Making Laws for Clouds (2 page)

‘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'