This is the best summer of my life. This is the summer my mother isn’t always on the bus, and I used to dream about that.
No more of my mother burping and farting and creaking like an old house with all that gas in her. My mother cracking those lame boozy jokes no one gets and smelling something like old fish. She’s a bit of an embarrassment.
My mother sits in the second row on the bus and takes up the whole seat, but mainly on account of her knees. They’re quite far apart, so there’s no room for anyone else. She sits on the window side, but her right knee gets most of the way to the aisle.
It’s the chafing, her thighs chafing. That’s what she says, and she says chafing’s hell and she doesn’t say anything about hell unless she means it. She says if they wanted to make hell hell they could forget the eternal fire and just go for a long hot summer with lots of chafing.
Summer’s when the chafing’s at its worst and she sits on the verandah sometimes, flapping the front of her dress to make a breeze, and she says it’s raw as a skinned possum in there. That’s usually when she calls the doctor. And, since it’s summer, there’s usually fungus involved and I’m off to the chemist to get a big tube of cream soon enough.
The first time she said ‘skinned possum’ my brother Wayne cried. He’s younger than me, and not good with surprises, even when they’re just ideas. He had nightmares about the skinned possum up Mum’s dress, in case it might come out and get him when he was asleep. It took me some talking to get him over it. Now he just asks her not to say it because it makes him want to spew. But lots of things make Wayne want to spew. All his life his stomach’s been on the sensitive side. My mother’s not too bad about that. We make allowances. She says I should always buy groceries with Wayne’s stomach in mind, and not make a fuss about doing it. So, no peanut butter.
Enough about my mother. This is the best summer because she isn’t always on the bus (except on Sundays), and that completely changes the seating arrangements. The regular seating arrangements go like this: front row – Tanika Bell and her mother (who always faces forward, and prays when we come up to intersections), second row – my mother, third row – me and Wayne. I’m older, so I qualify for the window seat, but I give it to Wayne. I should be giving it to Wayne because of his tendency to get motion sickness, but that’s just a good excuse. From the aisle seat of row three my mother isn’t as much in the way, and you can talk to Tanika Bell. See the back of her head the whole way, talk to her sometimes.
So how much better is it when my mother’s not there, and it’s Wayne and me in the second row instead of her? Much much better. From the aisle seat of the second row, you can see every freckle on Tanika Bell’s face when she turns around. And we don’t have all my mother’s noises to deal with.
I’m working right now and I should be concentrating, but it’s Tanika Bell’s face from one row back that I’m thinking about. Working and sweating in this foul summer heat, and the weeds get up knee-high overnight so there’s always plenty to do to keep the roads looking the way they should. I stop for water and some petrol for the Whipper Snipper, then I’m into it again, putting a straight edge back along the Nicklin Way, taking out weeds and the new strands of grass that are pushing out onto the bitumen. That’s ambition for you – grass thinking it can grow over bitumen, take over the Nicklin Way. That’s four lanes of traffic and two of parking.
Things have been better here since Tanika Bell’s father came along and got the job of church caretaker and driver of the minibus. And much better since rehearsals started, since that means bus trips without my mother.
We are the Magi, Tanika Bell and me, two thirds of the Magi in the church nativity play. It’s my first speaking part – Magus Three, the carrier of myrrh. But I’ve done three years as a shepherd (non-speaking), so it’s fair enough. People know I’ve earned it. And people probably knew I was shitted off with being a shepherd by now too. If they looked they could tell. The second year I worked hard with that crook, and all it got me was another year as a lousy fucking shepherd. The third year I just made up the numbers, stood there with a broom handle that had had nothing done to it – nothing to make it look like a costume – and I made sure sheep never crossed my mind.
My mother kept making me go. She doesn’t see that sometimes you’ve got to have something to live for to make you keep going back. Some understanding that you’ve got prospects.
I didn’t want to put my name down this year, but my mother made me. ‘Not if I’m no lousy fucking shepherd again,’ I said to her, and she said, ‘Righto, I’ll talk to Father Steele.’
I think my mother’s a pillar of the church – I read that expression in the paper once, and she’s the right size to be a pillar – so the talk with Steelo seemed to do the job. She came back and said they’d put me down for a Magus this year, along with Mattie Hartley and ‘that girl on the bus who talks too much’.
And I said, ‘I thought it was just you on the bus who talked too much,’ mainly to cover the fact that my face had gone red and my heart had started thumping like a knocker on a door and something in my pants was showing some kind of interest in answering.
‘She’ll have to wear a beard, of course,’ my mother said. ‘But she’s the right height for it, I suppose. Joe Bell’s daughter.’
As if I didn’t know who ‘that girl on the bus’ might be.
And that’s when, weeks out from Christmas, this started to look like it might be the best summer of my life. Forget the fact that Steelo makes us do the nativity play exactly the same way every year. Forget the fact that this is year three for me on the council road crew and summers are the worst time by far for doing this job. For me this year is different. I’ve been bumped up to Magus Three, and I’ve got dialogue with Tanika Bell.
I realise I’ve developed the thing my mother calls a ‘soft spot’ for her but, trust me, it’s a hard spot. It’s a good thing these council work shorts are loose in the front or everyone on the Nicklin Way would know exactly how I’m feeling about Tanika Bell right at this moment.
My mother – a woman all made up of soft spots – is pretty quick to pick them in other people, and give them a hard time about it. So it’s best to keep my dealings with Tanika Bell totally professional when she’s around. And to try to keep Tanika out of my mind when I’m at work, since this job involves some fierce equipment sometimes, and requires precision.
Tanika Bell has interesting teeth, some of which only look straight when she’s turning round to talk over the seat. Sometimes in rehearsals she catches me looking at her mouth, and she shuts it. It’s usually open, but in a way that I’d call thoughtful.
I pick up some Bundy rum on the way home, and three bottles of Diet Coke. The Bundy’s on special and that’s the best way to buy it, so I take two. I can always hide one until we need it. It’s not such a long walk from the bottleshop to home, but it’s too long for my mother to take on. I’m fit. Working for the council does that for you. I’m particularly fit in the legs.
Actually, it’s handy that there’s a bus to church, since I don’t know how we’d get my mother there otherwise. We’re early on the route, about a third of the way from the Bell’s place at Battery Hill to the Blessed Virgin at Wurtulla. We get on just before Mrs Vann, who embroiders flowers in the corners of her hankies and always smells of powder. Sometimes she gives us a batch of her date slice. She’s definitely another pillar of the church. The stop after that’s Mr Tooley, who tells lies about being a war veteran and goes to three churches for the food and one more for bingo. Then there’s the Skerritts, who take three rows down the back on the right and always have wet combed hair that’s turned frizzy before the trip home. The Skerritts’ hair drives them close to mad.
‘Hey, we’re the flock,’ Wayne said to me one day when he was about ten, so now that’s pretty much how I think of us – the flock being rounded up for church by Joe Bell’s bus. And we’re not such a bad flock really. Round Christmas, there’s carols. We wind the windows down and we sing and we don’t care if all Caloundra hears us.
It sounds like it runs pretty smoothly, and it does now that Joe’s been in the job ten months, but it didn’t at first. There was a bit of trouble when Mr Marcuzzi retired and my mother realised the new man’s wife and daughter thought they owned the front seat. My mother has a sense of something that I think is called proprietary. It’s to do with owning things. Not that my mother thought she owned the front seat, but she didn’t think the Bells should have it either. She went to Father Steele on that one, not that she wanted to make a fuss. There were people who had been around for years, she said, and it was all a question of who was entitled.
As it turned out, not everyone was as much into proprietary as that. Steelo fixed it somehow. He called it a reshuffle, and by the time it was done we were a couple of rows forward of where we had been (to rows two and three), and Tanika and Mrs Bell had held onto row one. Which Father Steele said was only fair – only fair for Joe – since he had no one but the other Bells on the bus at first, and he might want some conversation.
I didn’t mind the look of Tanika Bell from the start, I have to admit it. For the first couple of months, I just got to see the back of her head in the bus on Sundays and say hello a couple of times at the shops. It was my mother who told me to make her welcome and talk to her (so I couldn’t). Later on it was my mother who made me go in the three-legged race with her at the church picnic, since we were the same height. That’s the kind of thing my mother notices. It gave me five whole minutes tied to Tanika Bell, and almost a minute with our arms around each other during the race. We finished fourth, so just out of the places.
After that Tanika would turn round on the bus and talk, often enough that we got used to the idea. Before then it had only happened sometimes. And I’d lie in my hammock at night and I’d wonder what we’d talk about the next Sunday on the bus, and I’d wish that my mother wasn’t there all the time and I’d think about suggesting practice for next year’s three-legged race. And about how Tanika Bell’s body felt with my arm around it. Pretty good.
And on the bus the times when I’d most want my mother not to be there were the times when she’d crack a joke or fart. Whenever she farts on the bus, everyone pretends she hasn’t, because they’re a church crowd. The first time she dropped a bad one when Tanika was looking our way, Tanika stopped talking and stared. Right at me as though it was either my fault or she was forcing herself not to look at my mother, in case it’d give the game away.
I took that to be a hurdle for us, and I knew we’d have to get over it. So when we got off the bus I said to her, ‘Look, we pretend she doesn’t fart. It’s just what we do.’ And she said, ‘Right,’ but maybe meaning it in more of a ‘Right, get away from me, you’re an alien,’ kind of way. Which meant it was still a hurdle.
We didn’t talk properly for weeks after that, not until the three-legged race. I spent quite a few nights lying in my hammock wondering how to let her know that I only fart about the regular amount. That my mother’s different, or I’m different to her, whatever. Gas moves through my mother in strange ways. Maybe it’s because there’s more of her.
The doctor told her to change her eating, which means she now takes a Big Mac out of my pay every week. It’s got salad on it, that’s the reason. And she says her invalid pension doesn’t stretch all the way to a Big Mac. Big Mac, large fries, chocolate shake that actually means.
Sometimes I imagine her insides and they’re like balloons – long sausagey balloons like the ones they twist into animal shapes at American kids’ parties (I’ve seen the movies). Fat squeaky gassy pipes. One day I asked Father Steele about my mother, and he said God made no two of us the same way. Simple as that.
My mother is not a well woman. Parts of her came out – actually came out, they say – when she had Wayne, so we didn’t get to have Shane. My mother and father thought it’d be good to have three and go Kane, Wayne, then Shane, with the beauty of it being that Shane would have worked either way. But then there was the issue of Mum’s parts coming out, and Dad left, so there is no Shane. But I did work out that we’d ended up with three, in our own way – Mum, Wayne and me.
Wayne feels bad about Mum’s parts, but I took him to Father Steele – since he seemed good on that kind of thing – and Father Steele said with babies in the act of birth you were pretty much guaranteed one hundred per cent innocence, so Wayne was in the clear. And what happened to Mum was just a thing that God would think of as bad luck, but he’ll see her right in the long run.
Then her back went, then she started stacking on the weight, then her back got worse, then things went all the way to chafing. She doesn’t move much now. At least the back pain’s under control most of the time, with the Panadeine Forte and the rum and an occasional dose of what she calls ‘medicinal herbs’. Which we think is probably marijuana, but you’re not allowed to call it that, not even to the guy who comes round with it in a bag. Wayne’s pretty sure it’s marijuana, and he smokes a bit of it sometimes, if he’s had a bad day at school. I don’t, of course, because I’m in a position of responsibility with the council.
Now there’s something I wish I hadn’t said. I wish I hadn’t come up with that thought in my head weeks ago when I was explaining to Tanika Bell about the herbs, because it ended up being the way I said it – ‘a position of responsibility with the council’. I might have even said ‘there’s heavy machinery involved’ (and that might have been a reference I got from a sticker on the Panadeine Forte packet).
Of course, I’m totally embarrassed about it now. I just do verges. Good verges, but still just verges. I’m not the mayor, or anything.
Tanika’s a part-time receptionist for Bob Kotter Realty, the one that goes by the line ‘Bob Kotter – the Most on the Coast’. It was Tanika who told me that Bob Kotter doesn’t do the most on the coast at all – he was just the first one to notice the rhyme between ‘most’ and ‘coast’ and get a patent on it. She says with the places they sell it’s more like ‘Bob Kotter – the Shack out the Back’. Our place was ‘a Bob Kotter home’ (also patented) before our landlord bought it, so Tanika’s never coming over, now that she’s said that. She’s right though. Bob Kotter – the romp by the swamp. He could have that one too if he wanted it. Bob Kotter – the dump by the dump, the bomb by the bombs, the hole in the hole.
There’s sweat running down my legs and into my socks. You don’t stop sweating on days like this, and the weight of the bottles doesn’t help. But my mother’ll be glad of them. She’ll be ready for a rum now, sitting on the verandah doing what she calls ‘looking out to sea’, but that’s just another one of her jokes. She says we’re only about two storeys down from a sea view, but if we had a sea view – if we lived on a hill instead of in a dip – we couldn’t afford the place.
So much for Bob Kotter. I used to think having ‘a Bob Kotter home’ amounted to something until Tanika set me straight. I shouldn’t be such a fool for advertising. ‘Life’s a breeeeze in your Bob Kotter home’ (also patented, with all four Es). Well, it’s not. Most days the breeze, like the sea view, is two storeys up, and we get hot still air and views of the swamp and the lagoon and the bare patch of land that they used for artillery practice during the war. It had signs up about unexploded bombs until a couple of years ago. It’s now the Recreation Council Camp. They cleared it, but my mother says to mark her words and her words are, ‘One day a kid’ll go off in there.’
My words to Tanika, after trying to impress her with all my council talk, went something like, ‘I’ve kind of moved out of home, you know.’ Another thing I wish I hadn’t said. It’s the most impressive way – but not the most honest way – of saying Mum and Wayne sleep upstairs and I sleep in a hammock downstairs. I’ve got some old sheets hanging to mark off my bit down there, and I’ve got a bar fridge and a radio. It was my father’s workroom, not that it’s a room, and not that he did much work (according to my mother). But at least it means there’s a bar fridge, a sink, and a jar of something green and slimy that, for the nativity play, will do for myrrh.
It’s a good place, a good space. I had a T-shirt once that said, ‘Everyone needs their own space’ and that’s where I got the idea for it. Plus, it gives Wayne his own room upstairs, so everyone’s happy. Everyone really has got their own space. And my space is semi-outdoors but livable. I’ve got a couple of posters up, and I can do what I like down there. I’ve got Diet Coke in the fridge, I’ve got some African violets growing in pots next to the sink and a selection of magazines. I’ve got my own space where I can hang out nude if I’ve got the inclination, and I’ve got a box of tissues to go with those night thoughts about Tanika Bell (or Pamela Anderson).
My mother thinks I’m tidy, just because I own tissues. She says, ‘See, you were brought up right.’ My mother says that people who can’t look after their own noses can’t look after much. You’ve got to start somewhere, and your nose is as good a place to start as any.
She also says you don’t bear grudges in this life. She would have helped out at rehearsals if Mrs Bell had asked her to – the way Mrs Marcuzzi used to, every summer – but she didn’t ask and that’s that and you don’t bear grudges. That’s my mother. That’s her take on the world.
She sees me coming down the road, sees the rum and the Diet Coke and she shouts out, ‘Good on you, Kane,’ when I get to the gate. ‘Are the Cokes still cold?’
‘Just bought ’em.’
‘Good on you.’
She can’t turn much because her back’s bad – she says her pension report reckons she’s lost at least thirty degrees of turn – so it’s easy to sneak the spare rum by her, particularly since she knows I’m going straight into the kitchen to get a round of drinks happening. I usually drink my Diet Coke neat, because I think it’s cool that you can use the word ‘neat’ when referring to a drink, and because I don’t like rum. Alternatively, I go for ‘on the rocks’. I bought my mother a couple of ice trays last Christmas, which means we can do ‘rocks’ any day we like in summer, as long as we remember to keep filling the trays.
Wayne, it turns out, likes ice. He doesn’t drink much of anything, so finding out he liked ice worked out well, really. It’d work out better if he’d remember to fill the trays once or twice, but that’s Wayne. I can hear him now, in the backyard. He’s doing catching practice. That’s when he stands near the jacaranda tree and pings a golf ball at it and tries to catch it when it ricochets back. Wayne can do that for hours and then come in and suck only a couple of ice cubes. He’s pretty low-maintenance in a lot of ways.
Mum wants it on the rocks today. We both do. She holds the cold glass against her face and says, ‘Beautiful.’ Slowly, like she means it, like it’s a thing of actual beauty. ‘Could you wet me a face washer?’
Wayne says no to a drink, but yes to a cupful of ice. He puts a cube in his mouth and starts his catching practice again. He takes a dive to his right and nearly chokes on the cube when he hits the ground, but it clears. He crouches in the dust catching his breath and trying not to be sick.
I don’t know what Wayne’s going to do with his life. That’s what worries me. Not everyone can get trained on a work-for-the-dole scheme and end up at the council. Not everyone’s got it in them to end up with some kind of expertise about edges. But I don’t know what to say. I know he wants to field at second slip for Australia, but he can’t bowl and batting scares him – so, face it Wayne, it’s not going to happen. It could be time to live in the real world. Okay, so he’s only fourteen, but you’ve got to start thinking about these things. I was fourteen four years ago, and I had a few ideas about where I wanted to head by then.
It’s Wayne’s night for dinner and he does spam-burgers, which is what he usually does. Cut the right way you get three burgers to a can, so it’s okay. I can smell the spam frying while I’m in the shower. We’re eating early again tonight because of rehearsals.
With Wayne, advice can be good sometimes but you have to go about it gently. You have to pick your moment.
‘Hey, those were pretty excellent spamburgers.’ That’s what I tell him, since a compliment’s not a bad way to start. We’re waiting for the bus, and there’s a thing or two he needs to hear before the others turn up. ‘Remember how last time – after the last rehearsal – I said you looked a bit too much like Wayne up there? Well, that’s okay, but if you want to end up a Magus one day, you do have to put some work in. If you want to create the right impression as a shepherd, you have to have sheep on your mind. Get it? That’s acting.’
Wayne sits there picking at the scabs on his knees. I sit there in one of my mother’s old dresses with a long piece of rope wrapped around me three times, since I think that’s what they did for belts back then.
‘See, you don’t think I feel exactly like a wise man in this, do you?’
Wayne laughs, picks a bit more at a scab. Puts his finger on the drop of blood that comes out and turns the knee away from Mum.
‘You get what I mean? I’ve done four of these now, and you learn something every time. Like, just sitting here getting ready for the rehearsal, I’m getting used to my Magus gear again and I’m giving a bit of thought to my myrrh. See, it turns out I’m a wise man who chooses to express himself through his myrrh, and that’s got to mean something. Something specific’
Wayne frowns. He’s not there yet.
‘Okay, paint me a picture, Wayne. That’s what they say sometimes. Paint me a picture. You’re a shepherd, you’re on the job. Now, what can you see?’
‘Okay,’ he says, staring across the road and hopefully visualising the Holy Land. ‘There’s a swamp. And bombs.’
‘Wayne, it’s a rocky hillside outside Bethlehem. Acting is about making stuff up, getting beyond your own little world. You’ve seen that TV ad about thinking outside the square? That’s what it’s about. You know what that means?’
‘No.’
That’s when the bus turns up. At some stops Joe Bell gives a couple of toots of the horn, but not ours since I always make sure we’re ready early. There are only a few people on it tonight, because it’s just for cast and crew. Cast and crew and Mrs Bell, on account of the catering.
I try not to stare at Tanika on the way to the bus. Tanika in the front row with her gingery Magus beard, trying – if I’m getting it right – not to stare at me. Or maybe it’s just that her beard’s not on straight.
‘I’ve never seen a bomb,’ Wayne says when we’re getting on. ‘So I made that bit up. I just know they’re out there.’
‘That’s good Wayne. That’s the way’
Old dresses and sandals are pretty much the go for most of the people on the bus but my dress’d be the biggest, since I’ve got the biggest mother. It’s bunching up when I go up the steps, and I have to lift it like a queen going over a puddle. Very elegant. Mum gave Wayne a bathrobe for his costume, and he got to cut the bottom off but he still catches a sandal on it and headbutts me in the back.
‘What is it with you shepherds and your bathrobes?’ That’s what I say to him, to stop us both looking too stupid, and Tanika laughs. It’s the first time I’ve heard her laugh into her beard, and I quite like it.
‘Hey,’ she says when I sit down.
‘Hey back. Bearded lady’.
‘Nice dress.’
‘Thanks. Don’t know about the hibiscus pattern, but maybe I’m just that kind of Magus.’
‘Cool,’ she says, and laughs again. Her beard is stuffing from an old mattress stuck on a piece of cardboard and attached by fat ginger sideburns to sunglasses that’ve had the lenses knocked out. Not a bad job at all.
So I say, ‘Nice burns,’ and I’m tempted to give them a tug but I don’t since her mother’s there (even though she is facing forward). ‘You’re very resourceful.’
‘My mum made it.’
‘Yeah, well, she’s pretty resourceful too.’
‘I’ve got my frankincense,’ she says, and holds up some incense sticks. ‘They’re musk flavour.’ I show her my myrrh jar and I open it so that she can see the goo inside and she says, ‘Oh, yuk, what’s the baby Jesus going to do with that?’
We all laugh – except her mother – and I tell her, ‘Grease axles or something. He could do worse than get himself a trade, you know.’
The bus gets to the Blessed Virgin all too quickly, and we have to get down to business. Wayne goes off with the other shepherds and I go with Tanika to find Mattie Hartley. This is a Father Steele strategy – get together in your groups first and talk through some of the issues.
Mattie’s down the back, drinking a cup of cordial and eating as many biscuits as he can fit in before we have to get started. He’s found a packet somewhere. No surprise.
Clearly it’s up to me to take the initiative and I’d rather do that than watch Mattie Hartley crack biscuits open and lick the cream out (and then sometimes stick them together again and put them back in the packet), so I kick our Magus meeting off by saying, ‘Okay, what have we found out since last week? I’ve found out that myrrh is a resin, and it comes from trees. I reckon I’d have been the kind of Magus who would have been wise enough to have a few myrrh trees in the yard at home.’
Tanika goes next. ‘Okay, mine’s frankincense, right? So I looked it up in a dictionary and it said it was old French for . . .’ she checks a note she’s written on her hand ‘. . . luxurious incense. So I thought musk.’
‘And the wise part of it?’
She gives it some thought, a lot of thought, and then says, ‘I bought it when musk was cheap. And now it’s not.’
‘Good one. Mattie?’
‘Well, I’ve got the gold, so I reckon I’d be the richest Magus. And that’s what my dad reckons too. Also the smartest, since I’ve got the gold.’
Some of us don’t actually like Mattie Hartley. We decided that a while back.
‘The other thing I found out,’ Tanika says later when Mattie Hartley’s getting his beard fluff re-glued, ‘is that the star in the east – the one we follow to get to the baby Jesus – that was probably Venus. That’s the planet of love, technically.’ Then she goes bright red and looks the other way and says, ‘I’m off for a loo break before we go on.’
Steelo rounds us up as soon as she’s back. We, the Magi, have two scenes and our first one’s early on.
Herod’s Palace, Jerusalem.
Mattie Hartley: ‘Where is he that is born King of the Jews?’
Tanika Bell: ‘For we have seen his star in the east.’
Me: ‘And are come to worship him.’
Herod: ‘Why, I have it he is born in Bethlehem of Judea. Go and search diligently for the young child and, when ye have found him, bring me word again, that I may come and worship him also.’
Herod turns and swishes his gold cape at that point, then he stops and looks at Father Steele. ‘How about an evil laugh? How would that go then?’
‘You probably don’t need it,’ Steelo says. ‘And you probably don’t need the turn either. Not that it’s a bad move, but you are the king. You’re already in the position of power, remember.’
‘Righto. Got it. Puff up the chest a bit?’
‘Why not? Good. Now, let’s keep moving. Let’s have Matthew turn and do the next Magus One line, and then the Magi can depart.’
Mattie Hartley: ‘Behold, our star, our guiding light. Off in the east. Bring frankincense and myrrh, and I shall bring him gold.’
Steelo nods. ‘Good. And if we could have you all looking in the same place to behold the star . . . How high do you think it’d be in the sky? Matthew? Kane?’
‘Low. You can’t see it at our place at all. We’re in a bit of a dip.’
‘All right. Thanks Kane. Low. Good.’
That’s us done for the moment, so Steelo moves on to the next scene. Back in the stable. We walk through the shepherds backstage and I check that Wayne’s okay before going outside.
He nods but he doesn’t look happy about me asking in front of people. He glares at me like he wants me to go away. I notice the blood from the picked scab has trickled down to his ankle.
I ask him if he’s got a tissue and he says, ‘I’m a shepherd on a rocky hillside outside Bethlehem.’ He really, really wants me to go away.
So I just tell him, ‘Good work, Wayne,’ in a mate-to-mate kind of way, and I leave it at that.
Mrs Bell has the cordial and biscuits out on the table. The cordial’s in cups already, so Tanika and I take one each and walk away from everyone else, including Magus One Mattie Hartley.
That’s better,’ she says. ‘Better with just a couple of Magi, hey?’
‘Yeah. What’s his story? It’s just cause he’s got gold. And a couple more lines than the rest of us.’
‘Yeah. I never liked him anyway, but. Is that bad, not liking him anyway?’
‘No, it’s fine. I never liked him and I’ve known him for years.’
‘I want to be Mary,’ she says. ‘I wanted to be Mary, but they wouldn’t even let me try out for it.’
‘That’s the way it goes here.’
The last church dad worked at, they reckoned I’d have a fair shot at being Mary this year. And the Mary we’ve got here is such a bitch to me. I don’t know why. I hope she’s not a friend of yours if I’m calling her a bitch.’
‘No way. And it’s her problem, babe. All her problem. You’d be such a good Mary and she knows it, I reckon.’
‘I hate all this moving. You’ve got to keep starting again. And people don’t like you and there’s all that business about who sits where on the bus.’
‘Yeah. That’s all sorted out fine now though. Your dad’s entitled to some conversation. Everyone’s okay with that. So the bus is fine and hopefully you’re all settled in and it’s feeling a bit more like home here. Everyone’s got to have their own space, and you get your space and then you keep it. That’s how it should be. You should be here for a while, shouldn’t you?’
‘Hopefully.’
‘Yeah. I mean, there’s your job at Bob Kotter Realty. And stuff. You’re not just some kid who can be picked up and carted around any more. You’ve got some responsibilities now.’
‘Well, not really. But thanks. I hadn’t thought of it that way.’
Then the break’s over. We’re backstage again, waiting for our next scene. I’ve never seen the girl who’s playing Mary being a bitch, to Tanika or anyone. Maybe there are women’s issues going on. The roughness of the beard makes Tanika’s skin look particularly smooth. That’s what I’m noticing when she shuts her mouth again and looks at the floor.
Steelo claps his hands and says, ‘Tableau,’ which is the signal for the nativity people to freeze as we come to the edge of the stage to do ‘voices off’.
Mattie Hartley: This looks like the place, though all the rooms are given up to others.’
Tanika: ‘Not all the rooms.’
Me: ‘There are stables too, and people staying there, the inn keeper says.’
Knock knock knock. Tableau comes alive, shepherd opens door, the Magi are welcomed.
‘Exceeding great joy,’ Steelo says. ‘Let’s see exceeding great joy. This is Jesus, remember. You’ve just walked into a stable and found Jesus.’
Mattie Hartley: ‘We have followed the star and it has brought us here.’
Tanika: ‘To you, Christ Child and Blessed Virgin Mother.’
Me: ‘We come bringing treasures, Lord.’
Mattie: ‘Of gold.’
Tanika: ‘Of frankincense.’
Me: ‘Of myrrh.’
Steelo claps his hands. ‘What’s that myrrh, Kane?’
‘We had it at home, Father. I think you get oil off your hands with it.’
‘We might have to look at that.’
‘But I’ve looked up myrrh, and I think this is about the right consistency. It’s green too. Green wouldn’t be bad for myrrh.’
‘All right. Maybe a new jar though. I’m sure someone round here would have a spare coil pot, or something like that that’d be just right for a myrrh jar. Leave it to me. Move on, depart, tableau for the nativity people, Magi out the door and Magus One . . .’
Mattie: ‘But, lo, I had it in a dream that we should not return to Herod and should make our journey home another way.’
Exit.
I’m a bit annoyed with Father about the myrrh, to be honest. If he was going to chew me out about the myrrh jar he could have done it later, in private.
The bus takes us home via the Christmas displays at Bokarina, but I’m over the whole nativity thing right at the moment. Dune Vista Drive is already full of cars and minibuses, and some of the houses in the side streets have amazing numbers of Santas and lights and shit but a guy I don’t know says, ‘If you’re such a wise man, what’s going to win the fourth at Eagle Farm on Saturday?’ and I’m just not in the mood.
‘Venus is pretty low down sometimes,’ Tanika says when she comes up beside me. ‘You were right with that. And how can anyone say exactly what kind of jar myrrh would’ve come in back then?’
‘Yeah?’
‘All you’ve got to do is take the Vegemite label off before the first performance, and you were going to do that anyway. I bet you were.’
‘For sure.’
That’s when she holds my hand and says, ‘There we go.’
Tanika Bell is holding my hand in this night not long before Christmas in the best summer of my life. I should get over the jar. People around us get excited and I wonder if they noticed Tanika’s move. Then I hear hooves.
We turn around and Mary comes past us on a donkey – an actual donkey – led by Joseph. She sees us and smiles at both of us, but it’s like a smile in an old painting – a smart-arse smile half held back, like the Mona Lisa.
Tanika looks at the ground and says, ‘Fuck,’ down into her beard as everyone else says, ‘Ooh, Mary.’
We go back to the bus, just the two of us, and we’re still holding hands. I almost say something about the Mona Lisa and that Mary’s up-herself smile, but I don’t. We look around for Venus, but maybe we’re in a bit of a dip here too or maybe it’s behind a house.
She takes her father’s lighter and she lights an incense stick and says, ‘You can see it from my place. We’re up on Battery Hill. You could come over and see it from my place some time, if you wanted.’ She waves the musky smell around.
‘I thought that stuff was expensive.’
‘But I’m wise. I own it all, so I can do whatever I want with it. Whatever I want.’
‘Yeah?’
I kiss her then. I move to kiss her on the mouth, slowly, but when I get there she pulls away.
‘What’s wrong? I thought . . .’
‘My mouth.’ She looks away from me again. ‘I hate my teeth. And my nose is bent on the inside. It’s okay from the outside, but the bit in the middle is bent so I mainly breathe through my mouth. So that’s a problem. And if I kissed you and you didn’t like it . . .’
‘It was only the beard that had me wondering. I’d be fine about kissing that mouth.’
And I do, and this time she kisses me back.
I don’t sleep till well after midnight. I’m nude in the hammock and tonight there’s a breeze coming through the slats, bringing in wet salty swampy smells. I can remember every second of how Tanika’s rough teeth felt on my tongue. And my neck, and my ear. And the taste of blood in my mouth that time when she gave my tongue a bit of a gouge without meaning to. She’d be quite an eater, I’d reckon.
I didn’t tell Tanika about my mother’s views on the importance of looking after noses as one of the basics. Tanika, like Wayne and the birth incident with Mum’s parts, started life a little behind and you know what? I like her all the more for it.
I can hear my mother upstairs not sleeping either, but that’s the rum. No one sleeps well on rum. That’s just how it is. She’s talking, louder, arguing. That’s how it goes in Mum’s dreams. Then there’s Wayne’s feet in the hall, and he’s talking her down. I should be less worried about Wayne. He’s a good guy, and not everyone has ambitions. ‘Lofty ambitions’ – that’s what one of my teachers called them just before I left school and I told him I wouldn’t mind working in a plant nursery one day.
I can’t believe I pashed Tanika Bell. I want that to be the last idea in my head tonight. Not my mother’s messed-up dreams. Me, Tanika Bell and the night sky from Battery Hill. That’d do me. That’s my lofty ambition for now.
Sometimes we get a Blue Nurse in to dress my mother’s ulcers. This week the doctor lines that up for Thursday, and you can even smell the fresh bandages when I get home from work.
‘Looks good, Mum,’ I tell her, for a bit of encouragement.
‘Good on you, Kane,’ she says, and she gets me to fix her a rum and Diet Coke.
‘Rocks, Mum?’
‘Yeah.’
For tonight’s rehearsal Tanika is actually in the driver’s seat when we get to the bus, and Mr Bell is nowhere to be seen.
‘You didn’t know I could do this, did you?’ she says when we’re getting on. And she’s got one hand on the gear stick and the other on the steering wheel, and she’s sitting there like a complete expert. ‘If you’re lucky I might let you borrow the front seat. Give the driver a bit of conversation.’
‘Does that mean Wayne has to pray at the intersections?’
‘I really hoped no one had noticed Mum doing that.’
At that point Wayne trips coming up the steps and headbutts me in the back again. I shouldn’t have stopped.
Tanika shakes her head and says, ‘Bloody shepherds.’ And she tells us she’s already dropped a carolling group off at a shopping centre, and her parents were part of it.
So tonight there’s no Mum, no Mrs Bell, no Mr Bell, and I watch Tanika driving, driving the bus. We’ve come a long way in a few months. It wasn’t so long ago that I only got to watch the back of her head, and she was a passenger then. To think I showed off about operating heavy equipment, and she can drive a bus and she didn’t say anything.
And it stays different tonight at rehearsal. I’m not a good Magus Three this evening. All I can think of is Magus Two and her mouth, and I’m never ready for my lines. I make a mess of my lines, and that’s not like me. There are several things I want to say to Tanika Bell, but I don’t know what they are.
Tonight the rehearsal started early and we break for dinner at the halfway point, after we’ve gone through the whole play once. I didn’t get my shit together as far as dinner goes either. We’re supposed to bring our own. I managed to find enough in the fridge to put together a left-over package for Wayne, but I might have to make do with biscuits.
Which makes it more embarrassing when Tanika says, ‘Hey, want to eat together?’
And I have to tell her, ‘A couple of biscuits’d do me, I think.’
‘Oh.’ It’s like I’m turning her down.
‘No, I had a big lunch.’
‘Oh, okay.’
‘All right, I ran out of stuff at home, stuff that was in the fridge and ready to go. I didn’t get home from work in time to make anything new.’
‘You can have some of mine. It’s back in the bus.’
‘Back in the bus?’
We look at each other and then she says, ‘I’ve been thinking about you since Tuesday night. Nothing but.’
‘Yeah, I know what you mean.’
We start walking to the bus, and our arms end up around each other. I kiss her on the cheek, just in front of one of her big gingery sideburns.
It’s a surprise and she takes a breath in and says, ‘There’s people . . .’
‘Sorry.’
‘No, don’t be sorry. I was just saying there’s people.’
We get to the bus and she takes my hand and leads me up the steps. And it feels like it’s her bus now, now that she drives it. I’ve been a passenger on this bus all my life – three changes of seats, gradually moving forward – but I’m with Tanika Bell tonight, and her first seat was the front row and her second seat was the driver’s. That’s the kind of woman she is.
‘It might be down the back,’ she says. ‘I don’t remember. There might be a bit of searching to do.’
She walks ahead in the dark, and I reach out. My hand finds her shoulder and I move it down to her side.
‘Mmmm,’ she says, ‘are you helping me find dinner?’ She pushes back against me. Takes my hand in both of hers and moves it up to her breast. She half turns her head and our beards rub together. I get a mouthful of fuzz and she pulls her beard off, then mine and says, ‘No more wise men.’
Then our mouths are together and I can feel her tongue, her teeth, hear the air whistling through her nose. She leads me down onto the back seat, then climbs onto me, crouches over me with the moonlight coming in the back window and onto her face. She moves so she’s lying on me, and we’re kissing again. I can feel her back, her thighs through her dress, and she’s rummaging around in mine which is just one fold after another down there. She stops to breathe, and it becomes a laugh. Just a small laugh.
‘I’ve never had this kind of trouble with a dress before,’ she says. She lifts it up, fold by fold, slides her hand into my underpants. ‘So, what have we got here?’
‘Watch out. Or I’ll . . . it doesn’t need much encouragement.’
‘I wouldn’t mind some,’ she says and puts my hand where it’s never been before. ‘There. Just there . . . but not that hard . . . yeah.’
Her breathing changes, gets heavier. The moonlight comes in on her closed eyelids and I lift my head up to kiss her eyes. She makes a noise, and it almost pushes me over the edge.
‘I have to tell you, I’m close.’
Back home this is round about when I’d be reaching for lots of tissues.
Tanika says, ‘Yeah,’ like it’s all under control, and she still doesn’t open her eyes. She reaches into her bag, pulls out a small packet, bites the end off. ‘Here.’
I feel the condom go on, her fingers unrolling it, and I have to bite my lip and take the Lord’s name in vain. Then she moves on top of me again, rubs me up against her and suddenly I’m somewhere else and then . . .
Then Father Steele appears on the steps of the bus just as I let it go. I hear myself going, ‘Aaagh,’ like someone who’s just had a tooth pulled without a needle, and Father Steele makes the same noise as he slips back down the steps.
Tanika lies on top of me, very still, puts her face down against the base of my neck and says, ‘Shit,’ quietly.
Outside the bus, Father Steele clears his throat.
Tanika lifts her head and looks at me, looks right into my eyes.
‘It’s okay,’ I tell her. ‘I’ll sort it out.’
We move. She pushes herself up and away from me and my dress falls back into place, almost, and I take the condom off. I can’t go and talk to Father with it in my hand, so I give it to Tanika and I don’t know what to say so I say, ‘Sorry.’ It seems appropriate.
When I leave, she’s sitting there holding the condom like it’s an undersized fish that’s given up the fight.
‘So, Kane . . .’ Father Steele says when I get out of the bus, and the next line is up to me.
‘I know we’ve done the wrong thing, Father. I know it’s things like this that can spoil Christmas for everyone, and I know we’re out of the play now. You don’t have to tell me that. I know that neither of us deserves to be a Magus after this, and that’s just the way it is.’
‘That’s a very mature approach, Kane,’ he says, and we start walking. Father Steele always likes to pace when he’s thinking about life’s dilemmas, and I don’t mind it either. I think I picked up the habit from him.
‘I’m eighteen, Father, it’s about time for a mature approach. And I could have done better tonight. I know that, in that bus, Tanika and me, we succumbed. We were weak, Father.’
‘Yes, you were. I know you’re eighteen, and she’s eighteen too, isn’t she . . .’
‘I think so.’
‘I hope so. You’re eighteen and you have to make your own decisions, I know that, but this . . .’
‘I do love her, but. Does that . . .?’
‘It doesn’t fix it completely. It’s not the whole answer in the eyes of God. Love’s a fine thing, but there’s also holding back. There’s restraint of these urges. But maybe it’s some consolation, unofficially. And she . . .?’
‘I don’t know. We haven’t said all that stuff yet. But I’m pretty sure I love her. Even if it’s just, you know, recently.’
‘Well, we should talk. Not this evening, but tomorrow maybe.’
‘That’d be good. Um, my mother . . . you don’t have to tell my mother do you?’
‘Oh, no. I think this is between you and me and God. And Tanika.’
‘Just the four of us then.’
‘Just the four of us, as long as we can sort out the nativity play part of it smoothly.’
‘Good on you, Father. And you know something? When you’re looking for a new Magus, you could do a lot worse than young Wayne. Mum’d like it if I stepped aside for Wayne occasionally, I reckon. Can’t hog the limelight every time. It could help bring him out of himself, you know? And we’ve been practising at home, so . . .’
The last bit’s a lie, but if it gets Wayne bumped up to Magus it’s not a bad lie, I don’t think.
‘That’s very good, Kane. A good suggestion. And maybe we do have more shepherds than we need. So you’ll be off now, the two of you? And Tanika will be back later to drive people home?’
‘Yes, Father.’
‘And the two of you could talk this through in the meantime.’ He leads me back to the bus but, just before we get there, he stops and says, ‘Was there, um, protection?’
‘Yeah. That seemed to be . . . organised.’
‘Well done.’
On my way up the steps, he pats me on the shoulder.
‘And so, life’s next challenging phase begins,’ he says.
‘But, lo, I had it in a dream that we should not return to Herod and should make our journey home another way,’ Tanika says in the bus and laughs madly as she changes down gears for a hill.
‘We got off lightly with Steelo. I’m pretty sure that counts as fornication where he comes from. How are we going to explain being out of the play? What are we going to say to people?’
‘We’ll come up with something. I’m feeling . . . optimistic. I don’t often feel optimistic, so let me.’
How could I not be crazy about Tanika Bell – bus driver, optimist and, it’s turned out, woman of the world.
Back at her place, she gets sausages out of the downstairs freezer and tells me she never wanted the sandwich in her bag anyway.
‘We’ll do them on the deck,’ she says. ‘On the barbecue. And we’ll find Venus out there somewhere.’
We go up the stairs, pick up bread rolls and sauce in the kitchen, and she takes me outside. Venus is just above the trees, the cold white dot of Venus, bigger than the stars. Just big enough, if you look hard enough, to be distinctly round, to amount to something with a shape.
‘Venus,’ she says, and kisses me again.
She fires up the barbecue and gets the sausages going. She says the light out here is blown, but if it wasn’t she’d keep it off tonight anyway.
‘I watch the stars from out here sometimes, if I can’t sleep,’ she says. ‘When I was just a kid, I used to think my name was Tinkerbell, but no one else could say it right. So I thought I’d fly up there, with the stars, one day when I worked out how to. What an idiot.’
‘You’re not an idiot. You’ve got to have dreams. And anyway, did you know there are places now – cities – where, when it’s night time, you can’t see anything in the sky that’s smaller than the moon, there’s so much junk up there in the air? I saw that on TV. We’ve got a great sky here. Specially up on the hill.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Remember what I said about the council? The position of responsibility?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Well, it’s a bit of an exaggeration. I have to admit that. I pretty much just do verges. On the road crew.’
‘I know. But how would we get anywhere if plants grew all over the Nicklin Way?’
‘I guess.’
‘Anyway, Dad says you can always tell Kane’s verges. They’re neat as.’
‘Your dad notices my verges? What are we going to do after tonight?’
The sausages are already spitting and she turns them with tongs.
‘Jude chapter seven,’ she says. ‘Sprung giving themselves over to fornication and going after strange flesh.’
‘Are you telling me there’s a problem with these sausages?
She laughs, and turns the barbecue down a notch. ‘The next bit of the Jude quote’s something to do with hell. Something to do with the vengeance of eternal fire.’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t be worried so much about the fire. My mother says hell’s to do with chafing. So that’s what we’re up for then. You and me and chafing. Don’t worry. We’ll talk to Steelo. He’s good, really.’
‘You reckon he’ll tell our parents?’
‘He said he wouldn’t, and he’s a man of his word. He knows how my mother’d go off her nut if she found out we’d done it in the back of the church bus in the middle of nativity play rehearsal.’
‘I guess we’re probably out of the play for next year too.’
‘Yeah. I was hoping for Joseph, but . . . Did you know that, back in Steelo’s early days my mum was lined up to be Mary. Then she got pregnant with me, of course. She wouldn’t have been showing by Christmas but people knew, and your chances of Mary – or anything – are done for after that. She didn’t go back to school either. She thought about it for a while, but it never happened. Probably too old now. She’ll be thirty-six in April.’
‘She hasn’t had an easy time.’
‘No, she hasn’t. But she’s made what she can of it. Wayne and me, we’re okay.’
‘Yeah.’
She turns the sausages again, and I look out at Venus. There’s not a cloud in the sky tonight.
‘I’m going to make something of my life, you know,’ I tell her.
‘Yeah, I know.’
‘No, really. I’m . . . determined to. That’s the word. Determined. To. I’ve applied for a job in Parks, for a start.’
‘Done enough for you?’ she says, lifting a sausage with the tongs and holding it up into the light from the lounge room.
‘There was this lady once, years ago, who ran the cafe at Currimundi and she had this big hair and the longest nails. She used them for tongs sometimes, turned sausages with them. Now, that was worth looking at.’
She laughs. ‘Is that allowed, or does it count as touching them?’
‘I might open a nursery one day, actually.’ All of a sudden, there it is – my Year Ten ambition, out of me and turning loftier without me meaning it to. ‘A plant nursery. Native trees. Bottlebrushes and that. I might open one of those. Or work in one anyway.’
‘That’d be good. Better than real estate,’ she says, and rolls her eyes as if real estate’s the stop on the road to hell just before chafing. ‘Let’s do it. One day. Let’s save money and not tell anybody and one day just do it.’
‘Yeah.’