job that had no clear beginning and was never finished. ‘Your job!’ Susan had screamed one night. ‘Don’t call it your fucking job! It’s not a job. It’s your fucking life! It’s your fucking personality! It’s you. It’s what you are. You don’t exist without it. There isn’t anything fucking else in your world, don’t you understand that?’
I did understand that. And then again I didn’t. Not that it made any difference. She left me anyway. I came home one day and she was on the pavement putting suitcases into her car. It was a sunny day in early spring and, from a full block away, I saw the gold of her hair catch the light. A flash, like sun on a helmet.
Another departure. My whole life seemed to be about departures. My father and I changing towns every year or two, the two of us packing everything into the truck, sometimes no-one to say goodbye to, driving away from some forlorn fibro house in the grey dawn. I used to put myself to sleep thinking about the towns, trying to picture the few friends I’d made. Wal in Cunnamulla who gave me a Joseph Rodgers pocketknife. Sleepy-eyed Gibbo in St George whose mother always wanted to feed me. Russell in Baradine whose dog had spotty pups. For many years, I had the feeling that it was vitally important to keep the memories of these and other people and places alive. To let them fade away would somehow be an act of betrayal, of disloyalty. Perhaps this was because I had no recollection of my mother, and I felt that this was somehow my fault, as if I had not cared enough about her, as if I had cast her off, thrown away her memory. Your mother. Other people’s mothers ask you about your mother. The fathers ask: ‘So what’s yer father do?’
Why did we keep moving? I never really understood. I asked my father once, one night in my first university vacation, watching him work in the smithy. He didn’t stop what he was doing. After a while, he said, ‘Never wanted to stop anywhere long after I lost your mum.’ There was a long silence, then he said, ‘Nothin’s forever, John. Enjoy what you can and don’t be scared to move along.’
Before I was in my teens, I could tell when we were going to move. My father became morose, pacing around at night, not fishing, not reading, saying things like: ‘Jesus, imagine endin up in a dump like this.’ Once that started, it was over. Mentally, he was already somewhere else. It only remained for me to tell the teacher and get my sealed envelope. And prepare myself for the fight.
That’s the thing I remember most clearly about the string of tiny towns that looked as if they’d been dumped on the site from the air. The fight in the first week. They trailed you after school like mongrels following a bitch on heat. Big boys, small boys, fat boys, thin boys, all aroused by the prospect of violence, strutting, jostling. You walked on, whole body tense, heart like a piston in your chest, feeling them getting closer, half hearing the taunts through the blood noise in your head. Then someone would try to trip you, usually a small one, over-excited, wide-eyed, flushed. Or a few would run past you, turn and block your path or dawdle along, finally stopping. That was the moment.
By the time I was twelve, I’d learned to short-circuit the process, stop, turn, issue the challenge, draw out some pale-eyed, mouth-breathing boy, spitty lips, hands too big for his wrists. You couldn’t win these fights. Some bigger boy always dragged you off if you got the upper hand. But what my father taught me was
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