Making Laws for Clouds (5 page)

‘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.'

 

Harbo's boat went up on New Year's Eve, and they say you could see the flames from a mile away up the canals. He tried to put it down to fireworks but no one was going to buy that, particularly the council. He'd got it all wrong, they reckoned – the time, the place, the prevailing wind. Along at the wharf they thought it was part of the show, just going off early, but then they heard the sirens.

‘It was a gust,' he kept saying. ‘A flamin' gust.'

But from the way the
Stella Maris
burned it was pretty clear the gust had started on the inside. Lucky he's one of the flock.

Sometimes I come here on my bike, sometimes the bus, but with each day's work we get a little closer to putting the
Stella Maris
back into the water, and Harbo back with it. He doesn't like the land much. He reckons
it rocks. He's a boatie through and through, and water's like the land to him.

I'm sandpapering. That's today's job, yesterday's and today's. We're still on the coarse stuff so it'll be a while yet before it's done.

We're all chipping in, money or time. That's how we do it at the Blessed Virgin at Wurtulla. Even those of us who might have been mighty deep in the poo for about three weeks and four days now. That's me. I'm on the outer, and that's all there is to it. It's a complicated state of affairs but, suffice to say, I'm not exactly crowded out up here, standing on a plank between two trestles at the starboard side of the bow.

They passed the hat around after Harbo's boat went up. First to get it lifted off the bottom, then to get the experts in for major structural repairs. Budgeting for that pretty much emptied the hat, so that's when Father Steele really went to work, talking charitable acts out of all kinds of people – two colours of paint, a second-hand gas stove, a bit of space at the corner of Brown's Slipway where the
Stella Maris
could be hoisted up so we could fix her.

I'm sandpapering outside and Tanika Bell's sandpapering inside, as far as I know. I can see her there, imagine her exactly. There's the thickness of new wood between us, nothing more, but it might as well be miles. It's like one of those prison scenes in movies
where the people put their hands flat up on the glass and line them up with each other. Except the glass is wood and our hands have got sandpaper in them, but there's a few seconds sometimes when all the big machines shut up and I can hear the sanding going on inside. Tanika Bell, back and forward, back and forward, down near the bow, starboard side. Her hand and my hand, as close as they've been for three weeks and four days.

But the sun's setting and the bus is here. Mr Bell's calling out to us – to everyone in general and some people by name, but not me. There was a time when my name would have been one of the first, a time when I was famous round here for my hard work, always the first to pitch in and lend a bit of muscle to something. Bugger it, those days are gone. I'm pitching in harder than ever, but they're still gone.

I give my arms a shake but the dust from sandpapering sticks to the sweat. I'll have a bath when I get home, a shower to wash it off and then a bath. Just me lying there in cool water floating my tired arms and my tired legs and getting less annoyed. These days are long and hot and hard – work for the council, work on the boat. And we don't even get to talk now, Tanika Bell and me.

Mr Bell's at the door of the bus, but he looks down at the ground when it's my turn to get on. Word wasn't
supposed to get out but of course it did, despite Steelo's plan. You can't sack two Magi from your nativity play ten days out from Christmas and not expect talk. Rumours and speculation, then specific questions and it's out there and there's no stopping it. No stopping it turning from just a story going round into some great big deal.

So Tanika doesn't turn round on the bus any more, and my whole family got demoted. Wayne, Mum and me – we're two rows further back now, and everyone knows your position on the bus is some kind of sign of your accomplishments. I was the one who had to break it to Wayne. Not that I broke all of it but, since he's the quiet type, no one else would have told him anything and he might have taken it internally. Father Steele's been onto that one for a while – Wayne's tendency to take things internally. It makes a mess of his guts and puts him off his food.

If there's a difference between having Wayne around the house and having a pet, I'm not always sure what it is. No, that's not fair. Wayne's Wayne, and Wayne's all right. And most pets don't live as long. I had a lizard once.

‘It's all down to me,' I told him straight up, as an example of how to take it like a man or, alternatively, like an adult. ‘We got bumped a couple of rows because I kind of racked up a negative accomplishment. My
behaviour standards took a bit of a tumble at nativity rehearsals.'

‘Really?' he said. ‘You're usually the one who's Mr Too Cool For School.' And I think he even smiled, so at least one of us got something out of it.

Tanika gets on the bus, and she stares out the window as though not one of her fellow passengers exists. So many things have changed, and not for the better. She's looking out at the sea, across the park and through the she-oak trees with their branches swaying around in the onshore breeze. There's not a boat in sight, not a thing out there, just the darkening water and sky, night coming down. And the water would be cool and clean and I'm caked with sweat and sawdust, and if we swam down there it'd be just the two of us, goosebumps coming up on Tanika's skin with the first shock of how cold it was.

‘So how'd you go with the sanding today, Wayne?' It's not one of life's big questions, but if I don't say something the silence'd get me thinking the wrong things. You usually start off with sins of thought before moving on to word and deed, Father Steele tells me.

‘Good,' he says. ‘The wood's hard but. So I did my shoes.' He pulls them off and shows me, and he's sandpapered both heels completely flat.

‘That's good Wayne. They're more moccasin-style
now, and that's pretty interesting. You'll probably be ready for the wood tomorrow then, hey? I've got to say it's a neat job though. Those heels are flat as.'

‘Thanks.'

‘See, this could be useful for you, so you should keep at it. If you can do that to timber, well, the ability to use coarse sandpaper could be the first step on the road to you having a marketable skill. “Job-ready”, Wayne, that's what you could be. In a while. When you've picked up what you can from school.'

Tanika Bell – I can see the back of her head over Mrs Vann's shoulder. I can see the back of her head and remember how her hair felt when I slid my fingers into it. A few rows back from here, a few weeks ago. And how her mouth felt and how other things felt in that amazing second before Father Steele appeared at the top of the stairs. And we were gone, out of the nativity play right away, never to return. Fornication.

We're not even supposed to talk to each other now. Not a word. That's down to Mr Bell, mostly. Steelo says these things take time. Everyone gets a second chance as far as he's concerned, it's just that sometimes there are other people who don't want them to get it right away. The day will come, he says, when Tanika and I can talk again, but it'd be best to have a good and proper purpose.

The water's not that cold now anyway, thinking
about it. Not cold enough for goosebumps. That's just how I've imagined it on some of these nights.

Harbo's hands got burned in the fire and he's still got the bandages on. Up to the wrist on one side, most of the way to the elbow on the other. I'm onto the fine sanding when he shows up. Apparently they've started painting inside and he wanted to see.

He stands at the gate of Brown's Slipway, sizing it all up. This is all he's got, the
Stella Maris
, all he's got in the world. His bandages are so white they practically gleam. It's like he got dressed up in his best bandages to come and see how she's going. There's a bandage on his head as well, and one around his right leg. He sees me looking, and he gives me a wave.

Steelo brings him over and I ask him how he is.

‘Oh, no worries, mate,' he says. ‘Coming along fine. But don't let me stop you working. You don't want to waste your time yacking to some old idiot who can't fix his own bloody boat.'

‘You'd do the same for me.'

‘Yeah, but don't you go looking like this.' He lifts his hands up, as if I wouldn't have noticed the bandages otherwise.

‘Come on, it just looks like strapping. Like you're
about to slip them into a couple of boxing gloves and go a few rounds.'

‘A round or two for a pound or two,' he says, and he crouches, fakes at jinking back and forward, throws a couple of soft practice punches.

‘Come on old guy,' Steelo says to him, ‘we should get you inside before you start getting big ideas. Old salts, Kane, they never forget the scraps they got in when they were youngsters. Hey, Harbo?'

‘Never lost one, mate. At least not how I recall it.' It's a big claim, but he laughs as soon as he says it. ‘Nah, I'm a lover, not a fighter. That's what they say, isn't it?'

And he gives me a wink and his whole ugly old face crinkles up. Steelo smiles, gives a bit of a laugh himself, like a man who's heard a few of Harbo's stories in his time, and they leave me to the fine sandpapering of the bow and head down the back. Harbo goes up the ladder first, and not quickly, but Steelo's hands are both there waiting in case things go wrong.

Harbo's been laid up at someone's place, convalescing. He can't even roll his own smokes at the moment. They say he hasn't been doing so well, so Steelo told us he'd be dropping in from time to time for a ‘morale boost'. He used to run some pretty big ships, years ago. Freighters, all around Asia. He spent a few years working a Brisbane River ferry too, not that that seems like much after time in international
waters. He's been up here at least ten years now, retired at the coast, him and the
Stella Maris
. And he makes things out of wood for church fetes – boats and trains and things – so he'd hate the bandages, I'd reckon.

‘Hey.' It's Tanika's voice, saying ‘hey' quietly like it's still in my head, like it's one of all the bits of her voice I've stored up to think about these past three weeks and five days. ‘Hey, chippie, you with the sandpaper.'

She's on the deck, right above me. When I stand back on the plank, as far back as I can go, she's there, leaning over the railing and looking right down at me. Tanika Bell, in sunlight, late afternoon light, making her cheeks look brown and her hair all kinds of colours.

‘I'm looking for paint,' she says. ‘They've sent me out to get more paint, so I thought I'd check and see if you had any.'

‘Good idea. So, what are you looking for? White or blue?'

‘What have you got?'

‘None at all. Just sandpaper. But if I find some paint, you'll be the first to know.'

‘And if I need some sandpaper . . .'

Then someone shouts out, ‘Found some.'

‘I've got to go,' she says, still looking down at me.

‘Yeah.'

‘I . . .' She looks around. I think there's no one there. ‘I miss you, you know. Heaps.' She looks around again, then back down to me. ‘And this isn't over.'